Finally, her body was repaired. Better than it had ever been. Odette looked at herself in the mirror and saw exactly the same person. On the inside, she knew, she was stronger, faster, with greater control. Her spurs were tucked away inside her arms, but they were new. Her old ones, the ones Pim had sculpted for her, had shattered inside her during the scream. The new ones had been made by a distant relative who lived in Bratislava. Everything about her was bespoke, specially made. Her whole body was couture.
Inside her mind, though, she felt broken. She had enough control of herself to ensure that she didn’t dream, but she was still haunted by memories of what had happened.
And then she was summoned to meet with Rook Thomas and Grootvader Ernst to make her report.
Odette went to the Rookery and was led up to Rook Thomas’s office. Ernst embraced her, holding her tight, but she was stiff in his arms. She could not forget that it had been he who had given the order to make her into a weapon.
She told them everything. They sat silently, and Rook Thomas took some notes, but they did not ask any questions. Odette suspected that they knew it all anyway. When she was finished, Rook Thomas told her what had happened when Mariette attacked the school group at the V and A Museum.
As a result of Odette’s phone call to Alessio, the class had broken down into small groups, with various combat-and defense-powered students assigned to protect those who were more vulnerable. The students had then begun to make their way through the building to a multitude of exits, planning to regroup at a prearranged location. Alessio’s group had been accompanied by the teacher, who was especially eager to ensure the safety of her politically significant charge. As they moved through the fashion gallery, Alessio had recognized Mariette. She was wearing a different face, but she had on an armor-coat that was identical to the one Odette had worn. He very quietly pointed her out to his teacher.
So I suppose it was a good thing, in the end, that I explained everything to him, Odette thought.
The students in his group formed a protective ring around Alessio, and Pawn Tipper had engaged her discreet but devastating abilities. The public had been none the wiser, simply seeing the girl in the suit fall victim to a heart attack. None of them imagined that she had been struck down by a silent word from the teacher’s lips. Investigation of her corpse had revealed smoke grenades filled with an intricate and deadly toxin.
Odette bowed her head and accepted the fact that it was over. The Antagonists were done. Ernst and Rook Thomas remained respectfully silent while Odette absorbed this idea. Then she looked up.
“Is that all?” Odette asked. “Do you need me for anything else?”
“Not today,” said Ernst. “You may go.”
*
“How could they do it?” Odette asked suddenly, and Felicity looked up from her unenthusiastic contemplation of her bowl of muesli. They were having breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Felicity was no longer Odette’s minder — Odette didn’t seem to have a minder anymore. Apparently, if you murder your friends and relations for the sake of national security, the government will finally trust you. But Felicity and she still spent a good deal of time together. The things they’d been through set them both apart from their respective organizations. So they shopped, and walked, and talked. Odette had explained everything to Felicity, how she’d been used. The Pawn hadn’t said anything, for which Odette was profoundly grateful. But now, this morning, Odette needed answers. “How could they do that to me?”
“You’re a Pawn,” said Felicity. “A Pawn of the Checquy. You might not have taken the oath yet, but that’s what you are. You’re a tool, to be used and directed for the good of the people. Sometimes you’ll be a scalpel, cutting out disease. Sometimes you’ll be a sword, and you’ll take on threats with all the strength you can muster. And sometimes, Odette, you’ll be a stiletto, a hidden weapon that slides quietly into the heart.”
“I’m honored,” said Odette. She stared down at her food. “I just can’t stop thinking about it, Felicity. All I can see is them dying. I’ll be walking or taking a bath or watching television, and I’ll remember Saskia getting poisoned by her own body. Or Claudia’s brain shutting down. Or Simon’s skin putrefying. It’s been weeks now, and it doesn’t stop. I want it to go away!”
“It won’t ever go away entirely,” said Felicity. “I wish it did. But with things like this, with wounds on the inside, sometimes it’s just a case of getting through the day. Or the hour. Or the minute. Sometimes the hard times come every other minute, and they’ll keep slapping you so that you can’t ever relax. And sometimes you’ll go for weeks and maybe even months before it gets you, right when you least expect it. But it never goes away entirely.” Odette sighed. “Although it does get easier, Odette. And it’s easier when you have comrades.”
Later that day, Odette went for a walk in Kensington Gardens. The weather was getting colder, and the sky was gray. She looked in the Serpentine Galleries, which Saskia had mentioned visiting, and then stood in the wind and looked at the water. It gets easier, she told herself.
She sat down on a bench. It gets easier. And then she found that, despite herself, she was weeping, and she couldn’t stop. She sat, crying, while people hurried by, averting their gaze out of embarrassment, or courtesy, or distaste. She wept because of the sorrow and the guilt of watching her dearest of friends die, watching her beautiful boy die, and knowing that it was because of her, that she was the vessel of their destruction. She wept because of their rage and their fanaticism and because, in her heart of hearts, she knew that their deaths had been for the best.
A little old lady came walking by with two Scottie dogs in little tartan coats. She sat down on the bench by Odette and silently took her hand. Nothing was said between them, but they held hands until Odette ran out of tears. The lady gave her a clean handkerchief, and Odette mumbled something thankful.
Then she went back to the hotel and hugged a startled Grootvader Ernst for real.
*
Lionel John Dover stood on the footpath under the dim light of a lamppost and looked up at the house. Maybe this is it, he thought. It was different from the two places he’d visited before. Those had been little town houses, new and sterile. This was an old house in an expensive neighborhood. The trees along both sides of the street were huge, and they reached across to each other to make a tunnel of leaves. Beyond a low stone wall and a garden, the house stood large and beautiful. If he squinted, he could just make out the number 1841 carved in stone above the door. Light glowed behind the curtains on the ground floor.
Please, finally, answers.
At the thought, his hand tightened around his talisman, his proof. It was such a small, ridiculous thing to pin all one’s hopes on, but over the past weeks, a woman’s designer handbag had given direction to his life. It was the only clue as to what had happened at Ascot. There had been a woman, and she had known about him. She had.
He wasn’t certain that she’d died. There hadn’t been time to finish it at the racecourse, and then there’d been no outcry, no coverage, even though he’d done it in public, in broad daylight. Of course, there had never been any coverage for any of the other times he’d done it. But she had existed.
He had the photos to prove it.
The woman’s wallet made as little sense as she had. For one thing, it was stuffed full of different forms of identification and credit cards with many different names. There were driver’s licenses and identity cards for Colonel Amanda Connifer, Dr. Nicola Boyd, Mlle. Jeanne Citeaux, Ms. Myfanwy Thomas, Dr. Iris Hoade, Mrs. Susan Katzenelenboygen. Each of them had a different address, but the same woman was in all of the photos.