The Academy (53 page)

“What happened once you heard about the proscription?”

Alice finished the better part of her coffee in one swallow. Chris found himself wondering idly what his chances were of surviving the encounter, and then put it aside. There was no point in worrying about what couldn’t be changed.

“I told them the arrangement was dead, of course,” Chris said, immediately regretting his choice of words. “They told me that ending the arrangement would be a very serious error on my part, that it could have consequences for the Society. I walked away, never even looked back.”

Chris wondered if Alice had activated the Inquisition Protocol. She was a skilled enough Operator that he couldn’t read anything from her Etheric signature, but it was certainly possible. He hoped that she had. He desperately needed her to know he wasn’t lying.

“Why are you so cold, Chris? Why are you starving?”

Alice put down her empty cup on the table, ignoring the saucer, and the porcelain clattered against the glass tabletop.

“The entire London branch of the society is gone for certain,” Chris said, hanging his head. “They moved on us two days after they were proscribed. There was a bombing, at our central office. It did a lot of structural damage, but no serious losses. We followed the standard evacuation procedures, split up into small groups and headed for the safe houses, to wait for the all clear. They were waiting at the safe house when we arrived, I assume it was the same for the others,” Chris continued, his voice tired, wooden. “They looked like they had been there for a while. They’d killed the human servants… unkindly. There were Witches with them, and Weir, and there were only four of us. It wasn’t even a fight.”

Chris’s hand shook as he remembered Evelyn screaming while Paul and Miguel died, devoured by the maws of horrible, malformed wolves.

“Evelyn and I both activated emergency apport protocols, with randomized destinations to elude telepathic tracking. There was nothing else we could do.” Chris couldn’t look at Alice. He couldn’t stand the thought of what his face might show. With an effort, he recalled fifty years of professional composure. “I woke up in Amsterdam, near the docks, with a half-dozen bullets still lodged in me.”

“What about the Amsterdam lodge?” Alice asked, fruitlessly searching for their waiter, who had fled long ago.

“Nothing more than a burning building, surrounded by things in police uniforms that weren’t human,” Chris said sadly. “I got myself patched up by my own means, and then I went underground. I’ve kept moving since then, trying to find a safe place to retreat to. Everywhere I’ve gone, it’s been the same thing. Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona.”

“Barcelona is the largest lodge in Europe, right?” Alice looked skeptical.

“It was. All I found there was more rubble, and a package sitting in front of it with my name on it.” Chris felt an absurd urge to laugh. He wasn’t at all sure why. “Nobody watching, this time. Pretty clear that they wanted me to have it.”

Alice looked sadly at her empty coffee cup. Chris wondered if maybe she was mellowing slightly with age. Perhaps, after all this time, Alice was finally capable of dealing with small disappointments without resorting to homicide. Perhaps.

Otherwise, Chris sincerely hoped their waiter never came back.

“I didn’t open it, at first. I tried peeking at it a number of different ways, but no matter how I looked at it, it came up clean. Eventually I cut the thing open in my hotel room. There was a cell phone.” Chris looked around them nervously, checking the faces at the surrounding tables, and then continued. “There were videos, the things they had done to the others. I saw members of a dozen different lodges – Alice, I think that they’ve destroyed most of the lodges in Europe!”

“And?”

Alice stared at him patiently, clearly aware that he was still skirting the main point.

“They have Evelyn, Alice. They have her. My wife.”

He dug a cheap Korean cell phone out of his pocket and slid it across the table to her, hoping she would overlook his wet eyes.

“There are photos of her on the camera. They want me to give myself up, the bastards, and they don’t even bother to make any assurances that she’ll be alright.”

“You aren’t worried about paying for Margot’s education,” Alice said, slipping the phone into one of the side pockets of her long black coat. “You’re making arrangements for her to be cared for in your absence. Taking care of your obligations.”

“I’m her sponsor, so I’m responsible. My obligation is to the Society, not to Margot. It’s nothing personal,” Chris said darkly. “I’m not so naïve as to hold out hope for finding Evelyn alive. And I understand that even if I survive, that I will have to face an Audit of my actions. And I’m prepared for that. But, Alice, please... I know where they are. The people holding her have to be the same people who are attacking Central. I can’t let her disappear down some Weir’s den. She deserves a clean death, at the very least. And, you couldn’t help but learn something about your enemy, right?”

Alice looked at him for a long time then, considering. Chris sat and waited, making no attempt to sway her. If he hadn’t already, then there was no point in trying further. Alice could not be reasoned or bargained with.

She didn’t say anything to him, but after a long hesitation, she dug her own cell phone out of her pocket.

“Xia,” she said into the phone, a moment later, her voice cross and efficient. “I’m going to need to use the closest London safe house to where I am now. King’s Cross? Alright, I remember where it is. Have them send my usual things.”

Alice met Chris’s eyes for a moment, and then gave him a toothy smile.

“I’m going to be plus one for the time being, Xia. Christopher Feld. You can find his info on the network, go ahead and request it from Central. He’ll need a full kit, clothes, the works. Also, we’ll need some IV equipment, and several pints of O negative. Can you make it happen this afternoon?”

