Evensong

“Gaetano!” Olivia screamed. But he wasn’t listening. He was still doubled up and vomiting. The kick had hit him like an express train. “Gaetano!”

“Shut up,” Anwar told her, softly and precisely.

The six men sitting in the pews had looked convincingly shocked while all this was happening, but that was then. Now they were suddenly encircling Anwar and Olivia.

“Don’t,” he told them.

“Why, what will you do, surround us?”

“Yes.” The word hung in the air behind him. He was already moving.

He really did surround them. He orbited the tight circle they’d made around her, attacking it from outside, silently and with frightening speed and from every angle and with every striking surface, so they couldn’t face her but had to face outwards. And it still wasn’t enough for them.

He fought them the way he should have fought in the last Tournament. Taking the initiative. They tried their best moves on him but he flicked them away, unnoticing. To him, their moves were slowed to near-torpor, and their martial arts yells to a hoglike bass. As usual, he fought in silence. That, and his speed, terrified them. They were good, better than his last six Tournament opponents, but still Meatslabs. He flickered in and out of them in a glissade, bestowing Compliments and Gratuities—all watered-down versions, enough to immobilise but not to injure or kill.

He was shockingly fast, and frighteningly silent. He thought, This is everything I am, it’s what makes me extraordinary. But even now, when I’m doing it better than I did in the Tournament, it doesn’t mean much. My opponents are always outmatched, and half of the Consultants will always outmatch me. When will Everything I Am mean something?

It was never going to be a bloodbath. His abilities were too considerable, and too precise, for that. But it was almost an anticlimax. His inbuilt timer told him he’d finished them in twenty-two seconds.

He could have just stayed by her side and defeated them. Waited for them to attack, and countered. Instead, for once, he’d done it differently. Why? Because of her? He had enough time, now, to ask himself this and reflect on the answer. No. Because they weren’t the real thing. They weren’t the threat which had made her persuade Rafiq to give her a Consultant. They weren’t good enough.

He turned back to the Levin lookalike, who’d floored Gaetano and was now getting to his feet, smiling mockingly. Anwar indulged himself a little, and gave him a Verb. It was an openhand strike to the throat, fingers and thumb unusually splayed, the molecules hardening them into five striking surfaces. One of his favourite moves. A full-strength version would decapitate, but Anwar used only a powered-down version (an Adverb?) which didn’t penetrate flesh. He did it because the man looked like the real Levin, even down to the smile (I’m Miles ahead of you, Anwar) and it was the closest Anwar would get to wiping the smile off Levin’s face. The man fell, unconscious before he could cry out.

Anwar looked round. All prostrate, but neatly so. No groans or blood or writhing, except for Gaetano. All inert.

“Are you alright?” Olivia asked.

He opened his mouth to answer, but she was looking past him. At Gaetano.

“Not yet,” Gaetano said, between coughs, “but I will be. Thank you, Archbishop.”

Anwar turned to her. “Are you alright?”

She glared at him, but nodded.

“You were frightened when they surrounded you.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“Yes you were, but not of them. You were frightened I wouldn’t be good enough.”

“You aren’t,” she sneered. “You mistimed, I saw it. I needed the best, and Rafiq sent me you. A fucking autistic retard!”

“My knife wound is healing quite nicely, thank you.”

“Our appointment tonight,” she said, “is for nine o’clock. Don’t mistime that.”

She flounced off, back up the wide staircase, almost tripping over her long skirt. Fury came off in waves from her small retreating figure. Anwar assumed she was going back to the Boardroom. She did, after all, have an organisation to run.

A couple of minutes passed. The eight were still inert. Gaetano was kneeling and coughing.

“Try to get up now,” Anwar told him. “But take it slowly. I know the kick was genuine, and I know you weren’t wearing protection.”

“Couldn’t. You’d have spotted it.”

“Yes. You really are suffering for your art.”

“We still have unfinished business.” His breathing was growing less laboured. “I didn’t want you here, she did. Because she thinks that her own security won’t stop whatever’s threatening her.”

“Like it didn’t stop me...And I didn’t want to be here either.”