THE ELECTRIC HEIR

by Lee, Victoria

  It took Noam a second to realize he meant Brennan. Whether Méndez knew Noam had killed him was unclear.

  “Thank you, Mr. President. Tom was a close friend of my family’s,” Noam said. “He is deeply missed.”

  “I’m sure,” Méndez said.

  Lehrer’s hand fell from Noam’s shoulder, the gesture uncharacteristically short lived and chaste. Noam was anxious down to the blood; he kept expecting someone—any of them, perhaps even Méndez himself—to lunge forward to stab him and Lehrer both with syringes of milky-white vaccine. Every second they didn’t was another fray on Noam’s nerves.

  “I hope you have the opportunity to see some more of our beautiful country while you’re here,” Méndez went on. “There’s so much more to see of Texas than hotels and airports.”

  Noam’s gut tightened. So Méndez knew, then, that it had been Noam who led the assault in Houston.

  Noam smiled back, as mildly as he could. “I would love that. I’ve heard the backland prairies in particular are gorgeous.”

  Not heard so much as seen photos in old books, but it was neutral enough—and it provided Lehrer an easy route to change the direction of the conversation.

  “Perhaps we can tempt you to visit Carolinia, as well,” Lehrer said, resting a friendly hand on Méndez’s upper arm. “You haven’t lived until you see the Smoky Mountains during peak foliage. It’s breathtaking.”

  And solidly within the quarantined zone—but none of them mentioned that, of course.

  Somehow they all maintained inoffensive conversation topics for the next half hour; Lehrer introduced Noam to several other Texan officials in attendance, including their secretary of state and the secretary of homeland security. Noam wasn’t entirely sure what the difference between the two was, really, unless Texas felt they needed two equivalents to Carolinia’s minister of defense.

  Finally a servant emerged to announce dinner, and they all filtered into the dining room—every bit as elaborate as the rest of the house Noam’d seen so far, set with gold charger plates and antique crystal water goblets. At least Noam had figured out dinner etiquette since that harrowing dinner party at General Ames’s house, so he didn’t look like such an idiot when the palate cleansers arrived between courses.

  This was almost definitely the best time to see if he could figure out a way past the firewall. After dinner they’d all have to go have more drinks and launch into all the obligatory diplomatic conversation; it would be impossible for Noam to escape.

  So after the main course was swept away, Noam made his excuses and slipped out of the dining room. Only then one of the aides caught him in the entryway, offering to escort him to the bathroom.

  “Oh, no,” Noam said. “That’d be awkward, don’t you think?”

  “It’s my job, Mr. Álvaro,” the aide said evenly.

  “I can find it.”

  “I’ll show you,” the aide insisted again, and Noam couldn’t keep arguing. He had to let the man show him through the carpeted halls of the residence, all the way back to a single-person bathroom with granite counters and an old-fashioned tile floor.

  Noam forced a tight smile for the aide as he shut the door. The moment he turned the lock, he twisted his face in a silent scream.

  God fucking damn it!

  How the hell was he supposed to get loose and find himself a computer if he couldn’t even go to the bathroom without a chaperone?

  He used the toilet while he was there, buying time to think. But by the time he was washing his hands in that pretty gold-tapped sink, he still hadn’t figured anything out. His best option was to jolt the aide with a shot of electricity and escape while he was unconscious, but while that might get him to the computer, he’d have a hell of a time getting out again. What happened when someone realized the aide was missing? Or worse, when the aide woke up and told them all that Lehrer’s protégé had knocked him out and disappeared?

  At that point, Noam was pretty sure whatever flimsy sense of diplomatic etiquette had kept Méndez from injecting them both full of the vaccine would evaporate.

  He scrubbed damp hands over his face, dragging fingers back through his hair. Which, of course, only served to mess up the perfect pomaded style he’d spent ages fixing up to Lehrer’s specifications. He made a face at his reflection and did his best to comb it back into place, mostly succeeding in making himself look more or less like he’d been kissing some stranger in the back closet.

  Actually.

  That was an idea.

