by Alec Saracen
Hypothesis, he thought. Parys Hactaur is testing the waters for her coup. Let's assume it's true. If it is, it's because she doesn't want Tor to join the Coalition – or she doesn't want Tor to join the Coalition, therefore the coup. Either way, chicken or egg, in her endgame she winds up in control of an independent Tor. And if she's anti-Coalition, then she needs to sound out the Coalition ambassador, whose political situation is complicated to say the least – and who has determined enemies.
Who's vulnerable.
Who could be an asset.
All the lights snapped on at once inside his head.
Right, he thought. Let's dance.
And there was the rush, belatedly shivering through his ribcage and sweeping away the cobwebs of weariness, hotter and sweeter than any artificial stimulant. The lack of sleep and the assassination attempt faded into insignificance. There was a game to be played.
First step: make sure they were speaking the same language.
“I've only been here a few days, of course,” he said, “but I can't see your mother and Chang getting along well.”
“They manage,” Violet said guardedly. Zhai was on the attack now, and she knew it.
“I suppose policy divisions are inevitable in any cabinet,” Zhai said. “Though one can't help but wonder how at what depth those divisions become insurmountable.” He took a calculated gamble. “Especially with Emuel Mockhurst's departure...”
It was an ancient gambit: voice your suspicions, and watch for the reaction. Ancient, but effective. The flash of confusion in Violet's eyes might as well have been an explicit how could you possibly know that already?, and the glint of frustration that followed confirmed that Zhai had scored a hit.
“Ultimately, I think it's clear to everyone within and without the intelligence community that Emuel Mockhurst's resignation was inevitable, given the massive intelligence failings which almost cost you your life yesterday, Ambassador,” Violet said, obviously buying time to think with prolixity. “Fresh leadership was called for. Him taking charge of the CIC wouldn't have been tenable.”
“Not least because he was an Alliance appointment,” Zhai reminded her. “If I were Persylla Domoulos right now, I'd be looking over my shoulder. Didn't you hear the speech? 'Dawn has broken over Tor'. The long night of the Alliance is over, and its creatures… well, they vanish in the daylight, like all nightmares.” Violet said nothing, so Zhai pressed on. He was going too far too fast, and he didn't care. “But the governor thinks he’s a special case. He thinks he can hold on. 'President Chang' has a nice ring to it, after all. He just has to convince the planet that he's secretly been a red-blooded son of Tor all along.”
“Governor Chang was born here,” Violet said, with no real conviction. What's the matter, Violet? Zhai thought. I'm just getting started. Don't ask me to dance if you can't keep up.
“He was. But he's served his Alliance masters well over the years. Will the people let it slide? Will they believe him when he says he wanted independence all along? Is there a place for him?”
Zhai let the question hang like a body swinging from the gibbet.
He knew that he should stop there, while there was still a hint of ambiguity left. Experience told him to shut his mouth. A bubbling recklessness forced it open. He considered all the possible repercussions of saying too much, and found it impossible to care. His assassin had missed, but they might end up killing him all the same. The first shots had been fired, and the time for caution had passed.
Violet hadn't expected this, he thought. She had come to the embassy to put out the most tentative of feelers. She hadn't reckoned on finding Zhai in the mood to aggressively follow his gut, and right now, whether she liked it or not, his gut was propelling him deeper and deeper into her confidence – and her further into his.
“If I were Chang,” he said into the silence, “I would look for insurance. Stability. Right now, he has neither of those. He needs someone bigger and more powerful than any of his enemies to back him. Someone like, say, the Coalition. The question then becomes: does the Coalition want to back him? And that's an interesting one. The Coalition is a coalition, after all. Some of those factions who comprise that coalition would prop him up in a heartbeat. Others would let him fall. Some want Tor in. Others want it out. It's the same here, I imagine. Some want Coalition membership with Chang at the helm, and some want independence without him. The situation is...” Zhai drew the pause out, searching for the right word. “Fluid.”
Violet watched him wordlessly for ten long, long seconds, her eyes locked on his. She was trying to read him. Good luck, Zhai thought.
