Chapter 37
In leather,with his hair tucked away from his face, there is no hiding the predatory strength of his body or the stark brutality of his features. His eyes are nothing but chips of dark sea ice in his face. When he speaks, his voice is chilling, and not because I haven’t heard him cold or angry or dangerous—I’ve heard all of those things—but because there is absolutely no humanity left in his voice at all. There is no fury or regret or compassion, there is no trace of desire or interest that could be exploited or appealed to. He sounds flatly uninterested when he asks, “Have you changed your mind, Filip? It’s getting late, and I’d rather not be in this shithole any longer than I need to be.”
“Fuck you,” Drobny mumbles. He sounds dazed but still present.
“So we’re not quite there yet.” Mark sighs. It is a performance of disappointment, but behind it is nothing. No emotion. No feeling.
As he circles around Drobny, I shift back into the shadows of the hall, watching them through the crack made between the open door and the jamb. I debate leaving, I really do because this is…bad. Mark like this, Mark doing this, and if he knew that I knew?—
But the fear isn’t enough to get me to leave. I have a job to do, and even if Mark is going to do it for me, I need to make sure it gets done.
Besides, the words he speaks next have me fixed to the spot:
“I think you know who the leader of Ys is.”
Drobny lifts his head, attempting to sneer. “You are a fool to speak of Ys.”
“Hmm,” Mark says. And then nothing else.
“You will die for even knowing about us,” Drobny tries again, and with a sigh, Mark walks around behind him and kneels. A black duffel bag is open at the edge of the tarp and Mark reaches inside.
“I know that can’t be true, Filip, because everyone seems to know about Ys these days. I don’t think Ys wants to be all that secret.” Mark pulls out a vacuum-locking syringe and holds it up to the light. “I think Ys wants to be feared, and you can’t be feared if you’re unknown. But then the next question is why? Why be feared? Why make sure that the CIA and MI6 has heard of you? Seems like a bad way to do business.”
Mark connects the syringe to the dangling end of the IV and locks the two together with a practiced twist. “Unless, of course, the business is expendable. But then again, why?”
He pushes the plunger on the syringe, and every vein in Drobny’s body seems to pop. The weapons dealer thrashes in his chair and screams.
Mark keeps talking like nothing is happening, like Drobny’s just taking a quick stretch and not enduring intravenous torture. “I think, and again, you’d have more insight here, that Ys is not actually that interested in running guns and supplies. I think Ys is more interested in what the guns and supplies do. Foment rebellions. Destabilize governments. Build opportunities for oligarchs and billionaires. But alas, we are back to the question of why. To what end?”
He finishes emptying the syringe into Drobny’s IV and then stands up with a put-upon sigh.
Drobny is still rigid in his chair, and he’s not even fighting his restraints so much as he looks like he’s trying to climb out of his own skin to get away from the pain. Mark comes around to stand in front of him and then squats down to look up into Drobny’s face.
“Here’s what I think. I think you know that you’re expendable,” Mark says softly. “I think you know that Ys will eliminate you when you’re no longer useful. And I think you had a plan of your own to keep that from happening.”
“You—don’t—know—anything—” Sweat drips off Drobny’s hatchet-shaped face. His voice is hoarse from shouting.
“I don’t know enough, on that we can agree,” Mark affirms. “For example, why did you pay my wedding planner to feed you information about me? She wasn’t going to tell you anything you couldn’t read about in the paper. It’s puzzling.”
Drobny sneers again, even though every muscle in his arms and back is still pinched and sharp. “You are wrong about everything. Typical CIA.”
“Former CIA. I’m retired now. They gave me a plaque.”
“You think everything must be a riddle, when it’s only a simple question: Who do you trust, Mr. Trevena? Who shares your life and your days beside you?”
Cold realization slides down my neck. He can’t mean me.
Drobny can’t know—how would he know? But he must know, he must know that I’m a saint, and if he tells Mark…
But Mark doesn’t seem to care. In fact, he almost seems amused by Drobny’s words—or as close as he can get to it while still eerily inhuman. “I earned that plaque fair and square, Filip. Do you think that the people I’ve interrogated over the years haven’t tried this same thing? Sow division—seed doubt—make me look askance at my partner or handler or whomever. It would be effective if it weren’t so ubiquitous. And it doesn’t answer either of my two questions. Why my wedding planner? And who is the head of Ys?”
Drobny just growls a curse in response.
“I have theories,” adds Mark helpfully. “I think they’re good ones. But I’d like independent confirmation.”
“Fuck you,” Drobny says, uncreatively.
Mark stands up. “I thought that might be the case. Sadly for your longevity, I don’t really need confirmation. It’s just nice to have sometimes.”
“Then why not just kill me?” Drobny demands. “Why question me?”
“Oh, the questioning was just for extra credit,” Mark says. “No, I’m killing you slowly so that you can know exactly why you’re dying.”
“Because of your fucking club?” Drobny asks. I think he means it to come out contemptuous, but he’s too weak for it to sound anything other than pitiful. “Because I tried to kill you?”
“I’m still unhappy about it,” Mark agrees. “You upset my bodyguard. And we had to throw away several of my favorite chairs.”