  Lehrer would fucking kill him, but what Lehrer didn’t know . . .

  Noam frowned at himself for a moment, then let his weight tip to the left, toppling against the sink and knocking the soap dish into the bowl. It was loud enough to earn an immediate knock on the door.

  “Mr. Álvaro? Everything all right in there?”

  Noam waited several seconds, pinching his cheeks until his skin was flushed pink. Then he opened the bathroom door, leaning against the counter as if for support. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I . . . dizzy, all the sudden.”

  Concern creased the aide’s brow. “Do you need me to get a medic?”

  “No—no, I’ll be . . . I just. Is there somewhere I can sit? For a second?”

  “Of course,” the aide said immediately. He offered Noam his arm, and Noam hooked their elbows together, letting himself list in against the man’s body as they made slow progress farther down the hall, into a new sitting area. This one was warmly lit by a few lamps glowing on end tables. Perfect.

  The aide helped Noam down onto one end of a sofa, then hovered there in front of him, clearly feeling helpless. “Do you want water? I can ring for some.”

  “Oh—no. I’m. It’s okay. I only need a moment.”

  Noam tipped his head down into the palms of his hands, breathing in the scent of his own skin. After a few seconds he looked up again, one hand lifting to grasp at the back of his own neck. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, a bit self-deprecating. “I don’t know what came over me. Usually I can hold my liquor a little better.”

  “Ah,” the aide said, comprehension dawning on his face. “Yes, I understand. I used to be like that when I was your age too. You’re . . .”

  “Eighteen,” Noam lied, because that was presumably the legal age in Texas same as it was in Carolinia. He shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. It’s probably the Aperol spritz from earlier. I wasn’t thinking—with the wine, at dinner . . .”

  “You’ll feel better soon,” the aide reassured him. “Especially if you’ve gotten some food on your stomach.”

  “I’m already feeling better,” Noam said and gave him a soft smile. He reached forward and caught the man’s wrist, fingertips pressing in against its soft underside. “Thank you. Really. I—from all I’ve heard about Texas, I wasn’t expecting kindness.”

  “Not all of us hate witchings,” the aide said. “I’m sure it’s the same way in Carolinia. The government thinks one thing. Some people agree; some people don’t.”

  That was not at all what Noam had been led to believe. After the catastrophe, Texas had hung up the bodies of dead witching militants around the walls they built bracketing them safe from the quarantined zone. A warning—to Adalwolf and Calix Lehrer’s Avenging Angels and to anyone else. They’d declared themselves a witching-free zone, as if that were something to advertise proudly.

  But the catastrophe was over a hundred years ago now. Things could change. And the longer Noam spent around Lehrer, the more he was starting to wonder how much of what Carolinians knew about Texas was propaganda.

  “Texas keeps witchings in government hospitals,” Noam said. “You experiment on them. You torture them.”

  “No,” the aide said, and he tugged his wrist out of Noam’s reach—but he didn’t move away. “I don’t know what you’ve heard in your country, but it isn’t like that. The program is voluntary. And there’s no torture.”

  Noam couldn’t admit how he got the information, though. Couldn’t say, That’s not h
ow it seemed from the emails I found on the phone of the Texan spy I killed.

  Maybe Texas was just like Carolinia.

  Maybe both governments did terrible things. Secret things. And the majority of the population continued on with their lives blissfully unaware, convinced of their own government’s benevolence in contrast to the evil of everyone else.

  “That’s a relief to hear,” Noam said. He pushed himself up, at last, taking his time, like he was still a little fatigued. “I have to admit I was afraid to come here at first. I’m glad there are some Texans who don’t hate me just for existing.” He gave the aide a weak smile.

  “You’re from Atlantia, right?” the aide said.

  “My parents.”

  “People said the same thing about Atlantia before Carolinia annexed it,” the man told him. “You know that, right? ‘Atlantians are bigoted. Atlantians are closed minded.’”

  “I think most Atlantians were a bit busy trying to stay alive to worry about being prejudiced,” Noam said.

