Shona jumped to his feet and turned away from the schemers toward the room to shout out his discovery — his good fortune. They were all waiting for him, staring, smiling. He couldn’t help smiling back. Koscuisko would be gone well before he could possibly get to Emandis Station, it was two days’ transit — but he was going home. As much as he appreciated the need for extra help at Imennou, he wanted to get home, he’d been on one mission or another for too long. His baby would have forgotten what he looked like.
“You’d best go get some sleep, pilot,” the shift leader said, her voice full of mischief. “You’ve got to ferry a Bench specialist to Brisinje. We don’t dare put you on a priority mission with less than your full preparation cycle, do we?”
As if he was going to be able to sleep. Yes, he would be able to sleep, because he had to. No responsible pilot would attempt a difficult entry through Brisinje’s local atmosphere with anything less than all his faculties, let alone a run to Emandis at top speed.
Could it be — might it be possible — was there any chance —
He couldn’t afford to think about it. He smiled again — showing his teeth, almost rude, where Shona came from — and hurried out of the room, helped on his way by the cheers of the people who had been his companions for these days of desperation struggling to absorb the freight, process the inventories, get the cargoes to where they needed to be.
His family had at least met the man. His wife would tell him all about it. He was going home. He’d missed his chance, his one chance, the only chance that he might ever have — but he was going home. Joslire would understand.
His brother knew that necessity brought sacrifice better than any living man of Shona’s acquaintance. With that comforting thought Shona sought his billet, and lay down, and chanted himself to sleep with the words in his mind. Home. Home. Home, home, home. He was going home.
###
“Leaving,” Jils said with determination, forming the words with care. The painkillers were making her groggy, and she couldn’t afford groggy. They could kill her much more easily that way. How many of the people here wanted her dead? Had Nion been the only one? Were they all just waiting for a chance?
Possibly. But to lapse into paranoia was to surrender her reason. She had to make up her mind to at least act as though she could trust anybody here, anybody at all. Padrake. She could trust Padrake. Surely Padrake knew her as well as anybody yet living — Balkney, she could trust him too, Karol had said so.
“Delleroy’s contacted Tirom,” Balkney assured her, not preventing her from standing up — exactly — but standing so close to her, in the tiny medical area, that there was no way in which she could attempt to straighten to her feet from her seated position without becoming much more intimate with Balkney than she had any intention of doing. For one thing, Jils was afraid of his wife. Any sane person would be.
People said that the Hangman was a cold, ruthless assassin, a man who could kill without his pulse changing — she didn’t believe it. He’d been paired with his wife for quite a few years, now, and both of them still living, as well as the children.
She lay back down on the bed in frustrated resignation. All right, she was going to trust Balkney, but she was still shaken and weary, injured and in shock and full of all kinds of drugs. Antidotes, in case she’d been scratched. Pain medication. She wasn’t sure what. Nion was dead, her corpse in a locker in a storage room; what they were going to do with it down here Jils couldn’t imagine.
But she couldn’t stay. It was not possible for her to continue to function in this environment. She had no intention of giving anyone another chance. The next assault would end it for her for certain; she was weak, now, and vulnerable.
“Apparently you’re needed at Emandis Station, Ivers. Conflict between the home defense fleet and Fleet rapidly escalating toward critical mass, and you’re the Bench specialist to defuse it, lucky you.” Balkney had turned to the bedside chair to seat himself, once she lay back down. Once she surrendered. “You’re to go up with Delleroy, he’s to accompany you, represent the Ninth Judge, and so on. It’s two days to Emandis Station, not much less with even a really good pilot. Plenty of time for you to rest up. Jils.”
Balkney said her name with an unusual emphasis, almost as if it was something he’d still been deciding whether or not he was going to say it until it was actually spoken. He surprised her; he’d never used her personal name. “What?”
“You keep your eye on Delleroy. There’s something that doesn’t feel quite right to me, there. If you were my friend I’d be right here with you.” And he was; and he was. “If you’d been my lover I wouldn’t be letting you alone with anybody, not even a sober abstemious married man like me. Particularly with a sober abstemious married man whose primary role under Jurisdiction has been as an eraser of redundant lives. I’m not happy about this.”
