“Which, an O’Neal or a Michon Mentat?” Cally asked over the soft swishing of a conversation silencer that badly needed servicing.
Michelle placed her palm over it and it quieted. “Yes,” she said.
“I could eliminate that problem for you. Very permanently,” Cally offered. When her sister either didn’t understand or pretended not to, she spelled it out. “I could kill him. It wouldn’t be hard.”
“So you think. It is fortunate that the more elevated of your fellow intriguers keep you on — I believe the idiom is, ‘a short leash,’ ” she said.
“Whatever. It was just an offer.” Cally couldn’t help appearing affronted, though she tried.
“Besides, even if I were murderously inclined, which I am not, that would violate an agreement between your employers and the Darhel. A certain Compact.”
“I don’t take it as a rule. More of a guideline. I never get to have any fun.” She made a pouting moue. “Besides, if I drove him into lintatai, it wouldn’t be killing him. Letter of the Compact. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. The Compact was written back before we knew about lintatai and it wasn’t like the Darhel were going to tell us by negotiating for it.”
“As I said, you need to be kept on a leash, and I for one am glad your employers at least have a modicum of sense. It is not as easy to drive an adult Darhel into lintatai as you think, by the way. The ones vulnerable to losing their heads generally do not make it out of adolescence.”
“Yeah, but every time I turn around folks are telling me how much I piss everybody off. Gee, they split a millennia-old underground conspiracy apart, all for me.” There was an element of self-derision in her cornflower blue eyes. For a moment, Cally O’Neal looked every year of her age.
“Perhaps you could, but please do not kill Pardal. He is odious, but that external restraint on your killer instinct — do not call it a leash if the term offends you — protects you as much as anyone else. I know we Indowy-raised appear detached, but I do love you. Please try to avoid unnecessary dangers of that sort.” The softening of Michelle O’Neal’s expression was fleeting, quickly covered by a return to a more appropriate demeanor.
“I will admit this one thing. There is more room for intriguers of one’s own clan to counterbalance dangerous intriguers elsewhere than I had thought for many years. A very little more room,” she added, lest Cally take encouragement from such a small, polite concession. Her sister, of course, would never know that this entire meeting was a mere formality, a concession to Cally’s quaint Earther modesty. Michelle was sorry to have eavesdropped, but, in this instance, proper timing was so critical she could not justify the extra risk. Wisdom often had to override people’s personal preferences.
John Earl Bill Stuart, more generally known as Johnny, sat cooling his heels in Erick Winchon’s plush office. Impatiently. Even this many years into his employment under the Darhel Tir Dol Ron, the opulent surroundings gave him a feeling that was half greed, half offended contempt. Growing up poor, losing his wife too young to an illness that money could have cured just fine, it pissed him off to see money wasted on the fancy marble and crap in the lobby of the building. The Tir’s excesses affected him, too, but he hid it well. Oh, he liked the money just fine. It brought good bennies like health insurance for his daughter, who wasn’t so little anymore. It let him trick her out in expensive enough clothes and stuff, and afford a personal trainer, to put her in the popular cheerleader set in grade school. Every time he went to a basketball game and saw her on the sidelines jumping up and down with her ponytail and pom-poms, he teared up and had to hide it, thinking how proud her momma would have been.
His train of thought jarred loose as the little mentat finally strolled in, ten minutes late, for their meeting.
“I apologize for my unpunctuality, Mr. Stuart. There was a matter I was unable to delegate,” the suited pansy said.
Johnny got a lid on his feelings. He wasn’t all that sure Winchon couldn’t read his mind or something. Some of these Indowy-raised types could do some pretty scary stuff, and this little guy was one of the scariest. Especially knowing what went on here. As a manager of professional killers and dirty tricks men, Stuart couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or revolted. Probably a little of both.
“The Tir is getting kinda antsy. As it gets closer to you-know-what, he’s getting worried about somebody trying something. I’m supposed to check and make sure you’ve got a lid on all that. What you do isn’t my department, but the boss wants a report. So, what’ve you got?” the larger man said. He didn’t, himself, “know what,” but he wasn’t going to give this gay prick the satisfaction of admitting it. The bastard’s shrill, annoying giggle might mean he knew about Johnny’s own ignorance, though. He tried to keep a poker face in the face of the derision.
The mentat gestured to the far side of the room, where one of those weird game boards was set up with its layers of pieces and multicolored lines connecting these and those in ways that made no damned sense to him. He could see, though, that the setup at least mostly matched the similar board set up in the Tir’s office.
“I am quite confident that I’ve blocked off all the avenues where, as you say, ‘somebody might try something,’ ” the twerp said.
His choice of words showed that he knew damned well the spymaster had been kept in the dark about crucial factors in the operation — which seriously fucked up his ability to do his job.
“Yeah, well, Tir Dol Ron seems to want more guarantees than that. If I take that back to him, he’s going to show me his own aethal board and tell me he already knew that. He won’t be happy.” There. Let Winchon chew on that. Yes, I know what your dumb game is called, I don’t think much of it, and you’ve got as much reason to keep our boss happy as me.
“Far be it from me to tell an expert such as yourself what to do, but if it were my problem,” the mentat implied that it wasn’t, “I’d find some ostentatious barbarians somewhere to augment building security or some such. A bit of advice, Mr. Stuart. When you have dealings with a Darhel employer, and you do not know what else you should do, follow two old adages you Earth-raised have. Look busy. Cover his posterior. With the exception that when you do so, attempt to spend as few of his resources on the matter as possible.”
The executive’s AID chirped, “Your three o’clock is here, sir.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I think we’ve covered the matter. If you find yourself in any need of more assistance or advice, please feel free to call my AID. I’m always happy to find time for a… colleague such as yourself.” The small man giggled again and walked out, leaving the spymaster fuming in his chair.
Much as he hated to admit it, though, Johnny wasn’t one to scorn useful advice just because it came from a jerk. A scary jerk, but a jerk. Flashy security. Flashy cheap security. Yeah, it might smooth down the boss’s ruffled feathers — well, fur, anyway. That shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
As he stalked out of the building, he pulled at his lip, thinking over his options.
If he had been a civilian, Jake Mosovich would have been miffed at getting an important call, requiring action, after four o’clock on a Friday. As it was, sixteen hundred on Friday was just another set of digits on the watch he still wore. His hours had been so irregular for so long that he only thought in terms of duty and leave, which for a lieutenant colonel was just a more unpredictable extension of duty. His leaves or off-duty hours were relaxing in a fragile kind of way, but never inviolate.