There were no servants here, at least none that I saw. There were only Clerks. Some wore the short black tunics like the ones marching us forward. Some wore the more traditional long coats. Whenever we passed them they stopped and turned, standing like statues, letting our little parade go past.
The Clerks walked us about a mile. My knees and shoulders were on fire by the time the thoroughfare ended at another pair of the gilded doors. The lead Clerks laid their palms on panels embossed with the eternal Erasmus family tree, and the doors swung outward.
The room was blank white and shining, like the holding bay on the habitat had been. A white-haired man sat at a black desk in the middle. He wore a gold-and-ruby collar of rank around his bony shoulders, and he had a Clerk’s glittering eyes. A straight row of white chairs was arrayed in front of the desk. They were all high-backed, padded, and sealed to the floor. They all had restraints bolted to the arms.
“Good evening, Grand Sentinel,” said Amerand.
The Grand Sentinel Torian Erasmus steepled his fingers and smiled.
I rallied. I was going to have to talk fast if I wanted to survive long enough for the cavalry to come.
I had no chance.
The Clerk grabbed me from behind. I kicked back hard, but he didn’t even flinch.
“Stop this!” shouted Amerand. The nearest Clerk leveled the gun at him. I stopped struggling and swallowed. The Erasmus System was still firmly in place. If I fought, they would shoot Amerand.
Amerand and I stared wildly at each other and he understood why I had stopped struggling. He threw back his head and shouted wordlessly at the ceiling. He was a hostage again.
Still.
“Don’t, Amerand,” I said. “Do not give them any excuse. You are my witness.” Not hostage. Witness. I have no Companion. I have no one else. “If you’re gone, nobody sees what happens here.”
Torian smiled, frozen in place, fingertips pressed together.
I made myself look at him. It doesn’t matter, I told him silently. You’re already finished. You just don’t know it yet.
The door opened and a slender, freckle-faced young man wearing medical whites entered the room. I was not surprised to see the Clerk’s distant glitter in his tarnished gold eyes, or the pressure spray in his hands.
You’re already finished, I repeated in my head. You just don’t know it yet.
They slammed me into the chair. They closed the restraints on my wrists. I struggled. I couldn’t help it. They caught my head and I tried to bite and I heard Amerand shouting and cursing and the pressure spray dug into the hollow behind my ear.
It hurt.
It hurt.
It hurt.
THIRTY-SEVEN
TERESE
“Hello, Terese.”
Dylan?
My eyes flew open. I was in the curving white room, but I was alone. The desk and chairs were empty. My hands were free. But none of that mattered.
Dylan?
He was there. Black leather jacket and stupid tattoo and shit-eating grin. All of him.
“Yes.”
I lurched to my feet. Warm, strong arms wrapped around me in a bear hug. I couldn’t breathe, I could only feel. Dylan. I’d never known he would be so strong. We spun each other around.
Dylan…but they cut you out of me. You’re gone.
He chuckled, setting me down again. “Not anymore.”
I stepped back, just a little, just enough so I could look him over. God and all the Prophets, it’s good to see you!
“You too, Terese. I’ve missed you.”
But how…
“Ah-ah.” Dylan laid a finger on my mouth. “Don’t ask. If you ask, it’ll spoil things.” He took both my hands. “I don’t ever want to have to leave you again, Terese.”
No. Please, no.
“Okay then. Just enjoy. It’s been a tough time. Catch me up, would you?”
I’d like to say I didn’t talk. It would sort of be true. I didn’t talk. I babbled.
Thirty years’ worth of life, of names and places and things, of my contacts with the Guardians, such as they were, all sprinkled with “You remember who…” and “You remember how…” And when he didn’t remember, I filled him in.
I didn’t think about what I was saying. I didn’t care. This was Dylan, back in my mind, safe and whole. The pain was gone, the black hole was gone, and I wasn’t alone anymore. For the first time in three decades, I wasn’t alone.
