Jani caught Niall’s eye as he clenched his fists and arched her brow. Calm down, Colonel. Wuntoi was making a show of putting her in her place, but buried between his lines lay a certain inevitable conclusion. He didn’t have to come here. He could have ignored her invitation-that-wasn’t. Left her with a hatchery’s worth of egg on her face, surrounded by idomeni who would wait and wait until they finally realized that ní Tsecha’s toxin had provided them nothing worth waiting for. You don’t want to accede to the dictates of Temple, Aden nìRau Wuntoi. You don’t want to slaughter the Vynshà. All she had to do was provide him a way out that allowed him to fend off his propitiators, and she’d have an ally for life.
All she had to do…
“I know, and truly, why you wish to speak with me.” Wuntoi shot the cuffs of his overrobe. “Temple has dictated that which they wish me to do. The sin of Morden nìRau Cèel is too great to be set aside. It must be shared by all Vynshà. As they all partake of the shame, so must they all pay the cost of it.” He pointed to Jani. “You comprehend such. You, who helped damn the Laum.”
Jani nodded, struggled to ignore the ache in her chest. “I will never forget the Night of the Blade.” The escape from the consulate hospital basement, the dash through the streets to the shuttleport, and the realization that something horrible was unfolding before her eyes. “Ní Dathim Naré fought for Morden nìRau Cèel then. He was one of the Haárin who came down from the hills and rendered the justice of the gods upon the Laum.”
Hearing his name, Dathim turned to them, raising a hand in greeting and baring his teeth.
Jani ignored him. “Thinking back, I wonder at the decision. The vast majority of the Laumrau had no knowledge of their dominants’ collusion with humanish, or of that which occurred at Knevçet Shèràa.” She inhaled, smelled heavy bay air and imagined it light and hot and desert dry. “Do I believe that a laborer here in Rauta Shèràa shared the guilt of the dominants who planned, the warriors who surrounded the hospital and would have killed me and my suborns if I had not killed them first?” She shook her head. “I do not. I argued of this with ní Tsecha, as I argued with him of many things. When he died, he had repudiated the concept of Wholeness of Soul, a tenet of major idomeni faiths. I have no doubt that if he had lived, he would have repudiated the slaughter of the Laum as well.”
“You have no doubt.” Wuntoi rocked his head back and forth, the panspecies sez you gesture. “But you do not know.”
Jani pointed to the crowd seated on the lawn outside. “They are here because of their esteem for him. Because even though he is dead, they believe that he can deliver them. That his wisdom will find voice here, and change minds.” She sat back, ignoring the flutter in her chest. “Forget that there are also Sìah out there, and Oà, who supported Pathenrau in their ascension. Forget that there are also Pathenrau, who see fit to disagree with the decisions of their dominants.” She breathed in, breathed out. A glorious thing and truly, to breathe. “The Vynshà who are out there now did not wish to see ní Tsecha dead, and they should not be made to pay for the crimes of those who did.”
Wuntoi remained silent. His slouch had straightened somewhat. He didn’t seem quite as angry as he had when he’d arrived. Maybe she was getting through. Maybe…
“Prime Minister Li Cao and her suborns are content to allow idomeni to decide this matter.” Wuntoi folded his arms, and looked for all the world like a negative image of Evgeny Scriabin. “Why do you butt in?”
Jani glanced at Scriabin, who seemed fixated on the state of his fingernails. “It is in Li Cao’s interest to trade with the worldskein. It is in Li Cao’s interest to encourage worldskein support for the Outer Circle colonies, so that she can hold back her own material support and expend it in other ways.” She felt Scriabin’s stare burn a hole in her cheek, and ignored it. “It is not necessarily in Li Cao’s interest for the worldskein to be united and strong, and a worldskein that has just slaughtered millions of its own and lost tens if not hundreds of thousands more in the resulting rebellion against this slaughter, is not united. It is not strong.”
Wuntoi fixed his bronze glare on Scriabin, whose face had reddened to sunstroke levels. “Humanish do not care. If they have nice tilework, and trueleather, and Sìah metal sculpture, they will not care about the history of those who produce such.”
