Текст книги "Regenesis"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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He opted for going to Jordan’s apartment, exchanging a few words in a venue where they could name names, and then going home, before the naming got too specific. Jordan in this mood would only brood about a cutoff from the bar, and get madder, and there was nothing productive in that, not at all. Jordan was frustrated: he wasn’temployed any longer, not since his return from Planys. He had nothing to do but sit and read and work on the low‑level problems Justin handed him, output which Justin read, remarked on, and passed on to Clinical under his or Grant’s name–it gave him a better output on hisrecord, and kept Peterson happier than he would have been, but it wasn’t doing anything for Jordan’s mood or his bank account. Jordan drew a stipend from Yanni’s office, the size of which he wouldn’t name, but it wasn’t large. He had the rent and utilities paid. That was all.

And Justin didn’t want another round on that score. Jordan’s situation was on hold until the Reseune board met, that was that. Jordan wouldn’t get his clinician’s certification and his security clearance back until Yanni and Jordan were talking again.

There’d been some sort of blowup right before Yanni headed for Novgorod, and what Jordan had said in that office or what Yanni had said wasn’t in his need‑to‑know, apparently, because neither of them had been willing to talk about it, but it certainly hadn’t advanced the cause of Jordan getting his security clearance back.

And it wouldn’t be helped by a public scene tonight.

They took the escalator up one, walked over to Education B, where Jordan’s apartment was–not a word spoken until they’d gotten inside and into the living room.

Jordan immediately went to the bar, filled four glasses with ice, and poured healthy shots of vodka. Justin frowned and didn’t say a thing. He took his when it was offered, and went and obligingly sat down in the conversation pit, with Grant on the other end of the couch; Jordan and Paul took the other side.

“So,” Justin said. His plan for a quick exchange and exit was evaporating, but, well, predictably Jordan’s anger would probably give way to a complaint about the certification issue, and the clearance issue, which then would go into known territory–not pleasant, but he owed it to his father to sit through another rehearsal of grievances. “What can’t we say in the bar?”

“That you’re making some bad choices.”

“Professionally, or personally?”

“Both.”

“They’re my choices. Bad or not.”

“You bring me these piddling clinicals…which you get paid for. In effect, I’m working for you.”

“If that’s a bother to you, I won’t bring them.”

“They’re all that’s keeping me sane.” A drink of the vodka. “A damned thin thread, these days. Damn Yanni.”

“I hoped you’d give me a reasonable critique on the other set I sent you,” Justin said. “I’m waiting for it, in fact.” Jordan had had too much vodka to make sense on that topic, Justin was well sure–Jordan had likely forgotten all about it, in the heat of the argument at dinner, but he had questions of his own that Jordan hadn’t satisfied. The reward structure in that theta set emanated directly from work he and Jordan shared for years, it was related to the problem he’d handed Jordan in the bar this evening, and he hadn’t expected that kind of reaction. Yanni used to heap scorn on his reward concept in the low‑level sets, claiming it would produce problems down the generations in an azi‑derived population. Yanni had called him a damned fool–until Jordan started working with him, and then Yanni had started listening.

“Piece of crap,” Jordan said.

Well, that wasn’t what he’d hoped to hear.

“In what regard?”

“In what regard…don’t give methat calm‑down routine. Your damn design is out in the ether. Piece of crap, just like that crap you handed me at dinner. Same fucking reason.”

“Sorry, then. I won’t press you for specifies tonight.”

“I’ll give them to you with a broad brush, same issue. Same reason. Same damn problem I fought out with Ari. She didn’t listen. She implemented. Now I see it in my son. Grant, do you agree with this crap?”

“Ser,” Grant said, “insofar as I follow the thread of this argument, I am in agreement with the design, yes.”

“But then, you’re Ari’s design, aren’t you?”

“Ser.”

“Jordan,” Justin said sharply, “don’t pull that. You don’t believe it, you don’t mean it, so just don’t touch it. That’s your fourth glass.”

“You don’t see a problem. You think you’re fucking brilliant, skipping over any substructure, just go straight for the deepsets: it’s the shortcut, everything for the shortcut. And the poor azi you program, pity them–they’re not alphas, they’re not going to figure that’s a leap of flux‑thinking logic, no, you’re going to have theta minds making a leap from a to zed with no supportive structure, no crosslinks, no work‑up in their skill‑set level to encourage any critical thought about their actual performance…”

“Thetas aren’t good at that.”