“I think I understand you, Ambassador,” she said at last, her lips barely moving. “And I think you understand me.”
“I hope so,” Zhai said.
Violet let out a long, slow breath. “You're an interesting man to talk to,” she said. Zhai smiled at her choice of words. “Let's do it again some time.”
Zhai inclined his head. “Perhaps at these independence celebrations of yours.”
“The social event of the year,” Violet said, her easy smile finally making a reappearance. “That's the rumour, anyway. Plans are being laid.”
“Aren't they always?” Zhai said. Half an hour ago, I'd never heard of you, he thought, and now I'm suddenly a co-conspirator in your military coup. “Of course, they're often subject to change. You know how politicians are. Give them a reason, and they'll jump ship like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Violet nodded. “Best not to give them those reasons, then.” Steel glinted behind her eyes. “For everyone's sake.”
It was halfway between a promise and a warning, but more than either, it was a virtually explicit acknowledgement of the bargain they had just inked. You launch your coup, and I'll support it – if you do it right.
And, he thought, if either of us betrays the other, we're all going down with the ship.
“Out of interest,” he said, “who do you think wants me dead?”
“Apart from the Naroese?” Zhai ignored the barb and waited. Violet blew out her cheeks and folded her hands behind her head. “Trade secret, Ambassador.”
You have no idea, do you? Zhai thought.
There was no way they could know about Peck. Which left them... how many suspects? Liberation were the elephant in the room, but the way that Liberator had pursued the sniper drone seemed to rule them out – and implied that they had Zhai's back, a distressing prospect that he hadn't fully processed yet. When Liberation think you're doing the right thing, you're probably not.
Zhai doubted Violet would acknowledge that Liberators were on Tor, even in private. ResTore were a peaceful protest movement, not a cadre of high-tech assassins. Chang would hardly ruin his own 'historic' speech with a clumsy assassination. Who else? From Violet's point of view, Zhai's would-be killers were either a faction within the government, a private concern, or a big fat question mark.
Instinctively, he knew that Peck's Coalition affiliation was a potent weapon in the wrong hands. Or the right ones. He was on the verge of telling Violet his suspicions when caution reasserted itself, having spent the whole conversation screaming mutely at him. Better to keep that one under wraps for now.
With caution came sudden, crippling self-doubt. He'd gone too far.
Violet was looking at him with a quirked half-smile. Zhai wondered if the same horror was dawning in her. Probably not. She had powerful friends. He didn't. He had her.
“I'd better get back,” she said into the silence. “It's chaos right now. I'm probably missing out on all the fun. Before I go, though–” She reached into a pocket and withdrew an archaic paper notebook and pen. “Something for the future.”
She scrawled an absurdly long string of numbers, seemingly from memory, and tore off the page to hand to Zhai. He took it with a questioning frown.
“FreeSpeak,” Violet said. “In case you want to talk.”
Zhai arched an eyebrow. “I was under the impression that FreeSpeak is illeg
al.”
“You're right. That's why I don't use it, and neither should you,” Violet said, deadpan. “I'll tell you this, though. There aren't going to be many friendly ears for you in Macard. You're – inconvenient. For almost everybody.”
Zhai smiled. “Then I must be doing something right.”
*
Minutes later, Zhai stared numbly at Violet's vacated chair. The electric energy of the conversation was draining out of his bones, leaving them hollow and brittle.
What did I just do, he thought?
You just joined a coup, you moron, part of him whispered back. You might as well have danced around the room, shouting 'Free Tor, hang Chang!' It would have been subtler. And what if you'd been wrong? What if there had been no coup, and you'd just tipped your hand to half the players at the table?
Twins. You're losing it. One lucky escape, and you fall to pieces.
He had been right, though. All his guesses and hunches had been unerring. Violet must have left with the impression that Zhai was a political mastermind, and that was what she would report back to her mother. Zhai knew the truth: he'd taken unacceptable risks and snatched at dangerous chances. Exposed himself. It was all illusion. It had worked, but it was fake.
