Forty-Eight
FORTY-EIGHT
The Agency receptionist jerks upright in alarm as Isako storms down the arched nave to the visitor window. “Atier Isako, if you wish to request a meeting with the Partners, you will have to—”
Isako reaches into the little cubicle and seizes the woman by her pristine white lapels.
The receptionist gives a startled gasp as Isako yanks her forward, nearly dragging her across the counter that separates them.
The data monocle slips off and hangs askew from one ear.
Her synth arm makes a clicking noise as she flails ineffectually against the stronger atier’s grip.
“Where is he?” Isako demands. “Marsh Elias, that murdering piece of shit— where is he ?”
“Put the woman down, Isa. There’s no need to terrorize the staff. It’s unbecoming of you.”
Isako’s back stiffens at the voice behind her. Slowly, she lowers the receptionist back down and releases her. With as much recovered dignity as she can muster, the woman smooths her rumpled suit with trembling hands. Her face is pale, indignant—and scared.
It gives Isako a rush of sadistic satisfaction.
She spent decades serving the Agency, living by its maxims, training up its young.
Right now, she wants to burn the place to the ground.
Watch the stained glass shatter and melt, see the ancient stone walls crumble to dust. Centuries ago, this was a holy place for worshippers, but there’s no god and no mercy to be found here anymore. She stands in a church of lies.
Isako turns around, corrals her rage enough to speak. “Constance.”
The Partner looks past Isako. “I see you brought an old friend.”
Kob stands shadowed against the double doors, still in Sandbar Uchi’s clothes, his face a storm cloud that suggests he’s prepared to charge the glowing trio of scangates that bar his way.
Constance raises her voice to reach him. “I’m afraid freelancers are not permitted in headquarters, Strikebreaker. Unless you’ve finally decided to address your very overdue relicensing notices?”
“Fuck you, Constance,” Kob replies. “You and all the Partners.”
Constance turns away. “Let’s talk, Isa.” She gestures her former apprentice to walk alongside her. When Isako hesitates, Constance calls over her shoulder, “Don’t worry, no one will harm Rain Kob here in the Agency. It would be unspeakably gauche, and we’ve asked enough of Elias today.”
Isako follows as Constance moves toward the doors that lead into the simulation room. She instinctively braces herself when the lights come on, but without the haptic gloves, the visor’s multisensory inputs, and the sim-enhancing drugs, the room is simply a large, empty chamber.
Constance reaches into the oversized pocket of her knee-length fleece cardigan and pulls out a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that she sets pertly on her nose.
She taps and scrolls through an invisible projection in her vision for a moment.
The walls begin to glow with summer sunlight.
The panorama of a bright green field resolves and stretches out around them.
On one side, the grass slopes down to the shore of a lake, as still and reflective as glass, the blue silhouette of the mountains beyond obscured by thick white cloud.
On the other side lies a forest, with trees so dense they form a towering wall of green.
Black shapes dip and weave in the white sky overhead.
Isako puzzles at them for a second before realizing that they’re supposed to be birds, far bigger than any sparrow, and more of them than she’s ever seen.
This is only a moving image, projected on the walls across 360 degrees.
It’s not as convincing as the simulations normally held here for black-badge candidates.
But the illusion is enchanting. Isako’s been through false death five times in this accursed room.
She knows it only as a place of stress and pain.
She draws in a breath, imagining the air to be crisp and clean, to smell of earth and water and plants.
“This is how we picture heaven, isn’t it?
” Constance lifts her face to the artificial sunlight, yellow and warm.
“This room is feared and hated by every contractor who comes through the Agency’s doors, but it’s my favorite place to be.
The perk of being a Partner is getting to spend time here by myself. ”
“Typical. Only the best get the best.”
Constance turns toward the bitterness in Isako’s voice.
Even after decades, being in Constance’s company makes Isako feel young and inexperienced.
She may be feeling every bit of her fifty long years, but Constance still looks at her the way she did when Isako was a self-important twenty-two-year-old.
The papery skin around the Partner’s shrewd eyes tightens into a nest of disappointed wrinkles.
“Not true at all. You are the best, Isa. Only the best get the worst.”
