Anastasia had just sat down to a steaming cup of white tea and a daunting stack of paperwork when there was a soft knock, followed by the heavy wooden door to her office opening slowly. That was odd, because Renton had been stationed in the anteroom, with instructions to send away all comers, and not to enter the room himself. Anastasia watched the door open and got ready to scold Renton.
“Oh my,” Anastasia said in an amused voice, “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Eerie observed timidly, peering around the door. “Um. We need to talk. Please.”
“Very well,” Anastasia said generously, gesturing to indicate one of the ornately carved and completely uncomfortable chairs that fronted her massive desk. She’d had the legs sawn off the desk to shorten it, though that had been desecrating a family heirloom, and she was sitting in an elevated chair, so that her toes just reached the ground, but she didn’t think anyone had noticed. “You know, in all the time we’ve been neighbors, I don’t think you’ve ever come over to my house, Eerie.”
“That’s because you are scary,” Eerie said frankly, and without inflection.
“You think so?” Anastasia asked cheerfully, leaning forward, over her desk. “Is it the way I dress?”
“No, it’s because you kill people,” Eerie said flatly, clutching the handle of the knitting basket in her lap. The sweater that she wore hung off her shoulders, and black tights peaked out underneath a long woolen skirt. Her clothes were wrinkled, as if she had slept in them, and her hair was in disarray.
“The Academy is full of people whose duties can include killing,” Anastasia protested.
“The Academy is full of scary people,” Eerie agreed. “Some people think that you’re the scariest of all.”
“Do they really?” Anastasia asked, pretending to be scandalized.
“Yes. But you know,” Eerie said, hushing her voice and leaning forward, as if she was confiding something important, “if they knew what I knew about you, they wouldn’t feel that way. Because you have an important secret.”
“Heavens!” Anastasia gasped, holding a hand to her mouth. “And what is it that you know, exactly?”
“I wasn’t sure, the first time, because I was… busy,” Eerie said hesitantly, blushing. “But I thought so. I have been watching you since then. I saw it, on the island. What you did to Therese.”
Anastasia shook her head and smiled.
“Is this the same conversation we were just having? What is it that you think you saw?”
“Don’t play around,” Eerie said resentfully, rubbing her arm nervously. “I’m not stupid. I saw it. Your protocol, Anastasia. Your secret.”
“Oh my, how could that be?” Anastasia said, wide-eyed. “How could you have seen such a thing?”
“The Etheric Network,” Eerie said offhandedly. “All Operators are connected to it, like it or not. That’s just, you know, the way it is.”
“I see,” Anastasia said, folding up her shocked act and putting it away, for the moment. “I wasn’t aware that it could be used that way, as a monitoring device.”
“It can’t.” Eerie cocked her head to the side, considering. She must have dyed her hair recently, Anastasia thought, because her hair was different shades of blue in streaks, probably the spots that had been bleached previously. “Not by anyone else.”
“Well, putting aside what you saw or didn’t see, what exactly do you plan on doing about it?”
“Wait. Did I not explain it right? I know your secret,” Eerie said slowly, obviously confused. “You have to stop.”
“I have to stop…” Anastasia encouraged.
“Yes,” Eerie said, nodding.
“I have to stop what?” Anastasia asked as patiently as possible.
“Messing with Alex. And me. You know,” Eerie said, her hands twisting around the handle of her knitting basket. “You know what you are doing.”
“I suppose I do. And assuming I don’t, then you will what?”
“I will tell everyone,” Eerie said quietly, obviously dreading the thought of talking to ‘everyone’. “Isn’t that enough? I only want you to leave us alone.”
“I wasn’t aware there was an ‘us’ for me to leave alone,” Anastasia said dryly. “Let me recast the situation for you for a moment, Eerie. As you pointed out earlier, my position sometimes requires me to take violent action to protect the Black Sun’s interests. Why is it then, I wonder, you assume that I would acquiesce to your demands, when it is so much simpler to deal with blackmail by removing the blackmailer?”
“Because you can’t,” Eerie said, utterly without bravado. She seemed confused, as if Anastasia had said something very foolish indeed.
“Aha!” Anastasia cried, delighted. “Is this where the kid gloves come off and the threats start? How, I wonder, would you stop me?”
“I wouldn’t,” Eerie said softly, her irises briefly turning the color of a golden oil slick, a metallic rainbow. “But she would.”
“Who is that?”
Eerie shook her head.
“You know who. You already know each other,” Eerie said, standing up. “I don’t want to take anything from you. I don’t want you to do anything except leave us alone.”
