The Third Claw of God

by Adam-Troy Castro

  Skye, who was visibly moved by their plea, turned from them to the distraught Philip, regarding him with something very much like pity. Sparing only the briefest look at me, one I read as a warning not to interfere, she knelt beside him, placed a single hand on his shoulder, and asked, “Sir? Would it be less offensive to your delicate sensibilities had your brother ended life a defeated suicide, and your sister had spent the rest of her own blighted by the knowledge that she had not done everything she could to save him?”

  “She didn’t save him,” he said miserably. “She just destroyed herself with him.”

  “No, she did not. She just changed. That’s what life is, sir. Change.”

  “She didn’t have to change like that.”

  “I agree. She might have changed any number of other ways, including some that might have made her less precious to you. But whatever happened, she never would have stayed the same person she was as a younger woman. She would have grown up, developed new priorities, moved on, become in some ways a stranger to the person she once was. The only thing different here is that she decided how.”

  “But what she had to give up—”

  “Please, sir, if we accomplish nothing else here, trust the word of somebody who knows this from the inside. The sister you knew, the one who was capable of taking such a giant step for your wounded brother’s sake, is still with us, and if she kept this a secret from you, it had to be at least in part because she knew you would react as you have.”

  Philip closed his eyes, shuddered, then felt for the chair and pulled himself back up, refusing to look at them but allowing himself a slight nod, as close to acceptance as he was now able to provide.

  This would not be over today. If we all survived, there would still be shouts, accusations, apologies, and hurt at the sight of one another. There was no telling now whether there would ever be peace between Philip and his linked siblings. But there was a truce, and it was all we needed if we were to get through this.

  Jason and Jelaine seemed to realize that too. They backed away from him and sat down, their complementary faces both shining with the hopes of a single, oversized soul.

  Philip continued to look at his hands. “Counselor?”

  I tried not to feel pity for this man I hated, and failed. “What?”

  “Before we get into whatever else there is…please. Tell me how you knew. Tell me how you saw what my brother and sister had done, when I thought I knew them and didn’t see a damned thing.”

  Skye just shook her head, a bitter smile curling her lips. Her thoughts, their thoughts, were no deep mystery. Why don’t you, Andrea? Why not? After all, demonstrating how brilliant you are has always been your favorite part.

  If only Oscin were here. It didn’t matter that if Skye was mad at me, he would be too. The thought of him, standing among the others, participating in their conversations, revealing no hurt at all as he maintained the false veneer of individuality, was almost more than I could bear.

  Maybe if they were both here I could make them believe I was sorry.

  I felt another wave of exhaustion. I don’t know what this one was. I’d been up too many hours and been through too much shit to care. But Philip was still waiting for his explanation, and there was no way to get to the more important business still ahead of us unless I got through this part. So I ran my hand through my hair and began, my voice sounding far too dull for a woman who normally reveled in being the smartest person in the room. “My associates saw it first. They’re linked themselves, as you know, and were able to pick up a number of subtle cues in short order, even before we all sat down to dinner. They decided it was a private matter between your siblings and none of my business. But I knew they’d seen something, and that kept me on the lookout for phenomena they would have been better equipped to notice.

  “After that…there were more indications than I have time or inclination to list. Jelaine saying of Jason, ‘I do my best to help him carry the weight.’ The way she talked about some of his experiences almost as if they had happened to her personally. The way the two of them went out of their way to express provincial wide-eyed wonder at Oscin and Skye. Jason blinded by blood in his eyes, unable to see a thing, and still running without mishap across a floor covered with debris when Jelaine and the Khaajiir needed him. Jason agreeing with me when I said he’d told me he wanted to be friends, when he’d never spoken those precise words to me, and had not even been present when they were said; when it had been Jelaine the charmer, Jelaine the gracious hostess, who spoke them. You want a half dozen more from the events of the past few hours? I could go on. After a while, they were obvious.”

  The room fell silent as I allowed Philip the minutes he needed to decide whether or not to forgive his siblings. It took longer than I thought it would. Then he stirred himself, rose, and straightened his jacket with the same kind of excessive formality I’d used many times, whenever I was in the greatest danger of falling apart. It could have gone either way, but then his stern mask trembled, and he turned toward the first sibling within reach, in this case Jelaine, who hugged him with all her strength and whispered something I failed to catch. Jason joined them less than a second later, and the three stood in silence for about thirty seconds, not resolving the differences between them but for the moment accepting them.

  I tried to make contact with Skye again and was this time rewarded with one of the most complicated looks either Porrinyard had ever given me. It was rife with empathy, and concern, and anger, and a certain unambiguous warning.

  I was just happy under the circumstances to find love in there, somewhere.

  The Bettelhines disengaged. Philip wiped moisture from the corner of one eye, and said, “Well. Counselor. I hope that’s all we need to put aside for the moment. Because I really would like to know who killed the Khaajiir now.”

  “So would I,” said Jason and Jelaine.

  I walked past them and approached Skye, who averted her eyes again. I damned the situation without quite understanding it. This wasn’t just my distrust, or my momentary brutality toward a bartender with chains on her soul; it was something else, something that might have been too profound to allow everything between us to remain unchanged.

