His eyes sparkle as he looks down at her. His tongue moves against her palm in a familiar pattern. Heat rushes through her, pooling between her legs as she jerks her hand back.
“You’re a menace,” she says, instead of asking exactly where that portico is.
“I do my best,” he says agreeably, and starts them walking again. They turn off the staircase onto an aerial footbridge leading to the Temple of Ares, a tall cylindrical structure set on its own hill, and Julian lowers his voice. “Is there anything else you need for tonight?”
“Just to check in with Maki. He’s been minding my ship all afternoon. Who’s here for you?”
“Graham. He insisted.” Julian tucks her a bit closer to his side. “I’m not going to ask if you’re sure about all of this, but I hate that I won’t be with you while it’s happening. If either of them reacts badly…”
“The point is to get them to react badly.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’ll be heading this way when I need you,” she says, twisting away so she can walk backward. She stretches one arm back the way they came, up toward the Temple of Zeus standing tall above them, and the other toward Ares like she’s measuring the distance. “Think you could make it in one jump from up there, if you got a running start?”
“I fly a racing ship for a living, Mads. If I need to get somewhere fast, that’s what I’m using.”
“You going to have it on standby during dinner?”
She’s teasing, but Julian’s face is serious. “Should I?”
“It was a joke,” she says soothingly, turning around to walk at his side again. They’re nearly at Ares. She can see the Provenance and Chronicle ships between columns on the ground floor.
“Iwasn’t joking. Graham’d let me take the ship. He wouldn’t even ask questions.”
“I don’t think he’d appreciate you making him an accomplice to grand larceny.”
“He’d get over it.”
The man in question stands when he sees them enter the temple. “What am I getting over?”
“I’m going to steal the ship and take it for a joyride,” Julian announces. “Any concerns?”
Graham yawns. He’s in comfortable clothes and looking rumpled after spending most of the day sitting in a folding chair next to Julian’s ship, making sure no one touches it. A garment bag, presumably holding his own tux, is hanging from the back of his chair. “So long as it’s here for the show. And Val doesn’t catch you. Hey, Clarke.”
“Hi, Graham. Bye, Graham.” Clarke leaves Graham and Julian discussing how much trouble they’d get in were Julian to abscond with the ship and crosses the round room, completely empty beyond the other three ships and attendant staff. A staircase wraps around one of the columns on the far side of the building. She climbs up to the second floor (Enclave and Martian Motors) and through to the third, which Elemental is sharing with Barlowe.
Maki is lying on his belly next to her ship, tabbing through something on a holoscreen. He rolls over and waves at her from the floor, half of his body inside the marked square that’ll become a zero-gravity field when the show starts.
“Anything to report?” she asks. She tries to squat to get on his level, but there isn’t enough stretch in the fabric of her dress for that.
“Just that Raff continues to be Raff.” Maki sits up, glaring a few columns over at where Raff is hissing at the team member watching his ship. “Do you think anyone would be sad if he tripped off the edge of the temple? It could happen. All these columns, no walls or railings.”
“It’d probably look suspicious, given everything else that’s going to happen tonight.”
“I guess you’re right,” Maki sighs. He gets to his feet and hands her a small bag. “Here’s the jewelry you asked for. And Amira said you wanted to go over something?”
“Thanks, and yeah.” Clarke digs into the bag and starts settling rings on her fingers. She lowers her voice. “I think you sent me the wrong thing. I don’t need the metadata from the Wonderland parc fermé assessment as released by the FIC, I need the edited version.”
He gives her a quizzical look. “What edited version? I only ever had the one copy.”
Clarke freezes. “But you said what you were looking at was weird.”
“Itisweird,” he says. He opens the report and taps through to a secondary view. “See?”
Clarke knows how to read an editing record, but she can’t focus, brain too busy spinning through implications. Yves has been modifying the report between when he gets it from the FIC and when he passes it along to select team members. She has both versions of the document from Hanoi and Wormhole Wonderland to prove it. But Maki’s saying there’s something strange about the report before it even gets into Yves’s hands. Did he wise up after Clarke confronted him during the team dinner, start inserting his changes earlier? How, though? For that to happen, he’d have to have sway with the FIC, and he doesn’t.Saints know the FIC doesn’t trust Yves at the moment, Anders said, during that overheard conversation a month and a half ago.
“Tell me what I’m looking at,” Clarke says bluntly. In the back of her mind, she notes Raff getting louder, more incensed. She tries to tune him out. “Please, Maki. There can’t be any mistakes.”
