Part 30 (1/2)
Sixteen.
Miranda stayed behind David as he edged slowly into the room, his eyes riveted on Deven, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
”I see by your faces you've found me out,” Deven said calmly over the rim of his gla.s.s. ”May I ask how?”
Wordlessly Miranda held up the scan.
Deven made an exasperated noise. ”G.o.dd.a.m.n Horak. If I'd known that woman was going to cause all of this, I never would have taken his recommendation.” He gestured at the other chairs. ”Care to sit?”
”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” Miranda said. ”How dare you come into our house-”
Deven rolled his eyes. ”Yes, yes, I know. How dare I, murdering monster I am, traitor, et cetera, et cetera. Now, both of you sit down.”
Neither of the Pair budged. ”I should kill you right here and now,” David told him.
Deven sighed, looking down into his gla.s.s, and when he looked up there was something dark and menacing in his eyes that Miranda had never seen before. ”Try,” he replied. ”But then you'll never have the answers you want, will you?”
”He came alone,” Miranda observed. ”No Elite, no Jonathan.”
”Jonathan isn't a part of this,” Deven said. ”Well, he is, because I am, but I didn't want him involved. So if you kill me, you'll be killing him, too, and he's as close to innocent as any of us are. I doubt you want that on your conscience. So, sit.”
”I don't want to hear anything you have to say,” David told him coldly. ”Our alliance is terminated-consider yourself at-”
”Don't say it,” Deven interrupted, eyes flas.h.i.+ng. ”Don't even think it. You don't want to declare war on me, David. You couldn't win. Don't give me that look, either; you have your technological toys and your psychic parlor tricks, but I have my own ace up my sleeve . . . dozens of aces, all over the world, ready to kill at my command-anyone, anywhere, any time.”
”It was you all along,” David said, and Miranda could feel the sickness in his heart. ”You were the Alpha. You set the a.s.sa.s.sin on Miranda.”
Deven's eyes were unyielding, like steel. ”I am the Alpha. I have always been the Alpha. Each and every Shadow was trained by my own hand. I recruited them from every Elite, every mercenary guild, every cla.s.s of warriors in six hundred years of history. And I would have done the same with you, darling, except I learned a long time ago not to sleep with my agents.”
”What about Sophie?” Miranda asked, stepping forward. ”Was she really one of yours?”
His eyes flicked toward her. ”Sophia Castellano worked for me for almost one hundred years. She was one of my most talented agents, one of only four to earn the rank of Scarlet.”
”Then why did she teach me if all you wanted was to kill me?” the Queen demanded.
”Why would I want to kill you, Miranda? What purpose would that serve?”
”Then what do you want?”
Deven took a long, slow breath, and said, ”Marja Ovaska.”
”Who?” David asked.
”Marja Ovaska is the woman who is after Miranda. She, and she alone, wants you dead, my Lady. I didn't set her on you. She has been out of the Shadow for two years.”
”But no one leaves the Shadow,” David said. ”You said so yourself.”
”No one ever had. I've trained hundreds of agents, and in all that time there has only been one way out-the sword. They die on mission or they die by my blade, but they never leave. It's a lifetime contract. Or it always was.”
He set his gla.s.s down and crossed his arms, looking toward the fireplace; David and Miranda both kept their eyes on him, though he didn't seem at all concerned about it. And why should he be? He had gotten into the Haven, into their suite, completely undetected by the Elite, the servants, and the surveillance network.
”I have in the Shadow's entire history released exactly two agents alive,” Deven said, his voice tempered with something Miranda realized was regret. ”One was Marja Ovaska. The other was her lover . . . Sophia Castellano.”
”So Sophie wasn't working for you?”
”Yes, she was.”
”But you said-”
”Let him talk,” David said quietly.
”Agents of the Shadow do not mingle,” Deven went on. ”They never see each other's faces. If they speak, it's over the phone. They all have code names. But once in a while a client needs more than one agent to get the job done. Agents 3.17 Scarlet and 4.19 Scarlet-Sophie and Marja-met on a.s.signment, by accident, and as often happens in such tragedies they fell in love, in direct defiance of protocol and knowing that I would kill them both when I found out. I had them brought to me for execution.”
Miranda knew what he was going to say next; she could feel it. ”You couldn't do it.”
”No, d.a.m.n it. I should have. But for once in my life I allowed their sad little story to get to me. I had let myself grow attached to Sophie, fool that I am, and so I gave them a choice. They could die right then at my feet or they could each fulfill one last mission and then disappear. If I ever heard from either of them again, in any context, both of their lives were forfeit. They were to go underground and stay gone forever.”
”And you believed they would?” Miranda asked.
”Of course I did. My agents are trained to go into certain death without hesitation. There's only one thing they are taught to fear: me.”
”But Sophie didn't,” David concluded. ”She broke her end of the deal by telling Faith she was ex-Shadow.”
Again, Deven rolled his eyes. ”Please. Sophie was no fool. And she was no drunk. She was stone cold sober when she met Faith.”
”Then why . . .”
”Why do you think?” Deven snapped. ”Put it together, Prime. My Consort has the strongest precognitive gift in the Council. He knew you were going to take the South. Don't you think he knew you would eventually find a Queen?”
”I don't understand,” David said.
But Miranda did. ”You a.s.signed her to me,” she said softly. ”Sophie's last work for you was to train me. War was coming . . . Jonathan saw it. And he knew that I had to be ready. If it weren't for Sophie-for you-I wouldn't be here.”
Deven met her eyes, and his gaze finally seemed to lose some of its hardness. ”Her job was to make sure you were strong enough and had the skills you needed to help put you in the right place at the right time to become Queen. As soon as that happened she could vanish.”
”But she died in the battle . . .”
”She should never have been there. She was under orders not to go anywhere near the Haven itself, but to train you, then show you the way home and get the h.e.l.l out.” The Prime held her eyes. ”She believed in you enough to go off mission . . . and then she died before she and Marja could be free.”
”What was Marja's last mission?” Miranda asked, holding back tears.
”Irrelevant. But if Sophie had done as I told her and left you to fight your own way into the Haven that night, Ovaska would never have been heard from again.”
Finally, Miranda sat down, head in her hands. ”Sophie died . . . and now Marja wants me dead . . . to avenge her lover.”
David asked, ”How long have you known?”