Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [39]
And a mage of moderate ability, listening intently, would have been able to hear a scream of rage and despair rise from the interior of the concrete block.
seven
Sergei looked at his watch, tilting his wrist slightly to catch the light. 10:58 a.m. He was exactly, perfectly on time. He could feel the slight pressure in the soles of his feet that indicated the elevator was moving him upward at a disconcertingly quick speed. It made him, he admitted, nervous. He was all for speed, and power, but he much preferred being the one determining how it was used.
Not that he didn’t trust the Mage Council. He did. He trusted them to be cold, calculating, utterly ruthless and completely without a shred of human decency. Perfectly reasonable businessmen. Which was why he was here, in this elevator, instead of his partner. He could hold his own in negotiations, smooth-talk his way through the landmines and hopefully get out with what they needed, not having left too much of himself behind.
Sergei Didier knew from long experience that you didn’t need Talent to deal with the mages. Only patience, and a great deal of self-control. His Wren, for all that she was exceedingly good at what she did, lacked a certain level of self-possession when it came to negotiations.
In short, she lost her temper. And everything always, but always, went downhill from there. That was why he was making this call, and not her. Normally, a non-Talent like himself wouldn’t be allowed inside the building. The fact that they had allowed him entrance meant that they accepted him as Wren’s surrogate. Unusual, but not unheard of.
The Council’s old-fashioned, very 1950s patriarchal, except the role of the guy is played by the Talent, and all their dependents, nonmagically, are the wimminfolk and children, used for display to show you’re a good provider, if they’re allowed in sight at all. Her disgust when she said this had been unmistakable. He hadn’t realized, before the two of them started working together, how deep the distaste between lonejack and Council went. Fair enough, since he’d only ever heard rumors of the Council’s existence before they hooked up. But they were still all Cosa and therefore protected by the rules of the game, such as it was. Because of that, he was perfectly safe here as Wren’s surrogate. So long as he didn’t do or say or start anything stupid.
He shot the cuffs of his suit, straightening his shoulders so that the suit jacket fell smoothly, the way his tailor had designed it. The finely cut wool slid against the ironed cotton of his shirt, and when he looked down, the cuffs of his pants broke exactly right over his polished dress shoes. Clothes might not make the man, the way his father had always insisted, but they did make the man feel more confident. He was going to ace this. Keep it cool, keep it easy, and keep it under control. Don’t let Wren down.
The elevator slowed, and then came to a stop. The doors slid open smoothly, without a ding or beep to indicate he had arrived. There were no floor indicators inside the darkly paneled box, no call boxes or emergency phone. You got in because you were here to see the Council, and you got to the floor you needed to reach because they wanted to see you.
A solemn young man, carefully groomed and expensively dressed in a subtle gray suit and cream-and-gray herringbone tie, waited to greet him in the equally dark-paneled, gray-carpeted empty space that would have been the reception area in an ordinary office. They looked like nothing so much as two proper high-risk investment bankers, junior and senior, plotting a merger. Or world domination.
“Mr. Didier. Follow me, if you would.”
He was led down a hallway that, like the young man, whispered of power and wealth. The young man could be dismissed. But Sergei believed in those other whispers. The gathered power of seven generations of mages had built the place, and they maintained it to this day. The young man was nothing, merely one cog in the workings of a greater whole. This building