Gameboard of the Gods

CHAPTER 24 THERAPY

Mae hadn’t expected to get as much amusement as she had out of Justin’s treatment of Tessa’s poor date. Maybe after everything that had happened in Mazatlán, that little bit of comic relief was what she needed. It didn’t change Mae’s overall mood, of course. She was still reeling from everything that had happened, still trying to find a way to process the unimaginable: that a man she’d come to respect—despite how infuriating he was at times—was being driven by delusions of the very thing he was supposed to be fighting against.

As she started to climb the steps to her town house, she remembered a message that had come to her ego about a package that had arrived for her. She changed course and walked to the building next door, where her landlord lived. His lobby held all the tenant mailboxes on that block, as well as larger compartments for packages. Kneeling down, Mae located the one indicated and scanned her ego over the digital lock. The door clicked open, and she found a bouquet of long-stemmed white roses, their petals delicately edged in pink. She picked them up in surprise, searched for a card that wasn’t there, and headed back to her home.

She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had sent her flowers. Maybe some love-struck former soldier from back before she’d joined the prætorians? Porfirio hadn’t been much for gestures like these. Sure, he went for the dramatic sometimes, but it would be things like a candlelit bedroom, the kind of act that usually resulted immediately in sex. For half a second, she wondered if they were from Justin as a sort of Sorry for completely deceiving you about my involvement in illicit religions apology. But no. The flowers had arrived while they were traveling to Mazatlán.

She put them in a vase and received an answer far more quickly than expected when her ego rang with a call. The display showed a shocking name, and she switched the call over to her living room screen. Lucian Darling’s smiling face appeared, as handsome and polished as anything she’d find at a press conference.

“Senator,” she said in greeting. “I figured you’d forgotten about me.”

His grin widened. “Impossible. Just been caught up in the whirlwind of campaigning. Not that that’s an excuse.”

“I don’t know about that. It’s actually kind of a good one, what with you preparing to lead the country and all that.”

“Does that mean you’ll urge your representative to vote for me?”

She laughed and settled onto the couch. “Sure.”

“Then I’m one step closer. Was it the roses that won you over?”

“No, but thank you.” Despite all the ease and charm he radiated, she felt a little flustered by the gesture. It kicked his flirting from their first meeting up a notch, something she wasn’t sure she wanted. “You didn’t have to.”

“Of course I did. I needed to secure your vote. That, and I was hoping I could get you out for a late dinner.”

The unexpected just kept coming. “Tonight?”

“Sorry about the short notice.” Something in his manner made her think he wasn’t that sorry, that he still figured she’d jump at the chance. He and Justin weren’t that different after all. “An event just got canceled, so I’m homebound in Vancouver for the night and thought you might like to come over. Don’t read that as presumption,” he added. “It’s more for convenience. I’d gladly take you out somewhere, but I don’t think you’d like the attention.”

“Probably not,” she said in agreement. Remembering Justin’s observations about the political fallout of a plebeian senator dating a castal, Mae knew Lucian wouldn’t like the attention either.

“Fortunately for you, I can cook the kind of steak most people only dream of. You’ll be a believer.” That smile was in overdrive now as he waited for her response.

“That’s sweet. And flattering,” she said honestly. “But I literally just walked in after a long trip and don’t think I’m up to getting out.” Or navigating the treacherous waters of this sort of liaison. “I’m sorry. But thank you.”

His face fell only a little. Undaunted, he asked, “I’m out of town tomorrow but back the next day. How’s Monday night work for you?”

She shook her head. “I’m out of town. Justin and I are going to be out at the Nordic land grant.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Taking him home to meet the parents?”

“Business,” she said, shuddering at the thought of unleashing him on her family.

“Well, that reminds me…I also called because I’ve got an answer—sort of—to Justin’s question about servitor hiring.”

She’d nearly forgotten about that. “Why not call him?”

“I’d rather talk to you. Besides, he’d give me grief about not having much that’s conclusive.”

