An ice queen arms dealer hires a new bodyguard with a troubled past.
by Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Devi Lacroix
I.
Queen
The woman standing in my office is well-built, and the arm with the rolled-up sleeve is admirably thick, clean; no tattoos. I’ll have to train her to wear her shirts and suits properly—I find this look sloppy, and there will be bespoke suits in her future more expensive than her salary, if she earns my regard enough to reach the point of negotiating employment.
Her name is Yves, which is of course an alias: she is neither French nor a man, but I don’t begrudge and I’m not going to correct. The French are not real people, in any case, and their language and names are to be bastardized or remixed as one pleases (good pastries; their one redeeming grace).
The first thing that comes out of her mouth is, “I didn’t expect you to have an office.”
I tilt my chair back slightly. We are both sheened in sunlight: I arrange my desk to my advantage, to limn myself in morning’s gold or evening’s bronze. Backlit so that my face is difficult to see. Less theatrics, more a matter of control. “Did you want to meet me in a dark bar?”
Her smile is faint, thin-lipped by nature. Likely she cannot help looking a little sardonic no matter her actual mood—she has that kind of face. “No, Ms. Hua. This place is beautiful, if a little Nordic. Wintry.”
She means all the glass, the approximations of snowdrift and glacier that are terribly out of place in Hong Kong. But one creates the landscape one wishes to inhabit. “Tell me about your background. And do sit down, please. No point keeping you on your feet.”
Yves has a trick of moving the chair on her side of the desk—a thing that resembles a carved iceberg, and is not much more comfortable than that—so that it makes next to no noise against the marble. “All in my files. But you’d want to hear it from me.”
“Yes.” The way she moves interests me. It goes deeper than your usual ex-military sort, and I like what I can’t immediately categorize.
“I fought in Alaska at age twelve, in the Russo-American War.” Her shoulders rise and fall. “There weren’t quite enough adults to go around by then.”
Too many taken by the plague and the civil wars, which had eaten their way across North America and left it easy, ripe pickings for the Russians. My mother did good business back then; so much demand for everything, so much lucre for her offshore accounts. I prop my chin on my hand, examining the lines of Yves’ stance. Relaxed, for all that I know she needs the job: there is a wake of what passes for recommendation letters in our line of work, stiff and proper, but too numerous. Bodyguards are long-term. They have to be trained to adapt to each client’s team, and what they learn in the tenure is thick with trade secrets: the client’s routes and supply chains, alliances, regular buyers. It’s a wonder we don’t have them assassinated after they leave us, considering, like jilted spouses. “I don’t usually hire former child soldiers.”
“It’s a uniquely unappealing part of my resume.” A pause. “Or rather, I don’t want to work for people to whom it is a point of attraction.”
“You sound difficult.”
“My track record speaks for itself. People make certain assumptions about my background, about the kind of tool I’m likely to be.”
It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Yves to omit the truth of her early life: it is not as if there exists any sort of registry for former child soldiers, the entire point is that they’re untracked, unrecorded—unpersoned ghosts, to be discarded without a trace; the casualty rate is not precisely low, since most of them are sent untrained into the thick of conflict zones. Idly I wonder if there is a child soldier school, somewhere, to improve the efficiency and minimize the squandering of resources. “Come meet my lieutenant. Then we can decide.”
Knight
The affectations first: seated, in silhouette, back to the sunlight. Good positional advantage, for both negotiation and defense. Commands but does not reciprocate; dictates from a position of strength.
A snowy scene on the animated glass, climate control too cold. Ice motif in the furniture. Projects an image of undisturbed tranquility. Hard, cold. Austere. Low temperature keeps meetings short.
The woman herself, less important. Smaller than I am, weaker. But wealth is more powerful yet; she buys people like me as her armor. A sidearm mounted under the desk anyways. In this, she’ll have been practical—large caliber, armor piercing.
So: a client, and unremarkable at that. But they like to hear something in my voice that makes them unique and special. After all, it’s the only thing their money and power can’t buy. So I open with a “I didn’t expect you to have an office.”
On its face, it’s unbelievable—as if I am some backwater yokel come to the big city, or that my former employers only met in barren wastes or isolated compounds. But it isn’t a full lie, either. Many of my employers have prefered their palatial estates or secure bunkers. And I like to think there’s a certain… honesty… about this setting, a backhanded acknowledgement of the violence dictated from staid boardrooms.
She leans back in her chair, evaluating me. I take it as a good sign. I work well with observant employers. I’ve rolled the sleeve up on my shirt. It’s a small thing, an intentional blemish. If she thinks it’s unprofessional, I’ll know something about her; if she notices the lack of tattoos or tell-tale signs of substance abuse, then I’ll know even more about her.
