“Nicale Tai,” said the young woman. “And I’m not crying on purpose.”
“I feel like crying, too. Maybe if we all cry hard enough, the room will flood and it will short out the mechs.” Ingray didn’t know where that had come from, the words had just appeared in her mind and come right out of her mouth. Maybe it was knowing she was so close to death. Or maybe it was knowing that Tic was trying to get here, that he might be here even now.
Nicale gave a weak, shaking hah. Wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, though the tears kept falling. “The atmosphere control would probably suck all the moisture out of the air before very much could build up. Humidity is bad for the vestiges.”
“We’ll need another plan, then,” said Ingray. Lightheaded with fear, still not sure how or why she could say any of this. “Maybe we need to cry right onto them.” The mech, gun clutched in one appendage, loomed over them. “Are you waterproof?” Ingray asked it. It said nothing. “I bet it is.”
“It would be kind of foolish to go to war with mechs that weren’t,” agreed Nicale. “You could just fight them off with buckets and hoses.”
“Oh, will you be silent,” snapped Prolocutor Dicat.
Nicale teared up again. Had Prolocutor Dicat been needling her all this time?
Prolocutor Dicat had a reputation—widely admired by eir constituents—for saying things plainly and directly, not dancing around issues, or spending much effort being diplomatic. But Ingray knew that anyone who couldn’t exercise diplomacy effectively would never have made prolocutor. “Are you very uncomfortable, Prolocutor?” Ingray asked. She looked up at the looming military mech. “What are you even thinking,” she demanded, in Yiir, “making this poor, enfeebled, elderly neman …”
“Enfeebled!” interjected Prolocutor Dicat, indignant.
“… making em sit on the floor like this, with no cushion and no back support. You could at least bring em a bench!” The mech did not respond. “Would you treat your own grandparent like this?” Still no answer.
“Young lady,” began Prolocutor Dicat, “I’ll have you know …”
“Oh, be quiet!” cried Nicale. “We’re all three of us going to die, and if you won’t be polite to us, why should we be polite to you?”
“Silence!” The Omkem commander strode toward them. Her voice must have been amplified by something in her armor, because her face was still hidden behind the dark, smooth helmet. Chenns the ethnographer followed close behind her. “You’re as bad as the children.”
“Commander Hatqueban,” Ingray said, “don’t you know the prolocutor has a bad hip?” It was true, e did. Ingray remembered it being an issue at a meeting the prolocutor had attended at the foot of the elevator a few years ago. “And a bad back, too, and e probably has pain medication e hasn’t been able to take, and you’re making em sit on the floor like this with no …”
“Silence!” The commander again, in Yiir, voice deafening. “Or you will be shot.”
Beside Ingray, Nicale hunched down, shoulders suddenly drawn inward. “Not before we open the Rejection’s case for them,” she muttered. “If they set off the alarms the doors will all close and they’ll have to cut their way out.”
Ingray looked up at the flat dark gray of the Omkem commander’s armor. Felt the dizzy freefall of terror—she herself was not a member of the First Assembly, or necessary to open anything here. The business about Zat was, as she herself had pointed out, incidental, even if for some reason it was important enough that they’d kept Netano, and agreed to trade her and the children for Ingray. And if the prolocutor was right, Commander Hatqueban had been looking for a reason to send the children away. If Ingray caused too much trouble the commander might easily decide to be rid of her by the simplest possible method. So why was Ingray taking a breath to say something? She ought to keep silent. And after all, she was just Ingray, nobody special, not beautiful or brilliant or particularly important to anyone.
No. She was Ingray Aughskold, who had freed a wrongly convicted person from inescapable Compassionate Removal. Who had, completely unarmed, faced down Danach threatening her with a huge dirt mover. She’d had some help there, but she was also a person who sometimes had help from mysterious and unnerving aliens. She might have help here now.