“What’d you find out?”

He shrugged. “Mostly that the number of servitors has increased because the demand has increased.”

“Are you sure?” Mae tried to recall what Justin had said. “I think he checked the number of cases SCI’s got. There’s no significant difference from last year.”

Lucian’s eyes sparkled, probably at one-upping Justin. “He checked the national cases. But not ones in the protectorates and provinces.”

She was startled. “I didn’t think we sent many servitors there. Especially the provinces.” Protectorates weren’t that surprising. They were usually on track to being annexed, so it made sense that the RUNA would start cleaning house in advance.

“We do now,” said Lucian.

“Why?”

“No one gave me an answer on that. But I also found out some of the national cases are getting multiple servitors investigating them.” He tilted his head to study her. “Is that helpful?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Justin will have to make the call on that. I’ll pass it on. Thank you.”

The grin was back. “Happy to help. Especially if I get to talk to you again. Don’t worry—we’ll make something work out one of these days.”

“Thanks,” said Mae, who hadn’t been worried.

There was something appealing about him, but again, it was a mess she didn’t need. After a little more flirtation, Lucian disconnected and Mae stood up, stretching her muscles. The activity in Mazatlán hadn’t wearied her. If anything, it had made her crave more physical action. The odds of finding a canne partner this time of night were pretty low, though.

In a heartbeat, she made her decision—an ironic one, considering she’d just rejected Lucian. But she needed a simpler man now, one who didn’t travel with reporters in tow and could help her with this physical restlessness in as simple a way as possible.

“Call Giles Whitetree,” she told the screen.

He answered quickly, looking pleasantly surprised to see her face. “Koskinen.”

Whitetree had been on her mind since she’d seen him at the senate. He was a Scarlet too, one of the nicest guys in her cohort. Little stressed him out, and he didn’t kiss and tell. His liaisons sometimes did, and what they told was always favorable.

“What are you doing tonight?” she asked.

“About to head over to some Celadon’s place across town. Rumor has it he got some ree.”

“You want to come over here instead?”

Whitetree paused and gave her a considering look, perfectly understanding the subtext. “Have you moved?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen.”

They disconnected, and Mae wondered if she should make it easy on him by changing into a robe. Her implant would encourage her body to increase the chemicals of lust, just as it did those of battle. That surge in sex hormones sent women to heart-racing levels of arousal—men into blind frenzies. Normal male sex drives had a tendency to be stronger in general. Paired with an implant, those sex drives could grow out of control. However he was traveling here, Whitetree had fifteen minutes to think about sex, which was an eternity for the implant’s effects to keep building and building. Prætorians took nonprætorian lovers often, but it could sometimes be difficult for civilian women who weren’t prepared for that roughness. Although it was rare, prætorian men occasionally found themselves accused of rape.

“Look at you, courted by politicians and warriors alike.”

Mae immediately turned toward the voice that had come from the dark hall leading to her bedroom. Her guns were on the kitchen counter, and she couldn’t risk exposing herself to retrieve them. She picked up the first weapon she could find: a heavy stone bowl she’d brought back from a mission in Asia.

Emil, the man from the Brödern, materialized from the darkness. At least he wasn’t armed again, but that didn’t rule out a threat, especially seeing as he’d broken into her home. “How the hell did you get in here?” she demanded.

“I get where I need to go,” he said mildly. There was such an irritating casualness about him that Mae half expected him to go help himself to something in the refrigerator. “And it’s hard to find you in one place these days.”

She kept her grip on the bowl. “Really? And here I thought your group’s influence reached everywhere.”

“No, though it goes far. Did you get the hair examined?” Now that he was in better lighting, she couldn’t detect a trace of Cain on him.

“Yes,” she said reluctantly.

“And?”

“And it could still be a ploy. You could’ve gotten it from my aunt, and it’d have the same match.”

“That’s a lot of effort for one ploy.”

