“Attention! Attention!” the computer said. “A delivery is waiting at the front desk.”
Probably my clothes and stuff. I was about to go downstairs and get them when someone knocked. I thought maybe Kendi had dropped something in my room or something, but when I opened the door, an old man was standing there. He wore white, and his clothes had that expensive, silky look I recognized from some of my jobbers. He also looked familiar. White hair, blue eyes, some wrinkles, sharp nose.
The train. It was the rude guy old man from the train.
“Hello, Sejal,” he said. “May I come in?”
Too startled to say no, I let him in and shut the door. He sat on the corner of the bed farthest from me, keeping his clothes wrapped tight around him, as if he was afraid to let them touch me.
“Who-?” I began.
“My name is Padric Sufur,” he said. “I want to make you a proposition.”
He was a jobber? “I don’t do that anymore,” I told him. “So you can forget it.”
The man blinked, and I could hear the tiny click of his eyelids. “You don’t-oh! No, no. Nothing like that.” He blinked again. “I’m the head of Sufur Enterprises, and I have some information about the Children of Irfan that might interest you. About Mother Araceil Rymar, in particular.”
“What information?” I asked, tensing. This guy was setting off alarms left and right and I wished I hadn’t let him in. If I shouted for help, would someone come?
“Mother Araceil has orders from Empress Kalii herself,” Sufur said. “Orders to kill you.”
The words were so strange, I didn’t know how to react. “Kill me?” I said stupidly.
“Yes.” He shifted on the bed, edging away from me. “The Empress ordered Mother Araceil to watch you and decide if you are a danger to the Indepencdence Confederation. If she-Araceil-decides you are a danger, she is to kill you.”
“She wouldn’t,” I said hotly, but something stirred in my gut.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But those were the Empress’s orders.”
My face was hot and my hands were cold. I remembered the way Mother Ara would look at me, as if she were sizing me up. I remembered how the Unity had sent warships to try to bring me back.
“How do you know this?” I demanded. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I told you. I’m Padric Sufur. We touched on the train, so you know I’m Silent. I touched you-” Did he shudder? “-to make sure you were the person I was looking for.”
My fingers were twisting my sweater like snakes. I was getting mad and found myself lapsing into my Jesse personality, the one I used with jobbers. “So you’re Silent. Big fucking deal. Everyone around this shithole is Silent. How the hell does that tell you that Moth-that Ara’s supposed to gash me?”
“I have connections,” he said simply. “Mother Araceil Rymar has made a number of reports about you to Empress Kan maja Kalii. Twice Araceil possessed a Silent slave so they could meet in person to talk about you. In person with the Empress, Sejal. What does that tell you?”
“That she’s-” And then I stopped, my Jesse instincts screaming at me to shut up. People love to talk. After I gave a jobber a mind-shattering orgasm, some of them would get weepy and want to blab about this or that. I was always surprised about what they were willing to tell a complete stranger. Why did they want to blather so much? After I broke down and cried in the restaurant with Kendi, I could kind of understand it, but Kendi had saved my life. Twice. This guy was a total stranger I didn’t owe anything. So I shut up.
It didn’t stop my mind from racing, though. Assuming Sufur wasn’t lying-and my gut was said he was telling the truth-what did Mother Ara meeting with the Empress tell me?
It told me that Harenn was right. I was important, everyone wanted a part of me, and they’d rather I was dead than end up with someone else.
When I didn’t say anything, Sufur went on. “If you stay here, Sejal, they’ll kill you.”
The room was quiet. The French doors were still closed, keeping out the sound of breezes in the tree, though I saw green leaves fluttering beyond the glass. Footsteps trotted past my door and faded. I forced myself to think clearly before I said anything.
“You said if Ara decided I was a danger to the Independence Confederation, she was supposed to do it. How do you know she’s decided I’m a danger?”
“Premier Yuganovi is very upset that you slipped away.” Sufur calmly smoothed his trousers, as if he had said the weather would change. “The Unity’s going to declare war.”
“War? Over me?”
Sufur nodded. “You’re the most valuable piece of property in history. You possess the power to topple empires and destroy governments. The Unity wants you to work for them. The Empress wants you to work for the Independence Confederation. Other governments will want you as well. Empress Kalii isn’t stupid. She’ll see-has seen-that that she’ll be fighting wars she can’t possibly win. Sure, after a few years of training you’ll probably be able to wipe out entire civilizations, but the Empress has to deal with the Unity now.”
“You’re exaggerating,” I said. “I couldn’t wipe out a civilization.”
“You could make one person push all the right buttons and easily do the job,” Sufur countered.
“I’d never do something like that!”
“The Empress doesn’t know that. Premiere Yuganovi doesn’t know that. And people change, Sejal. Who knows what you’ll do in six years, or even six months, given the proper conditioning?” He crossed his arms. “No, Sejal. You’re too dangerous for any government to let you live for long.”
I started to protest. Kendi wouldn’t hurt me. The Children of Irfan had saved me, gone through a lot of trouble for me, even died for me. They wouldn’t kill me after all that.
But my Jesse voice was whispering other things. Would they have come for me if it weren’t for my special Silence? Would they have offered to take me off-planet if I were normal? Would Kendi have saved my life if I’d been an ordinary tricker like Jesse? I knew the answer. It wasn’t me they wanted. It was my power.
I was starting to tear up, which made me mad. “Okay, so I believe you. What do you want? And don’t give me any bullshit that you want to save my life.”
Sufur chuckled. “Oh no, young Sejal. Unlike the Children and the Unity, I won’t lie to you or pretend I’m talking to you for anything but selfish reasons. All humans are selfish. I’m just willing to admit it.”
“Okay, then. Talk.”
“Come with me. I’ll give you sanctuary and I’ll pay you well.” He sounded like a jobber again.
“And what do you want me to do?”
Sufur wet his lips as if he were nervous. “I want you to end war.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Just like that, huh? You want me to end war?”
“You can do it, Sejal,” Sufur said seriously. “Or at least, we can do it.”
“How?” I asked, deciding to play along.
“What would happen,” he said, “if there was a war and nobody came?”
Now I was getting nervous again. Sufur was starting to sound like a jay-head who’d had too much juice. “I don’t know,” I stalled.
He sighed and shook his head. “It’s a rhetorical question. Look, you can possess people. More than one at a time?”
I nodded despite the earlier advice from my Jesse voice.
“What if you got into a war, possessed the soldiers on both sides, and stopped them from fighting? What if you possessed the commanders and made them give surrender orders? What if you possessed the government leaders and made them sign peace treaties?”
“It’d work at first,” I said, “until I let go. Then everyone would be back to fighting again.”
“Not if they knew that you’d possess them again. And again and again until they gave it up.”
“I’m one person,” I protested. “I couldn’t possibly do all that.”
“You wouldn’t need to.” Sufur grinned like a cat. “It would only take the threat that you might do it. The Unity is willing to go to war over the mere threat that you might do something it doesn’t like, right?”
“That’s what you said.”
“And they’re declaring war because you’re, in theory, aligning yourself with the Independence Confederation.”
“Right,” I said, wondering exactly where this was going.
“I’m not aligned with any government.” He thumped himself on the chest. “If you come with me, the Unity-
