Stiletto

  “The sleepwalkers?” repeated Ernst. Rook Thomas hurriedly explained about the civilians getting up in the middle of the night and disappearing, the skin room that had gone up in flames, the loss of Felicity’s teammates, and the white-skinned man who had killed them. I wonder if that was Pim, thought Felicity.

  “So they have already killed Checquy people,” said Ernst. “Myfanwy, I cannot apologize enough. They are unstable, they must be, but I am certain of their love for Odette. That is what the attack on the car was about. They were coming for her. For all their hatred and resentment, they will do their utter best not to hurt her. Having her at the hotel and in Checquy facilities makes it less likely they will strike at those places.”

  “So you’re using her as a human shield.”

  “We must use every tool at our disposal,” said the Grafter. “That is also why we brought Alessio here. His presence is not a sign of good faith for the Checquy, or, should I say, not only a sign of good faith for the Checquy. He is here for us to hold as hostage against Odette’s loyalty. There is no one she loves as much as her baby brother. Not even Pim and the others.”

  “But this is your family,” said Felicity, aghast at the extent of the manipulation that had just been revealed. The Checquy used its people, of that there was no doubt. That’s why they call us Pawns, after all. But this level of control and deception was something else entirely. “You are using their affection—their love!—as a weapon.”

  “As insurance,” said the graaf. “As a shield, like you said. But if it comes to it, if the only way to win is to sacrifice Odette and Alessio, even if both of them are innocent, I will do it.”

  “This is the way it has to be, Clements,” said the Rook sadly. “We have to use every tool we have, even if we hate doing it. That’s the responsibility of our positions. And now it’s yours too.”

  Felicity’s mind was reeling. It was loathsome. She wanted to say that she couldn’t do it, that she wouldn’t do it. But she just nodded.

  “What are my orders?”

  “You’re not going to like them,” said the Rook.

  The needle itself was no longer than any normal hypodermic, but it seemed as if it ought to be huge, because the syringe attached to it was so very large. In it, a milky blue liquid sat expectantly.

  “Now, once I have injected this into you, you absolutely must not get pregnant,” said the graaf seriously. “Not for at least seven months. This is not a suggestion.”

  “Well, I hadn’t planned on it,” said Felicity wryly. Her tone was an attempt to cover up her increasing unease.

  “Planned, unplanned, it must not happen.”

  “I’m on the pill.”

  “That is not a hundred percent,” he said. “You must be one hundred percent certain.”

  “And what is this stuff again?” Felicity asked nervously.

  “The Antagonists have proven their willingness to use viral and bacterial weapons,” said the graaf. “If they come for Odette, or if she makes a break for it, you must be able to resist such weapons.”

  “But what is it?”

  “You wouldn’t understand the answer if I gave it.”

  “But it’s Grafter-tech, right? Some bacteria you’ve cobbled together or a hormone you’ve twisted about?” She looked at the Rook pleadingly. “Rook Thomas, please, you know what this means. It’s everything we’ve been brought up to despise. Please, please don’t ask me to do this.” The Rook chewed her lip thoughtfully, and her brow furrowed.

  “Pawn Clements?” she said finally.

  “Yes?”

  “Do it.”

  “. . . Yes, ma’am.”

  So why aren’t you just inoculating everyone?” asked Felicity as she squeezed the rubber ball the graaf had given her. The veins in her arm were coming to the surface.

  “Because the contents of this little syringe cost about half a million pounds to manufacture,” he said carelessly. “And even if we had enough for everyone, I think the members of the Checquy would be uncomfortable having Grafter materials injected into them.”

  Felicity watched as the needle slid into her vein. A dull ache spread into her muscles. Am I becoming a Grafter by letting him do this? she thought, and felt sick to her stomach. Despite herself, she tried to read the liquid with her powers as it flowed into her, but she found that she wasn’t able to. It’s alive, she thought. Alive, and inside me.

  “It’s creepy, I know,” said Rook Thomas. “They shot it into me as well.”