“Ploys generally work that way, especially if you really do want some enterprising prætorian to join up with you. You want to convince me? Give me an address and location. Or doesn’t your reach go there either?” While she spoke, Mae’s mind was racing, figuring out the best way to subdue this guy. If she’d had her ego within reach, she might have managed a covert call to the authorities. As it was, he couldn’t be that hard for her to take out herself, so long as he didn’t have a gun concealed somewhere. Even organized criminal groups had difficulty obtaining guns in the RUNA, but they were more likely to have them than average civilians.

“It’s hard for anyone to reach into Arcadia,” he said. “We lost track of her shortly after the picture was taken, but we can help you get to her—if you help us and take your rightful place.”

Mae didn’t hear anything past one key word. Arcadia. “You’re lying. They wouldn’t have sent her there.”

“Wouldn’t they?” Emil asked, meeting her eyes levelly.

Yes, she thought bleakly, they might very well have done that. “What do you want from me?”

“What we’ve always wanted: you to take your rightful place in the group you were born into and step up now that we need you.”

“Step up how?” She didn’t want to negotiate with these people, but it had suddenly become impossible to shake the image of that small girl in the desolate reaches of the RUNA’s tyrannical neighbor.

“By doing what you do best. We need you to kill someone.”

“Oh, is that all?”

He frowned, momentarily caught up in his own thoughts. “You kept company with the servant of another goddess this weekend, one our mistress doesn’t like. You need to eliminate her.”

“I don’t ‘need’ to do anything,” snapped Mae, trying to hide her shock at the reference to Callista. How did they even know about her? “And I’m not an assassin for hire.”

He shot her a wry look. “Really? Then why do you collect a government paycheck? Don’t be stupid about this. It’s your last chance to embrace your destiny…otherwise, you’ll face the consequences.”

Her body tensed. “Threats now if I don’t do your killing? Why would you even care about some zealot in the borderlands?”

“Because she and her goddess present a risk.”

“A risk to the Br—” Mae suddenly cut herself off as a terrible, sinking feeling emerged within her. It seemed as though Justin wasn’t going to be her last wacky mistaken-identity mishap. “You aren’t with the Brödern.”

Emil was briefly thrown off. “The Swedish mafia? Those underlings?” Slowly, almost comically, realization dawned on him as well. “You don’t know, do you? You have no idea who I am.”

“I know you’re a guy who broke into my house and dangled promises of my niece in order to get me to commit murder. Seems like that’s plenty.”

His eyes were full of wonder. “Unbelievable. They broke the rules and never taught you her ways. I just figured you were one of the many who stray, but you were never even set on the path. It’s a shame,” he murmured. “You’re too dangerous to change now.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

She threw the bowl, clipping Emil in the head. It made him stagger, and then with astonishing speed, he melted back into the shadows. She sprinted to the hall in a few easy steps and found no sign of him. It was impossible. He couldn’t be faster than her. Without stopping, she headed toward the bedroom and flipped on the light. He wasn’t there either. Swearing, she spun around and headed to the bathroom, wondering if he’d sidestepped into it. It too was empty. Her heart racing, she hurried back to the living room. Emil must have slipped into the bathroom while she was in the bedroom and then doubled back out. It was the only explanation…but it was improbable. This whole chase had only lasted a matter of seconds. She’d heard no door or window, and neither was open. The bolt to the storage area on the second floor was still in place.

She searched the apartment again, looking in every possible place: closets, under the bed, etc. No sign. He was gone, vanished without a trace. How had he done it? She paced around, more out of agitation than anything else. What did she do now? Calling the police over a break-in wasn’t unreasonable, but what was she supposed to say?

“Damn it.” She sat on the couch again, trying to calm down and figure out what to do. Except, there was nothing to do. It’s your last chance to embrace your destiny. Ominous words. She wanted desperately to tell someone about this, but who was there?