“Maybe.” Jani gestured to Schiff, who paled and swallowed hard, but managed not to faint. “Yet they will record. They will transmit. They will remember.” She bared her teeth. “Now, when most humanish think of idomeni, they think of ní Tsecha, who looked them in the eye when he spoke with them, and made them laugh, and behaved in ways they understood. If the slaughter goes ahead as planned, ní Tsecha will be forgotten, and when humanish think of idomeni, they will think of blood in the streets and the hacked bodies of youngish, and Rauta Shèràa will come to mean anathema. Humanish will move on, together with hybrid and Haárin, and bornsect will be left behind to fester in a pit of your own making.”
“You say this to me?” Wuntoi waved his finger under Jani’s nose. “You are sitting there in clothes that are stiff with the blood of those you killed.”
“Vengeance. Self-defense.” Jani once again pointed to the crowds on the lawn. “Slaughter.” She shrugged, lowering her arms slowly as her sightline darkened. “It’s a fine line, granted, and not always logical. But you cross it, and humanish will be a long time forgetting.” She sensed Niall next to her, staring straight ahead, temper at the boil. Sorry, Niall. If a stronger worldskein made his job harder, it wasn’t her problem. She was not of the Commonwealth anymore.
Wuntoi pushed a handful of braided fringe behind an ear ringed with gold studs. “And your solution to the Vynshà problem is?”
“They were his. Now they’re mine.” Jani held out her hands to the crowd. “Give them to me. Declare them Haárin, as a sign of your ascension. Declare them what you will. But give Tsecha’s people to one who was also of Tsecha, and release them.”
Silence fell, so profound that Jani could hear the breeze rustle the awning flaps. Then Scriabin cleared his throat. “That’s fifteen million bornsect and over three million Haárin.”
Jani shrugged. “He doesn’t want them.” She twitched a thumb at Wuntoi. “He would kill them. I am of Tsecha, as they are.” She bared her teeth again. “I have died several times, and they are as dead. The dead leading the dead. It makes perfect sense.”
Wuntoi regarded her with narrowed eyes. “They would need to leave this place and go to another.”
Jani nodded. “And they will need places in which to live, and work to do and food to eat when they get to wherever they’re going. The transit systems of two civilizations should be able to handle the load. We have experts to work out the logistics. We have builders and food experts. It will not be an instantaneous transition—it may take years. But it can be done.”
Wuntoi cocked his head, as though considering. “You, as the dominant of a small enclave of most strange hybrids, are empowered to negotiate this agreement?”
“As dominant of Thalassa, I am acknowledged to be a Head of State by the Outer Circle colonies.” She nodded toward Scriabin, who groaned softly. “If you doubt, propose such to Feyó, who will see her Outer Circle enclaves quintuple in size. Propose it to your suborns, who will eliminate Vynshà from their lives without blood. Propose it to Temple, and hear their screams—” That drew the equivalent of a nasty grin from Wuntoi. “—and if it serves, they will negotiate it, and come to the same conclusions, and you will have the diplomatic imprimatur you seek.”
Wuntoi sat quietly. Then he looked up at Jani and bared his teeth. “To hear the screams of Temple would be a good thing, and truly.” He stood. His shoulders held no curve.
Jani worked to her feet a little more slowly. Val’s cardiopack had done something. The weight on her chest had lessened, and she felt tired rather than weak. “Humanish say that if a decision does not anger someone, it’s the wrong decision.”
“Do we really say that?” Nial
l managed to keep most of the sarcasm out of his voice.
“It is a good thing to say.” Wuntoi seemed a different male than the one who had entered the enclosure a quarter hour before. His eyes had brightened. His voice sounded higher as the anger leached away. “I look forward to using it often, and truly.” He nodded once to Jani, then walked out of the enclosure as the idomeni scrambled to their feet and parted for him once more.
Scriabin pressed a hand to the back of his neck. “Li Cao is going to have a stroke when we tell her this. She won’t allow it.”
“Then delay the final treaty signings, and make damn sure you win the next election.” Jani patted his shoulder on the way out of the enclosure. “It’s the best solution.”