  I spoke to her and through her to Oscin. “Love?”

  She lowered her voice. “Remember who you are.”

  “What?”

  She grabbed my hand and gave it an urgent squeeze. “It won’t be easy, given what’s facing you. But remember who you are.”

  I didn’t have even the slightest idea what she might have been talking about, but it sounded too much like a goodbye. Were the Porrinyards saying they didn’t expect to survive the next part? Or that they intended to sever their relationship with me if we got past this and had the luxury to decide where our lives went next?

  A third possibility occurred to me, one so awful that for a moment I felt what the Khaajiir might have felt as all his life drained away. Hours and a lifetime ago, Pescziuwicz had warned me about the dangers of ever pushing the Bettelhines too far. He’d cited the example of a previous Dip Corps representative, one Bard Daiken, who’d overstepped his bounds and suffered some kind of unspecified retribution. Had I thrown away whatever kind of diplomatic immunity the Bettelhines felt they owed an honored guest? Did I know too much now? Was I going to reach Xana only to be spirited away to one of their prisons, or worse, provided internal governors that would make me happy to fulfill any role they might deem appropriate for me?

  Remember who you are? Would it make a difference to me to even remember who I was if I was tucked away at some isolated Bettelhine estate and wearing a sincere but frozen smile on my face as I poured drinks for family members who needed only a few more to decide just what they wanted to do with me in the privacy of a bedroom suite?

  Remember who you are.

  If that’s what awaited me, once this business was done, I didn’t want to live to see it.

  Behind me, Philip said, “Counselor?”

 
Skye had looked away again.

  Damn this. It wasn’t as if I had any choice anymore. Sooner or later, either the air or the water or the food or the power would run out. Whatever happened to me, the Khaajiir’s murderer still stood between us and the rest of our lives.

  I took a deep breath and told Oscin, through Skye: “Bring everybody back up. It’s time.”

  17

  THE KHAAJIIR’S TESTAMENT

  B y the time the five of us left the suite and returned to the sullied magnificence of the Royal Carriage’s parlor, the others were already filing in and taking their positions around the bar. The most common denominator among them was not fear but exhaustion. They’d all been up many hours under the most stressful conditions, and the adrenaline that had kept them going in the early stages of the crisis had tapped much that might have been remaining in their reserves. Not all of them wore the pressure on their faces. But they all showed it in the resigned quality of their stride, as if gravity itself had grown more powerful in the hours since we’d all gathered around the table for a friendly meal.

  Of them all, Dejah seemed to be the one least touched by the events of the past few hours. Were our deliverance to arrive at this very moment, I would not have been surprised had she suggested a nice ten-kilometer run or perhaps a mountain climbing expedition or two. She may have been even more hyped from her own time in Intersleep as the Porrinyards and I had been, but I wasn’t willing to declare that the sole explanation. Exhaustion was just not a state in her body’s physical vocabulary, nor despair in her soul’s emotional one. Even now, I read a hidden message in the nod she gave me as she passed by on the way to claiming her seat: I’m ready.

  Dina Pearlman pierced me with her glare as she searched my face for signs of further accusation. Storming past me, she muttered something about hoping this would be over quickly.

  Her husband, Farley, looked more sweaty and bloodshot and miserable than anybody I’d seen so far. There was a shiny, fresh stain on his jacket, at chest level. Since there’d been nothing to eat or drink downstairs, I deduced that he’d been ill: not surprising, given everything he’d had to drink in the aftermath of the Khaajiir’s death.

  Monday Brown gave me a professional nod before seeking out and standing beside Philip. It was hard to miss the way his very posture, ramrod-straight at rest, grew ever more formal the closer he approached the highest-ranking Bettelhine on board. I could imagine no other man being as formidable a right hand to the great Hans. But I now understood the air of sadness I’d sensed in him. I could only wonder what kind of man he would have been, had he been allowed the opportunity to live a life ruled by his own will.

  Vernon Wethers picked a place by Philip’s other shoulder. Unlike Brown, who gained stature in the presence of his employers, Wethers diminished, becoming not so much a presence as another component of the overall atmosphere. When he saw me looking at him he just as quickly looked away. I wondered if he’d been conditioned to carry such a heavy burden of social inadequacy or if it was something he’d carried with him since childhood.

  Arturo Mendez marched to a position beside the bar, his hands linked behind his back as he waited for the proper moment to excel at his personal duty. His ridiculous uniform, complete with sash and epaulets, had not been touched by any of the foul events of the day. Given what we now knew about him, it was tempting to imagine him in his natural habitat: tanned, stripped to the waist, his skin shining from a recent plunge into turquoise ocean waters. I suspected that some part of him, behind those obliging eyes, never stopped screaming.

  Loyal Jeck chose an identical stance opposite him, his slight build and blander personality rendering him a virtual invisibility. There was nothing in his expression, nothing in his eyes, nothing in his personality suggesting anything but duty. He hadn’t said much in the hours we’d spent together. Nor had his input been missed. His brittleness, his hollowness, that gave the impression of a porcelain creature, just waiting for the moment when he’d be shattered.