“Don’t read me basic lessons! You know damned well you’re taking a shortcut.”

“I am. Yes. Admittedly. That’s the whole purpose.”

“And you’re going to have a pack of thetas gone eetee with no recourse but Reseune operators to pull them back to sanity… ifthey can. A batch of smug, happy, wrongheadedworkers.”

“That’s why I come to you.” A little bald flattery never hurt. But it was also the truth. “I see you don’t think it’s a good idea. I respect that. I just expect more specific reasons for your opinion than I’m getting here.”

“I don’t know why I’d bother. You’re getting all your theories from the little darling.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t think so.”

“I damned well know so. You think that’s new, that leap of procedures you threw into that last paper? That’s Ariane Emory. That’s Emory, cut and dried. She’d just wave her hand and say, with the appropriate gesture, ‘It will work. It will work.’ Hell! That kind of thinking created Gehenna. There’s her kind of thinking run amok. She was doing it that far back!”

“But the azi there lived. They weren’t expected to. But she expected it of them. She just didn’t tell Defense. And what she did worked. The fact there’s been other input into the system–that wasn’t in program…”

“Well, that’s the universe for you! Don’t you get it? You can’t anticipate your little program to run forever in a bubble. Something’s going to impact it. Something damned sure did, on Gehenna.”

“There’s got to be a dividing line, between trusting the subject will adapt, and going only by micromanaging little situations, constantly referring back to a Supervisor. We’re so damned conservative with the deepsets…”

“With reason! Have you ever seen a real eetee case? Has your real‑life practice ever gotten the results of one of your damned thought experiments?”

“No. I’m teaching. It’s all theory.”

“At this point.”

“We argue. In point of fact, I know the present Ari would love to hear your objections. She’d be very interested. We could have some good conversations…if you were so inclined.”

“While she’s hot after my son? The hell.” The rest of the vodka went down. “Get me another, Paul.”

“Jordan,” Justin said, as Paul looked dismayed.

“I said get me another. There are things I need to say. I didn’t know my geneset could produce a fool.”

Paul got up and shot more vodka into the glass. Twice that, Justin thought, if that’s what it takes…bundle him off to bed and let’s end this evening somewhere short of disaster.

“I hate to point out,” Justin said as Jordan took the glass, “that’s five.”

“Have you been alone with her?”

“Are you asking if I’ve had sex with her?” Justin asked.

“I’m asking if you’ve been alone with her. Grant, has he ever been alone with her?”

“Ser, I’d rather not enter this conversation.”

Grant, damn the situation, wasn’t able to lie, not to a man who’d been his Supervisor as well as his CIT father. In some situations he was thorough azi, and too vulnerable for this fight.

“I’m taking Grant home,” Justin said, and set the glass on the side table. “ ’Til you’re sober. Grant, don’t answer him. You don’t have to answer him.”

“Oh, I’ll imagine the answer, then. Stay put, Grant! I’m not through.”

“ Iam.”

“You sit where you are and you listen to me. I’m seeing things in your work–I’ve been seeing them. I’ve corrected you. You’ve changed things right back–”

“Where it matters.”

“You’ve changed things right back in the same vein as that little item you sent me this afternoon. The same thing you shoved in my face at dinner.”

“I was uneasy about the concept, I didn’t get an answer on the others, just a correction with no note. I wasn’t sure why. I was asking your help with a problem, Dad… I’m sorry if it gives you some eetee flashback to your own time…”

“Oh, back to my time, is it? What is my time, can you tell me that, son of mine?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Pretty clear what people here think. Twenty years out of the current here, twenty years of a real style change in operations here, Yanni Schwartz losing his mind and putting you with the little bitch to let her pick your bones clean. I don’t appreciate that move. I don’t care if the spoiled darling did threaten to stop breathing if he didn’t.”

“Actually, Jordan, I agreed to it. Clear the family name and all.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s good. I didn’t do it, dammit! Do you need to hear that?”

“I hear you. I just think it’s as well the public–when this goes public–hears it, too. I’d like to see the day–”

“What, the day everything’s sweet again? It won’t come. You want me to work with you? Quit working with her.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t!”

“Let’s put it this way, Dad. I won’t. I respect you, I respect you tremendously, but you don’t have the right to tell me who I work with. I’m getting something out of this…”

“Oh, it’s clear you’re getting something out of it! And you don’t have the right to take mytheories and hand them on a platter to that little walking memory bank. I had to put up with the last Ari taking my work and putting her name on it and I’m sure as hell not going to see it happen in the second generation.”

