by O. J. Lowe
Brennan Frewster.
He’d been sat in the hospital for two days now, finished typing up his report on the whole Brennan Frewster fiasco to give it the official label it had been granted by Icardi when Nick had been pressed for the whole truth. He could still hear the disbelief in his boss’s voice, not quite able to accept what he’d been told, no matter how true or false it was. He couldn’t see past the sensationalism of it all. Icardi was a solid enough choice to cover for Brendan while he was on leave, but he lacked any sort of imagination to be truly great at the job in Nick’s opinion.
Not that he could comment. Brendan had tried leaving him in charge, even Nick had to admit with hindsight it hadn’t been the best decision. He’d done the best he could, he lacked the experience and Walter Swelph had moved Icardi into the position until Brendan returned from Vazara.
Those memories haunted him, that failed operation felt such a long time ago. For a long time, he hadn’t been sure about his place at Unisco and where he fit in. When Sharon had been alive, he’d felt he’d wanted to leave, a feeling that had developed first when Montgomery had nearly been killed, had simmered for the following months, to Wade getting hurt at the Quin-C, to his investigation for the suspected unlawful killing of Jeremiah Blut, to that undercover operation he’d agreed to go on following Sharon’s death.
No. Her murder.
Those two words burned bright within the centre of his being, felt the heat rush through him at their meaning. Harvey Rocastle and Wim Carson. Those two had been responsible, neither of them was blameless. He’d had them both in his sights at one point, Carson had ended badly for him, he might be a target beyond him. That was why the Vedo were here. To deal with Carson ostensibly. Rocastle though, if he’d been willing to sacrifice the rest of the pieces, he could have killed him. Instead he’d made him suffer but it hadn’t done a damn bit of good. He’d gotten away.
Back then, he’d thought about leaving Unisco for pastures new, a new challenge in life that wouldn’t make a little more of him die inside or hurt the people he loved. Now, with everything happening, he couldn’t see himself anywhere else. There was nobody left he cared about to make a long-lived life sound a viable possibility. He’d failed Frewster, thrown all his efforts at him and still he’d died. He’d heard that Saarth was still in critical condition, not quite dead but not quite alive either. They didn’t know when she’d wake up, they weren’t going to be getting any viable intelligence from her any time soon. Not that he expected her to crack. Ulikku hadn’t, after all. They weren’t breaking. Maybe something in the process that had turned angry, oddball spirit callers into hardened killers who didn’t fear anything. He didn’t know.
Carlow was waking up. He’d made the choice to be here, hadn’t really had anywhere else to be before his investigation was complete. Icardi would be furious with him, but screw Icardi. He wanted every fact before he went back, lest he need them to defend himself with. First rule of Unisco. Never leave any weapon behind you might need, and he’d always considered information to be one of the ultimate weapons. Hardest to acquire, trickiest to use, but always the most useful.
Her eyelids trickled apart, she managed a smile at him. “Hey,” she said, her voice little more than a croak. He’d seen her medical records, had noticed too many discrepancies for her to be just a normal butler. Whatever Frewster had used her for, it wasn’t solely for cooking his meals and pressing his suits. Not unless that left broken-and-healed bones and noticeable scarring.
“Ms Carlow,” Nick said. “Welcome back to the world of the living. You gave us all quite a scare.”
He watched her eyes, suddenly alert again, scan back and forth across the room, searching and seeking, he saw them fall as she realised that he was alone with her. “Master Frewster?” she asked. “Did he make it?”
Nick shook his head, was about to apologise, only to be cut off by the wail she gave, primal animal, sorrowful and broken, every decibel a testament to her grief. He reached up, patted her hand. “My sympathies, Ms Carlow,” he said. “In the end, he died a hero. You were down for the count, you didn’t see it. He saved thousands of lives…”
“But he couldn’t save himself, could he?” she said, moving her hand away from him to wipe her eyes. She looked older since she’d woken, twenty years transplanted onto an already hard-lived life. “That was Brennan all over. He’d do the right thing, no matter the cost. He never did consider the price he’d pay one day.”
