Contingency

Verity's phone rings out.

You try at midnight, at one, at two. You try her office line, her home line, the emergency number every envoy memorizes on their first day. Every time, the same smooth voicemail: You've reached Verity Kinsale. Leave a message and I'll call you back.

You don't leave a message. You don't know what you'd say. Hi, it's me, did you try to murder me with a Merlot?

"It's a mistake," you tell the fire. "Someone switched the bottle."

The fire doesn't argue. That's the nicest thing anyone's done all night.

At half past two there's a commotion below the tower, voices on the stairs. Mircea opens your door a crack.

"Mr. Ingram is at the citadel gate," he says. "He's asking for you. Rather loudly."

You're on your feet. "Let him in."

"The king says no."

"The king isn't my..."

"Envoy." Mircea's voice is patient. "You can see him from the gallery. Not closer."

The gallery of the gatehouse looks down into a courtyard full of snow and lantern light. Emlyn is down there in his coat with no hat, hair wild, arguing with two guards twice his size. When he sees you at the rail, his whole face changes.

"Ava! Thank God. Are you all right? They wouldn't tell me anything. They kept me in a room for six hours asking about the pouch."

"I'm fine. I didn't drink it."

"I know, I heard, it's all anyone's talking about, the king drank it, that's insane." He spreads his hands. "Come home. Come back to the villa. You're not safe in here, you're a hostage in here, can't you see that? We'll get you on the morning train. I'll call Vienna, I'll call Verity myself."

"Have you reached her?"

The smallest pause. "Not yet."

"Neither have I."

"So come home and we'll keep trying together." His voice drops, coaxing. "Please. I'm responsible for you here. Let me do my job."

Something about the way he says home makes the back of your neck prickle. You don't know why. He's been nothing but kind. He's terrified, he's freezing, he's the only other human for a hundred miles.

"Not tonight, Emlyn," you hear yourself say. "Go home and lock the door."

His face falls. Then he nods and turns away, shoulders hunched, and you watch him go out through the gate into the snow.

When you turn around, Severin is standing at the far end of the gallery in the shadows, watching you.

"How long have you been there?"

"Long enough." He doesn't move. "You didn't go with him."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," you say honestly. "Something."

He considers that. "Trust the something," he says, and walks away.

Ysolde calls at four in the morning, Vienna time five, on the encrypted line every Directorate phone carries.

"Ava, you absolute disaster," she says instead of hello. "The entire building is whispering. Are you dead?"

"Not yet." Your voice wobbles, and you hate it. "Ys, I need a favor. A big one. The kind that gets you fired."

"Those are my favorite kind." Keys clatter. Ysolde Vrba lives on energy drinks and spite and has never in her life met a database she couldn't sweet-talk. "Go."

"The diplomatic pouch to Nocturne. Two days ago. I need the manifest. Every item, who added it, whose authorization."

The clattering stops. "You think it came from inside."

"I don't think anything. I need to know."

"Give me ten minutes."

It takes twenty-two. You spend them pacing the tower in your socks. When the phone buzzes again Ysolde's voice is different. Quiet. Careful. The voice of someone checking over her shoulder.

"Okay," she says. "The pouch went out Monday at six a.m. Standard items. Mail, two legal binders, a fruitcake for Ingram, a bottle of Fetească Neagră, 2015, flagged as a personal gift for the envoy."

"From Verity."

"That's what the gift card says. But Verity didn't add it." A breath. "The bottle was added to the pouch after it was sealed. That needs a deputy-level override. The code on the override belongs to Lennart Strack."

You sit down on the edge of the bed very slowly.

Lennart Strack. Deputy Director. Silver hair, beautiful suits, a voice like a late-night radio host. He shook your hand at the Christmas party last year and said So you're Verity's prodigy, and you went home glowing.

"Maybe someone stole his code," you whisper.

"Maybe." Ysolde doesn't sound like she believes it. "Ava. Delete this call. I'm going to go throw up in a very professional manner."

The line goes dead.

He's in the library when you come down, alone, standing at a table by the fire with a small black box in front of him, the kind of military radio receiver you've only seen in museums.

He looks up when you come in. Whatever is in your face, he sees it.

"You found something," he says.

"The bottle was added after the pouch was sealed. Under the Deputy Director's code." The words come out flat. "Lennart Strack."

Severin nods slowly, as if this isn't news. Your stomach drops further.

"You knew."

"I suspected. Now I'll show you why." He touches the receiver. "My guard has listened to every transmission out of Villa Aster since 1925. Your people know it. They use codes. The codes are bad." His jaw tightens. "This went out from your embassy forty minutes after you were carried up to the tower."

He presses a switch. Static hisses. Then a mechanical voice, flat and synthetic, reading out a decrypted line.

Envoy survived. Advise.

Static.

Reply from Vienna. Received two hours later.

The voice again.

Contingency stands. The Accord must not survive the first.

The receiver clicks off. The fire pops. Somewhere far below, the citadel's great bell begins to toll the fourth hour.

You stand there in your socks in a vampire king's library, and you understand, all at once, the whole shape of it.

The poison wasn't a mistake. The bottle wasn't switched. Someone in Vienna, in your own building, in the office where they hand out lanyards and birthday cake, sent you here to drink it. A dead envoy at the vampire king's table. A war, and a reason for it.

They sent you because you were the one nobody would miss.

You look up at him. He's watching you with an expression you can't read, the firelight sharp along his cheekbone.

And the truth arrives like the bell: your own government poisoned your wine to start a war, and the only person keeping you alive is the king who hates humans.