Division had not been fulfilling, but merely a puppet show she had performed so the string pullers wouldn’t become displeased and direct their grim attention toward her. Of course, eventually they had. Over the past few years, she had left her tracks in the most distant and alien of climes and breasted very deep, very dangerous waters.
The man on the throne showed the edges of his teeth in a vulpine grin. “I am Captain Saragayn, if you haven’t guessed.”
“I had. I am—”
“Brigid Baptiste,” the man broke in. “A chief field operative for the group known as Cerberus, based in Montana, in the former United States of America.”
Brigid smiled with a confidence she did not feel. “Very good. How did you know that?”
“Would you care to guess again?”
Brigid presented the image of pondering the question before replying calmly, “The emissary of the Millennial Consortium either described me or showed you a picture.”
Saragayn clapped his hands together in delight. “Excellent. Mr. Book said you were very smart…and very dangerous.” A frown suddenly replaced the smile on his lips. “I’ve already witnessed the dangerous part.”
“What else did Mr. Book tell you?”
Captain Saragayn shrugged. “Many things. Mostly about the bit of bad blood between your two houses. Very interesting.”
“No doubt,” Brigid responded flatly. “Was Mr. Book alone?”
“Yes,” a male’s voice said from behind her. “Due to a personnel shortage, thanks in large part to Cerberus.”
Brigid turned quickly, just as a slender man stepped around the guard in the doorway and entered the throne room. He wore a one-piece zippered coverall of a neutral dun color. A small button glinted dully on the collar of his garment, and she didn’t need to see the image inscribed on it to know she faced an agent of the Millennial Consortium.
“My name is Mr. Book,” the man stated coldly. “It’s about time we met.”
Chapter 4
Brigid’s first impulse was to shoot back with a witticism or an insult. But when she looked into Book’s eyes, she saw the glint of cruelty in their pale depths, glimmering like the fires of a furnace that had only been banked, not extinguished.
Although of medium height, Book was so excessively lean he appeared taller. His hair was cropped so short it resembled a gray skullcap of bristles. His rawboned, leathery face was deeply seamed, as if it had been cooked by the sun and leached by acid rain until only bone, muscle and sinew were left.
His posture and attitude reminded her of Magistrates she had encountered, and she realized that Book was quite possibly a former Mag, one who had been recruited by the Millennial Consortium. Her mouth went dry as she experienced a rare moment of fear. She opted to remain silent.
Book regarded her broodily. “Brigid Baptiste. And where you are, so are Kane and Grant. The question is why.”
Brigid frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You people from Cerberus are enigmas, Baptiste. Oh, I know your names and your histories—renegades from Cobaltville, baron blasters and all that overblown bullshit told about you in the Outlands.”
Brigid forced a taunting smile to her face, but she didn’t reply. Over the past five-plus years, the Cerberus warriors had scored many victories, defeated many enemies and solved mysteries of the past that molded the present and affected the future. More importantly, they began to rekindle of the spark of hope within the breasts of the disenfranchised fighting to survive in the Outlands.
Victory, if not within their grasp, at least had no longer seemed an unattainable dream. But with the transformation of the barons into the Overlords, all of them wondered if the war was now over—or if it had ever actually been waged at all. Brigid privately feared that everything she and her friends had experienced and endured so far had only been minor skirmishes, a mere prologue to the true conflict, the Armageddon yet to come.
Seeing the smile, Book challenged, “I amuse you?”
“To a point. If our reps are overblown bullshit, why has the consortium black-tagged our files?”
Saragayn stirred in his chair. “What means this ‘black-tagged’?”
Staring levelly at Book, Brigid declared, “It means that my friends and I from Cerberus are high-priority targets for the millennialists. There is a big bonus paid to any of their agents who manage to kill us.”
Saragayn angled at eyebrow at Book. “Is this so?”
The man nodded and then glared at Brigid. “Why are you here in Pandakar?”
Brigid smiled defiantly. “Take a guess, Mr. Book.”
“The cheap heroics of you Cerberus people nauseate me,” Book said harshly. “But let’s be frank with each other. The consortium’s enterprises in America are imperiled by the continual interference of Cerberus. You’ve destroyed our satraps, killed our personnel and disrupted our operations. You’ve forced us to move farther and farther from the American shores, yet you keep coming after us. Why?”
Brigid cast a glance at Saragayn. “That’s an example of the bad blood you mentioned.”
Saragayn nodded. “I gathered as much. I’m interested in your perspective.”
Brigid made a dismissive gesture. “Is there any point in that? You’ve already made up your mind.”
Saragayn chuckled. “You severely over- or underestimate me. I am responsible for nearly a thousand people, most of them related to me. Pandakar is surrounded by tides of change, and I do not want my island to be swept away. Therefore, I don’t make decisions rashly or choose sides until I’ve gauged every advantage and disadvantage.”
Brigid nodded as if she agreed, although she surreptitiously looked around for another way out of the room. Daramurti still blocked the doorway. “Do you know what the Millennial Consortium really is, Captain?”
“I only know what Mr. Book told me—a union of organized salvagers and traders.” Saragayn cocked his head at her in an exaggerated pose of puzzlement. “Is that not the truth?”
“To a point,” Brigid admitted, pinching the air between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. “A very small and very blunt point.”
The Millennial Consortium was, on the surface, a group of very well-organized traders who dedicated their lives to recovering predark artifacts from the ruins of cities. In the Outlands, such scavenging was actually the oldest profession.
After the world burned in atomic flame, enough debris settled into the lower atmosphere and very nearly created another ice age. The remnants of humankind had waited in underground shelters until the Earth became a little warmer before they ventured forth again. Most of them became scavengers mainly because they had no choice.
Looting the abandoned ruins of predark cities was less a vocation than it was an Outland tradition. Entire generations of families had made careers of ferreting
