Soldier of Fortune

Perhaps later, Gideon would appreciate the memory of a wet, naked Celia surging from the bath.

In the present moment, however, he was more concerned with containing the kicking, scratching she-draco before she could do some serious damage.

As it was, he took a wicked scratch to the throat and barely avoided a knee in his most favorite part before he swept her up over a shoulder, where the punches and kicks were more annoying than dangerous.

She did, while he was reaching down for the robe she’d left on the tile floor, get her teeth into his side, which had him this close to letting her drop straight down onto her head.

Fortunately for Celia, Gideon needed her alive and conscious. So, while she dug her teeth in, he reminded himself it had been a gift to find the house empty of servants when he broke in, and to expect the rest of the plan to go so easily would be greedy.

With this in mind, he gritted his teeth, slung her out of the bath and into the adjoining bedroom—already scoured of the previous night’s violence—and tossed her soapy ass onto the bed, where she immediately scrambled to her knees, ready to attack again.

“Think about it,” Gideon said. “I was being nice before. You come at me again, I won’t be nice. I might even do what I really want to do and break your neck.”

She thought about it, and while she did, he tossed the robe he still held onto her lap.

She ignored the heap of fabric as she studied his face. “You’re not lying. You really would kill me.”

“I can’t believe you find that surprising,” he said, wiping at the blood on his neck.

“But it’s not your first choice,” she observed, sitting back on her heels. “Which means you’re not here seeking revenge, so . . . what is it you want?”

“I came for my coat,” he said, then nodded to her robe. “You may as well get dressed. Unless you want to catch a cold while I continue to not fall for your charms.”

Interesting, he thought, that the cool spy would blush so . . . comprehensively.

She did, however, put on the robe, tying the sash with short, angry jerks.

“Happy?” she asked, biting off the word with enough violence to make it bleed.

“I’m still a long ways from happy,” he said just as shortly.

“If you are speaking of the Nasa incident—”

“It wasn’t an incident. It was murder.”

“It was war,” she shot back. “And in war, soldiers do what they must.”

“Soldiers fight on the line, face to face. They don’t—”

“Don’t lie? Cheat? Steal?” She shook her head. “I’ve read your file, Colonel Quinn. Most of your career was spent behind the lines, destroying munitions, stealing supplies, and intercepting intelligence . . . killing Midasian interrogators. Hardly fighting the honorable fight, was it?” As she spoke, her face, her voice, her entire body softened. “We’re not so different, Gideon.”

“Yes, we are, and stop that,” he ordered. “We both know you’re as seductive as the proverbial road to Pollution. There’s no point pushing my buttons just to prove it. Which brings up another issue . . .”

“It does, indeed.” She looked down, then up again. “I thought you weren’t interested?”

“Ha. And I’m not,” he said between clenched teeth because of course he was interested.

“Of course you’re interested,” she said with a scary little smile.

“You,” he said shortly, “are poison.”

“And you a blunt instrument,” she said, showing no sign of offense. “Weapons, the both of us, in service to our countries. But knowing that, why can’t we—”

“Just get along?” he cut in.

“Something like that.” She leaned back, so the satin of her robe blended with the silk of the coverlet, and it seemed to Gideon she was swimming in a pool of blood.

“Just that easy?” he asked, though his voice had gone a bit rough.

“Why not?” she asked in turn, while her hands slid up the coverlet to either side, open and inviting—until her right hand slipped beneath the massed pillows at the head of the bed.

He had to give her credit; she’d almost gotten a grip on the knife hidden under the pillow before he was on top of her, his left hand tightening around her wrist until she was forced to release the needle-like weapon.

“Nice try,” he said, taking custody of the blade.

“Who says I failed?” Beneath him, she relaxed. Her lips parted, and he became uncomfortably aware how little fabric was involved in the robe she wore. “I got you where I wanted, didn’t I?” When he said nothing, she smiled. “Why, Gideon, I sense you’re . . . conflicted.”

Conflicted wasn’t the word for what he was. He could feel every centimeter of the woman, see the flutter of her pulse at her throat.

Every breath he took was filled with the scent of her.

It would be so easy to rip that flimsy bit of satin aside. So easy to . . .

What the hell is wrong with you?

He blinked, then let out a curse that came out more like a growl before flinging himself away, taking the knife with him.

She sighed and curled herself to a sitting position. “Why are you so resistant?”