“I don’t think we ever do,” Nick said. “Not until it comes to us all. Heroism is not a common thing, Ms Carlow. We talk about…”
“Helga,” she said. “Call me Helga.”
“Helga, we talk about heroism and what it means…”
“Brennan wasn’t a hero, he’d have been the first one to say so. He had his faults and his deficiencies just like everyone else. He wasn’t perfect, you had to look at his personal life for that,” she said, interrupting him again.
“Nobody is perfect,” Nick said. “That’s the only thing that’s true about life. Someone once said, the older you get, the more you compromise.”
“What he did do though,” she said. “He tried to at least do the right thing. If there was an injustice he had the power to change, he would go for it. He might not always win, but he always made the enemy work for it. How did he die?”
“Shot,” Nick said. “Wasn’t even meant for him.” It was meant for me, he wanted to say, the words caught in the back of his throat and wouldn’t come free. “Stray blast punched straight through him. It would’ve taken a lot to save him and he ran out…” He swallowed. “He just ran out of time. I wanted to try and save him, he told me not to, more or less made me let him go.”
“We always want more until we don’t,” Carlow said. “Sometimes we know when we have to let go. Life though, the most beautiful thing that you’ll ever spend.” He wasn’t surprised to see the tears flowing from her now, for a woman in her fifties, she gave the impression of a little girl lost, not knowing what the future held.
“I know,” Nick said. “I know. I’m sorry. It was a bad situation. People were going to die. People did die. They’re talking about giving Brennan a posthumous medal for bravery and service to the kingdoms. Some sort of honour.”
“He’d prefer to be alive,” she said. “I know that much.”
“I think we all would,” Nick said. He was thinking of Sharon again, thinking of how Ritellia had stood up in front of the media of the kingdoms and proclaimed that in honour of her memory, the Quin-C trophy would be named for her. Nobody had won it, ironically. The champion of the competition remained Ruud Baxter since it had been unclaimed by either Scott Taylor or Theobald Jameson. Given a choice between a thousand meaningless accolades named for her and having her back in his arms, he knew which he’d pick in a heartbeat. Accolades didn’t keep you warm at night. Didn’t love you back. You couldn’t stare at an accolade and see the spring in their step, the way they walked and talked, the way they laughed and cried. You looked at an accolade and you knew you were never going to see them again. The dead were gone, no bringing them back and only the memories lingered, the pain and the pleasure. You looked at the accolade and you felt the black hole where they’d previously existed in life.
“Look like you’re having some tough thoughts there,” Carlow said. “Do you need a moment.”
“Just thinking,” Nick said. “You’re right, you know. We never can tell how much time we have. We both lost people to this whole Coppinger thing. Too many will before it’s over. She needs to be stopped and fast.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Carlow asked simply.
“Because not every battle is won in a day,” Nick said. “And only a fool disregards vital intelligence because it sounds fanciful. Frewster didn’t die for nothing, I intend to make sure of that. He died because he knew something, he died because Coppinger wanted him. He spun me a story that, if it weren’t for some elements of it, I would find fanciful. I wanted to see how y
ou were.”
“And you were going to pump me for further information, weren’t you?”
“I certainly thought about it,” Nick said. “Forewarned is forearmed and this isn’t the sort of game you want to go into without all sorts of plans.”
“I’m glad I got out of it,” she said, resting her head back. “It’s not a life you enjoy after a while.”
“Why do I know the name Carlow?” Nick asked, his interest piqued with her answer. “You can’t leave me hanging on that.”
“I had a bit of a past,” she admitted.
“Don’t we all,” he said, smiling at her. He knew it lacked warmth, he just wanted a damn answer rather than the games. Standard question evasion. “Were you Unisco?”
She shorted. “Hardly. I was a bit better than that, Agent Roper.”