“I wish you’d died that night,” Drobny says.
“A pointless thing to say with your remaining time,” Mark says. “Of course you wish I’d died. You were the one trying to kill me.”
Drobny’s only answer is a wheeze.
“And all because of a small misunderstanding years ago?—”
This rouses Drobny. He pitches futilely about in his chair. “It wasn’t small! You killed my cousin’s best friend’s brother-in-law!”
From my place in the shadows, I close my eyes with a feeling of utter stupidity. I’d thought Mark had said that as a joke, a self-deprecating punch line to underscore the fact that he’d never know why someone had tried to kill him and his club members.
He had known all along.
But why even let Drobny join the club, then? Why risk having an arms dealer who hated him inside its walls?
“He was a loyal and strong man,” Drobny is gasping now. “I will gladly suffer in his honor. I will gladly suffer for having avenged his death.”
“Shut up,” Mark says, and it’s the first real human emotion I’ve heard from him tonight: irritation. “You avenged nothing, and you’re not dying for him anyway. You’re dying because of what I found on my wedding planner’s phone when I cloned it—and what I found on one of your mercenary’s phones when I caught him following my bride around Manhattan.”
Memory flashes: an old sedan, Tristan’s worried face. So I had been followed that day.
Mark threads his fingers through Drobny’s sweat-damp hair and pulls his head up. The older man blinks up into Mark’s face.
“Whatever you were planning to do about Ys somehow involved Mrs. Trevena. Having her followed and photographed and then having those pictures sent to you,” Mark says. “I’ve looked through all of them, and I found nothing prurient, fortunately for your pain tolerance. Unfortunately, however, there is no acceptable reason to stalk my wife.”
“Didn’t—hurt—her?—”
“But I think you might have. Or you might have offered the chance to someone else. Surely, you must know that I can’t allow such a thing to go unpunished.”
A strange swell in my chest at that. A beat of obsession, a thud of awe and desire.
Even if he could never love me back, could never feel the same about me as I do about him, killing a man for me feels like uncompromising, vicious possession.
After last night, when I was terrified he’d demand a divorce, it feels better than a declaration of undying love.
For his part, Drobny tries to spit at my husband, but it goes nowhere. Bloody foam now clings to his lips.
Mark lets go of Drobny’s hair and returns to the black duffel bag. “This was my theory about the wedding planner, by the way,” he says conversationally. He pulls out another syringe—this one he has to fill himself. “You needed someone who could keep tabs on Isolde before she came to Lyonesse, where she’d be much more difficult to watch. But there is that pesky why again…”
I’m bothered by the why too. Why stalk me? Build plans around me? It has to be related to being a saint, but if that’s true, how come the Scales or my uncle didn’t know Drobny was interested in me?
That Ys might be interested in me?
My hand tenses around the hilt of my honeysuckle knife until I force it to relax.
I don’t want Ys to be interested in me, especially after killing five men with close ties to it. My anonymity is my single strongest protection.
No. Not quite.
There is the leather-jacketed man just through the doorway. I don’t know if I fully understand why or how, but he might be my protection too.
The syringe is full, and with the competence of a seasoned nurse, he removes the old syringe and replaces it. He pushes the plunger down without any delay or hesitation.
“It’s done,” Mark says, straightening up and walking to the edge of the tarp. “It’s morphine. It won’t hurt.”
“You want me to say thank you?” Drobny’s voice is reed-thin now and quiet enough that I have to lean forward to hear it.
“I don’t expect it, no. But I didn’t do it for you. Believe it or not, I don’t particularly enjoy unnecessary suffering.”
“You will pay for it,” Drobny whispers. A trite thing that Mark has probably heard a hundred times. A thing even I’ve heard as a saint. The priests I kill add in a little damnation for good measure, but otherwise it’s the same.
“Maybe I will pay for it,” Mark says, surprising me a little. I thought he’d scoff or roll his eyes or ignore the dying man’s imprecation altogether. “But not before I’m finished. First stop, Ys; second stop, Rome. Isn’t that right, Filip?”
Drobny doesn’t answer. It doesn’t seem like he can.
Mark checks his watch, as casually as a man would waiting for a cab, and then drops his wrist. He rolls his shoulder twice, three times. It’s the wounded shoulder, I notice. I wonder if it gets stiff.
He presses his gloved fingers to Drobny’s neck, waiting a full minute before stepping back. He stares down at the dead man for just a handful of seconds, his expression unreadable. He does sigh, though, like someone looking at a sink full of dirty dishes. And then with practiced—if resigned—movements, he starts cutting Drobny’s ties and moving his body onto the tarp.
I take that as my cue, and I retreat with silent steps until I reach the chilly night air, and then I bolt back to the penthouse, my thoughts in a haze, like incense smoke shrouding the altar.
Mark killed for me.
Mark killed, full stop. And I have to think that John Lackland was not a fluke; this was not a fluke. Mark may not work for the CIA anymore, but he is working.
For whom, then?
For himself?
Ys started the game. I’m only finishing it. That’s what he told Melody at the engagement party. So Mark is hunting Ys.
Ys is possibly hunting me.
And Mark has been setting the board for so much longer than I could have imagined.