  “You?” said Felicity. The Rook grimaced, and Felicity remembered that the Grafters had performed an entire surgery on her. An injection’s not very pleasant, but at least they’re not elbow-deep in my abdominal cavity.

  “The Antagonists seem to be pretty irritated with me for some reason,” said the Rook lightly. “Whoever that blond guy was, he was apparently very focused on killing me, so we thought it best not to take any chances.”

  “Now you’ll have a fighting chance,” said the Grafter.

  “So what exactly is it that you want me to do?” asked Felicity.

  “That’s the problem, Clements,” said Rook Thomas. “We can’t plan for every eventuality, so we must rely on your personal judgment. Watch her. If you believe Odette is going to do anything on behalf of the Antagonists, if you witness her trying to escape your guard, or if she harms a civilian, an operative of the Checquy, or a member the delegation, then you will do whatever proves necessary to resolve the situation.” The Rook’s voice was mild. “Personally, I don’t believe that will happen. I trust her. She’s saved my life twice. But Ernst here thinks it’s still a possibility, so keep it in mind.”

  “Right,” said Felicity.

  “If the Antagonists come for her,” said Ernst, “then you must do everything in your power to stop them. Once they have her, there will be nothing left to prevent them from striking at the Checquy without restraint. And then negotiations will fail. They must not get her.”

  “And if the opportunity arises,” said the Rook, “it would be great if you could acquire one of the Antagonists for us.”

  Oh, absolutely, thought Felicity. If I see one, I won’t hesitate to snatch him up and put him in my handbag.

  “If we have even one of them,” the Rook was saying, “we can extract the information we need from him or her.”

  “But if you think Odette might be a traitor, why don’t you just interrogate her?” asked Felicity, frowning.

  “I am gambling on that point,” confessed the Grafter. “I truly hope Odette is not a traitor. Not only is she a valuable and brilliant Grafter, but I love her. She is family. The interrogation that the Checquy has in mind would not be gentle. And the fact that we interrogated her at all would be enough to destroy her loyalty to us.”

  “If she actually does have any loyalty to you,” the Rook remarked to Ernst helpfully. “We’re not certain that she does.”

  “Exactly.”

  My God, this is getting confusing, thought Felicity. “May I just review this, please?” she asked. “We don’t know whether Odette is a traitor.”

  “Correct,” said Ernst.

  “If she is a traitor and tries to do something evil, I should stop her.”

  “Correct,” said Thomas.

  “But regardless of whether or not she is a traitor, I should stop any attempt by anyone to get her out of Checquy custody.”

  “Correct,” said the Rook and the graaf together. They exchanged glances.

  “One final thing,” added Rook Thomas. “Please don’t kill her if you can possibly help it. Wherever her allegiance lies, her death will leave the Antagonists open to strike at us. And it might actually spur them on.”

  “Well, it helps that I don’t actually want to kill her,” said Felicity.

  “I appreciate that,” said Ernst.

  “And I also have a present for you,” said the Rook. “Since it seems to be the evening for that sort of thing. Mine is less creepy than an injection of alchemy into your veins, althoug
h still wildly inappropriate.” Mrs. Woodhouse brought in a small case, and the Rook removed an item covered in bubble wrap from it. She handed it to Felicity, who set about unwrapping it, peeling off the tape and unwinding the plastic until it sat in her hand, small and hard and clever.

  “It’s a gun,” Felicity said stupidly. Despite their abilities, the operatives of the Checquy were not permitted to carry firearms on British soil. Not unless they had actually been placed in a combat setting or were on a security detail. I suppose I’m both of those, Felicity thought. Of course, she had received rigorous training in shooting at the Estate, but it was startling to have a gun in her hand. A pistol, small enough to put in a handbag, large enough to put holes in someone.

  “I inherited it from a friend,” said the Rook carelessly. “If I arranged for you to be officially issued one, I’d have to answer all sorts of questions. And I don’t want people looking too closely at you, or at Odette. We still don’t know what kind of resources the Antagonists have within the Checquy.” She glanced sourly at Ernst and then looked back at Felicity. “I can’t very well announce that you are being given a gun to kill treacherous Grafters if necessary, as that would send the wrong message.”