Diltaory conversation follows, a few hollow sentences. She invites me to sit and tell her more of my background. As I move, her gaze intensifies; for a moment, I feel the sting of assessment, the banal inhumanity that comes from measurement and evaluation. It’s a feeling I am familiar with, and one I have had to strangle to excel in my line of work. The self-destructive impulse to take a swing at a superior, to betray a client, to take back some shred of control or dignity—that’s how you die. In the end, it’s better to be dehumanized by a look than a bullet. I’ve taken my past and made it a marketable skill set, and it stands to reason that the goods will be weighed.
Still. She is very observant.
“I fought in Alaska at age twelve, in the Russo-American War.” This is the crux of the matter, and what she really wants to know about. It isn’t as if I can tell her the truth, the ignominy that it wasn’t a thing that I did so much as it was a thing that happened to me. I shrug. “There weren’t quite enough adults to go around by then.”
It’s an affected nonchalance, a blind to hide my counter-observation of her. “I don’t usually hire former child soldiers,” she says, and there is a bite there: it is important to her that I know there are certain actions she finds more or less detestable, certain lines that she’ll bend and only unwillingly cross. The type that has some esoteric rules of behavior, then, or an assbackward code of honor.
Alright, that’ll be extra.
But we’re still talking about me, technically. “It’s a uniquely unappealing part of my resume.” I pause, and then make eye contact. There’s a bit to my voice now, too; I also have a point I want to make. “Or rather, I don’t want to work for people to whom it is a point of attraction.”
There is a moment of tension as we hold each other’s gaze. Her eyes are bitter ice, and I can feel my body fight a need to shiver.
And then she sighs, announcing the end to whatever tête-à-tête we are having. “You sound difficult.”
“My track record speaks for itself. People make certain assumptions about my background, about the kind of tool I’m likely to be.”
She looks me over a final time, and I can see her coming to a preliminary judgement about how, precisely, she can use me. She smiles, and I realize it is the coldest, hardest surface in her office. “Come meet my lieutenant. Then we can decide.”
Queen
Lieutenant is a misleading title to apply to Fahriye, seeing that what I have is too small to be a private army, but it’s her old title in her military and she’s fond of it. Her name is delicate; she herself is not. Yves isn’t short, a little under a hundred eighty, but Fahriye is easily a head taller and a good deal broader.
I’ve sent them both off to a bar not because I believe alcohol will loosen Yves’ tongue but because Fahriye insists that her intuition works best under influence. So far she has not been wrong, and she never drinks to excess, and a bar provides Fahriye with a few crucial demonstrations—whether Yves knows how to case a location, how to watch for exits and entries, how to map parameters. In a couple hours she will report back whether Yves is a good fit, longer if she talks the woman into her bed.
In their absence I take to the most banal part of my work, handling communications through lines encrypted within a millimeter of their lives, managing such logistics as can be performed remotely. The sales and purchase of arms used to be strikingly public, between imperial and client states, between corporate interests. Civilians accepted them so readily. In those days my professional forebears would be carefully pruned, disappeared, because they didn’t answer to defense contractor conglomerates—not due to moral compass, but because they were proud to the point of stupidity. America’s breaking shifted much, fundamentally altering the status quo forever, eradicating overnight certain large-scale companies and supply chains that served the empire. In this vacuum, independent dealers—like myself and my mother before me—arose. The Russians pursue monopoly less aggressively, and they like to play us off against each other.
(I have, also, a brother. He is more interested in narcotics. Occasionally we meet up in person to discuss which of us does more harm to the world. He agrees, at least, that I leave more lasting impact: literal craters and ruins. My hands are clean, I like to say without any seriousness, but they are not particularly. Supplying guns or shooting someone in the face, you have blood under your fingernails just the same.)
Later I head ten floors down to a favorite bakery that does the best char siu sou this side of Hong Kong. To anyone I appear no different from an ordinary office worker, a little more polished and a little more expensive if one knows what to look for: the cut of my tailoring, the black opal mounted on my ring that costs more than many diamonds. People unused to wealth understand its signifiers to be in gold and designer brands, in fast cars and enormous mansions. True wealth, though, is about the purchase of absolute privacy and absolute security. It is not about being under headlines, having your face onscreen, attending charity galas. Those are the trappings, the costumes. True power is in the lack of consequences even as you engage in the most heinous deeds.
Fahriye returns with Yves. That is answer enough: if she’d found Yves below her standards, the new recruit would have been politely turned out to the streets.
“These are still warm.” I gesture at my char siu sou, now plated. “Care for some? And Yves, you’re hired.”
My lieutenant eats with gusto—she has a big appetite, essentially twenty-four hours a day, and we share favorites in food. Yves eats with more restraint, out of politeness. Briefly I wonder what kind of food she prefers or if, like most people of her background, she eats whatever is put in front of her and which fulfills her caloric needs.
I brief Yves on my schedule for the next day. No further; new recruits are to be treated as potential spies, and given limited access, to information, to everything. “And,” I add, “I want you to be my detail for tomorrow’s business dinner.”
Yves looks at me. Her hair is dyed an interesting shade—asphalt distantly lit by brushfire. “Viveca Hua doesn’t have a reputation for being trusting. If you don’t mind me saying.”
