I stayed behind the wall and waited to see if the four people inside would make a move. They didn’t. I knew that Stickleback would attack the instant I poked my head out into the doorway, but until then, it seemed they were willing to wait.
“Not coming out?” I called.
“Why don’t you and your pet monster come in?” Caldera called back.
“Anne’s not here,” I told her. “Far as I can tell, she’s chasing Barrayar.”
“That’s nice.”
I smiled to myself. “Let me guess. Planning to camp out till reinforcements arrive?”
“You tell me.”
It wasn’t a bad plan. The wards made ranged attacks almost impossible. Anyone wanting to force entry would have to advance through the choke point under fire from Stickleback, then fight Crash and Caldera at close range. Anne would still kill them all, but she’d have to work for it.
“Crash,” I called. “As I understand it, you’re the spokesman for your group.”
There was a pause. “What if I am?” Crash said at last. It was the first time I’d heard him speak. For a tough guy, he had quite an educated voice.
I nodded. “I am hereby notifying you that your employment with Councillor Levistus has been terminated, effective immediately, as per section seven of your contract. Authorisation codes have been sent to your contact details as specified. Your outstanding fees have been paid to the account specified in appendix one, including a cancellation fee as per section twelve.”
There was a moment’s silence. “What?”
“Go ahead and check,” I said.
Another pause, then through the futures, I saw Crash pull out a phone. He tapped at the touchscreen, keeping a wary eye on the door.
“What are you doing?” Caldera demanded.
“Any problems?” I asked.
“Our contract’s not with you,” Crash said.
“Your contract’s with the Council, as represented by Levistus. I’m still a member of the Council and authorised to make negotiations in their stead. In any case, the contract doesn’t specify who has to deliver notice of termination. Only that they need the proper authorisation codes, which I’ve supplied.”
“You don’t seriously expect anyone to buy this,” Crash said.
“Put it this way,” I said. “You have two options. Option one is you and your team take the money and leave. The Council won’t be happy, but you can point to the fact that you fulfilled the letter of your contract, even if it wasn’t in the way they wanted. Option two is you and your team stay and fight against me and Anne, who have, in case you haven’t noticed, killed pretty much everyone else in the building. You will lose at least one member of your team and probably more. I don’t personally think you’re being paid enough to make that worth it, but it’s up to you. So. Which is it going to be?”
Silence. I could sense Crash, Stickleback, and Jumper looking at one another. Caldera stared between them. “What are you doing?” she said again, more sharply. “You’re not listening to this shit?”
Jumper said something to Crash, and Crash answered, both of them speaking rapid-fire Japanese. Stickleback interjected something, and a quick three-way exchange took place.
“Hey!” Caldera said. “Talk to me!”
Crash looked back at her. “We need to confer.” He made a signal. Jumper and Stickleback moved up, closing on his position in a few quick strides. Crash watched my position warily right up until Jumper put his hands on Crash’s and Stickleback’s shoulders, and the three of them teleported out.
And all of a sudden, Caldera and I were alone.
“Well,” I said. I took the sling of the MP7 off my shoulder and walked out into the open. “Looks like it’s just the two of us.”
Caldera glared at me. “If they come back—”
“You really think they’re going to?”
Caldera didn’t answer. There was a kind of baffled fury in her eyes. Once again, the ground had been cut out from underneath her, and she didn’t know how.
I nodded past Caldera to the glass observation gallery and the door set into the wall underneath. “Levistus is through there. I’d appreciate it if you could let me pass.”
“Well, you’re shit out of luck then, aren’t you?”
“I suggest a compromise,” I told her. “You withdraw and call for reinforcements. Once they show up, you can come after me again and we’ll carry on where we left off.”
“A compromise?”
I shrugged. “Nobody’s happy, but nobody’s dead.”
Caldera stared at me in disbelief. “Screw you.”
“Fine,” I said. “A contest, then. Just like our old sparring matches. I get one good hit through your defences, you withdraw. If you get one good hit on me, then I will.”
“A contest? You think that’s what this is?”
“I’m trying to—”
“No,” Caldera said. “Shut up. You do not get to talk. You and your psycho girlfriend just walked in here and killed everyone in this room. And before that, the two of you helped kill an entire base’s worth of Council people, including a member of the Senior Council. And before that, the two of you killed another base’s worth of security at San Vittore. And now you walk up and tell me you want me to withdraw so you can add another Senior Council member to your body count, and you actually have the fucking arrogance to think I’ll let you?”
I looked at Caldera in silence.
“I can’t believe I ever sponsored you to the Keepers,” Caldera said. “Slate and the rest gave me so much shit for that, but I stuck up for you. I put my neck on the line for you! And you pay me back with this?” Caldera snorted in a half laugh. “You are going to go down in history as the worst traitor the Light Council’s ever had! And when mages look up the records to find out how you ever made it into the Keepers, they’ll find my name as the reason why!”
“I think you should be less worried about the history books and more about the next five minutes.”
“Shut up!” Caldera shouted. “I’m sick of how you think this is a joke! Being a Keeper is supposed to matter! The law is supposed to matter! But all you give a shit about is yourself!”
“The law is whatever the Council says it is,” I said. “They signed a piece of paper, and I became a criminal. They signed another, and I wasn’t. Their whims write the laws; the Keepers enforce it. And at the end of the chain, some unlucky mage or adept gets sentenced to death because a Senior Councillor was able to get four votes instead of three by blackmailing the others with a bunch of sex tapes.”
“You sound like every other Dark mage,” Caldera said. “You think I don’t know about the Council’s dirty secrets? I was dealing with this shit back when you were fleecing teenagers for crystal balls. But at least I work for something bigger than myself. For you, all that matters is Alex Verus.”
“Working for something bigger than yourself? All the times we hauled off some adept to the cells, or played the heavy, you think that makes it okay?”
“Yeah, I’ve arrested a lot of adepts,” Caldera said. “Mages too. You know what I didn’t do?” Her arm shot out towards the corpse-filled hallway. “I didn’t go fucking judge-jury-executioner on everyone who got in my way!”
“No,” I said contemptuously. “You just threw them in a cell and washed your hands of what happened afterwards. Just following orders, right, Caldera? That way, nothing is ever your fault.”