I told him about Dazzle. I told him about Vijay and about Siri, and finally about Bianca. I cried while he held me.
“Will they really do an open intervention?”
They’re on their way, Dylan.
He pulled away. He walked away, taking his warmth away from me.
What’s the matter?
“There’s a problem, Terese.”
What?
“Terese, if they come here…Misao and the others. They’re going to take me away.”
No. I shook my head. Never happen. You have no idea what I had to do to make them let me come out here without you in the first place. They’ll be thrilled you’re back.
“No, they really won’t, Terese, and you know it as well as I do.”
I did know it. They’d do it. I couldn’t seem to think how it was Dylan was back, but I knew it wasn’t an official act. They’d take him away, take him out. They’d leave me alone in the dark. All closed in the dark. They’d broken me into pieces before, they’d do it again.
No, Dylan. Not again.
He spread his hands. “I wouldn’t want to, Terese. But I wouldn’t be able to stop them.”
What do we do?
“It’s up to you.” He walked over to me and laid his hands in mine. I felt the weight of them, and they were as broad and callused as I had always imagined they would be. “You’re the one who brought them in. You’ve got to call it off. Stall them until we can figure out what to do.”
How come I can touch you? I curled my fingers around his. I could never touch you before.
He smiled. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he said, lifting our hands. “It also brings technological improvements.”
Technological improvements. Improvements from experiments carried out on Bianca, on Siri. Cold flooded me, knotting my stomach, forcing me to back away. How could I have forgotten even for a moment?
Who are you?
Dylan’s face fell and he shook his head. “I’m Dylan, Terese. You know me.”
No. You’re not. You can’t be.
“Look at me. Who else is there?”
I looked. I strained my eyes. There was nothing—the blank whiteness of the empty room, the chairs, the desk, and Dylan.
But this wasn’t right. My hand flew to the curve behind my ear and found the hot welt there.
Those are clones, said Dr. Gwin’s voice from memory. I saw again the black-and-white blocks of the chips that had been laid into Siri’s network.
They must have laid down a whole new network for me. Was it easier or harder that way?
“I wouldn’t know, Terese,” said Dylan quietly.
Easier. It had to be easier. There would be no interference, no second voice of sanity to be counteracted. Just my permanently mourning mind, all primed and ready to believe in the miraculous return of the lost.
You’re a ghost! You’re nothing!
“You don’t believe that, Terese,” he said softly. “You can’t believe that.”
I slumped and I sagged. I fell back into the white chair. They hadn’t even bothered to keep me restrained. This was Dylan, and he was with me again and he was real—and I couldn’t fight him.
Dylan crouched down in front of me. “It’s okay, Terese. We’re needed here. We’ve got a whole new world of people who depend on us. Just stall Misao for a few hours while we sort out what to do.”
I lifted my head weakly. Dylan smiled at me, and I took his hand. They had me. They had me in a way the Redeemers never had. They had not taken anything from me.
/>
They had given me what I’d wanted most in the world.
They. Who are they? I tried to make myself think. I should know. I should be able to understand. I knew the names. I knew who had planned this and brought me here. I knew who held Amerand hostage now and forever.
You’re Torian Erasmus, I said to Dylan. You’re the Grand Sentinel of the Erasmus System.
For a single heartbeat, it wasn’t Dylan. It was the white-haired man in his bright collar. And Dylan’s hand vanished from mine.
Then it was gone, and it was me and Dylan, and I was holding his callused hand again.
“Does the name really matter, Terese?” he murmured. “I’m here with you now.”
I didn’t answer at once, and he frowned, just a little, and sorrow flooded me. It was cold, it was loneliness, deep in my head and my heart.
It was too much. It was going to drag me under, it was so strong.
Too strong to be real. Too strong to be mine.
I grabbed his hand again and I squeezed, too hard.
“It matters,” I said through gritted teeth. “It does matter, Torian Erasmus.”
