* * * An enemy's name reveals his nature. Ilya thinks of this as Dorianna says what she can of her unexpected pursuer. --Jonathan Zandt-- “A name”--Dorianna says through Ivanna's voice--“that I've tried to forget.” “Things went badly?” Ilya inquires. “Not enough for him to come after me with things that explode.” “He's an anthropologist like you?” Aleo asks. Ivanna shrugs and the gesture is purely Dorianna's. “No. Data brokerage was his game—still is as far as I can guess.” Dorianna's casual tone implies that Centralnik data brokers have full, explosive arsenals at their disposal. Not a surprising thing, Ilya thinks, even if the impression is pure and unadulterated exaggeration. “Freelance?” from Aleo/Arkady. “No. He worked two contracts; his primary was with Swaan Technologies, the last I heard, and his subsidiary contract was with Laen Fabrications IP.” In his own flesh, Ilya might feel a chill at that. Crouched deep within Mihial’s consciousness, he senses his own unrest as a remote and abstract thing: the raw fear of an animal behind observation barriers. His feelings have no visceral references. “Swaan Technologies,” he says. “The biggest of the multiplanetary corporations.” He dares no mention of Laen Fabricators, InterPlanetary. It is a name too closely associated with the Widow's Year, those two centuries ago. He wasn't there. He didn't fight in the war, or run for shelter when the fighting swept across just over a dozen worlds, but everyone remembers Laen Fabricators, and the weapons they produced: gamma bombs, particle weapons, and kinetic-kill drones of incredible efficiency. Even now, two hundred years after the Widow's War, Laen Fabricators IP is still a curse on the lips of anyone of Nemaean blood. “We have to move,” Aleo says. There is a tightness in his voice—filtered as it is, through Arkady's vocal cords. “He's a problem we should resolve by tonight.” “How?” Dorianna asks. “We engage him—draw him into a vulnerable position and--” “--blow him to smithereens, like he attempted with us?” The voice is Ivanna's, but the sarcastic undertone is purely Dorianna's. “Something like that,” Aleo says, dryly. “So,” Dorianna asks, and this time the voice is purely Ivanna's; only the impulse to speak comes from the spark of Dorianna's consciousness, nested in Ivanna's synapses. “How do we go about doing that?” “We engage him...call him out.” “Now?” Arkady nods and the decisiveness of the gesture is purely Aleo's. “Now,” he says. “You have a plan?” Aleo/Arkady shrugs: “Pay attention and follow my lead,” he says. “We're going to promise to deliver his prey right into his hands.” Ivanna/Dorianna shrugs. “An empty promise, I hope.” * * * Where their semi-private table allowed them space and silence for conversation, the main bar is a more crowded and louder place. They shoulder—with their drinks in hand—into a half-space near the stranger, and it is Aleo/Arkady who takes the lead. He plants his elbows on the bar and casts a sidelong glance at the man. Jonathan Zandt. Ilya reminds himself of the name: scrying for some pattern within its syllables; he senses nothing but a swirl of impressions—there are cultural assumptions in the name, insights into social trends within Centralist Space. But there is nothing to reveal the presence of this man's possible weaknesses. Nothing. “You have riders,” Jonathan says suddenly. His voice is low. A soft, rolling baritone that reminds Ilya of granite—or something more brittle. “Not the sort of thing I'd expect in a place like this.” He doesn't look up from the drink before him. He might be reading lines in it. “We're having a little fun,” Aleo says, casting a playful lilt through Arkady's borrowed voice. “I wish I could believe that.” “And why don't you?” Aleo challenges. “Because you're too smooth—too calm and collected: not like anyone else here; you're not desperate for a good time. You don't move like spacers. You don't drink like them. You're after something else and you've shouldered your way through this crowd, thinking you can get it from me.” His Nemaean-Rüs is flawless and Ilya senses the full impact of his oblique focus. He doesn't shift his attention from his drink, or from the neat roll of tabak, smoldering in an ashtray: a crisp, white column, it's tip gone to ash. Ilya recalls the explosion, bare nights ago, and though he wears Mihail's flesh now, he senses the itch of a healing gash in his forehead. “So,” Jonathan asks, still focused on his drink. He hasn't touched it. Nor has he touched the smoldering tabak. “What do you want from me?” It is Dorianna who answers. “That all depends.” “On what?” And for the first time, he looks away from the drink centered on the coaster before him. He glares directly into Ivanna's eyes, as if attempting to sense the secondary presence behind them, and in that instant, Ilya worries that he may sense Dorianna. But he focuses back on his drink, leaving no sign that any recognition has registered. The smile on Ivanna's face is cold and calculating. “On what you're looking for.” “It's none of your concern.” “Wrong,” Dorianna says. “Look around you. Look where you are...offworlder. You can come in here and speak Rüs like you're born to it. But you're not; I can hear it in your words. Nemaea's foreign territory for you.” She sidles forward, and Ilya cannot determine if it is Dorianna who moves Ivanna's flesh, or some impulse from Ivanna herself. At any rate, she places her glass on the bar-face and strokes Jonathan's hand with one finger, the edge of her black-lacquered nail just