Gameboard of the Gods (Age of X, #1)(37)

Val and Dag were already there, having taken over a table by the front window. They were in casual mode, jeans and T-shirts, which earned them a couple of disapproving looks from the more elegantly dressed patrons. At least they hadn’t worn their uniforms—which they did on occasion, simply to create a scene and disconcert those around them. The last time they’d done it, their waitress had been so intimidated that she’d dropped a tray of drinks—twice. Mae had felt obligated to leave a generous tip by way of apology.

Dag whistled when he saw her. “Look at you,” he said. “Going to the country club?”

“They wear dresses to country clubs,” chastised Val, as though she were some kind of expert. “Our girl looks more like she’s been giving boardroom presentations.”

“You’re both wrong.” Mae sat down and immediately brought up the table’s touch-screen menu and ordered a mojito without even checking out anything else.

“Well?” asked Val. Both she and Dag were watching Mae expectantly. They hadn’t seen her since the funeral. “Where have you been? Not in detainment, obviously. We thought maybe they’d lent you out to the police. Or had you giving tours of the military museum.”

“Well, that may be yet to come,” Mae said. “But this week I’ve been in the provinces.”

Her friends looked impressed. “You were in action already?” asked Dag.

Mae decided beating up those backwoods thugs didn’t really count as action. “I was, uh, running an errand in Panama.”

A waiter came by with her mojito, as well as another round for Val and Dag. They were only social drinking tonight, or else they would’ve had at least ten drinks in front of them. If you could take down several drinks within a couple of minutes, you could briefly keep ahead of the implant’s quick ability to metabolize alcohol. It achieved a very, very short-lived buzz that was usually over in ten minutes. Pr?torians called it “slamming the implant.”

Justin and Tessa’s presence in the RUNA wasn’t something that could be kept secret, so Mae gave them a quick—and extremely edited—rundown of her Panamanian adventures and glossed over the murders, simply saying she was working as Justin’s bodyguard. Judging from her friends’ faces, Mae wasn’t the only one who found those events bizarre.

“What the f*ck did he do that was bad enough to get exiled?” asked Dag.

Val traced the rim of her glass, dark eyes lost in thought. “And yet apparently wasn’t bad enough to keep him from coming back.”

“They don’t tell me stuff like that,” Mae said, trying to act like it didn’t bother her. “I’m just the messenger.”

Dag brightened. “Still, a lot more exciting than monument duty. Not as honorable, of course.”

That caught Mae by surprise. “Monument duty? What are you watching?”

“The National Gardens,” Val said. She knocked back half her drink. Maybe she wasn’t slamming the implant, but she wasn’t really holding back either. Mae was tempted herself, after drinking that Panamanian swill.

“Both of you are in the gardens?” she asked. Her friends nodded together.

“There are a bunch of Scarlets there right now.” Val ticked them off on her fingers. “Whitetree, Mason, Chow, Makarova…”

“Lucky,” muttered Mae, not voicing what the others were thinking.

If they’d assigned a Scarlet team to the capital, she might have been in it—if not for recent events, of course. The most celebrated pr?torian posts were in places with active fighting, like the provinces and borderlands. Those were around-the-clock missions and also the ones pr?torians died in. Pr?torians were also rotated through the capital, however, to guard senators and important national monuments and buildings. It was relatively sedate work for soldiers like them, but there was power in it. The pr?torians were a symbol of the RUNA’s strength and perfection. Putting pr?torians on display in Vancouver reassured citizens of their country’s superiority, even if it also sometimes frightened them. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing, though. Capital duty had shifts like ordinary jobs, meaning pr?torians received a lot of time off. Having a significant amount of one’s cohort on hand was an unusual perk since they were normally split and scattered around the world.

Val and Dag were fully aware that they’d landed a very sweet assignment, but Dag diplomatically tried to make Mae feel better. “I’m sure you’ll see cool stuff with a servitor. Maybe you’ll get to take down some crazy cult. I saw this one on the news that was sacrificing animals and having naked moonlight dances.” He turned wistful. “I wouldn’t mind a little of that. The naked part, that is. Not the animal part. I heard they tried to stone the servitor.”

Mae gave him a smile for his effort. “Cults usually get taken down with paperwork instead of brute force. They only show the sensational ones on TV.”

“Well, just remember, it could’ve been a lot worse for you.” Val’s voice was light, but there was a warning note in it. Nobody was mentioning the funeral, but they were all thinking about it. “And hey, how crazy is it that you’ll be with a mysterious exile and a provincial girl? That’s drama right there. You can’t make that stuff up.”

“No,” agreed Mae, thinking back on what she’d seen. “You really can’t.”