Inception fic: Words and stones (2/4)
(Sorry for the delay, guys! Real life intervened for a while, but now we're back on schedule.)
Complete header information can be found at Part One.
Part Two.
Castelrotto, Italy.
19.12.14
The cobblestones were sticky, clinging to her bare feet like syrup. Forward progress was an effort: her leg muscles burned, pulling uselessly against the viscous stone. Ariadne reached out to grab hold of a passing lamp post, hoping to use the iron base to pull herself out of the street. Her fingers brushed the metal, but it was too cold, biting, burning her, and she couldn’t hold on.
“This isn’t how it goes,” Arthur told her. The left side of his head was collapsed, fallen inward, the skin splintered open like broken sugar on crème brûlée. He didn’t seem to notice. “Watch,” he said, and walked away. His steps echoed on the stone, and there was something slick and red on the underside of his shoes.
“I don’t think this street is done yet,” Ariadne said, watching the cobblestones creep hungrily up her legs. Their weight was overwhelming. “The stones are still soft.”
“It’s fine,” Arthur said. There was wet yellow bone showing behind the torn skin at his temple, and Ariadne didn’t think she could cover it with make-up this time. “You just have to keep moving.”
Ariadne opened her mouth to ask him how, and a stone crawled inside, settling heavily on her tongue. It was soft and gritty, a lump of dough left to rise on the beach. She swallowed, and the weight slid slowly down her throat, choking her as it went.
“That’s not going to help you keep up,” Arthur said, crouching down beside her. He pulled a chess piece from his pocket and set it on cobbles next to her. She was sinking down into them, now, petrifying from the inside out. Arthur reached out with a finger, tipping the little brass bishop over. It made a soft clink against the stone, rolling away from her in a slow semi-circle. “See? You’re already awake,” he said, and the world swung sideways, uneven and jolting, and Ariadne jarred her forehead hard against the window as the driver eased the bus around a hairpin turn.
“Ow,” she said reflexively as she opened her eyes. She sat up in her seat, feeling the hours of uncomfortable sleep in the ache of her neck and the twist of her spine. Across the aisle a college-aged kid-- Canadian, from their brief conversation at the station some hours earlier in Trento-- grimaced sympathetically.
“All right?” he asked her, voice hushed in deference to their fellow travelers, most of whom were still dozing fitfully.
“Yeah,” Ariadne said, rubbing at her forehead. “It was a bad dream, anyway.” A watery pink light was beginning to wash the eaves of the occasional chalets which dotted the valley floor, snow hanging heavy on the branches of evergreens. As the bus trundled around another curve, Ariadne could see a tiny play-set of a town, complete with gingerbread houses and a bell tower topped with a sweetly-curved cupola, the whole scene dwarfed by the pale cliffs of the Dolomites to the north. "Oh,” she said quietly.
“I know, right?” said the young man. “It’s like I woke up in The Sound of Music or something, not Italy.”
Ariadne nodded, then bent to retrieve her bag from where she had stashed it under the seat, the strap wound several times around her leg to prevent theft. Cait had written the walking directions to her family’s property on a paper napkin, her mouth tightly drawn, and Ariadne had stuffed them inside the flap pocket of her messenger bag.
“I do not believe you,” Cait had said flatly more than thirteen hours ago, staring at her from across the outdoor cafe table. It was cold, misting slightly, and Cait’s breath hung in front of her like cigarette smoke. “Not for a moment. Yesterday, you are fine, the top of the world. Today, you decide you need to go to Italy. This very moment, alone, and for several weeks. There is something very wrong,” she said, biting off her words with even white teeth, “and I want to know what it is.”
Ariadne had shaken her head, refusing to budge. “You’re not going to win this one, Cait,” she said. “If you don’t think you can help me,” she said, keeping her voice even, “that’s okay, I’m asking for a big favor here, I understand.” She glanced at her watch. “But I don’t have time to fight with you, and I’d much rather not.”
Cait exhaled heavily through her nose. “You aren’t going to tell me the trouble,” she said at last.
“No,” Ariadne said, “I’m not.”
“You want to leave Paris to stay at the house in Kastelruth, even though it is a sty with no central heat and you have no idea how to get there. You want me to mail several packages for you,” she said slowly, as though adding up a column of complex figures in her head, “although they have no names on them and you refuse to say what is in them. And if anyone asks, I am to say that you are not in Italy, but have gone to Barcelona to stare longingly at Casa Batlló yet again. I am not to call you, because you won’t answer your cell phone. I am not to email you, because you won’t be checking that, either.” Her mouth was a thin rose-colored line, and she was utterly furious. “And I am not to worry,” she spat, “because you are fine.”
Ariadne experienced a profound flash of sympathy for Arthur in that moment. She sighed, and tried to think of something to say which wasn’t uselessly condescending. “Okay,” she said, deciding on an unspecific, but not untrue story. “Fair enough, you’re right. I’m in some trouble,” she said. “It’s not good right now. I’ve known it might be coming for a while now, though, and I found out a few hours ago that I need to leave, and I need to do it as soon as I can.”
She chose her next few words carefully. “Something happened in Brazil, after Argentina. It didn’t happen to me, it was someone else, a friend, and it was pretty bad. They needed some help, so-- I helped. I’m not sorry I did,” she said, decisive. “I would do it again. But because I did what I did, I’ve got some people looking for me.”
