Book One: A Storm of Glass and Ashes

Chapter Ten: Interrogating Ozymandias

"She's prickly," Willheim said, as Alex went after Emile. His body language read I'm going to make them behave, but she knew Alex was making sure they'd be okay with this much concentrated transphobia in flannel and shitty cowboy boots. Show off for the Mark, but make sure your people know that you're safe for them.

"They," Hawk said. And waited. They had both sat down upon Emile's oversized, overstuffed couch.

"Beg pardon?" Kaiser said.

Hawk kept her chin up, her glare bare. She kept waiting.

"They," he sighed. "Come on, Dr. West. Forgive an old man his troubles."

"You're sixty-seven. You went through the sixties. You can absolutely pull your head out of your ass and stop using my friends' soft points as your leverage." Hawk said.

"I'm not used to this level of hostility," He said.

"I'm not used to being set up by somebody who could have gotten all the cooperation he wanted twenty four hours ago." Hawk said.

"You didn't have anything I wanted, twenty-four hours ago. Now, you're my first priorities."

"Aw," Hawk said, dripping on the sarcasm. "I'm so fucking touched." Then a sigh. "Emile grew up in one red state and lives in another. They get rocks thrown through their front windows so often that they bricked them in. And they're an avowed anarcho-communist. You are everything they hate. And they still let you in their living room."

Willheim had been scowling harder every moment. This last one brought him up short. "Beg pardon?"

"They do not and will not trust you without a hell of a lot of work on your part. It was the same for me when I met them, and the same for Alex when I introduced them. They never really had a chance to grow out of the teenager limit-testing phase. They are always testing every single person they know to make you reject them before they decide they like you. Let them be prickly. Let them say obnoxious things. Park the pride the way you parked that nice Chevy out there, and you might find them warming up to you."

"I apparently almost let their friends die," Willheim said.

"Yeah. But you're also the guy with the keys to the kingdom. The one thing I can promise you, Kaiser, is that they do not like having the fate of the world resting in your hands without any checks and balances. Right now, they want to shoot you and stitch the whole world back together by hand. But all three of us do recognize that we're going to have to keep dealing with you, no matter what. I'm making recommendations so that you two don't eat each other alive."

"You think that Emily could eat me?" Kaiser said.

"Emile, and yes, they could. With their choice of beans and a great wine list. There are a few rules in life. One of the big ones is do not fuck with Emile Yong."

And that was when Alex and Emile returned. Emile had taken the time to put on lipstick and gotten out a couple pink things to layer over the rest of their clothes. Puffy things. Hawk was pretty sure one of them was some species of duster. She had no clue about the other thing. It looked like a very complicated legwarmer made of telephone cord. It was, Hawk thought, the first things Emile grabbed that they could put on quickly. Well, Kaiser had gotten his warning shot across the bow. If he kept being a transphobic dipshit, she'd help Em boil the tar.

Alex walked over to Willheim and placed a large square in front of him. A photo, Hawk realized, of dirt. But not entirely.

In the middle of this photo, beside a dime that looked like a wagon wheel, sat a shape of similar size. It was clear, refracting like cut glass or polished quartz, and shaped like a three-sided pyramid, with small diamond-shaped mirrors at each corner. It was purposeful. Man-made.