biting into the flesh. “You're a long way from home...and pretty on top of that. Not like any of the zeks around here. Pretty doesn't last long in the Black City, and I'd hate to find your eyes or some more vital organ for sale, next week, on the market. There's been action. Some mafioso blew up his competition's car. A lot of people got hurt. A lot of people died. The ones that got hurt might want a new set of eyes...maybe another kidney or two.” “I don't need bodyguards.” Her finger traces the length of Jonathan's arm. “We're not offering bodyguards.” He gives Dorianna/Ivanna his full focus. He says nothing. Ilya sees the pattern of this game, and he catches the stranger's eye. “You don't belong here,” he says. “And you're not wanted. You're looking for something...maybe to buy something? Sell something? Maybe you're looking for somebody. Whatever it is, you've got six eyes looking with you. You come for what you're after, and you leave.” “I don't need your help.” It is strange how naturally Mihail snickers, how easy it is for Ilya to feel it, and to sense the spike of epinephrine in the meat of his brain. All superfluous thoughts dampen, and though Ilya hasn't been listening in on them, he is aware of their sudden fade now. “Yeah,” Ilya says, with Mihail's voice. “You do. Because if you were as close to your goal as you want us to think, you wouldn't be sitting in a downside-spacer's bar, staring at a cheap piss-water beer forgetting to smoke your stupid tabak.” Jonathan laughs: a low, rolling chuckle that is more sensation than sound. Ilya feels it through Mihail, like the displacement front of an interstellar cruiser dropping out of superluminal transit. “You don't even know what I'm here for.” “It's like my friend said...you're a Centralnik pretty-boy. That says you're not here for common reasons. Maybe you're rich enough to pay off the Frontier Guard, maybe you've got a tight droog in the Ministry of Visitor Exchange--” “--If it's money--” “--It's not money,” Ilya says, feeling Mihail lean forward. Jonathan leans back, giving the first hint that he feels threatened. It's there—in the set of his shoulders and the more subtle verbs that scream out from the faintest twitch at the left corner of his upper lip. Fear. “Then what is it?” And now, Aleo/Arkady leans forward, snagging the smoldering tabak from the tray. It is Arkady who takes a drag from it. Aleo doesn't smoke. It is Arkady who draws a deep inhale, then blows a neat plume of smoke toward the ceiling. It is Aleo who speaks, however; the implication of actual weight in the voice matches Aleo's own habit of manipulating words and pitching them for maximum, manipulative effect. “We want the one thing you alone can give us.” “And that would be?” Arkady reaches forward and clasps Jonathan's hand. The gesture might be Aleo's, or it might be Arkady's own. It doesn't matter. Ilya can read the motion, and he catches the faint flex of fingers before contact. He (Aleo or Arkady?) has just built up an electrocyte charge, and in a beat, his fingers have wormed their way under the sleeve of Jonathan's black jacket. Jonathan flinches, just once. His features go slack. --And from the corner of Mihail's eye, Ilya sees Ivanna flinch in the one way that announces Dorianna's sudden discomfort. She is remembering, he thinks, a moment in another bar...a moment of invasion at the hand of a pilot-swimmer. It is happening again. Not with her, but with Jonathan. She hasn't guessed that Arkady bears the modifications of any Cloistered Brother...any pilot-swimmer. It lasts for only two beats of the heart. Aleo/Arkady withdraws his hand. Jonathan recovers, shaking his head as if to clear it. Arkady smirks, and again, Ilya can see Aleo in the facial gesture. “We have what we need.” Jonathan's face goes cold. Hard. “You have no idea what you've just done.” Arkady cocks a single eyebrow in Aleo's signature expression of amused disdain. “And you've just come one step closer to the woman your bomb failed to kill. The Centralnik woman. We know where she is, and we can take you to her.” “Just like that?” Jonathan asks. “No.” Aleo/Arkady shakes his head. “Not...just...like that.” “Name your price.” “The three of us walk out of here together...you don't follow. But you meet us. Tonight.” “Where?” “You have a pad?” Jonathan nods. “My jacket. Inside pocket. I'm going to reach for it. I have a weapon...but you already know that, no doubt. I'm not reaching for it. Just the pad.” “Slowly,” Aleo/Arkady says. Jonathan nods, his hand moving from bar-face to the shadow of his jacket's inner pocket. Ilya reads every twitch of his muscles and feels Mihail shift into a relaxed/alert stance. Ivanna shifts at his side, but Jonathan's hand emerges from the shadow with only a small, flattened rectangle of molded polycarbon laminate. He hands it to Arkady/Aleo. “You'll meet us here.” Deft fingers activate the pad and key an address into its memory. “You'll also pay us ten-thousand New Rubles for our services.” “Ten thousand?” “You prefer twenty?” Jonathan's lips go tight, but he nods. “Ten thousand...and that's it?” “No,” Arkady/Aleo says. “You do what you have to do...but no Nemaean gets hurt. Understand. You finish your job...pay us, and get on the first ship out of here. You do that, and everything's clean. You weren't here. We never saw you, and that's two Centralnik problems off of this planet.” * * * ...And yes, still more to come. Hopefully without the delay preceding the chapter you've just read...As always, thank you for reading and commenting.