Endgame Read online

  Jani hugged herself. As she did, the rough weave of her overrobe grabbed onto that of her shirt-jacket, pulling it so that she felt wrapped in restraints.

  Then she looked toward the bed, and her eyes filled.

  “Jan.” Niall touched her arm. “You need to get out of this room.” He took her by the elbow and supported her as she stood, then guided her to the door.

  “It won’t help.”

  “Humor me.”

  They navigated the twist of corridors. Heard voices, and followed them until they came upon John and Scriabin sitting in the clinic foyer. Their conversation was low volume, but animated, the sort of discussion one saw in hospitals.

  John looked around when he heard footsteps. “Jani?” He stood and started toward her. “I thought you’d gone upstairs.”

  “I was with Niall.” She leaned against him as soon as he embraced her. “He told me that His Excellency wished to see me.”

  Scriabin stood. “I appreciate Niall’s sense of urgency, but there is no rush.” He had changed clothes at some point, and now wore shirt and trousers in drab tan that looked like they’d been liberated from Dieter Brondt’s own closet. “Anais has departed for Karistos, where press and staff await. I will be following her shortly. Stash and the others are conferring with ná Feyó. Colonial impact will be felt most immediately, of course.”

  “I imagine it’s begun.” Jani eased away from John, who ran his fingers down her back, then took hold of her hand.

  Scriabin eyed her, then tilted his head toward John. “I told John of our discussion this morning, and the outcome. You have lost an inestimable ally, but that does not change the economic reality. We would prefer that the situation here remain as it is. We will do what we can to ensure that.” He looked down at his clothes and sighed. “I dread leaving, to tell the truth. Stash’s decision to treat Thalassa as a sovereign state reaped unforeseen benefits. You have borders, and your own com system. No one has to talk to the press because you haven’t cleared it, and no one can report back to Cao while they’re here because your secure system and Chicago’s secure system can’t talk to one another.” He sighed. “I think I could live here.”

  “Just say the word, Zhenya.” John gestured down the hall toward the labs.

  Scriabin’s eyes widened. “Perhaps not quite yet.” He grinned, then hung his head. “Jani.” He looked at her, all professional seriousness. “Words cannot express. He was one of the greatest, most influential beings who ever lived, and you called him friend for over twenty years.”

  “Among other things.” Jani fielded Scriabin’s startled look. “If you’d known Tsecha for a quarter-century, you would have, too.” Her eyes stung, and she inhaled slowly, exhaled, struggled to maintain control. “Thank you.”

  “Now it’s important that we preserve his legacy. This place—” Scriabin gestured around the foyer. “—and sound relations between humans and idomeni.” He squeezed Jani’s hand, then nodded to John and Niall and walked to the lift.

  Jani waited until the farewells had been said and the lift door closed. “I thought we’d have things to discuss.” She let go of John’s hand and paced around the foyer.

  “They’re not machines, Jan, and they know you’re not, either. They’re giving you time. They know what you’re going through.” John stepped in front of her, forcing her to stop. “I have to go.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her hard. “I’ll see you later.” He nodded to Niall, then headed down the corridor into the clinic proper, disappearing around a corner.

  Jani remained in the middle of the foyer. Eventually, she stared down at the patterned lyno, then at the gleaming walls. “I’m going to make some coffee.”

  Niall fell in behind her as she headed for the break room, which was located just off the foyer. “We could go upstairs. Your mess crew has hot and cold running everything up there.”

  “I need to do something with my hands.” Jani scanned the break room for bodies before entering, and was relieved to find it empty. She walked over to the coffee table and started to assemble the brewer. “Want some?”

  As usual, Niall chose a table by the wall, with a clear view of the entry. “Sure,” he said as he dug for his nicsticks.

  For a few minutes the only sounds were the clatter of metal parts and glassware, the gravel tumble of beans, a metal gnashing, and the gurgle of water. Then came the aroma, like dark brown velvet, swamping out the odor of Niall’s clove smoke.

