by R. M. Olson
At last, though, she said, “Alright. Alright, genius, I agree. We’ll make a backup plan. You’re right, no one is bloody well hurting those kids as long as I can do anything to stop it. But—we won’t use this backup plan unless we have to. Right?”
He took a long breath and glanced around at the others. They were watching the two of them, no one speaking. He closed his eyes for a moment.
Masha was dangerous. Masha was probably the most dangerous person he’d dealt with, and that included Vitali and Grigory. She’d been on their side, or at least brought them onto her side, for long enough that he’d grown accustomed to working next to her, had actually come to believe she wouldn’t pose a threat to them, even if she did to the rest of the system.
He’d been disabused of that on Grigory’s ship.
But—well, but Jez still trusted her.
He hadn’t realized, until he’d been forced to take a look at himself, how he’d grown accustomed to treating Jez. Like someone who had to be watched to keep her from hurting herself or tripping up the stairs. But she wasn’t a kid, and she wasn’t an innocent. She’d been thrown out of her home at fourteen, she’d told him that, had survived in one of the most vicious smuggler gangs in the system, stolen the crew boss’s ship, and kept ahead of the consequences for years before he met her. She was whip-smart, she’d never have survived otherwise. And … well at this point, after their job in the university, she knew Masha maybe better than any of them.
If she trusted her—
At last he opened his eyes and met Jez’s steady gaze. “Alright,” he said quietly. “Only if necessary.”
She nodded once, and stood. “Listen. I’m going to bed. I’m not letting those damn kids get killed, so if you need me, I’ll be here. But I don’t want to be part of this. I don’t want to know about it unless I have to.” Her voice was uncharacteristically grave. “Anyways, just—just remember what I said, OK?”
He nodded, and she turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Lev looked around at the others. “What about the rest of you?”
“I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” said Tae, his voice strained. “You know that. But—but I may have to meet with Zhenya again. The less I know, the better.”
Lev nodded. “I agree. Go get some sleep, then.”
Tae nodded, but Lev was fairly certain from the grim set to his face that the kid wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon.
“Go on,” he said more gently. “At least try to sleep, OK? We’ll figure this out, I promise. Your friends won’t get hurt if there’s anything I can do to prevent it.”
Tae gave him a faint, strained smile, then turned for the door, exhaustion written in every line of his posture.
At last it was only Lev, Ysbel, and Tanya.
Ysbel looked up at him, raising one eyebrow. “Alright, Lev. What do you want us to do?”
Lev sank back into his chair and rubbed his hand over his face. “Honestly, I have no idea.”
She looked at him for a long time. “You really think that Masha will let those children die?”
He looked up, not bothering to hide the exhaustion on his face. “I’m not willing to bet their lives that she won’t.”
She nodded.
For a few moments, they were quiet. At last Ysbel said, “How far are you willing to go for this?”
He sighed.
That was the question, really. That had always been the question.
“I … don’t know,” he said at last. “I don’t know.”
There had been a time, not too long ago, where he thought he had known. On Grigory’s ship, with the memory of his one-time professor’s attempt to kill Jez fresh in his memory, he’d thought he’d been willing to do anything at all.
And then he’d seen exactly what being willing to do anything at all looked like.
Oh, it would have been for a good cause, certainly. He would have done whatever it took to keep his friends safe. To keep Jez safe. But in the end, it wasn’t what you were doing it for that counted. It was what you did.
Grigory had tortured a man to death in front of Lev, because he’d thought Lev would enjoy it.
And Lev had become the kind of person who Grigory might think would enjoy that.
He almost had been. Not someone who’d enjoy it, perhaps, but condone it anyways. He’d been almost willing to kill hundreds of innocent people, in order to stop the person who had the power to kill all of them. He’d been a hair’s breadth away from it. A hair’s breadth away from losing his damn soul, if he had a soul in the first place.
A hair’s breadth away from losing Jez forever.
Because in the end, he’d been willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted, just like Grigory was. That was what it had come down to.
And he couldn’t be that person again. He couldn’t.
Ysbel was still watching him, but there was a look on her face that said she’d guessed what was going on inside his head.
“There are things I won’t do, Ysbel,” he said at last. He managed a wry smile. “I’m—still working out what those are. But to answer your question, I’ll go as far as I can without making Tae and Jez ashamed to be in the same room as me.”
She watched him for a few moments. At last she said, “One day, that’s going to have to come from you. What you believe. Not what they believe.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But it’s a step.”
She nodded, and they were silent for a few moments. At last Ysbel said, “Well. If that’s the case, then, I suggest you leave what needs to be done to Tanya and me. I have some ideas.”
He nodded. There was a strange feeling in his stomach, a sort of dread mixed with relief. “Alright,” he said. “I won’t ask what you’re doing.”
“Don’t. Please. I know you don’t want to keep anything from Jez, and I’m glad, because that would make you a very terrible friend. She doesn’t expect me not to keep things from her, though, and if she asks me, I will tell her to piss off.”
He managed a chuckle.
“I will need one thing from you, though,” she said.
“Yes?”