“I haven’t given her your work, except as you’ve taught me. After that. Dad, in the way things work in the universe, it becomes mine.”

“The hell it does.”

“It becomes mine. Dad, not because I’m regurgitating it verbatim, but because I’m using mybrain and everybody else’sa input along with yoursto come up with my own ideas.”

“And herinput, it’s very damned clear.”

“Because you didn’t like a two‑line routine I wrote on a cocktail napkin? I gave you a second instance of a similar routine, because my own leap of logic bothered me and I wanted your reaction on it, but do I get a sensible discussion, on this one or the last two weeks? No. First you ignore it–”

“I didn’t ignore it. I corrected it!”

“Twice, without any explanation!”

“I’d think you damned well knew my objection!”

“I’m not reading your mind!”

“So I said something, tonight!”

“In the bar? You didn’t say something in any rational way. You went orbital without a launch, just up there, bang! No preface, no sensible discussion, nothing but a fucking emotional reaction, alcohol‑fueled, and fluxed to the max. You aren’t thinking clearly on this. Dad. If you saw something in my work that triggered a flash of your own–”

“Don’t you go patronizing with me!”

“All right, all right. This is it. We’re going home.”

“Home. Is thatwhat you call it?”

“I live in Wing One! I live there because there was a time, thanks to my trying to find out about yoursituation, that I was apt to be arrested, which was damn near a monthly event in my life, and it was getting serious, about then. I’d have been in lockup. That was my choice.”

“And then things all changed. All right. Level with me. There was a time they wouldn’t trust you. I’m not talking about the little darling. I’m not even talking about Denys. I’m talking about Yanni. They wouldn’t trust you. Now they do. Why?”

“Because she told them to. Because Denys Nye is dead, and his apparatus isn’t functioning any more. Because Yanni likes me better than Denys did!”

“ Because she told them to. Because she’d had a chance to work you over, that last time, when Grant was in Planys, and you were here solo, in her reach.”

It was too close to the truth. He didn’t want to lie about it. “She’s a kid. Dad.”

“She’s a monstrosity. And she got her hands on you when Grant wasn’t around. She finished what her predecessor started. Didn’t she?”

“Dad…”

“I’m not hearing you deny it. Is it true. Grant? Did she do that?”

Silence from that quarter. Grant had prior orders, an instruction from his current Supervisor that outranked anything his first Supervisor could order on that topic.

“I draw my conclusion,” Jordan said. “She did. Just you? Or both of you?”

“I have the session tapes,” Justin said, braced for the storm. “And nothing happened. She asked me where I stood on certain matters. I satisfied the questions–that I wasn’t an assassin. That youweren’t. And Grant wasn’t.”

“Let me see the tapes.”

Reasonable request, on one level. But not a good idea. That second thought flashed up, fast and hard: Jordan wasn’t anyfather–Jordan and he twitched off exactly the same impulses: Jordan took a deep breath and he felt as if he had just breathed. Jordan flared off and his own adrenaline surged, mirror‑image. He couldn’t help it. He was a PR, Jordan’s exact replicate, and the resonances were there, every muscle twitch. It was his face, as he’d never be, because he’d started rejuv at thirty‑five and Jordan hadn’t until forty‑five–but it was close enough. Every lift of a brow, every frown, psychologically connected as they were, to hoot, by Jordan’s having brought him up as a son–resonated, in a way a natural son wouldn’t feel it. They were twins. Identicals. And his father, besides all that, besides the fact that his father’s own gut would react to that tape of him lying there, deep‑tranked, undergoing questions from Ari’s twin–besides all that, his father was a psych operator, and the first time seeing that tape, Jordan might be in shock, but the second and third time through he’d be gathering bits and pieces, tabs, things he could use in a constant, battering attempt to undo everything he’d seen done, to grab hold of parts of his son’s soul and jerk–hard. Every damned time anything came up that Jordan didn’t like, he’d have? a key to his psyche that nobody else would.

“No,” he said. “No. Those tapes are private.”

“I’ll bet they are.”

“This was a mistake,” Justin said, and this time, in his own moment of temper, reached for the double vodka on the side table and downed it in three gulps, half ice melt, because he was going to need anesthesia to get any sleep tonight. After which he propelled himself to his feet, and Grant got up. “ ’Night, Dad.”

“Oh, now we run for it. Touched a sore spot, have I?”