“This is unacceptable,” she said to the Omkem commander’s blank helmet, voice flat and disapproving. “You will bring a chair for the prolocutor. One with a back and a cushion.” Commander Hatqueban said nothing. Beside her, Excellency Chenns frowned and opened his mouth to speak. “Do not argue with me about this!” Ingray ordered, astonished with herself. Apparently all she had to do was think of the Geck ambassador and she herself would produce a passable imitation of the alien diplomat. “Bring the chair.”
“Stupid child,” said Prolocutor Dicat. Quiet and vehement. “I have been doing my best not to get us killed.”
“They’re not going to kill you,” Ingray retorted. “Not until they get whatever it is they want you for, anyway. And they might as well let you be comfortable until then.” Though she wasn’t entirely sure she believed it. And she herself had no protective usefulness. Not really.
Excellency Chenns said something too quiet for Ingray’s translation utility to catch.
“Hah!” said the commander. “Chair process you several silent.”
“The commander will have a chair brought,” said Excellency Chenns, “if you will all promise to be quiet.”
“What, even if you ask us something?” Nicale asked. Very quietly.
“I advise you not to push your luck too far,” Chenns said. “The commander is not in a mood for games.”
“You’re not going to do anything to Nicale until after you get her to open that case for you,” Ingray pointed out. “I think we all know that. Or, excuse me, excellency,” she added sweetly. “The commander won’t. You’re not a soldier and you don’t threaten people.”
Chenns only said, calmly, “The chair is on its way.” And he and the commander walked away, toward the Rejection.
After what seemed like an interminable wait, a mech came into the hall with a chair and a cushion and set them beside Prolocutor Dicat. It also dropped three bottled water rations and three paper-wrapped packages onto the ground.
“That’s our supper,” whispered Nicale. “Nutrition blocks. I can’t read the writing but I’m pretty sure they’re dust-flavored.” And then, even more quietly, “I don’t think the prolocutor can get up from the floor by eirself.”
But e could get up with Ingray and Nicale on either side, to support em. E said nothing, no word of criticism or thanks as e settled into the chair, and Ingray and Nicale sat back down on the ground and opened their nutrition blocks.
They had all three eaten, Ingray was trying very hard not to look around and try to see if Tic was anywhere nearby, and Nicale was dozing, leaning against the side of Prolocutor Dicat’s chair, when footsteps echoed in the long room—Commander Hatqueban and Chenns walking toward where they sat. Nicale startled awake. Prolocutor Dicat didn’t even look up at them as they approached, just stared ahead of emself.
“Miss Aughskold,” Chenns said, “the commander has some questions for you.”
“Commander Hatqueban,” acknowledged Ingray, feeling a somehow surprising sting of anger.
“Miss Aughskold,” said the still-armored commander, in Yiir. “Tell me the truth about the death of Excellency Zat.”
“I’ve already told Excellency Chenns,” Ingray said. She wanted to stand up, so that she didn’t feel so small and helpless, so that Commander Hatqueban and the ethnographer Chenns and the large armed mech were not looking down at her from such a height. But neither did she want to give the impression that she cared much what any of them thought. She leaned back against one leg of Prolocutor Dicat’s chair. “I was there. Garal Ket was with me the entire time.”
“Who is Garal Ket?” asked Commander Hatqueban.
“Designation Pahlad Budrakim existing,” murmured Chenns to the commander.
“Excellency Zat was in view the entire time,” Ingray continued. “There was no one on the hilltop with her, and the only mech I saw was her own Uto. You can’t miss it, it’s bright pink.”
“Utos are,” agreed Chenns. “It’s so you can see them easily.”
Ingray gave him the briefest of glances but no other acknowledgment. “I found her. Zat had been stabbed with a marker spike, one that came from Zat’s own store of them, which the Uto held. And then, after she died, she was stabbed with a knife that came from my mother’s kitchen. Planetary Safety found that knife in the Uto’s storage compartment. The Uto itself was at the bottom of the Iogh River, caught between pieces of ruin glass.”
“Pahlad Budrakim might have had that knife from your mother’s kitchen,” Commander Hatqueban pointed out. “Or you.”
“Eir name is Garal Ket now,” Ingray said, coldly. “Have you ever tried to pilot an unfamiliar mech from an entirely different system?”
