Shadow of the Hegemon, the - Book 2 (Ender)

country."
    "You're really very good. You keep setting a new standard for cleverness," said Achilles.
    "And you keep setting a new standard for failure."
    He hesitated a moment, then went on as if she hadn't spoken. "They're going to pit the other kids against me," he said. "You already know them. You know their weaknesses. Whoever I'm up against, you're going to advise me."
    "Never."
    "We're in this together," said Achilles. "I'm a nice guy. You'll like me, eventually."
    "Oh, I know," said Petra. "What's not to like?"
    "Your message," said Achilles. "You wrote it to Bean, didn't you?"
    "What message?" said Petra.
    "That's why you don't believe he's dead."
    "I believe he's dead," said Petra. But she knew her earlier hesitation had given her away.
    "Or else you wonder-if he got your message before I had him killed, why did it take so long after he died to have it hit the news? And here's the obvious answer, Pet. Somebody else figured it out. Somebody else decoded it. And that really pisses me off. So don't tell me what the message said. I'm going to decode it myself. It can't be that hard."
    "Downright easy," said Petra. "After all, I'm dumb enough to end up as your prisoner. So dumb, in fact, that I never sent anybody a message."
    "When I do decode it, though, I hope it won't say anything disparaging about me. Because then I'd have to beat the shit out of you."
    "You're right," said Petra. "You are a charmer."
    Fifteen minutes later, they were on a small private jet, flying south by southeast. It was a luxurious vehicle, for its size, and Petra wondered if it belonged to one of the intelligence services or to some faction in the military or maybe to some crime lord. Or maybe all three at once.
    She wanted to study Achilles, watch his face, his body language. But she didn't want him to see her showing interest in him. So she looked out the window, wondering as she did so whether she wasn't just doing the same thing the dead psychologist had done-looking away to avoid facing bitter truth.
    When the chime announced that they could unbelt themselves, Petra got up and headed for the bathroom. It was small, but compared to commercial airplane toilets it was downright commodious. And it had cloth towels and real soap.
    She did her best with a damp towel to wipe blood and body matter from her clothes. She had to keep wearing the dirty clothing but she could at least get rid of the visible chunks. The towel was so foul by the time she finished the job that she tossed it and got a fresh one to start in on her face and hands. She scrubbed until her face was red and raw, but she got it all off. She even soaped her hair and washed it as best she could in the tiny sink. It was hard to rinse, pouring one cup of water at a time over her head.
    The whole time, she kept thinking of the fact that the psychiatrist's last minutes were spent listening to her tell him how stupid he was and point out the worthlessness of his life's work. And yes, she was right, as his death proved, but that didn't change the fact that however impure his motives might have been, he was trying to save her from Achilles. He had given his life in that effort, however badly planned it might have been. All the other rescues went off smoothly, and they were probably just as badly planned as hers. So much depended on chance. Everybody was stupid about some things. Petra was stupid about the things she said to people who had power over her. Goading them. Daring them to punish her. She did it even though she knew it was stupid. And wasn't it even stupider to do something stupid that you know is stupid?
    What did he call her? An ungrateful little girl.
    He tagged me, all right.
    As bad as she felt about his death, as horrified over what she had seen, as frightened as she was to be in Achilles' control, as lonely as she had been for these past weeks, she still couldn't figure out a way to cry about it. Because deeper than all these feelings was something even stronger. Her mind kept thinking of ways to get word to someone about where she was. She had done it once, she could do it again, right? She might feel bad, she might be a miserable specimen of human life, she might be in the midst of a traumatic childhood experience, but she was not going to submit to Achilles for one moment longer than she had to.
    The plane lurched suddenly, throwing her against the toilet. She half-fell onto it-there wasn't room to fall down all the way-but she couldn't get up because the plane