“Where to start? Maybe the bit where you framed me for your husband’s murder—after I did six years hard labor because you persuaded him to frame me for treason?” His lip curled as he added, “I’d ask how you did it, but after last night and just now, I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

She tossed her head. “Don’t be crude.”

“How can you say that with a straight face?” he asked. “But that’s not what I meant.”

She frowned. “Then what did you mean?”

“I meant that as attractive as you are, I find it improbable that simply being in the same room with you turns me into a randy teenager with the mental faculties of a dodo.”

“And that’s different from your norm in what way?”

“Ouch,” he said mildly, before continuing. “I felt it the first time in Allianza, right before you shot that Midasian soldier. I knew it was wrong, what I was feeling for you; especially given where we were. But all you had to do was look at me and all my thoughts just,” he raised his right hand and exploded his fingers outward in description of his mental state. “Then we were moving, and I mostly forgot about it.”

“Funny, because I forgot it as soon as it happened.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Because if you had forgotten, you wouldn’t have convinced your husband I assaulted you. Who’d you get to mark you up, anyway?”

She stared.

He waited.

She sighed. “Nahmin. He did a very convincing job, so much so that Jessup went quite mad. Luckily my tears, and the fear of scandal, dissuaded him from confronting you directly.”

“So instead he used his position to send my company into Nasa, making me look like a traitor,” Gideon finished for her. “And I bet he never once questioned what he was doing because it was you who asked him to do it.”

“He loved me,” she said simply.

“I’m sure he thought he did.”

She raised her hands in frustration. “How is that not the same thing?”

“It’s not the same thing because it wasn’t him loving you. It was you making him love you.”

Her face, usually so expressive, closed like a moonflower at sunsrise. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Cut the crap, Celia. You know exactly what I mean, and you know exactly what I mean because you can feel it, and you can feel it because you’re not just a spy, you’re a sensitive.”

Nahmin spied the mass of police as soon as he reached the corner of Chaucer and Canterbury, so he continued around the next block before he parked, slipped through the Muirs’ back garden, then climbed over the dividing wall to the Rand estate.

He landed in the kitchen garden nestled between the stables and the main house, where he paused to listen to the proceedings on the other side of the wall.

Which was how he learned Quinn had used the buffoonish Ohmdahl triplets to lure Rey and Ronan to the boathouse and into the waiting shackles of the Nike PD.

Fearing the worst, he raced to the house itself only to find the servants’ entrance bolted and the key broken inside the lock.

He stepped back and looked up to Celia’s bedroom window, from which Quinn had recently escaped.

“Are you waiting for something?” Celia asked, nothing in her voice giving away the speed at which her heart was beating. “Applause? A clap of thunder? A tearful confession?”

“I don’t doubt you could pull one out,” Gideon replied while, she noted, keeping a healthy distance from the bed. “But like I said earlier, I just came for my coat. And maybe some answers.”

“You’ve done such a fine job of coming up with your own answers,” she said, adding a negligent shrug. “What could I possibly add?”

“How about why you’re still active, now the war has ended?”

“The war hasn’t ended,” she scoffed. “It has simply moved to a different battlefield.”

“I’ll say.” Gideon glanced at the bed, then he flipped the knife again, then used it as a pointer. “So, to sum up, you, Celia Rand, are in fact the Coalition operative known as Odile.”

“Fine. Yes.” She sat up and crossed her arms over her knees, willing to play along until . . . well, until. “You are impressed with yourself, aren’t you?”

“You are also a sensitive of some flavor or other.”

“Empath,” she confirmed, then gasped at the rush of revulsion that erupted from Gideon. “What?” she asked, blinking at the sudden stinging in her eyes.

“I guess no one’s ever manipulated your emotions against your will,” he said, studying her.

“Of course they have,” she said, her voice almost breaking as she met his gaze, saw the flicker of his surprise even as she felt it. “How do you think we were trained?”

“I guess that—training—would be necessary for maintaining a cover as deep as yours, for as long as you did,” he said, and she took some pleasure in his discomfort. “Only, and I’m guessing here,” he continued, “when I was released from prison, you were worried about keeping that cover; maybe wondering how poor old Jessup would react. Maybe he’s starting to feel a little bit guilty about killing those six soldiers—sorry, five soldiers.” He shrugged. “Turns out your husband failed to murder my lieutenant.”

“That’s not all he failed at,” she said tightly.

