Endgame (30 page)

“Until it backfires. Then I'll be on everyone's shit list again.” Jani tried to elbow past him, but he grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her against the wall.

“Does that mean I'll finally have some company?” Lucien leaned in until he pressed the length of his body against hers. “Someone to talk to? Have dinner with? Someone to—” He abandoned the preamble and kissed her hard, bruising her mouth as his hands burned their own path along her buttocks and up her back before finally moving forward and settling on her breasts, cupping and massaging and teasing—

Jani tried to push him away, but each touch, each sensation, unlocked memory and need and desire. Craving. To quench a thirst long denied, ease the ever-growing tension and allay the fear and soothe the quickening ache between her legs.
Simple.
Take that one simple path, if only for a little while. “I don't have time.” She tried to shift away from him, but he'd laced his legs through hers and pinned her against the wall and all she could feel were his lips and hands and the press of his erection through his uniform and her pound
ing heart and the slow trickle of sweat down her back. “I bet they have imagers in the corridors.”

“Not in the private wing—the residents would riot.” Lucien paused, his breathing rough, his hands stilling, hovering, a devil's promise on hold. “Your room?”

“Aides unpacking the luggage.”

“I've got Facilities working on the shower.” Lucien turned the handle of the nearest door, prying open the panel and releasing Jani just long enough to peek inside. “Oh, look. Housekeepers' closet.” He arched an eyebrow. “Blankets. Pillows.” He took her hand and led her through the gap, then pushed the panel closed and wedged the inside handle in the locked position with a long-handled scrubbing brush.

“You've done this before.” Jani leaned against a narrow worktable.

“I've done everything before.” Lucien slipped the duffel off her shoulder and tossed it in the corner. Pulled her shirt out of her trousers and opened the fasteners, peeling open the front of her bra along the way and applying a quick lick-and-tease to her nipples before undoing her trousers and sliding them down.

Jani reached for his tunic, but he pushed her hands away and undid it himself, slipping it off and laying it carefully across a shelf. His T-shirt, he pulled off more quickly, and it stayed where it landed.

“I don't think this table will hold—” Before Jani could argue load capacity, Lucien swept a shelf's worth of pillows to the floor and lowered her onto them. Kissed her again while his hands found their way everywhere, excited her everywhere, brought her to the edge before easing off ever so slightly. Then with a flick of hand and a twist of hip, he undid his trousers and slipped inside her, moving, then stopping, then moving more quickly and stopping once more, the same ebb and flow again and again until he couldn't stop himself anymore and he buried his head in her neck and whispered things to her that he hadn't said since Chicago and called her things he'd never called her before and
she wrapped herself around him and raked her nails across the small of his back and rode his sharp gasps and choked moans and matched them with her own.

Then held him as he slumped against her and relaxed in a way only he could, loose-limbed as a cat after a surfeit of cream.

Her breathing slowed, eventually. The ability to form sentences returned. “If the housekeeper comes in here for towels, they're going to get a hell of a shock.”

Lucien laughed, a deep, warm sound that wrapped around Jani like the pillows. “You think they haven't learned to knock before entering a room in this place?” He slid off her onto his side. “You haven't worked in many government buildings, have you?”

“Not with you.” Jani scrutinized the ceiling for a time, then looked at Lucien to find him studying her in turn, head cradled on his arm, eyes half closed.

“Six weeks.” His voice emerged tight. “Wasted. And why? We could have—and it isn't like you and Shroud were still even—” He rolled over on his back. “Who the hell knows?” He muttered something under his breath, then closed his eyes.

“You could sleep in here, couldn't you?” Jani sat up. Tried to stand until her trousers hobbled her and she fell on her ass and finally lay back and yanked them up.

“What are you doing?” Lucien sat up, a vision of randy dishevelment amid the white-on-white toss of pillows.

“I have to get out of here.” She recovered her bra and shirt from the floor and put them on.

“You just—” Lucien stood, pulling up his trousers in one easy motion, a man who had never been hobbled by his clothes in his life. “Wait a minute.” He collected the rest of his uniform and dressed. “Dammit.”

“I need to get to the Haárin enclave.” Jani tried to remove the brush that held the door closed, yanking on it twice before Lucien nudged her aside and removed it with a twist of his wrist. “I need to talk to Meva or Dathim or Galas or somebody.”

