Stiletto (55 page)

“What he is proposing —” began an iguana with the voice of her uncle Dieter, but it was cut off by a bright green chameleon.

“He is not proposing anything,” declared Pim. Odette could picture him striding around in his studio down the street from hers, as he always did when he was caught up in something. Pim was passionate, innovative, a genius among the Grafters, and Odette loved him with all her heart and all her heat. He had sculpted her spurs for her, and he would kiss her closed eyes and tell her how much he adored her. “He simply told us: ‘We will be joining ourselves to the Checquy. Peacefully.’ Just like that!”

“As if there could ever be peace with those abominations!” spat Mariette from her home in Brussels. At twenty-one, the only member of the group younger than Odette, Mariette spent as much time studying history as she did the craft of the Broederschap. She had interviewed Graaf Ernst and Graaf Gerd on many occasions and had talked for long hours with the few Grafters who had been alive since the very beginning of the Broederschap. Odette had had a hand in crafting her eyes. “They tried to rob us of our future! The Checquy would have obliterated our people, our families, everything we were if they’d had their way!”

“Well, after our armies tried to invade their country,” pointed out Simon languidly. His lizard, a frill-necked variety, had something of Simon’s look about it. It might have been the amused expression or the fact that it kept flaring its ruff to get attention. Simon was Odette’s cousin, and he never hesitated to push the bounds of either biological science or other people’s sensibilities. He had been known to turn up at Broederschap events looking completely inhuman.

“That is not the point!” said Mariette. “After you have won a war, you do not kill every person on the other side! You do not order them to destroy their culture and slaughter their own people.”

“Even if they hadn’t forced us into hiding,” said Claudia’s chameleon, “their very nature makes them dangerous.” Living in Brussels, Claudia was the one who had designed their reptilian communications network, and she’d secretly gained access to some of the secure records the brotherhood had on its enemies. “I’ve scrutinized the notes of our
handwerksmannen,
and there is simply no explanation for what the Checquy are. Their DNA is perfectly normal.”

“How can they be so certain?” asked Odette curiously. Even for the Grafters, genetics could be tricky, with unexpected surprises lurking in the coils of code.

“They have twice grown clones of three Checquy operatives,” said Claudia, and the reptiles all fell silent. Given a few cells from a living thing, the Grafters could produce an exact genetic duplicate of the original. The prospect of their creating a Checquy-thing in the lab was a disquieting thought.

“Was it done under speed-growth conditions?” asked Pim thoughtfully. The Grafters had the means to rapidly accelerate the aging process, bringing a subject to a particular point in its life span and then allowing it to resume normal metabolism. It was useful because one could see the results of a new process without having to wait years for it to come to fruition. Plus, it saved on lab time and maintenance costs.

“The first batch were speed-grown, yes,” said Claudia. “And none of them displayed any sign of the originals’ powers. One was a copy of a Checquy man who had patagia and was covered in yellow fur. The clone was a perfectly normal man with brown hair.”

“But speed-growth isn’t perfect,” observed Mariette. She was right. Speed-grown organisms, whether or not they were clones, had various built-in problems. The growing process cut their life spans to a fraction of what they would normally be. At a random point, they would suddenly suffer rapid cellular breakdown, aging in moments, their flesh rotting on the bone.

“Yeah, you know that, and I know that, and, oh, wait, everyone in the Broederschap knows that as well,” said Claudia tartly. Even her lizard was rolling its eyes, as only a chameleon could do. Mariette’s lizard kept its mouth firmly closed.

“Don’t be a snot, Claudia,” said the tortoise with Saskia’s voice. Odette rested her cup of tea on the tortoise’s shell and closed her eyes. It sounded as if Claudia and Mariette were ready to break out into one of their trademark arguments.

“Fine,” said the chameleon sniffily. “Anyway, yes, they then did a normal-growth cloning. They spent twenty years raising the clones to adulthood. Same results. No powers, no duplication of unnatural appearances.”

“What does that mean?” asked Mariette hesitantly.

“That they’re abominations,” said Claudia flatly. “Whatever they are, they don’t belong in nature. They’re not bound by the rules of science.”

“Demons,” said Simon, and there was no trace of his usual amused tone.

