Vishous stroked the bag of Turkish delicious like a pathetic loser. "Mind if I just rolled up a couple?'
"One flick of the flint and I'll pound you into the carpet."
"Roger that." V lined things up on the desk. "I've come to talk about Payne."
"How is your sis?"
"She's ... amazing." He cracked open his pouch, took an inhale and had to suck back his mmmm. "It worked - I'm not sure how, but she's up and around, true. On her feet, good as new."
The king eased forward. "No ... shit? For real?"
"One hundred."
"It's a miracle."
Named Manuel Manello, evidently. "You could say that."
"Well, this is great f**king news. You want to get her a room in here? Fritz can - "
"It's a little more complicated than that."
As those brows disappeared under the wraparounds again, V thought, man, even though the king was fully blind, he still appeared to focus like he always did. Which kind of made you feel like you had a gunsight trained on your frontal lobe.
V started laying out little white squares. "It's that human surgeon."
"Oh ... for shit's sake." Wrath popped his sunglasses onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. "Do not crank my crap out and tell me they've hooked up."
V remained silent, grabbing the pouch and busying himself with the pinching stage of things.
"I'm waiting for you to tell me I got it wrong." Wrath let his glasses fall back into place. "Still waiting."
"She's in love with him."
"And you're okay with this?"
"Of course not. But she could date a Brother and the motherfucker wouldn't be good enough for her." He picked up one of the loaded papers and began rolling. "So ... if she wants him, I say live and let live."
"V ... I know what angle you're going to take and I can't allow it."
Vishous stopped in mid-lick and considered bringing Beth into the happy convo. But the king already looked like he was getting a headache. "The hell you can't allow it. Rhage and Mary - "
"Rhage got beaten, remember? For a reason. Besides, times are changing, V. The war is heating up, the Lessening Society is recruiting like a motherfucker - and on top of that, there's the sliced-not-diced, halvsie shit you found downtown last night."
Goddamn it, V thought. Those slaughtered slayers ...
"Plus I just got this." Without looking, Wrath patted to the left and held up a page of Braille. "It's a copy of a letter that was e-mailed to what's left of the Founding Families. Xcor has relocated with his boys - which was why you found those lessers in the condition you did."
"Fucking ... hell. I knew it was him."
"He's setting us up."
V stiffened. "For what?"
Wrath sent a get real over the desk. "People have lost entire branches of their families. They've fled their homes, but they want to come back here. Meanwhile, things are getting more dangerous, instead of safer in Caldwell. Nothing should be taken for granted right now."
Read: He wasn't assuming his throne was secure. No matter what he happened to be sitting on.
"So it's not that I don't understand where Payne's at," Wrath said. "But we've got to circle the wagons and hunker down. Now is not the time to layer on the complication of a human in here."
Things grew quiet for a moment.
As V considered his counterpoints, he picked up another square, rolled it tight, licked the flap, twisted. "He helped my Jane last night. When the Brothers and I came back here after the melee in that alley, Manello was hands-on and then some. He's a spectacular surgeon - and I should know. He operated on me. He's far from useless." V looked across the desk. "If the war intensifies further, we could use an extra set of surgical hands down in the clinic."
Wrath cursed in English. And then in the Old Language. "Vishous - "
"Jane is awesome, but there's only one of her. And Manello has technical skills she doesn't."
Wrath popped up his glasses again and rubbed. Hard. "You telling me that guy is going to want to live here in this house day and night for the rest of his life? Lot to ask."
"So I'll ask him."
"I don't like this."
Loooong silence. Which told V he was making headway. He knew better than to push, however.
"I thought you wanted to kill the bastard," Wrath groused. As if that would be preferable as a goal.
Abruptly, the image of Manello on his knees in front of Payne blazed into V's mind, until he wanted to snag a pen and poke his own eyes out. "I still do," he said darkly. "But ... he's who she wants, true. What am I gonna do."
Another loooong silence, during which he made a satisfyingly tall pile of light-ables.
Finally, Wrath dragged a hand through his mile-long black hair. "If she wants to see him outside of here, that's none of my business."
Vishous opened his mouth to argue, and then shut his trap. This was better than a flat-out no, and who knew what the future held: If V could evolve to a place where, even after The Shower Nightmare, Manello remained aboveground and breathing, anything could f**king happen.
"Fair enough." He resealed the pouch. "What are we going to do about Xcor?"
"Wait until the Council calls a meeting about him - which will be in the next couple of nights, no doubt. The glymera is going to eat this shit up, and then we've got real problems." In a dry voice, the king tacked on, "As opposed to all our half-assed ones."
"You want the Brotherhood up here for a meeting?"
"Nah. Give 'em the rest of the night off. This is not going away."
V stood, pulled on the robe and gathered up his smoking para. "Thanks for this. You know, about Payne."
"It's not a favor."
"It's a better message to carry back to her."
Vishous was halfway to the door when Wrath said, "She's going to want to fight."
V pivoted around. "Excuse me."
"Your sister." Wrath put his elbows on all the paperwork and leaned in, his cruel face grave. "You need to prepare yourself for when she asks to go out and fight."
Oh, hell, no. "I'm not hearing that."
"You will be. I've sparred against her. She's as lethal as you and I are, and if you think she's going to be content prowling around this house for the next six hundred years, you're f**ked in the head. Sooner or later, that's what she's going to want."
Vishous opened his mouth. Then shut it.
Well, he'd had a rockin' good time enjoying life for about ... twenty-nine minutes. "Don't tell me you'd allow it."
"Xhex fights."
"She's Rehvenge's subject. Not yours." Wrath's brows made a third disappearance. "Different standard."
"Number one, everyone under this roof is my subject. And two, it's not any different just because she's your sister."
"Of course" - It. Is. - "not."
"Uh-huh. Right."
Vishous cleared his throat. "You're seriously thinking about letting her - "
"You've seen what I looked like after we worked out, right? I was giving her no leeway at all, Vishous. That female knows what she's doing."
"But she's ..." My sister. "You can't let her go out there."
"Right now, I need as many fighters as I've got."
Vishous put a hand-rolled between his lips. "I think I'd better go."
"Good idea."
The second he was out and had shut the door, he flicked the gold lighter Fritz had given him and inhaled like a Dyson.
As he thought about his next move, he supposed he could flash back to the Commodore and deliver the happy news to his sister - but he was more than a little afraid of what he'd materialize into. Besides, he had until dawn to convince himself that Payne out in the field was not an Edsel-like idea.
Also, he had someone else he had to see.
Taking the staircase down, he crossed the foyer, and hit the vestibule. Outside, he walked fast through the pebbled courtyard and entered the Pit through its stout front door.
The familiarity of the couches and the plasma screen and the Foosball table eased him.
The sight of the empty bottle of Lag on the coffee table? Not so much.
"Butch?"
No answer. So he went down the hall to the cop's room. The door was open and inside ... there was nothing but Butch's huge wardrobe and a messy, empty bed.