a Latin name if it’s based on a Chinese legend.” She smiled but there was no joy in it. “Nine people who could remake the world, that’s how they think of themselves.”
“Is Edward one of the nine? Or is he a flunky?”
“I don’t know.”
“These fifty people. What’s special about them?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“That’s a lie.”
“No, it’s not.” Lucy drew her knees up to her chin. She peered at me above them. “When you asked me to marry you, I almost said no. Not because I didn’t want to marry you. I did. But I felt like you wouldn’t be enough. I wanted a lot from life. I wanted money. I wanted respect. I wanted to work hard for ten years and then have enough to live on. Not work my fingers to the bone clawing up some male-run bureaucracy, not putting my life in danger for a bunch of ideals.” She slid her legs out in front of her and for a moment we were back in London, drinking lager in our apartment, talking about our future. “I knew you didn’t care about that. And for a time I thought I could live without the money. I couldn’t.”
I didn’t say anything. She was quiet for nearly forty minutes and I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she said, “I think I will tell you a little bit about who I work for.”
“Why the change of heart?”
“Because do you think the Company’s really going to welcome you back? Even if you help them? Maybe they’ll give you a pardon. Maybe. But they’ll never, ever, let you work for them again. They won’t trust you. They won’t think you can follow orders. Orders trump all.”
“Are you telling me this to offer me a job?”
She stretched out a leg. “Consider it a lifeline. I think the Company will simply kill both of us when they’re done.”
“No.”
“Oh, not them officially. But there are rogue groups running inside.”
I looked hard at her. Could I have been so wrong for so long? The thought was a fist in my chest, in my brain. “I wasn’t enough for you. Marrying me wasn’t enough,” I said.
“Marrying you was… Marrying you was the right thing to do. I loved you. It was an act of optimism.”
“I don’t believe you loved me.”
She raised an arm, slid up the sleeve, and I saw a trio of round, brutal burns on her upper arm. “That was the price of making that phone call that got you out of the office. Edward thought I’d betrayed them, leaving you alive. A dead patsy is more valuable than a live one who can deny and possibly disprove the frame.”
“But you did frame me.”
“You were alive. I knew they might let you go, that there was a chance. Better prison than a grave.”
“Why wasn’t I enough? Wasn’t I a good husband?”
“You cannot possibly care about my opinion.”
I started to answer and she raised a hand. “No, you don’t care about me. I see through all this talk. This is about the baby.” She smiled and then the smile went away. “My trump card.”
“Don’t talk about Daniel that way.”
“I know. He’s a person. Who grew inside me for nine months.” She wiped a hand against her lip. “When we found out I was pregnant, do you remember…” It was a sign of her psychosis, I thought, that she even had to ask.
“I remember.” It had been right after dinner; she’d taken the test without telling me of her suspicions. And brought me the test, with its little affirmative plus, and I’d whooped and hollered and she’d worn a stunned smile on her face.
“Well, I thought, that’s that. I won’t work for Novem Soles any-more. I will walk away. I will cover my tracks and I will stop and no one will ever know that I ever sold bits and pieces of information. I will have this baby and I will love Sam and that will be my real life.” She rubbed at her lip and she dropped her gaze from mine. “But they don’t let you walk away. You don’t submit a letter of resignation. They told me they would kill you.”
I closed my eyes and felt a corner of my heart die. I could never know the truth of anything Lucy said. She had saved me in London; but why, I could never know. Maybe even she didn’t know. Love? Guilt? A more selfish reason, to use me in the future? It didn’t matter. She lied