“I don’t mind, and not to worry; I don’t trust you. My other personnel will be in the restaurant. Call this a field test.” I nod to Fahriye. “She’ll take you for your fitting.”
For the first time since Yves arrived, I see real emotion in her face—something close to terror pinching the corners of her eyes. “Fitting for what?”
“Your suit. My bodyguards are supposed to dress well.”
Knight
Fahriye is a big woman: big size, big laugh, big appetite. She’s a full head and shoulder taller than me, and her reach is similarly outsized. Judging by her scars, she’s got a hard edge of experience on me, too; if it came to an all-out brawl between her and I, I’d put my good money on her.
But she’s neither a bodyguard nor an enforcer, which means her real skills, and her real danger, is what’s behind her dark green eyes and constantly crooked grin. Brains and brawn; I’d like to think I know the type. And I know for a fact that Hua has no children and no living relatives, save for a brother who has his own sordid business. I wonder if Hua is grooming Fahriye to inherit her empire, like she did from her own late mother, or if she plans to burn it all down with her death. As the woman applying for the job to keep her alive, it’d be nice to know.
The “lieutenant” takes me to a dive bar, one of the dark and dingy places where the only thing more dangerous than the patrons are the health code violations. We take a sticky booth and, over a beer, she does her own version of Hua’s interrogation. She’s boisterous, but she drinks far less than her temperament indicates, and she watches me watching the place. I oblige and narrate: two guys in the back, surreptitiously guarding the door to the kitchen, another on the bar. Probably arms traffickers, small time compared to Hua; subcontractors of a subcontractor, I wager. I’ve worked with the type.
We’re also decidedly unwelcome, a point that comes to a head when four more men come through the door and begin to approach our table.
“Well, I think that’s enough of that,” Fahriye says with a grin and stands, stretching like a massive feline. “So are you in or are you out?”
Brass knuckles, billy club carried underhand, hidden; packing heat, but not their first choice. Violence, but not total war.
I shrug. “This won’t be the first time I’ve been evaluated in a pit fight,” I say, and it sounds far more bitter than I intend it.
Fahriye flashes me a knowing, almost conspiratorial look as she reaches down for her beer and finishes it in a single massive swig. “Oh, and one more thing,” she adds, right before picking up our table and hurling it into our assailants. “Don’t get hit in the face. No visible bruises—the boss demands a little decorum.”
We tear the place apart after that. It’s almost perfunctory, clear that this was something between a walkabout and a working dinner for Fahriye; I suspect she let some lesser officer of the organization off for the night so she could stretch her legs with the new girl.
And I guess I pass, even if I do take a love tap on the chin; before I know it, I am again sitting across the table from one Viveca Hua, Fahriye unceremoniously eating some sort of stuffed pastry—kolaches?—beside me.
Hua summarizes tomorrow’s itinerary. No further knowledge for me, until I’ve earned it; a modest concession to operational security. I approve.
“And,” she concludes, “I want you to be my detail for tomorrow’s business dinner.”
Now this is unexpected, and far too soon. I make a show of narrowing my eyes. “Viveca Hua doesn’t have a reputation for being trusting. If you don’t mind me saying.”
“I don’t mind, and not to worry; I don’t trust you. My other personnel will be in the restaurant.” A ghost of a smile crosses her lips. “Call this a field test.”
Then she nods toward Fahriye. “She’ll take you for your fitting.”
I start. I don’t mean to, and of all the things to get under my skin, I didn’t expect it to be this pedestrian instruction. But you can’t always control a fear response, and all the tests of the past day have primed me for this reaction: for a moment, I am struck by an impression of me as some sort of trained hound, being measured for a collar of cold iron and burning ice, cloth measuring tape around my neck like a garrote.
“Fitting for what?” I manage.
She sees me flinch, and her ghost of a smile becomes very hard, very corporeal. “Your suit. My bodyguards are supposed to dress well.”
II.
Queen
When Yves reports to me the next afternoon, she’s properly clothed: a dress shirt in warm, pale gold, the jacket and trousers in burgundy so deep it nearly disappears into black. She does not look entirely comfortable in it, but she’ll adjust in time. What is important is that she looks like a fine commodity and, even more crucially, a commodity that belongs to Viveca Hua.
(Fahriye, on occasion, points out that my sense of ownership toward human beings in my employ is indicative of the sort of issues one normally takes to a therapist. I have told her, also on occasion, that it is actually quite healthy considering my work. How else do you engage in this sort of profession if you don’t treat people as objects? But she insists I hide a heart of gold within my carapace exterior because I don’t use my personnel as cannon fodder. It is not an assessment with which my brother, who does know me exceedingly well, would agree. He would say—as would I—that it is about efficiency. I do not require therapists. They’ll absolutely violate patient confidentiality to leak your sessions to rival suppliers.)
“I don’t want to say that I can’t breathe,” Yves says on our way to the appointed restaurant. “But—”
“It’s a suit, not a corset.” Having said that, corsets are less constricting than most people think. “Undo the top button, you’ll feel better.”
