But trust Netano to find some political advantage in any situation.
“I’ve let the ambassador from the Omkem Federacy know that Excellency Hevom is welcome to stay here as long as he likes,” Netano continued, “and that my own children are looking after him. I am extremely unhappy that my guest has been murdered, and I want very much for Planetary Safety to find the person who did it. I expect every member of my household to cooperate fully and openly with Planetary Safety’s investigation of this matter. It would be very unfortunate if anything unsavory came to light in the process.”
“Yes, Mama.” Ingray knew that for a warning as well.
“The groundcar is here,” said Netano, rising, “and I can’t miss the elevator. I won’t be available for anything but the most urgent of emergencies, so you’ll have to call Nuncle Lak if anything comes up that you can’t handle on your own. Be good.” And she kissed Ingray on the cheek, as though Ingray had still been a small child.
Ingray wasn’t sure whether to be pleased at that, or to be very, very afraid.
In the morning she had a quick breakfast in her room and told the head house servant to message her if Excellency Hevom needed anything staff or Danach couldn’t handle—though she trusted Danach to be self-interested enough to be very solicitous with Hevom—and ordered the household groundcar for a trip to the district Planetary Safety offices. While she ate, she considered the advisability of letting her nuncle know what she was planning, but she was quite sure that e would forbid her to speak to anyone at Planetary Safety without eir advice or possibly even eir presence, neither of which Ingray wanted. As it was, she could take disingenuous refuge in Netano’s anything you can’t handle on your own from the night before. It wouldn’t be the first time she, or any other Aughskold, had done such a thing.
It took ten minutes for the groundcar to bring her to Planetary Safety. As she got out, it slid off to find somewhere to wait until she needed it again. Arsamol District Planetary Safety Headquarters stood on one side of a broad court, sunlit today, and paved with scuffed and time-rounded black stones, each of which was a vestige from the founding of the district. The flat black basalt vestige in Eswae had been an imitation of them, though these were smaller and much, much older. Older even than the existence of the Aughskold household, let alone the first Netano. Ingray had never thought about that before, but now, since hearing Garal—no, Pahlad—talk about how easy it was to forge at least some vestiges, it seemed she couldn’t stop thinking about them in odd ways. Why had Netano chosen a design for that vestige that would remind people of the court here in the district center? Had she known that she was doing that?
But Ingray had more important business. Before she’d left the house, she’d checked to see that Taucris was available for a meeting and had made a request to speak to her in person, and now as she entered the building a half-meter-high, four-legged, green-and-gold mech broke off from a line of identical mechs along a far wall. “Ingray Aughskold,” it chirped, reaching her. “Ingray Aughskold.”
“I’m Ingray Aughskold,” she said.
“Ingray Aughskold,” chirped the mech in reply, “I am unpiloted and can only lead you to your appointment. Stay within two meters of me until you reach your destination. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” said Ingray, who had expected something like this—the various Assembly office facilities had escort mechs nearly identical to these—and the mech toddled off, Ingray following.
Taucris actually smiled when Ingray entered her office, and she was struck by the strangeness of it. Taucris had not smiled much when Ingray had known her better. Or not the last few years before Ingray had taken her adult name, and then lost touch with her old friend. “Ingray, good morning. It’s good to see you. I would have invited you, the other evening, if I’d known you were back home.”
“Was it a nice party?” asked Ingray.
Taucris gestured Ingray to the other seat in the small office. “Not really. I didn’t want to have any sort of party, or maybe just a very small one, but Nana insisted. I didn’t think e would, I was sure e would be too embarrassed that I took so long. And embarrassed at this.” She gestured around herself, the narrow plastic desk, the two chairs, the walls, one set to show notices and announcements, one a view of the black-paved court outside, people strolling across it, or standing to talk, the occasional groundcar sliding along the court’s perimeter. “I couldn’t help but feel like everyone was snickering at me behind their hands. I actually caught Danach at it, but I pretended I didn’t notice.”