“I had thought the Broederschap was working against them,” said the Saskia-tortoise, sounding lost. Odette reached out and, ridiculously, patted the tortoise to comfort it.

“We were,” said Dieter. Although he was her uncle, he was only two years older than Odette, and more like a big brother. His laboratory was five minutes’ walk away from hers and Pim’s, and they had collaborated on several projects together. Also, his father, Marcel, was highly ranked in the Broederschap and a close confidant of Graaf Ernst’s. “Papa said that everything was proceeding well.”

“And now this!” exclaimed Saskia. “They want us to ally with them, to join ourselves with these atrocities who drove us underground. I simply cannot believe it.”

“Believe it,” said Claudia grimly. “Because it’s happening.”

“’Dette, you’ve been pretty quiet this whole time,” said Pim. “What do you think?” Odette opened her eyes. All the lizards and the tortoise were looking at her expectantly. It was almost worse than having her friends staring at her in person. At least, she would never have used the actual Saskia to hold her teacup. She hastily plucked it up.

“I don’t know what to think,” she confessed. “I mean, the Checquy is...” She trailed off helplessly.

The idea of the Checquy gave me nightmares all through my childhood,
she thought.
But that was when they were the monsters under the bed and in the closet. Now I know that they’re monsters in suits, in offices. If they’re a part of a government, if they take orders from a government, then perhaps they can be reasoned with.
But she didn’t say that. She didn’t dare.

“There are some things one cannot do,” said Pim. “Things the graaf cannot ask us to do. And I cannot ally myself with these monsters, who have done so much harm to my people.” There was a murmur of agreement among the reptiles. Miserable, Odette kept silent.

“We need to meet,” said Dieter. “To discuss this further, face-to-face.” Odette looked up hopefully. If there was to be more discussion, then there was the possibility of coming to a sensible conclusion.
Dieter will convince them to be reasonable,
she thought.

“Let’s all meet in Paris,” said Pim. “A week from today. And we’ll decide what we’re going to do.”

*

“And?” asked Rook Thomas. “What happened?”

“We went to Paris,” said Odette sadly.

* * *

Sitting in the lobby café of the Rataxes, Paris’s most beautiful hotel, the seven of them had drawn appreciative looks. They may not have been famous, but when you’re young, able to control your appearance, and dressed in expensive clothing in an expensive place, you get looked at. Plus, their grave expressions made them stand out even more. Beverages and food were brought to them, and they began an extremely quiet conversation.

“This is where you thought we should have this discussion?” asked Claudia, looking around at the civilians passing through the lobby.

“I thought it would be best if we all remained calm,” said Pim. “We can’t be productive if we start screaming about the injustice of it all.”

“And I like to think that none of us are gauche enough to start screaming here,” said Simon. Although it was only midmorning, he was sipping brandy and cream out of a long, thin glass. He was wearing a new suit and a new face that Odette suspected had been specially picked out to go with the suit.

“Fine,” said Claudia, folding her arms.

“I’d like to begin, if I may,” said Odette hesitantly. Saskia and Pim, who were the unofficial leaders of the group, nodded and smiled for her to go ahead. She’d finally found her courage. “We’ve all had time to think this over, to move beyond our instinctual reactions. We’re educated people, and I think we’re all clever enough to, well, to see where we need to go.

“Like you all, the idea of the Checquy makes me deeply uncomfortable. But I’m afraid that we’ve already come to a place where there’s no going back. They know about us, and the rest of the Broederschap is going to join with them. Our teachers, our superiors, our families are going to join with them. Can we really stand against that? Is that what you really want?”

*

“I tried to talk to them,” Odette told the silent executives in the conference room, “to make them see that there could be a good ending to all this.” She looked down at her hands. “But they wouldn’t budge. They felt they had to fight.”

* * *

“Please,” pleaded Odette, “I love you all, I can’t bear this. I can’t bear to watch you ruin everything we have — everything we could have.”

“A future like that isn’t worth having,” said Pim sadly. “They can’t order us to join ourselves to this profanity, to give up what makes us who we are.”