“Do you trust the security of comport communications around here?” Lucien didn't wait for her to shake her head. “Then you have to leave the enclave, and you can only leave the enclave in an authorized vehicle driven by a licensed member of the embassy staff.” He smiled and waved his hand in her face. “Hello. Me, again.”

Jani waited in an alley beside the embassy building while Lucien signed out a skimmer. She had returned to her room to collect her overrobe in case she needed it, but instead of donning it, she rolled it up and stuck it in her duffel. She didn't want to be recognized now. She didn't want to be followed. She just wanted to find out what, if anything, Galas had discovered about Nahin Sela.

A sedate four-door in Service blue-grey appeared at the end of the alley. Lucien disembarked and walked around to the passenger side to see to Jani's door, then used the exercise as an excuse to kiss her neck.

“Do you know where we're going?” He inserted himself into the cabin and steered onto the enclave access road, then tapped a blank display in the middle of the dashboard. “If I can avoid using the mapping system, that's one less way they can track us.”

“I remember where the Haárin enclave used to be.” Jani felt her heart trip as they floated through the gates, the skimmer shuddering as it switched from the humanish to idomeni skimtrack system. “From what I've seen, they rebuilt the city exactly has it had been before the war. I should be able to find it.”

They drifted through the streets. Jani recognized old landmarks, buildings she had used as guides when she first arrived at the Academy and hadn't known enough Laumrau or Vynshà to understand the street designators.

“Where's the Academy?” Lucien maneuvered into the slower lane so he could sightsee.

“We won't pass that—it's about ten kilometers north of here.” Jani felt her throat tighten, and struggled to will the sensation away.
It looks the same…all the same.
The parks and the art-filled niches in the walls of buildings otherwise so featureless they looked like molds a child had made with wet sand and a bucket. “First you'll pass the Council dome, then the Temple dome. Then there's the Haárin enclave. Then you pass all the dominant temples for the gods. Shiou's is the largest, followed by Caith's, which is what you'd expect. Then there's a riverwalk, and on the other side of that—” She fell silent. She'd had nightmares, yes, and hadn't wanted to return to this place. What she hadn't expected was that part of her would have…missed it all, the crowded streets and the sand-hued monotone and the flowers and the heat and the distant smell of the bay.

“It's a little like Thalassa.” Lucien had slipped into absorption mode, where he watched and memorized and said as little as possible as things burned into his brain. “Thalassa's brighter, and there's that undercurrent of Karistos attitude, but still.” He sat back, still on point but a little more relaxed. “I know why Tsecha liked Thalassa so much.”

“Yeah.” Jani fixed her attention on the view. They'd just passed the street leading to Caith's temple, a squat, ugly edifice with a dome of tarnished silver. Sedate clothing and breeder's fringes gave way to the occasional sheared head or burst of rebellious color, the entire scene clicking into place when an all-too-familiar figure emerged from the crowd.

“Pull over.” Jani waited until Lucien edged out of moving traffic, then pushed up her gullwing and waved. “Dathim!”

Dathim strode toward the skimmer. “Hah—I came to see
you as well.” He pulled up the rear door and piled into the backseat.

Jani turned back to face him. “Are you sure you want to be seen with me?”

“What difference?” Dathim folded his arms and sat ramrod straight, the top of his clipped scalp grazing the cabin headliner. “Cèel watches us and listens to us and what difference? Hell with him.” He looked out the window, then bared his teeth. “We go to the river and talk there. In the open where all can see.”

 

“So that's the Academy?” Lucien stood atop a stone bench and gazed across the river toward the congested scattering of white buildings large and small that stretched from the main avenue down to the bay. “It's smaller than I thought it would be.”

“It's about the size of a ministry compound.” Jani looked at the place where she'd spent four of the more harrowing years of her life. “One of the smaller ministries.” She stepped up next to Lucien. “The library is the largest building—you can see the gold dome. The rest are classrooms, a few labs. The scanpack brain farming is performed at Temple because it's a medical procedure, and all those labs are staffed by physician-priests.”

“Humans don't attend anymore?”

“No. There were a few classes after ours, but then the war came—”

“Your overrobe—where is it?”