Isako digs into her coat pocket, pulls out the crushed remnants of her badge, and holds it up to her mentor. She can barely speak. “You lied to me. You used me.”
She and Kob tore apart his apartment looking for recording devices. She checked and double-checked all her electronic safeguards and found them intact. She went through her own clothing, even disassembled her triggersheath. Only then did she think to smash her badge with a hammer.
Inside, she discovered the tiny transmitter that had been secretly placed there four weeks ago, on the day she took it off and set it on the metal tray before walking into this very room to earn it back.
All this time, the Agency has been listening.
When she told Director Minto where to send the car for Uchi, the Partners sent the gunman.
“I came here to ask for your help, and you bugged my badge to spy on me. You gave me authority to investigate Martim’s death, but you already knew or suspected the truth, didn’t you?”
Constance sighs regretfully. She takes off her spectacles and stows them back in the pocket of her cardigan.
“Sandbar Uchi has always been a challenging client and a controversial public figure. We were already hearing rumors of health issues and erratic behavior prior to his recorporalization. Shortly after Uchi entered second stage, however, Condor Anand came to us with… serious concerns.”
Tide Sullivan’s atier. Sullivan, the director of NorCon GasPro, Uchi’s greatest supporter and ally. With Uchi’s public death, now the remaining undisputed leader of the terraformist movement.
She imagines wrapping her hands around the Puppetmaster’s short, fleshy neck. The day Anand picked her up in his car and told her Martim was dead, he’d already spoken to the Agency.
“We attempted to contact Uchi’s atier but were unable to locate him,” Constance says. “Then you arrived, with a contract from Savannah Minto to carry out an assignment inside SoCon GasPro. You were the best person to credibly investigate the issue without the Agency overshowing its hand.”
“You could’ve told me all this, instead of putting me under surveillance!”
Constance remains unruffled by her fury. “You were under contract. You know full well that the Agency will not supplant or interfere with preexisting client agreements. And the seriousness of the accusation was such that we could not risk it leaking to your client or anyone else.”
Isako’s hands clench and unclench. “Where’s Elias?”
The older woman shoots her a look of impatient scorn.
“What do you think you’re going to do if I tell you?
Your hatred is misplaced, Isa. Marsh Elias is taking some well-deserved time off.
You of all people know how mentally and emotionally taxing DTE work can be. Do you think he wanted his assignment?”
Isako spins away with a choked noise.
Her mentor is right, of course. The Ronin Killer was doing his job, the way she’s always done hers, even when she wished she didn’t have to. But she wants to hate and blame him, the way dismissed wagemen hate and blame her.
Isako falls slowly to her knees in the nonexistent grass.
Constance comes up behind her. When she speaks, it’s almost a whisper, and she sounds every bit as ancient as she is. “We never stop watching and caring about our apprentices, do we, Isa? Even years later. Even after they make choices we can’t save them from. That’s how I feel, certainly.”
“Why did you have to kill him?” She can’t stop hearing the gunshot, seeing the grisly, bloodless head wound, the scattered bits of brain—all that was left of the brilliant young man Dragonfly Martim had been. “Kob and I had a plan. One that would’ve fulfilled my contract and saved Martim’s life.”
“I know.” Constance sounds almost proud. “You and Rain Kob always were a daring and formidable team. I think you two might’ve pulled it off. But you work with short-term objectives in mind. The Agency thinks in decades and centuries. We consider the good of the entire Company.”
Isako turns over her shoulder to glare at her mentor.
“The client-contractor relationship is sacrosanct. The Agency doesn’t play favorites with its members or its clients.
It doesn’t interfere with the activities of its atiers.
It serves the Company by serving its leaders, not by putting its thumb on the scale.
The Partners broker services, but they don’t judge or rule. ”
The Partner nods as if Isako’s a bright student reciting the correct answer on a test. “The Agency doesn’t take a direct role in Company affairs, that’s true.”
“Except that’s exactly what you did.” Isako’s whisper is harsh. “The amorality of the Code is its morality, and the Code is our compass. We teach that to all new longknivesfolk. I’ve preached it. And you’ve shown it to be a lie .”
“Our neutrality allows us to occasionally nudge events and exert influence as we deem necessary. This is one of the rare instances we had to take action.”