Cait sat back in her chair. “These people,” she said carefully, “are they capable of arresting you? Or your friend?” It was a very polite way of asking, Will I be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal if I help you?, and Ariadne felt a faint smile at the corners of her mouth. The etiquette lessons foisted on Cait by an over-zealous grandmother apparently had their uses in peculiar situations.
“No,” Ariadne had told her, and saw the relief flash across Cait's face. “Not unless they’ve paid some people off. They’re more like-- freelancers. Which,” she said, grimly, “is probably worse.”
“Then this is something we take to the police,” Cait insisted, the relief replaced by worry, and Ariadne said, “No,” fiercely enough that the couple at the next table looked over at her. She smiled apologetically at them, and then said, “No,” again in a quieter voice, but with no less strength.
“The help I gave wasn’t legal,” Ariadne said, blunt. “Don’t ask what it was, because it’s not important. What’s important is that I leave Paris right now, and that you forget we talked about this. I'm going, regardless of what help you can give me, Cait," she said. "And even if you disapprove-- and you're probably right to do so-- I need you not to mention this to anyone. At all.” She reached out and to take hold of her friend’s hand, and squeezed Cait's fingers. "I'm being paranoid, probably, but it's really safer that way.“
"Ariadne," Cait said, her forehead deeply furrowed, "I really don't think--"
"I can take care of myself,” Ariadne told her, smiling crookedly. “Believe me, this is something I can do.”
Cait looked at her for a long moment, then squeezed her fingers and let go. “Then give me a pen,” she said on a sigh, spreading a napkin out over the table top. “The house is difficult to find if you can’t read German.”
Ariadne handed over a pen, and watched as Cait drew a rough map, writing instructions alongside it. “Thank you,” she said, soft.
Cait looked up. “You know I am so angry at you this moment I want to scream,” she said. “But I also would rather that you not die horribly, which is what I keep imagining will happen if I do not concede to your ridiculous plan. So I am restraining myself.”
“I know,” Ariadne said, wryly. “You have no idea how well I understand the feeling.” She took the finished map that Cait offered, as well as a small brass key on a cheap silver ring, both of which Ariadne zipped into the interior pouch of her messenger bag. She slid three manila envelopes across the table and stood up. “I'll let you know I'm safe as soon as I can,” she said, slinging her bag across her shoulder.
“And when you get back,” Cait had told her, taking up the envelopes and standing as well, “you will tell me what this was all about.”
“Yes,” Ariadne had promised, turning to kiss Cait’s cheeks. “When I get back home, I’ll tell you everything.”
It had been a long, complex, and frustrating trip, full of competing train schedules and bad rail station coffee. She first used her credit card to buy a ticket to Barcelona, then left the train at Valence in order to double back to Lyon where she switched IDs and paid cash for a ticket to Torino. Once in Italy, Ariadne switched IDs yet again, waited for two hours for a train to Verona, and then switched to the northern line to Trento. At Trento she had stumbled blearily to the bus station, and managed to purchase a ticket to Castelrotto-- Kastelruth, to the German-speaking population-- where Cait’s family had a small holiday property.
"Very pastoral, very nearly Austrian," Cait had told her once, describing the town where the Brossards spent most of their summers. "Excellent skiing. And there is a yodeling festival every year, if you can believe it."
Looking out the town through the bus's fogged windows, Ariadne found she could easily believe it. Always imagine new places, Cobb had insisted during that first job, and Ariadne rather suspected that the same advice could be applied to the art of disappearing. And Kastelruth-- the German name really did suit it much better-- was certainly a new place for her.
Thinking of Cobb reminded her that she had promised-- hours ago, while waiting for the train to leave Verona-- to let him know she made it to her destination, so she bent to dig through her bag again and pulled out the cell phone she'd bought at the train station in Torino. Nearly there, she tapped out once she had it in hand, Maybe half hr left. Am fine, no probs. Cant sleep on mvng vhcls, tho.
It took several minutes for Cobb to respond-- unsurprising, given that it was about ten at night in California, and he had two kids with bedtimes to enforce-- and Ariadne was busy trying to pull her hair back into some semblance of a bun when her phone buzzed at her. Glad to hear it, Cobb's response read, Nothing new on wires, Y says. Think youre clean for now.
Thnx for the info. Will call when have eaten, slept, she wrote back.
Cobb's reply was immediate. Sounds good. & call A, please. Is being obnxs & planning elab rescue. He followed with a long string of numbers that Ariadne took to be Arthur's current phone number.
Will do, she told Cobb, suppressing a snort. Go read to your kids or smthng, Ive got this one.
The bus was entering the outskirts of the town, sliding slightly around corners on the narrow slush-covered streets, and the rest of the its passengers were beginning to wake. Ariadne keyed in Arthur's number.
Still not dead, she wrote. Pls stop annoying C & calm down. No rescue ncsry.
The response was nearly immediate, and Ariadne had to stifle a laugh as she read it. i am never annoying. also, am perfectly calm, c lies like a dog. Then, a few moments later: i owe you a rescue anyway.
She rolled her eyes. That was on the house. No repayment needed, she tapped back, then looked up. The bus was rolling to a stop along one side of the town square, opposite a small stone church. Have to go, she told Arthur. Am in town, will call in few hours after settled. She slid the phone into her pocket without checking for a reply from Arthur, and waited for the driver to open the door to let her and a handful of other travelers out.