Jani turned to find Dathim glaring at her.

“You should wear it.” He folded his arms. “He died for it, and you traveled here because of it, and you should wear it.”

Jani looked out over the riverwalk. The time for midday sacrament approached, and most idomeni had retired to their altar rooms, leaving the usually crowded walkways sparsely populated. “I didn't want to be recognized.”

“Then you should not have followed him. You should not
have come here. You should not have walked behind the reliquary.” Dathim grabbed her duffel from beneath the bench and held it out to her. “Meva is outraged. She will yell at you when she sees you again. Put it on.”

“You're a bully, ní Dathim Naré.” Jani yanked open the duffel fasteners and removed the overrobe, shook it out and pulled it on. “Now we better get out of here.”

“Now we must talk.” Dathim sat down on the end of the bench, hands on knees, like the town chatterbox. “Ní Galas does not trust his secure communications at the enclave, either. He told ná Meva that it would be much the same as if he went to Council and spoke to Cèel directly.”

Jani leapt down to the ground and perched on the rim of a planter. “Ní Galas has been busy?”

“Ní Galas has been to the Trade Board. He showed the images of Nahin Sela to all he met.” Dathim gestured disgust. “They are all godly idomeni who do not look others in the face. They had never heard of Nahin Sela, and did not recognize the hair or the clothes, so they could not say if they knew her.” He held up his index finger and pointed at Jani. “But there was one female. A bornsect. She did not know of Nahin Sela, but she did know of Imea nìaRauta Rilas.” He lowered his voice, a concession that said all anyone needed to know about the quality of the information. “Rilas is a member of Cèel's household. She has been thus for many years. The female said that she is absent much, and spoke sometimes of travel.”

Jani pushed away from the planter and stared at the river. “Galas will not be permitted to speak to Rilas.”

“A fact which he knows.” Dathim lowered his voice even more. “Meva has petitioned Cèel for permission to request that another bornsect speak to Rilas. Wuntoi, or another of the sect dominants.”

Jani turned slowly. “Meva has already asked Cèel—” She fell silent when she looked past Dathim to the sloping lawns beyond.

“Oh, shit.” Lucien stepped down from the bench and headed along the river to the nearby charge lot. “I'll get the skimmer.”

They weren't a large crowd of Haárin, a few hundred or so. But judging by appearances, they were the gamiest, all shorn hair and garish colors on the males, horsetails or loose hair on the females, some of whom wore long skirts instead of all-pervasive trousers.

So quiet.
Like the crowds in the station.
What do they want me to say?
Did they expect her to preach, like some of the ministers her papa listened to when he entered one of his “loud religion” phases?
Sermon by the River.
She swallowed a nervous laugh.
I don't even believe in your gods.
What could she say to them that they would want to hear?

The Haárin remained standing, because she was the propitiator and the level of their heads had to remain above hers as a show of respect.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jani saw Lucien maneuver the skimmer up to the top edge of the slope. A dash across a short stretch of lawn, a few quick strides, and she'd be free.

Instead, she crossed her ankles and lowered to the ground. Slipped into Vynshàrau Haárin, because that's what most of them were.

“Ní Tsecha missed Rauta Shèràa. Humanish have a term—homesickness—a longing for the places where one lived as a youngish, where one grew up. He used to tell me stories…”

 

“They were just stories.” The embassy security guard grinned. “The one she told about Tsecha when he was young and studying at the Temple school and made this confetti bomb—ohmigod—” She finally took note of the less than enthused audience reaction, and fell silent.

“The Haárin were orderly in the extreme, sir.” The second guard shook his head, disbelief stripping the years from his face. “They just followed us to the van, and one of them opened the door for her, and another held out his arm so she
could climb in. I mean, Christ on a cracker, if Cèel calls that a riot, I'd hate to see—”

“Thank you, Sergeant—that will be all.” Niall waited until the pair filed out before planting his elbows on the desk and burying his face in his hands. “If I were to ask you what you were thinking, would I want to hear the answer?”

Jani sat across from him. She'd removed her overrobe and hung it in her closet, then showered and changed into the more embassy-appropriate dinner attire of a severe black trouser suit. “They expected me to say something, and I didn't know what else to talk about.”

