Chapter 20 — The Parley
1492 Words
The doors opened with a long low groan.
Two guards pushed them from the inside. Heavy brass. The kind of doors that had been opening and closing for a hundred years and were tired of it.
We walked through.
The heat hit me first. After the cold tunnel outside it felt like walking into a closed room that had been holding its breath. The air was thick with cigar smoke and something underneath it that had no smell exactly but that you felt in your chest. Like pressure. Like a room full of people who had all done terrible things and knew it and had stopped caring.
A big round table sat in the center under bright white lights.
Four chairs filled. One empty.
Varek walked into the light.
I walked beside him.
The pain blockers were doing their job. I couldn't feel the tube. Couldn't feel the tight wrap around my ribs. What I could feel was the blade inside my sleeve and the weight of the dress around my feet and Varek's hand just behind me. Not touching. Just there. Close enough to feel.
I looked at the people at the table.
The woman in the white suit from Tokyo. Her face gave nothing away at all. Not a muscle moving. Like she had learned a long time ago that showing anything in a room like this cost you.
Two men in matching dark suits from London. They looked at my neck first. At the diamonds. Then at my face. Taking stock.
A man in gray I didn't know from the neutral banks.
And across the table.
Syris.
He looked bad. The bruising at his throat from Varek's hand had gone dark yellow at the edges. His skin was pale and a little shiny under the lights. Holding a cigarette between two fingers wrapped in white tape and looking directly at me.
He smiled.
Wrong. Like always. The scar tissue pulled the corners of his mouth in a way that had nothing to do with warmth.
Varek pulled out the empty chair.
Didn't sit. Stood behind it with both hands on the back and looked at Syris.
"You called it," Varek said. "So talk."
Syris took a long slow pull of his cigarette. Let the smoke out even slower. Like he had all the time in the world and wanted everyone in the room to know it.
"My issue," Syris said. His voice was still broken from his throat. Like gravel being dragged across something rough. "Is standing right next to you."
The London men leaned in. The woman in white didn't move.
"Old Law," Syris said. He tapped his cigarette against the glass dish in front of him. "Section four. Article nine. Only people with proper papers stand on the Council floor." He looked at me. "She has no papers. No record. No history anyone can find." He tilted his head. "She's a ghost. And you dragged a ghost into our house."
The table was quiet.
Felt the weight of it. Five pairs of eyes doing math.
Varek's hands tightened on the back of the chair. The leather creaked.
"She's my wife," Varek said. "My blood covers her. That's all this table needs."
"Is it?" Syris smiled again. "Because what I hear from Sector Four is that you bought a girl to cover a debt. That she's not a wife. She's a prop." He looked at me. "No offense."
The London men looked at each other.
Felt the trap closing.
This was what it was. Not the guns. Not the casino. This. A room full of rules being used as a weapon. Syris couldn't shoot me here. But he could use the law to strip away everything standing between me and a bullet later.
"Remove her," Syris said. He looked past Varek into the shadows at the edge of the room. "Neutral guard. Take her out. If she fights"
"Execute her," the gray man finished. Like he was reading from a page.
Two men stepped out of the shadows. Rifles up.
Varek moved.
Stepped in front of me. His whole body. Not halfway. All the way. Everything blocked.
Red lights from the rifles found his chest. His forehead.
He didn't flinch. Didn't reach for his gun. Just stood there between me and the barrels like the lights on his chest were someone else's problem.
I saw it then.
Syris wasn't looking at the rifles.
He was looking at me over Varek's shoulder.
He wanted this. He wanted Varek to die protecting a secret. He wanted him to go down in this room so I'd be standing alone in the middle of it with nowhere left to go.
The pain in my right side picked that exact moment to push through the blockers. Sharp and hot. My vision went white at the edges for a second.
Pressed my left hand flat against Varek's back.
He went completely still.
Didn't turn around.
"Stand down," I said.
He didn't move.
"Varek." Quiet. Just for him. "Stand down."
He stepped aside.
I walked to the table.
The dress was heavy. Each step had to be decided. My right side was burning and I breathed through it and kept my face still and walked until my legs touched the edge of the table.
"You want the Old Law," I said.
Syris looked at me. "A rat that speaks."
I snapped my wrist.
The blade came out of my sleeve. My fingers caught it the way they caught everything now... without thinking, without deciding, just knowing. In one fast downward move I drove it into the table.
The tip punched through the glass dish.
Glass and ash flew across the felt.
Syris's chair scraped back hard.
The guards moved forward.
Left my hand on the grip and didn't move.
"Sanguis imperat," I said.
The Tokyo woman went rigid.
The London men stopped breathing.
"Lex prima. Caput quartum." The words came up from somewhere I hadn't known they were stored. Rough and broken from the tube and the tight wrap around my ribs. "In praesentia regis omnis vox obmutescent. Qui umbram meam contemnit sanguine solvent."
The room went so quiet I could hear my own blood moving.
The guards stopped.
The rifles went down. Slowly. One at a time. Like they were being lowered by people who had just realized something and needed a moment to finish realizing it.
Nobody at this table spoke the old language. It had been dead for ten years. Burned in Sector Four along with everything else. The only people who had ever known it were born inside the walls of the Sovereign palace.
I looked at Syris.
The cigarette had fallen from his fingers.
He was white. Not pale. White. Like the blood had somewhere else to be. He stared at the blade in the table. At the broken dish. At my face.
He had brought a street girl into this room to use her against Varek.
Instead he had just watched her stand up in front of the entire Council and speak words that only one kind of person in the world had ever known.
I could feel blood moving slowly into the bandaging under the dress. My side was burning. My legs were shaking under the fabric where no one could see.
I kept my hand on the blade.
I kept my eyes on Syris.
"I am vetted," I said.
The dead room carried every word.
"The question before this table," I said. "It doesn't matter whether I belong here."
I looked at each of them. One at a time. The Tokyo woman. The London men. The gray man from the banks.
"The question is what happens to anyone in this room who decides I don't."
Nobody moved.
Nobody spoke.
The Tokyo woman looked at her hands on the table for a long moment. Then she picked up her pen and set it down again on her side of the felt. A small gesture. Quiet. But in a room this still it landed like a door closing.
The London men looked at each other. Then at the blade still buried in the table between them. Then away.
The gray man from the banks folded his papers slowly and put them in his jacket pocket.
One by one the rifles went the rest of the way down.
Syris hadn't moved. Still white. Still staring at me from across the felt with the dead cigarette on the floor beside his chair. For the first time since I'd met him that dry patient smile was completely gone. What was underneath it was something smaller and older and much less controlled.
I pulled the blade out of the table.
The wood groaned around it as it came free.
Behind me I felt Varek take one slow breath.
Just one.
Like a man who had been holding something for a very long time and had finally found somewhere safe to put it down.
- Writer
