Then the second tone. The one that isn’t a request.
I’m up before I’ve decided to be, across the room, the thing already in my hand that I already don’t want there.
No greeting. The line never wastes one on me.
“Ásp Móra. The Vestry requires your unit. Fifteen minutes.”
It cuts before I can answer, and the quiet after it tells me more than the words did. Fifteen minutes is nothing. I’ve moved this unit on less, out a window and across a border with the order still warm. The fifteen minutes was never going to be the problem.
The Vestry calling me is the problem.
They don’t call units. They call the Legion. The Legion calls us. That chain exists so anything the Vestry wants runs through enough hands to go quiet before it ever reaches mine — softened, shaped how they want it, and made survivable. When they reach past all of it and put the order in my ear raw, it’s because someone decided I should have it before it had a chance to become something I could stand to hear.
So I’m already moving.
I run the next ten minutes in my head while my body handles the first one. Who I wake and in what order. What I tell them and what I hold. How fast I can have four men underground and composed in front of people who will read every flicker we fail to hide. The list assembles itself the same way it has the ten thousand times I’ve built it. It’s the one thing I never have to think about.
Brock’s door is open before I reach it. He was up with the second tone — he sleeps the way other men keep watch, one layer down, always listening. He’s dressed. Ready. Already knows it’s bad, because Brock has never once stopped at bad when worse was sitting right next to it, and the maddening thing about him is that he’s usually right.
“Vestry,” he says. Not a question.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Directly?”
“Directly.”
Something moves behind his eyes and goes still. He’s already two conclusions ahead of me and he won’t say either one until he’s sure. I let him keep them. I’ve got my own.
Gunnar I have to wake, and Gunnar is loud. He’s talking before he’s upright. It’s the most honest thing about him — everyone else collects themselves on the way to consciousness and Gunnar just arrives mid-complaint. I have to fight a smile. If he catches it the whole thing’s over, so I don’t.
“Whatever it is, no.” Half-dressed and offended to be awake. “Middle of the night. I have a rule. Nothing good has ever come for me in the dark.”
“Vestry. Fifteen minutes.”
“Fuck.”
He goes quiet for three full seconds. I watch for it every time, because a loud Gunnar is performing and a quiet Gunnar is the only one telling the truth. And that truth on his face right now is the same fear that’s sitting in my chest. Then he’s back out of it, faster, reaching for his boots.
“Why us? Why directly? What did we do?” He points a boot at me. “What did you do? That’s the better question. Is this the records thing? Tell me you didn’t fix their records again.”
“I didn’t fix anything.”
“You change one date, they call it tampering. I told you that.”
“It’s not the records, Gunnar.”
He’s still grumbling when I step out, and I let him. The grumbling means he’s scared and the scared means he’s paying attention, and I want all four of them paying attention walking into that room.
Rayner’s already in the corridor, and he’s the first thing tonight I can’t place.
I read these men for a living. It’s the work under the work. Before I command anyone, I need to know what’s running through them. Fourhundred years is long enough to learn Rayner’s tells. The easy read comes clean: he’s dressed, he’s waiting, he’s calm. It’s the next layer that’s wrong. He’s too still. His back is to a hall full of men he should have heard coming three rooms ago, because Rayner hears everything, Rayner has never once been surprised by a footstep in his life, and tonight he didn’t turn.
Something’s got hold of him.
“You sleep?” I ask.
He takes too long. “Enough.”