  Jani rummaged for cups in the community cupboard. She filled them to the brim, forgoing flavorings or any other additives that might dilute the caffeine. Sat down. Took a sip of coffee, tried to savor the flavor, and tasted only heat and bitterness.

  Niall took a swallow, then reached for the creamer. “There’s awake, and then there’s orbit, gel.” He poured half the contents of the small pitcher into his cup. “John would be proud.”

  Jani sat back, cradling her cup. “I’m wondering if I should change.” She tugged at the front of her overrobe. “I know this is priestly garb and should be correct no matter the situation. My mother would consider it appropriate, but to her, white is a color for funerals.”

  Niall tipped back his chair, ’stick in one hand, coffee in the other. “I see your father in black. With a red rose in his buttonhole.”

  “Close.” Jani took another sip, felt her head clear. “He preferred sprigs of lavender. He said the scent reminded him of his grandmama.” She laid back her head. “The looks I got from Via’s suborns when they came in for his body. As though I’d committed some grave sin. Spread out dinner on the edge of the bed.” The patterned ceiling reminded her of the beach, the swirls of the tile coating like sprays of sand. “My father would’ve demanded more time. A proper wake, with stories and whiskey and laughter. We’d have had a chance to say good-bye. We wouldn’t have felt like roadblocks in the way of those gods I’m supposed to intercede with even though I don’t believe in them.” She looked across the table to find Niall watching her, eyes dark with worry.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep?” He extinguished his spent ’stick, then immediately ignited another. “I’ll hold off everyone, tell him that you had things you needed to see to.”

  “Can’t sleep.”

  “Let John give you something.”

  “It’s not the getting-to-sleep that’s the problem.” Jani’s eye fell on the image someone had tacked up on the wall opposite. A forest scene, all green and leafy and shadowed. Quiet. Peaceful. “It’s what happens after I arrive.”

  Niall stared at the smoke as it drifted upward, then he shook his head. “How long?”

  “Three months. Maybe a little longer.” Jani set down her cup. Plucked sugar packets from the dispenser, and stacked them one atop the other. “You don’t have to listen to—”

  “You’ve listened to me enough over the last couple of years.” Niall took a long drag. “How many versions have you heard? A dozen? Two? ‘What did you do during the War of Vynshàrau Ascension, young Niall?’ ‘Night of the Blade, sir. Laum blood running in the streets and shatterboxes shredding the air like tissue. Botched an arrest during evac, blew the commander of Rauta Shèràa Base and two of her cronies to bits, then spent the next twenty or so years covering it up.’” He stared straight ahead, the room’s soft lighting making his battered face look very young. “‘And why is that a problem, young Niall?’ ‘Because, sir, the man people think I am and the man I know I am are quite different. Because the honors I have since received are as dust upon my tongue. Because I’m living a lie.’” His head tilted toward Jani. “‘But I have a friend who tells me that the man I am now is the one who matters.’” He cleared his throat. “Out with it.”

  “I never…even after it happened, I didn’t…” Jani struggled for the words, wondered if the right ones existed. “The years went by. Nothing. I came here, and I was fine for months. Then…” She studied the forest scene again, and wondered at the feel of cool, damp air. “I don’t know if it’s the heat, or the scene
ry. Or the fact that this is so much an idomeni place, despite the humanish presence. The voices, that soft rise and fall. The gestures, and the smells, and the colors of the clothes.” She paused, debated continuing, and felt the pull of Niall’s patient gaze. “The first one. I’m walking down a dune. I can’t find my footing, and I keep sliding. There are tents in the distance. The Laumrau tents. I’m wearing drop-dead whites instead of desertweights. I never get to the tents. I never even get to the base of the dune. I just keep walking, and sliding.”

  Niall remained silent, and waited.