A pause. “Actually, excellency, I have. But I will grant that it was not a simple proposition, nor a spur-of-the-moment thing. Still, your own military likely has methods for doing exactly that.”
“Garal was never military,” Ingray pointed out. “E’s a vestige keeper. I’m quite sure e’s never done more than the kind of mech-piloting anyone does for fun. And even if none of that were true, why use the knife? The marker spike did the job.” She felt a tiny shiver at the back of her neck that wanted to spread further but somehow didn’t. “If the goal was to falsely accuse Excellency Hevom, then the knife only muddied things. When the Uto is the murder weapon, Excellency Hevom is the first, obvious suspect. And Garal had no reason to kill Excellency Zat.” She thought of pointing out that Garal would certainly not be working for eir father. But, she realized, there was no true statement she could make that Commander Hatqueban couldn’t dismiss as deception by some means or another. And, she remembered, Chenns had said that the commander was Hevom’s cousin. She wasn’t sure how close a relationship that might imply, but Chenns had seemed to think it would mean that Hatqueban wouldn’t want to think Hevom was a murderer. That probably also meant the commander wasn’t pleased with how Zat had treated Hevom. “You probably had more reason to wish Zat dead than Garal did. In any event, this business with Excellency Zat can’t have been part of your orders when you started out. If they were you wouldn’t be asking me any of this, because you’d know it was set up.” But that wasn’t a useful direction to go. Commander Hatqueban was no naïve child, she was an experienced soldier with orders to follow, and she would surely follow them, no matter what she might privately think of those orders. “You were already on your way here, with orders to do this,” or something a lot like it anyway, “long before Zat died. So all this concern about who killed Zat and all these questions, none of it makes any sense.”
“And so you know what it is to be a soldier,” replied Commander Hatqueban. “Orders often make no sense, or not good sense. One follows them regardless, the best one can.”
The best one can. This operation had clearly not gone according to plan and Commander Hatqueban was likely trying to salvage as much of her original orders as she could.
Commander Hatqueban said into Ingray’s silence, “Tell me why the Geck are here.”
“They’re here looking for a former citizen of theirs.” Citizen couldn’t possibly be the right word. But Ingray wasn’t sure what other word would do. “Someone the Geck ambassador knows personally. She was concerned about this person’s welfare.” Maybe Tic was here, even now, watching. Waiting for some reason to act.
“You’re not speaking of Pahlad Budrakim,” said the commander. Not a question. “Or, excuse me, Garal Ket.”
Ingray frowned. And then realized that the specifics of what the ambassador had wanted had never been discussed on any of the news services. “No, not Garal. Someone else.”
“The Geck don’t leave their homeworld,” argued Commander Hatqueban. “Not unless they absolutely must. And they aren’t human, so a Geck could hardly pass unnoticed anywhere else.”
“There are humans who are associated with the Geck,” Ingray said. “They count as Geck under the treaty. The person the ambassador was looking for is one of these. Or was at one time.”
“And the Geck have claimed that Pahlad … excuse me, Garal Ket, is also one of these? Why?”
Ingray gave a small careless wave of one hand. “You’d have to ask the Geck. But it doesn’t really matter. Garal didn’t kill Excellency Zat. Believe what you want about Hevom, but it wasn’t Garal.”
“It might have been you,” suggested Commander Hatqueban. “After all, the knife came from your mother’s house, and you could easily have put it into the body when you came up the hill.”
Ingray blinked in surprise. “Now, why would I have done that?”
“No reason that makes sense,” replied Commander Hatqueban. “It would muddy the water, as you have already pointed out, but not in any way helpful to you or your mother. Or Garal Ket.”
“Who is beyond our reach now,” added Chenns.
Commander Hatqueban said nothing, only turned and strode away, back toward the case that held the Rejection of Obligations.
Chenns looked at Ingray and gave an apologetic smile. “The commander has a lot on her mind right now.”
“Does she.” Ingray was not disposed to be sympathetic.
