I rolled him onto his side and listened for approaching footsteps. The fight hadn’t been as clean or quiet as I would have liked, and there was every chance someone in another room had been alerted. I remained silently crouched behind the island in the kitchen while I counted off thirty seconds. Satisfied that no one was coming, I finally stood.
I took off my bloodstained coat and left it on the countertop. Five men down. For a retired diplomat and beloved public figure, Solovyov was certainly security-conscious. I went through the kitchen into a large open living room with a sweeping view of the city of Valhalla. I glanced through the windows again for any sign of StateSec, and it seemed my luck was holding. The thought crossed my mind that StateSec may not come into the neighborhood at all and every resident had their own private security.
On the other end of the living room, past the intricately carved real wood furniture and the sealed bookshelves filled with aged paper manuscripts, was a purple door. The bedroom, I was sure of it.
I gripped the door’s handle and listened. I could hear movement in the room, but it was slow and deliberate, not the rapid patter of someone rushing into position. There was a quiet voice, followed by a woman’s reply. So there were at least two people in the room. I checked my posture and made a conscious effort to relax my expression. I was just a lost executive here for a meeting with Mr. Solovyov.
I knocked as I opened the door, feigning confusion. The affectation quickly became real.
I saw the Arbiter of Shaanxi, Ivan Solovyov himself, sitting at the edge of a shallow pool of water in the center of the room. Kneeling next to him was Katerina Capanelli, looking at me with a warm smile.
“Oh, Tycho,” she said, her voice perfectly friendly. “It’s only you.”
23
Finding Katerina was not a contingency I’d prepared for.
I took a furtive glance around the room. I didn’t want to take my eyes off of her, but I needed to know the space before the situation turned and she attacked. In contrast to the rest of the penthouse, the room was nearly empty. Near the floor-to-ceiling windows was a bed with silk sheets piled on top. An ornately carved wooden bureau stood next to it. Hanging on the opposite wall was a woven tapestry depicting golden crowns above twelve genderless figures.
The only other feature in the otherwise barren room was the circular recession in the floor at its center, filled with water. Ivan Solovyov sat nude at its edge, the old man quietly staring at me with what I took as an inquisitive expression. Katerina put her hands under Solovyov’s armpits and gingerly lowered him into the shallow water. He closed his eyes as he floated.
Katerina looked up at me and asked, “What did you think of the security team?”
“They weren’t exceptionally difficult.”
“No, I suppose they wouldn’t be. Are any of them still alive?”
“All of them, as far as I know.”
There was a neatly folded linen towel and silk robe on the floor next to her, with two small black devices sitting on top. Katerina took the devices in one hand and held them up to the light, as if inspecting them. They looked like dataspikes, but larger.
“Do you think that was mercy on your part,” she asked.
“Alive is better than dead. I only came here to talk to him.”
“And you injured—likely crippled—at least five people to do it. What do you think will happen to them tomorrow? Or the day after? Do you think everyone in the system has access to prosthetics like you and Andrea?”
That coming from her. It was narcissism unbound. “I don’t care to be lectured on ethics,” I said. “Least of all by you.”
She smiled and raised an eyebrow dismissively. “Fair enough. I’ll take your dataspike now,” she said and held out her empty hand palm-up. I glanced at it, then looked her in the eye again. I didn’t feel the need to say any of the myriad reasons why what she’d just said was inane. And yet she was staring at me as if I’d missed something.
“You went to a lot of trouble to speak with the man in front of you,” she said. “It’s a simple thing to just do what’s needed to make that happen.” She motioned with her extended hand. “Let’s not waste time with the trivial.”
She was right about that of course. I needed answers. Against my better judgment, I pulled off my dataspike and tossed it to Katerina. She dropped it into her shirt pocket with an appreciative grin. She then placed the small devices in her other hand on Solovyov’s temples and he took a deep breath.
When he spoke at last, his voice was a deep bass, metallic like the synthesized voice of a proxy but with the verve and soul of a human. “Why have you come to see me, Mr. Barrett?”
Solovyov was a living legend known throughout the system. He’d negotiated an end to the Russo-Sino war. His philanthropic foundations were credited for bringing stability to the Pallas Flotilla and tripling the Antarctic crop yields. Yet here he was, in the company of a rogue Section 9 agent. There was only one question that mattered.
“Are you one of them?”
He smiled faintly and breathed deep before answering. “I am. You don’t truly understand yet what that means, Mr. Barrett, but I believe I can help you.” He turned his head slightly to Katerina. “Start the procedure, my dear.”
Katerina stood quietly and walked to the far wall. She pushed open a door I hadn’t noticed, so flush it had been nearly invisible, and disappeared into a brightly lit room beyond. I didn’t know what she was doing, but Solovyov seemed willing to answer me with complete candor, and I couldn’t waste that.
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t understand. Julian Huxley claimed that he’d lived dozens of lives. He said he’d transferred his consciousness from one body to another, for hundreds of years, and that there were others. Are you telling me that was all true? That the Arbiter of Shaanxi is one of these monsters?”
His smile dropped. “Monsters exist in children’s stories and ancient legends. Creatures that live simply to visit calamity upon the innocent. But we both know the true nature of reality. Consequence follows action, and consequence is what defines good and evil, not the action. That’s why I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for some time.”
“You’ve been looking forward to meeting me?”
“In my vast experience, it is rare to find someone of your disposition.”
“What does that mean,” I asked.
“You are an agent of the State. You’ve killed quite a few people, and I have no doubt you will kill many more in the years to come. And yet, you take care to ensure that violence is visited only on those whom it absolutely must.”
“What could have given you that idea?” I asked him. “I didn’t kill your security team because that wasn’t my mission.”
He looked at me with a furrowed brow. The deep lines around his eyes made his expression seem almost melancholy. “I know more about you than you realize, Mr. Barrett. You didn’t kill those men for the same reason you chose to face the Erinyes in Hellas.”
Katerina returned, closing the door behind her, and walked over to stand by Solovyov’s side once more. I eyed her the entire time, expecting an attack of some kind. She met my eyes and slowly spread her hands to either side at the waist. They were empty. She raised an eyebrow and mouthed the words “you see” before clasping them together in front of her.