“Maybe,” Justin said. “But I’m not staying here to have you twist the knife.” He got a breath, and one clear thought. “I want to go on working with you. If you want it otherwise, you can have that, but don’t answer me tonight.”

“Tell me this,” Jordan said. “How are the flashbacks?”

He’d been plagued by them for years. Flashes of a couch, elder Ari, the taste of orange and vodka. The smell of it. Not of late. And he flashed on the answer, the thing Jordan was really asking. “Not germane here, Dad.”

“They’re better, aren’t they? Not as many as before you had a session with the younger version. Was there sex?”

“Nothing nearly so entertainingas the first time,” he shot back, referencing the fact Jordan had seen the first tape, and he knew he shouldn’t have said that. It was the vodka. Which hadn’t been a good idea. He felt an oncoming wave of heat. “Grant, come on. It’s not friendly in here. I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry for the whole damned thing.”

“They’re spying on us, you know. This whole conversation will go to her.”

“More likely it’ll go to Yanni. She doesn’t meddle in my business.”

“She says.”

“She doesn’t have to lie. And you’ve spread enough of my business out for the monitors to see, at whatever level. I’ve had enough of this argument, Dad. I was glad to see you home. I knew there’d be problems…”

“Meaning I wouldn’t fall in line with the compacts you’ve made.”

“Meaning everything, Dad, meaning just about everything.” He had the impulse to say. Meaning you’re frustrated about that license, meaning you’re mad about lost time, mad about the current administration, mad that you’re still under house arrest. Mad about your whole life. But the vodka hadn’t that thorough a grip on him that he should let that fly. He just said. “I love you. Go to bed and sleep it off. Maybe they’ll arrest me in the morning because I was stupid enough to let this carry on this far. Maybe not. Things are generally better now.”

“Oh, the martyr, my suffering son.”

“Have it any way you like. Security is what security is and they’ll do any damn thing they like. I’m used to it and they know I’ll tell them the plain truth. Hear that, Yanni? So just go to bed, Dad. At least we didn’t have this conversation in the bar. But I’m not sure we should have had it at all.”

“High time we had it.”

“Sure,” he said, “if you think so. I didn’t have an inkling you were getting that mad about my repeated question. So think about it. And calm down. Come on, Grant.”

This time they did make it out the door. He’d bet there was one more glass of vodka poured tonight, if not drunk, before Paul got Jordan into bed. He deeply regretted the one he’d had.

“I’m going to be hung over,” he said to Grant.

“Glass of orange, another of water, water every hour, and two aspirin,” Grant said. “Sovereign. You were making perfect sense, by the way.”

“Sorry. Very sorry.”

“You couldn’t stop him.”

No security had shown up. They took the open air route across the quadrangle to Wing One, and through the doors, and security checked them through and never said a word.

That much had changed since Yanni had taken over. People could be fools these days and not be arrested or interviewed. They might hear from Yanni once he got back, but tonight they made it home all right.

BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter vi

APRIL 22, 2424

2351H

Yanni was up to stuff in Novgorod. Yanni’s office wasn’t going to tell her that, but Base One did. Base One found it real easy to wander where it liked, into communications between Yanni’s office and Novgorod, and between Yanni’s office and ReseuneSec; and what Ari heard made her mad–not a real Mad, so far, but a good one all the same. Yanni was talking to unusual people, people who’d been enemies, and probably not making records about it. That was a watch‑it, but she hadn’t told Catlin and Florian about the problem yet, just in case Yanni had a reasonable explanation.

Yanni might guess Base One was into his stuff. Probably he didn’t. Denys hadn’t known to what extent Base One had invaded Base Two, or if he’d known, he’d hoped he’d worked around it, and he’d hoped he was being careful. Or at least he’d hoped to psych her, which would have been the answer to his problem, if she’d been that stupid. She’d grown up. He’d been one jump too late to stop her.

She ran through all sorts of records on things Yanni had done, from way back. She did find that her predecessor had trusted Yanni ahead of the Nyes. That wasn’t a great surprise. Yanni generally told the truth.

She incidentally found that it was the first Ari who had given Yanni instructions that if anything happened to her, she wanted Jane Strassen to be the surrogate.

And then she looked just a little too deep: Yanni had had a long conversation with Maman about that, and Maman had said, Hell, no, what do I want with a baby? I had one, thanks. See how that turned out. No. Absolutely not.