  “The second one…” Jani tugged at the red-slashed cuff of her overrobe. “I’m wearing desertweights. I have my shooter drawn.” She raised a hand, index finger extended. “I’m standing at the first tent and pulling at the flap, but it won’t open. It’s like the fabric’s all one piece—I can’t find a gap. Then I freeze, because I know someone’s behind me, and if I make any move to turn around, they’ll kill me.” She felt her heart pound and waited until it slowed. “Then I hear a shooter hum, and it isn’t mine, and I know they’ll kill me anyway.” She flicked the pile of sugar packets, sending them splaying across the table. “Last night, they finally did.” She waited for Niall to say something, then looked across the table to find him sitting with a fist pressed to his mouth, his eyes closed.

  He lowered his hand eventually and opened his eyes. “Have you told John?”

  Jani shook her head. “He’d get Neuro right on it. And who knows what else they’d take out along with the memories? They tend to overcompensate where I’m concerned.” She picked up her coffee, then set it back down. “I wish I could drink.”

  “It doesn’t help.” Niall’s voice emerged quiet, almost a whisper. “You dodged it for all those years. It was one of the things I held onto. Not that it did me any good. But just knowing…that if you never had them, maybe eventually I wouldn’t have them, either.” A twitch of a shoulder. “Doesn’t make sense, but not much does. Can you talk to Parini?”

  “Val tells John everything. They’d gang up on me like always, tell me it’s for my own good.” Jani looked at the forest again, but she’d lost the sense of it. Instead, she felt the heat and the dust, and smelled the bay, and saw the body on the gurney. “It happened so fast. He was there, and we were talking, and five minutes later he’s on the ground, and ten minutes later he’s—”

  Niall stood. “I’m getting John.”

  “No.” Jani rose, cup in hand, and walked to the sink. “I’ll be all right.” She poured the dregs down the drain, rinsed the cup with cold water, held her hand beneath the flow until her fingers ached.

  “I need to get back.” Niall set his cup on the drainboard. “I sent off a quick missive to Roshi, but I need to prep the one with all the details.”

  They encountered several clinic staffers in the corridor. Jani fielded words and gestures, meeting sympathy with sadness, and tears with a touch or handshake. And all the while, something roiled within. Restlessness. And anger, looking for a place to land.

  Niall ushered her into the lift, then waited for the doors to close. “I’m guessing Pascal sent something to Roshi as well. Maybe I’ll intercept it and see what he has to say about me.”

  Jani forced a smile. “Would anything surprise you?”

  “I can think of a few things that would piss me off.” Niall flipped his lid from one hand to the other, then ran his sleeve over the smudged brim.

  The ground floor proved to be the clinic writ large. Thalassans came from the demirooms, the courtyard, and the offices. Then word traveled, and they hurried down from the three upper levels. The line formed in orderly silence, and Jani walked along it and accepted the words and the hugs and wondered if there was any way to trade all that grief to Tsecha’s gods for five more minutes. For a chance to say good-bye. To say anything at all.

  Niall hung by her shoulder the entire time, monitoring her every move. When the impromptu receiving line petered out, he herded her to a table, then filled a plate for her from one of buffets.

  “I will call later. I’ll go through the office so that I don’t wake you in case you’re sleeping.” He set the food in front of Jani, then unwrapped some cutlery from its napkin wrap and handed it to her. “‘His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, “This was a man.”’” He spread the napkin across her lap. “The end of Julius Caesar. Not completely appropriate, but it says what I mean it to say.” He kissed the top of her head, then turned and clipped across the courtyard.

  Jani ate a little, then passed the time tearing a roll into tiny bits and feeding the lizards that had taken autumn refuge in the courtyard. Eventually, she heard distant thunder, then the rain spatter against the skylight roof. Looked overhead, and watched the roiling dark through the glass.

  “You’d think it would be cold, but it’s not.”

  She tore her attention from the rain just as Lucien emerged from the garden shadows. He wore civvies, brown trousers tucked into low boots and a tan shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A slingbag hung from one shoulder, and he had tied a weatherall around his waist. “I thought you’d be back at the base.”

  Lucien shrugged. “I showed up for an emergency staff meeting. But I couldn’t get into the room—my coding hadn’t been entered into base systems, and according to regs, I cannot attend certain types of meetings unless I have been entered into base systems.”