And more important, who was Emil? With his blond looks and information about her niece, it’d been easy to assume he was one of the mobsters she’d long beseeched for help. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. Weirder still, he seemed to think she should’ve known who he was, furthering the mix-up. She wished she had Justin’s talent for memorization so that she could analyze all the tiny details of the conversation. Surely there was a clue in Emil’s words. The most she could draw on was his mysterious use of feminine pronouns and his reference to some “mistress.”

The chiming of her doorbell made Mae jump. She’d nearly forgotten about Whitetree. Sex was suddenly the farthest thing from her mind, but he was on her before she could shut the door. There was an animal look in his eyes as he pulled her to him and crushed her mouth with a kiss. The kiss was unexpected and was what convinced her to shove Emil from her mind. The encounter with him had amped her physical responses up, and she suddenly wanted an outlet for them. Usually prætorian men didn’t waste time with kissing. In fact, in a remarkable show of restraint, he actually managed to carry her off to her dark bedroom rather than taking her on the couch, against the wall, on the floor….

But after that, the primitive urge took over, and their clothes were off in seconds. There was too much testosterone churning through him, and any rational thought he might have had was swallowed by his body’s out-of-control need to mate. She’d only just managed to lie on the bed when he threw himself onto her body, and like that, he was in her. No preamble, no foreplay. Mae made no attempts at resistance as he took out that animal fury on her. It was hard and it was rough, but her own desire had spiraled up enough to welcome it.

It was also brief. Prætorian sex almost always followed a similar pattern. That initial burst of lust was mindless and raging, and his body needed the relief as soon as it could manage it. He collapsed onto her, his breathing ragged and his skin already slick with sweat. This pure, basic need was a welcome change to all of the muddled goings-on of the last few days. Nothing esoteric here. Just nature.

With that initial blind lust sated, Whitetree’s desire—though still strong—eased a little. He rolled over, his breathing relaxing. It wouldn’t take long for him to recover if they wanted to do it again, and although it’d still be fast and furious, the second time usually managed to last a little longer and sometimes even allowed for foreplay.

But for now, Mae was content. Fast or not, her body had still found release, its bliss momentarily trumping her troubled mind. With their needs temporarily satisfied, the implant wound down, no longer needing to increase the hormonal output. Their hands trembled as the excess chemicals were metabolized.

“Lucky me,” said Whitetree at last.

“I’ve been kind of stressed.”

He laughed and brushed back her hair. “Well, if you need therapy again, I’ll be around. I’ve got another month here.”

“Doubly lucky,” she said, surprised at the bitterness in her voice.

“Hey, you’ll be back in the game soon,” he said, trying to reassure her.

Mae put her hands behind her head and sighed. “I should’ve just skipped the funeral.”

He shifted to his side to look her in the eyes. “She asked for it, Koskinen. She provoked it. You’ve got a hundred witnesses.”

“People keep saying that, but it doesn’t matter. I should’ve done the noble thing and walked away.” Thinking about Kavi was killing some of the afterglow happiness. So much for a reprieve. “The only upshot is that I didn’t cause anything worse than a quick hospital stay and physical therapy.”

“Not that quick,” he said. “She’s still hospitalized.”

Mae sat up abruptly. “What? It’s been three weeks! It takes a fraction of that time to set and bind a broken bone. She should be home recovering on her own.”

“I’m no doctor. That’s just what I heard. Addison was over there the other day after getting in a fight—defending your honor, by the way.”

Mae barely heard him. She was still reeling from the news. Why in the world would they still have Kavi at the base’s hospital? True, she’d been pretty messed up afterward, but there was no way she’d still need intensive treatment…would she?

“Just let it go. It’s over and out of your hands.” Whitetree gently drew her back down. “One more time?”

Mae nodded, if only to have an excuse not to think about Kavi. When they finished, he offered to stick around for more, but she declined. He asked if he could use the shower, and she directed him to it and the towels. Pushing Kavi out of her head, Mae just tried to lie in bed and revel in her body’s satisfaction. It didn’t work, because her mind wandered to Panama and the tantalizing way sex had been drawn out there. Plebeian men might not have been able to keep up with prætorian frequency, but they more than compensated with the ability to make sex last and build up the anticipation with long lingering touches….

