show on his face, the replay far more lurid and obscene than the encounter itself.
This wasn’t the man I’d taken to bed. He was still playing dress-up.
Merlin looked bored, but Campbell—ah, yes. Campbell had a different reaction. I wasn’t the target audience. This show was not staged for my benefit.
I leaned close to Ian. “It never is about the girl with you, is it? It’s the other man—the rival. That’s what gets your blood hot? Having the girl everyone else wants?”
“Not everyone. Just certain ones.” His eyes flickered past me.
I leaned closer, until my lips were inches from his ear. “Marduk?”
He didn’t answer, but the smirk on his lips told me enough: he knew that name. He knew exactly who that was.
“Why were you at that party looking for me?”
A flicker of sympathy. “Trying to save your skin, beautiful. Trying to get you out of it before it all went pear-shaped, but you didn’t come home with me.” He looked past me to Campbell, and he didn’t like what he saw. “It’s not too late, you know. Why don’t you ditch these circus freaks and come take a cruise with me? I can show you sights so beautiful you’ll think you’ve gone to heaven.”
I straightened. “I have work to do.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Also, I don’t like you.” I turned to leave.
He stood, grabbed my arm and pulled me back to him. I could have fought, certainly, but it was his play, and I wanted to see where he was going to take the dialogue. He pulled me to him and held me close, making a big deal out of how he was holding me, if only for Campbell’s benefit.
Jester whispered: “Get out of here. He’ll dump you out an airlock if you get in his way, no matter how much he ever cared about Isis.”
“I know that,” I whispered. “Believe me, I know. Did Gabriel tell you how to find me? Does he still have contact with his, with our—”
He put his hand in my hair, at the neck, and pushed me against the wall, as if to kiss me. I could feel movement behind me, and I knew he’d finally pushed Campbell or Merlin—someone—to their limit.
“Don’t you get it?” Jester whispered low, so only I could hear. “She won’t let us go. Not you, not me, not any of us. Probably not even him, that goddamned son-of-a-bitch.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I think we’ve had enough of your melodrama,” Campbell grabbed Jester by the arm and dragged him off me. “Go to the dock and wait for your damn ship. We have work to do.”
Jester shrugged off Campbell’s touch with a growl. “Yeah, don’t even try to pretend you’re going to do anything but count the seconds until you can get her alone yourself.”
Campbell’s expression was grim and contemptuous. “Thank you for finding Ara-MacLain. Now remove yourself from this room before I have you shot.”
“Gladly.” Jester straightened his shirt. He bowed to me, florid and elaborate. “I can’t help you with your little Sarcodinay friend, but if you want to talk about family matters, you come look me up when this is all over.” He turned and left.
No one spoke.
“A shame about Ian Delgado.” I said at last. “I liked him.”
SEVENTEEN.Deimos
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Belisle said as he entered the room behind me. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased as punch to see that particular report was mistaken, just a touch confused.”
“Turns out dying creates too much paperwork so I changed my mind.” I was eating one of the brownies that Merlin had somehow found the time to bake, drinking a cup of coffee good enough to make me suspect its provenance was Jester’s smuggling operations. “What are you doing here, Colonel?” I looked behind the man to see he had his two hounds with him, Kovacs and Petrov. All of them looked rough, weathered and soot-stained. Petrov sported a nu-skin gel patch on his right arm; standard first aid treatment for stabbings and gunshot wounds. None of them had slept recently.
“He wouldn’t say.” Merlin pointedly did not hand any of them a cup of coffee, a stern mark of disapproval.
Petrov growled at Merlin. “It’s not any of IO’s business.”
“IO has a right to know if there’s an operation in progress than could impact—”
“How bad is it?” I asked Belisle.
He pulled his hands out of his pockets, laced his fingers together, and loudly cracked his knuckles. He slowly walked into the room and looked over at the MOJ security, then at Campbell. He shook his head and tsked like he’d just caught the kids trying to stay up through nap time.
Campbell scowled and turned to the prison security. “The rest of you, out. Right now.”
“But we have orders…”
He shook his head. “No you don’t. If you had orders you’d be in the yard putting down the riot, not hiding here trying to figure out how you’re going to clear station. Now get out.”