Her legs felt swollen and painfully stiff as she stepped out of the bus into the thin morning air. Ariadne wrapped her coat more closely around her torso, and debated pulling her hat out of her bag-- the wind was surprisingly strong and she could feel it biting hungrily at her ears and nose. She pulled on her gloves, then took Cait's instructions out of her pocket and headed off in search of breakfast and the Brossards’ house.
The town was still half-asleep, and painfully charming: the snow was thick and untouched on railings and rooflines, and there were fir garlands punctuated with the occasional copper lantern strung between shop fronts in deference to the season. There was a hotel along one side of the square painted with murals which had to be at least two hundred years old, the colors weathered against the white plaster walls, but still eye-catching. She paused for a moment, admiring the elaborately painted images of the Madonna and Christ-child near the roof's peak, the knotwork of vines and birds around windows, the life-size portraits of a soldier and a farmer flanking the door, and-- rather disturbingly-- a sweet-faced cherub with a knife in hand, holding up the severed head of a pig.
"Interesting local color," she observed, and made a note to ask Cait about the hotel's history when she got the chance.
She found breakfast with relative ease, following the smell of baking bread and strong coffee across the street from the frescoed hotel, stopping at a bakery which had just opened its doors. She bought a loaf of rye bread, still warm from the oven, and several apple tarts, employing the time-honored communication method of all foreign travelers of pointing and nodding emphatically while the girl behind the counter patiently pulled out first one tray of strudel, and then another.
"Danke schön," she said after a moment of wracking her sleep-deprived brain for the correct response, finally coming up with an image of Matthew Broderick singing something by the Andrews Sisters into a bar of soap. It was apparently the right thing to say, but she made a note to pick up a German phrasebook at the first opportunity. If she planned to stay for any length of time, it would be helpful to at least be able to buy food without resorting to complex pantomimes and pleasantries gleaned from classic eighties teen movies.
Breakfast achieved, Ariadne turned back to Cait's instructions. The house was on the outskirts of town, apparently, a good fifteen minute walk from where she was. And while the snow was cleared from Kastelruth's main streets and square, it wasn't easy going at all once Ariadne turned onto the winding lane that-- she hoped-- led to the Brossards’ property. The snowfall was a day old, perhaps, and a thin frozen crust had formed on the top of drifts during the night. The effort of trudging through the shallow drifts weighed down by her bag and the paper sack full of baked goods had Ariadne panting softly and wishing she were wearing fewer layers underneath her heavy wool coat.
Her shoes were soaked through and the bottoms of her jeans were crusted with snow by the time she found the property, a comfortable two-storey chalet-style house with bottle green shutters covering its square windows. It was set back from the road, and the hillside fell sharply away from the rear of the house. Ariadne made her way to the doorstep, kicking some of the snow off the stoop with her feet to outline the step's edge. Back in the village, she could hear the peal of the church bells breaking through the early morning stillness: seven o'clock. "Right," she said, and juggled her bags briefly, searching for the key. "Let's see what we've got to work with."
The house was well-built and no-nonsense on the inside, all wood and plaster and slightly musty-smelling from being uninhabited since summer. Ariadne set her bags down on a worn plaid sofa, taking off her gloves and coat as well. It wasn't warm inside by any stretch, but simply being out of the wind was enough to make it feel much more comfortable.
Ariadne was relieved to find that the lights worked when she tried them; there was a wood stove in the main room for heat, so she wouldn't have frozen to death without power, but it was awfully difficult to charge a cell phone or laptop with a wood-burning stove. She had less luck with the water, however: the pipes clunked and rattled in the walls when she tried the tap in the kitchen, but nothing came out. She suspected that the Brossards had cut off the water to prevent the pipes bursting in their absence, which meant she was going to have to find the water main or well or whatever the house used and turn it back on if she wanted indoor plumbing.
All in all, she was quite pleased; it wasn't the Ritz, sure, but it also wasn't the sty Cait had suggested it might be. Not too bad for an improvised hide-out.
"Okay," Ariadne said, going back into the main room. "Heat first, then water." She knelt down by the stove, a giant black cast-iron monstrosity, and found the chimney's damper. Once she was relatively certain it was open and she wasn't going to die from smoke inhalation, she used some of the tinder and matches she found in a box in the corner to lay the fire, watching the small yellow flames lap hungrily at the resin-filled pine. She knelt in front of the stove for several minutes, slowly feeding the fire larger pieces of wood. When she was certain that it would burn on its own for a good while, she closed the grate and stood up.
Running water proved to be a trickier venture. Ariadne was fairly certain that the house, given its age and distance from the center of town, would be run on well water, which meant that there had to be a pump somewhere-- either in the cellar or outside, most likely. The cellar proved to be a small stone-lined crawl space filled with garden tools and broken ski poles and empty gas canisters, but no water lines or pump mechanism. It was only after several minutes of chewing on her bottom lip in frustration that Ariadne thought to check the small outbuilding off to the side of the house. And after a relative eternity of fiddling with pointlessly complex machinery, Ariadne had the satisfaction of hearing the pump hum grudgingly to life.
By the time Ariadne finally had the chance to change out of her damp jeans and socks and warm herself in front of the steadily-heating stove, it was well into midmorning, and she was too tired to do more than eat half an apple tart and curl up on the sofa with a scratchy felted blanket. She fell asleep to the sound of flames hissing quietly in the stove, and if she dreamt of anything in particular, she didn't remember.
