Endgame

by Kristine Smith

  She looks like she got caught in a wind tunnel. Jani stood against the near wall, arms folded. Imagined finding Meva trapped in such a device and hitting the activation pad herself. “I didn’t want to attract attention.” She ignored Ulanova’s mutter.

  “You are a priest, priest. We are that which we are. To hide such is not even anathema. It is simply stupid.” Meva sat back and fixed her attention on Scriabin, who had abandoned the seat next to his aunt for a chair next to Niall’s desk. “As for my petition, why should I withdraw it? I wish to speak with Rilas. If I cannot do so, a bornsect dominant may do so in my stead. Aden nìRau Wuntoi proved most agreeable to my request, and truly.”

  “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” Scriabin picked his nails, which over the intervening hours had crossed the border from neat to ragged edged. “It’s in his interest to keep Cèel off balance.”

  “It is in all our interests to keep Cèel off balance, and truly, Minister.”

  “Yes, but at the same time, ná Meva, it is still taken for granted that a human assassinated ní Tsecha. If Rilas vanishes, never to be found, humans lose their last best chance to prove that one of theirs did not commit that crime.” Scriabin’s face darkened, as though the conversation dredged up images of that day. As though they replayed in his mind. As though he wanted them to stop and knew they never would. “No one will know the truth.”

  Meva’s expression softened, a little. She sat up straighter, her voice lightening. “The gods know, Minister.”

  Jani read the answer to that in Scriabin’s eyes. Your gods aren’t our gods, Meva. They didn’t affect elections. Didn’t quell colonial unrest, or allay the suspicions of Haárin who had lost docks and goods and ships to bombings, followed by their dearest priest.

  Then there’s the Capria. Meva’s gods didn’t affect a damned thing where that was concerned.

  “Tomorrow, much will be decided.” Meva bared her teeth. “Kièrshia will confront Cèel with Tsecha’s assassination. She may demand of him then that we be allowed to question Rilas.”

  Jani fielded the expressions of alarm that focused on her. “That is why I came along, remember? To officially inform Cèel that Tsecha had been assassinated.”

  “That was when we felt no doubt whatsoever that a humanish had committed the crime.” Scriabin picked his nails with renewed vigor. “Now we have doubt, and given our delicate position here, we’re not really in the position where we can accuse our host of planning the murder of his most vocal critic.”

  “Why not?” Meva didn’t raise her right hand to chest height and curve it, but let her voice carry the question. “Off balance was the term you used, Minister. To keep Cèel off balance is the only way to drive forward that which is to be.”

  Scriabin and Niall glanced at one another, a library’s worth of enclave evacuation plans transferred in one look, their likely failure in the next. “I think that tomorrow,” Scriabin said, eyes still on Niall, “we make our appearance. We swallow whatever insults, whatever threats, Cèel flings at us. And we bide our time, and continue the search for nìaRauta Rilas, for any evidence that Cèel planned Tsecha’s assassination. When we have the facts, then, and only then, do we move.” He finally looked at Meva. “Do I have your pledge, ná Meva, that you will not do anything to escalate the tensions between Cèel and the Commonwealth?”

  Everyone held their breath as Meva sat silent, meeting Scriabin’s concern with a bland gaze and an air that Jani remembered all too well.

  I could talk to Tsecha until I couldn’t talk anymore. And he would still do what he planned, because he was right and she was wrong and any discussion of the matter was simply an irritating way to pass time. I told him that his treatises would anger Cèel. The signal time in her life when she would have enjoyed being wrong.

  “I will do nothing to irritate Cèel, Minister,” Meva said finally.

  Niall nodded. Scriabin closed his eyes. Even Ulanova reacted, her shoulders sagging as though tension seeped away.

  Then Jani looked to the back of the room, where Lucien sat. Once more in the shadow. Once more, apparently forgotten. He stared back, eyes narrowed, bullshit detector cranked up to the most sensitive setting. Perhaps they believe her, the look seemed to say. I sure as hell don’t.