Mae suddenly grew angry at her traitorous thoughts, especially in the wake of her current mess with Justin. She almost considered asking Whitetree for a third time, if only to blot out her memories, but was no longer up to it. When he finished in the shower, he encouraged her to come out to the Maize party with him, but she declined. In a particularly gallant gesture, he told her he’d wait around until she showered. It would have been perfectly normal in the world of prætorian sex for him to take off.

She was halfway through blow-drying her hair when she heard him knock at the bathroom door and call her name. She turned the dryer off. “What is it?”

“That guy’s here. The one you were with at the senate.”

Mae was certain she’d misheard. She put her robe on and stepped outside. In the living room, she found that Justin was very much there and also very, very drunk. He held out a bottle of ree to her.

“I come bearing gifts. But I guess next time, I should call first.” Mae could only stare in disbelief. She wasn’t ready for this. She still needed to process the revelations in Mazatlán. And Emil.

Whitetree pulled on his shirt and kissed her cheek. “My cue to go. Call if you change your mind.”

As he left, Mae thought that a glass of ree might not be such a bad idea after all.

“Get some water,” she told Justin. “I’ll be right back.”

Whatever was about to happen, she wasn’t going to do it half-naked. She put on a T-shirt and flannel pajama pants. Her damp hair wasn’t particularly elegant, but as she returned and looked at Justin, she doubted he’d even remember tomorrow.

He’d ignored the water order and sprawled out on her couch, with his arm tossed over his head. She sat down in an armchair opposite him and waited expectantly.

“So was that his one time?” Justin asked. “No second date for plebeians, right?”

“Why are you here?” she demanded. She reminded herself that she’d promised to be patient with Justin, in light of his mental state, but it was kind of hard under the circumstances. “It can’t be just to interrogate me about my personal life.”

“No,” he said in agreement. “That was just a bonus. You wouldn’t believe all that’s happened since I saw you earlier.” Considering she’d been asked out by a senator and ordered to perform an assassination, Mae was pretty sure she could believe any number of things had happened. “Did you know Tessa’s a terrorist? She invaded the senate. Er, the gardens.”

Okay, that wasn’t one Mae had expected. “How much have you drunk tonight?”

“I’m serious,” he said, studying her face. “She and some of those stupid kids climbed the garden walls. Bad enough for any of them, let alone a Panamanian citizen.”

He was actually serious, she realized. “Is…is she in jail?”

“No. She had the astonishing and improbable good luck of being caught and brought home by two prætorians. Two prætorians who are big fans of yours.”

Mae closed her eyes for a moment. “You can’t be serious. Not Val and Dag.”

“They drank half my liquor cabinet, you know.” He paused. “Okay, that’s an exaggeration. There’s plenty where that came from.”

For some reason, it bothered her that Justin had met her friends. There was nothing illicit about it, but it was just something she’d never shared with him. “That’s why you’re here? Do you want me to reimburse you for what they drank?”

That brought a flicker of a smile to his lips. “No. It was worth it to meet our country’s noble defenders.” He glanced away for a few moments, and when he looked back up, all traces of humor were gone. His dark eyes bored into her. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me about Porfirio and that funeral?”

Mae froze, unable to respond for several seconds. “How do you know about that?” she asked in a low, low voice. But it was a stupid question. Val and Dag had spilled everything because they had no control switch.

“You should have told me.” There was a surprising desperation in him. “You should’ve told me that you were only with me as a punishment. And that you were in mourning after some ill-fated romance. Fuck, Mae. If I’d known that, I never would have…I don’t know. I would’ve done things a lot differently.”

The world spun for a moment and then abruptly snapped back into focus. Something exploded in Mae’s chest, and she shot to her feet. “No!” she exclaimed. “You can’t know that. It’s mine. Everything else you’ve clawed out of me. That was the one thing I still had. The part of me you hadn’t figured out with your goddamned ‘amazing’ sleuthing skills. You can’t know everything about me. You have no right!”