Chenns crouched down, so that his face was more on a level with Ingray’s. “She doesn’t understand Hwaeans. Or Hwae. She’s disgusted that the parents of the children we were holding didn’t demand their release.”
“But they …” Ingray stopped.
“I know.” Chenns looked over his shoulder at the commander, and then back. “I wasn’t … sure about the wisdom of explaining who those children were. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference. The commander isn’t the sort to shoot children.” Ingray considered asking why, if that was the case, Chenns had neglected to mention just how few people would care very personally if anything happened to these particular children. “And actually, between you and me, she’s relieved to be rid of them. It’s just that she wonders why you troubled yourself over them, when no one else did and they’re no relations of yours. And it’s difficult for her to think that your mother allowing you to take her place makes any kind of sense, but Netano went with the children immediately, with no hesitation or even any sign that it might trouble her. Even though the commander agreed to the switch, she’s very suspicious of your presence here, for that reason.”
“But Mama hadn’t named her heir yet,” Ingray protested. “And it wasn’t ever going to be me anyway.” Behind her, Prolocutor Dicat snorted.
“I know,” said Chenns. How he stayed squatting the way he was, not quite all the way down, in that armor, Ingray didn’t know. Unless it was supporting him somehow. “I’ve explained, and she trusts that explanation, or you wouldn’t be here, but she doesn’t really understand it. She might understand better if I told her you were a foster-child, but she would understand better in the wrong way. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“Not really.”
He gave that apologetic smile again. “I didn’t think so. At any rate, there were good reasons for agreeing to the exchange, but the commander is still not sure it’s not some kind of trick. I’m here because I speak fluent Bantia. Translation utilities can only do so much. And when you don’t understand a language or a culture very well, it’s easy to make simple mistakes that undermine what you’re trying to do. That much the commander does understand. She also understands just how unlikely it is that the Geck have come into this system at all, let alone at this particular moment. Add their interest in … in Garal Ket, and it becomes perhaps a bit too much to accept as mere coincidence.”
“It is a coincidence,” Ingray insisted. “Coincidences happen.”
“But as a result of this one,” Chenns said, “our plans have been disrupted. It’s not just the presence of the Geck that’s done this. Garal Ke
t’s presence here has also changed conditions we were depending on.”
Ingray frowned, puzzled. Then remembered that Prolocutor Budrakim had been on his way to the station when he’d learned that Pahlad Budrakim had returned from Compassionate Removal.
But he’d been on his way because of the Geck. If the Geck hadn’t come, would he have been on the station now for some other reason?
The First Assembly had been in session. In theory all eight members could hold meetings long-distance easily enough. In practice they did need to meet in person every now and then, and besides, anyone interested in running for Prolocutor of the First Assembly needed to be familiar to the voters of Hwae Station, who just from sheer numbers tended to dominate prolocutorial elections.
The Omkem had been delayed taking the Chambers because the presence of the Geck had compelled them to take a longer way there. If not for the Geck, Commander Hatqueban might have been able to hold the entire First Assembly hostage, and with it, legal authority over Hwae Station. And authority over Hwae Station ultimately meant control of the system’s most valuable resources—the station itself, the gates to other systems. Access to the planet.
It suited Tyr for Pahlad to come back, Nuncle Lak had said. And Ingray had replied, It suited Tyr to embarrass Prolocutor Budrakim. And Garal had confirmed both statements.
Would Prolocutor Budrakim have gone up to the station at this time even if the Geck hadn’t come? Ethiat Budrakim was Prolocutor of the Third Assembly, not the First. He wouldn’t have had any reason to be with the First Assembly when the Omkem captured it. But maybe he had known this was coming, and had some role to play. The heroic negotiator who ended a tense and dangerous standoff, maybe?
Tyr couldn’t have known, could they? Certainly they couldn’t have known about the Geck, but could they have known the Omkem were planning this? Maybe not this thing specifically, why would anyone try to counter an invasion with an escaped convict? But something. Something they thought Ethiat Budrakim might be involved in. Ethiat Budrakim is many things, but he is not stupid and he is not a traitor, Nuncle Lak had said.