Scriabin followed after her. “It tips the population balance of the Outer Circle toward idomeni.”
“If it’s a good place, more humanish will come.” Jani felt a looseness across her upper back, which was the only indication of how much it had ached previously. “What other decision could there be?” She started down the incline toward the double-length, where Val stood waiting.
“You know, I think I’ve figured it out.”
Jani stopped and turned to find Niall standing at the top of the rise, lit ’stick in hand.
“On the first day of Creation, a Kilian cried out, ‘It’s dark in here—someone take care of it!’ And then there was light.” He doffed his lid and flipped it up in the air. “It’s the only possible explanation!”
CHAPTER 34
Val’s medical magic held. By the time Jani arrived at the embassy to see what diplomatic pitfalls and pushbacks awaited, it had once more donned its party finery. The mood seemed more subdued, however, as technical types in ill-fitting daysuits and uniforms bearing the white trouser stripes of the Sideline Service sat around tables with handhelds and trackboards and shook their heads in between trips to the open bar.
Mako met her at the opening to the garden, drink in hand. Whiskey, by the look of it, with no ice worth noting. “You realize you’ve set in motion a nightmare that will cause the logistics experts of two systems to awake screaming in the night for years to come?”
Jani shrugged. “It’s good to spread the nightmares around.”
“Hmm.” Mako sipped his drink, then stared into his glass. “For someone who’s just upended two governments and increased her own power and influence exponentially, you don’t seem very happy.”
Jani walked with him to an empty table near the stone wall. “It was his dream, this blending together. And he didn’t live to see it.”
Mako studied her for a time, then moved on to the sweeping tree branches that brushed to the ground. “I got to know ní Tsecha a little before he left Chicago. Niall always called him ‘that wily old bird.’” He sat down and pondered his drink. “You reach a certain level in government, in the Service, you assume that…some might prefer if you did not exist. You don’t dwell on it—you’d go mad if you did. It just crosses your mind occasionally that the day you’re currently living might be your last.”
Jani didn’t say anything, even as the thought that she had earned membership in a very select club settled in her stomach to lie there and burn.
“He expected it, I think. The attempt, at least. No one could have written what he did, made the enemies he made, and not expected to have someone endeavor to extract the ultimate price.” Mako rubbed the edge of the table with one thick finger. His hand was a battering ram, broad and brown and heavy-knuckled, the hand of a man who could handle any opponent face-to-face. Which was why he now concerned himself with the opponent that had been schooled in the use of sight mechs and long-ranges and explosives.
“He prepared as well as he could have, I think.” Mako’s voice grew tempered. “Feyó is sound. Not as much of a risk taker as she used to be, but she has managed to bring the conservatives to her side without losing the firebrands like Dathim and Meva, and that says something. There were those he influenced, the common idomeni, Haárin and bornsect both. The humans like Scriabin, who admired him.” He looked out over the garden. “And then, in case all that failed, he had his second knife.” He glanced up at Jani, then rose and headed for a table beneath the trees, where Cal Burkett had already opened the second bottle.
Jani sat in the chair Mako had vacated and watched the party. She had cleaned up with Val’s aid, and changed into a dark blue wrapshirt and trousers that hid all her medical attachments and helped her blend in with the shadows. She gestured to a passing waiter and ordered iced water with bitter lemon. Sat back, and breathed, and closed her eyes.
“He told me, ‘Meva, if anything happens to me, you must take her there.’”
Jani’s eyes snapped open. Her heart skipped. “Dammit, Meva.”
The female bared her teeth. She stood in front of the table, still dressed in her propitiator’s overrobe, the object of stares from every part of the garden. “‘You must take her to Shèrá,’” she continued as she sat across the table from Jani, “‘because if anything ever happens to me, it will be from Shèrá.’” She picked up the tiny coffee service and poked through the sweetener packets, occasionally holding one up to the sun to examine it more closely. “‘You must allow her to do that which she does, even if such maddens you. Even if such drives you to challenge her yourself.’” She set down the service with a clatter. “And I wished to, most certainly. When you accused Haárin of his death, I wanted to meet you at Guernsey and fight you in the middle of the concourse.”
