Soldier (Talon, #3)(78)
“But, I know you,” I went on. “And this is going to drive you crazy if you walk away now. If you’re willing to see the truth, it’s right here.” And I took my hand off the table.
Tristan hesitated a moment more, staring at the envelope like it was a venomous snake curled up on the counter. Then, with a curse, he leaned forward, snagged the corner of the envelope and slid it toward him.
I watched him as he pulled out the contents and flipped through the stack of documents and photographs, his face growing darker with every page. Even if the name of the Patriarch’s “partner” was deliberately missing from every document, the evidence was still pretty damning. This was meant to be used as blackmail, and Talon had left nothing to circumstance. Even someone like Tristan, who was searching for a loophole, a way out, would be hard-pressed to disagree that this was anything less than treason.
“Why?” he finally rasped, putting the stack down with a vaguely ill look on his face. I didn’t answer, not knowing if the question was directed at me or the universe in general. Tristan stared at the papers a few seconds more before glancing up at me, his expression tormented.
“I don’t get it,” he said, making a hopeless gesture. “So... Talon is using the Patriarch to kill dragons? Why would they slaughter their own kind? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Inside, something that I didn’t know had been tense relaxed, and I let out a quiet breath. I knew Tristan was pragmatic and logical, and that he looked at the evidence before making any decision, but even with proof, I wasn’t certain if he would believe his Patriarch was corrupt. Not only corrupt, but working with the enemy. Committing treason of the highest order. That would be hard for any soldier to swallow.
“It’s complicated.” He glared at me, and I sighed. “Not all dragons are associated with Talon,” I explained, keeping my voice low in case a civilian was watching us. “There are deserters, rogues, who have broken away. Who have gone underground in order to escape. And since Talon doesn’t want any dragons to exist outside their organization, they send assassins to kill any rogues that they find. Usually, they dispatch one of their own—that’s what the Vipers do when they’re not sent against the Order.” Tristan gave a short nod; that, at least, made sense to him. The Vipers were Talon’s killers, we knew that much.
“But now...” I motioned to the envelope. “They have an even better method. St. George doesn’t suspect the Patriarch’s hand in this, because the Order is doing what we have always done, and that is to take out every dragon we come across. Without question. Without wondering how we got there. You said it yourself. What does it matter where the information is coming from, as long as it keeps leading us to the enemy? Only, you’re just taking out Talon’s enemies, and making them more powerful than ever.”
“Son of a bitch,” Tristan breathed. He’d gone very pale, his blue eyes dark pools against his skin. “And the Order doesn’t know,” he muttered. “The Patriarch is selling us out to Talon, to the lizards, and St. George doesn’t suspect a thing.”
I waited, watching him. The first two hurdles had been cleared; Tristan believed us, and he hadn’t arrived with the rest of St. George to blast us to bits. But the last obstacle loomed, and it was the largest one. Would he help us? Would he choose to side with the enemy, to expose the man the Order revered above all else?
“What are you going to do, Tristan?” I finally asked. He jerked up.
“I... I don’t know.” Leaning back, he raked a hand over his scalp. “I have to think about this. Gimme a day or two.” He eyed the documents once more, as if wishing they would spontaneously burst into flame. “Any way I could take those with me?”
“They’re just copies,” I told him. “We still have all the original documents. Destroying them won’t do anything.”
“I wasn’t going to destroy them, dammit.” Tristan glared at me. “And I’m not so stupid as to show them to anyone in the Order. I just...need to make sure.” He made a hopeless gesture that hovered very close to despair. “It’s the Patriarch, Garret. If I’m going to do anything, I have to be certain.”
I hesitated. Letting him walk out with the envelope wasn’t a good idea. Even if we did have the originals, St. George discovering that evidence could be disastrous if it reached the wrong people. If it got back to the Patriarch, he could find ways to cover it up, to twist it to his advantage and to put the blame on us rather than on himself. Right now, we had the advantage because the Patriarch didn’t know that we knew. If Tristan showed those documents to the Order, there would be an uproar, and a lot of questions the Patriarch would have to deal with, but we could lose all chance of credibility, depending on how well the Patriarch had prepared in case he was exposed.
But we couldn’t do this from the outside. We were enemies of St. George, monsters, traitors and dragonlovers. Whatever proof or evidence we claimed we had, they would never hear us. If we were going to break up the alliance between the Patriarch and Talon, we had to do it from inside the Order. And Tristan was our best hope of getting into St. George.
Besides, I knew my ex-partner. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I trusted him—whatever the circumstances, he was still a loyal soldier of St. George, and I was still on the wrong side. But he wasn’t, as he’d snapped at me earlier, stupid. Showing those documents to anyone in the Order would bring him under fire, too. There would be questions as to where he’d gotten such evidence, who he had been meeting with, and eventually it would point back to either us or Talon. And then Tristan might find himself in a cell, before he made the short walk to the execution wall.