“If he wins. If he trusted Bullstow to protect him during the process, to protect him once it was over. Tristan, he didn’t do this for Chairwoman Wilson, and she’s not running to Burgundy. She’s heading to Germany. Tomorrow morning, the chairwoman will board a flight with Oskar Kruger and use the boy to gain safe haven, either from King Lucas or from his enemies. No one in the commonwealth will be able to touch her there, and Oskar will no longer be a slave. Peter was doing it for his children.”
Tristan’s eyes widened as he gave her back the cup. “Are you sure? What of the daughter? What of Maria Kruger?”
“I suspect the chairwoman promised she’d take the whole family. She might have kept her vow, too, but I spooked her. She wasn’t ready. She told Valandra Schreiber not to even bother with the other two visas. She’ll take the only person who really matters.”
“That’s what you meant before when you said the chairwoman would have something more damning with her. You knew what she was planning all along, even when you spoke to me on that roof, and you didn’t even tell me.”
“I had my suspicions after we broke into Liberté,” Lila said, and sipped her water. “I didn’t know for sure, though. All I knew was that she was liquidating assets. Oskar Kruger is an asset, one she could sell or use to her advantage. If I had told you, would you have believed me?”
“Of course I would have.”
Lila raised an eyebrow, and he looked away. “If the chairwoman is caught with the boy and fake visas, it’ll be clear what she’s doing. Come tomorrow, she’ll be arrested for treason. They’ll look into her records, and they’ll see how she paid off Slack & Roberts as well as Muller and Davies. They’ll all be punished enough, even for you. Let Bullstow do its job. Sometimes the system does work.”
“Sometimes. Other times it fails miserably. How many people from the poorer classes have to pay for the occasional win? How much injustice is acceptable?”
“How much injustice pays for another bomb? What happens when you hit innocents in the crossfire? Will you justify a few casualties the same way I justify the current system? Do you even care about justifying it at all?” she asked. “You know, I think most of the time, you’re so angry about your past that you want to destroy the world, rather than build it slowly into something new. You want people to pay, people who had nothing to do with whatever happened to you and Dixon, and fuck improving anything for anyone.”
“That’s not true. I just want everyone to be free. What’s wrong with that?”
“Abracadabra,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “All slaves are free. Now what do they eat? How do they put a roof over their heads? How do they school their children? Broader still, how will we grow our food when we have no slaves to harvest the crops? How do we run our manufacturing plants, our oil platforms? What do we do with our criminals? Half the world runs on slave labor, Tristan. Disrupt that, and you’re left with anarchy. You can’t destroy the world, shake it up, and expect it to change all at once. It takes time, time that’s better spent building than cleaning up after an implosion.”
“You don’t give people enough credit.”
“So that’s your way of saying you have absolutely no idea what to do after everyone is free? That we’ll just figure it all out later?” she asked. “You should change your focus to piecemeal victories, Tristan. Changing the world is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s a lot less dangerous than bombing a city. I don’t want someone’s death on your conscience, Tristan. You couldn’t bear it if you hurt someone.”
“How do you know what I can and can’t bear? You don’t know me.”
“Don’t I?”
“Apparently not. You thought I might have hired Peter.”
“I was shaken up.” Lila said, knowing that wasn’t the only problem. Her shell had not softened while Tristan spoke to her. Indeed, it had just grown harder and harder. The sting of it, her feelings of stupidity, of anger. It didn’t seem to matter that he had explained his intentions.
She just didn’t care anymore. His intentions were sloppy. His intentions had absolutely nothing to do with her, and everything to do with himself.
“What will you do with Peter?”
“If he dies, I’ll leave his body in the old hotel with a few spare bombs. Bullstow will find him eventually. If Doc heals him, I’ll think of something else. It’s hard to have sympathy for someone who tried to murder one of my—”
“I’m not—”
“One of my people?”
There it was. That was what had bothered her the most. That was what hurt her the most. She had been a tool to him at her most vulnerable.
Just like Peter.
He had intended to use her just like he would soon use her would-be murderer.
Dying or unconscious, leaving them both as evidence for Bullstow and Chief Shaw, all to take the heat away from himself and his friends.
His real friends. His family.
What would he have done with her body if she had died?
She shivered, not wanting to know.
“I was worried,” he said at last.