  “That’s my point, though. Just because something’s a stereotype doesn’t make it true.”

  It was . . . well. It was interesting to consider. But as illuminating as this conversation had been, Noam was getting real far off track. He had to get rid of this man, not launch into a fresh political debate with him.

  “You’re right,” Noam said, conciliatory. “We hear all kinds of things about Texas that I’m sure are untrue. Like that you’re all homophobic.”

  “Criticism of Calix Lehrer, a homosexual man, is not the same as homophobia.”

  Damn it. Noam had been hoping the man would say something he could work with, like, How could I be homophobic if I’m gay? But that was definitely a long shot. Texas’d never had a queer president. They still had plenty of antiqueer hate crimes too. Even if most Texans weren’t homophobic, queerness still wasn’t normalized for them the way Lehrer’d normalized it for Carolinians.

  Ugh. This was pointless. It had been a stupid idea from the start. Seduce some random Texan aide and slip out after while he was still pulling himself together? It sounded dumb even in Noam’s head.

  This was the presidential residence. There was absolutely no way Noam was getting into those halls alone—this wasn’t Gordon Ames’s funeral, where Noam was a trusted wanderer.

  He’d just have to figure out a way to explain that to Lehrer.

  “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” Noam said. “But I should be getting back. I’ve been gone awhile.”

  “Of course, Mr. Álvaro,” the aide said, right back in that professional mode.

  He guided Noam down the hall and to the dining room, where the others had started in on the dessert course: an elaborate-looking tiramisu.

  Lehrer didn’t attempt to catch Noam’s eye during dinner. It would have been too risky trying to communicate anything here—too many malevolent eyes watching, too much suspicion with lethal stakes. Noam finished his tiramisu in silence; he wasn’t important enough to be spoken to, at least not when Lehrer and the ambassador sat at the same table. Which was fine, anyway. Noam didn’t have anything to say. He still didn’t—

  Well. He didn’t have to have an opinion on Texas. Not yet. Right now the priority was getting rid of Lehrer. Until Lehrer was gone, every other evil was ephemeral.

  But the Texans remembered Noam existed by the time they all retreated back to the drawing room.

  Gregory Pulver—the Texan secretary of state—handed Noam a glass of bourbon and said, “So, Mr. Álvaro. Tell me about yourself.”

  At least the question was banal. It was the same one Noam was presented with every time he accompanied Lehrer to one of his stupid dinner parties. And that made sense, he supposed. Everyone was curious about Lehrer’s new teenage protégé, the one who’d replaced infamous Dara Shirazi.

  But Noam always got the impression the question boiled down to one thing: Where did you come from?

  “There’s not much to say.” Noam’s typical evasion. “I only joined Level IV a year ago.”

  “And yet already you’ve been named liaison for Atlantian affairs,” Pulver pressed. “That’s a lot of responsibility for an . . . eighteen-year-old?”

  Noam didn’t correct him. “I was qualified. I was mentored by Tom Brennan, who held the position before me.”

  Never give anyone more information than you have to, Lehrer had instructed him once, his palm heavy at the nape of Noam’s neck. Make them fight for everything they get, until they’re grateful to learn anything at all.

  “So you consider yourself particularly well informed on the Atlantian response to annexation,” Pulver said.

  It wasn’t a question, so Noam sipped his bourbon instead of answering.

  Lehrer had been deep in discussion with President Méndez and the secretary of homeland security—but maybe he sensed the direction of this conversation, because he turned to face the room. “Shall we sit?”

  They claimed their chairs, Noam intentionally picking one opposite Lehrer’s. He didn’t want to sequester them in a corner. There was something about having the minority side of a discussion clustered together that gave the impression of easy prey.

  Not that anyone was liable to see Lehrer in a vulnerable light. Lehrer occupied that elegant armchair as if it were his chancellor’s seat, legs neatly crossed at the knees and the hand that didn’t hold his whiskey glass settled easy on the armrest—which was carved in the likeness of a growling lion. Lehrer’s long fingers draped right over the chiseled lines of the lion’s bared teeth.