  But an accurate one, thought Felicity. The world, which had seemed so complex and difficult a few hours ago, seemed infinitely worse now.

  They gave you guns?” Felicity heard Alessio’s incredulous voice from the living room. She squeezed her eyes shut and snuggled down under her blankets. It was far too early for her to be awake after being awake far too late.

  “Shotguns, for hunting,” said Odette. “It’s not like I got a pair of Glocks.” At this, Felicity tensed and put out a hand to the bedside table, where the Glock that Rook Thomas had given her was resting in a drawer. It’s there, it’s safe, you can go back to sleep.

  “Can I see them?” asked Alessio.

  Can you shut up? For some reason, this morning the kid’s voice was cutting through her brain like a pubescent chain saw.

  “The Checquy took them overnight,” said Odette. “And then today they’re going to a gun-storage place. I guess the shop stores them until you need them. Or until you get a place with a gun safe.”

  “Were they cool?”

  “Extremely,” said Odette. “Here, I took a picture on my phone.”

  “Those are awesome!” squeaked Alessio in a register that put paid to Felicity going back to sleep that morning. Her entire nervous system seemed convinced that his warbling tones presaged some sort of attack. She put on a dressing gown and staggered out into the living room.

  “Morning!” chirped Alessio.

  “Yeahshutup,” mumbled Felicity. She picked up a cup of coffee from the table.

  “That’s mine,” said Odette.

  “Yeahshutup,” said Felicity, taking a long swig. She focused on Alessio. “It’s Monday, don’t you have an excursion to run out to?” He opened his mouth. “Don’t talk. Just nod or shake your head.” He nodded. “All right, good. I’m going to take a shower.” She took the coffee with her.

  When she emerged from it, Alessio had gone and Odette was sitting at the table, her head bent over something. Felicity looked at her curiously. There was a stillness to the Grafter girl, except for her fingers, which were making tiny, barely visible movements.

  She’s doing needlepoint, decided Felicity, but then she realized that the other woman was sewing up a raw steak that had been gashed open. The Pawn sat down across from her. As she watched, invisible thread bound the meat together so meticulously that only the thinnest of lines marked where it had been cut open. The focus, the control, the perfection were as magical as anything Felicity had ever seen.

  After long minutes, Odette finished and tied an intricate knot that looped and whirled around her fingers like a cat’s cradle of silver. When she drew her fingers out, the knot shrank down on itself. She laid her hands down and sighed. Then she looked up, and Felicity saw that her pupils were massively dilated, so much that her eyes seemed black. She blinked several times, and once again, her eyes were blue.

  “Impressive,” said Felicity.

  “Thanks.”

  “So, we should have a little talk.”

  “I suppose so,” said Odette, looking at her postoperative steak. Felicity felt a little twinge of pity for her. She didn’t blame the Grafter girl for not telling her about the Antagonists—she’d clearly been under orders to keep it secret. The fact that her boyfriend and best friends had become international terrorists couldn’t have been easy on her either.

  “I need a better understanding of the situation with your friends. What happened after you woke up in the hotel lobby?” asked Felicity.

  And Odette began to tell the story. By the time she had woken up in the hotel lobby, realized where she was and what had happened, and been able to stop sobbing, her friends had already made their move.

  “Pim must have had it all planned out beforehand,” she said. “Of course, the Broederschap knew immediately who had done it. Their fingerprints were all over the chapter house. Pim had even used his security pass to open the front door.” She shook her head. “They weren’t trying to hide what they were doing—they wanted everyone to know. I think that’s why they killed the house, as a statement.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Felicity awkwardly. “Did you, um, know the house well?”

  “Yes,” said Leliefeld. “But I didn’t find out about that until weeks later. When I woke up, I knew they’d left me, that they’d left the Broederschap, but that was all. I called Marie in Brussels and she immediately sent a car and some soldiers for me. They put me in the back and drove me to Belgium.”