In the driver seat, Fahriye chuckles. She knows well my vice for women’s collarbones.
The restaurant is three floors underground; the kind of people I have business meals with have a great aversion to high floors with panoramic windows, since those are begging for a sniper to put a few rounds in your head, and also the heads of your bodyguards, family (should any be present; my brother and I together make prime targets—two birds and so forth; we have to watch out for explosives), and trade partners.
We authenticate our invitation into the restaurant through specialized phones. The servers wear bulletproof vests under their livery.
Two of my other personnel are already there, discreetly stationed, both pretending to be themselves diners. My table is in its own private room, though then again most of the restaurant is private rooms.
Ariadne Torres has preceded me. She is arch when she says, “You’re six minutes late.”
“Apologies.” I gesture in no particular direction. “Traffic’s terrible this time of the day. How have you been?”
We talk shop: I have just delivered a shipment to the border between America and Canada, where they kill each other for freshwater. She has just come from Britain, a land torn by famine and political schism—children starving in flooded streets, squatters in mud-streaked brick ruins, the usual; that country has never been able to recover after its loss of colonial riches. Ariadne asks if I plan to do business in or with Russia. I don’t: insufficient contacts and familiarity, too many toes I could accidentally step on. But she insists it’s lucrative.
The food is simple, plates of char siu and roast soy duck, bowls of rice. Fine dining is for when you can appreciate it, not when an assassination attempt might impend any moment. Both of us eat in a rush, the speed of office workers at a food court. The business component of the meal—we’re swapping contracts due to a logistic issue, namely that one of Ariadne’s informants has gone missing and she’s spooked—takes no more than fifteen minutes.
Which is just as well, since some eight minutes after that, the door bursts open and Yves tackles me to the ground. The noise of gunfire ensues, lagging as usual behind the actual bullets and their impact. It is loud, of course, but it is also banal—the kind of noise I’ve been inured to since I was ten, my mother having been more partial to the field than I am (but I am a supplier of a different era; so much can be done remotely these days, and while I still deliver a few shipments myself in warzones, I do it to make a point only rather than because it is necessary).
Decoding the cacophony is a specialized skill of mine. I can tell who’s been hit, how many times, deciphering the cries and the sounds of impact—bodies hitting furniture, the clicks of guns emptying. It isn’t an assassination attempt but a suicide attack. Someone is angry and vengeful; I try to recall what Ariadne has been up to recently and then decide that it doesn’t really matter. I watch, from a considerable distance, as she thuds onto the cold marble. So much for our friendly acquaintanceship. It is a shame. You make so few friends, or even friendly rivals, in this line of work. Everyone is so cutthroat, so focused on profit. It makes a person tedious.
“This is nice,” I say aloud, still under Yves. She has the kind of body I expect her to have, all tight muscles and hard strength. “I do love a woman on top of me.”
She gets up, her gun drawn, though it is already over. “Seriously?”
I push myself upright. “What, you want me to take something this routine as a deathly event? I wasn’t even the target.”
The killer is on the floor too, barely recognizable as human, more a practice target with realistic gore. Ariadne herself has just the one wound, but it is precisely placed above her eyes: no chance of her getting up again. Her bodyguards are distraught, mostly because this will mar their record forever. No one wants to hire failures. Fahriye’s voice in my earpiece: “All clear.”
I get to my feet, stretching. I’ve been told I look feline doing that, the appearance of a creature without a care in the world. Fahriye and two of her subordinates have taken positions at the ruined door. My lieutenant is tearing into the restaurant’s security, multilingual, using a few profanities I didn’t even know existed; Turkish is a creative language.
A little blood has gotten on my shoes. I scuff them sadly against the floor, to little effect. “I’m moving hotels today. Fahriye will tell you where, and the room number too.”
Yves stares at me. “Seriously?” she says a second time in almost as many minutes.
“You didn’t get to shoot anybody. All that unspent adrenaline has to go somewhere and it’s a perfectly lovely outlet.” I widen my eyes at her, affecting a debutante’s coquetry, an artifact of a different century. “Why, you must have been asked to a woman’s hotel room before.”
“Pardon me,” she says, her voice even and deliberate, “but I didn’t sign on to be that.”
“Obviously, and I’m not paying you for that sort of arrangement either—your wages would wipe out half my profits then. Join me at the hotel if you want; take the evening off to tend to your own matters if you don’t. I won’t take it personally.” I spread my hands. “I have other options.”
She inhales deeply—visibly seizing control of herself—and then winces, as if the scent of my skin or my perfume has offended her. “I’m not doing that.”
“Suit yourself.” One of the buttons on my blouse has popped loose in the scuffle. “Help me do this up, will you?”
“You can—”
“Touching my clothing isn’t going to harm your chastity, I promise.”
Yves snorts, low in her throat. She complies, pulling the silk together, pushing the button back in place. Her thumb brushes my throat and rests there a few seconds longer than necessary. Then her hand falls away. “See you tomorrow, Ms. Hua.”