Well, that was just ridiculous. She knew Padrake; Balkney didn’t. Padrake was actually doing his imitation of a man almost demented with worry and distraction, really. It could be hard to tell, sometimes, that was all.
“Since we are alone together,” she suggested, feeling the cumulative effect of drugs and excitement, fatigue and pain slowly but certainly begin to overwhelm her. “I’m blaming any snoring on you. I’m gone, Balkney. Sorry. Can’t help it.”
“I’ll be here.”
His voice faded into a twilight as sudden as it was profound, and ceased to impart any meaning.
###
She’d just gotten past the initial disorientation of waking after having fallen asleep under the influence of drugs when she heard Padrake come into the room, singing out cheerfully. “Up and at them, Jils, we’ve got a lift to catch. They’re waiting for us topside, let’s go, are you okay to walk?”
“I’m tired,” she replied, her eyes still closed. “Not crippled. Where are we going?”
Someone had a hand at her shoulder, helping her up. Her entire body still ached, and her ribs — oh, yes. That was right. Her ribs. That had been earlier. The hand at her shoulders didn’t feel particularly Padrake-like; Jils opened her eyes just as Rafenkel turned away to reach for a flask of water.
“Topside,” Padrake repeated. “We’ve got to go. Emandis Station needs you, courier on stand-by, Chilleau’s sent someone to speak for the Second Judge in your absence. Ready?”
“Stims,” Rafenkel murmured to Jils, showing her a small handful of pills that Rafenkel was holding in the palm of her hand. “Garden-variety, caffeine and ferridose. It’s only been a few hours. And you can sleep on the courier.”
Rafenkel said they were stims. They looked like the common run of freely used stimulants; could be poison, of course. But she’d settled her mind, as she’d slept, on the subject of paranoia. Wasn’t going to give in to it.
“Thanks.” She took the pills — they tasted like common stims, too, that bitter metallic tang that was intended to discourage over-use and prevent accidental ingestion — and drained the glass of water. Could be poison in the water as well. On the other hand at any moment there could be an earthquake — Brisinje was still geologically active — the entire cave could collapse, and she’d be just as dead.
She’d survived an assassination attempt, maybe two, and these were her peers — Bench specialists. Maybe Nion hadn’t been quite up to speed, and made careless by arrogance. The fact remained that Nion had tried to kill her, and failed, and if anybody else meant to they’d have had plenty of chances by now, and she was not — was not — going to surrender to fear. “Who’s come for Chilleau, Padrake?”
She pushed herself carefully up to her feet, feeling wobbly but intact. Her ribs hurt. She didn’t mind them hurting. Pain was useful — it reminded a person that she was still alive. It could be a distraction — but if she was going to Emandis Station she’d be sleeping on the courier, as Rafenkel had suggested. Padrake would be there as well, wouldn’t he? He’d said “we.” So that was all right, then.
“I’m not actually sure that Chille
au sent him,” Padrake admitted. “But Arik’s checked, and the Second Judge will accept the substitution, under the circumstances. Let’s go.”
What circumstances were those, exactly? That of having been almost killed, and having no intention of whatever sort of staying in this dangerous-to-her environment for a moment longer? Or the circumstance of the Second Judge being disgusted with her for her failure to find out who had killed the First Secretary, frustration that was trending unquestionably toward a conviction that Jils had done it herself?
She wasn’t interested in thinking about things. She settled herself in the lift and waited for her mind to clear. As the lift started signaling the end of trip — nearing surface, arriving, clearing atmosphere, opening doors — did it occur to her that, in the combined distraction of her physical state and her concerns and reservations, she couldn’t remember what answer Padrake had made to her question about who it was that Chilleau had found to send here in her place.
“Who are we meeting?” she asked Padrake, who had been resting himself with his legs stretched out and his arms folded as his eyes closed. “Anybody I know?”
