George Martin - Suicide Kings

He reached under his jacket for his pistol. He really didn’t want to shoot one of his former comrades, so he just rested his hand on the butt.

“Noel, what the hell are you doing here, man?”

It was Devlin Pear, aka Ha’Penny. Since Noel was seated on the floor they were actually nose to nose. Dev was a midget. He could get smaller, a lot smaller.

Noel held up the file. “Just a bit of intel.”

“You can’t do this. Lady Margaret’s on the desk tonight. She’d have your balls if she knew you were here.”

And that was most certainly true. Lady Margaret, aka Titania, had nursed a desperate crush on the former head of the Silver Helix for years. Now Captain Flint was awaiting his war crimes trial, and Noel had put him there. “Well then, don’t tell her.”

“I’ve got to. You can’t just pop in here-”

Noel laid a hand on the file. “Look, I’m doing God’s work. Or at least England’s, which is almost the same thing.” He gave Dev a smile, but the little ace continued to look worried. “I’m looking for a way to remove the Nshombos that won’t have Western fingerprints on it. That can only help British interests in the area, right?”

“Why would you do that? You left the service.”

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn about the Silver Helix, but I’m still an Englishman. I just wanted some information.”

“That’s really all you want?”

“I swear.”

“All right, but don’t do this again.” The little ace hesitated. “Call me instead.”

They shook hands, Noel put away the files, stood, and checked his watch. It was still three minutes until full night.

“Wish you hadn’t left us,” Devlin said.

“I had to. I didn’t like what I’d become.”

Ha’Penny considered Noel’s role in the Silver Helix-assassin-and nodded slowly. “I can see that.”

It was time. Noel made the transition to Lilith. “The PPA’s the danger, Dev,” she said. “I just want to help.” And she teleported away.

Monday,

November 30

Paraguacu River

Bahia State, Brazil

His eyes snapped open to darkness.

The humid air remained hot long after midnight. Sweat rolled ticklingly into armpits that felt at once familiar and utterly alien. Insects buzzed like power-saw choirs. Poison-arrow frogs trilled to advertise their killer beauty. The river sighed and gurgled through the mangrove roots. The smell of the water, like strong tea and death, overwhelmed even the smell of sweat-soaked bedding.

Starlight through the open window confirmed his memory, still vague with transition, that the blur beside him was the sleeping face of Sun Hei-lian. Details of her incredibly fine features resolved slowly as his mind and vision focused. The lines that living left in her face somehow made her even more beautiful to Mark Meadows’s eyes.

Good thing she’s close, he thought. He’d always been nearsighted. And for the last fourteen years he had seen through eagle-perfect eyes.

It took him three breaths to dare to try to move his eyeballs. There was little left to see: the bed, the rough room with its few and deliberately raw furnishings of wood and coarse rope, the Coleman lantern they’d brought from Salvador, now dark. And the rest of the woman herself, pale and slender and exquisite.

That was a favor, anyway. If as much torment as pleasure. He knew that body’s every contour. Yet she had never known his touch. Only the touch of this body he inhabited. Isn’t that just my luck? he thought. I fall in love with a lethal lady Chinese spy. And she falls in love with the evil alter ego who’s taken over my body. Perfect.

It wasn’t the first time he’d made himself a fool for love. His obsession with his first love, Sunflower, had led him into the obsessive quest that resulted in his body being usurped by the Radical. Long after the love he’d felt for her had ended in divorce, acrimony, and Sprout.

Sprout -it was Hei-lian’s treatment of Mark’s daughter that made him fall in love with her. She had begun with coldness, almost loathing. Now she showed every sign of loving her. It was as if Sprout had awakened a capacity for kindness in a woman who had lived virtually her entire life professionally coldhearted.

Hei-lian possessed a razor-keen intellect and a will so fierce it had forced her hide bound bosses to acknowledge her excellence. Years of witnessing-and yes, no doubt working-brutality had never crushed her spirit. Yet it was her unexpected capacity for warmth that won him.

I love you, he wanted to tell her. I know the Radical’s seductive power. Far too well. And it’s a lie.

He ached to warn her. Warn the world. The man you think you love is changing into something that isn’t human. If he isn’t stopped he’ll destroy everything. He-

Mark felt himself swirl away from the world, down into old accustomed darkness. He uttered a vast and desolate cry that his throat could never voice.

“Aaaahh!”

The scream snapped Tom awake and upright. Sweat soaked his hair and face and body as if a tropical downpour had busted loose inside the cabin. The rough canvas covering of the bed under his butt was a mess, more sodden than the relentless heat could account for.

Fingers trailed down his arm. “Are you all right?” Hei-lian asked, sitting up beside him.

He drew in a huge breath and palmed hair back from his forehead so it would stop stinging his eyes with sweat.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Just a nightmare.”

Ellen Allworth’s Apartment

Manhattan, New York

It was still dark outside when Bugsy woke up. The alarm clock blazed 6:22 in numbers of fire. He groaned and rolled to his side, pulling the covers with him. The woman beside him made an impatient sound and pulled the blankets back. He sat up, watching her sleep in the dim light filtering in from the window.

She was beautiful, especially when she was asleep and wasn’t Ellen or Aliyah. Her naked body was familiar now. Known territory, and still fascinating. The way her small breasts rose and fell with her breath. The nameless fold where her thigh stopped being thigh and turned into body. The mole on her spine. When she wasn’t anyone and her face went slack like that, she looked young. She looked his age. He sighed.

The room still smelled like sex and liquor. His head hurt a little, but not enough to bother with. The soft buzz of a few stray wasps made a white noise that seemed like silence. Still, he gathered them up, folding the insects back into himself. She slept better when it was quiet.

He rose, showered, nuked some scrambled eggs and coffee. The apartment was like a really high-class junk shop or a really cheap museum. All around him were artifacts of other people’s lives. The cameo that Ellen wore and sometimes channeled her mother with. The pen that brought back a dead investment banker that she used when she was planning out her budget. A pair of scissors. A pair of glasses. A hundred dead people, all of them there for Ellen when and if she needed them. He was dating a republic.

When he snuck back into the bedroom to get some real clothes, her eyes were open. Until she moved, he didn’t know which one she was.

“Aliyah,” he said. “You sleep okay?”

She nodded gently.

“Ellen?”

“Still asleep,” Aliyah said, touching the earring gently. “It’s kind of weird, not having her back there. I guess I’m really used to it now, huh?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“It means I’m real, though,” Aliyah said. “I mean if I can be here when she’s not, that means I’m really me and not just… I don’t know. An echo. I’m not just her wild card if I’m awake and she’s asleep. I’m not just a dream.”

“That’s what it means,” he agreed, because it was what she needed to hear.