The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(68)

Noam shut his eyes and tried very hard to concentrate on not puking.

He did eventually, anyway, once he made it back to the barracks—when he had an empty bathroom and what felt like years’ worth of disgust and anger to vomit up.

The general, with all those medals glittering on his uniform.

Ames’s face when she said he killed my mother.

He kept telling himself this was Sacha’s Carolinia, this was what Lehrer’s coup would overthrow.

It didn’t make him feel any better.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The day following the dinner party dragged past like molasses. Everything Noam wanted to say about the general stuck in his throat like wet sugar when he met Ames’s gaze. If he told Lehrer, Ames would kill him. But how the hell was Noam supposed to ally with Lehrer, plotting Sacha’s downfall and Lehrer’s subsequent rise to power, when Lehrer’s rule came with a man like that at his side?

Noam walked himself through each option Saturday afternoon, sitting behind the store counter. He chewed his way through three moon pies before he remembered they were coming out of his paycheck and made himself do a round of price stickering instead.

He had to tell Lehrer.

At least Dara will be there, he thought as he headed across the atrium late that night. Dara could back him up.

He evaded the antitechnopathy wards easily this time, letting himself into the west wing as deftly as if he’d had a pass card of his very own. Not that anyone was around to appreciate the feat—it was past ten o’clock. The halls were empty of anyone who might look twice at a young cadet wandering the government complex alone.

He knocked at the door to Lehrer’s study, then hung back, waiting. Could Lehrer hear knocks at the study door from inside his apartment? Maybe Noam should text him or something. Or text Dara.

Only then the door opened, and Lehrer was there—not wearing his uniform or a suit. Just trousers and a cable-knit sweater, looking more like he belonged in someone’s private library than in the Ministry of Defense.

“Noam,” he said, and it was perhaps the first time Noam had ever seen Lehrer caught off guard. “What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”

“Sort of. Can I come in?”

A part of him wondered if Lehrer was still angry after last night—he still cringed every time he remembered the softness with which Lehrer had spoken in the car, words like ice in his veins.

But Lehrer just stepped aside, gesturing Noam into the darkened study. “Of course. Please.”

This late at night, the room was lit only by a few odd lamps, elongated shadows stretching out on the floor and obscuring Lehrer’s face. He moved through those shadows with the ease of someone who’d had a hundred years to learn the topography of the room. This time Noam paid attention when Lehrer unlocked the wards to his apartment, watching the glitter-gold threads quaver beneath Lehrer’s touch and then dissolve. Even now Noam couldn’t make sense of it. What type of scientific knowledge allowed someone to construct something like this? The ward seemed like it was crafted out of raw magic, not theory.

“How did you do that?” Noam asked. It came out more accusatory than he’d intended. “That, and the antitechnopathy . . . I’m sorry, sir, but—I can’t figure it out.”

Lehrer stepped through the door to his apartment, Noam following bemusedly and trailing his own magic against the withdrawn wards as if that could tell him how they were built. It was only once he was past the doorway, toeing off his shoes in Lehrer’s foyer, that he realized he forgot to touch the mezuzah.

“Telling you would defeat the purpose of having wards, don’t you think?”

You told Dara. Noam bit his cheek over that one.

“In theory,” he insisted.

“In theory,” Lehrer said, “you could build a ward of your own. Imagine an electromagnetic field you maintained around your person like an invisible shield to deflect bullets. Creating it takes magic, but so does releasing it. When you get very good, you can release one part of such a shield while maintaining the rest.”

Wolf scampered out from the other room, skidding a little when he leaped off the rug and onto the hardwood floor. Noam crouched to scratch behind his ears. “That wasn’t electromagnetism, though,” he said, glancing up toward Lehrer.

“No. But you must let me keep some secrets.”

Although Noam had been in Lehrer’s apartment once before, it felt different now that he was here with the intent of staying longer than a few seconds. He drank in the shapes and colors as he followed Lehrer into a sitting room. The whole place was surprisingly simple; what furniture Lehrer did have was clearly antique, the exposed floorboards half-covered with Persian carpets worn along what must be familiar paths. Noam didn’t have to be an expert to know quality when he saw it, even when that quality was likely older than Noam and Lehrer put together.

Lehrer turned to face him, standing there with one hand resting on the back of a sofa. “Now, tell me what’s going on.”

“Noam?” Dara emerged from the hallway, sleep tousled and tugging a sweater down over his short-sleeved shirt. He scowled, arms folding over his chest. His gaze flicked from Noam to Lehrer, then back.

“Hey, Dara,” Noam said and tried to look casual.

“Hey, yourself. Why are you here?”

“Dara, you shouldn’t be out of bed,” Lehrer said. “You need to rest.”