Chapter 10
Ten
Mark
I don’t have time, and it’s beyond defensible—just a twinge, really, at the nape of my neck and the pit of my stomach—but I stop at the National Central Library before I skulk out of the city.
For this, I wear a collar (purchased honestly at Gammarelli, like a good Roman priest) so that my nosing around is written off as pre-conclave boredom or as holy scholarly duty. I get into the library and guilt the librarian into honoring my request without any undue curiosity.
I sit in the glossy and echoing rarities room as the old volume is brought out and set on a cradle in front of me.
I’ve already been asked to wash my hands; the rarities room doesn’t require gloves for this particular book as a glove’s fibers could catch on the brittle paper.
They leave me with a few dire warnings in Italian and retreat to their desk on the other side of the room, and then I begin carefully lifting the cover.
When you work for the agency for too long, you develop a condition Melody calls spy brain , which is a sort of paranoid inverse of Occam’s razor.
It means that when I look at a book, as I am right now, my mind goes to tags or chips hidden in the spine or maybe documents pasted under the endpapers rather than what the pages actually say.
But a subtle scan with my phone reveals nothing at all, and I detect no seams or bumps under the endpapers or the cover of the book.
So then I stop thinking like an old spy and start thinking like an archivist. Like Father Minch would have if he were still alive. I begin to read.
Or rather, I pretend to read, because the Revelata Scientia is entirely in Latin.
I only know a bare handful of Latin, two scratched-out semesters of high school before I dropped it for Spanish, and it was only enough to toil through Aesop’s Fables , not enough to decipher whatever passed for “science” in 1682, when this was published.
Luckily, it’s a slim volume, and I decide to cheat.
I surreptitiously take pictures of each page with my phone, page after page of unevenly printed Latin with the occasional inset drawing, and then I gently close the book and stare at it for a moment, knowing I’ve wasted time I don’t have on a feeling I can’t prove.
Why did Father Minch have you written in the margins of his Bible? I ask the book.
It doesn’t answer, and no possibilities come to me. I drum my fingers once on the table and then get up to tell the librarian I’m finished.
Three hours later, a favor from Lyonesse’s treasury used, and I’m on a U.S. Air Force flight to DC, red hair, collar, and all.
“—asking to see you, one about the pope’s death and his secrets, and three members about ongoing concerns with your wife and bodyguard missing.
One is having a dispute with another member over a private room—sounds like an unauthorized subletting situation gone awry—and then we have an NDA issue to resolve.
Andrea knows a little more about that than me, so I’ve scheduled a meeting between the three of us this afternoon.
As you’ve requested, we’re not opening the club on Christmas Eve or Christmas, although we will have a larger gathering the last day of Saturnalia, and then of course, our usual fête on New Year’s Eve.
Also are you going to explain the priest collar, or is this your latest bid to seem daring and mysterious? ”
I look over at Dinah, my club manager, who’s followed me into my apartment as I start shucking off my coat. “ Seem daring and mysterious?” I ask, affronted.
She’s not concerned for my hurt pride in the least. “And the hair? I’m sorry, Mark, but you make a terrible redhead.”
I finish with my coat and drape it over a kitchen chair.
Tiredness pulls at me, reminding me that I’m no longer a dashing young CIA officer.
I really need to focus on getting a solid six or seven hours a night.
“It’ll wash out in a day or two. It was expedient not to be so overtly… me while abroad.”
A dark, perfectly shaped brow lifts. But Dinah doesn’t press; she knows it’s for her own sake that I keep my activities close to the chest, and it’s the same for Goran and Sedge too.
Only Andrea has a slightly clearer picture of how I spend my time away from the club, and even then, it’s still not complete.
“Sir,” comes Sedge’s soft voice from my door. “I thought you might want to set the week’s agenda.”
“Come in,” I say, just as Dinah gives an I’m going to get some work done wave and starts to leave. “Dinah, I’ll see you this afternoon when we meet with Andrea about the NDA violation.”
“Yes, yes, see you later,” she says, passing Sedge as he steps into the apartment.
His eyes catch on the collar at my neck, and a flush threatens at his freckled cheeks.
“I, ah.” He clears his throat and shuts the door, and when he turns back to me, his expression is devoid of anything telling.
“I’m glad to see you back, sir. About this week’s schedule, I kept it light in case your trip was extended once again.