She gave him a small smile, and suddenly he was very glad that he wasn’t in Masha’s shoes right now. “I will need you to introduce me to someone.”
“Who?”
“Your uncle. Vitali Dobrev.”
He stared. When he’d recovered his power of speech, he said, “Ysbel. What in the system are you thinking? First, he’d kill all of us on sight, and second, he’s—”
“Here. On the pleasure planet. I’ve checked into this. I’m not surprised you didn’t know, because he’s been keeping his whereabouts confidential since we pulled our little heist. There are a lot of people who don’t like him, and most of them he doesn’t like back. But he’s here. My father was a famous weapons designer, you know. I have plenty of contacts in that world, and no one who deals in weapons is stupid enough to lose track of a man like Vitali Dobrev.”
“I—” for the first time in a long time, he was unable to come up with words.
“He’ll talk to you. I promise. I don’t think you understand how obsessed with you he is. You’re his brother’s son, and you outwitted him, twice. He’s not the kind of man who forgets someone like that.”
“I’m—fairly certain that he’s only interested in me insofar as it helps his ultimate objective of actually killing me.”
“Well yes, he does want to do that. But don’t sell yourself short. That isn’t the only reason he’s interested in you.”
“It’s a relatively important one, as far as I’m concerned!”
She smirked at him. “At any rate, you know there are people thinking about you.”
“Again, because they want to kill me.”
She shrugged. “Anyways. You can believe me when I tell you, he may want to kill you, but he will talk to you if you ask. And if you introduce me to him, he’ll talk to me. My father knew him.”
“And w
hat do you need to talk to him about?”
She looked at him. “And that, Lev, is what I would like you not to ask me, if you truly don’t want to be hiding things from Jez. Alright?”
Reluctantly, he nodded.
She was right—it was probably better for him not to know, at least until he was sure what he was and wasn’t willing to do.
“Send me what you have on him,” he said at last. “I’ll find a way to speak with him.”
“I suspect that will not be as difficult as you are imagining,” she said with a grim smile.
“As I’m hoping,” he muttered.
Her smile only widened.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“MY HEART. YOU will be alright while I’m gone?”
Ysbel looked up, startled out of her reverie.
Tanya was watching her, concern on her face. “Is everything alright, Ysi?”
Ysbel sighed, and tried to smile. “Yes. I—was just thinking about Vitali.”
Tanya nodded, and, after a moment, sat down on the bed beside her. “Do you think he’ll call you?”
Ysbel gave a short nod. “He’ll call me. If Lev contacts him, he’ll call me. I don’t think he’ll be able to resist.”
“And you think he’ll take you up on your offer?”
Ysbel paused a moment, then gave a short nod. “I’m quite sure he will.”
There was something tight in her chest at the thought, though.
She sighed again. “Anyways, you don’t need to sit here and listen to me worry. They need you out there. You go, I will take care of things here.”
Tanya kissed her fondly and slipped out the door, and Ysbel looked after her with a foolish smile on her face.
She suspected she was as stupidly in love with Tanya as she’d been at fourteen, but then she deserved it now, after however many years of marriage.
“Mama!”
She bit back a sigh at the shrill shout, and turned to where her son was dragging something out of her bedroom.
She looked closer, then cursed under her breath, grabbing for him. “Misko! Where did you get that? Those are mama’s explosives. You know you’re not supposed to play with mama’s explosives.”
“I want to! I want to blow things up like you do!”
“No.” She snatched the bundle of components out of his hands. “You are not to blow anything up until I have time to teach you how to do it safely, do you understand?”
He scowled at her. “I want to.”
“Yes, but I said no. So you can’t.” She paused a moment. “Why do you want to? Is there someone you are angry at?”
“No,” he muttered, dropping his gaze. “I just want to blow things up like you do.”
She frowned at him. “Why?”
“Because. Because I want to be like you when I grow up.”
She stared at her son, something strange stirring in her chest. “You—you do?”
“Yes,” he muttered.
For a moment, she almost had to grab the wall to steady herself.
“Well,” she heard herself saying. “Perhaps then we should sit down one of these days. Because if you want to learn about explosives, you need to be able to hold still so you don’t kill yourself while you’re putting them together.”
He looked up at her, sudden hope gleaming in his face. “I’m going to learn how to blow things up?”
She smiled past the lump in her throat. “Well, we can try. But remember, you have to be able to sit still.”
His whole face transformed when he smiled. She hadn’t remembered how much, maybe because he’d spent most of the last weeks sulking. But he was smiling now, like a sun had lodged behind his eyes and was shining out of them, and he grabbed her around the legs in an over-enthusiastic hug.
“Careful! You’ll knock me over and I’ll land on top of you,” she grumbled, but there was a lump in her throat. “You go finish your chores, and maybe after that we can sit for a little, and I’ll start to show you some components.”
His face fell again at the mention of chores, but he went, grumbling to himself.
Ysbel watched him go with eyes that were slightly misty.
She would never have thought it, honestly. A six-year-old proclaiming he wanted to be like her.