And I pictured the white-haired man in his collar of rank. I pictured the Clerks and their guns. I formed the thoughts and I held them hard.
I had been trained for this. I had worked with a Companion for years, and I knew how to picture him. I could picture a world to put him in when I needed to. I had been in a cell for months with only Dylan and that world for relief, and I had gotten very, very good at this kind of focus.
My eyes cleared and I could see. At least, it seemed as if I could see. Dylan was gone. My hands were empty. Torian Erasmus sat at his desk, his mouth fixed in his death’s-head smile.
“I can give him back to you, Terese.” It was still Dylan’s voice in my head. I’d never heard Torian’s voice. I didn’t have any memory to work from. “Anytime. Just say his name and he is here.”
No.
Torian frowned. I’d hurt him. I’d hurt him and the sorrow rushed through me. Despair, bleak and uncomprehending. How could I hurt this man? I was making him keep Dylan away from me.
Who are you?
Patience, deep and profound, radiated from him. “I’m Felice Erasmus’s father.”
Shock blanked my mind, and the patient warmth flowed into me unhindered. “I took immortality, I think about the same time your Bianca Fayette did. I was able to watch my daughter’s plans come to fruition, then fail.” His anger shook me, a parent’s righteous, disappointed anger. His grandchildren, the unworthy heirs of his beloved daughter, they’d been given everything, and they’d lost it all.
But he was not going to permit his family—his daughter’s family—to perish. He’d planned this across the decades, with the vision of centuries.
“I truly owe Bianca a debt. I thought I was going to have to let them take me apart. I started the Clerks’ network to protect and stabilize my family in case I had to give what I had, what I was, over to them. But then Bianca came, and that was no longer an issue.” His smile was beatific. “That she was conspiring with Bern to destroy my family only made it easier for her to vanish. Liang didn’t care what happened to her, and Bern couldn’t let the truth be found out.”
And you took her to Hospital. You cut her open and you experimented on her. You were looking for immortality and in addition you found her Companion.
“Yes. The debt we owe her is truly incalculable.”
I was on my knees. I didn’t remember falling. My focus wavered enough that I saw Torian stand up slowly and walk around his desk. He held out one long, well-kept hand.
“Accept this, Terese. Let me help you.”
I stared at that hand. Hand. Hands.
Hands.
I saw Siri’s hand holding the knife to Vijay’s throat.
I saw filthy hands covered with my blood, reaching out, making me kneel like this. Voices whispered lovingly in my ears, swearing they were doing the work of God Almighty, and black despair overtook me, because I believed them.
I knew this. I knew this.
I looked up again and I clenched my teeth. One fiber at a time, I pulled myself to my feet. And there was Torian Erasmus sitting immobile at his desk.
No.
Despair again, a flooding black wave. I stood and let it wash through me. I did not resist. There was nothing to fight. It was pure feeling. It would come. It would go. I would still be here.
This was illusion. This was drugs and nanos and Dazzle. I reached inside myself and I found my voice, my real, physical voice.
“Amerand!” I shouted.
“Terese!”
“Amerand, I’m blind! What’s Torian doing?”
“He’s just sitting there, Terese, he’s not moving.”
And Amerand screamed and there was the sound of metal against flesh, and I whirled around, but I saw nothing.
“There’s only you and me here, Terese,” said Torian. “I see no one else. This is our place, and it will be from now on.”
Warmth flooded me now, the pure primal security that comes with being with your best friend, your lover. This was the safest place. There could be no pain here, no worry, and no end.
I stood. I don’t know how, but I stood. I let it rise in me, sweet and false and a thousand times more terrible than the despair had been.
“You can’t move, can you?” I moved my mouth, I worked my throat. I would not speak to him as I spoke to Dylan. He was not Dylan. “You can’t move because you’ve got to focus on holding me here and creating this illusion.”
Torian shrugged. “It hardly matters. You cannot maintain your resistance for long. This takes a great deal more strength for you than it does for me.”
