Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“Aksel,” he asked, “could we have water for our vǫlur?”
Aksel stood and went to a side table where I noticed a pitcher and wooden goblets. He filled two and brought them over to us. I realized only then how dry my mouth had become, when my master held the goblet to my lips and I drank with small obedient swallows, eyes half closed.
When I had finished, I looked around, not quite able to see Henrik’s face and having to settle for the serious expressions on Sven’s, Aksel’s, and Giovanna’s. I realized I still had something to tell.
“I think they felt us,” I whispered.
The interest in the room seemed to sharpen.
Sven’s hand, still resting possessively between Mary’s thighs, went still. “Why?”
“Not certainty,” I said. My voice remained rough. “A warning. The structure below… the lights… they seemed to become responsive. Like pressure in a network. Like if we looked too long, something could look back.”
Mary nodded immediately from Sven’s lap. “I felt it too.”
Aksel leaned forward. “Before or after you saw the name of the fellowship?”
“Right after… right before we fell away,” Mary said.
“Just after we understood the danger,” I added. I pressed my face briefly against my master’s shoulder. The act of continuing to speak while so spent required somewhere to rest. “It was why we stopped.”
Giovanna uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “Then perhaps your Chinese counterparts are not merely passive instruments.”
“No,” Sven said. “Or perhaps the men behind them are not.”
“It fits capital flows,” my master said, his voice steady, as if his words represented thought rendered into final form. Aksel and Giovanna looked intently at him. “Or, from another angle, there’s a reason why you folks…” he nodded toward Giovanna, “… put so much store in controlling the grid as a way to save civilization. If one wishes to influence the future at scale, energy remains the cleanest choke point. If one also possesses predictive or intuitive mechanisms unavailable to competitors…” I felt him incline his head as if had glanced down at me, on his lap. “One could build a frightening advantage.”
Giovanna gave Henrik a sidelong look. “There. The businessman returns.”
“He never left,” my Herra responded.
Sven’s mouth shifted faintly. “No. And we will need him.”
Mary stirred. “What happens now?” she asked softly.
CHAPTER 36
Ilsa
Our masters carried us to a room they called a chamber of brotherhood. There, firelight moved over stone and oak. An enormous bed stood on a raised platform, piled with dark furs and thick woolen blankets, broad enough for a small household. Around it I saw other things my eyes now recognized too quickly: a bride saddle, hooks, folded straps, a low chest with its lid open to show neat coils of leather and polished metal.
Henrik laid me down on the bed with a care that made the soreness in my body feel even more intimate. Across from us Sven did the same with Mary. For a moment the two of us only looked at each other over the expanse of the furs, flushed and exhausted and still somehow newly alive from what we had seen together. My ivory pendant felt cooler now, as if it had spent some mystic force, though I knew even as I thought it that my own mind’s power of imagination had created both the heat and the coolness.
Then our masters, the Sons of Odin, returned to business without any warning. It seemed they found no contradiction between strategic planning and sexual use.
Sven sat on the edge of the bed, one big hand on Mary’s ankle. “The Fellowship cannot be left to build quietly,” he said. “If they have a working oracle helping them make plays on energy infrastructure, then we are already late.”
Henrik unbuttoned his cuffs, then his collar. He looked to Sven with grave directness.
“We need the Guard,” Henrik said. “And they need us. Bellatrix Hestiaea understands that much already, even if she dislikes the flavor of the lesson.”
Sven’s mouth shifted. “A formal meeting, then. Neutral enough to satisfy all parties and operational enough to matter.”
“At Project Athena,” Henrik said.
The name struck me at once with the little thrill of hearing one secret system touch another. I didn’t think I had heard anyone say the name Project Athena before, but I could see in Mary’s face that she knew it well. Somehow it felt to me, in a way that struck my logical mind as bizarre while my imagination accepted it instantly, that I knew it too.
In Mary’s green eyes I saw that Project Athena was a place where women of unusual capacities and men who meant to use them came into alignment with the strategic intent of saving civilization. I turned my head on the furs and found Henrik looking down at me, as if to confirm that I understood the significance.
“Athena headquarters,” he said, and though the words were directed to Sven, they seemed also meant for me. “The Sons of Odin and the Guard. Leo Marmareus, Erik and Camille. Aksel and Lorna. We compare intelligence. We plan a joint response before the Fellowship decides to come looking for the girls who looked back.”