He opened his eyes with an expression of mild confusion. “It’s sure that you know him,” Padrake said. “Vogel. Missing for months, just turned up in Emandis, but his affidavits are apparently in order or Chilleau wouldn’t have agreed. I’d like to get the story on that, but we’re not going to have time, I’m afraid.”
The lift had stopped and cleared. The doors slid open. Karol. In uniform, no less, but he had his old jacket and his equally as old or older campaign hat in his kit or her name was not Jils Tarocca Ivers.
And also First Secretary Arik Tirom, frowning anxiously, who moved forward to offer her his hand as she exited the lift with the apparent intention of assisting her. “Dame Ivers. Very unpleasant for you, Bench specialist, completely undeserved I’m sure it goes without saying.”
They smelled. They both did, ever so subtly, of soot and smoke. The launch-fields were still burning, then.
“Thank you.” She couldn’t be rude to Brisinje’s First Secretary — not without good reason; she didn’t have it in her to be rude for the sake of being rude. Not like Nion. “Academic now, sir. Karol. Where’ve you been?”
No, that wasn’t right, she should ask how have you been. She should. He looked a little worn around the edges, and twenty years younger at the same time. How’ve you been, what do you mean by disappearing and strewing cryptic little sketches hither and yon, what do you think you’re up to? She couldn’t. She’d gotten close to Karol, they’d worked very well together, she’d felt his disappearance as a personal loss and a professional handicap, and she was in pain and not in a very moderate state of mind.
“Plenty to tell you about that, Jils,” Karol said. “But later. I came to ask you to go to Emandis Station. Scylla’s taken Andrej Koscuisko, Emandis claims him for a native son and objects to Scylla’s misappropriation of valuable cultural artifacts, and the Ragnarok’s left the system so Scylla doesn’t know how it can let Koscuisko off the ship without losing face.”
And as angry as she’d been at Karol for more than a year, as angry as she was at him right now, she had to step back in the privacy of her own mind to admire the succinctness with which he gave her situation, problem, background, and probable unfortunate outcome to be avoided, by implication. They were good together. As agents, never as lovers, but there were ways in which she was closer to him than she’d been to any lover.
Even Padrake? Padrake was standing behind her with his arms folded again, and the vibrations in the aether from the Padrake sector toward the Karol direction were not in particular warm and friendly. Best if she avoided any comparison of degrees of intimacy in her mind while she was standing between the two of them.
“I can get him out,” she said. “But only if he’ll come. All right. I’ll see what I can do.” She knew things about Koscuisko’s exact legal status with respect to Fleet that no one else around here might know. Verlaine had known, Verlaine had obtained a grant of relief of Writ for Koscuisko, but Verlaine was dead. The clerk at Chilleau who had processed it and the Second Judge might remember, but they weren’t here; no Fleet Captain would let himself be dictated to by any clerk of Court, and the Second Judge had other things on her mind. “Have you been briefed, Karol?”
“First Secretary’s given me the brief-packet,” Karol said. “The rest of it I’ll have to figure out as we go along. Where are we?”
“Ask Balkney.” Karol might not know who was part of Convocation. “So far all I’m really sure of is that everybody thinks confederation is a sub-optimal solution and Fontailloe is out of the question, either as a temporary home pending re-architecture of Chilleau’s administration or as the base of a newly elevated First Judge. Balkney can tell you, though. I’m prejudiced.”
You can trust Balkney. Maybe Capercoy; maybe Rafenkel, and nobody else that she cared to name. Karol had already made up his mind about that, though. She didn’t add anything more, and Padrake spoke over her shoulders to the First Secretary.
“Two days there and two days back, Arik, if we’re lucky. With Vogel coming on line we could lose a few days while he gets himself calibrated, but some of the disputation can be settled in the mean time. I’ll be back inside of five days.”
Jils looked at him — what did he mean, he’d be back? Padrake tilted his head down to meet her eyes, and seemed almost to blush.