“You shouldn't have been out there in the first place.” Ulanova sat against the far wall next to her nephew, who sat with arms folded and his head down. “Of all the self-aggrandizing, egomaniacal, inflammatory—” She fell silent and pressed a hand to her forehead.

Lucien, who sat off to one side, well away from the center of the action, raised his hand. “In my opinion, sir, ní Dathim planned for this to happen.” He spoke softly, his voice steady, determined to soldier on whether anyone listened or not. “He shamed Jani into putting on her overrobe, even though she expressly informed him that she did not want to be recognized. We felt that since the time for midday sacrament was near, no idomeni would be out on the river. The local hardcore Haárin, however, have apparently stopped following prescribed meal times, a fact we had no way of knowing.”

Niall plucked a stylus from the desktop holder and tapped it against the blotter. “You shouldn't have been out there, period. As matters stand, Cèel is threatening to pull all driving privileges for embassy personnel—”

“Ní Galas took Nahin Sela's image to the Trade Board.” Jani spoke quickly, trying to fit it all in before anyone interrupted. “One of the bornsect females recognized her as a bornsect named Imea nìaRauta Rilas, a member of Cèel's household.”

Niall's tapping stopped. “Why didn't you tell me this sooner?”

“Meva plans to petition Cèel to allow another of the bornsect dominants to talk to Rilas.” Jani met Niall's tired eye. “That crack you made about the bottom of the bay just might come to pass.”

“What about the bottom of the bay?” Scriabin lifted his head.

“Niall is of the opinion that if Cèel hasn't already killed Rilas, he plans to do so soon. When the threat of exposure is sufficient.” Jani avoided Niall's eye even as she cast credit his way. He'd freed a 'stick, and now sat glaring at her through a haze of smoke, like the villainous interrogator in a cheap holodrama. “Meva's petition to allow another bornsect dominant to speak with her might be enough to force his hand.”

“And then we lose the only being who can testify to Cèel's culpability?” Scriabin sat up, fingers drumming on knees. “Is it too late to ask Meva to withdraw her petition?”

“This is Meva we're talking about.” Niall's voice emerged desert dry. “She's a handful even by idomeni standards, and we have no diplomatic bludgeon with which to compel her to cease and desist.”

“Meva can be a pain in the ass.” Jani ignored Scriabin's just audible, “Pot. Kettle. Black,” and Niall's arched brow. “But the concepts of trial and conspiracy and culpability don't apply here. Cèel would never stand trial as we know it. The only penalty for a crime like assassination is the same we've seen before with the Laum—another sect ascends to
rau
, and the sect that had been in power is obliterated. That blanket condemnation doesn't apply here. We're only interested in Cèel. We're blazing a new trail.”

“Is this your way of telling us to trust Meva?” Niall's voice took on an avuncular lilt, as it sometimes did when they spoke in private. “You don't like her, but you trust her?”

“The two aren't always mutually exclusive.” Jani took a deep breath. “Why don't we ask her to meet with us so we can discuss this?”

 

Meva was contacted. She proved very eager to arrange a meeting, as there were several things on her private agenda that she felt needed an airing.

“Priest-in-training, you call yourself.
Hah.
You do not even wear your overrobe. The greatest ceremony in which a priest can participate, the transport of a soul. And you do not even wear your overrobe!” Meva had taken charge of the chair in front of Niall's desk. She still wore the same conservative clothing, including overrobe, that she had during the procession, but the overall effect had acquired a rumpled aspect. Some hair had escaped the tight braiding of her breeder's fringe, sticking out at odd angles. A few of the beads that decorated the braid ends had gone missing as well.

She looks like she got caught in a wind tunnel.
Jani stood against the near wall, arms folded. Imagined finding Meva trapped in such a device and hitting the activation pad herself. “I didn't want to attract attention.” She ignored Ulanova's mutter.

“You are a priest,
priest
. We are that which we are. To hide such is not even anathema. It is simply stupid.” Meva sat back and fixed her attention on Scriabin, who had abandoned the seat next to his aunt for a chair next to Niall's desk. “As for my petition, why should I withdraw it? I wish to speak with Rilas. If I cannot do so, a bornsect dominant may do so in my stead. Aden nìRau Wuntoi proved most agreeable to my request, and truly.”