Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [106]
“And in response to your question, only in the widest sense.”
“Yeah. You guys authorize killing. The original Star Chamber didn’t.”
Not that Sergei had said so much, in so many words. But it made sense.
And Felhim didn’t deny it.
Wren supposed that if she had any real delicate sensibility, she would refuse the meal, refuse the deal, and walk out. Do the whole “I may be a thief but I have some standards” routine. She did a systems check, just to make sure there wasn’t anything she was missing. Nope. All quiet on the outrage front. Not that she didn’t disapprove of killing. She did. But she was also very much against getting killed. And if it came down to it, she thought she might have less trouble with being a killer than being dead.
Besides, she was a thief. Her specialization was in getting in and out without conflict. And it wasn’t as though she’d have a lot of contact with the Silence, beyond getting assignments, right? Sergei dealt with their clients, not her. It was a good business model.
You’re rationalizing, Sergei’s voice said to her. She could hear the resigned amusement in the tone, see the raised eyebrows, one higher than the other, softening the otherwise severe lines of his face.
Bite me, she told her hallucinatory partner, and cut into her steak.
It was, after all, very good food.
The teakettle was whistling when she opened the door. She’d known, anyway—the moment she started working the locks on the apartment door she’d felt the urge to boil water herself.
That was probably why she resisted picking up the tea habit herself. Better to know it was him causing it, and not some weird craving of her own.
But the time delay of opening three different dead bolts gave her a chance to come up with a cover story. Where had she been? What had she been doing? Telling him would only upset him, for no reason. Even if it was a perfectly innocent meal.
“Have a good meeting?”
She blinked at him, mouth open.
“Jorgunmunder told me. He took great pleasure in it, actually.” Sergei pulled at the string of the teabag, watching the water darken as though that was the most important thing on his mind. “He’s so blatantly obvious it almost takes all the fun out of it.”
Wren remembered to breathe again. She closed the door behind her, reactivating the locks out of habit.
“Why?”
“Why is he so obvious? Because he lacks imagination, I think. Or maybe it was beaten out of him as a child.”
“No. Why…play the games? Lunch, head games…why do they bother? Why isn’t ‘no, go away’ enough for them?”
“Partially, I think, because that’s the way they operate. Nothing is as on-the-surface as it seems, nothing is as easy as it should be. They operate in the shadows, so they think everyone else does, too. Metaphorically as well as actually, Wren,” he said when she opened her mouth to point out that she did, yeah, work in shadows. “Also…they think I’m going to fight them for you. Make their…acquisition of you difficult.”
Her temper, kept in check all lunch, flared. “I’m nobody to be acquired!”
Sergei smiled, sipped his tea. “Just so. And yet, you did go to lunch with Andre.”
Wren narrowed her eyes at him. “All right, mister. Into the kitchen.” She didn’t wait for his response but brushed by him, going through her arrival ritual—keys in the bowl, bag on the counter, start the coffee machine—only to discover that Sergei had anticipated her.
“Bless you. I so wanted to get lunch over with I didn’t bother having coffee afterward.”
“Andre was less than charming?”
She snorted rudely through her nose. “Andre couldn’t be less than charming if he was nailed in a pine box with a ghoul on his chest.” She dumped sugar into the coffee and took a long drink, swallowing with relish. She could swear she felt the caffeine hit her brain like a syringe. Then the weight of recent events dropped back down on her shoulders, and she put the mug down and turned to look at her partner.
“I don’t want to get mixed up in their games. Not when there’s so much else going on—and stuff I