“Maybe,” Anastasia offered, leaning back in her elevated chair, “instead of things getting ugly between us, we could talk about something you could do for me. A favor for a favor, Eriu?”
There was brief pulse of light in a brilliant range of colors surrounding Eerie’s head, and then it was gone. However, Anastasia could still smell a faint trace of sandalwood in the air.
“I don’t know who that is,” Eerie warned. “My name is Eerie. And I’m not doing you any favors, because I’m not asking for anything. Leave me alone. Leave us alone.”
Eerie nodded at the end of her speech, as if she was satisfied with her performance, and then stood up and headed for the door.
“Eerie, that is no way to make friends…” Anastasia offered, as the Changeling slipped out the door.
After she left, Anastasia shook her head, as if to clear it, and then laughed once, cold and contemptuous.
“As if I would,” she said, grinning at the chair the girl had vacated.
Then she composed herself, sighed, and went to go see if Eerie had killed Renton.
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me how you feel?”
“About what? You? Me? What happened? What?”
Rebecca shrugged and tapped ash from her cigarette into the stained ceramic ashtray.
“Whatever you want. Just start with what’s bothering you the most.”
That prompted another silence, as the boy sat on her leather couch with his forehead as creased as the cushions he sat on. The t-shirt and jeans he was wearing were getting tattered and ratty, Rebecca observed critically, and made a mental note to take him shopping soon, if she couldn’t wrangle one of the girls into doing it.
“Okay,” he said finally, folding his hands as if he planned on praying. “Why didn’t you tell me you were an Auditor?”
“Didn’t want you to know,” Rebecca said, anticipating his complaints and forcing her recalcitrant window open to let out the smoke. “Didn’t figure that you would talk to me if you knew.”
“Oh. Okay. Um. I don’t feel good about that.”
“Why is that, Alex?”
“It feels… dishonest, somehow. I mean, I know you didn’t lie to me or anything, but…”
He trailed off, staring down at his sneakers, which, she noted, were in even more dire shape than his clothes.
“I wasn’t honest with you,” Rebecca admitted. “I should have told you right away. But I thought knowing that would frighten and alienate you even more than you already were. The Academy has been a challenging experience for you, Alex. I wanted to be someone who you felt comfortable leaning on. Someone you could trust.”
“And that’s the other thing,” Alex said, more forcefully, clearly getting to the heart of the issue. “Once you… well, once you got hurt, everyone went crazy, Rebecca. Everybody. Even Anastasia. Now, well, now I’m not so sure that you aren’t manipulating me, my emotions — hell, everybody’s emotions. It’s not just that I am having trouble trusting you. Now, I’m not even sure I can trust the way I feel.”
“Alex, if I was manipulating your emotions all the time, would you be so worried about it?”
She gave that time to sink in.
“Hmm.”
“Exactly. It doesn’t work that way,” Rebecca said thoughtfully. “Do you mind if I give you an example from your life?”
Alex nodded slowly, brushing aside the hair that stubbornly insisted on falling in his eyes. Rebecca added a haircut to the mental list she was compiling.
“When Emily was manipulating you, do you remember how hard she he had to work? How close she had to stay to you, and how much she followed you around? Do you remember how much… contact she had to make with you?”
Alex nodded again. She decided not to notice the blush openly, but in a way, she was a little bit glad for Alex, that he had done something worth blushing about. It was another connection in the web of connections she was building around the boy, tying him to the people around him and the place he was in.
“Well, if I wanted to control your feelings to any great degree, all the time, then I would pretty much have to do the same thing. So you see why that’s impossible, right? I see ninety students in a slow month, Alex. No empath is that powerful.”
“But, then, why did it get so weird? When you were…”
She didn’t make him finish the sentence, but she was touched by the genuineness of the pain she felt radiating from him. Even if Alex had mixed feelings about trusting her, he obviously still wanted to. So all it would take was a little nudge…
“I didn’t say I wasn’t doing anything at all, either,” Rebecca said, grinding out her cigarette. “I do smooth out the occasional wrinkle, and I do my best to improve my student’s general mood and outlook. And yes, for some of our problem students, I do tend to try to limit their own destructive tendencies. However, before you ask — no, you aren’t one of those kids. When I have used empathy with you, Alex, it has always been to help — to limit your suffering, to ease your shyness, to help facilitate your transition to the Academy. I never once tried to make you do anything, or feel anything that you already didn’t. I’ve tried to make things easier for you. Moreover, if you want, I won’t even do that anymore. We can just talk and pretend we are still normal people, Alex, if that’s what you want to do. We can pretend that the rules they made up apply in the circumstances we find ourselves in. On the other hand, you can accept that we are both very different from what we used to be, and in a different world than the one we used to live in — and you could try giving me credit for having good intentions. Up to you.”