“I’m really impressed,” said Ingray, sitting, though she had to admit to herself she’d been taken aback. “Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Serious Crimes on your first day! And you already seem like you’re so good at it.”
“It’s not really my first day,” said Taucris. “You know I did all those tours with the Young Citizen Volunteers.” Taucris had always been fascinated by policing and crime. Her nother had indulged it, and everyone had assumed she’d grow out of it, or that it would stay a hobby. “And I’ve been doing internships for a couple of years. In fact …” She hesitated. “I wouldn’t have chosen yet, except I’d been doing a lot of this job for a while and the deputy chief really wanted me to actually officially have it. But as long as I wasn’t legally an adult I couldn’t. And of course Nana really wanted me to finally choose. E tried to be patient, but e really didn’t understand.” Ingray didn’t know quite what to say to that. “And I’m mostly glad I did. I wanted this job so much, and I’m glad to finally have it for certain, officially. But … you won’t laugh at me, will you?”
“No, of course not.” Ingray couldn’t imagine what there was to laugh at. Though she could think of quite a few acquaintances who would sneer at Taucris’s actually going to work for Planetary Safety like this.
“Danach would laugh at me.” Taucris hesitated a moment more, on the verge of saying something, and then finally said, “Ingray, how did you know? How did you know you were ready?”
“I don’t know,” replied Ingray, baffled at the question. “I guess it just seemed like everyone expected me to choose.”
“But I never felt like … like a grown-up,” Taucris said. “I still don’t, not really. Nana said I should just listen to myself and I would know what was right. But it never seemed right.” She sighed. “Thank you for not laughing.” And then, “I’ve always been kind of jealous of you. You just always seem to have everything so together. Danach keeps trying to knock you over, but you always just brush it off. I just wish I could … I don’t know; I wish I could be that sure of myself.”
“I wouldn’t laugh at you,” said Ingray. And meant it, but also found herself astonished at the rest of Taucris’s confidence. “And I don’t … I’m not sure I really have everything together.” Did she? She didn’t really think so. “And I don’t think I’ve ever been able to just brush Danach off.” She thought of Pahlad’s story about having met her when she was small and intervened in Danach’s trying to hurt her. Thought about how she’d gone to such lengths just to get back at Danach. “But I’m glad it seems like it. That makes me feel a little better about it.”
“You’ve always been so kind to me,” said Taucris, very seriously. “But I’m taking up your time—I assume you’re here to talk about the case.”
“Sort of,” admitted Ingray. “I have some information from our cook. E said e’d searched the kitchen and found two knives missing, not just one.”
“And there was nothing on the knife in Pahlad’s bag except eir own fingerprints,” said Taucris. “I don’t think that’s much better, though. And we’re still looking for the mech.”
Ingray thought of little Uto, bobbing up and down among the glass blocks that spilled into the river, bright pink against the blue and green. “Did you look in the river?”
“They’re looking there right now,” said Taucris. “I suppose the other knife won’t be far off, if it was the one the murderer used. And I can’t see how Pahlad cou
ld have piloted the mech—e wouldn’t have had the access and from all I can find e was never much of a mech-pilot to begin with.”
“Excellency Hevom might have access,” Ingray suggested, “and I think he and Zat had some disagreements. Though there was some kind of Omkem family thing keeping them from talking to each other directly. And he seems completely devastated by her death.”
“Omkem.” Taucris waved away the eccentricity of foreigners. “It’s the Omkem consul the deputy chief is meeting with right now. Hevom apparently contacted the ambassador sometime last night, and he sent the consul here. The consul wants us to let Hevom go home immediately. The deputy chief, of course, considers Hevom a suspect and wants him to stay until this is resolved.”
“So the deputy chief hasn’t settled on Pahlad, then?” asked Ingray.
“Oh, no, e hasn’t settled on anyone. Everyone’s still a suspect. Well, you aren’t, not really. Danach might be, if it turns out that the murderer used a Hwaean mech. But that marker spike was Zat’s, and had to have come from Uto. I doubt Danach even knew what a marker spike was, to be honest, let alone how to use it. Besides, Danach has no motive. Everyone knows he’s going to be the next Netano, so he’d only be hurting himself if he did this. So I don’t think he’s really a suspect.”