He clenched his fists on the desk, digging his nails deep into his palms.
“Fuck,” he said aloud. He was actively conspiring against the government, and he hadn't even been there a week. What the hell was he going to say in the report to Sekkanen? 'Oh, then a clone of the head of the air force came to apologise for me nearly having my head blown off, so I aggressively volunteered to support her coup'? She'd skin him alive.
For a moment, he entertained the idea of combining the Hactaurs' schemes with Grigori Thier's ResTore movement. They wanted the same thing, but Zhai suspected it would be like smashing two rocks together and hoping they'd turn into a bigger rock. It was probably still worth trying. Thier had a part to play yet.
Zhai tried to calm himself and rationally assess the situation. He had just chained himself to the Hactaurs. Both sides now knew enough to bring the other crashing down in flames. It was the political equivalent of mutually assured destruction. Neither party could back out now.
Slowly, it stole over him that what he'd done was secretly rather brilliant, in its way. Like it or not, he and the Hactaurs were allies now, united against Chang and the Coalition. And Aliven Cadmer, he reminded himself. Can't forget him.
In fact, the more he considered it, the better things looked. He hadn't made any catastrophic missteps. He had secured powerful allies who could help protect him. What worried him wasn't what he'd done, but how rashly he'd done it. The assassination attempt had shifted his mental paradigm to a war footing, and he'd failed to realise how much it had affected him until it was too late. It went beyond rustiness. The good ship Zhai was creaking low in the water, and decommissioning loomed.
Well, it was war now. Undeclared and bloodless, but it was still war.
There was a quiet knock at the door. Zhai jerked upright, took a moment to collect himself, and tried to look professional.
“Come in.”
He'd expected Harod. Instead, it was Lho.
“Lho,” Zhai said. “How can I help you?”
The old woman shut the door behind her with an ominous click. Zhai's gut tightened. Half a century after they'd left Xanang behind, Lho could still make him feel like a naughty child.
She stalked up to his desk and sat down, her feet dangling a few inches above the floor.
“Go home, Gumeigo,” she said.
Zhai sighed and pressed the knuckles of his thumbs into his eyes. Some part of him had known this was coming. The latest act of a lifelong drama. “I can't.”
Lho clicked her tongue. “Go, or die here.”
“Lho, I can't,” Zhai said. He let his hands fall limply to his lap. “I just can't.”
“They tried to shoot you.” Zhai heard the outrage loud and clear. “They'll try again.”
“I know.”
“So go home. Retire. Be free.” Lho's mouth, set into a steely line, softened ever so slightly. “I'll never forgive myself if I outlive you too. I've seen too many Zhais leave this world. I'd like to leave one behind when it's my turn to go.”
Heat started to prickle behind Zhai's eyes, and he closed them before the tears could come.
Pull yourself together, he told himself. You're better than this.
With a titanic effort, he forced the wave of heat back. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Zhai opened his eyes.
Lho shook her tiny head. “I don't understand you. Why stay here? You could go home tomorrow.”
“And do what?” Zhai snapped, immediately regretting it when he saw the hurt in Lho's eyes.
“Be yourself.”
Zhai snorted. “Am I not myself now?”
“No,” Lho said. “You're not.”
Zhai stared at her blankly for a few seconds, then shook his head and stood up. “Lho, today is very busy, and I have work to do–”
“If you're going to tell me to piss off,” Lho said coldly, “tell me to piss off. Don't lie to me, Gumeigo. I can tell.”
A red flash of pique robbed Zhai of his senses for an instant. “Piss off, then,” he said.
Lho got up and left without a word. Zhai watched her go, a jumble of emotions tangled around his tongue. He wanted to say something. The words wouldn't come.
“Damn it,” he hissed, and aimed a savage kick at the leg of his desk, bruising his toe through his leather brogues. He slumped back into his chair, brooding. His mood was blackening by the second.
