“Don’t be absurd. I’m giving the girl the finest dose of reality money can buy.” Jellicoe’s gray eyes slitted toward the flunky. “Nothing could be further from that children’s garbage.”
“Then you’ve read them,” continued the flunky, obstinate. “To know they’re children’s garbage. Look, I won’t turn you in to the Executive General or anything. We all know we all do it.”
“Your point?” demanded Jellicoe through grinding teeth.
“Oh, I haven’t got one. And I suppose you wouldn’t know much about storytelling at all, pleasantly kowtowing to the UCC as you do. I, on the other hand, take a rather personal interest in the art form.” As her captor spoke, pressure eased up on Pru’s shoulders. The flunky gave her a shove toward Jellicoe’s silent companion, who seized her by her arm. With a pop, the flunky removed the black UCC-branded helmet.
Sophie Wu, the woman who’d once been called Scheherazade, cast a benign, red-painted smile over the top of her chrome-plated uniform. “We apologize for the deception,” said Pru’s mother. “But as representatives of a would-be government-in-exile, we weren’t at all sure how else to get a meeting with some politically disgraced Incorporated arms dealers. It’s all just too much shadiness to wrap our heads around.”
We, thought Pru, staring openly at her mother. Who’s we?
“Who the hell are you?” snarled Jellicoe.
“You don’t know?” Mama mugged a wounded face. “Well, I suppose I should have known you weren’t much of a reader. Some Incorporated types are, keeping book smugglers in business and all, but I was perhaps overly optimistic—”
Jellicoe turned to the flunky hanging on to Pru, face flaming with rage and confusion. “You! Get rid of this woman!”
Pru’s new captor actually sighed. Pru stumbled forward, as he freed his grip, and removed the UCC helmet. “I’m afraid I don’t take orders from you,” said Gabriel Lamarque pleasantly. His hair fell in an unlikely layer of well-coiffed waves across his forehead, his cheeks slightly pink, as he grinned at Jellicoe with all his teeth. “That said, my associate and I did come here to negotiate in good faith. So far as we’re able, at least, given the gambit to get ourselves into the same room as the famous Harold Jellicoe.”
The flattery, at least, seemed to puff Jellicoe up a little. “What, so the great Head Representative of the Barricade Coalition”—he spat that bit out, curse-like—“would deign to ask favors of little old me?” He spread his arms, all false invitation and false smiles. “Or perhaps it’s an assassination attempt. You’re too hungry for the old battles of our youth, Lamarque, for playing the blood knight, the war hero. Perhaps you’ve come to finish me for a little taste of that old rush. Why else would you come alone, instead of sending some merc to do your dirty work?”
“Oh, he’s not alone,” Mama reminded Jellicoe, a deadly little caress of a whisper.
“I mean you no harm,” Lamarque reiterated, all cajoling tones.
“No?” Jellicoe paced around the length of the concrete, and paused, right in front of Pru, just a few feet from Mama and the Head Representative. For one wild moment, Pru thought Jellicoe might seize the back of Pru’s ponytail, toss her to the floor, put a plasma gun to her skull.
But Jellicoe only had eyes for Gabriel Lamarque. “Give me a reason not to call the Executive General right now.”
“Exactly what I said.” Lamarque bowed his head. “A negotiation.”
“And what could you possibly want to negotiate for?”
Lamarque’s blue eyes blinked once. Carefully, his expression schooled itself smooth, politician pleasant. “I’d think that would be obvious.” He glanced once toward Pru. For one dizzying moment, she wondered if this really was a fairytale, if the hero of the Partition Wars had come here with her mother to fix her screw-up, to rescue her from this mess and take her home to New Columbia, where Alex and Anabel and Cat would be waiting, safe and sound. She wondered if he was here to save her. If the adults had arrived to make everything all right.
Then the Head Representative’s gaze flicked back toward Jellicoe. “We’re here for my brother,” he said.
16
THE ART OF WAR
Jellicoe’s face was a creature unto itself. It twisted slowly from a sneer into self-satisfied disbelief, moving in pieces, from wide mouth to runny gray eyes to wrinkling nose. “What, and you think to storm my compound and take him, the two of you and this . . .” He barely spared a glance for Pru. “This insolent little freak?”
“A child,” corrected Mama, all smiles. “Playing a prank, no doubt. We are sorry for not keeping a better eye out, the Head Representative and I.” Like Pru had wandered into a neighbor’s suburban flower garden and trampled on some roses.
“Sorry!” Jellicoe’s wide mouth went wider still, disbelief painted in mottled red across his features. “That’s one hell of a prank, breaking and entering on Incorporated territory, don’t you think?”
“As the girl says,” continued Mama, unperturbed, “Barricader children are precocious.”
“Like your brother,” said Jellicoe. His eyes flicked toward Lamarque. Predatory intent glittered behind the pale irises. “He was precocious too, wasn’t he? The idealist who never quite grew up. You should have heard his old speeches here on our side of the Barricades, whenever he rallied attacks on my compound. Liberty and equality and justice for all. Such a firebrand! Perfect, really, for my . . . marketing purposes.”
Pru’s attention followed Jellicoe’s gaze toward Alex’s uncle. Gabriel had a face like marble, symmetrically carved and well shaped, but he’d won his following on warmth, the kind of heat that came with human approachability rather than the wild burn of his younger brother’s flames. Now, though, he looked cold as any statue. “No doubt,” he said. Cool voiced, the politician emerging slick and certain, angling for a deal. “You’ve had your way with him, but now I’d like him back, if you’ll please.”
“Like him back,” Jellicoe echoed, mocking. “As if you can waltz in here and demand anything you’d like without making an offer in return.”
Lamarque did smile then. “Only because you’ve been too preoccupied with marking your territory to allow me or my colleague here the chance. Believe me, it’s not one you’ll want to refuse lightly.”
“Oh?” Jellicoe’s lip curled. “And what’s this marvelous deal of yours, Head Representative Lamarque?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Lamarque spread his hands. “I come to you in disguise, with only one aide in what should have been an entourage, and no security detail so far as the eye can see. I’m here against the express wishes of my government. Which can only mean one thing.” He leaned forward, the way Pru sometimes saw on news networks, the same body language he used to create the impression of confiding great intimacy for the safekeeping of some interviewer or talking head. “I’m offering the best thing I have of value. I’m offering myself.”