KNIGHT
The fitting goes well enough: a gold dress shirt, jacket and pants of black-maroon. The cut and color are not to my liking, and I’m a working girl at heart; I prefer a combat harness and fatigues over business formal. But there are two types of clients—those who want their security detail to be invisible, and those who flaunt their safety and protection—and Hua bivouacs in a very aesthetic corner of the latter camp.
So I am dressed up like a conspicuous ornament and cast in the role of the kept woman, seen but not heard by my lady’s side. The metaphor holds up in other ways, too. Concubines exercise a specific power in a specific context, exchanging access to their bodies for a type of authority. When the time comes, I will throw Hua to the ground, bruise her black, break a rib—and she will thank me for it. All that is asked from me is access to my body: my limbs to shove and grab and hold, my chest to envelope, everything that I am and will be reduced to a coefficient of friction, my heart become the viscera that slows a deadly shot.
Less romantically: I’m disposable beef, and I find it unseemly that I must dress pretty and attend pageants before being led to the slaughter. And Hua is self aware enough to know she likes the pageantry; it adds a possessive, cruel element to her humor and to her gaze.
Dinner is with another arms dealer, Ariadne Torres; know her from before. Service is in something approximating a bunker; underground, no windows, controlled access through heavy doors. Two of Hua’s are already inside, women pretending at having a relationship. I wonder if that also describes my client; it would be nice to anticipate the potential outcomes. Private room, one door. Torres doesn’t read as having animosity, but the best ones don’t. Food is barbeque and roast fowl; smells nice.
Conversation, fast eating; work, not pleasure. The door opens, interrupting—gun.
The analysis is always fast, a never ending stream of observations and conclusions; in contrast, the moment of action is timeless and indelible. I have no fondness for Hua, or Torres, or even myself. But the need to act precisely and perfectly in the face of your and your client’s mortality? It has a way of staying with you. The momentum of my impact into Hua, how I wrap around her as I carry us both to the floor, Torres’ shocked expression as a rose of scarlet blooms from her brow—these moments I will remember until I die, a daguerreotype that joins my album of all the other near misses, all the other moments that were almost the last.
From here, time will again flow normally. I will keep Hua covered—there is no glory in standing too soon and being perforated by your own side—while I listen to the sound of gunfire, ascertaining who is where and who has died. Then I will rise and kill, as necessary, to preserve the life of my client.
That is what is supposed to happen.
Instead, time does not right itself, and I find myself staring into Hua’s eyes for one unending moment. They are a rich brown, I finally realize—but here they glow warm, almost amber, as they catch the light of the room’s marble. Her expression is also contemplative and soft, its piercing bite momentarily held in abeyance; I realize she is tracking the gunshots, too.
“This is nice,” I hear her say. “I do love a woman on top of me.”
But what I feel are our two heartbeats, perfectly synced: still and slow despite the bloodshed around us.
And then I wrench myself back to reality, stand as I pull my gun. It’s already over, but I had to do something to break the spell.
“Seriously?” I ask, letting a touch of disgust mask my discombobulation.
“What, you want me to take something this routine as a deathly event? I wasn’t even the target.” She stands and stretches, as if awakening from a catnap, and then carries on, unperturbed by the blood at her feet. “I’m moving hotels today. Fahriye will tell you where, and the room number too.”
I stare at her, and this time I am gripped not by the absurdity of the situation, but by a real anger; I am being solicited. I center myself listening to Fahriye tear into the restaurant’s security, her brutal invectives having the cadence and familiarity of battlefield cant. When I do finally speak, I’m proud that I keep my response to an uncreative reprise of “Seriously?”
“You didn’t get to shoot anybody. All that unspent adrenaline has to go somewhere and it’s a perfectly lovely outlet.” She sounds almost bored, as if describing some immutable law of the universe, the most reasonable cause-and-effect one can imagine. And then she widens her eyes and affects an inviting, naive drawl. “Why, you must have been asked to a woman’s hotel room before.”
“Pardon me.” I find my words betray a precision and carefulness I no longer feel within my thudding heart. “But I didn’t sign on to be that.”
“Obviously, and I’m not paying you for that sort of arrangement either—your wages would wipe out half my profits then.” What is she implying? Is she complimenting me? “Join me at the hotel if you want; take the evening off to tend to your own matters if you don’t. I won’t take it personally. I have other options.”
Even with her nonchalance and her casual out—and I believe that she would not retaliate, that she does not assume a control over my body that I have not already deeded away—I am still struck by the suddenness of her proposal.
I try to clear my head with a deep breath, and too late realize that I am pulling in the stuff of this place—the smell of gunpowder and blood, food going cold; the odor of a meal ruined, mixing with the scent of my employer, her warm skin and subtle perfume. I am sucking down the very thoughts that I am trying to expel from my body. I grimace at my own foolishness. “I’m not doing that.”
“Suit yourself.” She gestures to her blouses’ top button, undone in the melee. “Help me do this up, will you?”
