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Zheng still had an audience, but only of three. His boys were downstairs with strict orders that we not be disturbed. Louis-Cesare, Zheng, Ranbir and I were up in the office, making decisions that all of us were far too tired for.
“This is above my paygrade,” Zheng said, striding back and forth. That was a good trick, as the office was small, and Zheng took up the space of two. The bag was there as well, sitting in the middle of the desk. It was nothing special, just the type that medieval people kept money in, and that somebody like Jonathan kept an army in.
It was, of course, fey tech, the same kind that my arsenal was composed of. Only this one was much, much bigger. I opened it up again, even though it was a little dizzying to look down into a space that your brain expected to be small, and see a vast hangar, of the type that they kept jumbo jets in, milling with Jonathan’s handiwork.
It was even stranger to think that all of this—the original attack on Hong Kong, the study and exploitation of its magical system, and the design of the super soldiers down there—all of it, had just been the day job to Jonathan. He was a necromancer; he specialized in studying the dead. He could give a damn about any of this, but as he’d admitted to us, he’d needed life magic, a huge amount of it, to sustain him, and so he’d been chained.
It didn’t make me feel sorry for him; I didn’t think there was anything that could do that. But I did understand him a little better now. I just didn’t know what to do about any of this.
“It’s above all our paygrades,” I said, throwing the army back on the desk. “But it fell in our lap. We have to decide this.”
“Easy for you to say,” Zheng snarled. He’d been doing that a lot. “I’m the one who’ll take the heat for this!”
“Is there another option?” I asked.
“Hell, yes, there’s another option! I turn it over to the consul and reap massive rewards. She could end the war with this. She could rule the world with this!”
“Exactly,” Louis-Cesare said, and said no more.
Zheng threw himself into a pathetically inadequate desk chair and glowered at us. “I hate you both.”
“We’re not trying to tell you what to do,” I began.
Zheng said a bad word.
“Okay, we are. But . . . you do realize that no good will come of this, right? Give the consul that much power—hell, give any vamp that much—”
“I have that much, right now, and yet I’m sitting here, listening to you.”
“But you can’t use it.”
“Like hell I couldn’t. I could . . . I could take over the world myself. I could run this shit!”
I looked at him. “Do you want to run this shit?”
“Hell, no. I have enough trouble running Lily’s, and she does most of it.” A huge hand pushed up the hair over his forehead. “I just wanted some respect. That’s how I got into this mess. I’m an ex-pirate and a gangster. I am not supposed to have to make these kinds of decisions!”
“You’re also a senator,” Louis-Cesare commented.
“Yeah, for a hot minute.” He picked up the bag and tossed it to him. “You deal with it!”
“We could destroy it,” I said. “Just burn the bag and destroy the gateway—”
Zheng grabbed it back. “Talk sense. We’re in the middle of a war. We need this.”
“Nobody needs this,” Louis-Cesare said, sitting forward. “You know that. This kind of power could unbalance everything.”
“And not having it could end up costing us the war. Not to mention the fact that I know it’s here, okay? I can’t unknow that. The first time someone like Ming-de scans me—or your father, or anybody else with mental abilities—you think it’s not going to get out? It’s getting out.”
“He has a point,” I told Louis-Cesare.
My husband frowned. “If your father were here, or Dorina—”
“But they’re not. And I wouldn’t trust Mircea with this, any further than I could throw him. He’s the general for this war. You think he’s going to throw away an advantage like that?”
Louis-Cesare frowned some more.