“You’re to go on to Chilleau, Jils, once we’re done at Emandis Station. The Second Judge doesn’t care to interrupt the process a second time.”
No, the Second Judge didn’t care to have Jils represent her in Convocation, not if she had anybody — anybody at all — to use instead. That wasn’t quite fair, though. Karol was as good as she could have hoped to be, his only handicap his lack of immersion in the problem and its possible solutions over the recent months.
And who knew? Maybe that wouldn’t be a handicap after all. Maybe a man who had not been inside the problem would see the way clear to a best possible solution that would otherwise escape them. She could hope. Since she was to have no further opportunity to contribute to the process, hope was all that she was to be able to do.
She was going to Emandis Station to mediate between Fleet and the Emandis home defense fleet on the subject of Andrej Koscuisko. She was going in person, to signify the importance that the Bench put on pursuing good relations between the two — and perhaps because she had the authority to tell a Fleet Captain what to do, but only if she was actually there. She was going to remind both parties that the Bench was still the ultimate authority. And she was going because the Second Judge had dug up Karol Vogel from somewhere and sent him to replace her as quickly as possible.
“Very well,” Jils agreed. “Let’s get going. But you owe me an explanation, Vogel.” For too many things to be mentioned here and now. He knew it, too, because he nodded. And then gave a little start, the way he did when a thought turned a corner in his mind and burst into the forefront of his consciousness, surprising him.
“Oh. There’s one more thing. Koscuisko’s angry at me. But it wasn’t my fault. It was booby-trapped. Ask him about it.”
What could that possibly be supposed to mean — but Karol hurried past her into the lift, and the First Secretary followed. To effect the introductions, Jils supposed, not really required but necessary for the sake of the formalities. History was watching. What would history make of this mid-process switch-out of the personnel?
As if it mattered. No Bench specialist was under any false impression as to what history might say about them, if they ever turned up in history at all. To an extent it was a failure to turn up on any sort of a public record, if you were a Bench specialist.
“Let’s go, Jils,” Padrake said softly, as though in sympathy with the turmoil in her mind. Karol turned up out of nowhere, with some vague protest about Koscuisko. Something booby-trapped? What could he possibly be talking about?
What else could he be
talking about, except the Record, the forged record whose patently false evidence was to have formed the keystone of the Ragnarok’s defense of its crew against accusations of mutiny and murder?
She was cold. She could wait. Ask Koscuisko, Karol had said. She’d do that. She would. “Let’s get out of here,” she agreed with a nod, and led the way out of the block-house to where the ground cars were waiting to take them to the launch-field, and thence to Emandis Station.
###
This wasn’t a convocation, Rafenkel told herself, disgusted. This was a circus. The chair collapsing under Ivers might have been a practical joke gone awry — might have been. Might. But Nion was dead, and while there was unquestionably a harpoon in evidence, who knew for sure where it had come from or who had attempted to deploy it?
If she had been Ivers and wished to kill Nion, she certainly wouldn’t have used the harpoon herself. She would have shown it, let Nion take it away from her, and then killed Nion in self-defense. She would have. There were problems with that approach, of course.
“Specialist Vogel,” First Secretary Tirom said. He had come as far as the airlock but was not, apparently, going to address them in the theater; this wasn’t a formal visit on behalf of the Bench, but an administrative errand. “Some of you may already know him. Chilleau Judiciary has agreed to transfer its proxy to Specialist Vogel, in Specialist Ivers’ absence.”
The first problem would be that it was a risk. Nion was younger than Ivers was and Ivers had been recently injured. If that had been the plan it was unnecessarily hazardous, as well as unnecessarily complicated.
“I know Vogel,” Balkney said. “Who’s to speak for Brisinje, though, First Secretary?”
The larger problem lay in what Ivers’ possible motive might have been. Rafenkel couldn’t come up with any that satisfied her. Why would Ivers want to kill Nion? It was understood that under the circumstances such a frame might successfully hold, since it was easy — well, relatively easy — to understand why Nion might have wanted to kill Ivers. But Bench specialists didn’t waste killings.
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