by Sharon Shinn
She turned her head to meet his eyes. He had been unable to keep the accusatory note from his voice. “Lieutenant,” she said very distinctly, “you have no idea what I live for, what I love about life, and how I feel about dying. Don’t presume to guess.”
A moment longer their gazes held. Drake was remembering something Jovieve had said the other day, although she had said it about him: There is nothing easier than surrendering yourself to something larger than you are. And this woman had done that; he could see that now, had given up her soul, her volition, her endless struggle against fear and temptation and hope. He had never seen anyone more at peace, but there was something about that peace that was also filled with abandonment.
“It’s frightening,” he said at last, “when you come to stop caring whether or not you live.” He put the car in motion again.
“You mean you have reached that point yourself?”
“I reached it once. But I stepped back. I rejoined the ranks of the frail and the afraid.”
“It makes you very vulnerable, to love life,” she said.
“Or love anything else that lives,” he replied. “I know.”
“You are now supposed to give me the moral,” she said, and once more her voice had that faint edge of sarcasm to it. “It is better to love life and fear losing it than to live without that love.”
“I believe that,” he said slowly. “But I can’t prove it by my own life.”
“Then don’t lecture me,” she said.
That was all they said for the rest of their drive. But Drake’s mind was busy, filled with wonder and doubt and the strange awakening sense of a hunter on a new scent. This was only the second time he had met this woman, and yet he knew he had discovered something about her that few people knew, that she preferred to keep hidden; and so their relationship had become something different from most relationships she maintained. She would therefore treat him differently than she treated others—tell him more of the truth or tell him less—but he had the key now, and he would know the truth from a lie. He knew without thinking about it deeply that he wanted only the truth from her.
But even more strange to realize was that he wanted to give her the truth in return, he who volunteered very little and, as Lise said, had come to think his own existence was not worth bothering about. If she asked him, he would not evade; and if she did not ask, he might one day tell her; and he could not remember the last time he had even wanted to share with another human being the long, slow, troubled and meaningless events that he was used to considering his life.
Chapter Seven
Drake slept late the next day and headed for the hombueno headquarters a little before noon. Benito was in.
“You’ve been busy,” the smaller man said.
Drake accepted a cup of steaming coffee and settled himself into a chair across from the capitan. “Pure accident I was there last night. Awkward situation. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but if they had attacked me—”
Benito nodded. “Could have wiped the lot of them out with my blessing.”
Drake smiled briefly. “Didn’t have my laser,” he said, “or maybe I could have. Drug-runners?”
Benito nodded again. “Most crime on Semay is connected with drugs. Except for the small murders, the personal assaults, crimes of passion.”
Drake sipped his coffee. “I read about one the other day. Triumphante woman witnessed a murder, testified against the guy, and now he’s in prison on Fortunata. That happen often?”
Benito reached out a hand for the notes Drake had carried in—date of the crime, date of the trial, names of the participants. “All the time. The priestesses are on the streets more than we are. They see more. I think there are a lot of crimes that go unreported—like this thing last night, one murderer against another. Who knows who has committed the worst crime? But in cases of domestic violence, rape, that sort of thing, the Fideles and the Triumphantes are almost our primary source of information.”
“Well, then,” Drake said, a sharp tone to his voice, “there’s your motive for murdering priestesses.”
Benito was scanning the notes. “She gave her name,” he commented. “That’s a surprise.”
“Why?”
“Usually they don’t. Even when they appear in court, it’s anonymous.”
“To protect them?”
“Not so much that, no. It’s—I don’t know, maybe it’s peculiar to Semay. There is such a thing as ‘conviction by the will of the goddess.’ If one of the priestesses testifies against a man on trial, it is considered that she embodies the will of Ava and that Ava herself has condemned him. It is not necessary for a priestess to give her name, you understand, when she is not really the one who condemns him.”
If Drake was the kind who expressed his emotions on his face, his eyes would have widened in utmost disbelief. “Capitan,” he said urgently. “You’ve got your solution to your murders right there. Revenge.”
Benito shook his head. “You don’t understand—you can’t understand—how sacrosanct the priestesses of both faiths are on Semay. Even a man sent to prison for a hundred years would not blame one of the ermanas or one of the amicas for his incarceration. He would blame himself, he would ask for the mercy of the goddess. He would not return to kill one of the sisters.”
“I think you can’t be so sure,” Drake said. “Maybe nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, you’re right. But it only takes one aberrant mind to destroy your theory. We’re only dealing with one person here—one killer.”
Benito looked troubled. “You may be right. I don’t know—but you may be right.”
“How can I find out how many trials in the past—fifteen years, twenty years—had priestesses as star witnesses?”
Benito smiled gloomily. “We don’t have the information here. At the courthouse. I don’t know how easy it would be to search their records.”
“Will they cooperate with me?”
“I’ll send someone over. They’ll cooperate. You want to go now?”