“I didn’t accuse the Haárin…” Jani waved a hand, let it go, surrendered to the futility of trying to explain reality to those who preferred their altered truth. “I don’t know how you talked Feyó into going along after she found out.”
“I persuaded her.”
“You bullied her. You’re a bully, Meva.”
“Pot. Kettle. Black.” Meva bared her teeth. Sat back, hands folded in her lap, and watched the party, which gradually returned to its previous volume and activity levels once everyone adjusted to the propitiator in their midst.
Then the waiter arrived with Jani’s bitter lemon. He set it down, then looked at Meva.
“That.” She pointed to Jani’s drink. “Galas thinks much of it,” she added, as the young man headed back to the bar, aplomb itself but for the occasional backward glance.
Jani waited until he returned with Meva’s drink. Waited longer, until the music and dancing started and she knew no one else could hear. “Dathim told me what you said to Tsecha about me.” She breathed in until her chest ached. “You’re right. I’m not a priest.”
Meva nodded, eventually. Poked at the ice cubes with her straw. “This, I know. So did Tsecha, in the end. He saw that you did not study. He knew that you did not believe.” She paused to sip. “But then he realized that which you were. You are the bringer of pain and change.” She held out her glass to Jani. “Do that which you do. Leave the gods to me.”
Jani hesitated. Then the token dropped, and she clinked her glass against Meva’s, took a sip to seal the toast. “I think I saw him. After Cèel stabbed me. He was standing outside the circle. I heard him say, ‘Nìa.’ And he bared his teeth.”
“He reminds you. His soul waits for release.” The first hint of shadow crossed Meva’s face, and she grew more subdued. “He asks you to do so.”
“I thought you would do that.”
“He would wish you to do so, I think.”
“At Temple?” Jani shook her head. “Temple tried to push Wuntoi into slaughtering the Vynshà. It doesn’t seem the right place.” She paused, raked through all the Vynshà theology that she’d struggled to remember and now tumbled about her brain as though it had always been there. As though she had always known it. “Can I ask you…?” She spread out a napkin and asked the waiter for a stylus, and talked while Meva listened. Until the music ramped up and the laughter and talking grew louder. Until Meva tucked the napkin into her overrobe, said that she needed to speak to those at Temple whom she trusted, and left.<
br />
Val came eventually, with John in tow, but the undercurrent of tension made conversation too painful to pursue. Lucien missed out due to the fact that this time he actually had pulled desk officer duty. No one mentioned Anais or regretted her absence.
As night fell, Jani pleaded fatigue and left, but instead of retiring to her suite, she departed the embassy and headed for the base. Stopped at the gate, asked if Colonel Pierce was on site, and received the surprising news that she had been cleared. That she was expected. That she would know where he was.
She found Niall sitting on a bench that had been set in a patch of lawn next to an office annex. The bench fell under the building’s shadow and the lighting was poor. She would have walked past the spot if she hadn’t seen the telltale pinpoint glow, stark as the reflection off a predator’s eye.
“It actually does cool off at night.” She sat near the end of the bench, an arm’s length away. Close enough, but not too. “I remembered that it did, but then I wondered if it was just memory playing tricks.” She quieted, let the silence settle. Her job wasn’t to talk, but to sit, wait, listen. To be there.
“Haven’t had time to think about this much over the past few days. Every time I turned around, you were getting yourself killed or pulling some diplomatic rabbit out of a hat. I suppose I should thank you for the distraction.” Niall took a last pull on his ’stick, then rolled the gold-striped cylinder between his fingers. “It happened over there.” He pointed to a place about twenty meters distant, the current resting place for a cluster of skimmer charge-stations. “Those stations weren’t there, of course. Nothing was. Just a piece of open land in between the buildings.” He sniffed. His face was in shadow, and maybe it was a good thing. “I wonder if anyone knows what happened there? Someone. One of the old-timers.”
Jani looked toward the spot and imagined a night twenty years before. The darkness shattered by bombs and artillery. The shouts. The panic. And in the middle of it all, a twenty-one-year-old sergeant, sent to perform a very special task. “How do you feel?”
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