Lexicon

shedding her training, it wasn’t evident. “So what are we doing, Eliot?”
    “I’m sorry.”
    Her eyebrows rose. “Oh? You’re here to kill me?”
    He said nothing.
    “Well, that’s disappointing. Kind of extremely disappointing, coming from you.”
    “I thought you might respect it, coming from me.”
    “Yeah, you know what? Not so much. Not so much.” She shook her head. “How about this, Eliot: You pretend like you never saw me. I go to Harry. Him and me disappear. End of story.” She watched his face. “No? Not even that?”
    “You must understand, I have no choice.”
    “I love him. Do you understand that?”
    “Yes.”
    “If you did, you’d know I don’t have a choice, either.”
    He said, “I can give you one hour. You can spend that with him. Then you say good-bye and you walk back down the road. That’s the best I can offer you.”
    “And I decline your shitty offer. Three months I’ve spent getting here, Eliot. Three months. And they have not been easy months. I didn’t go through that for an hour.” She shook her head. “I think we should be clear on the fact that you can’t stop me from doing anything I want.”
    “Where is it? In the car?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “Do you know what it is?”
    “A bareword.”
    Her head tilted. “Is that what it’s called? Huh. I just know what I read in old books. They didn’t have a name for it. Or rather, they had lots of different names. The only thing those stories had in common was every time a word like this turned up, it was followed by mass enslavement. And death. Also towers, for some reason.”
    “You are describing a Babel event.”
    “This word compels everyone,” she said. “Everyone.”
    “Yes.”
    “So let me ask you something, Eliot. Do you really think Yeats trusts you to bring it back? Because I only met him that one time, but it doesn’t strike me as his style. It seriously doesn’t. You ask me, how this plays out is you make it about halfway back to Adelaide and somebody runs you off the road. Somebody in a black suit and helmet.”
    “I will take it to Yeats,” he said, “and Yeats knows that.”
    She squinted. “You’re kind of spineless, Eliot. I’m just realizing. You present as badass, but you’re weak as piss. That’s a little local lexicon, if you’re wondering. Holy hell. You would actually take this thing to Yeats and
give it up.
That’s amazing to me.”
    He didn’t respond.
    “Fuck Yeats. Fuck him. He’s not here. Do something unexpected for once in your life. You and me, right here, we have power. We have all the power we need.”
    “I’m not interested in power.”
    She sighed. “This has been a very disappointing conversation, Eliot. I’m not going to lie. I feel like I’ve gone past you.” She began to walk back to the car.
    “Stop.”
    “Or what?”
    He went after her and put one hand on the car door before she could open it. It was more than he’d intended, but it was her final chance, and he wanted her to have it. “There are snipers. At a signal from me, they will drop you. If you attempt to remove any object from your person, or get back in the car, or strike me, they’ll drop you. They’ll drop you if you try to leave Broken Hill regardless of what I do. This is set. This is the reality you have created. The best I can do for you in this reality is to give you an hour before you die. Please take it.”
    Her eyes searched his. “You really don’t get it. The basic concept of love. Of valuing something that you feel. You have no comprehension of that at all.” She shook her head. “Let me go, Eliot.”
    So that was that. He stepped back, one step and then another, leaving her isolated for the snipers.
    “Oh,” she said. “Here we go.”
    Her hands plucked at her T-shirt. He closed his eyes and gave the signal, spreading his arms wide.
    Nothing happened. No shots. No noise. He opened his eyes and she was there, arms at her side, her hands empty, just watching him.
    “I’ve been scouting this town eight days,” she said. “You and your people, you stick out like crazy here. You glow.”
    “
Vart—
” he said, beginning the sequence that would compromise her, and her hands moved in an odd way. He wasn’t sure what she was doing and she threw one hand toward the windshield and it was a magician’s trick, he realized, a dummy move to draw the eye, but his gaze had already shifted and the windshield was no longer obscured by the sun’s reflection. On