It was early evening before Ariadne woke up, hungry and a little stiff from sleeping in an uncomfortable position. After stoking the fire, Ariadne ate the rest of the tart she'd eaten in the morning-- it was very good, although she imagined it would have been much better warm-- and drank a little water before picking up her phone to call Arthur.
He picked up on the second ring, and she heard him tap the mic twice rather than say hello.
She smiled; Arthur's supremely cautious phone habits always made her want to start conversations with something like The elephant crows at noon, or I heard a nightingale in Central Park today, just to see what he would do. But such experiments would have to wait for a slightly less stressful situation. "It's me, Arthur," she said.
"Ariadne," he said, audibly relieved. "I was just about ready to call you and make sure everything was all right."
"Sorry," she told him, settling back on the sofa and pulling the blanket up over her legs. "I didn't sleep much on the way here and then I had to figure out how to work the pump when I got in, and it pretty much wore me out. I slept longer than I meant to."
"Pump?" Arthur asked, and she could hear his eyebrows climbing upwards. "Please tell me you have running water." She told him briefly about the house and her quest for indoor plumbing, and Arthur snorted in amusement. "Let me get this straight," he said, his voice dry, "when it's me who needs to run, you have us hole up in a four-star hotel in a major metropolitan area. When it's just you, you run off and play Heidi meets Little House on the Prairie in a shack that doesn't have heat. I think that probably says something about how you see me, and I'm not sure it's flattering."
"Shut up, it does not," she told him, laughing, although there was probably a little bit of truth to what he was saying. Arthur just wasn't a pastoral sort of person. "And I have heat!" she insisted. "It's just the fiery kind. I'm really very comfortable. Look," she said, trying to explain, "staying here makes sense, I swear-- I'm working off of straight cash, right now. Sara Webb was the only ID I had with credit cards that matched-- and obviously that one's not any good anymore-- and using a pre-loaded card or cash at a hotel would be like putting up a giant blinking sign that says, Traveling under a fake name! on the roof of the building. So I needed someplace I could hole up for a while that wouldn't cost anything. This was the first thing I could think of and it fit. Plus," she added, "the town's kind of nice. I like it. It's like walking through a Christmas card."
"Sounds-- very Thomas Kincaid," Arthur said, distracted. "What do you mean, you don't have any other cards-- you don't have any other dummy accounts?" he asked, clearly concerned. "I didn't make any others for you during the Fischer job? I could have sworn I made more than one."
"No, you did," Ariadne said, quickly. "I was just stupid and haven't done any maintenance on the ones for Archer and Hunt in the past two years. My fault. I didn't think I'd need them. Thought I was done," she said, wryly. "And then when I got back from São Paulo, I wasn't sure who I'd need to talk to in order to come up with some new accounts."
"You should have just asked me," Arthur said. "I would have done it, you know that."
"I know," she said, and she did. "But you've had better things to do recently than hack into servers and invent credit histories for me."
"Not really," Arthur said mildly. "Poland was really boring."
Ariadne rolled her eyes. "I'm calling bullshit on that," she told him. "You've been working on something since you left Zurich. I know you, you're funnier when you're working a job--"
"What the hell?" said Arthur, blankly. "I'm funnier?"
Ariadne ignored him. "--and since you said you wouldn't take commissions while your name is still floating around, my bet is that you're planning something that involves taking down Souza. And considering current circumstances," she said with more confidence than she actually felt, "I think you should deal me in."
There was a heavy silence from the other end of the line, and Ariadne held her breath. She was lining up her most persuasive arguments-- she wasn't sure what they were, really, other than This involves me, too, and Remember how much waiting in tower sucks?-- when she heard Arthur laugh, sharp and sudden. "I had this speech all worked out," he said, sounding a little embarrassed, "about not being able to do everything myself, and not giving you enough credit to make your own choices and a bunch of other things. It was pretty good. I even wrote it out, for christ's sake."
"I want to hear it," Ariadne said immediately. Fuck, it was probably the closest thing to a love letter or an apology she was ever going to get from Arthur. "Forget I said anything, I want to hear the speech."
"Not a chance in hell," he said easily. "It's unnecessary, apparently."
"It's very necessary," she argued, feeling a foolish smile settle on her face. "I'm having second thoughts. Come on, convince me."
Arthur snorted. "You need convincing like a drunk needs another shot."
"You're not impressing me, here."
"Hey, Ariadne," he said, "I've got a job lined up. Know any good architects?"
Ariadne tucked her feet up underneath her on the sofa. "That's a pretty crappy speech," she observed.
"Well, I don't have my notes in front of me," Arthur told her, annoyed. "I'm improvising." He cleared his throat, and his voice was grave this time. "Seriously," he said, "I promised you I'd ask someone for help before going after Souza, and I'm doing that. I know I'm not great at letting other people do things for me, but-- you're the best possible person for this job. I've never seen anyone come anywhere near what you can do in your designs, you don't panic under pressure, and if I want this job to have any chance of success, I'm going need your help. Plus," he said, clearly trying to sound casual and failing miserably, "there's this ridiculous thing where I miss you enough to make my teeth ache and I find myself looking up Dorothy Parker poetry online for no reason."
"Oh," Ariadne said, blankly. She hadn't been expecting honesty, of all things. "That-- wasn't too bad, actually."
"So are you in?" Arthur asked.