“Arknatz?”
Carlow yawned. “Darling, I wouldn’t be seen dead associating with those individuals. Thugs, the lot of them. No finesse. No refinement. Brute force and battery. I always found you got more results with silk and lace than with steel.” The particular implications of that statement hung in his mind, he tried to brush them off. Carlow wasn’t an unattractive woman, if carrying the trappings of a hard life. In her youth, he’d have wagered she’d been a real head turner.
“Nicholas, the organisation I worked for no longer exists,” she said gently. “Thirty years ago, it was good. Twenty years ago, it folded. Life never quite is what we think it will be. Still, if you hadn’t heard of us, I’d be surprised.” He said nothing, she smiled at him. “Coldstone,” she said. “We had our highs, I’ll give the good old days that.”
Of course, he had heard of Coldstone. “Okay, now I’m impressed,” he said. “What the hells happened to you all? You went from everything to nothing in ten years.”
As he remembered, Coldstone had been a small intelligence operation, only a few on its staff but it specialised in deep infiltration, putting people where others couldn’t get them. They’d freelanced, taken up jobs where hired by those that couldn’t do it themselves. Today, they’d probably have been called mercenaries. Back then, there’d been a certain romance about them, not least because most of their operatives had been attractive women. There’d been a drama made about them a few years back, he wondered if they’d taken poetic licence with the storylines and their choices of actresses.
He chuckled. Maybe he’d been right about Carlow in her youth. “Seriously though, you ladies were legends,” he said. “No wonder I thought I’d heard of you before. Helga Carlow. The Thorned Rose herself.”
She’d gone red, the touch of colour rushing through her cheeks. “Nobody ever called me that. That was made up for the drama. You know, they interviewed us all?”
“Incredible, they managed to track you down for it?”
“Some people forget the first rule of keeping your mouth shut,” she said. “Just because we’re retired doesn’t mean that we like to talk.”
“You’re talking to me,” Nick said.
She gave him a bemused look. “Only because you saved my life. I didn’t talk to you before like this, did I?”
He had to give her that one. “No,” he said. “No, you did not.”
“Didn’t just save it, you fought for it. Brennan would have let me die and I’d have been fine with that.” She shrugged as he raised an eyebrow. “I had a good life. Brennan knew it. He wouldn’t have regretted it.”
“I think he would,” Nick said. “It was a tough day for us all.”
“Why?”
“Well, there was the attack and the shooting and…”
“Why did you save me? You and Brennan could have dumped me and carried on running, just leave me to die.”
“First of all,” Nick said. “He was a ninety-year-old man, how much running do you think he could realistically have carried on for?” Carlow smiled at that. “And second, well it wasn’t really much of a choice. I don’t like leaving women to die when I can do something about it.”
“Do you miss her?” Carlow asked suddenly. “Your fiancé?”
“What do you think?” Nick replied, leaning back in his seat, folding his arms behind his head. “Every damn day I’m awake, I think about her. I remember the good times, I try not to dwell on the not-so-good. That won’t do anything well for me.”
“Hindsight always makes things better,” Carlow said. “Love is what it is. It can create, it can nourish, but it can also destroy, I’m sorry to say.”
“And yet without it, where would we be?” Nick said. “I once heard someone say if there was a drug with a comedown like love, nobody would take it. Thought he sounded like a wise man.”
“I don’t think you’re over her, are you? A part of her still beats within your heart.”
“I think a part always will,” he admitted. “I know everyone says it, but I always feel that what we had was special. We could have had something wonderful and it was torn from us in pretty bad circumstances.”
“When a love is torn in two, it is never in good circumstances,” she said. “Be sad not that it’s over but be glad that it happened. Those are words that I tried to conduct my life by.”
She was right. He wasn’t sure he felt better about it, but he didn’t feel any worse and that was a good thing. Nick grinned at her. “Thanks, Ms Carlow.