  Meva stood. “Now that you have forced pledges from me, I must return to the enclave. Early evening sacrament approaches, and I believe and truly that there might be cake.” She ignored the assorted farewells and thank-yous, her eyes meeting Jani’s as she turned and walked to the door.

  “I’ll walk you to your skimmer, ná Meva.” Jani pushed off the wall and followed after her. “So you can yell at me some more.”

  “I can never yell at you enough, ná Kièrshia.” Meva waited in the doorway for Jani to catch her up, and together they walked down the embassy corridor to the entry.

  “You lied to Scriabin.” Jani lowered her voice as one of the guards emerged from her office to open the door for them.

  “I told him that which I will do, which is nothing.” Meva shrugged. “You will do that which you will do. Whether it is that which we discussed in Thalassa, or something else which I do not know, you will do it.”

  As they approached Meva’s skimmer, the driver-side gullwing swept up and Dathim emerged. “Did you yell at her for forgetting her overrobe, Meva?”

  “Yes, Dathim. But I do not know, and truly, whether it mattered. Whether it had any effect.” Meva stood aside while Dathim raised her door, then pushed away his hand as he attempted to help her into the cabin. “Tomorrow, Kièrshia.”

  “Tomorrow,” Dathim echoed as he slammed the door, then circled the vehicle and inserted his formidable frame into the driver’s cockpit.

  “Enjoy your cake.” Jani raised a hand in farewell, and received a flicker of hazard lights in reply. Turned, and found Niall standing at the top of the steps, watching her.

  “Well, that was interesting.” He sat on the top step and dug out his ’sticks. “Think Scriabin made any inroads?”

  “She said she wouldn’t do anything to upset Cèel. I think we’re stuck with taking her at her word.” Jani sat down beside him. Dusk was just beginning to fall, the undersides of the clouds purpling and the sky fading. Rauta Shèràa sunsets. She’d enjoyed them at one time, when they didn’t carry with them the promise of worse days ahead.

  “How are you doing?” Niall leaned back on his elbows, ’stick dangling from his lips, releasing puffs of smoke with each word.

  I have never felt more lost, more helpless. More restless. I have never come closer to regretting my life. Jani whittled the words down to a shrug. “I was about to ask you the same question.”

  Niall sat up straight and wiped off the elbows of his tunic. “Have you been to the base?” He waited until she shook her head. “It’s completely different in appearance—new buildings, new skimtrack layout. But the square meterage is the same, so if you remember where things used to be, you can still…figure out where…” He pinched the end of the ’stick, then broke it in half. “There’s a certain area I avoid, let’s put it that way. Otherwise, it’s all just bunky.” He flipped the halves one by one into a nearby planter. “You?”

  “I haven’t tried to sleep yet.” Jani watched a trio of swallowlike birds flit silently across the skimway and vanish into the trees. “I feel as though it all happened yesterday, that I’ve only been gone a moment.” She savored the weaker warmth of late afternoon sun. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Pretty standard with you, isn’t it, gel?” Niall tried to grin and failed. “We’re as ready as we can be. Now all we can do is wait. Always the fun part.”

  “Yeah.” Jani stood, swept grit from the seat of her trousers. “You going to the reception?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.” Niall stood, stretched. “Probably be the last party we have around here for a while.”

  Rilas tried to sleep, but the words of Ansu’s suborn returned, again and again—

  And then she proceeded t
hrough the concourse, nìaRauta, after ní Tsecha’s reliquary…and so many waited for her…and she spoke by the river of ní Tsecha…and the Haárin listened, and laughed…

  —and again and again.

  It seemed as though she had spent an entire season in this room, in this bed, but when she stopped to count the number of sacraments, the times Ansu had visited, she realized that only two sun cycles had passed. They have drugged me. She suspected such after the first cycle had passed, when she slept longer than she ever had. Until after sunrise the next day, which was something she never did.

  They will keep me here until the humanish leave. Even though she would have pledged to nìRau Cèel to remain silent, to leave Rauta Shèràa, to travel to the islands of the Dahoumn and remain there until she grew most old.

  I came to you freely.