Ariadne nodded blindly. "Yeah," she said. "Yes. Count me in."
Continue to Part Three.
Complete header information can be found at Part One.
Part Two.
Castelrotto, Italy.
19.12.14
The cobblestones were sticky, clinging to her bare feet like syrup. Forward progress was an effort: her leg muscles burned, pulling uselessly against the viscous stone. Ariadne reached out to grab hold of a passing lamp post, hoping to use the iron base to pull herself out of the street. Her fingers brushed the metal, but it was too cold, biting, burning her, and she couldn’t hold on.
“This isn’t how it goes,” Arthur told her. The left side of his head was collapsed, fallen inward, the skin splintered open like broken sugar on crème brûlée. He didn’t seem to notice. “Watch,” he said, and walked away. His steps echoed on the stone, and there was something slick and red on the underside of his shoes.
“I don’t think this street is done yet,” Ariadne said, watching the cobblestones creep hungrily up her legs. Their weight was overwhelming. “The stones are still soft.”
“It’s fine,” Arthur said. There was wet yellow bone showing behind the torn skin at his temple, and Ariadne didn’t think she could cover it with make-up this time. “You just have to keep moving.”
Ariadne opened her mouth to ask him how, and a stone crawled inside, settling heavily on her tongue. It was soft and gritty, a lump of dough left to rise on the beach. She swallowed, and the weight slid slowly down her throat, choking her as it went.
“That’s not going to help you keep up,” Arthur said, crouching down beside her. He pulled a chess piece from his pocket and set it on cobbles next to her. She was sinking down into them, now, petrifying from the inside out. Arthur reached out with a finger, tipping the little brass bishop over. It made a soft clink against the stone, rolling away from her in a slow semi-circle. “See? You’re already awake,” he said, and the world swung sideways, uneven and jolting, and Ariadne jarred her forehead hard against the window as the driver eased the bus around a hairpin turn.
“Ow,” she said reflexively as she opened her eyes. She sat up in her seat, feeling the hours of uncomfortable sleep in the ache of her neck and the twist of her spine. Across the aisle a college-aged kid-- Canadian, from their brief conversation at the station some hours earlier in Trento-- grimaced sympathetically.
“All right?” he asked her, voice hushed in deference to their fellow travelers, most of whom were still dozing fitfully.
“Yeah,” Ariadne said, rubbing at her forehead. “It was a bad dream, anyway.” A watery pink light was beginning to wash the eaves of the occasional chalets which dotted the valley floor, snow hanging heavy on the branches of evergreens. As the bus trundled around another curve, Ariadne could see a tiny play-set of a town, complete with gingerbread houses and a bell tower topped with a sweetly-curved cupola, the whole scene dwarfed by the pale cliffs of the Dolomites to the north. "Oh,” she said quietly.
“I know, right?” said the young man. “It’s like I woke up in The Sound of Music or something, not Italy.”
Ariadne nodded, then bent to retrieve her bag from where she had stashed it under the seat, the strap wound several times around her leg to prevent theft. Cait had written the walking directions to her family’s property on a paper napkin, her mouth tightly drawn, and Ariadne had stuffed them inside the flap pocket of her messenger bag.
“I do not believe you,” Cait had said flatly more than thirteen hours ago, staring at her from across the outdoor cafe table. It was cold, misting slightly, and Cait’s breath hung in front of her like cigarette smoke. “Not for a moment. Yesterday, you are fine, the top of the world. Today, you decide you need to go to Italy. This very moment, alone, and for several weeks. There is something very wrong,” she said, biting off her words with even white teeth, “and I want to know what it is.”
Ariadne had shaken her head, refusing to budge. “You’re not going to win this one, Cait,” she said. “If you don’t think you can help me,” she said, keeping her voice even, “that’s okay, I’m asking for a big favor here, I understand.” She glanced at her watch. “But I don’t have time to fight with you, and I’d much rather not.”
Cait exhaled heavily through her nose. “You aren’t going to tell me the trouble,” she said at last.
“No,” Ariadne said, “I’m not.”
“You want to leave Paris to stay at the house in Kastelruth, even though it is a sty with no central heat and you have no idea how to get there. You want me to mail several packages for you,” she said slowly, as though adding up a column of complex figures in her head, “although they have no names on them and you refuse to say what is in them. And if anyone asks, I am to say that you are not in Italy, but have gone to Barcelona to stare longingly at Casa Batlló yet again. I am not to call you, because you won’t answer your cell phone. I am not to email you, because you won’t be checking that, either.” Her mouth was a thin rose-colored line, and she was utterly furious. “And I am not to worry,” she spat, “because you are fine.”
Ariadne experienced a profound flash of sympathy for Arthur in that moment. She sighed, and tried to think of something to say which wasn’t uselessly condescending. “Okay,” she said, deciding on an unspecific, but not untrue story. “Fair enough, you’re right. I’m in some trouble,” she said. “It’s not good right now. I’ve known it might be coming for a while now, though, and I found out a few hours ago that I need to leave, and I need to do it as soon as I can.”
She chose her next few words carefully. “Something happened in Brazil, after Argentina. It didn’t happen to me, it was someone else, a friend, and it was pretty bad. They needed some help, so-- I helped. I’m not sorry I did,” she said, decisive. “I would do it again. But because I did what I did, I’ve got some people looking for me.”
