Fuck You it meowed.
“It doesn’t seem to like me.”
“It doesn’t like anyone, except me. And It is a He.”
As at Fallingwater, he tried to mask his feelings by taking stock of his surroundings.
The Boardroom was large, mainly white and silver; with its adjoining anterooms it covered nearly a quarter of the area of the Cathedral’s first floor. It had a long table of light wood set for twenty people. There were windows floor to ceiling down two walls, looking back along the length of the Pier to the beach and the i-360 Tower, and looking to the left over the pearlescent domes and spires and arches of the Cathedral complex. The third wall was lined with comms and screens, and the fourth wall, at the far end, with the tropical fish tank.
There were clusters of armchairs around the room’s perimeter, occupied by people who were obviously the Archbishop’s personal staff. They reminded him of Rafiq’s staff: competent and well-groomed, like Arden Bierce. They’d all stopped talking as he entered. They were still silent now.
He sensed a compression in the air behind him, and turned to see Gaetano approaching. Going to make me put on a show for her.
Gaetano carried a quarterstaff, and held it like he knew how to use it. Anwar reached out, blurringly fast, and took it. He broke it in two, then in four, then in eight, and handed the pieces back to him.
“Please,” he said, “I don’t have time.”
He had done most of this without taking his eyes off her. Many of her staff had gasped as he did it, but she remained silent.
She studied him, his thin face and hook nose and dark eyes. For he shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter. He shall defend thee under his wings.
He looked back at her. Into your trousers like a rat up a drainpipe, his eidetic memory helpfully reminded him.
“Leave us,” she said to her staff, hoarsely. “Give us this room.”
They left, with an alacrity which suggested this was not an unusual occurrence. After a moment’s pause, Gaetano followed them out.
It happened on the Boardoom table, noisily and untidily. There was no foreplay, just an abrupt transition from the vertical to the horizontal. He fumbled with her long voluminous skirt, she with his jacket and trousers, and each of them with each other’s underwear. They scattered the table settings. Normally he disliked making tidy things untidy, whether table settings or female clothing, but not now.
The ginger cat retreated to a corner of the room, and became absorbed in licking its private parts.
Because it was simple physical lust and nothing more, it came and went easily. There was little to be said afterwards. They sat on opposite sides of the long Boardroom table. It was a few minutes before either of them spoke.
“We’ll dine tonight,” she said, smoothing down her skirt, “and I’ll brief you. Gaetano will take you to your suite, and he’ll come for you at nine.”
“And you?”
She smiled. Her lips were dark red, like her dress. “I have an organisation to run.”
He turned to go.
“Wait,” she added. “I’ll walk back with you.”
Outside the door, Gaetano was waiting.
“Quarterstaff,” Anwar murmured. “Good choice.”
Gaetano smiled but did not answer.
They walked back along the silver and white corridor, down the wide staircase, and into the silver and white Cathedral.
Anwar felt something wrong in the air. Too much stillness. All the Cathedral doors were closed.
It was almost deserted. Just eight people, two together and the others singly. The two stood facing them, in the large open space before the altar. The other six were sitting in pews, >apparently at random. Anwar was already calculating distances, probable routes of approach. Vectors. Lines of sight. Estimating, from their posture and the drape of their clothes, what weapons they carried.
The two facing them approached Gaetano. Strangely, they hadn’t even glanced at Anwar or Olivia, and didn’t now. One of them was built like Levin. The other was smaller, stocky and dark-haired. With unusual hands.
The larger man went to speak to Gaetano. He made eye contact, smiled, and opened his mouth to begin a sound like “Erm...” on a rising note, as if about to air some routine matter. Then he delivered a huge kick to the testicles. Gaetano was lifted bodily, and landed doubled up and vomiting. The second man made for Olivia with a knife which came, as Anwar expected, from a forearm sheath. A specialist’s knife, with a blade combining points and tines and serrations. Anwar decided to take the blow himself.
The knife was aimed at his heart, and he turned at the last moment to take it in his side. But his timing was fractionally off, making the knife penetrate deeper than he’d expected. He felt a surge of anger—how many times must I mistime?—but he killed it. Geared it down to something colder, something he could use.
Olivia had seen Anwar’s mistiming and was shouting obscenities, mostly at Anwar. Quite unreasonably, he felt. But she’s genuinely afraid. And she’s not supposed to be afraid of anything.
He’d taken the knife-blow without apparently noticing. The blood it should have drawn was already clotting. He’d willed it to. The knifeman was starting another attack, but Anwar didn’t care. He moved liquidly, almost accidentally. Then a shuto strike to the collarbone, this time intentional. He felt the molecules in his hand aligning to hardness, felt the collarbone give. He pulled back before his hand could actually penetrate and shear it.
While the knifeman dropped unconscious, he was turning to the second man, the one built like Levin, and struck him. This time only a light fingertip to a pressure point on the temple, to put him out for a few seconds. Anwar very much wanted him for later.
“Gaetano!” Olivia screamed. But he wasn’t listening. He was still doubled up and vomiting. The kick had hit him like an express train. “Gaetano!”
“Shut up,” Anwar told her, softly and precisely.
The six men sitting in the pews had looked convincingly shocked while all this was happening, but that was then. Now they were suddenly encircling Anwar and Olivia.
“Don’t,” he told them.
“Why, what will you do, surround us?”
“Yes.” The word hung in the air behind him. He was already moving.
He really did surround them. He orbited the tight circle they’d made around her, attacking it from outside, silently and with frightening speed and from every angle and with every striking surface, so they couldn’t face her but had to face outwards. And it still wasn’t enough for them.
He fought them the way he should have fought in the last Tournament. Taking the initiative. They tried their best moves on him but he flicked them away, unnoticing. To him, their moves were slowed to near-torpor, and their martial arts yells to a hoglike bass. As usual, he fought in silence. That, and his speed, terrified them. They were good, better than his last six Tournament opponents, but still Meatslabs. He flickered in and out of them in a glissade, bestowing Compliments and Gratuities—all watered-down versions, enough to immobilise but not to injure or kill.
He was shockingly fast, and frighteningly silent. He thought, This is everything I am, it’s what makes me extraordinary. But even now, when I’m doing it better than I did in the Tournament, it doesn’t mean much. My opponents are always outmatched, and half of the Consultants will always outmatch me. When will Everything I Am mean something?
It was never going to be a bloodbath. His abilities were too considerable, and too precise, for that. But it was almost an anticlimax. His inbuilt timer told him he’d finished them in twenty-two seconds.