“You can—”
“Touching my clothing isn’t going to harm your chastity, I promise.”
This is about control, of course, about asking me to demonstrate where, precisely, I draw the line. I snort and opt to maintain the status quo, pulling the folds of her shirt close while I gently slide expectant button through waiting slit. I go so far as to affirm my dissent with a final, “See you tomorrow, Ms. Hua.”
And yet my traitor hand rests for a moment along her throat, my thumb finds the steady, unhurried beat of her heart. By the time I drop free, it feels as if the woman has seen me flinch a second time.
III.
KNIGHT
We escort Hua to her new hotel, Fahriye and I. “Get on out of here,” she tells me, voice low, while our employer pretends not to hear. When she sees how my jaw sets, the lieutenant pulls me aside, falling out as the rest of the security detail ascends with Hua in an elevator.
“You heard the boss. You’ve got rest of the night off—and you fucking earned it, kid. First day on the job, and you saved her life.” She must see how my face hardens; her voice drops from boisterous to remarkably sincere. “Ah. I see. Look, I’m not going to tell you who to sleep with or who not. What I will say is that the thing you’re worried about? It won’t matter here. It’s pretty fucked up, but she’ll treat you the exact same either way.”
Like something she owns, I think, barely able to hold the words back; the adrenaline from the shooting has left me taut, less able to control my emotions. My expression must slip regardless, because Fahriye nails me with a pointed look. I’m giving you an out here, she’s as good as telling me. You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to.
And then she’s back to her magnanimous persona, a to-go container materializing in her hand. “I asked ‘em to box up the char siu,” she says, and laughs like a hyena. “What were they going to do, tell me no?” She shoves the food against my chest. “The things which men greatly desire are comprehended in meat, drink, and sexual pleasure. Go get yourself fucked up, Yves. Just remember—” She pantomimes as she steps away. “—not the face. Boss only likes the bites she leaves.”
I make my way back to the hotel we stayed at the night before, where my things are still. It is as nice and luxurious as the hotel I just left; Mistress Hua demands only the finest things. I work in an industry divided between professionals who build of stone and desire permanence, and those who would make of their life one long migration, a different bedroom each night. I have fought in enough cratered edifices, slept under enough stars, that I know the folly of the first, feel in my bones the impermanence of all things. But the hotel as an institution, as a waypoint and liminal space, has its own oppressive sameness, more immutable than reality itself. I could stay here for the night—eat this place’s delicacies, enjoy its unrivaled vistas, sleep with one of the unmatched women who prowls its bars—all bespoke experiences that I could have at the next hotel, and the next, and the next.
Once, I would have craved this kind of certainty. Instead, I strip down to my undershirt, change into jeans, shove Hua’s burgundy and gold into my satchel. Pack the hotel’s tiny toiletries, steal a towel—old habits are oppressive, too, but there is a dark joy in that weight—and I’m out the door, leather jacket on.
Then it’s just me and the road, the throbbing power of my bike under me, a screaming engine between my legs and the evening wind in my hair. I take the highway into the hills over the city and lose myself in asphalt and elevation.
But the promised oblivion does not come. Hua is right. The stress of the day stays with me, bunching between my shoulders and grinding down my teeth. It isn’t that I need to kill, per se; I may delight in the perfection of a kill, and I will someday need to grapple with the skill and ease with which I take life. But I am not so broken or so evil, so deluded, that I consider what I do art, and I do not delight in how violence has molded me, clay of blood under fingers of bone.
But still, there is a need for catharsis—a scream, a fuck, a thunderclap to release the storm that builds within me. I take each winding turn with a speed and a precision that should border on mortifying, faster and faster, running from thought, from body and soul, from the pressure of existence and being.
This job. The intimacy of a jealous mistress and a sin-eater both, absorbing the mortal wound into myself. I know the stuff of those I serve, take into me their routines, protect them from their foibles. Death of my ego for their pride, death of my body for their safety. I am not so romantic as to think life is priceless, but…
I pull off at an overlook, dig into this lukewarm barbeque Fahriye gave me, these scraps from a dead woman’s table. It’s tasty, I guess. Probably would have liked a Coke to wash it down, that lasting export of my ruined home. The empire is dead, but its cloying sweetness, the burn of its carbonation—that stays with you, eats at the calcium of your bones and the enamel of your teeth, until the illness is a part of you, forever.
I may be thoughtless in the calories I put into my body. I accept the dehumanization of the looks, the thousand little papercuts of the soul. But there is within me a thing growing, a destructive need for dignity and control, a desire that grips at me and shakes me from my slumber, a gnawing need to—
Words escape me. That which I need be, I do not yet know. I cannot find it on any map.
Below, I see the lights of the city. The air is muggy and the wind has died, heavy with promise of a storm still unseen. I sweat under my jacket, but do not move to take it off. The discomfort of wearing it, the vulnerability of being known; that balance stays with me, in all things.
