The sun coming up next morning over the garden found Giles already sitting on the terrace, brooding over the world. He had a large leather-bound tome with him, for it was his custom to read before and during and after breakfast. But this day the book remained closed on the breakfast table. He was still there, and the book still closed, hours later when Jolie came to breakfast.
"Where is Seneca?" she asked as Marcos began setting the table.
"Seeing to business," said Giles in a vague way, scarcely stirring. "Elsbietka may be joining us at some point."
"Ah." It was very disdainful for a monosyllable. "I would have thought she had important things to do elsewhere."
"Everyone has important things to do elsewhere," said Giles, again in a vague way that made it clear his mind was elsewhere.
Jolie said nothing else as she filled her plate, and after several minutes of silence, Giles shook himself, turned away from the garden, and took his book in hand, without, however, opening it.
"A great deal on your mind?" Jolie said.
His eyes turned briefly toward her and he smiled slightly. "There is always a great deal on my mind," he said. "But yes, I have much to think about."
"This Siberian situation is getting serious, it seems."
"It is not," said Giles, "but it seems that however much I say it, no one believes it. This Ivan, whomever he may be, is hardly a matter of concern at all. It's merely a matter of timing."
"Perhaps, Gilles" said Jolie, raising a very lovely skeptical eyebrow, "but you cannot blame people for doubting when you sit and do nothing."
"Of course I can," said Giles. "I am Aegidius regardless of what anyone thinks I am doing. Do you remember back when I first came across you?"
Jolie put down her silverware and looked at him sidelong as though trying to guess his purpose in raising the question. "Of course I do," she said. "I was wolf-mad. You tracked me down and commanded me to be human, and then I was. And then you said you were Égide, or Gilles, or Giles...."
"...And you said I was English, and I said only in a sense. I wasn't speaking of the very beginning, though, but some of the conversations we used to have. I remember one in particular in which you said I only ruled because might makes right."
"As is still the case. As I recall you seemed displeased by the claim. But, as I said then, it is the way of things: force fait loi. The Age of Aegidius is built on the principle."
Giles shook his head vehemently. "No, Jolie, this is what you have never understood. I impose my will, mais force non fait pas loi; nécessité fait loi. I am merely necessity's executioner. If you had ever lived in the Age of Lykaios you would know the difference in your bones. What Lykaios did cannot be called law. It was something for which there is no word in civilized language. What I have accomplished is a different order of thing entirely. With the madness of the moon I have set limits to the madness of the moon; I have taken chaos and made it order. Now there is law."
"Yes," said Jolie, suddenly scornful. "Now there is law, and it is the will of Aegidius. Gilles commands and it is done. But what do you have us do? Eat breakfast on the terrace, play the businessman, talk and talk and talk, pretend we are the thing that we are not and pretend we are not the thing that we are. You call it order; it is imposed weakness. We are always stepping lightly; let a Wolf break a glass and Aegidius comes down on him. And why? Because you think of it as shameful, as if it were all some disease that must be quarantined. You are still the Dominican; you would have us all do penance for being Wolves."
"We are a disease, Jolie. We are morbid little cancer cells in the body of humanity; we have forgotten how to be human and have been seized by madness. But the time for penance seems to have passed us all by."
"And so we all sit around and do nothing."
"And what would you prefer? That we return to the days of Lykaios, with plunder and pillage?"
"Anything would be better than wasting away. I do nothing these days. Seneca does nothing. You do nothing." She looked at him angrily, then suddenly said, "Tell me, why have you not killed me yet?"
Giles smiled slightly and looked away. Jolie went on. "You know as well as I that have been undermining you for decades now, and that I am breaking away. I know you know it; you can never resist dropping hints. And yet you do nothing. Nothing except talk and drop hints. I knew a time when you killed Wolves for much less."
"Yes," said Giles, still smiling slightly and looking away into the distance. "But those were days when I was still putting necessity into place. Harsher deterrents were called for. And I was a weaker Wolf then, and did not know my strength as well as I do now."
"You are complacent. You simply sit and expect everyone to obey while you grow weak and they grow strong."