“If Excellency Zat’s Uto was involved,” Ingray pointed out, “there’s no way Pahlad could have done it, either. You know how different outsystem mechs can be—I don’t think mechs from Omkem work quite like ours. I can’t imagine many Hwaeans have the right implants.”
“No, you’re right,” Taucris admitted. “It matters whether the murderer used Uto or a Hwaean mech. If it was Uto then you and Danach and nearly every other Hwaean are cleared. But, you know, Pahlad’s situation is … complicated. E was supposed to be in Compassionate Removal, but e’s not, and we don’t know how long e hasn’t been there, or where e went in the meantime. E could have gotten any sort of modifications or implants. We’ll check for that, of course, but even if e’s cleared of Zat’s murder …”
Ingray sighed. “Yes. And that actually brings me to the thing I wanted to ask you. Do you think I could talk to em?” She wasn’t sure how that worked, visiting or talking to people Planetary Safety had detained. Well, she knew how it worked in entertainments, but real life was often different. And Pahlad’s situation was, as Taucris had said, complicated.
Taucris frowned. “Probably not—I’m supposed to turn aside any requests to talk to em, actually, but I’m fairly sure the deputy chief meant to keep any news service workers from poking around and happening onto something they shouldn’t just yet. But let me check something.” Her gaze turned inward for a few moments. “All right, the deputy chief says you can, if Pahlad will agree to talk to you, but e wants to make sure you understand that anything you say to Pahlad, or Pahlad says to you, is going to be recorded and examined.”
“All right. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
8
It turned out that talking to detainees of Planetary Safety was a lot like in entertainments. Taucris ushered Ingray to a small gray-walled room with a two-meter-long backless bench of scratched and dingy white plastic. “Have a seat,” said Taucris. “It’ll just be a few moments.”
Not long after Taucris left, the wall in front of Ingray dissolved from gray to an image of another, identical small room, except there was no bench and Pahlad stood there. E wore gray tunic and trousers, and was barefoot. “Ingray,” e said, with eir tiny barely-a-smile twitching on the corners of eir mouth. “I don’t think you should be here.”
She stood—it felt wrong to sit there while e had no way to sit emself. “I probably shouldn’t.” She had thought about it all night, and all during breakfast. She knew that she should distance herself from Pahlad as quickly as she could. For just a moment she felt that dismaying feeling that she was about to fall. “But I couldn’t just leave you here. Especially when I realized I owed you for stepping on Danach’s foot that one time.”
E smiled—a real smile this time, though still a small one. “I’m fine. I have a room all to myself and they feed me regularly. Nothing like the food at your mother’s house, but still. There’s no need to worry about me.”
“The prolocutor is coming,” said Ingray.
Pahlad seemed entirely unsurprised at that. Though, Ingray realized, e never had been very easy to read. “Yes, of course he is.”
He. There was no reason to assume that Ingray had meant Pahlad’s father, and not eir sister. Unless e already knew. “Did they tell you?”
“No. But I knew he would come, as soon as he heard I was here. I knew he wouldn’t send my sister. He’s going to come here as soon as he arrives and demand to speak to me.”
Ingray wanted to ask why, and then reconsidered. The Budrakim family hadn’t been like the Aughskolds. So far as Ingray knew, there had never been any doubt that Ethiat Budrakim was going to give his name to his eldest biological child, had brought her up himself, rather than fostering her out, and trained her accordingly. Any other of the Budrakim children had known from the start that their futures would be different, and presumably their places in the house didn’t depend on how well they did in some competition for his approval. Maybe he had come straight here despite how it would look to the public because after all, no matter what e might have done, Pahlad was his child.
But then, the prolocutor had done nothing to prevent Pahlad’s being sent to Compassionate Removal, when he almost certainly might have. And she remembered Pahlad telling her she should take Captain Uisine’s advice to get as far away from her own family as she could. Maybe that was based only on knowing something about Danach, and having spent an evening in Netano’s house. But maybe not.
