Text Message to Bahir

Our Rook has changed her colors. Look to the pawns, consider candidates.

SS.To: "Clay Ashton"
From: "S. Shaw"
Subject: Harper

Ask Legal to bring me the file on what we hold in Harper's company. Then call her people and have them tell her I know why she cancelled dinner, and have them make a date she intends to keep.

SS.

I am going to have to take steps, aren't I?

Text Message to Bahir

Let's talk about the Rook. Breakfast tomorrow.

SS.
To: "Clay Ashton"
From: "S. Shaw"
Subject: Appointment

Call Harper's people. Set up a dinner date with Harper in a few days - someplace nice, don't schedule anything afterwards. Cancel on Emily or Zoe if it's needed.

SS

( 'Were you expecting something in particular?' (Sal) )

We will teach them to threaten us - we will show them what it means to know the halls of power. They are outside, looking in. We are inside, looking down at all we command.

( 'No one is /talking/ about protecting the Brotherhood.' (Emma, Adel, Bahir, Percy, Sal) )

I don't believe she has the guile to lie, and her motive for betrayal seems hazy and indistinct. No, if she has a crisis, it is a crisis of competence - and these have been interesting times.

Perhaps I fool myself - perhaps I'm just looking for allies, and pretending Janus has only one face - but I feel more confident in my shadow this evening.

( 'Was this whole meeting to establish my guilt or innocence?' (Sal) )

Harper's got some sort of affection for Rossi, it looks like - I'll ask her about it when her hackles are less up. Or I won't - it frustrates me that that arrogant greaseball worms his way into my territory. What makes him so likeable? I have my flaws, perhaps, but he's no less an asshole than I am ( Read more... )

In some things, perhaps, the bitch has the right of it - there are pieces on the board best controlled not with promises of power but by personal connection, whose loyalty rests not on their paycheck or their rise through the ranks but something ineffable and ungraspable that they wish to none-the-less claw fingers at ( Read more... )

I fear that she's right - that it isn't just my grip that's crumbling, it's some of the bedrock foundations we build ourselves on. Emma, perhaps, ties her pieces to her outside the club; Adel would still be in her bed whether we stand or fall - but I rely upon the concrete creations of our endeavor. If that endeavor is shaky ( Read more... )

Perhaps the Rook is right - perhaps this is excessive. Perhaps this serves no purpose. The schemer says this sends a lesson to the pawns, a way to warn them that their deaths - their lives - are not all that is at stake. Even if they sacrifice themselves, any that they love might suffer. This is merely an object example, a way to remind them that ( Read more... )

The cogs are turning. Everything is proceeding as it should.

There are days when this job is a pleasure.

( 'He is useful, even while crippled.' [Sal] )

I didn't tell her.

Didn't tell her that Linden found Grey. Didn't tell her that my problems go deeper than-

Didn't tell her everything.

But that's not what she's here for. That's not what I'm here for, not with her. Dangerous, like letting her know Grey's location (thank you for the report, Bill, but don't tell me about debts, when I've made you ( Read more... )