He turned his dark eyes back toward her, but the small, confident smile did not change. "I am the least complacent Wolf in the world, Jolie; much less complacent than you. Life and death with every breath."
"And yet here I am. And this Siberian situation. You are losing control of everything."
"Losing control to you?"
She shrugged. "It need not be so. I would not be averse to sharing the power.Together we could put this Ivan in his place. But I will take something, even if only by myself, over the nothing that you have been giving."
Giles laughed. "I admire your impertinence, Jolie-cherie, in generously offering me part of what is already mine. But I have no need for bargains with you. I have done nothing to you yet because you have done nothing to me yet. The most you have done is stir up some restlessness among your fellow Wolves, but that is their fault for being gullible. And perhaps I have also done nothing because I saw your potential on the very day we met. As I told Elsbietka then, you had untold promise. And you still do. Someday you may cast me down from the Throne of Wolves, Jolie, but, if so, that day is centuries away. You are clever, it is true, and have strength of will to sway Wolves and Primes of Wolves, but you are young and have only played the game under the benevolent rules of Aegidius. You do not know how to play when those rules are broken. To this point you have been at my side, however insubordinately. Walk away from me and you will be crushed."
"Words," said Jolie, "all words. I am tired of being bullied by boasts and coaxed by threats. They are just words." She rose and bent over the table to look him in the eye. "And you will find that I know how to play."
Giles simply smiled and looked back. There gazes were locked for several moments, but it was Jolie who looked away first. She straightened and walked back into the house. He watched her go, the small smile still on his face, and then, taking the book which had been in his hand through the entire conversation, opened it and began to read.
It was about half an hour later when Seneca and Elsbietka came out.
"Eric seems to have vanished," said Seneca as he sat down.
"I've no doubt," Giles said drily, and continued reading.
"I notice, too, that Jolie is not here."
Giles closed the book and looked at him sarcastically. "Your powers of observation are exceptional this morning, Sen," he said, also sarcastically. "Do you intend to go through the list of everyone you notice isn't here, or are you hinting at something?"
Seneca was unperturbed. "Is there a connection between the two?"
"For any two things, there is some connection between them. Are we now playing the game of vague questions?"
Elsbietka looked at Seneca and said, "If he's this sarcastic and uncooperative, it must be something important. What has Jolie been up to?"
Seneca glanced at Giles, who was still looking at the two of them sarcastically, then looked back at Elsbietka. "She has been planning a coup. So it has begun."
"Is this true?" she asked Giles sharply.
"Does Seneca have any reason to lie?"
"How long have you known?"
"That it was likely coming? A few decades now. But that she would go through with it more or less now -- a few days."
"And you did nothing?"
Giles put the book on the table forcefully enough that dishes rattled. "If another Wolf accuses me of doing nothing, it will be the last thing they say."
"What I do not understand," insisted Elsbietka, "is how she walked out of here alive if you knew what she was doing."
"She walked out of here alive because I knew what she was doing," said Giles. "The Wolves have known peace a bit too long. They are forgetting why it is necessary to obey me. And a regime of obedience is buit on the principle of the carefully selected deterrent. Jolie cannot harm me; let her have her little rebellion. At the right time we will crush it so spectacularly that Wolves will remember it for centuries."
"Ah," said Elsbietka. "That was why you brought up Charles Louis at the meeting. I wondered; it seemed somewhat excessive if you were simply putting Cotton in his place. Half the table was with us when we tracked Alain down, and they all saw Alain after you were done with him." She shook her head. "I never liked Jolie. It will be a pleasure to rip out her throat."
"I think Jolie might have some things to say about it first," Giles replied.
"So what is our plan?" Seneca asked. "I have difficulty believing you just intend to sit tight."
"I do intend just to sit tight," replied Giles. "Everything else I'll be doing by means of you; it's what I have you for. You will continue trying to uncover the whereabouts of this Ivan. Elsbietka will start preparing against Jolie."
"Gladly," said Elsbietka.
Giles shook his head at her. "Do not underestimate Jolie, Bitka. And do not move too quickly. Your task is to prepare. Jolie has her first moves already planned; do not let yourself be surprised by them."