“Guess the mourning period is over,” he observed, and started to pace as he continued. “Anyway, you’re worried, and being a sensitive, you’d have known you were right to worry. What to do? What to do?” He spun from the hearth and started toward the window. “Why not solve both potential problems at once? Jessup is becoming a liability, and I’m already—”

“Troublesome,” she cut in, sliding to the edge of the bed. “The word you tend to inspire is ‘troublesome.’”

“And I’m troublesome,” he echoed, pausing in front of her. “So why not take out two dracos with one stone? Send your lackeys out to fetch me, and once they do, you drug me, murder your husband, and leave me to wake up in his blood. How am I doing so far?”

“Impressively accurate. I would pay as much as two starbucks to see you at the Circus. So accurate, in fact, I wonder if you’ve a touch of sensitivity as well?”

“Doubt it.”

Despite the casual tone, his eyes darkened with the desire Celia kindled. Encouraged, she prodded him further, psionically stoking the fire of his need as she asked, “And why is that?”

“Sensitives in the Barrens don’t do well—something about live crystal,” he told her. “Something you’ll be finding out, soon enough.”

“No, I’m afraid I won’t,” she said, even as a low, mournful keen rose from outside, causing Gideon to spin towards the window.

At the same moment Nahmin swept like smoke through the billowing curtains, his blade slicing through the air between himself and Gideon.

Celia dropped to the floor, fully expecting to see Gideon falling to the carpet at her side.

What she saw instead was Nahmin’s dagger rebounding off the bedpost before dropping to the carpet with a dull thud.

Turning, she spied a pair of long legs in rough-spun trousers, facing the window.

Looking up, she saw Gideon, his eyes glittering dangerously, his left hand extended and empty.

Her gaze tracked the direction of that hand to see Nahmin, standing just inside the window, his expression blank and her own knife lodged in his throat.

He really has that move down, she thought, remembering another Midasian in Allianza.

Even as she thought this, Nahmin’s head tipped in her direction, and his mouth fell open, but no sound emerged.

Still, she felt what he felt, and surprised the both of them with the tears that wet her cheeks. “Your service will be remembered,” she told him.

Her words seemed to act as scissors, for on hearing them Nahmin’s legs buckled, and he dropped to the carpet where, after a soft sigh of release, Celia felt him no more.

She blinked away the tears to see Gideon, already crouching to retrieve Nahmin’s knife from where it had fallen.

“You should run now,” she told him, her voice strange and flat in her own ears.

He looked up from his study of the blade. “Why?”

She stared at him, so calm so . . . smug . . . “You’ve just murdered my servant. That’s two men in two days, dead by your hand.”

“I didn’t kill your husband.”

“You killed Nahmin.”

“In self-defense.”

“That may be true, but we both know when it comes to your word against mine, the widow of a decorated general trumps the ravings of a convicted traitor.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “I guess you’re right.” Then he rose and crossed toward one of her display tables. “Which makes it a good thing I left this on, so the coppers could hear our conversation.”

As she watched, Gideon picked up a battered military radio from amidst the cans and music boxes and ancient shoes. “Quinn to Hama,” he said into the device, “did you get all that?”

“DS Hama is on the door, but rest assured, I got all of it,” a woman’s voice, dry and crisp despite the static, came over the radio.

“General Satsuke.” Gideon rolled his eyes. “So glad you could make it.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” the general replied. “But that enlightening conversation provided more than enough to take Msr Rand into custody, if someone will unlock the door.”

“We’ll be right there. Over and out,” Gideon said, then set the radio down and held out a hand to Celia. “Coming?”

She looked at that hand, then at Nahmin—specifically at the dagger protruding from Nahmin’s throat.

She could, she was certain, have the knife out of his throat and into her own heart before Gideon could stop her.

“If you do that,” she heard Gideon say, “you’ll be admitting you lost.”

“I have lost.” She looked up to see him watching her. Hatred and—something else—burned in her heart.

“You’ve lost the battle,” he agreed. “But you said it yourself, the war’s not over.”

His hand was still out, still waiting.

“Why do you care?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, after a beat.

Being what she was, she could feel this was so.

She could only speculate on what caused the emotional conflict. “Maybe you wish to see me suffer for my crimes.”

He held her gaze. “Maybe.”

“Or maybe,” she said, holding up her own hand and allowing him to pull her to her feet, “you’ve come to accept we really are much the same.”

His gaze sharpened, then he looked away.

Celia took it as a triumph, small though it was, to have rendered him speechless.