  Lehrer’s smile was a knife being unsheathed. “Let’s discuss the terms of Texan surrender.”

  Méndez and Pulver exchanged looks, the latter’s mouth fixed in a straight line.

  “This isn’t a surrender,” Méndez said. “It’s a cessation of hostilities in both nations’ mutual interest.”

  “Call it whatever you like,” said Lehrer, expression unchanged. He set his whiskey glass aside, reaching for his jacket pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  No one denied him.

  Lehrer lit the cigarette with a snap of pyromancy and took a long drag, exhaling toward the fireplace. “This feels familiar,” he commented.

  “The last Caro-Texan war was before my time,” Méndez said. “2074.”

  “Ah, right. I forget how young you all are. Well, let me give you a little history lesson: I’ve sat in this room with four presidents just like you, and the discussion was remarkably similar. I could practically script it.” Lehrer swirled his whiskey round in its glass. “You’ll demur and make empty threats, citing your antiwitching technology. I’ll remind you of the losses you sustained in recent battles and how much more violent things will become if we take Houston. You will recall that I’ve never failed to deliver my promises where biological warfare is concerned. Ultimately we’ll come to an accord that reestablishes our tradition of hating each other from a silent distance—until next time, anyway.”

  Méndez lifted a brow. “You forgot one thing. We have a vaccine now. If weaponized, it would decimate your witching population. You’d be virtually defenseless.”

  “Even counting only baseline soldiers, we have the largest standing army in the world,” Lehrer said idly and finally sipped that bourbon again. “I wouldn’t call that defenseless. Besides—you’re a long way from weaponizing that vaccine. It’s still only absorbed intravenously. Do you really think your science will move faster than me? Than the virus itself?”

  Noam used to imagine what it would have been like to sit in the room with Calix Lehrer during the peace talks from any war in the past hundred years. But now that he was here, he realized it was somehow not at all and yet exactly as he’d imagined it. Somehow he’d thought Lehrer would be less explicit about what he could do to Texas if they failed to surrender. And yet . . . it was working.

  And why shouldn’t it? This was exactly why the rest of the continent failed to get Carolinia to reduce their witching population back in 2019. Because of Lehrer. Because
they knew what Lehrer was capable of.

  A thrill rolled through the pit of Noam’s stomach, warm and alive. Whatever else he might think about Lehrer, he was still this.

  “If we agree to a cease-fire,” Méndez said eventually, “you will need to remove your soldiers from Texan territory. We won’t make the same mistakes Atlantia did.” He glanced toward Noam at that; Noam kept his expression impassive.

  “Of course. And you will cease all research into the weaponization of the vaccine.”

  This time, it was Pulver who interjected. “I’m surprised, Chancellor,” he said. “I would have thought you’d be very interested in our vaccine-development research. Surely you are eager to prevent more outbreaks in Carolinia. Not to mention the challenges of sanitizing your newly acquired Atlantian territory.”

  “I fail to see how the weaponization of this vaccine plays into any of that.”

  “Don’t you?” Pulver said. “If aerosolized, the vaccine could be dispersed across the entirety of Carolinia and Atlantia together. You’d eradicate magic within Carolinian borders. Surely you want that.”

  But Lehrer didn’t. All of them knew that. And from the dissatisfied set of Lehrer’s mouth, Lehrer was well aware.

  “We have our own vaccine-development program,” Lehrer said. “But unlike you, we are more interested in finding a way to eradicate magic’s mortality rate—not eradicate magic itself. So I’m afraid our goals are not quite as aligned as you might think.”

  “And how many innocent people will you let die while you waste time on this fool’s errand?” the secretary of homeland security snapped—and clearly saw her mistake a moment later reflected in Lehrer’s pale gaze, which had gone cool.

  “No fool’s armies surround Houston,” Lehrer said softly.

  “I’m sure the secretary meant no offense,” Méndez cut in. “My apologies, Chancellor. Our goal here is to work toward a constructive solution—not to get mired in insults on both sides.”