Page 37

RYLOS

Aarvyd.

The lockdown had driven him toward the Regent’s private north-gallery lift, the same route that lay between us and the bay. He had not come here to duel us; the building had put its chairman and its intruders on the same narrowing exit. Twelve of the Regent’s Own were what remained of his escort.

After years of hunting the Conclave, its chairman walked out from between the columns. Regent Aarvyd, silver-haired, unhurried, dressed for an ordinary afternoon of running my Sovereign’s empire.

A dozen of the Regent’s Own fanned across the marble behind him in matte black, visors down, rifles level, moving with exact spacing. Their firing lanes stayed clear even as they spread out. These were the men the files rated equal to a squad apiece.

I pulled the horn sheaths free and stripped the contour mesh from my face. Aarvyd had twelve rifles on my family. I wanted him looking at me.

He recognized me at once. The satisfaction on his face told me how long he had wanted this meeting.

“The first apprentice.” His voice carried the way it did in the recordings, a chairman’s voice, reasonable and warm enough to make terrible decisions sound administrative.

“Finally come home. Do you know, I argued for recruiting you, after? The others said you’d never turn. I said every man turns; it’s only ever a matter of what moves him.” He looked slowly down our column.

“It seems I was right about everyone but you.”

He strolled a step closer, hands loose, twelve rifles making the stroll safe, and kept talking. He was used to rooms listening when he spoke.

“You’ve had a remarkable day. Truly. My analysts will spend a year on it. But I find myself curious about one detail, apprentice. One only.” The warm eyes settled on me.

“Six years ago I bought a leak. Weapons shipment, three days out, expensive to fabricate, and it had one purpose: to move you away from the Spire for one night. And it worked, and here is my question, the one I’ve saved.”

A small, hospitable tilt of the head.

“Did you ever work out that it was addressed to you? That of everything in the Sovereign’s household, you were the only piece we bothered to move? I’ve always hoped you knew. I always wondered how much of the work you’d do to yourself afterward.”

Before the Virelle, that sentence would have torn me open. Now I had already said the whole truth aloud in the small hours to the woman standing at my shoulder. She knew what happened. She knew what I blamed myself for. Aarvyd was waiting for damage that had already happened and no longer belonged only to me.

“You flew me off this level,” I said. “You’ve wished every day since that you hadn’t. Get to your terms.”

“Terms. Yes. I do prefer commerce to theater.” His gaze made one more pass down the column. He had spent a lifetime solving problems with money, titles, or threats and expected the same tools to work here.

“Although I’ll note the offer extends individually. Whatever he pays you,” this to my people, warmly, “I can better it. Pardons. Titles. The technician alone I’d give a moon.”

“He has a moon,” Bronwen said. “We have several moons. Do finish; my charges are getting cold.”

Something crossed Aarvyd’s face at that, the first honest thing it had produced: the puzzlement of a man discovering that nobody here wanted what he was offering. Then he resumed his smile.

Twelve rifles. Firing lanes clean, cover just beyond Lika at the column line, my people fanned behind me, Talon already circling for the landing window on the extraction call I’d made in the vault.

I assessed the room automatically. Every direct response ended in bodies. The only question was whose. So I stood in the enemy’s ceremonial light and did what he wanted, which was listen, because every second the chairman kept talking gave Zarek and Bronwen more time to move out of the positions his guards had last seen.

“You have something of ours in those cases,” Aarvyd went on.

“And you’ve made an impressive mess of my building, which will be inconvenient to repair, and none of it matters, because here is what happens now. You set down the cases. All of them. And you walk out of my Spire alive, every one of you, and I even mean it, because a firefight on the throne level is a story I’d have to manage and I have managed enough stories about this room.” He spread his hands, generous.

“It’s the best offer you will get today.”

He believed every word. To Aarvyd, the coup had been a successful political operation. He expected us to negotiate over its proceeds. Killing him would be easy. Defeating him meant something else: walking out of this building with the deal refused, the recovered archive intact, and the story unmanageable forever.

I said nothing. I’ve stood across from a hundred men who needed my answer to feel in control of a room, and silence makes them fill the room themselves.

He lasted only a few seconds before changing tactics. His gaze moved along my column and stopped on Lika’s uncovered face.

“Strategist Darven,” he said, pleasant. “There you are. Six years in my service.” A signal I didn’t see passed to the formation; four rifle muzzles shifted in one smooth traverse, off me, onto her. The threat shifted in half a heartbeat.