She was surprised to find she was clenching her fists. Even the implant had spun up a little with her agitation. It wasn’t the content that bothered her so much. The story of Porfirio and the funeral was widely known. But in seizing that last piece of her life, it was like Justin had unraveled everything about her. She was open and exposed. There was no escaping, and she suddenly hated him for it.

Perhaps the only satisfying thing here was his complete and total shock. She didn’t know what he’d expected from her, but this outrage obviously wasn’t it. Finally. Something he hadn’t figured out.

“Mae…” He faltered. There it was, another rarity: him without a clever response.

“You think you’re so smart,” she continued. “You think it’s a game—that it’s some right you have—to pry and crack open other people. But you can’t! You can’t do that to people.”

His face was perfectly still as he processed her words. “I told you before that I can’t help it,” he said finally. “I can’t help seeing the things I do.”

Mae crossed her arms and stalked away to the kitchen. She opened the bottle of ree he’d left there and, without any formalities, took a long drink before speaking again. “You don’t have to flaunt it.”

She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want him to see something else in her. Seeing the outside of her body was nothing compared to seeing the inside. Even now, he was probably analyzing her outburst, and she already felt too raw and exposed. If she kept her back to him, maybe she could hide the hole in her that she felt he’d ripped open. The silence that stretched between them was agonizing. When he spoke again, his voice was very, very quiet.

“I’m sorry.”

Somehow, she knew he didn’t apologize very often. If ever. That didn’t mean all was right with the world, but she felt the need to acknowledge his words. Slowly, against her better judgment, she turned around and felt the first flush of the ree hitting her, bringing a slight tingling to her limbs.

“That doesn’t change things,” she said.

“No,” he agreed. “I can’t take back what I said. Or what I know. I’m sorry.”

There it was again. She swallowed and forced that calm indifference onto her face. “Nothing to be done. But thanks for the apology.”

“But it’s not accepted.”

She threw up her hands. “What do you expect me to say?”

“I don’t know.” He slumped back. “I meant what I said back in Panama: You’re hard to read. And I don’t know how to deal with that. You’re still that devastatingly beautiful Nordic nine who looks so sad sometimes and is terrified of losing control. I want to understand that. I mean, I guess I kind of do now, but still. I know you think I have no respect for women, but I really wouldn’t have taken advantage of you back then. And when I gave you that asshole line about no second dates, I really wish that—well.” He shook his head. “Forget it.”

“You didn’t take advantage of me.” Mae took another long drink of ree. “And I’m not in mourning. I mean, I didn’t want him to die. I’m sad for that—I am. But everyone seems to forget I ended things with him. I refused him.”

“Why did you? From what Dag and Val said, you guys were—” Justin abruptly stopped and looked sheepish. “Sorry. Horatio’s just tactfully reminded me I’m doing it again—pushing you. It’s none of my business.”

Horatio. The raven that lived inside Justin’s head. She’d almost forgotten about that in the midst of this new drama.

“What else do they say?” she asked. As the ree continued to work, talking about imaginary ravens didn’t seem that strange.

“They tell me you’ve already forgotten about the guy who was here.”

Mae supposed that was true. It also was a conclusion Justin himself might have subconsciously drawn. She sighed.

“Do you want to know why I have control issues?” she asked. “It’s because people have been trying to control me since birth. Only my dad didn’t, and he’s been gone for years.” Mae wasn’t sure where her next words came from. “I know what else you want to know,” she said. She wanted to believe this admission was ree-driven, but some part of her also needed to let out what was inside. He’d shown discretion with everything else he knew about her, and besides, she kind of had leverage over him. “You want to know how a Nordic nine ended up in the military.”

His eyes said yes, he very much wanted to know that. “It’s not my business.”

“It is now. Get comfortable.”