As far as Chris could hear, and Chris’s hearing was nothing short of remarkable, even in his half-starved state, there was no response. In the time that he had known Xia, he had never heard him speak. But Alice certainly acted as if she had received a response.

“You’re a life-saver, Xia. We’ll have to take the tube for a while, to make sure Chris hasn’t picked up any new friends. Let them know we’ll be there in a couple hours, okay? Everything going well in Saigon? Pat Mitzi on the head for me, won’t you? Okay, then.”

Alice hung up, and then folded up her cell. Her eyes wandered down to her still empty cup, and she looked disappointed.

“I guess we can stop somewhere on the way,” she said, standing up from the table and motioning for Chris to do the same. “Since they finally have fucking Starbucks in this town. If I don’t get another cup of coffee, I’ll get a headache and be bitchy all day.”

And I certainly don’t want that, Chris thought, following Alice out the door and into the chilly London afternoon.

“Do not tell me that your entire plan consists of waiting for that little bitch to produce Alex and Eerie
, Gaul. Tell me you’ve got something better than that.”

“I have something better than that.”

“Then what is it?” Rebecca demanded, throwing her hands in the air in frustration. “Tell me, dammit! I’m freaking out over here.”

Gaul sighed and shook his head, trying unsuccessfully to walk fast enough to avoid Rebecca’s pestering. It was always like this when she caught him in the hall – he was a half-foot taller than her, with long legs, and he still couldn’t manage to outdistance her when she’d decided that they were going to talk.

“Could this possibly wait until we’re in my office, Rebecca?”

Rebecca muttered something unintelligible, but she shut up, so Gaul decided that would have to be good enough. She managed to wait until they were in his office, door bolted behind them, and Gaul installed behind his desk before she starting badgering again. He felt better about it here, though – it was always easier, somehow, when he was behind the desk.

“That fucking little monster! She gets right under your skin, doesn’t she? I can’t believe the Black Sun saddled us with her. Such a fucking princess, you know? And she looks at you with those,” Rebecca threw her hands up and gestured vaguely, “eyes of hers, like she
knows
things. Given half a chance, I would make her feel like Ophelia, rather than just dressing the part. She is so fucking lucky that she is exempted from counseling sessions.”

“Apparently,” Gaul said dryly, reaching for his pen and opening the folder nearest to him. He wrote two words, and then his pen was jarred across the page by Rebecca hopping up onto the corner of his desk.

“How is it that we know nothing about what protocols the most dangerous student at the Academy operates, anyway?” Rebecca demanded, lighting a cigarette despite Gaul’s frown. “Even the precogs can’t seem to get a handle on her, you know. That’s bad news right there, if you ask me. Never happened before.”

“You are still referring to Martynova, I assume, and not Alex?”

“For fuck’s sake, Gaul,” Rebecca said, nudging his trashcan into place with her boot and then knocking the ash from her cigarette into it. “You know I’m talking about the ice queen that ran us around in circles. Alex might be a wild card, but he’s hardly the calculated menace that Anastasia Martynova represents. The Black Sun was already dangerous without her. With her?”

Rebecca blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling while he resignedly pushed the ashtray her way.

“With her, it gets dangerous for everybody, not only the Hegemony. Anastasia plays for keeps, I can tell that much, even if I’m not allowed to peak around in her head. She will put the whole détente at risk, it’s a fucking certainty. And I know you’ve heard – everybody says she operates a Deviant Protocol, and nobody knows what kind. She could be a precognitive, Gaul, for all we know. She worries me.”

“You honestly think that girl has one up on me?” Gaul asked, finishing the document with his compact, economical signature. “Is that your professional opinion?”

Rebecca’s eyes lit up, and she propped her chin up on her elbows, facing Gaul.

“I don’t know,” she said, obviously interested. “You gonna tell me I’m wrong?”

“Anastasia is no precognitive.”

“We don’t know anything about her!” Rebecca objected. “She could operate all sorts of protocols and we wouldn’t know a thing.”

“One precognitive recognizes another,” Gaul said dismissively. “Whatever Miss Martynova is, she isn’t a precognitive. She’s incredibly devious, no doubt, but I promise you she is not running a game on me. Whatever it is she thinks that she’s doing, you need to understand that it is all in our best interests, or I would have prevented it.”

“Eerie and Alex are gone, and we don’t know where,” Rebecca said irritably, in the grating voice that she always used when she wanted to complain. “The only way we can get them back is by letting Anastasia do it for us, letting her protect the Black Sun from any potential consequences while putting us in her debt. And all this is assuming that she actually does know where they are, that they are still alive, and that she decides to bring them back. Where are our best interests in all this?”

Gaul sighed and set his pen down.

“We need to get Alex into the field, sooner rather than later. If we are responsible for everything that must be done to him, in order to make him an Operator, there is an excellent chance that he will end up blaming us, blaming the Academy. If we’re lucky, he’ll end up blaming Anastasia or Eerie for this,” Gaul said, flicking his red eyes up at Rebecca, and then back down to the paperwork in front of him. “Anyway, Alex and Eerie are somewhere in San Francisco right now.”

Rebecca jumped off the desk and started pacing excitedly. Gaul sighed more deeply.