Campbell did intimidating quite well when he choose to; there was hardly a grumble of protest after that.
Belisle eyed him. “You too, son.”
Campbell pulled up a chair and sat down. “I don’t think so.”
“Now I don’t have to ask nice—”
“He’s fine, Belisle. He’s with me,” I said. “How bad is it?”
Belisle frowned and waved a hand at Merlin and Campbell. “Oh hell, they could tell you easy enough. Almost as soon as the peace was announced, prisoners here started acting up, then the Warden went and pulled back most of the guard and it was like putting a match to dry grass. Been non-stop rioting ever since, and even the guards are looting the place.”
“Where’s the Warden?” I asked. “Where’s Kaj-Shae?”
“The powers that be around here are all holed up nice and snug in Administration, just on the other side of the docking ring, but nobody is getting in there. Threllis has guards on him like he’s expecting the devil himself to show up—oh. I see.“
“He’s Zaladin’s next target,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily. Merlin and Campbell had figured it out all on their own. It was, Merlin told me on the way over, Campbell’s idea to track the High Guard themselves, under the very logical assumption that the Sarcodinay (or at least Tirris Vahn) seemed to know exactly who Zaladin was after. Kaj-Shae Threllis had a narrow window of opportunity before he was scheduled to return to Sarcos, so they figured the next attempt would be here, on Deimos.
He chewed on his lower lip. “Threllis Kaj-Shae, huh? Can’t say many as would shed a tear for that son-of-a-bitch going to his grave early.”
“You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” said Petrov, sneering as he enjoyed what I think he expected was going to turn into a ‘watch MacLain get her ass chewed out’ festival.
I only spared him a glance, keeping my attention on Belisle. “I didn’t have much of a choice. I think you know that.”
Belisle’s expression was not angry or upset, not even disappointed. He looked at me with an almost genuine concern, like a lost uncle or an old family friend. “That may be, but you shouldn’t be here. Not here, not on Deimos. I looked at your file, Lieutenant. I know you’re good and you can usually keep it together, but you honestly expect me to believe that you can keep your focus to stopping this man? When the man he’s trying to murder is the man who killed your parents?”
I put down my coffee so I could rub my temples again. This was a conversation I so didn’t need. “Maybe if this was new, if this was the first chance for revenge I’ve ever had and it was a chance that would never come again, I might not be trustworthy, but if you’ve read through my file you also know that I’ve been here before. I’ve been here so often they might as well have named the docking ring after me. If I wanted revenge, I’d already have it.”
Kovacs didn’t really like that. He frowned and said: “Why didn’t you? You might have saved lives…”
“No,” I said. “It wouldn’t have saved lives. Just the opposite. Sarcodinay retaliation would have been swift and worst c
ase scenario? They replace Threllis with someone competent. Threllis is an idiot. Someone who knew what they were doing might find the security holes I need to be able to sneak in here and smuggle people back out.” I laughed, although really it was more of a snort. “Keepers, I always wondered why he was never replaced.”
“Well you do sell the story at a good price,” Belisle acknowledge with a graceful tilt of his head, “But it don’t matter one bit. This Zaladin fellow ain’t getting to Threllis Kaj-Shae. Nobody is getting to Threllis Kaj-Shae. He has locked himself up in admin so tight that nobody can break through, and we’re talking human security that can’t be flimflammed by any Sarcodinay telepathy. They’re shooting anyone who tries to come through from this side, even if it was the Emperor himself. Any of this Zaladin’s disguises or what have you? Don’t matter.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I’m sure Shaniran thought he was untouchable too.”
That made Belisle stop in his tracks and then his left cheek started to twitch. “You don’t think he could pull that off again—?”
“No.”
He exhaled in relief.
“But that doesn’t mean he won’t come up with something as bad or worse.” I looked at Merlin, who was chewing on his thumb, and Campbell who was staring at me with an uncomfortably dark intensity that made me wonder just how hard he had taken the news that I was dead. I shook my head. “Colonel, I understand it seems like Kaj-Shae Threllis is safely tucked away, but it’s an illusion. I wasn’t bragging when I said I could have killed Threllis if