The Silver Thread by Emigh Cannaday Page A

years, but he had a feeling that he would be seeing more of it in the future. Snow was beginning to fall, dusting the rooftops with a thin layer of white.
    “Has anyone else read this?” Merriweather asked, closing the folio a quarter of an hour later.
    “Just a couple members of my family, and Asbjorn’s colleague, Pavlo. Why?”
    “Did you just ask me
why
?” Merriweather demanded, and marched over to the window where Talvi still stood with his glass in hand. “After all our efforts to maintain open relations with the modern world and our own, you go and instigate a damned war with our enemies, and then have the audacity to let your entire family read Asbjorn’s report! It was supposed to be confidential!”
    “My entire family did not read it,” Talvi scoffed. “As I said before, only a couple of us did.”
    “Oh Talvi, I know how you define ‘a couple’—you always allow room for company.”
    “There was my brother and my father, which makes two. A
couple
. And I didn’t start any war,” Talvi insisted, his eyes gleaming, “although coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
    “Forgive me,” she said, with her dark eyes glaring at him. Her nose was only a few inches from his. “It’s not yet been declared.”
    “I suggest you read that report in full, Merri,” Talvi retorted, trying desperately to ignore how beautiful she looked when she was angry, how long her black eyelashes were, how she smelled faintly of jasmine and spiced vanilla, how she might look if she let her hair down, and how that maroon dress hugged her in all the right places. To him, it seemed an entirely inappropriate outfit for her to wear on a Wednesday. “It’s not as though we blasted in and made a royal mess of things. We did the best we could, with the information we were given at the time. I know how to tidy up after an assignment.”
    Merriweather walked to her desk in silence, downed her drink in one shot, and sighed as she sat back in her chair. She held her glass absentmindedly, unsure whether or not to fill it again.
    “From all that I know about the Pazachi, there likely was nothing else you could have done differently. But I absolutely despise that there are loose ends, that girl being one of them.”
    “Those are being tied as we speak, I assure you,” Talvi said gently. He knew she must have been terribly upset at the situation, to have finished her expensive drink so quickly. He also knew that was about as close to an apology as he would ever get from her. He returned to sit on the corner of the desk once again. “Don’t be so vexed, Merri. I prefer it when you’re laughing.”
    “I’ve much to be vexed about,” she said crisply, and set her empty glass beside the documents she’d been reading. “You heard about Paris, I assume?”
    “I saw it with my own eyes. Or rather, I did
not
see it with my own eyes. It’s unbelievable.”
    “If you spent a few days here, you would believe it,” she said, and motioned at the huge stacks of paper on her desk. “It’s been a nightmare, dealing with the amount of travelers begging for lodging and passports and directions and currency exchanges. We’re a research facility, not Waterloo Station. We can’t get any headway on the Paris case, because we’re doing the work of two embassies. I have no time to focus on my regular work as it is, and I don’t know where I’ll find the time to sort out all the details that I’ve just been given on this ordeal with the Pazachi, not to mention the rest of Asbjorn’s report. I’ll be buried in presentations and meetings for the next year. It’s going to drive me mad!”
    “My my, you’re wound a bit tight. You’ll feel more relaxed after another one of these,” he said, about to refill her glass, but Merriweather put her hand over it.
    “Since we were speaking about loose ends,” she said, noticing her door was locked, “your quill has caused me more problems than it’s solved, so don’t think