“Will you agree to meet him when he comes?” she asked. Wondered a moment if Pahlad would be allowed to refuse. “Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be fine until they send me back to Compassionate Removal,” Pahlad said. “Ingray, you’ve already done so much to help me. More than you really should have. I still don’t think you should be here. But since you are, will you do some things for me?” And just as Ingray was opening her mouth to answer, e added, “Don’t say yes until you’ve heard what they are.”
“All right, then, I won’t.”
The corners of eir mouth twitched into that barely perceptible smile, and then it was gone again. “Would you get my things? I know you probably can’t get the knife back. Please tell your cook I’m sorry about that. But the bag, and the other things in it. There are probably fewer nutrient bars in it than you remember. If you could put a few more in I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll try,” said Ingray. “Do you just want me to keep it?” She almost said keep it until you get out but of course it wasn’t very likely Pahlad would get out, except to go back to Compassionate Removal. Pahlad’s situation, abstract to Ingray except where it might cause herself problems, suddenly seemed all too real. What was going to happen to em? Ingray’s troubles with her brother, her potential trouble with her mother, maybe even the difficulties she would have if anyone discovered her role in bringing Pahlad here, it was all nothing compared to the situation Pahlad was in.
“Yes,” e said. “Just keep it.” Serious and straightforward. “That’s the easy one, actually. Would you also be here when my … when Ethiat Budrakim talks to me? I don’t want to talk to him alone. Ever. I know I technically never am alone, here. But I don’t just want Planetary Safety here. I won’t blame you for saying no. You probably should say no. It would probably be much safer for you.”
But not safer for Pahlad, for some reason Ingray didn’t understand. She wasn’t sure how her presence could make any difference at all. She thought of Pahlad lying to her so smoothly about who e was—and wasn’t—back at Tyr Siilas. “Was it so bad, in Compassionate Removal?” she asked. “I thought the whole point was people could live there and just be away from everyone else.”
E hesitated before e answered, and took a breath. As though thinking
very carefully about what e wanted to say. “It might be all right if there were enough food for everyone. There’s supposed to be. We’re supposed to be able to grow our own food, but there are only certain places in Compassionate Removal where you can do that, and people have already laid claim to most of it. If you can get in with some of them, if they’re people you can trust at all, you might be all right, but that’s not easy to do. And growing all your food, without mechs, that’s an awful lot of work. If your timing is right and you’ve got control of one of the places where the occasional supply drops arrive, you can keep everything for yourself and your allies.”
Ingray didn’t know what to say to that.
“There was a small war, after the last supply drop,” Pahlad continued, into her silence. “Even people who’d scratched out their own living and weren’t bothering anyone else wanted those medical supplies. I know no one out here really cares. After all, it’s Compassionate Removal. It’s only what the people there deserve.” Ingray suspected eir words were bitter and sarcastic, but there was no trace of it in eir voice. “I really don’t want to talk about it. If I thought you had any chance of being Netano, I would say more. But I don’t think you do. No offense. It’s better for you if you don’t. If my sister were coming instead of … she might have some chance of doing something about it. If you see her, will you tell her?”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll tell her. And I’ll be here if you want me to, when the prolocutor comes.”
“Thank you.” Eir face was blankly serious.
At home, Ingray did not stop to do anything, not even put down Pahlad’s bag that now hung from her shoulder, but went straight into the reception room. Today the blocks of ruin glass glowed a bright green and blue, and the mossy gray stones, the trees and flowers through the broad wall of windows were lit by the sun. The consul for the Omkem Federacy sat with her back to the courtyard, and Danach next to her, speaking, midsentence. “Consul,” Ingray said before Danach could finish, let alone protest her interruption. “I’m Ingray Aughskold. It appears we missed each other at Planetary Safety. I went there myself first thing this morning to try to speak to the deputy chief, but you were already with em. I went to take care of some other business, and when I came back, you had gone. I must have just missed you.”