“Can I help—?” The clerk does a double take as he realizes he faces the famed Conqueror of Urav.
“I need you to make something for me,” she says before he can comment.
“Oh, ah … Certainly. What would it be?”
She places the little ball of metal on the counter. “A bolt tip,” she says. “Or a small knife.”
“Well … which would you like? A bolt tip or a knife?”
“Something that could be both, if needed. I will need this to be quite versatile.”
The clerk picks up the ball of black metal. “And what would you be hunting, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Shara smiles and says, “Deer?”
*
CD KOMAYD TO GHS512
EMERGENCY SITUATION STOP
RESTORATIONISTS PLAN FULL SCALE ASSAULT STOP
REQUEST RELOCATION AND FORTIFICATION OF ALL POLIS TROOPS IN BULIKOV STOP
CES512
PG MULAGHESH TO CES512
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR DAMN MIND STOP
ARE YOU EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE INVESTIGATING THIS ANYMORE STOP
MUST PROVIDE MORE DETAILS STOP
GHS512
CD KOMAYD TO GHS512
CANNOT PROVIDE DETAILS STOP
NOT DUE TO UNCERTAINTY DUE TO LENGTH STOP
QUESTION OF JURISDICTION IMMATERIAL DUE TO THREAT LEVEL STOP
PLEASE MOBILIZE FORCES IMMEDIATELY STOP
CES512
PG MULAGHESH TO CES512
PLEASE PROVIDE SOME INDICATION OF THREAT LEVEL STOP
ANYTHING STOP
MOVING FIVE HUNDRED ARMED TROOPS TO AN URBAN AREA NOT LIKE BACKING UP A WAGON FULL OF POTATOES STOP
GHS512
CD KOMAYD TO GHS512
RESTORATIONISTS CONFIRMED TO POSSESS 30 PLUS SIX INCH CANNONS NORMALLY SUITED FOR DREADNOUGHTS STOP
TARGETS CURRENTLY UNKNOWN STOP
GHS512
PG MULAGHESH TO CES512
IF I COMPLY WILL YOU TAKE THE HEAT FOR THIS STOP
ALSO WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JAVRAT STOP
GHS512
CD KOMAYD TO GHS512
IF MILITARY REACTION IS NOT IMMEDIATE THEN LIKELIHOOD OF THERE BEING A MINISTRY TO APPLY HEAT VERY LOW STOP
LET ALONE A JAVRAT STOP
CES512
PG MULAGHESH TO CES512
WILL BEGIN MOBILIZATION IMMEDIATELY STOP
IF YOU MAKE ME START ANOTHER WAR WILL NEVER FORGIVE STOP
GHS512
CD KOMAYD TO GHS512
WAR ALREADY STARTED STOP
CES512
*
Just once I would like to get eight hours of sleep, thinks Shara. I would pay for them. Steal them. Something.
But Shara cannot sleep. She is working on a deadline—Mulaghesh’s forces will arrive in a matter of hours—but knows she is missing something. Yet she feels she is drowning in information: Efrem’s journal, the lists from the Warehouse, financial transactions, Continental history, forbidden lists, Votrov subsidiaries, possessors of loomworks—all of it dances before her eyes until she cannot hold a single thought besides, Please, just calm down, stop thinking and calm down, just stop, stop, stop. …
A tap at the door. Shara shouts, “No!”
A pause. Pitry’s voice: “Well, I think you—”
“No! No appointments. None! I told you that!”
“I know, but—”
“All meetings are off! All of them. Tell them I’m … Tell them I’m sick! Tell them I’m dying, I don’t care.”
“All right, but … but this is a little different.” He slowly enters the room. “It’s a letter.”
“Oh, Pitry …” She rubs her eyes. “Why do you do this to me? Is it from Mulaghesh?”
“No. It’s from Votrov. A boy brought it on a silver plate. And it’s … very odd.”
Shara takes the message. It reads:
IN A GAME OF TOVOS VA, ONE PLAY CAN END THE GAME, BUT IT CAN TAKE YOUR OPPONENT SOME TIME TO REALIZE IT’S ALREADY OVER.
I KNOW WHEN I’VE LOST.
COME TO THE NEW SOLDA BRIDGE, BUT PLEASE COME ALONE.
I DON’T WISH THE PRESS TO KNOW. I DON’T WISH TO HARM ALL THE GOOD I TRIED TO DO.
V.
Shara reads this several times. “He can’t be serious.”
“What’s he talking about?”
“To be honest, I’ve no earthly idea,” says Shara. Could Votrov actually be involved with the Restorationists? It seems absurd, but, if so, could calling in the military have cut their plans off at the knees? And, even more, how could he have heard?
None of this makes any sense. Either Vohannes has gone insane—something she isn’t ready to rule out yet—or she’s missing a very big piece of the puzzle.
“What are you going to do?” asks Pitry.
“Well,” she says, “if he asked me to meet him at his home, somewhere private, I’d never go. But the New Solda Bridge site is both public and terribly popular. I think he’d be mad to try something there.”
But that still doesn’t answer the question: what is she going to do? An operative takes care of their sources personally, she tells herself. And though he’s not a source, he is mine. But deep down, she does not want any other Ministry official to deal with Vo. So many insurgents and enemy agents wind up disappearing to meet horrible ends.