Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

made my accusation. The rest of my standard operating procedure was a combination of threats and cajoling, neither of which would be effective against Paulus.

“You’re done, Ambassador. Your career, your money, your manna. Everything that you base your power on, it’s all wrapped up and flushed away. The only question is, are you going to let it destroy everything around you as well?”

She swallowed. Her eyes weren’t narrowed, weren’t wide. They simply sagged, the softening eyes of someone realizing that they can’t avoid the trap, because the trap has already been sprung. She took two long breaths. Then a spark came back to those predator’s eyes as they locked on mine. “Tell her.”

I didn’t nod, didn’t give the least sign of acknowledgment. I’d give Gellica fair warning of what was coming. But I finally had the upper hand with Paulus, and I wasn’t going to let anything change that.

I left her there, staring out through bars more immutable than the laws of physics. Because even if she ran, her life was over. Everything she’d built was tumbling down. Unless I helped clear her name. And I wouldn’t do that, not for anything.

Not even justice.

The next morning I grabbed the stack of papers shoved into my department mailbox and flipped through them as I waited for Jax to arrive. I had a handful of phone messages, most from Klare, the photographer from the Union Record. There was also the background file on Bobby Kearn, from Cloudswar. I skimmed the report, but my mind was elsewhere. Klare bothered me. She was tenacious, and would keep coming after me until she felt justice had been done. The trouble was, I didn’t know if that would happen. I pushed the messages and report aside when Jax arrived.

“Don’t bother getting comfortable,” I said. “We need to make a social call.”

I gave him enough time to grab a coffee and we headed out for the short walk to 1 Government Center. There, I asked Jax to sign in at the front desk while I waited in reception. I hadn’t been in the building since I’d visited Gellica to take her into my confidence and plead for her forgiveness. It seemed like I did a lot of that whenever she and I talked.

“You sure we shouldn’t have made an appointment?” Jax said, voice low as he sat next to me.

“No,” I said. “But Gellica will see us. She can’t get out of it. There’s an ongoing investigation into her boss.”

“Oh? We can’t force our way in. She may be willing to see someone from the Bunker. But I doubt that someone is you.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Especially considering Paulus got our badge numbers when we visited her at home. I’m guessing her personal security shared that info with the security here.”

Ajax swiveled to face the security desk. But he relaxed just as fast, understanding creeping into his voice.

“When they took our badge numbers,” he said, “I had that duplicate we got from the pawnshop.”

“Never waste a bit of luck,” I said.

Jax shook his head and looked out the glass doors to the street, leaving me to retreat into my own thoughts. Mostly, that consisted of Paulus’s voice: Tell her. I didn’t like the idea of taking advice from a sorcerer who’d been glad to see me suffer before, but Gellica deserved to know what was going on. And if Gellica and I were going to stay civil long enough for me to give that warning, then I needed another adult in the room. Hence, Detective Ajax.

The guard at the desk waved us to the elevator bank. “This way, please.”

I glanced at my partner. “See?”

Gellica’s office was far busier than I’d ever seen it. We paused at the door, and received a brief, chilly glare from her assistant, but he stood and escorted us past the doors that separated the sanctum from the space outside. “Ambassador?” he said, and I thought for a moment he’d made a mistake. But Gellica raised her head, brows furrowing as she saw me, and I remembered that she was, in fact, the acting ambassador until the AFS Council stripped Paulus of her rank and appointed a replacement. Gellica was overseeing a smooth transition to the end of her career.

She stood. Hair held back in a no-nonsense ponytail, she wore a gray silk blouse and a blue suit, a decorative necktie loosened in the Mollenkampi fashion. But while Jax wore his tie slightly undone to allow him to speak more freely, Gellica was making a statement. She was dressed professionally, but hadn’t bothered to embrace the full clout of her new position. She understood as much as anyone that her role was temporary, and all the political will of Paulus’s enemies—and most of her fair-weather friends—would be arrayed against her.

“Detective,” she said to me, then to my partner, “Ajax, it’s good to see you. Sit down. I’ll be with you in a minute.” Then she turned her attention back to the three assistants in suits who sat around her desk.

While she finished up her business, I tried to get comfortable on one of the chairs in her formal sitting space. She’d had a couch the last time I’d been in her office. A couch that she’d ultimately given to me rather than put up with having to speak to me again. I glanced in her direction. Gellica was a creation of magic and science, a clone who required a regular intake of manna to survive. Her eyes were so similar to Paulus’s, but Gellica wasn’t a predator. She was a competitor. She’d beat you but she’d do it by the rules. And after her skill and head games wore you into the ground, she’d help you up and say, “Good game.”

The other AFS employees filed out and Gellica took a seat opposite me, to Jax’s right. Having Jax was a mixed blessing. His was a calming presence; with him there we couldn’t speak as bluntly as I might like, but