My jacket. Her ties. Her collar. Armor, tool, possession. I have been all three, will be all three again. And yet—
This is at the crux of my roiling thoughts. I have worked for others, taken their poison into myself, become strong with it. But this woman is grotesque in a singular way, possessive, and to stand beside her is to run your hand along a smooth surface of ice, to feel the heat of all that you are bleed into a barren stillness that drinks and drinks but does not melt.
But when she looks at me, I feel known. I feel desired. I feel like I have value, that maybe there is some part of me worth more than blood and bone, a hidden part yet uncharted.
Mistress Hua demands only the finest things, and on her wall of ornaments, she has set a place to mount me, carved out for me alone a place by her side. She wants me, of this I am certain.
And I am so fucked up that instead of running, I need to know why.
QUEEN
Yves’ knock on my door does not come as a surprise. It is not that I believe I am irresistible (my wealth is, but not in this context and not to her in particular); rather it is that there’s a brittleness to Yves that I have observed, and that my assessment—she requires catharsis after unfinished violence—has proven correct.
The floor is high, though I’ve drawn the curtains shut; again, one never knows, and even glass meant to be bulletproof does not always bear up under certain calibers of ammunition. The suite is like any other pricey suite in a five-star property, and when Yves steps in I can see that she is unimpressed by the bas reliefs, the statuettes, the upholstery with its expensive trims. Her regard for them is cool, indifferent. Insult to injury, she’s put aside the tailored suit in favor of a leather jacket. Black, plain.
“Do come in,” I say, able to be gracious in ultimate victory. Let her wear her leather. “You’ve had dinner? The room service here is decent.”
“No, thank you. I just had a few questions I wanted to ask you in a private setting.”
I grin at her, full-toothed. “Ah yes, and it can’t wait for my office tomorrow. It must be absolutely pressing. Go on.”
She stays standing even as I’ve seated myself in one of the plush sofas. Her gaze sweeps me over, looking perhaps for any hint of a gun on my person. “Why are you in this line of work? With the kind of money you have, you can do virtually anything else.”
“That applies to you, too.” Much less money, but sufficient to live comfortably if she’s saved up. But I already know why she would pursue no other profession: with her background, she’d fight the rest of her days to take control of her early years, to express that she wields primacy through combat and the Russo-American War left no stains on a child. I cross my legs, aware that my skirt rides up, that the silk stockings flatter my calves and thighs well. “Even if I’d wanted to do anything else, I have a certain inheritance. My mother was a supplier. Her enemies weren’t going to leave her children alone.”
“The money could have allowed you to disappear. Gone into witness protection. Something.”
At that I laugh—I can’t help it. She is hilarious. “You know it doesn’t work like that. But I’ll answer your question, since I’m dedicated to my profession for reasons other than necessity. My mother, Elizaveta Hua, died when I was young. You may have heard of her. She was under sixty when she died, which is young for normal people and ancient for an arm dealer’s life expectancy. Another trader, Cecilie Kristiansen, betrayed her to a state organization and had her taken out. I’ve thought about that a lot.”
“Revenge,” guesses Yves.
“In technical terms. In philosophical terms, I resent her showing me that my mother wasn’t all-powerful; that she was still vulnerable to state institutions.” My brother once said that it is perfectly normal for our mother to have died—relatively—young, offering an unsolicited insight that it’s not really about her but about me. It was the one time I felt tempted to violence toward my own sibling. A terrible idea, of course; he has better snipers than I do. “I’m not going anywhere until Kristiansen is well and truly over, six feet under, ashes in the wind, whatever imagery you like.”
Yves’ frown, which has been present since she stepped into this suite, deepens. I should tell her it is a bad habit that will age her face quickly, but I suppose she too expects to die very young. Under forty, maybe. “So you want to be in this long enough to terminate your mother’s murderer, but you have next to no self-preservation instinct. Or you wouldn’t have let me in here. I don’t really understand.”
“Women like me are not made to be understood, Yves, we’re made for other things.”
Her eyes dart to the top of my dress, which doesn’t bare much more than throat and shoulders—I am not desperate—and her cheeks color, very faintly, the first sign I’ve beheld that what runs in her arteries is not reptile’s blood. “Why did you really hire me?”
“One of my bodyguards got shot. There was a vacancy. Or,” I add, “you could come closer and get the real answer.”
For half a minute, I think she’s going to turn around and exit the suite. Then she closes the distance, not quite looming over me but nearly. Her shadow falls across me, blotting out the room’s illumination: in this position she has all the power. Physically she is by far the stronger of us—it’d be easy for her, were she an assassin sent by one of my enemies, to complete the deed. “I’m not doing this. I don’t fuck my employers.”
“I already told you: it’s not part of our contact. If I want to pay for sex, I pick escorts who are not trained to perform mass homicide. I haven’t survived this long by chasing my own death, have I?” My hand alights, bird-soft, on her hard thigh. “Bend down, Yves.”