Drake nodded and rose to his feet. At the door he paused. “I don’t know what kind of manpower you have—”
Benito looked up. “Why?”
“I know some of the Fideles are still wandering around alone at night, making calls. It makes me nervous. Could you spare a detail of officers to escort them places—after midnight, say?”
“I’ve offered,” he said. “The abada has not been interested. I cannot force my protection on them.”
“She refused?” Drake said. “I wonder why.”
“She believes Ava will protect them.”
“Obviously that is not true.”
“Her faith is stronger than her fear.”
Drake smothered the retort that formed on his tongue. “Later,” he said instead, and walked out.
* * *
* * *
The tall redheaded woman accompanied him to the courthouse, a huge white building in the center of Madrid. She explained Drake’s mission very carefully to the pale, enormous, completely bald man who apparently kept the records for the city.
Drake could not follow the intricacies of the conversation, but it was clear the big man was overwhelmed at the task set before him. He raised his hands expressively in the air, let out his breath in a most significant fashion, and began the argument again. The redhead replied in soothing but firm tones.
“What’s the problem?” Drake asked her.
“It’s a lot of work.”
“Isn’t there a database? A search function?”
The redhead laughed. “I don’t think the courthouse files have even been transferred to visicube. I won’t bore you with the political debates we’ve had in the past five years on this very issue—”
Drake held up a hand. “Well, can he get me the data manually?”
“Oh, yes. He’s just being dramatic. He’ll do it.”
They bargained for another twenty minutes, but in the end, the hombueno had her way. Drake drove her back to the station.
“He will give you year-by-year reports as he compiles them,” she said as they rode. “The trials in which priestesses were star witnesses, the verdict of each case, and the disposition of the defendant.”
“Disposition?”
“His sentence—and if he was imprisoned, the name of his prison.”
Drake nodded. “And then we get to contact all the prisons in the Aellan Corridor and see how many of these criminals are still incarcerated, or where they might be now.”
“It seems like a lot of effort.”
He slowed to a stop before the station. “And it may be for nothing. Our guy may never have committed another crime before in his life. But it seems like something worth checking out.”
She smiled at him briefly. “Have to amuse ourselves somehow,” she said, and got out.
He drove back to his hotel to spend another two hours poring over the police records from seven and eight years ago. Nothing caught his interest.
Late in the afternoon, a message was delivered to him by a hotel employee. Breaking the gold seal, he found it to be an invitation from senya Jovieve. “I am having a small dinner at the temple tonight around 8 o’clock,” she wrote in a lovely script. “I think you might enjoy yourself if you came. It is supposed to be casual, but everyone will be formally dressed. Your official uniform will do nicely.” She signed it merely “Jovieve.”
The image of the French courtesan came back to him yet again; the king’s mistress. Just so would he have expected the unacknowledged power behind the throne to word a polite order. There was no question that he would attend.
Accordingly, he took a second shower and dressed himself with care. He generally wore the regulation whites, but all Moonchildren also had more elaborate ivory uniforms which they wore on formal occasions, and tonight was surely one of those. This uniform was more tailored, decorated with embossed silver buttons and (in Drake’s case) half a dozen medals on a blue sash draped over his left shoulder. He adjusted the gold half-moon earring in his left ear, checked the fit of the silver wristbadge over his left arm, and studied himself in the mirror.
He generally considered himself invisible until he wanted to make his presence felt, but every once in a while, when he took the time to look at himself, he realized that he would not be an easy man to overlook. He was taller than most of the Semayans, and the lankiness that he always remembered from adolescence had mellowed into a sort of loose-limbed assurance. He had long arms and long legs and his hands were big; he looked swift, which he was, and smart, which he also was. His reach and height also gave him a certain aura of latent menace, which he always expected the expression on his face to counteract—but somehow, in the tailored uniform, he looked broader and more powerful than usual.
He practiced a smile. Like most Semayans, he had dark hair, but his skin was pale and his eyes deep blue. The smile made him look pleasant. When he stopped smiling, he looked sad. He turned away from the mirror.
It was nearing full dark when he pulled up at the temple. This was the first time he’d been here at night. Brightly colored lights illuminated the fountain, and softer lights played over the gilded statues on the front terrace. There were perhaps thirty other expensive-looking cars parked in the streets near the temple. Drake wondered just what Jovieve considered a small dinner.
Inside, he found out. Lusalma answered his ring at the door and guided him to a large, gorgeously furnished room toward the back of the temple. It was glowing with candles, garlanded with flowers (where did they get flowers on Semay? he wondered) and full of glancing lights reflecting off crystal. There were possibly seventy-five people in the room who looked like guests, and ten or fifteen who must be servers. Drake had done no more than make a stab at the numbers when a young man paused before him and offered him a glass of wine from a tray. Drake took it.
“Venga,” Lusalma said to Drake, and led him across the floor. He was not surprised when she took him directly to Jovieve, who appeared to be holding court at the far end of the banquet hall. She was dressed in a black silk gown, and her dark hair had been twined with white roses. Against the glossy black of the silk, her goddess-eye pendant glowed like an opal; the charms hanging from the gold chain made a brilliant line across her throat and bosom. She was laughing, and she looked beautiful.
