info. “Got a minute?”
“You have something for me?”
In the end Sven had agreed to spy for the king, but he’d used Mac, a couple of bugs, and some old- fashioned skulking to do it rather than leaning on Carlos and Cara. He’d gotten their forgiveness, though it had taken him a couple of days to talk to Carlos. The winikin had made it too easy for him, even claiming it wasn’t necessary. It was, though, and he had a feeling they wouldn’t be so quick to forgive if they found out he’d been using them to get to the winikin, so he’d found other options. Besides, he’d needed to keep his distance from Cara, for sanity’s sake… but that had backfired, because while he’d been staying on the outskirts, it seemed that something must’ve been going on inside her head. The Cara he knew never would’ve knowingly sacrificed her people like that, game or not. That hadn’t been collateral damage; it’d been a massacre.
He should know. He’d been one of the ones doing the shooting.
In answer to Dez’s question, he shrugged. “I’ve got a few thoughts. But I’ve gotta ask… what the hell happened out there today?”
“You first.” Dez tossed him a pool cue. “And we’ll play while we talk.”
Sven caught the stick on the fly and masked his impatience, knowing that the king had his own system, his own agendas. “What’re we playing for?”
Turning his back on Sven, Dez started racking up another game of nine-ball. Over his shoulder, he said, “Future claim?”
“Fuck that.” There was no way he wanted to owe the Nightkeepers’ master manipulator something like that. “Fifty bucks.”
“A hundred.”
“Deal.” It wasn’t like the money really mattered, anyway. Even with the dicey economy and some big-ass withdrawals they’d needed for techware and weapons, the Nightkeeper Fund was more than flush. It had been intended for an army of hundreds, even thousands. Not a dozen Nightkeepers and fifty or so winikin.
“Shoot for break,” Dez ordered. “And start talking.”
Sven lined up on the cue ball and shot it straight for the far bumper, trying to land it as close to the dotted line as he could. But it rolled like a damn ball bearing on a foosball table, and went well past the mark. As they swapped out, he began, “For starters, I don’t think any of the winikin were responsible for letting those things into the compound.”
After putting his ball nearly on the mark, Dez set up for the break. “How sure are you?” He shot, scattered the neat diamond, and then muttered a curse when the yellow-striped ball bounced just short of the corner pocket, denying him the insta-win. Nothing else dropped into a pocket, so he stepped back.
“Pretty positive. I’ve spent the past few days ghosting in and out of their stomping grounds and quartering the compound with Mac, looking for hot spots, and I haven’t found jack. There’s no evidence—at least that I can see—that any of the winikin have the kind of power that would’ve been needed to punch through the blood-ward and bring those things through the barrier. Hell, I’m not seeing that any of them have any kind of magic, period.”
Dez’s expression flattened. “Yeah. Shit. I keep hoping for a miracle there.” Waving Sven toward the pool table, he added, “How much trouble are the rebels going to be over the next few months, do you think?”
As he lined up his shot, Sven shook his head. “That’s a tougher question to answer, especially after what happened today.” He paused, looking at Dez with a raised eyebrow.
“Just give me your general impressions.”
Frustration kicked, along with the suspicion that there was more going on here than just a debriefing and a game of nine-ball. “Most of them are about where you would expect, given the history. On a personal level they don’t trust us Nightkeepers as far as they can throw us, and they hate being under the rule of a mage king… but on the save-the-world level they’re committed to doing whatever they can. There are a few outliers, of course. Sebastian was talking about taking a band sander to his bloodline mark, and I think he’s capable of doing it.” At Dez’s wince, Sven nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, he’s loud and pissed off, but I don’t think there are layers to him. You kind of get what you get, ya know? Then there’s Threefer, Nance, and Wyeth. They’re young, impulsive, and angry. I don’t think they would start something, but they’d be the first ones to jump on board.” He finally lined up, closed one eye, and shot, banking the one ball and getting it—barely—into the side pocket. Shit, he was rusty. Two years ago, he could’ve run the table, no problem.
“That it for people who ping on your ‘need a closer look’ radar?”
“Yeah.” Sven missed with the two on a nearly impossible shot, but managed to hide the cue ball in a corner behind the six.
The king curled his lip in an appreciative snarl, but then hopped the white ball right over the six and sank the two. “You sure about that?”
Had he caught something in the tone, or did he have suspicions of his own? Sven wasn’t sure, and he didn’t know if he really wanted to go there, but after a moment, he nodded. “Okay, no, I’m not sure. There’s someone else: Zane.”
“Seriously?” The king’s expression suggested that either he’d been fishing, or his suspicions had been leaning elsewhere.
Shit, he should’ve kept his mouth shut, especially when he wasn’t sure whether the brush-haired bastard was hitting his radar because of his obvious interest in Cara, or because there was really something going on beneath the military exterior. But it was out there now and he couldn’t take it back. “It’s just a hunch. A bad vibe, a few looks I haven’t liked. Maybe it’s just that he’s in such a key position that it’s hard not to look at him and think that he’d be perfectly placed to make trouble.” He shrugged. “Not to mention that I just flat-out don’t like the guy.”
“Noted.” Dez took his shot, and the three ball kissed two bumpers before dropping into a corner. “Question becomes: Is that coming from your warrior’s talent or something else?”
Careful. Now he’s definitely fishing. And Sven didn’t have any intention of giving him a nibble, just in case this conversation wasn’t entirely about the winikin, after all. “I don’t know. The feeling’s mutual, so it could just be bad chemistry.” That was what he kept telling himself, in fact, trying not to let personal stuff get in the way of his investigation. When Dez just nodded, he pressed, “Come on, spill. What the hell happened out there today? One minute Mac and I were patrolling one of the temples, and the next we’re in the middle of a firefight—hell, it wasn’t even a fight, more like a paintball bloodbath.” And it had been too damn easy for him to gun down the winikin, too much like what he’d spent the past six months doing.
Dez grimaced. “On one hand, their plan was pretty impressive. It was a slick move putting Zane outside the game zone as a sniper and surveillance, the low-velocity paint grenade was a clever tweak that we’re thinking about using ourselves, and the flares were an effective—if unsubtle—solution to the radio blackout.… But then Cara took a look, saw the situation, and deliberately sacrificed eighty percent of her manpower in order to get herself into the pyramid.” The king shook his head. “Sure, she won, but it was at a hell of a cost.”
“Deliberately? Are you sure?”
“I was watching on the surveillance feeds. I saw it in her eyes. She got a look at where our manpower was headed and she just… blanked, I guess. The next thing I knew, she had signaled the attack, and three of her four teams were headed straight into enemy ambushes. So, yeah. It was deliberate.” The king paused, grimacing. “Thank the gods we were able to spin it to the other winikin as game strategy. A few of them are probably suspicious, but so far they’re not calling for her head.”
Sven’s gut tightened. “Will they?” He didn’t like the sound of that. Hell, he didn’t like the way any of it was sounding all of a sudden. What had happened out there? The Cara he knew wouldn’t blank under pressure or turn against her friends like that, no matter what.
“Not if I can help it, and I could use your help.” Dez sank the four, then looked up, his expression deadly serious. “I need to know that the winikin are solid, Sven, more now than ever before.” He pocketed the five and six in quick succession and then said casually, “What do you think of Cara?”
Sven clamped his lips, but the answers were right there, just as she was right there at the edges of his mind. I think that she’s amazing and doesn’t realize it. I think she terrifies me because she’s so determined to be a good leader that she’s losing track of what it means, especially if what happened today is any indication. I think she’s strong, tough, independent, brilliant… and that she’ll kill herself—and maybe everyone around her—trying to prove it.