  But such did not seem to matter to nìRau Cèel, because the anathema was here, and the Haárin followed her, and listened when she spoke of the outcast Tsecha.

  Rilas opened her eyes to find Ansu standing over her.

  “You are awake, nìaRauta?” The physician-priest stepped back from the bed and crossed an arm over her chest in alarm.

  “You are surprised at such, Ansu?” Rilas sensed the female’s dismay at such casual address. “You are most as your most esteemed patient, Ansu. You greatly prefer the formalities.”

  “Such are godly behaviors, Imea nìaRauta Rilas.” Ansu stressed the full form of Rilas’s name as a form of scolding. “We should all strive to follow such at all times.” She lowered the rail on one side of the bed just as the door opened and a suborn entered pushing a skimchair. “Now, we shall go outside for a short while, because it is a godly day, and truly.” Ansu took Rilas by the arm and pulled her until she sat up. “The warmth will enliven you.”

  The withholding of your drugs would enliven me. Rilas tasted the unseemly sourness that spread over her tongue and wondered what Ansu had given her. Not soma, for she did not feel ill in the pit of her soul. Instead there was exhaustion, and the inability to concentrate, and a weakness in her limbs. She tried to sit up, to move onto the chair as Ansu bade. But her knees buckled and her heart fluttered and even the suborn wondered at her growing weakness as he pushed her chair onto the veranda, and the clear sky, and the godly sun.

  “You shall drink this, nìaRauta Rilas.” Ansu poured liquid from a flask she carried into a small cup. “It is a Sìah concoction which will enliven you, and truly.”

  “Thanks to the gods for such, nìaRauta Ansu.” Rilas watched as Ansu’s shoulders lost their slight curve of displeasure, and knew what she had to do from this point on. Speak as one who would cooperate, even as she behaved as she had to in order to regain her strength and save her life.

  Rilas held the cup to her lips, allowed the barest touch of pale brown liquid to skin. Then she waited until Ansu had turned her back and tipped the cup, spilling the liquid to the ground.

  CHAPTER 29

  Mako tipped the last of the wine into his glass, then crooked his finger at the steward, who removed the empty bottle and set another, already opened, in its place. No decanting. No sniffing or pondering the bouquet or the origin of the grapes. The first order of the evening was to get just drunk enough, and Hiroshi Mako was already halfway to goal.

  Guests sat at a scattering of tables that had been set out in the garden. John and Val arrived together, but adjourned to opposite sides, Val sitting with Ulanova and her coterie and John opting for the Service table at which Niall, Burkett, and Mako held court. Lucien, who had been sitting there, rose as soon as John sat down, and walked from table to table, chatting and cracking socially acceptable jokes while looking for a place to land.

  Jani watched it all shake out from her suite window. Wished she had the option of a good drunk. A night with Lucien in an actual bed. A chance to forget. The tension permeated the air like the scent of the bay, infiltrated her every thought. What do you expect me to do, Meva? What could she do to make things better? How could she keep from making things worse? And Meva’s not helping. “Do that which you do.” Which was what, exactly? Breathe? Yell? Shoot someone?

  Jani watched the dinner seating settle out. Watched Mako empty the latest bottle into John’s glass, then call for another.

  Offered a prayer to Ganesh, checked herself one last time in the mirror, and headed downstairs.

  “Jani, get over here!”

  Jani abandoned the tiny two-chair table in a darkened corner near the stone wall and braved the walk through the gantlet to join an old friend beneath the trees.

  “It’s so good to see you!” Brigadier General Frances Hals threw her arms around her and hugged her hard enough to hurt, then pushed her down into the chair next to her. “Cal Burkett has locked me and my staff in the embassy basement for the duration. We’re prepping paper for treaties and agreements, and hoping like hell that some of them get signed.” She was a short, compact woman of middle years, dark of hair and medium complected, a New Indiesian who had worked her way up the documents ranks to become Service Diplomatic’s strong right hand.

  “He didn’t tell me you were here.” Jani pointed to the star adorning the collar of the woman’s white tunic. “About time.”

