Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [63]
The thought of her turning to someone else, taking guidance from someone else, made his stomach twist. Ten years they’d been partners. Three times longer than anyone else he had ever worked with. A truer partnership than anything he’d known before.
Those thoughts brought up memories he had been repressing since he walked into the building, the memories that had driven him out in the first place. Poor Jordan. Young, Talented, eager. So eager to please, he claimed he could do more than he could. And current wasn’t kind to those who overreached themselves.
Wren thought that there wasn’t anything worse than wizzing. He had seen that there was. The Silence had asked that of Jordan. Had demanded it. Taken it.
Destroyed all that talent, that eagerness. And he, as Jordan’s Handler, had been complicit. Guilty.
Wren wasn’t that compliant, that obliging. The very thought made him grin in relief and memory as he raised his glass to his mouth.
But if everything he’d planted today grew as it should, he would have to return here. That was the offer he had made to Douglas: he would return to the fold, and they would leave Wren alone. Return to the thing that had almost destroyed him, to protect the thing that had saved him.
Douglas had promised to consider it, to take the partial victory rather than lose entirely. Sergei would still be free to continue his association with Wren, after his responsibilities to the Silence. And that association would earn her the Silence’s protection as well. But active status would put a strain on their relationship, their partnership: one he wasn’t sure it could survive.
And how long would the trade hold for? The Silence wanted Wren—how much time could he buy her, realistically? Was it a trade worth making, or would he be selling himself for no real gain?
He would do it, in a heartbeat, if he felt that it was the right move. If it were a winning move. But he didn’t trust the Silence anymore. And, in this matter, he no longer trusted his own instincts.
Sergei kicked back what was left of his drink and left the glass on the table. Suddenly the amber liquid didn’t taste as appealing as it had before. The cocktail party was building in energy. There were people arriving whom he hadn’t seen in years, people he had once considered allies, but he didn’t want to mingle, didn’t want to talk to anyone else, and have to decipher what games they were playing, what agendas they were pursuing or alliances they were building. He pushed through the crowd, nodded to the few people there he respected, and went out the door and down the escalator—the Silence didn’t like elevators, too easy to tamper with—and out to the street.
The question lingered, like the aftertaste of the Scotch. Why was he trying so hard to avoid the inevitable? Adam thought the Silence could be useful to him, Sergei. And Douglas believed that Wren could be useful to the Silence. That message came through loud and clear. She could probably write a half-decent ticket for herself, maybe stay out of the worst of the assignments.
But there was always a price to pay for power. In this case, Wren’s freedom. The chance for her to remain a lonejack, answerable to no one save herself. The option to do or not, as she felt best.
In short, what was at stake was her soul. It was clichéd, old-fashioned, but he didn’t know any other way to express it.
He glanced back up at the building, its façade innocuous, unthreatening, almost not there to the casual passersby. There was a price to pay for everything. Wren might, given the choice, think losing him, at least for a little while, a fair price to pay. And yet he had promised never to leave her. Did this qualify or not? And if it came to that, would he be able to honor that promise?
Too scared to risk everything on the roll of the dice, when you know someone else had the loading of it. He was too old for this. Too unwilling to rock the small, patched boat he had fashioned for himself.