Cait sat back in her chair. “These people,” she said carefully, “are they capable of arresting you? Or your friend?” It was a very polite way of asking, Will I be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal if I help you?, and Ariadne felt a faint smile at the corners of her mouth. The etiquette lessons foisted on Cait by an over-zealous grandmother apparently had their uses in peculiar situations.
“No,” Ariadne had told her, and saw the relief flash across Cait's face. “Not unless they’ve paid some people off. They’re more like-- freelancers. Which,” she said, grimly, “is probably worse.”
“Then this is something we take to the police,” Cait insisted, the relief replaced by worry, and Ariadne said, “No,” fiercely enough that the couple at the next table looked over at her. She smiled apologetically at them, and then said, “No,” again in a quieter voice, but with no less strength.
“The help I gave wasn’t legal,” Ariadne said, blunt. “Don’t ask what it was, because it’s not important. What’s important is that I leave Paris right now, and that you forget we talked about this. I'm going, regardless of what help you can give me, Cait," she said. "And even if you disapprove-- and you're probably right to do so-- I need you not to mention this to anyone. At all.” She reached out and to take hold of her friend’s hand, and squeezed Cait's fingers. "I'm being paranoid, probably, but it's really safer that way.“
"Ariadne," Cait said, her forehead deeply furrowed, "I really don't think--"
"I can take care of myself,” Ariadne told her, smiling crookedly. “Believe me, this is something I can do.”
Cait looked at her for a long moment, then squeezed her fingers and let go. “Then give me a pen,” she said on a sigh, spreading a napkin out over the table top. “The house is difficult to find if you can’t read German.”
Ariadne handed over a pen, and watched as Cait drew a rough map, writing instructions alongside it. “Thank you,” she said, soft.
Cait looked up. “You know I am so angry at you this moment I want to scream,” she said. “But I also would rather that you not die horribly, which is what I keep imagining will happen if I do not concede to your ridiculous plan. So I am restraining myself.”
“I know,” Ariadne said, wryly. “You have no idea how well I understand the feeling.” She took the finished map that Cait offered, as well as a small brass key on a cheap silver ring, both of which Ariadne zipped into the interior pouch of her messenger bag. She slid three manila envelopes across the table and stood up. “I'll let you know I'm safe as soon as I can,” she said, slinging her bag across her shoulder.
“And when you get back,” Cait had told her, taking up the envelopes and standing as well, “you will tell me what this was all about.”
“Yes,” Ariadne had promised, turning to kiss Cait’s cheeks. “When I get back home, I’ll tell you everything.”
It had been a long, complex, and frustrating trip, full of competing train schedules and bad rail station coffee. She first used her credit card to buy a ticket to Barcelona, then left the train at Valence in order to double back to Lyon where she switched IDs and paid cash for a ticket to Torino. Once in Italy, Ariadne switched IDs yet again, waited for two hours for a train to Verona, and then switched to the northern line to Trento. At Trento she had stumbled blearily to the bus station, and managed to purchase a ticket to Castelrotto-- Kastelruth, to the German-speaking population-- where Cait’s family had a small holiday property.
"Very pastoral, very nearly Austrian," Cait had told her once, describing the town where the Brossards spent most of their summers. "Excellent skiing. And there is a yodeling festival every year, if you can believe it."
Looking out the town through the bus's fogged windows, Ariadne found she could easily believe it. Always imagine new places, Cobb had insisted during that first job, and Ariadne rather suspected that the same advice could be applied to the art of disappearing. And Kastelruth-- the German name really did suit it much better-- was certainly a new place for her.
Thinking of Cobb reminded her that she had promised-- hours ago, while waiting for the train to leave Verona-- to let him know she made it to her destination, so she bent to dig through her bag again and pulled out the cell phone she'd bought at the train station in Torino. Nearly there, she tapped out once she had it in hand, Maybe half hr left. Am fine, no probs. Cant sleep on mvng vhcls, tho.
It took several minutes for Cobb to respond-- unsurprising, given that it was about ten at night in California, and he had two kids with bedtimes to enforce-- and Ariadne was busy trying to pull her hair back into some semblance of a bun when her phone buzzed at her. Glad to hear it, Cobb's response read, Nothing new on wires, Y says. Think youre clean for now.
Thnx for the info. Will call when have eaten, slept, she wrote back.
Cobb's reply was immediate. Sounds good. & call A, please. Is being obnxs & planning elab rescue. He followed with a long string of numbers that Ariadne took to be Arthur's current phone number.
Will do, she told Cobb, suppressing a snort. Go read to your kids or smthng, Ive got this one.
The bus was entering the outskirts of the town, sliding slightly around corners on the narrow slush-covered streets, and the rest of the its passengers were beginning to wake. Ariadne keyed in Arthur's number.
Still not dead, she wrote. Pls stop annoying C & calm down. No rescue ncsry.
The response was nearly immediate, and Ariadne had to stifle a laugh as she read it. i am never annoying. also, am perfectly calm, c lies like a dog. Then, a few moments later: i owe you a rescue anyway.
She rolled her eyes. That was on the house. No repayment needed, she tapped back, then looked up. The bus was rolling to a stop along one side of the town square, opposite a small stone church. Have to go, she told Arthur. Am in town, will call in few hours after settled. She slid the phone into her pocket without checking for a reply from Arthur, and waited for the driver to open the door to let her and a handful of other travelers out.