“Lieutenant,” she greeted him when Lusalma brought him to her side. He took the hand she held out to him and wondered if he should kiss it. “I’m glad you could make it.”
“How could I ignore such a summons?” he murmured, and dropped her hand.
“Let me introduce you to a few people.” She was speaking Standard Terran, so he assumed these particular guests did as well—and that, if he had ever had any doubts, told him who Jovieve’s guests were. The rich and the powerful of Semay. “This is General Frederico Merco and his wife, Alicia. This is Barry Hurilio and his wife, Juliana—they are bankers, you know, they handle the funds for the temple. This is Senator Teresa Varga and her husband, Darro—Darro, do you need another drink? Lusalma, my pet—”
Drake nodded and shook hands and wondered what in Ava’s name he was doing here. The general was a ruddy and genial man who instantly asked him about Moonchild tactical maneuvers, so Drake was deep in a war discussion within ten minutes of his arrival. But Semay had had no civil or planetary strife for three hundred years, as Jovieve had told him, so the general’s knowledge was mostly theoretical. The others listened, and asked questions, and the conversation eventually turned to other subjects.
Jovieve had left them but reappeared just as a pretty gong sounded for dinner. “One more name, Lieutenant, and I trust you’ll remember this one,” she said. Her hand was laid across the bent arm of a very distinguished older man, silver-haired, black-eyed and fine-featured. “This is Alejandro Ruiso, governor of Semay. He speaks Standard Terran better than any of us, and I thought you would enjoy sitting next to him at dinner.”
This was why he had come, then. Drake briefly shook hands with the governor, returning a covert inspection. Well, he looked every inch a king, strong-willed and autocratic. No wonder Raeburn was having difficulties with him. But not stupid, oh no. Those onyx eyes had stared unblinking across the infinite blackness of space to defy every member of the Interfed council.
“I’m sure I will,” Drake said. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.”
“And you.”
The food was delicious, as expected, and conversation, at first, quite general. The woman to Drake’s left spoke Standard Terran as well, and took some trouble to explain the import-export business of Semay to the Moonchild.
It was not until dessert was served that Drake really had time to turn to the governor and talk. Ruiso looked amused.
“An illuminating evening for you, no doubt,” the politician said. “I am sure trade and finance are your forte.”
Drake smiled. “I learn what I can. You never know when information might come in handy.”
Without looking away from Drake, the governor signaled for a waiter to bring him more wine. “And what have you learned during your short stay on Semay? I understand you have been here five days.”
Drake could be a diplomat, but he didn’t feel like it just now. “Are you inquiring about the status of my investigation into the murders?” he asked bluntly. “It goes slowly, but every day I learn something.”
“Someone suggested,” Ruiso said, “that only an off-worlder could commit such crimes against our priestesses. What do you think?”
“It’s possible, of course, but I wonder. An off-worlder would have no reason to bear such a grudge against institutions so particular to Semay.”
“It seems like a very personal crime, you would say? That is what I think.”
Drake smiled briefly. “Every crime is personal, sir. The motives are, that is. To find the motive is
to find the key.”
“And have you found a motive?”
“Most often, the reasons are love, hate or money.”
“Love? Surely that wouldn’t lead to murder.”
“Wouldn’t it? It does, oftener than you might think.”
“So murder investigations are your specialty? I understand you are a Special Assignment Officer of the Moonchild forces.”
“I wouldn’t say I prefer murder, no. My job in every case has been to analyze complex emotional issues and come to a solution based on the personalities involved. In a broad sense, that’s what a murder investigation requires.”
“We hear stories, you know, about the Moonchild forces. Stories that are hard to credit at times. About their efficiency, their ruthlessness, their . . . omnipresence.”
Drake smiled again. “If you were to join Interfed,” he said, “would the inevitable influx of Moonchildren help you or hurt you?”
Ruiso nodded ironically. “To get right to the point.”
Drake jerked his head toward Jovieve, seated three tables to his right. “She says your planet’s last three hundred years have been war-free. If that’s so, you wouldn’t need a peacekeeping force. Unless you’ve made some enemies outside Semay.”
“And if we have?”
“If you’re a member of Interfed, and you’re under attack, you’ve got the whole Moonchild army behind you. And that’s an army that is awesome in its ability to protect its allies. Doesn’t cost you much—some food, some space for housing—because Interfed pays for the Moonchild forces. Basically, you get for free the best police and fighting force ever assembled in the history of humankind.”
“And if we have no enemies?”
Drake lifted his own glass of wine. His first, and still not emptied. “If you don’t,” he said, “why are you having talks with Interfed?”
Now Ruiso was the one to smile. “I am not a fool,” he said. “Interfed may have things I want. But I have something Interfed wants, or it would not be making deals.”