Twenty-Five #2
She stands in front of her friend, her partner, and gazes down at him with a bewildering sadness that feels as though it’ll suffocate her.
“I choose to trust, Kob. We both did. The day we strapped on our longknives, we swore to live and die by the Code. God knows, it’s not always rewarding or correct or fair, but it’s still the best we’ve got. ”
Contractors serve their clients, who serve the Company, which serves society. And society only endures if everyone knows their role and does their job. That’s how humanity survives. How it wins against the Vastness.
“Yes, it’s personal,” she admits hoarsely. “But so’s the Code. How could our lives be anything but personal? To serve is to live. Or do you not believe that anymore?”
Kob sags as he breathes in and out. At last, he says, “I never told you about my final contract, the one I failed to complete.” He raises his shielded eyes to the sky.
“It was a challenging DTE, really good pay but nothing to be proud of. The last wageman knew I was coming. Didn’t try to run or put up a fight.
Was accepting of it, welcoming even. Practically held the door open for me. ”
Isako thinks of Dew Loren. You’ve still got a heart, Isako. That’s rare, you know?
“I looked at his face and couldn’t do it.
He was the spitting image of his biofather.
I remember, because I served a dismissal to him twenty-four years ago.
” Kob shoves gloved fingers under his sunglasses, pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I sat across from the dad with my triggersheath still shiny and new on my thigh, and told him that he had to resign for the sake of his family—for his son, who was only ten years old—so the boy would grow up with plenty of food and water and scrip, in a Company that was secure and prosperous.”
There’s a bit of sage grass growing up through the cracks of the stone wall.
Kob rubs it between his fingers but doesn’t pick it.
“He cried and he begged, but in the end, he did the right thing. Walked into the Vastness with his son’s photograph in his pocket.
And here I was, years later, showing up to put an end to that boy’s life.
I’d been at the start of my career the first time; now I was near the finish line.
How had I spent nearly three decades? I wasn’t just a reaper.
I was a liar. I was whispering hope to families and wiping them out. ”
Isako tries to put herself in Kob’s position. She imagines drawing a longknife on Dew Loren’s girl, Tessa. Or on the man who will come from the baby boy she’s carrying in her womb. Thank all the gods of old Earth she’ll be long gone by the time that baby’s grown.
“I hated myself in that moment, Isa. I hated this —” He taps the side of his head. “Gray’s Waste can go ahead and take my perfect memory. I won’t be sad to lose that curse.”
She’s always admired Kob’s mind, envied the gift that he sees as a burden.
She aches for him, but she finds it unbearable to think of him becoming less than who he is.
“I’m not asking you to come with me.” She doesn’t view him as the scourge he claims to be, but she understands the line he won’t cross.
“You’ve already done a lot to help me out—more than I can thank you for.
I’m just grateful we got one more chance to work together. ”
“Me too.” She can’t see his eyes through the sunglasses, but his voice roughens. “You’re a good friend, Isa. You didn’t look down on me for losing my badge. Everyone else acts like I’ve lost my whole damn mind, but you didn’t run away from me.”
She doesn’t point out: Because I needed you. And I thought I could save you.
“This past week, it’s been as if no time’s passed,” he goes on, the corner of his mouth lifting in a weak smile.
“It was just like when we were young. Even the part where we almost died. Honestly, in the middle of it all, I thought—this is perfectly okay. I’m fine with going down like this, together.
It was the most like my old self I’ve felt in a while. ”
So her plan almost did work. She brought Strikebreaker back, if only temporarily. She sits down beside him, rests a hand on his knee. “I agree. It’s been nice.”
More than nice. It’s hard to put into words the strange importance, sudden and unexpected, that Rain Kob has assumed in her life, now of all times.
Two weeks ago, she was barely thinking of him at all.
He was a bit of pleasant nostalgia nestled in the back in her mind.
She was ready to finish her last contract and resign without seeing him again.