Oh, it felt so good to be here with him. Better than it had ever been with Dylan. Only with David had I ever been this safe.
David. Memory bright as daylight flashed over me. David in the rooftop garden looking out over the winter city. David sad and struggling with what I had done. David fighting with my old ghosts and losing. Ghosts, after all, couldn’t fail to comprehend. Ghosts couldn’t disappoint you.
Except wasn’t that what Bianca had done?
“Very pretty,” murmured Torian. “I always did like Chicago.”
And David and Chicago were gone, and we were in the white room again, and all the worry was gone. I was tired and I was safe. I could sleep now, and it would be all right.
You saw that. You saw my memory.
“I see everything, Terese. It’s those little technological improvements—and the fact that I am a living being. We are connected now, you and I.”
Lassitude, warmth, and safety. Connected through a wireless transmission, a buzzing in the background, right behind my ear where my Companion used to be. The place Siri had tried to cut Vijay.
“You’re very close to accepting it. Rest now. You’ve earned it.”
Sleep. I was so tired.
“When you wake, Dylan will be here with you, and nothing else will matter.”
I wanted to lie down at his feet and sleep. It would feel so good just to stretch out on the floor.
“Go to sleep now, and Dylan will wake you when it’s time. Nothing else matters.”
I swayed on my feet. The edges of my vision blurred and dimmed, moving slowly inward, blotting out light with warm darkness.
Darkness.
Darkness from my cell. Darkness from the space under the stairs. Darkness can see you. Darkness creeps under your skin and into your head. Daylight thinks it sees, but darkness knows. Darkness is what you carry in a hole in your head.
I could hold on to darkness. I could grab hold of it as I never could the daylight. I could shape the darkness because I remembered it so well.
I knew what the stone would feel like under my hands, I knew the exact temperature of the air, the way the dust would grate against my throat. And I knew to the depths of my soul there was no way out.
And there in the darkness of my mind, I closed the door. I kn
ew the sound, I knew the feeling. I felt the breeze of it against my skin. The hollow thud reverberated down into my bones.
“What are you doing? Where is this?”
Torian Erasmus groped through the blackness I’d brought down. I could feel him blundering through my nightmare, searching for the door with blind fingers.
It’s locked, Torian. There’s no handle. Nothing.
It was then I knew Bianca had foxed them. In the end, she’d foxed them all.
She’d been their test case. They had manipulated her Companion, trying to see how far they could make her go, but they couldn’t keep her alive and she’d called for me at the very end. This was why. She knew they’d pull me in here, into this space of illusion and manipulation. She was betting on what I’d bring with me.
She’d broken the rules and cost me my Companion, and she had found a way to save us all.
And I thought Misao was the stone-cold manipulator among us.
I could be in this place forever. Waking or sleeping, this was where my mind went. I wore this darkness like I wore my skin. I had never been able to escape it. I wouldn’t lose it now.
“What have you done?”
“I’ve closed the door, Torian, and I’ve locked you in here with me.”
And he believed me. He had to believe me. This memory was stronger and more clear than anything he knew how to bring up. I was trained. He was only practiced. This was my final reality and I had pushed it into his mind.
I was his Companion. I was the voice in his head and the vision in his mind’s eye.
I smiled into the darkness and listened to the sound of Torian Erasmus banging on the locked cell door.
THIRTY-EIGHT
AMERAND
After the Clerk poleaxed me, I couldn’t do anything but crouch on the floor, curled around myself, fighting for breath. Slowly, I was able to open my eyes again.
Terese knelt in the middle of the floor. She was smiling up at Torian, a satisfied, almost beatific smile. My guts flipped over and if I’d had anything left in my stomach, it would have spilled. Torian sat where he was, his fingers steepled, smiling down at her.
The Clerks stood still and staring. Not moving. I pushed myself up onto my knees. They still didn’t move.
Bitter Angels Page 36