Fuck it all, he thought. Fuck Tor. Fuck the Coalition. Fuck Sekkanen, fuck Chang, fuck the Hactaurs, fuck Peck. Fuck me. Why am I here? What am I doing? Why am I doing it? The answers faded into mist as soon as his mind turned to them, zipping away into obscurity like the creature of light vanishing into the Void.
Rather than sulk alone in his office, he got up and stalked out into the embassy, seething at the world. Harod tried to ask him about Violet. Zhai wasn't in the mood.
“You all right?” Harod called after him as he swept past. Zhai ignored him. He was going nowhere, which was the only place he could go. It seemed like everyone tried to speak to him about something on his circuit of the embassy: Fleischer was muttering about strange readings again, Sam had updates from the Coalition for him, Umbiba wanted to tell him something about security plans. He ignored them all. Abstractly, he sensed their concern, and it only poisoned his mood further, like warm air feeding the angry whirl of a tornado.
Zhai wanted to go out and taste fresh air, even in Tor's stifling heat, and escape his shell of an embassy for a moment. It wouldn't do any good. Dimly, he sensed the walls of some vaster prison all around him, an immaterial cage from which no physical journey could free him. A prison of his own making.
In the end, he stood silently at the window for hours on end, watching the day run its sweltering course. He thought of assassins crouched on rooftops, the merciless eyes of their rifle scopes gleaming in the sun, and of Naro's outraged crowds, and of the torrential lies that had passed his lips over the decades.
And later that evening, as the sun's blazing arc brought it plunging suicidally towards the horizon, a hushed huddle of Sam, Tetaine, and Fleischer conferred behind him.
“What is it?” he said, turning. The whispering stopped, as if cut off by a guillotine. With a dark satisfaction, he saw that they all looked scared of him.
Fleischer proved boldest. “There's an encrypted call for you, boss,” she said, the tone of her voice suggesting there was more than mere encryption to it.
Zhai raised an eyebrow. Nervously, Sam stepped in.
“We've traced the location, though. It wasn't hidden. Like they wanted us to know.”
“It's coming from inside the building,” Tetaine said.
Zhai was too tired to puzzle out the implications of that. “Fine,” he said. “If they want to play games, let them. Put them through t
o my watch.”
Sam did so. There was a brief pause.
“Good evening, Ambassador,” an unfamiliar female voice said in his ear – but the accent was familiar, all right.
Well, he thought, this is all I need.
“Good evening,” he said. The compulsive gambler in Zhai had taken over the controls once again, and wasn't about to give them back. “And to which Liberator do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
Silence on the line, and open-mouth surprise on the faces of his staff.
Grimly, Zhai smiled.
15
Sitting cross-legged on the roof, Grey Hawk almost swallowed her tongue. How the hell had Zhai known she was a Liberator? Where had she miscalculated?
She closed her eyes, realising her mistake. The accent. She hadn't thought to hide her Plenty accent, and just like that she'd squandered the initiative. Worse still, she'd already hesitated too long, which was as good as confirmation. She had to say something, and fast.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“We are talking,” Zhai replied. He spoke with the clipped, terse accent stereotypical of Armenaiakon politicos, though Grey Hawk fancied that she could hear a hint of something else distorting it, like a pebble on a smooth road. Xanang?
“In person.”
“My staff inform me that you're already inside the building,” Zhai said drily, “so that shouldn't be too hard to arrange.”
“I have something for you,” Grey Hawk said.
Zhai chuckled. He sounded tired. “A bullet in the head, maybe? Join the queue.”
“Close. It's the computer core of the drone which shot at you yesterday.” She hefted it in her hand. “You're going to want to see what it says for yourself.”
There was a pause, then a flat silence. Zhai had muted his end of the line, presumably to confer with his staff. Grey Hawk raised her head and watched the sun sink behind the city, already starting to regret going to Zhai. The others knew nothing about it. She could justify it to herself as the best way to advance the cause, and she certainly had the authority to make the call – but the longer the silence stretched out, the more unsure of herself she became. Was she doing it because she honestly thought it was the right choice, or had her need to prove herself warped her judgement?