Then Yanni had promised Maman if she did it for them she could go back to space when the job was done. That she’d have a major directorate somewhere in space, and Maman had said, well, she’d think about it–because Maman really loved being in space. The War was what had made it necessary for Maman to be down on the planet, because it was safer, she found that fact out between the lines, but after the War, Maman had been so important to Reseune, she’d been stuck in an administrative post and hadn’t been able to get transferred back up to the station. So for that promise, Maman said maybe she could put up with a few years of inconvenience.

That hurt. That really hurt, and it really bothered her–she didn’t cry about it, but the information just bored a sore spot in her heart, until finally she psyched herself and said Maman had changed her mind eventually, that it didn’t matter how it had started, she’d finally Gotten her Maman, all unexpected, because Maman had turned out to love her. She wouldn’t believe that wasn’t so.

Well, it was what you got for getting into people’s records and eavesdropping: you caught people saying things you never wanted to hear, and this one, hurtful as it was, taught her that in a major way.

But what she found went on teaching her. She couldn’t leave it where she’d left it. She couldn’t stop looking at it.

She got into Maman’s records, too. She’d never gotten a letter from Maman after Maman had gone away to space, and there were no letters from Maman hidden in the record, but she did find her Maman’s report on her when she was five. She’s a handful. But site’s bright. God, she’s bright, She scares me.

Ari Senior had also said–this turned up in Maman’s letters–Let Strassen choose the second surrogate. And Maman was going to pick Yanni to take over her upbringing after Maman went back to space, but Giraud hadn’t allowed that.

That was worth a Mad, too: Giraud had just overridden Maman, being head of Security. He’d sent Maman to space, then ignored her choice, and ended up choosing Denys, as being a relative closer to her as well as actually being a Special himself, without the Senate declaration that said so. Which Yanni wasn’t.

No question where Giraud’s reasoning lay, however. Giraud hadn’t wanted any power edging over into Yanni’s hands, and Yanni was the man that would take it and do what he pleased.

And of possible candidates to take her on, Giraud wasn’t of the disposition. But Denys had agreed to it. Denys had probably just hated it; but Denys would have done it to get power.

Possibly, too, it was because Denys couldn’t stand not knowing how she was developing. Denys had liked puzzles. And she’d been a puzzle to him–at close range. And by the time he was in it, he’d realized that an azi nurse wasn’t going to keep her from disrupting his life, nor was domestic staff, nor even his own bodyguard.

The Child has subverted the minder,she read on a certain date, in a frustrated communication to Giraud. She eluded Seely. She’s a monster.

She liked that one. It echoed Maman, in a Denys tone. She forgot for two seconds that she’d lost one and killed the other. For a fluxed second she was just there again, a little girl in Denys’s household, pursuing a Mad about losing Maman, a Mad that had never let her be friendly with Denys and never would.

Or maybe it was just good taste, she thought. She’d picked her enemies, and she’d been pretty accurate so far.

And then, with the thought of Denys, she riffled through the rest of that electronic file, the one that slowly built a case against Denys, finding justification for killing him–

And, still in flux‑state, back to Yanni’s file, as large as Denys’, in Base One.

Was there a connection? Did one temporary authority equal the other? Was Yanni on the level with her?

Denys might have killed her predecessor, and then made it look as if Jordan had done it, so Jordan was exiled for it. Or at least–Giraud had dug up the evidence. Giraud had hated the Warricks with a passion.

But it had been Yanni who had actually brokered the Family deal that got Jordan into Planys, close and protected. There was a lot more security at Planys for several reasons–the military base, the isolation of oceans you couldn’t even fly across without decon; the fact that Planys worked on a lot of military projects and every communication that went out of there went through security. If they’d sent Jordan to space for exile, there’d have been ship‑calls, people coming and going. Not at Planys.

So it was both a closer arrest, and a safer one–nobody was going to assassinate Jordan inside PlanysLabs, where visitors were so closely tracked. Giraud had been perfectly capable of arranging an accident, wherever else Jordan might have ended up, inside some Reseune facility. Yanni had saved Jordan from that.

Giraud had had power, a great deal of power just after the first Ari had died. And he had used it. A lot. So you could say he’d benefitted from Ari dying, and that was a motive. You could almost suspect him of killing the first Ari.

But in all his communications and even messages to Denys, he’d really been upset by Ari’s death. He’d seemed to view it as a tremendous loss to Reseune–worse, a premature one, before they’d gotten the psychogenesis project really organized. They’d taken a whole year getting her started. So for one reason or another, they really hadn’t been ready.