She does. It is always fascinating, to succeed in seducing someone who’s so much a challenge: the insides of her mind, the coiled guts and wet humors, are for the most part opaque to me. But there are ways to turn a person’s brittleness to your advantage. There are ways to invite with a touch, a breath, a provocation.
I kiss my fingertips. I bring them to her mouth. It is an adolescent gesture, my plum lipstick smearing on her pale mouth; she freezes, and then her breath quickens.
“You don’t own people,” she says, her voice thick.
“Don’t I? Take the rest from me.”
Our first true contact is all teeth. She grazes and bites like she means to prove that she is the hunter and I the hare, and her grip on my shoulder is near-bruising. Her fingers tug at my dress—I half anticipate her to rip it clean off, but she remains this side of decorous, or else it is poverty’s habit that stops her from shredding pricey satin.
We make our way to the bed: lust-led or not, we’re both adult enough to know beds are more practical than the sofa, or worse, the floor. On the sheets I unbuckle her belt, slide off her trousers and briefs, and soon have my mouth between her legs. The taste of her is clean and the heat of her is lush; I delve deep, tongue and fingers both.
She must have been keyed up, more libidinous than she lets on. It doesn’t take long before she convulses, her feet kicking against the mattress, though she herself is almost silent. I disentangle from her, my mouth and chin drenched, and smirk down at her.
Yves doesn’t let me stay smug for long. She seizes me and pushes me into the sheets, pinning me down with her weight—she must have at least fifteen kilos on me, and most of them muscle. Again she kisses me, as hard as before, and when she descends to my breasts it is the same: more teeth than tongue. She rucks up my skirt, makes a noise in her throat when she finds the silk under that soaked. That is quickly made scarce. Her fingers glide inside me, effortless, long and blunt. A callused thumb on my clitoris.
I like rutting. There is a sort of purity to it that other vices lack. Drugs remove you from your body; fucking is the opposite—it is all body, all sensation. The character of your partner is beside the point, as long as they’re skilled at ensuring mutual satisfaction. But the thrill of having someone like Yves adds to it, too. My hips jerk against her. My back arches off the linens. I come into her hand, my cunt gripping her fingers.
We separate. There is no pretense at intimacy: she lies on her back a couple handspans from me, reestablishing the distance.
She wipes sweat from where it’s gathered above her mouth. “When did you learn I used to work for Kristiansen?”
“Before you came to my office. It doesn’t appear on your records, but it’s not hard to find out. What, do I look stupid?”
Silence, for a moment. “And that’s why you signed me on, and also why you took me to bed. Because you think this will make me tell you her secrets.”
This time I bray, completely unladylike. “Really? You think I need you to know about Iron Cecilie? Please. I’ve had spies in her ranks for years. Her business partners talk. I’m sorry to report, but you have no intelligence value to me whatsoever.”
“Then why?”
“Why did you leave Cecilie?”
Yves turns her face to me halfway, her large brown eyes reflecting the fixtures so that they look—momentarily—almost amber. Bestial. “You tell me. You bragged of your spies.”
“I’d have thought you would hate for me to narrate your life for you.” I think of catching her hand, of nibbling on her fingers, but set aside the urge. Bonding impulses don’t become either of us. “Cecilie was training you to become her second-in-command. Held you up like her prize horse. Arguably you were one of her most, if not the most, valuable personnel. Correct so far?”
Her mouth purses. She says nothing.
“But you had an… organizational issue. The other person she’d kept as her second for a decade, you don’t get along with him. Tristan Phillipe, is that right? Though I understand he has pretty bloody nicknames of his own. In the end you told Cecilie, it was Tristan or you. She insisted she needed both. You insisted otherwise and quit.”
“Tristan,” Yves begins, nearly spitting the name. “He’s a sadist completely. He can’t run anything well—he just impresses and intimidates people with his kill count, that’s all. Without Cecilie he’d have run the entire operation into the ground. I wasn’t going to stay around for that.”
“And I’m sure you and he had personal enmity.”
Her eyes drift shut. When they open again, they’re sharp and clear. “You signed me on because it pleases you to possess something Cecilie valued greatly.”
I flash her a glimpse of my teeth. “I love people who pay attention.”
“You’re quite unwell, you know that?”
“In our profession, is there such a thing as a person who’s perfectly well? Each of us is sick in our own way, the difference is in what we do with it.”
“I’m much saner than you are.” Yves lets out a sigh. “If I’m exercising that sanity, I’d be handing you my resignation right now.”
My eyes are drawn to her nipples, still hard beneath her shirt. The jacket’s long gone, probably flung across the sofa, though I don’t recall either myself or her discarding it. “And are you?”
“Not yet.” Her hand slides across the distance between us and closes around my thigh, as if she too means to lay claim: that I may own her, but I will be owned in return. “I’m staying around, to see whether you burn yourself up before you get to Cecilie. Until either outcome arrives, I promise to serve you to the best of my ability.”
“Good.” I move until I trap her hand between my thighs. “People who fascinate each other, sick or not, work together the best. Welcome onboard, Yves.”