Now the knowledge that she’s losing him to Gray’s Waste feels like a thorn lodged in her chest, pushing itself into her heart. It doesn’t even matter that he’ll outlive her.
Kob says, “You know what the odds are of you getting out of this alive?”
She has a half-formed plan to ambush Uchi when he’s away from the safety of his own headquarters, but even if she succeeds, she harbors no illusions about her ability to escape afterward. “I would say low,” she admits.
“What happened to wanting to resign for Maya’s sake?”
“The Agency will give her something. Constance will handle it.” Publicly, of course, Savannah Minto will disavow her. Isako’s been careful not to implicate her client. Privately, Minto will be pleased, and the Agency will see to it that she’s posthumously rewarded.
When Kob reacts with silence, she says, “Besides, what does it matter whether I get the bonus and the nameplace, if I manage to finish things right?”
Putting an end to Sandbar Uchi’s reign, delivering justice to his victims and to Martim, who she failed as a mentor and a friend—that will be enough.
She’s been searching for meaning for a while now, but all the more so since Greves abandoned her.
She realizes that now. She took pride in her skill as a longkniveswoman before age began to steal her speed.
She was an elite atier until she lost the war.
She was never a great mother, but she was a good mentor—that’s also what she used to believe, before last week.
What is she, now that she is none of those things?
“Is it that important to you?” Kob asks. “To finish out a contract you never wanted, that’s demanding your life when you’ve already given so much? Why’s vengeance and justice suddenly your responsibility? What can I say to convince you it’s not?”
The harsh pleading in his voice, so foreign, so unlike him, grates on her, drives the spike in her heart deeper into soft tissue. “You knew from the start this was going to be my last contract,” she reminds him. “Why are you trying to fight me on this now, all of a sudden?”
“Mother in fucking Chains, Isa.” Kob gets to his feet, agitated. “I didn’t want you to think of it as your last contract. I thought maybe I could change your mind.”
“To do what instead?” she demands. “Go rogue and wait to die?”
She instantly regrets her choice of words. Kob’s back stiffens, and he draws in a breath as if he’s about to tell her, straight up, just how much of a bitch she is.
“Never mind,” he says instead. “I was wrong.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“No, I’m the one who was out of line.” He takes a step back, puts distance between them, big shoulders curled, hands in pockets. “You deserve to complete your last contract successfully and finish your career the way you want. Selfish of me to try to change that.”
She doesn’t have any reply. All she can think of is the irony, the way she could’ve said the same about him. She gets to her feet woodenly. “We should go back.”
They return to his place as if to a funeral.
The little yellow apartment already feels achingly familiar to her.
She pauses in front of it, refusing to go inside with him, knowing it might break her resolve.
The wrenching truth is that it’s tempting, so vastblasted tempting , this other path he suggests.
Walking away from her contract, her legacy, her anger and her grief, her sense of duty to the Code and her very sense of self, just to get a little bit more time, now that she can imagine sharing that time with a friend.
Fresh fruit and eggs at breakfast, walks in the sunshine, someone to watch your back until the end.
She wanted to bring him back into the edge life; he wanted to bring her out.
They tried to save each other. What a couple of idiots.
It’s such a tired cliché to reach a certain age and say you feel your mortality. Atiers are always aware of their mortality. What she’s actually been experiencing is a rebirth. The emergence of the woman who is going to die. One last chapter—make it a good one.
“I guess this is goodbye.” She tries to sound fine with it.
You knew , she reminds herself. She knew the reunion was temporary, that her assignment was bound to take her where Kob could not follow.
Now, or standing at the gates of Easthatch, it doesn’t matter.
She puts her arms out to give him a hug, but he wraps his big hands around the back of her neck and drops his lips to her forehead.
He presses them there, cold against her skin, and the tickle of his beard so soft, just like she imagined when she watched him sleeping.
Kob lets her go. “If you do change your mind, I’ll be waiting. And if you don’t, I’ll be Waiting anyway, on the other side. We’ll see each other again, partner.”
He turns away and goes inside so he doesn’t have to watch her leave.