Her legs felt swollen and painfully stiff as she stepped out of the bus into the thin morning air. Ariadne wrapped her coat more closely around her torso, and debated pulling her hat out of her bag-- the wind was surprisingly strong and she could feel it biting hungrily at her ears and nose. She pulled on her gloves, then took Cait's instructions out of her pocket and headed off in search of breakfast and the Brossards’ house.
The town was still half-asleep, and painfully charming: the snow was thick and untouched on railings and rooflines, and there were fir garlands punctuated with the occasional copper lantern strung between shop fronts in deference to the season. There was a hotel along one side of the square painted with murals which had to be at least two hundred years old, the colors weathered against the white plaster walls, but still eye-catching. She paused for a moment, admiring the elaborately painted images of the Madonna and Christ-child near the roof's peak, the knotwork of vines and birds around windows, the life-size portraits of a soldier and a farmer flanking the door, and-- rather disturbingly-- a sweet-faced cherub with a knife in hand, holding up the severed head of a pig.
"Interesting local color," she observed, and made a note to ask Cait about the hotel's history when she got the chance.
She found breakfast with relative ease, following the smell of baking bread and strong coffee across the street from the frescoed hotel, stopping at a bakery which had just opened its doors. She bought a loaf of rye bread, still warm from the oven, and several apple tarts, employing the time-honored communication method of all foreign travelers of pointing and nodding emphatically while the girl behind the counter patiently pulled out first one tray of strudel, and then another.
"Danke schön," she said after a moment of wracking her sleep-deprived brain for the correct response, finally coming up with an image of Matthew Broderick singing something by the Andrews Sisters into a bar of soap. It was apparently the right thing to say, but she made a note to pick up a German phrasebook at the first opportunity. If she planned to stay for any length of time, it would be helpful to at least be able to buy food without resorting to complex pantomimes and pleasantries gleaned from classic eighties teen movies.
Breakfast achieved, Ariadne turned back to Cait's instructions. The house was on the outskirts of town, apparently, a good fifteen minute walk from where she was. And while the snow was cleared from Kastelruth's main streets and square, it wasn't easy going at all once Ariadne turned onto the winding lane that-- she hoped-- led to the Brossards’ property. The snowfall was a day old, perhaps, and a thin frozen crust had formed on the top of drifts during the night. The effort of trudging through the shallow drifts weighed down by her bag and the paper sack full of baked goods had Ariadne panting softly and wishing she were wearing fewer layers underneath her heavy wool coat.
Her shoes were soaked through and the bottoms of her jeans were crusted with snow by the time she found the property, a comfortable two-storey chalet-style house with bottle green shutters covering its square windows. It was set back from the road, and the hillside fell sharply away from the rear of the house. Ariadne made her way to the doorstep, kicking some of the snow off the stoop with her feet to outline the step's edge. Back in the village, she could hear the peal of the church bells breaking through the early morning stillness: seven o'clock. "Right," she said, and juggled her bags briefly, searching for the key. "Let's see what we've got to work with."
The house was well-built and no-nonsense on the inside, all wood and plaster and slightly musty-smelling from being uninhabited since summer. Ariadne set her bags down on a worn plaid sofa, taking off her gloves and coat as well. It wasn't warm inside by any stretch, but simply being out of the wind was enough to make it feel much more comfortable.
Ariadne was relieved to find that the lights worked when she tried them; there was a wood stove in the main room for heat, so she wouldn't have frozen to death without power, but it was awfully difficult to charge a cell phone or laptop with a wood-burning stove. She had less luck with the water, however: the pipes clunked and rattled in the walls when she tried the tap in the kitchen, but nothing came out. She suspected that the Brossards had cut off the water to prevent the pipes bursting in their absence, which meant she was going to have to find the water main or well or whatever the house used and turn it back on if she wanted indoor plumbing.
All in all, she was quite pleased; it wasn't the Ritz, sure, but it also wasn't the sty Cait had suggested it might be. Not too bad for an improvised hide-out.
"Okay," Ariadne said, going back into the main room. "Heat first, then water." She knelt down by the stove, a giant black cast-iron monstrosity, and found the chimney's damper. Once she was relatively certain it was open and she wasn't going to die from smoke inhalation, she used some of the tinder and matches she found in a box in the corner to lay the fire, watching the small yellow flames lap hungrily at the resin-filled pine. She knelt in front of the stove for several minutes, slowly feeding the fire larger pieces of wood. When she was certain that it would burn on its own for a good while, she closed the grate and stood up.
Running water proved to be a trickier venture. Ariadne was fairly certain that the house, given its age and distance from the center of town, would be run on well water, which meant that there had to be a pump somewhere-- either in the cellar or outside, most likely. The cellar proved to be a small stone-lined crawl space filled with garden tools and broken ski poles and empty gas canisters, but no water lines or pump mechanism. It was only after several minutes of chewing on her bottom lip in frustration that Ariadne thought to check the small outbuilding off to the side of the house. And after a relative eternity of fiddling with pointlessly complex machinery, Ariadne had the satisfaction of hearing the pump hum grudgingly to life.
By the time Ariadne finally had the chance to change out of her damp jeans and socks and warm herself in front of the steadily-heating stove, it was well into midmorning, and she was too tired to do more than eat half an apple tart and curl up on the sofa with a scratchy felted blanket. She fell asleep to the sound of flames hissing quietly in the stove, and if she dreamt of anything in particular, she didn't remember.
