Chapter 20
An opening appearstoward the end of my second week there—a small parting of the sea that is Lyonesse’s security.
A storm rolls over the Beltway, the kind that turns the streets into rivers and stitches the sky with lightning. From my office window, I see the buildings on the district shore lose power, low, hulking shapes against the dark afternoon sky. But Lyonesse merely flickers once and then resumes its usual glow—generators, I presume.
An idea strikes me then, and I go to close my office door. When I return to my desk, I sit—wincingly, Mark really worked my bottom over last night in the hall—slide my phone closer, and pull up the app I use to listen to the small recording devices I’ve left around the club.
I’m no hacker; I know code about as well as I know Hungarian, which is to say just enough to get me in trouble. But I’m familiar enough with security to know when it’s better to wait and learn more rather than force my way in. Early on, I treated myself to a quick but thorough tour of the security offices—a Monday morning, when only a single person was on duty—and then of Mark’s office when he was having a lunch in the city.
Aside from an electronically locked safe hidden behind a picture, Mark’s office gave me nothing—the kind of nothing that would be unsettling if I didn’t know what he used to do for the CIA—but the security offices revealed a few important things.
One, that the server vaults can only be accessed by Mark, Andrea, Goran, and Dinah.
Two, that even they can only access the vaults with a thumb and retinal scan—and without those scans, the floor around the servers is alarmed for any kind of unauthorized presence.
And three—most irritatingly—all of these systems were given an overhaul after Mark was attacked and these server rooms were broken into. Any weaknesses I might have been able to exploit have been discovered and remediated.
However, new, untested strengths can be their own weaknesses too, and that’s what I listen for now, hoping that Goran and Nat think like I do—at least a little.
“…reboot because of the generators?” Goran is asking. I can imagine him in the security room, staring at the screens with an amiable but puzzled expression.
“I used to drive a tank,” Nat replies, her voice barely audible. She must be on the other side of the room. “I only know enough about computers to know when they’re broken.”
“We’ll have to ask Lox to look at the system again,” Goran says unhappily. “She scares the shit out of me.”
“Does she scare the shit out of you or does Rafe de Lacy scare the shit out of you? Because those are two different things.”
“Fine, they both scare me.”
“You weigh as much as the two of them put together. I’m pretty sure you could pick up Lox with one hand.”
“Not the point,” comes Goran’s grumble. “I don’t trust them.”
“Just because they used to be CIA? Mark used to be too, you know. Plus Lady Anguish trusts them. That’s good enough for me.”
Lady Anguish. She was at the bedding ceremony with a tall submissive man behind her, elegant and dark eyed. It had taken me until the next day to place her submissive—her husband—because while my memory for faces is generally dependable, former presidential advisor Merlin Rhys hasn’t been relevant to politics for years now.
But Merlin wasn’t the reason I’d been preoccupied with Lady Anguish that night. I’d recognized her. Viscerally and immediately recognized her.
Not from real life—we’d never met before that moment—but from the dream I’d had after my wedding. She’d been a little older in the dream maybe, her hair threaded with silver, but it had been her all the same. Standing in a circle of stones with a braided cord in her hands. She’d seemed sad in the dream; in real life, she wasn’t sad at all. There’d been a knowing kind of smile on her mouth, softening whenever her husband took her hand, which was often.
How could I have dreamed her when I’d never met her? It feels a little late to acquire the gift of prophecy.
It turns out that Lox is not an easy person to get a hold of. It’s later in the day when Goran gets a call back from her, and she sounds like she’s just been woken from a deep sleep. I listen to her grumble at him while I open a folder of high-resolution pictures of a small icon discovered in Georgia, a Christ Pantocrator with remarkable depth of color and marked asymmetry. I’m listening to what’s happening in the security room through a wireless earbud, so if anyone interrupts me, I’ll look like I’m listening to music while I work.
“The only way the power gap would have affected the system would be if there’s a hard-wiring failure,” Lox is telling Goran, and I can tell by Goran and Nat’s uh-huhs and hmms that they’re only understanding about half of what she’s saying. “But I’m portaled in now, and I don’t see anything that would?—”
A pause.
“Lox?” prompts Nat.
