“So, Jools’s complement were hiding their plate armor, but keeping the electric wagons? So civilians in the Hem Kader wouldn’t recognize them as Seekers, I’d say. There’s got to be something of interest out there.”
He shrugged.
She’d known she’d run up against a barrier like this eventually: A point where she’d have to take a more aggressive step toward the answers.
And a step closer to being discovered.
The Immersion Chamber’s dead were owed those answers. Patzer knew the renegades, and Lijjen had suspected her of… something. She had to find the connection, and if she stopped now, she’d be betraying both Lord Armer and Lord Sumad. If this was what it took to be able to look Pella in the eye and tell her the journey was worth it, then so be it.
She gripped the desk. “I have a plan, Toornan.”
He leaned toward her, eyes wide.
“One I can’t share.”
15
Terese jumped when the knock came, ten minutes early. She cursed under her breath. Her preparations were barely complete. She forced a smile into her voice. “Coming!”
The wave device’s volume was set to a pleasant level, to a station playing mostly popular Sumadan pieces. Terese dusted her freshly laundered silk blouse, checked her reflection in the mirror on the back of the door, and twisted the handle.
Jools Teeber beamed at her from the other side of the threshold.
“Terese!” she shouted, pushing a bottle of wine at her.
“Jools, come in.” They kissed the air at each other’s ears. “You’re looking so well.”
“Thanks,” Jools said. She lowered herself onto Terese’s couch. “It’s this new exercise that Gam and I’ve started. It’s got to do with keeping your core active, and he’s taught me how to really cook skinleaf. They’re doing it all wrong in the commons galleys because it’s cheaper to skip parts of the process.” She sighed. “I wish we had skinleaf back home.”
“We do, I think,” Terese said, “but it apparently doesn’t grow as well as here.”
Jools plopped onto a padded chair. “They do everything with it, here. Young skinleaves for protein, old skinleaves as leather replacement, and when they grow it, it produces minerals for the other vegetables, so it’s more efficient to grow it even if you don’t want to eat it. And do you know it has no common relatives in the plant kingdom? No one knows where it came from! It’s something else, all right.”
Terese popped the cork and poured wine into two pear-shaped glasses.
“Oh, Terese, you and your nail polish. You’re obsessed with it!”
Terese froze in horror. There, right beside the cheese and crackers, was her small vial of Armen nail lacquer. How could she have missed it? Nerves, too many nerves. A survivable mistake, nothing had been ruined. Yet.
She swept the lacquer bottle up protectively, cradling it in her hand and searching for a plausible excuse. Once the ‘lacquer’ she’d put in Jools’s empty glass hit her, Jools couldn’t suspect anything, or the results wouldn’t be reliable.
“It started with Pella going through a varnishing phase, and we got into it together. It’s something from home I can cling to, I suppose.”
Jools gave a happy shrug. As if to say, ‘We all need something to keep us going.’ Terese clinked her glass to Jools’s, and they sipped.
For a time, they ate, drank and spoke of small things. Jools giggled when Terese attempted a bad joke.
“You’re handling this all well, Terese. I mean, the… you know.”
It was a pleasant surprise that she could speak honestly.
“I can’t take it personally, Jools. You were there. My part of that taking went perfectly, and the whole complement knows. I had to spend a month in the Wastes with Sumad Reach’s favorite Cenephan bounty hunter, and even he couldn’t find them. I haven’t humiliated the Seekers, no matter what Lijjen says. For some reason he needed a scapegoat.”
“You’re good, Terese. Don’t forget that. We’ll all vouch for you. When we get home, I mean.” Jools looked as though she would say more but stopped herself.
“Thanks.” A small silence became a long one. “There… there’s a reason I asked you here tonight.”
Jools looked down.
“Jools, no matter how badly they treat me, no matter what happens when we get home, only I have the authority to release and transfer you. And in six months I’ll grant that transfer. If you want it.” She crossed her legs. “But you only get one transfer between Polis per lifetime, Jools. If it doesn’t work out with Head Kedden, you can’t come back to any Armer chapterhouse.”
Jools looked up, the corners of her eyes wet. “It’s a good rule, Terese. It’s there for a reason. But it’s at the back of my mind every time I look at him. I don’t know what to say because if I bring it up, then it could be the start of us falling apart. Or if it’s the start of something better, then that scares me more. Because he can’t come to Armer. His career is so much further ahead than mine, and, it’s not like he’s going to make babies and stay at home with them. But if I stay, who’ll look after my mother once Da is gone? And then…”
She paused and put her head in her hands. “This has to sound so stupid. I’m sorry. When I say it out loud it sounds so stupid.”
“It’s your brain, Jools. You’re listening to it too much. There’ll always be another reason to do or not do something. Stop making lists of things that could go wrong. Just stop thinking about everything outside him, and ask that inner voice you keep trying to shut up because you’re scared of the answers.”
Jools didn’t take down her hands, and, right on schedule, burst into tears. The nail lacquer worked, thank the Gods.
“Oh dear,” Terese said, feeling a little guilty. She wasn’t the naturally nurturing type. Sometimes she envied men, who could just clap other sobbing men on the shoulder and wait for