It was early evening before Ariadne woke up, hungry and a little stiff from sleeping in an uncomfortable position. After stoking the fire, Ariadne ate the rest of the tart she'd eaten in the morning-- it was very good, although she imagined it would have been much better warm-- and drank a little water before picking up her phone to call Arthur.
He picked up on the second ring, and she heard him tap the mic twice rather than say hello.
She smiled; Arthur's supremely cautious phone habits always made her want to start conversations with something like The elephant crows at noon, or I heard a nightingale in Central Park today, just to see what he would do. But such experiments would have to wait for a slightly less stressful situation. "It's me, Arthur," she said.
"Ariadne," he said, audibly relieved. "I was just about ready to call you and make sure everything was all right."
"Sorry," she told him, settling back on the sofa and pulling the blanket up over her legs. "I didn't sleep much on the way here and then I had to figure out how to work the pump when I got in, and it pretty much wore me out. I slept longer than I meant to."
"Pump?" Arthur asked, and she could hear his eyebrows climbing upwards. "Please tell me you have running water." She told him briefly about the house and her quest for indoor plumbing, and Arthur snorted in amusement. "Let me get this straight," he said, his voice dry, "when it's me who needs to run, you have us hole up in a four-star hotel in a major metropolitan area. When it's just you, you run off and play Heidi meets Little House on the Prairie in a shack that doesn't have heat. I think that probably says something about how you see me, and I'm not sure it's flattering."
"Shut up, it does not," she told him, laughing, although there was probably a little bit of truth to what he was saying. Arthur just wasn't a pastoral sort of person. "And I have heat!" she insisted. "It's just the fiery kind. I'm really very comfortable. Look," she said, trying to explain, "staying here makes sense, I swear-- I'm working off of straight cash, right now. Sara Webb was the only ID I had with credit cards that matched-- and obviously that one's not any good anymore-- and using a pre-loaded card or cash at a hotel would be like putting up a giant blinking sign that says, Traveling under a fake name! on the roof of the building. So I needed someplace I could hole up for a while that wouldn't cost anything. This was the first thing I could think of and it fit. Plus," she added, "the town's kind of nice. I like it. It's like walking through a Christmas card."
"Sounds-- very Thomas Kincaid," Arthur said, distracted. "What do you mean, you don't have any other cards-- you don't have any other dummy accounts?" he asked, clearly concerned. "I didn't make any others for you during the Fischer job? I could have sworn I made more than one."
"No, you did," Ariadne said, quickly. "I was just stupid and haven't done any maintenance on the ones for Archer and Hunt in the past two years. My fault. I didn't think I'd need them. Thought I was done," she said, wryly. "And then when I got back from São Paulo, I wasn't sure who I'd need to talk to in order to come up with some new accounts."
"You should have just asked me," Arthur said. "I would have done it, you know that."
"I know," she said, and she did. "But you've had better things to do recently than hack into servers and invent credit histories for me."
"Not really," Arthur said mildly. "Poland was really boring."
Ariadne rolled her eyes. "I'm calling bullshit on that," she told him. "You've been working on something since you left Zurich. I know you, you're funnier when you're working a job--"
"What the hell?" said Arthur, blankly. "I'm funnier?"
Ariadne ignored him. "--and since you said you wouldn't take commissions while your name is still floating around, my bet is that you're planning something that involves taking down Souza. And considering current circumstances," she said with more confidence than she actually felt, "I think you should deal me in."
There was a heavy silence from the other end of the line, and Ariadne held her breath. She was lining up her most persuasive arguments-- she wasn't sure what they were, really, other than This involves me, too, and Remember how much waiting in tower sucks?-- when she heard Arthur laugh, sharp and sudden. "I had this speech all worked out," he said, sounding a little embarrassed, "about not being able to do everything myself, and not giving you enough credit to make your own choices and a bunch of other things. It was pretty good. I even wrote it out, for christ's sake."
"I want to hear it," Ariadne said immediately. Fuck, it was probably the closest thing to a love letter or an apology she was ever going to get from Arthur. "Forget I said anything, I want to hear the speech."
"Not a chance in hell," he said easily. "It's unnecessary, apparently."
"It's very necessary," she argued, feeling a foolish smile settle on her face. "I'm having second thoughts. Come on, convince me."
Arthur snorted. "You need convincing like a drunk needs another shot."
"You're not impressing me, here."
"Hey, Ariadne," he said, "I've got a job lined up. Know any good architects?"
Ariadne tucked her feet up underneath her on the sofa. "That's a pretty crappy speech," she observed.
"Well, I don't have my notes in front of me," Arthur told her, annoyed. "I'm improvising." He cleared his throat, and his voice was grave this time. "Seriously," he said, "I promised you I'd ask someone for help before going after Souza, and I'm doing that. I know I'm not great at letting other people do things for me, but-- you're the best possible person for this job. I've never seen anyone come anywhere near what you can do in your designs, you don't panic under pressure, and if I want this job to have any chance of success, I'm going need your help. Plus," he said, clearly trying to sound casual and failing miserably, "there's this ridiculous thing where I miss you enough to make my teeth ache and I find myself looking up Dorothy Parker poetry online for no reason."
"Oh," Ariadne said, blankly. She hadn't been expecting honesty, of all things. "That-- wasn't too bad, actually."
"So are you in?" Arthur asked.
Ariadne nodded blindly. "Yeah," she said. "Yes. Count me in."
Continue to Part Three.