Alex considered it.
“They made me see a bunch of different shrinks, psychologists and psychiatrists, I never could figure out the difference. You know that?”
“Nope,” Rebecca said, getting up to pace the room restlessly. “I don’t know anything about you, other than what you’ve told me and what I’ve seen since you arrived.”
Alex didn’t look skeptical. He looked like someone was trying to play a bad joke on him.
“How is that possible? You must have access to that sort of thing. There must be records…”
“Sure, but that shit doesn’t mean anything to me,” Rebecca said, leaning against the corner of her desk. “It wouldn’t be relevant to my job, anyway. Those shrinks — whoever they were, whatever the reasons you had to see them, they had a different job than mine. They were trying to make you better, make you healthier, a better person, a better citizen, right? Well, that’s not me. I’m not out to confront your innermost demons, Alex, not unless you want to. I’m just here to try to be a friend to you during a very difficult experience. Because the Program is a traumatic experience, a deliberately designed one, and we have studied it thoroughly. Candidates who have someone to turn to, someone to trust and someone to care for them — well, they tend to make it through more often. And I want to be that person for you, Alex, for a whole host of reasons, some professional, and some personal.”
“Ah… that. Um, I just… well, thanks for that,” Alex said, rubbing his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in a long time, as absurd as that was. “Thanks for being honest with me.”
“And I am fond of you, smartass. Don’t get me wrong. I really am pulling for you. I think it’s important that you know this: you aren’t there yet, but there will be some critical work very soon, and there won’t be many people who will be able to do it. It will need to be done, Alex. The kind of work that I used to do,” Rebecca said, trying out the past tense and not very sure how she felt it about it. “It isn’t healthy, or nice, or even right, Alex. But it is necessary. And I need you to know that I believe in you, and your ability to do this work, better than anyone else at the Academy.”
He didn’t say anything. He seemed to be staring at the ground, so she gave him space. She almost missed it, when he patted the couch cushion beside him, her accustomed spot during their sessions. Her movements were slow and placid, designed not to startle him, but she needn’t have bothered. She sat down and he put his head on her shoulder and then started sobbing, and she threw her arms around him and held him close, until long after he had stopped, until she had gently made all right within his little world.
Rebecca always tried to stretch it out, the first time they cried with her. It was amazing, cathartic experience. Actually, she thought with a trace of bitterness, it was the closest thing to an orgasm she had experienced in months.
“We need to talk, Anastasia Martynova,” Gaul said firmly, approaching where she was currently holding court: on a picnic blanket, underneath a tree, near the creek and in view of the partially burnt roof of her home, already back in use despite the ongoing repairs. The dress she wore was dark blue to match the ribbon in her hair. “Right now.”
A number of people eyed him from the expansive, red-and-white pattered blanket. He had mixed feelings about all of them. Svetlana was mild and servile to the extent that she attracted his derision, which perhaps was unmerited, as she sat quiet and meek beneath a parasol. Renton Vidor was one of his least favorite students at the Academy, and not only because he was the only student to fail the final class so many times. Renton was much older than the savage looking youth he appeared to be, and his smile was oily and unpleasant. Timor Zharov’s eyes held a flat acknowledgement — one precognitive recognized another. In addition, he was a trained killer. For the Black Sun, and particularly, for Anastasia, from childhood. Another potential problem.
His sister, Katya Zharova, was something of an enigma to him. She’d done sessions with Rebecca, as all students were required to, and Rebecca reported her to be of above-average intelligence, with no learning disabilities or social defects. Yet she had failed enough to be held back twice already, ending up in her younger brother’s class. Moreover, his spies inside the Black Sun reported that she had similar issues in their private assassin camp, showing exceptional aptitude but no motivation. She had transferred back to the Academy from the Black Sun’s camp two years before, to avoid expulsion for a baffling series of incidents that had occurred there, culminating in an equally baffling assault and hostage taking. Since Katya’s return to the Academy, however, she had been agreeable and accommodating to the point of inviting suspicion, as long as he overlooked her habitual violations of the substance abuse policy. As with Renton and Timor, he suspected her actions to have been orchestrated by Anastasia Martynova, for her own inscrutable reasons.
