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If all of that was so, then Graves had effectively stalemated him on the matter of Vanderberk.

And perhaps all of his clones, for that matter.

Agh. The paranoia was rearing its ugly head again. And bastards like Graves thrived on that, didn't they?

Heh. But in fairness, bastards like Jercash did, too.

There was little point in getting all worked up about it now, he figured. Too many wheels were already in motion. This was just how things were, sometimes.

You prepare as much as you can, scheme as much as you can, but at some point, you just had to let the dice fly and see how they fell.

Yeah. He much preferred thinking about it like that. Excitement. Soon, he'd get to see how Graves' machinations measured up against his own.

He was especially curious to see if the Pale Hawk would be able to protect his fellow marshals. Jercash still owed Kane and Grant something fierce after they spoiled his victory party back in Kavia and slaughtered his men.

He knew they were on the move. Coming here, most like. To Intar. Jercash had all but invited them with that little preamble on Livingston Grand Castle.

Then there was Sermung, of course. Ever the wild card, of late. Perhaps he'd decided to take a page from Morgunov's book.

Jercash was still fully expecting the Crystal Titan to show up at any moment and try to ruin everything, but he to admit, the man sure was taking his sweet time. Being given this free reign was certainly a welcome surprise. If he'd known that he would have so long to prepare, then he might have approached things very differently.

Played with his cards a bit more.

How many more aces could he fit up his sleeve? It was hard not to be antsy about the inevitable encounter. Like all this prep work might abruptly be for nothing when Sermung showed up out of the blue and smoked his ass in a minute flat.

Wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

On the subject of payback again, Jercash owed Sermung most of all. In their last meeting, the Titan had him dead to rights. Granted, in that particular instance, it had at least been long and arduous journey getting there, but still. Jercash knew only too well that, if not for Morgunov's last minute intervention, he would not have survived the Titan's wrath.

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In fact, he'd never even told Vanderberk the truth about Vanderberk.

Perhaps that was a mistake in retrospect, but Jercash had never really wanted to find out how he would react to the revelation that he and his reaper were experiments.

Clones, actually. Though, for some reason that Jercash still did not understand, Lozaro hated it when he used that word. Based on some technical gobbledygook, no doubt.

The real Vanderberk and Elinox had died twenty years ago. Truly died. And the new versions of them had needed to be replaced multiple times since then, too.

The latest iterations had been much more stable and reliable, which was why Jercash hadn't minded granting them a bit more freedom to make their own decisions--that was the whole point of the experiment, after all--but he hadn't anticipated Graves getting to them in such a problematic way.

From the way Gohvis had described their deaths this time, Graves intended to use them as psychic puppets--either by reconstituting their corpses or by making full illusory copies.

Either way, it presented him with a major issue. If he had Lozaro make yet another new clone, then Graves could essentially do the same, and then there would be two Vanderberks running around.

But one of them would be a traitor.

That was simply too dangerous to allow, no matter how much more might still be accomplished by continuing the experiment.

He had to be patient, unfortunately. He needed to wait for this traitor copy to appear so that he could deal with it properly and then decide what to do next from there.

But even that plan was rather dubious, honestly. If Graves really could make a traitor clone, then what was to stop him from doing so again and again? If Jercash killed one, then it wasn't like he could suddenly start making his own clones again. It would be a constant threat to the experiment.

Until the Pale Hawk himself was dealt with.

Which was why Jercash started to think that, perhaps, Graves actually wouldn't be sending a Vanderberk clone to infiltrate their ranks.

Because the bastard knew. About the experiment. About the cloning. Somehow.

No one should know about that. Not Gohvis. Not Morgunov. Hell, not even Lozaro and Jercash knew, at times, due to their memory locking strategy.

And yet... when it came to the Pale Hawk, he might still have found some way to learn about it.

That surreptitious motherfucker.

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That seemed to be a running theme with Lozaro, unfortunately. Not playing well with others who specialized in R&D. Always running into "creative differences," as he liked to put it.

Even with all he'd managed to provide, Jercash still sometimes wondered if he was worth the hassle.

But at least he wasn't psychic.

Jercash had gotten more than his fill of that type of support. The Weaver was lucky that Morgunov had gotten to her before Jercash did. If she wasn't under Gohvis' protection now, he would have hunted her down years ago and made her pay for her betrayal.

Through her, he'd been able to learn much about the nature of psychics and their terrible powers, but in the end, she hadn't been able to resist trying to bend him to her will.

And it didn't exactly help that she was one of his many ex-wives.

Mixing work with romance was rarely a good idea, of course, but it had taken him more than two centuries to learn that lesson.

He'd definitely learned it, though. He was not going to marry his personal secretary, this time. Never again. No. It didn't matter how much he liked her. Even if she seemed like prime wife material. It simply couldn't happen. Hell, Zenia probably wouldn't even want to, if he asked her.

Regardless, his marriage to Weaver--as brief and turbulent as it had been--had nonetheless proved rather useful in the long-term. It was thanks to her--and others, of course--that he'd developed his own psychic defenses.

One of which he'd picked up from Morgunov.

The deliberate locking away of memories. He always had to do that whenever preparing to meet Gohvis. As much as he enjoyed the big guy's company, Jercash knew only too well that their friendship was ultimately based more on convenience and amusement than anything else.

Which were serviceable enough foundations, sure, but he wasn't about to gamble everything on them.

There were some secrets that needed to remain secret, even from Gohvis.

Which, apparently, was yet another reason why Graves, the Pale Hawk, was such a bastard to deal with. Somehow, he seemed to have gotten wind of Jercash's plans--or some of them, at least. It was the only explanation.

Taking Vanderberk off the board in that particular manner had been an especially cunning move--one that even Gohvis had not fully recognized.

Because, of course, Jercash had never told him the truth about Vanderberk.