“I’m not here to fight you,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to fight you, Sienna.”
“If you want to build your ‘better world’ on a pile of corpses, you’d better be prepared for mine to be one of them,” I said as I assumed a fighting stance. “Because I’m not just going to lie down and let you kill everyone I care about.”
His hand came up, covering his face for a moment, and when it came away he looked tired, older. Same guy, just weary. “Are you even willing to listen to reason? What is it with you?”
“Maybe it’s something you said, maybe it’s something you did.” I dipped a shoulder, my version of shrugging when I was in a fighting stance. “Could be the company you keep. Like Weissman. Not a huge fan of your BFF.”
“He’s not my ...” Sovereign looked chagrined, like I’d caught him doing something embarrassing. “He’s an ally of convenience, okay?”
“I’ve had those before,” I said, and indicated Hildegarde’s prostrate body with a nod of my head. “See how well it works out?”
“She was going to betray you, you know that, right?” He looked uncertain again.
“So you’ve said.” I was still waiting for the fight to break loose, and I was beginning to wonder if he was using the same power to hold me back that he was employing on Hildegarde’s Hercules, who still had not said one damned thing. “I’m a little unclear on the why.”
“She was trying to prove her worth, buy her way into Century by clearing a few spots off our roster,” he said.
“You mean she thought that if she killed a few members of your club, you’d let her into the club?” I raised an eyebrow at the Hercules, who still stood there, looking like a helpless thing, overinflated and unsure of himself, looking haplessly from Sovereign to me. “Not the greatest plan ever.”
He looked down at her unconscious form. “She’s your ally.” He looked up, and was smiling again. “Maybe you should pick them more carefully.”
“Maybe you should stop killing all the good ones,” I replied with a smugness I didn’t really feel. “Or at least the more effective ones.”
“Hey, I didn’t beat the Primus of Omega to death with his own chair,” Sovereign said, stepping around Hildegarde’s body to lean against the wall, his black leather coat making a little noise as he did so. “I don’t typically go in much for wrath, but I heard you really put it to him.”
I sighed. “Are we going to discuss my greatest hits or can we just get to the fighting already?”
“Why are you so eager to fight me?” He let out a sigh. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked. “To get back your telepaths?”
“What?” He frowned. “No, I know they’re dead.”
“Then why the hell did you send an army of mercs in here to shoot us up a few days ago?”
“That was Weissman,” he said quickly. “He didn’t know they were dead. Also, he is eventually going to try and kill all your friends.”
“It seems like you’re trying to make a good impression on me,” I said. “Keeping it polite and all. You know what would make a really good impression? Not killing the people I care about. Not killing random strangers. And not letting your boy Weissman do any of that, either.”
He grimaced, and I could tell he was genuinely pained. “I would if I could.” He pushed off the wall and walked over to Old Man Winter and stood behind him. Winter, for his part, stiffened as the shorter Sovereign hovered over him. “But I can’t. You know why?”
“Because you’re a neo-fascist and you just can’t get this killing of your inferiors out of your system?”
He made a face, something between a smile and a frown. “I’m not a neo-anything.”
“So does that make you a paleo-something?”
“You know why Winter did what he did to you?” Sovereign clapped both hands onto Winter’s shoulders, causing the giant man to blanch. “Because he believed that pushing you to kill was the right thing to do.” He leaned toward Winter and peeked around his arm. “Isn’t that right, Erich?”
Winter looked me in the eye. “I did what I did to make you stronger. To make you the kind of person who could—”
“That’s enough of that,” Sovereign said, and Winter stopped speaking. “She gets the point. He did something horrifying to you because he believed it was the right thing to do. What do you think about that?”