And once she’d started looking and sounding like her predecessor, Giraud had warmed up to her, and started doing her favors in a very fond way. She hadn’t wanted to like him. But she’d ended up liking him, and still did, even knowing what he’d done to the Warricks.

The hour the first Ari had died, she’d arranged for the first Florian and the first Catlin not to be with her–she’d sent Florian and Catlin each off on an errand. She’d been alone, then. Jordan had come in. The sniffer at least proved that. Jordan admitted they’d had an argument, which no monitor had picked up–again, some device had broken, and nobody knew how. She’d died. But the crime scene had been muddled up because Denys argued they should call in the Moreyville police, not to have it investigated only by ReseuneSec, so as not to have any political accusations of a coverup. And in that process there’d been a lot of people going in and out, which they never should have been allowed to do, that was Yanni’s note on the case. The sniffers’ evidence was muddled for the same reason there were fingerprints all over–a lot of people used that lab, and a lot of people had been in and out in the immediate furor over Ari’s death before the Moreyville investigators ever got there.

Should she take that at face value, as just the confusion of a bad, bad moment in Reseune’s history? Maybe. The authority that ran everything had died, and for an hour or so nobody had been running things. Departments were all running at their own admin levels, no coordination, nobody to call or appeal to, until Giraud and Yanni had stepped in.

And Ari sending Florian and Catlin away…had she known she’d never see them again? Had she known she was killing them? Had she kept that cold a face and not given anything away to them, who’d have read her the way her Florian and her Catlin could read her? Some people thought the first Ari had killed herself. But she didn’t know how the first Ari could have ever gotten that intention past her Florian and Catlin, if they were anything like hers.

She scanned Ari’s notes from immediately before she died. She had, a hundred times. She searched administrative comments on Jordan, and bastard was about the sum of comments from Giraud and no few others, plus a note that Jordan had found out about Ari having run an intervention on Justin, and that Jordan was madder than hell.

But Ari’s records stopped with the lab notes, right at the end of a sentence. Period. Was it significant that Ari had finished her last sentence? She would finish a sentence, herself, even if somebody came in while she was writing. It was just the way she was.

Base One had apparently shut down the instant Ari’s death was logged. Base One had gone into an entirely different mode, truncated its wide information‑gathering to a single, computer‑driven thread, all but shut down–for so many years some people must haw thought Denys’s base in the house system had actually become Base One, even if it called itself Base Two. But Denys had known better. Denys had gotten her to log onto Base One when she was old enough. And maybe he’d hoped he could get his own access on it. But it hadn’t done a lot when Denys was there.

And then Base One had said, Hello, Ari. In her predecessor’s voice. In her room. She’d gained her secret friend. Her childhood advisor. Denys had been aware she used Base One to a certain extent, after that, but his Base continued as the dominantly active one in System. Maybe he knew Base One would be pegged to her age, and that she wouldn’t be able to use it until she was the right age. But Base One had always treated her as two years older than she really was.

Denys had been safe until she’d gotten the keys to open Base One wide and set it back to work at full stretch, as it had been in the first Ari’s day, assembling and collating all the log notes from the years it had been asleep–and it suddenly took priority.

She sped through the mundane records. Being prime in System, nearly identical with System, Base One left no footprints where it went. She’d asked it to bring up remarks in which she or her predecessor or Maman had figured. It found those. And later, it found Justin’s.

She felt abraded, rubbed raw, when she read Denys’s message to Giraud, saying, “Strassen spoiled the little bitch. Systematically.”

Her eyes stung. She backed off, mentally, and just scanned it–she could read very, very last–and picked out keywords that were highlighted in colors. She got vocal records and listened to tone of voice, reserving judgement. It didn’t come out better for Denys or Giraud. She heard Abban’s remarks, that cold, distinct voice that sent chills through her. Abban had been near the labs when Ari died.

But Abban had been Giraud’s bodyguard in those years, before Giraud died and Abban joined Seely in Denys’ household.

Curious. Companion azi went in ones. Bodyguards went in twos. And neither Abban nor Seely had been companion azi, not if you really knew them. They’d been like Florian and Catlin, products of the training down in Green Barracks, and deadly dangerous. Giraud had been born, and seven years later, Denys had been born, and Abban and Seely had been in the household with Giraud. When Giraud was sixteen and making his first trip to Novgorod with his mother, leaving nine‑year‑old Denys at Reseune. Abban had gone with Giraud, and Seely had stayed with Denys. Which was the way it had been, forever after, when they set up separate domiciles. That was the way it had been until Giraud died.