  The Broederschap had apparently been very suspicious of her and immediately placed her into a sort of quarantine. She had been screened very carefully, undergone multiple scans and exploratory surgery to check if she had had any new weapons implanted. They injected her with antibodies, “in case of any war bacteria that might be floating around in my system.” A number of existing implants had been removed—apparently, despite her surgical and scholarly role, she and the other Antagonists had given each other a variety of unorthodox enhancements. Felicity recalled the photos that she had seen in Odette’s bedroom and realized that her dossier had listed nothing that would permit her to breathe underwater or scale a cathedral. So much for keeping my eyes and my brain open, she thought.

  Odette had been permitted to keep her spurs, but the venom reservoirs had been drained and the muscles that activated them had been carefully paralyzed. Hours and hours of questioning had ensued.

  “It wasn’t violent interrogation,” Leliefeld assured her. “It was just Marie, Marcel, and I sitting on the veranda with endless cups of tea as they took me through everything I knew and everything I thought I knew and everything I didn’t know and everything I didn’t realize I’d known. God, it was tedious.

  “Of course, there were serious doubts about whether I should be allowed any freedom at all. There was talk of putting me in a penal coma. I really can’t blame them. Everyone was already in shock over the announcement about the Checquy, and then this betrayal by their own children. And we were so close, my friends and I, the Broederschap leadership thought I had to be involved, that it was part of some plan.

  “I was under supervision for weeks. I wasn’t allowed to do any work or research; I just sat around reading novels and watching movies. Then the attacks started, and it was even worse.” She took a long breath. “My friends were doing these—these awful things. I was so ashamed of them. And everyone was eyeing me like they expected me to blow myself up or something.

  “But then they suddenly decided that they would trust me and let me be part of the delegation. So I received the next set of upgrades right before we left. Great-Uncle Marcel actually did the surgeries himself.”

  “What were the upgrades?” asked Felicity, half fascinated, half nauseated. “Or is that a rude question to ask?”

  “You don’t really get to be offended in
the Broederschap,” said Leliefeld. “Everyone knows about everyone else’s anatomy.”

  “It’s like that in the Checquy too,” said Felicity. “It’s very hard to keep a secret.” Not impossible, though, she thought. “And everyone knows what your powers are.”

  “Sounds familiar. Well, my bones got strengthened, and my second cousin gave me some really nice new kidneys. My spinal cord and nervous system have been augmented and improved, and they put in some fixtures in my throat that allow me greater control over Broederschap constructs and creatures—oral commands and whatnot. They’re all still healing and kind of sore. I haven’t had time to learn how to use them yet, so they’re pretty much off-line.”

  “So why did they bother to put them in before you came here?” asked Felicity.

  “As a sign that they trusted me,” said Leliefeld. “It’s like your parents giving you back the keys to the car. Only we get new organs. It really meant a lot to me.”

  “I’m sure,” said Felicity. There was a silence.

  “What are our plans for today, then?” asked Odette. “Am I back in quarantine? Do we just stay here and watch movies?”

  “Far from it,” said Felicity. “Once you’re ready, we’re going to the Rookery to help them track down the Antagonists.” She very carefully did not say “your friends.”

  Last night’s attack left us with a few leads,” said Clovis, the Checquy security chief, as he led Odette and Felicity through a series of subterranean corridors. Apparently, tucked away in the bowels of the Rookery was a whole series of tiled rooms used when Checquy people needed to be sewn up or when non-Checquy people needed to be cut open. “The first is the catatonic blond man, and the others are the various augmented corpses. Bishop Alrich did manage to leave two of them alive but I’m afraid all of them went into simultaneous seizures at about four a.m.—even the dead ones,” he added grimly. “And let me assure you, that gave the morgue attendant a nasty turn. She emptied an entire clip into them.”

  “She had a gun?” asked Odette, startled. “I thought people in this country didn’t carry firearms.”