  Frances touched the designator and her face lit. “Thanks.” Then her expression clouded. “I’m surprised that poor man can still remember his name, truth be told. This place is a pressure cooker.” She looked to her other dinner partner, and some of the animation returned. “Captain Pascal was giving me his eyewitness account of what happened at the riverwalk. My God.”

  Guess you finally found a place to land. Jani shot Lucien a shut up look, which he fielded with an arched brow and a Who, me? shrug. “It was an experience.” She gave the wine bottle a last look of longing before taking a lemon wedge from the appetizer tray and squeezing it into her iced water, and was trying to think of something innocuous to talk about when a blocky shadow fell across their table.

  “Is there room for another?” Scriabin sat before anyone could reply. “To spend one meal not discussing politics would seem like a month’s vacation at this point, wouldn’t it?” The ground rules thus set, he proceeded to hold forth on everything from wine to olives to the best places in Chicago to buy blintzes and handmade shirts, with occasional interjections from Lucien and encouraging noises from Frances.

  Wait staff served and cleared, served and cleared. A salad. Soup. Some sort of fish. All struck Jani’s hybrid palate as bland in the extreme, but she ate because she had to and because the company was good and she could feel herself relax even as the night wore on and the next day drew nearer.

  Then someone suggested music, and someone else rolled out a synth box, and soon the strains of some band or other sounded. Then Val took over, pushing tables out of the way and pulling a feebly protesting Ulanova onto the floor. A few more couples followed. Word spread, and soon people wandered over from the base and the working part of the embassy, drawn by the open bar and the music and the chance to let off steam that had been building for months.

  “Ma’am?” Lucien stood and offered Frances his best recruiting poster smile. “Care to take a turn?”

  Frances drank him in, her eyes alight with the effects of the wine and appreciation of blinding male beauty. “Don’t ever tell my husband,” she whispered to Jani as she took Lucien’s hand and followed him onto the floor.

  Scriabin watched them for a time and shook his head. “He is an utter waste of talent and training, but I don’t know a minister in Chicago who wouldn’t kill for ten percent of his charm.” He turned back to Jani, arms folded across his barrel chest. “I know you better than you think, you know.” He sat back, crossed his legs ankle to knee. “I remember the uproar when my uncle Acton learned that his boy Evan had dropped the family standard and hooked up with a colonial girlfriend. There the dear scion was, in the alien wilds of Rauta Shèràa, ignoring all attempts at communication. Acton had already earmarked my cousin Alyssa for him, and you did not cross Acton van
Reuter once he’d made up his mind.” Grey eyes dulled. “My mother tried to play peacemaker. ‘Let the boy have his fun,’ she said. I think that deep down, she knew what Evan was, and she didn’t want him for Alyssa. Not that Alyssa was any prize, but even she didn’t deserve Evan. But mother’s efforts came to naught, to the regret of many.” He picked up a knife and speared a wedge of cheese from the dessert platter. “I’m sorry for all that happened. I would have paid a great deal for the opportunity to see you take on the old Hawk.”

  Jani looked around the garden. The noise level had ramped up, taken on an edge. Laughter had grown too shrill. There would be at least one fistfight before it ended. Affairs broken and begun. She’d attended enough parties with Evan to know the signs, had even thrown a few herself under his guidance. He lived for this. Oblivion achieved in noise and seen through the bottom of a glass. Then came Knevçet Shèràa, and that final, brutal cleaving. “I’m sorry that the eradication of the Twelfth Rover Corps and the deaths of a score of good Spacers came between you and this entertainment.”

  Scriabin stilled, knife held upright and cheese beneath his nose for an assessing sniff. Then he grinned, and bit. “See? That quality of moral anger, tossed out as an afterthought. I’d have paid much. Not sure if you would’ve won, mind. At least not in the long run. Not many did who possessed a ghost of a conscience.” He chewed thoughtfully, then speared a slice of apple and commenced the same examination he’d given the cheese. “Did you love Evan?”

  Jani looked to the Rauta Shèràa sky for respite, but the light from the party lanterns overwhelmed the stars. “Worse than that. I trusted him.”