A sigh that I hear loud and clear through my earbud. “I think it’s nothing, but I’m not getting a door lock confirmation from the fire exit.”
Goran sounds worried. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I can’t be sure the door is currently locked or, if it is, if it will stay locked. Or if it will register being unlocked and opened, since there’s currently no signal.”
Goran sounds even more worried now. “So what does that mean?”
“It means I’ll come out there and fix it.” Lox’s voice is undeniably grumpy. “I don’t know when. Whenever I can get over there. I can hardly hop a commercial flight when half the government believes I’m a domestic terrorist.”
“What should we do until then?” asks Nat.
“Does the fire exit have a big sign on it that says, Secret shit this way?”
“No,” answers Goran. “There are cameras though.”
“Then monitor the feeds and call it good. I’ll try to get out there…at some point.”
And Lox hangs up.
* * *
There’sno time to hunt for the fire door after that because Mark and I are expected at dinner and then at the opera. Mark behaves as we arrive at the Kennedy Center and begin to schmooze in the lobby—although behave is a relative term for him. He possessively strokes the back of my neck and plucks at the sheer cape of my black Jenny Packham dress. He leans in to murmur in my ear, this name or that name, this scandal or that scandal, until his cool voice and warm breath have left goose bumps all over my shoulders and chest. His favorite thing is to brush his palm discreetly over my paddle-bruised backside and watch me shiver.
Not for the first time, I think about how evanescent the line between reality and pretend is. My bottom really is sore; Mark really is treating himself to the sight of my shivers in public.
He knew it would be like this, all those years ago. He knew our performance would be tangible and corporeal and able to be witnessed. He knew that any pretending we did would have to mirror what couldn’t be feigned.
Bruises. Touches.
Sighs and sweat and shivers—blushes and stippled, goose-bumped skin.
He tried to warn me that our bodies would have to prove our lies, but no warning could have prepared me for how it actually feels, for this yearslong betrayal of my flesh. For my body to tell the truth rather than sell it.
Arjun and Evander are there, transformed into two handsome but vanilla boyfriends who are the social toast of the town. Arjun owns a global chain of luxury hotels, and Evander—whose real name is Theo—seems to have the enviable job of being the playboy heir to a shipping empire. They hold hands and peck each other on the cheek, and no one else here would know that Theo/Evander had a massive dildo in his ass last night while Arjun hit him with an electric flyswatter.
The crowd gathers around us as people come to clumsily propitiate Mark for favors, and then about ten minutes before the opera is set to begin, a commotion stirs near the door. I look up to see Tristan at the far end of the lobby, eyes alert as the president of the United States strolls inside the Kennedy Center, his wife on his arm.
They are even more attractive in person, which I would not have thought possible, with President Embry Moore’s sky-blue eyes and aristocratic features, and his wife Greer Colchester-Moore’s sunlight hair and faintly clefted chin. They make their way toward us, their security detail fanning out into the lobby, the First Lady’s bright-red dress catching the light as she walks, making no secret of the gravid curve of her abdomen.
“Mark,” President Moore says. He shakes hands with my husband. “It’s good to see you. I’m sorry we weren’t able to make it to the wedding.”
“I wasn’t feeling my best,” the First Lady volunteers with an apologetic smile. “I asked him if we could go to our river house and take it easy for a few days.” Her silver eyes turn to me. “You must be Isolde.”
I take her hand, smiling back, and we make easy small talk, fluent in the same rich-girl language. Greer Colchester-Moore, née Galloway, had a very similar upbringing to mine. She’d been political royalty rather than financial royalty, but it was largely the same life, all told. Boarding schools followed by expensive universities followed by the kind of career that called for a closet full of silk blouses. Although I doubt she’s also had a secret job poisoning archbishops and smothering evil priests.
There is another way we’re similar, however.
The rumor goes that Greer had been in love with President Moore when he was still Vice PresidentMoore and she was married to Maxen Colchester, his best friend. It’s an unconfirmed rumor—substantiated by Embry and Greer’s quick marriage after President Colchester’s assassination, maybe—but still.
What’s not a rumor is that Embry was in love with President Colchester, something Embry told the world during his election night victory speech. Which means the vice president loved the president and the president’s wife, and she loved him and her husband too. I wonder what it felt like for the three of them, to want what was impossible to have, if it felt anything like what Tristan and I feel now.