She’d lost them, five and a half years ago. But maybe, for the first time—maybe she was getting them back again after all.
She hardly noticed the sound of the door opening, several standard hours later. When she looked up, Tanya was standing in the doorway watching them, a soft smile on her face.
“Hello, my hearts,” she said. “You look like you’ve been having fun.”
Ysbel glanced around. Misko had settled himself on her lap, and Olya was sitting across from her, organizing the explosives components in front of her into neat piles.
“We’ve been very busy,” said Ysbel, trying to keep her face solemn. “Misko almost blew this entire place to dust before we decided that maybe I should help him.”
“I didn’t need help,” Olya volunteered. “Mama told me what needed to happen, and I figured out how to keep the pieces separate until I got the ratios right.”
“She did, you know,” said Ysbel, glancing at her daughter fondly. “She’s very good at this.”
“She will be quite the threat, then,” Tanya murmured, coming over to stand beside them. “She’s already very good at what I do. She’s a fast learner.”
“I’m also a very good gambler,” said Olya importantly. “Aunty Jez says so. She said I would be able to out-cheat her in a couple years, if I practice very hard.”
Ysbel bit back her chuckle at the look on her wife’s face and turned to her daughter. “Yes, well my love, perhaps that’s something that should wait until you’re a little older.”
Olya gave her a skeptical look. “If I’m good at it, I should probably work on it right now. Mamochka says it’s good to work on your talents.”
“Well—” Ysbel paused and glanced up at Tanya again. “Perhaps we should talk about this later, Olyeshka.”
Olya sighed and rolled her eyes, then reached for another component. “Anyways, I’m going to have a bomb that I made all by myself.”
Ysbel watched her fondly. It was the simplest of bombs, but then she remembered how proud she’d felt, sitting in her mother’s workshop with her very first explosive. It could hardly have blown the roof off their cottage, but it was hers, and that was all that mattered.
“When you’re finished, I’ll let you come into my weapons room and test it, alright?” she said, and Olya gave her a look of sheer adoration.
She stood, taking Misko carefully off her lap. He clung to her for a moment before she put him down, and there was something about his small hands on her arms that made something expand in her chest until she wasn’t sure there was room for it. She kissed him lightly on the cheek and set him down on the bench. “Only the components I gave you, alright? What happens if you touch one that mama didn’t give you?”
“I go to my room,” he muttered sullenly.
“And?”
“And you get to eat my dessert after dinner,” he said, his eyebrows lowered threateningly, eyes narrowed in disgust at the injustice.
“That is right,” said Ysbel impassively, then she turned to Tanya. “Alright, my love. Tell me what is happening in the rest of the world.”
Tanya glanced at the children. “Will they be alright alone for a moment?”
Ysbel looked at Olya. “Olyeshka, will you watch your brother?”
“Yes mama,” said Olya primly.
“And if he tries to take any of the components that he’s not supposed to?”
“I’ll take them away from him and call you.”
“And?”
“And grab him and run as far away from the table as I can and hide behind a door, in case something blows up.”
Ysbel gave her a fond smile. “That’s right. Good job.” She turned to Tanya, who was wearing an expression of mild concern. “Don’t worry,
my love. I was younger than this when I started working with explosives. Besides, there’s nothing here that would blow up anything bigger than this room, so if they’re behind the door, they’ll be safe.”
“I—know that,” said Tanya. “I suppose they just seem younger when they’re your own children.” She sighed, and stepped into the bedroom, and Ysbel followed.
They sat on the mattress, and Tanya reached out, taking Ysbel’s hand and pulling it into her lap. For a few moments she just sat there, looking at the way their fingers twined together.
“What is it?” asked Ysbel.
Tanya looked up, as if startled, and then smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry. It’s just—we got word on Grigory. They’ve been monitoring his communications, since Lev broke the code. He’ll be sending people to check out the pleasure house in the next few days, and I’m not certain we’re ready.”
Ysbel frowned. “That soon?”
Tanya managed a slight smile. “It’s a good thing, I think. This is what we’ve been waiting for. He’s not going to risk money on something that isn’t legitimate, and he’s got to find out what’s happening somehow. But it does mean we let Grigory’s people in here, and—” she shook her head. “I don’t know what he’s capable of. I don’t know if he wants us dead enough that he’d be willing to risk a quarrel with Olyessa. But it’s not something we can discount.”
Ysbel nodded thoughtfully. “Masha’s not worried, I assume. But then, why would she be? She always has an escape plan. What about Lev?”
Tanya shook her head. “He’s worried. He’s trying not to show it, I think, but he’s worried. And Tae looks like he hasn’t slept since he came back from talking to that Zhenya.”
“He’ll be fine,” said Ysbel, leaning over to kiss her wife on the forehead. “I don’t think you realize how little that boy sleeps when we’re on a job. I keep expecting him to fall over, but he hasn’t yet.”
Tanya gave her a small smile and sighed. “You know, that Ivan—”
“Would be good for him, I know. Do you think we should tell Tae that Ivan’s completely off his head for him, or do you think he’ll figure it out at some point?”