  Colette Wilson may have been no longer projecting light, but she still shone, her determined cheer and helpfulness showing on her face even as she entered this room filled with grim and scowling faces. She’d touched up her makeup at some point since I’d seen her last, and twinkled at me as she walked past, no doubt still imagining an immediate future being put to recreational use. To my special horror, she went back behind the bar, as if expecting to continue serving refreshments for as long as it took me to get around to pointing my finger at the guilty party. The Porrinyards saw her try to return to work, and Oscin took a moment to divert her to a nearby couch, and a seat beside Farley Pearlman. Her pretty face showed only obedient interest. If she was screaming inside, her cries must have been even more pitiful than Arturo’s. I did not want to know.

  The party was now gathered in a semicircle, facing me. Colette Wilson and Farley Pearlman sat side by side on a couch, Dejah Shapiro and Dina Pearlman bracketing them in a pair of angled easy chairs. Arturo Mendez stood with Paakth-Doy to our left, Loyal Jeck at equal attention to the right. The Porrinyards stood a little behind me, Oscin on my left and Skye on my right. The Bettelhines and their execs remained standing five paces behind the couches bearing Colette and Farley, Jason to the far left beside Brown. After Brown came Philip and Wethers and, at the far right, Jelaine. It was impossible not to read Brown and Wethers as a pair of protective parentheses shielding Philip from the influence of his strange siblings, Jason and Jelaine.

  The easy chair still bearing the Khaajiir’s body was behind us, his slumped figure just a shape sinking deeper into his cushions as everything inside him grew emptier.

  If this was the way we’d march the rest of the way to the naming of the name, then so be it. It was not likely to go without blood.

  I met everybody’s gaze one at a time, then coughed into my fist and began.

  “I know this has been a long night. I’m sorry, but it’s going to get longer.

  “A little while ago Mr. Bettelhine and Mrs. Shapiro offered the Khaajiir’s murderer amnesty in exchange for surrender. Those offers have been withdrawn, but I’m about to make another one. We already know who you are. I’ll be saying your name in a few minutes. If you step forward now and save me the trouble of explaining how we know, I promise that you won’t be injured or killed as we take you into custody.

  “This is also a one-time only offer, and unlike the others I won’t add additional seconds at the end of my deadline in the hopes that you’ll relent.

  “You have ten seconds.”

  Nobody looked away from me. By this point, nobody expected an easy confession. I hadn’t either, but it was worth a shot.

  At the tenth second I said, “Very well. You’ve been warned.

  “This explanation leaves out certain personal information about the lives of some of the Bettelhines among us, and about certain questionable security measures taken by the corporation that have already been discussed in private with Philip, Jason, and Jelaine.

  “It also leaves out a host of questions that remain unanswered. I’ll be pointing out a few of these along the way, but you do not need to know any of this information or much of the data we gleaned from the Khaajiir’s personal records to follow the specific route that leads us to the Khaajiir’s murderer.”

  I coughed, searched the faces of the arrayed suspects for signs that anybody was anticipating me, and moved on.

  “So this is what you need to keep in mind about the crime itself.

  “The Khaajiir was murdered with a K’cenhowten Claw of God, the same kind of weapon the Bocaian assassins on Layabout had previously attempted to use on me.

  “There was, much later, an attempt on the life of Mr. Wethers, and my own, using another ancient weapon known as a Fire Snake.” A murmur of surprise rippled through the room. “I believe this to have been a distraction, intended to obscure the murderer’s true purposes, and mention it now only for the sake of thoroughness. We will put it aside for now, and focus on the use of
the Claw of God.

  “The first critical question: why use something so rare, so obscure, especially in such close proximity to a civilization based on the development of weaponry that might have provided access to any number of practical alternatives?

  “It’s certainly not for religious reasons. The sect that first designed and used the device has been extinct for some sixteen millennia. There’s no evidence that it has ever found any popularity among Bocaians. The Khaajiir’s own interest in K’cenhowten history was academic and based less on the crimes committed during their dark age than with the great achievement of the historical Khaajiirel in preventing a violent aftermath in the years that followed. Committing the murder with a Claw of God might have some symbolic value, I suppose, but who but a historian would ever care?

  “No. Killing the Khaajiir, or me, with a Claw of God has no purpose beyond sowing confusion among those who would later be obliged to investigate the crime by focusing attention on a period long past and implying a connection to the Khaajiir’s scholarly work.

  “The same is true for any other murder committed around him. This would have been doubly true if the attack on me had ended with my death. Everybody would have said, Oh well, of course, the Bocaians hate her, almost as much as they hate the Khaajiir for wanting to forgive her. Using a weapon he wrote about to kill her is just poetic justice.

  “And yet the symbolic weight of the attack on me is almost certainly a coincidence, since one of the first things we determined was that the timeline suggests a conspiracy well under way long before anybody could have known I was even heading for Xana.

  “The Bocaians needed to be recruited. The Claws of God had to be obtained. Further events establish also that the technical challenges posed by the sabotage to the Royal Carriage needed to be overcome. Same thing for seizing control of the Bettelhine security forces.