But maybe not. Because Tristan looks like someone kicked a puppy in front of him, and I feel like my heart has been burning in small battered flames like a rack of votive candles in a church, but when I look at Greer and Embry now, they look…happy. Embry is constantly touching her, the small of her back, her hand, the swell of her stomach. And she is looking at him like he’s all she can see.
So maybe whatever happened between the three of them isn’t the same at all.
“I’m glad you were able to escape and rest for a few days,” Mark is saying to the president. “I know you’ve been busy.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Embry says with a sharp look. “I’m sure you’ve heard the news that John Lackland’s body was discovered. It’s been a bit of a headache.”
Mark takes a drink of his gin. “I did hear. How terrible.” He doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s terrible at all.
“Of course, we’ll need to nominate someone to fill his position. I had the thought that your sister would be an excellent candidate.”
Mark lifts his glass in wordless concurrence.
“It is strange how these stars align, though,” remarks the president, looking down at his own drink, an amber whiskey that coats the side of the glass when it moves. “If that space exploration bill had passed this summer, it would have passed with all kinds of extra things packed inside it. Like, for example, a provision for a committee to do a full investigation into CIA activities during the Carpathian war. I like Melody, but I have to imagine that a committee like that would have found some skeletons in her closet.”
“Literal skeletons,” agrees Mark easily.
“But the bill didn’t pass, even though it was widely expected to.”
“Politicians are fickle—present company excluded.”
“And then John Lackland died, violently and mysteriously. Tragically.”
“Tragically.”
“And my top candidate to replace him is conveniently free of any ongoing investigations about any murdering she may have done during the war.”
“It’s a common misconception that CIA operators only kill people while in the field. There would have been theft and arson too, at the very least.”
The president stares at Mark a minute, and Mark stares back. And then together, they both take a drink. It looks like they’re both hiding smiles.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” says Mark after he swallows, giving the First Lady a friendly nod. “I’m wishing you three the best.”
“By three, I presume you mean me, my wife, and our little Imogen,” the president says. His voice is suddenly edged with a hard cordiality. “But then you’d be leaving out my son, Galahad.”
“My apologies, you are absolutely correct. Please, though, accept my well wishes for the whole family.”
Embry’s eyes narrow the tiniest amount, as if he’s trying to pierce through Mark’s expression to the thoughts behind it.
It must not work because Embry just shakes his head. “Consider them accepted, I guess. And what about you? Any children in your future, Mark?”
I know I keep my thoughts from my face, but my feelings are harder, coming as a scald of heat and blood to my cheeks. Once, I planned on annulling this marriage as soon as possible, on using my uncle’s influence to secure a fresh start for myself after the Church had what it needed from Lyonesse. I would have taken vows then, would have dedicated my whole life—my time and my body and my attention—to the Church. It’s the kind of future that precludes children. That demands an empty womb and an even emptier life, since that very empty life is the vessel that the Church fills with itself.
If I have children with Mark, I am closing myself off to that future forever.
“Embry,” Greer chides lightly, probably noticing my stained cheeks, “that’s a very rude thing to ask.”
The president doesn’t look like he cares.
Honestly, neither does Mark—though the cool expression and lingering tilt to his lips make it hard to tell.
“Isolde and I haven’t decided,” Mark finally replies, and then looks at me. “My wife is a little young yet for children. She’s only just started her career.”
“And we’d have to figure out where to put them,” I say, keeping my tone light. “Having two different kinds of playrooms might make things confusing.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” the president says with a lazy smile, and his wife sighs.
“Embry,” she says.
“Oh, like Mark doesn’t know that our marriage is fifty percent spreader bars.”
“And apples as gags,” she says in a private kind of voice, and Embry’s eyes flash, like he’s ready to drag her back to the White House and try to get her pregnant again somehow.
The lights dim and then return, and people begin moving inside to claim their seats. We make goodbyes to the president and his wife before they are enclosed in a nest of Secret Service agents, and then we find our seats. Tristan is staying outside the theater, just by the door we’ve used to enter our box.
Mark sighs as the theater lights drop.
“I hate the opera,” he says.