“Saving my life grants you the right to call me by my first name,” she said, managing a weak smile as she said it. “You know that, correct?”
“Does it also grant me the tale of how a deep cover intelligence operative ended up working for Brennan Frewster?” he asked. “Because that story might be interesting.”
She laughed, looking better and better by the second. The deathly pallor he’d gotten used to across her skin had rescinded, she gained a little bit of colour right across her face. “Not really, I’m afraid. I needed a job. He initially wanted a bodyguard. He knew his onions, Brennan did, and he had a great respect for Coldstone. He threw a lot of work our way when he was the head of Unisco. All us ladies knew him by sight, and although it’s irrelevant, but by all Divines, he was a handsome bastard back then.”
They’d continued to chat for an hour, anything and everything, Nick’s questions remaining forgotten until the end and finally she brought her speaking to a halt as she looked around the room.
“I thought he’d be here when I woke up,” she said. “I know it was a dream before, but you’ve still got to believe, right?”
“I’m not sure what to believe in any longer,” Nick said. “I don’t think the kingdoms are getting better. Probably the opposite in fact. The more we do; the more things start to tear apart underneath us.”
“We all have days like this,” Carlow said. “Nicholas, you don’t let them get you down too much when you lose, you don’t let your victories lift you too high.”
“Victories, huh? What do those feel like again?”
Her chuckle made him smile in turn. She had that way about her. Reassuring. Easy to talk to. A great listener. She’d probably been a great spy and an amazing butler. That she was using her experience to draw stuff out of him now wasn’t something he was unaware of, he wasn’t giving anything away compromising to Unisco. “Don’t doubt yourself, Nicholas. You still have more to offer than you think. We all do. It isn’t over until we’re all dead, and the last one alive can switch the lights off.”
“Everything Frewster said about the Forever Cycle,” Nick finally said. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “He believed it was. He told me the tale he told you long since, of Canderous Arventino and Adrian Battleby and his adventure with them. I didn’t believe it at first. He spent years researching it as a side project, he had great stock in what it said. The amount of times I came in early and saw him pouring over family trees and genealogy records and Unisco backgrounds of possible Divineborn, I lost track.”
“Frewster was tracking the Divineborn?” Nick asked. “Did he get anywhere identifying them?”
“His
notes are back at Withdean,” she said. “When I get out, I can find them for you. He spun you his tale, didn’t he?”
“Finished it post-mortem unfortunately. I got the whole gist of the story. Interesting. I think there’s elements of lunacy there, but Frewster didn’t strike me as not being entirely in control of his faculties. If he was struggling, he did a good job hiding it.”
“Frewster came from fine genes,” she said. Nick had to smile at the pun there, given the questions springing up around Frewster’s parentage. “He didn’t hide things when he didn’t have to.”
“Divines, but Unisco was the wrong line of work for him then,” Nick said. “Until you’re better Helga, then I’d like that research.”
“It is just names and lists, none of it truly helpful,” she said. “But if you desire, then I’ll aid you. Brennan brought you into his life to help him when he was troubled. He would have wanted his death to be avenged, his enemies brought to justice and my assistance to be granted.”
“Even the smallest of insignificancies can have surprising revelations,” Nick said. “We never know what’s going to be valuable, so we try to take it all.” He rose to his feet, was surprised to find her hand on his arm.
“Not everything dies, Nicholas Roper,” she said. “The dead carry on living in our memories. If we can recall them, they will never leave us. A lot of people knew of Ms Arventino. She was loved, she was adored by the masses. That counts for a lot. She’ll live on forever. She’d have wanted you to be happy. You can’t wear her memories around your neck like an anchor, they’ll drag you down if you’re not careful.”
“Then I’ll need to be careful,” he said. He didn’t want this discussion right now, he’d already reached his limit for the day. More than that, he wasn’t ready to let her go yet. She had too much of a prominent role in his memories to just be forgotten like that. “Or learn how to swim.”