You’ll meet this afternoon with Andrea and Dinah, and then on Sunday, you have a scheduled call with POTUS.
That would be tricky to move if you needed to move it, but if you need a little more time to adjust from the jet lag, we can. ”
“No, no, keep the call with Moore.” I think for a moment. “I’d like to meet with Goran and Nat tomorrow to follow up on the security changes since Drobny’s attack.”
“Sir.” Sedge is using a stylus to write on his tablet now.
“And Lox. Can we put in a call to her? I can talk anytime that I’m not in the meeting this afternoon, including tonight.
I’ll be absent from the hall.” I need time to wash out the dye.
My club employees are one thing, but I don’t need members at large seeing me with the same red hair I used to hop around Rome before a conclave.
“Yes, sir.”
As he makes some notes, I unbutton the long-sleeved black shirt I’m wearing and roll up the sleeves. Sedge’s gaze darts to my forearms and then, with some effort, pulls away. I politely pretend not to notice.
I kick off my shoes, stretch my back, and consider whether I have time for a shower and a nap before my meeting or just a shower when my assistant steps closer.
“Sir,” he starts and then pauses. Looks down at his tablet but seems to see nothing. “I…”
I wait. I’ve had Sedge with me for less than two years, but I’ve always found that his cautious insights are worth my patience.
“Did you find them? In Europe? Is that why you left?” The question seems to leave his lips despite himself—and there’s no question who he means by them —and I’m unprepared for this from Sedge.
From Andrea, certainly, and maybe this kind of probing from Dinah, when she’s in a no-bullshit mood, but Sedge has always, always kept his opinions to himself, expressing them only with flicks of those silver eyes.
I don’t think there’s harm in telling him the truth, so long as it’s not specific. “I did. And yes, that’s why I left.”
“But she’s not here with you. She’s not back.”
“No,” I exhale. “No, she’s not back.”
There is a furtive sort of ache to his face now, a compressed longing around his mouth and eyes, and I don’t entirely understand what’s happening until he steps forward again and sinks to his knees. Right in front of me.
“Sedge…”
“Sir, please. I am here for you. Only for you. If you need me.”
I let out a long breath. I’ve fucked two bodyguards in a row—and Isabella Beroul and a few other subs besides—all while I was engaged to Isolde.
I can hardly claim to be a picky man when it comes to fucking, so how can I explain to myself or anyone else all the subtle contours and gradations of obsession and possession and yearning?
The love negotiated over adultery and secrets and lies?
The betrayals turned into proof of devotion by the raised red line on my neck?
I love you , Isolde said with a knife pressing into my skin. I love you .
And she meant it.
No, of course Sedge doesn’t understand. He, like everyone, thinks I’m a hedonist with a bent toward sadism and imagines no barrier between me and my own shortsighted gratification now that I’ve been so publicly cuckolded.
Not to say that the idea of using my assistant in such a way would never have held any appeal for me.
Sedge is beautiful and well made, his mouth a thing of temptation, his features delicate and symmetrical.
The finely wrought face and the nearly colorless eyes give him an otherworldly look, and who wouldn’t want to study those freckles?
Watch those eyes change from silver to black as you cajoled pleasure out of his guarded body?
Before I can (gently) refuse him, he leans forward and presses his face between my hips.
I freeze, but he doesn’t, some kind of long-held control unraveling into loops and piles around him as he rubs against my groin, needily, hungrily, mouth open and whimpering.
His entire body is shaking, and he’s dropped his tablet on the floor, and when I slide my fingers into his flaxen hair, he presses even harder against me, seeking and mouthing.
“Please,” he begs. “Please, sir. Only for you. I’ll be only for you.”
Blood and heat pool, and I swell against the attention.
It would be easy, I think, to unbuckle my belt, pull myself out, and make my pliant assistant give me some relief.
To grant myself satisfaction for all the times Tristan and Isolde have made a fool of me.
To clear my head so I can think , so I can feel for a moment like the man I was before Tristan Thomas came and knocked down every palisade I’d built around my innermost being.
But bodyguards aside, I’ve been reluctant to fuck my employees, and it would be dangerous for me and someone like Sedge to be together anyway, because he is trembling with something that feels almost like self-hatred, and I would?—
I would not be responsible with that.