“We have to act, Odette,” said Saskia, taking her hand gently. She was exquisite, in a delicate white dress that bespoke elegance and civilization and calm afternoons. “We have to make the changes, the better changes. Please, please, come with us, darling.”

“I can’t!” sobbed Odette. “I can’t turn on my family! And what about Alessio? You want to bring your fight to him? Why do you have to try and make this worse? Isn’t peace better than war? You don’t know that a future with the Checquy will be a bad thing.”

“We know,” said Saskia sadly, and there was a momentary stinging sensation in Odette’s hand. Odette looked down and saw a spur stretching out from Saskia’s wrist to touch her hand. A single droplet of blood welled on her skin. She looked up at Saskia in horror. “I’m so sorry, ’Dette.”

“We all are,” said Mariette, and her words seemed to echo in Odette’s ears. The lobby and the faces of her friends wavered, twisting and blurring. Pim was gazing at her and his eyes were full of tears.

I love you,
he mouthed.

“We love you,” she heard Simon say distantly. She felt a kiss on her cheek and Saskia’s hand holding hers tightly as she sank into sleep.

*

“I woke up in the lobby of the hotel three hours later,” said Odette. “They bribed the manager and told him to keep an eye on me while I slept, that I’d just had bad news. A death in the family. They’d even arranged for a waiter to bring me a coffee and some aspirin when I woke up.

“By the time I was awake enough to think straight, I realized that my friends had been very busy,” she continued. “They’d returned to the big Paris chapter house and lifted a lot of things — materials and tools. Then they killed the house and fled.”

“They killed the people in the house?” asked Rook Thomas intently.

“No, they killed the living components of the house,” said Ernst, real sadness in his eyes. “Two centuries’ worth of thoughts, memory, and service, wiped out.” He sighed. “That house was a good friend, a member of the family.”

“Since then,” said Marie, “they’ve been waging war on the Broederschap in Europe. Infiltrating installations and damaging projects. Some were major endeavors — years of work ruined in a matter of moments. People have been hurt, people have died, and property has been destroyed.”

“And now they are here,” said Bishop Attariwala.

“They have been for a while,” said Ernst. “They have already made some attacks. For instance, those people killed in the Italian restaurant the night of our cocktail party. That was the Antagonists’ work.”

“Oh God,” said Rook Thomas. “Why? Why would they do that?”

“We do not know their purpose in that instance,” said Marie. “But it is not the only time you have encountered them.”

“What else?” asked the Rook.

“The creature in Portsmouth,” said Odette.

“That gigantic sea monster they dredged out of the Channel?” asked Rook Kelleher, an extremely fat white man who was attended by a dozen iridescent butterflies fluttering in the air above him.

“We think it is how they entered the United Kingdom,” said Marie.

“Too good for the Eurostar, are they?” asked Chevalier Whibley.

“You know what kind of compounds and equipment our work requires,” said Marcel. “They could never have risked shipping it in through conventional means. Using one of our major constructs, they could transport a substantial amount of matériel across the Channel.” He snorted. “If they had managed to do it without running it into a cargo ship, they would have had a very useful engine of war as well. Still, I wasn’t surprised. That creature was experimental, unique, and apparently a complete bitch to pilot.”

“So who was the dead person inside the creature?” asked Bishop Attariwala. “Which of the Antagonists?”

“I think it was Dieter,” said Odette weakly.

“My son,” said Marcel quietly. There was an appalled silence.

“It had his eyes,” said Odette, “but it wasn’t his skin, it wasn’t his face. He was wearing some sort of white utility epidermis. We have something similar for conducting major surgeries or operating in harsh conditions.”

“In order to pilot the vessel, he would have had to link his neurons to the creature’s,” said Marcel. “When he crashed into the ship, the feedback would have killed him outright.”

“That would count as a design flaw in my book,” remarked Rook Thomas.

“We probably would have worked out that detail,” said Marcel.

“Why did it come alive again in the hangar?” asked Felicity. She was thinking of those horrible moments when she was trapped in the creature’s living flesh. “Was that part of their plan?”

“No, we believe it reactivated in response to Odette’s presence,” said Marcel. “With a living Grafter inside it, it turned back on, although the damage it had taken in the collision with the ship meant it would not have survived for very long.”