  Jani tossed a bit of bread on the floor, where it vanished amid a rustle of leaves and a flick of green and red striped tail. “You have the right security clearances?”

  “Yes,” Lucien said with a sigh, “but I am not officially in systems. Pierce’s admin told me that initialization can take up to a week. She was smiling when she said it.” Another shrug. “I could bitch to Mako, but what would be the point? He’s in Chicago—any communication he sends Pierce ordering him to give me access would be lost or garbled. They’re experts over there at losing and garbling. It’s the Elyan way.”

  “What did you expect? You know he can’t stand you, and you forced yourself down his throat.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ve been keeping myself busy.” Lucien studied her through narrowed eyes. “I thought you’d have meetings of your own to attend.”

  Jani looked around the courtyard, then up toward the walkways, where Thalassans milled, chatted. It could have passed for a normal enclave evening but for the pall that hung in the air. “I’ve been allowed time to grieve.”

  “How considerate of everyone.” Lucien met her low tone with his own. “I have a skimmer parked out on the beach. If you have some time, I’d like to show you something.”

  Jani eyed his face, rain-damp and drawn. His clothes and boots, mud-streaked and spattered. He’d been looking for something. Would he have come looking for her unless he’d found it? “I have time.” She fingered the edge of one red cuff. “Give me a chance to change clothes.”

  CHAPTER 14

  The Service two-seater coursed over the water like a seabird. Whitecaps swelled close enough to touch, spray mixing with rain to spatter across the vehicle’s windscreen. Lucien had shut down all lighting both exterior and interior, leaving as the sole illumination the sickly green safety string that ran along the bottom of the dashboard.

  Jani huddled against the heated cushions, fixing on the distant lights of Karistos, their yellow-white flicker like stars against the churning dark. “Does Niall know you’re here?”

  “I don’t think he gives a rat’s ass.” Lucien’s voice emerged measured, his native French provincial accent muted to nothing, a sign that anger and humiliation simmered into stew just below the surface. “I spent part of the day filling out forms. Then we heard the news. I tried to get into the staff meeting, like I said before. When that fell through, I pulled some strings at the Communications center, which for some strange reason did have me in systems. Poked around. Intercepted some chatter. Changed clothes, gathered gear, signed out the skimmer, and went to
have a look around.”

  Jani rode the silence for a time, listening to the dull hum of the motor and the occasional splash of water against the hull. “What sort of chatter?”

  “Details about Tsecha’s death.”

  Jani’s heart tripped as Lucien maneuvered the skimmer off the water and along a narrow strip of rock-strewn shoreline, held onto the armrests and squeezed as the vehicle shuddered and bounced. “What bothered you?”

  Lucien remained silent until he had steered the skimmer onto the comparative smoothness of a steep incline. “The speed.” He paused as he executed a hairpin turn. “I heard folks mention stroke. Hemorrhage. Aneurysm.” He shook his head. “I didn’t think that Tsecha would allow any condition he developed to advance until the point of crisis.” He tore his attention from the narrow snake of a road to look at her. “John didn’t discuss this with you?”

  “Not in any detail.” Jani folded her arms and concentrated on the road ahead. “We were right in the middle of it. John had to focus on treating him.” She felt her face heat as Lucien’s deceptively gentle laugh filled the cabin.

  “Did he really think you wouldn’t find out?” He steered around the final turn and up over the edge of the cliff, his voice shaking as the skimmer fought to stabilize over a stretch of rocky scrub.

  “Find out what?” Jani closed her eyes and waited. They were just giving me time to adjust. Her gut ached. They were being kind. She opened her eyes. Since when? She saw the lights of Karistos, brightening the horizon like sunrise. They wanted to talk to me. And then they didn’t.

  The sounds of argument remembered…

  Why the hell didn’t you spot it before?

  Because it wasn’t there before.

  It’s growing.

  “He was killed.” Jani heard her voice echo in her head. A barely detectable sound, like the first pebble in the landslide.