“You heard him,” the object of his suspicions said cheerfully, dismissing her hangers-on with a wave. “Really, Director, it isn’t like you to make our affairs so public.”
Renton snickered and left, with Timor and a grinning and tipsy Katya trailing behind him. Svetlana gathered a few things hastily and then trotted after them. All the while Anastasia smiled benevolently at him, as beatific as a pope granting an audience, flanked by two black wolves, one of which whined as she scratched its exposed belly. He gritted his teeth and stood when she offered him the blanket to sit on with a gesture.
Her dress reminded him of the Tenniel illustrations from Alice in Wonderland, except her knee socks were black. The composure on her face was constantly at odds with its own immaturity. It was appalling. No child should have such self-assurance, such cold and calculating ambition.
“We are alone,” she observed. “My people will not observe or intrude. Please understand,” she said, taking up a china teacup in between her thin white fingers, “my time is at a premium at the moment. My cartel needs me. So, with that in mind, what can I do for you, Director?”
Gaul shelved his anger. When he spoke, he could hear the appropriate iciness in his words, and felt satisfied.
“There are a number of people facing a reckoning due to recent events. You are among them. I came here to give you the opportunity to try and make an accounting for yourself, and for your actions.”
“Surely you don’t mean to imply that I had some role in this attack?” she asked mildly, looking surprised. “Why, Director, my people suffered more than any others.”
“It seems that way, on the face of it,” Gaul said grimly. “But when I look closely at the data, the soldiers that the Black Sun lost were primarily affiliated with the old guard, with your father. The Black Sun members who died included many of those most inclined and capable to resist your future ascension.”
“I am not the heir,” Anastasia objected mildly. “I have an elder brother, Director. And I have no forces loyal to me. Just a few unwanted children that I look after, that’s all. If none died in the attack, then isn’t that for the best, since so many of them are your charges, Director? I would think that you would be pleased.”
“Do I look pleased? I am not. Moreover, do not pretend that your brother plans anything besides abdicating in your favor. You placed Katya Zharova with Alexander Warner, an assassin. That is most certainly not what I had in mind when I asked for an insurance policy with some combat training on the side. If killing the boy were a viable solution to the problem, I assure you, I would have done so the moment I met him.”
“Then be more specific when you want favors,” Anastasia said, shrugging. “And don’t diminish Katya, please, just because she can be erratic. Alex is in good hands — and if you don’t believe me, why, please, do go and tell everyone, if you find our covert dealings to be less than satisfactory. I am not afraid to make my part in this public, Director. Do you feel the same?”
“I have three questions. How you answer them decides your future, Miss Martynova,” Gaul said, cognizant that these words put him very deep indeed, if he didn’t like her answers. “I require honesty.”
“Ask away,” Anastasia said, eyes sparkling, leaning forward with interest.
He started with the worst and least likely possibility.
“Did you know Emily and Therese Muir had contacted the Anathema?”
“No,” Anastasia said, looking a bit humbled. “That was my failing in the matter. I thought I had them boxed in, so that they would be forced to turn to me for assistance. Obviously, it didn’t work out like that.”
The Inquisition Protocol he had downloaded proved as useless on Martynova as he had feared, but he was certain that she wasn’t lying to him all the same. He breathed an internal sigh of relief, and went on to his second question.
“Did you have anything to do with the death of Therese Muir?”
“I thought it was a tragic event,” Anastasia said honestly. “And, sadly, a necessity, to protect her family from further harm.”
Gaul knew that his question had been answered in the most careful manner possible, and exactly the way he’d expected. There was nothing more to be done about it at present, though, so he let the issue go, shelving it for another time, and moving on to the personal.
“Someone arranged for Eerie to be… removed. As an obstacle to attaining Alexander Warner, I assume. Did you have anything at all to do with that?”
Anastasia must have been able to read the tension in his voice, because her smile faltered for a moment, and he knew that she was surprised at the depth of his anger. He was satisfied with that. She had no idea, after all, exactly how angry he would be if she had, in fact, had anything to do with an attempt to hurt Eerie.
“Again, no,” Anastasia said frankly. “I didn’t even know that was what happened to Steve Taylor and Charles Brant — it was them, right? — until right now. That kind of thing is beneath me, Director. I never imagined that Emily Muir would become that desperate.”
Gaul shrugged, but he kept his doubts to himself. John Parson had a way with people; specifically, he had a way with helping people to find places inside themselves that were far darker than they had believed possible.