Jathmar’s mind was certainly boggled, since he hadn’t understood a single word of that crazy mishmash. Judging by their expressions, neither had Shaylar or even Jasak Olderhan and Twenty Thousand Sogbourne. Gadrial, however, was gazing at the rifle with a smile of childlike delight. She moved with sudden authority, taking Jathmar by surprise.
There were five more rounds loaded in the magazine. Gadrial racked the action like a seasoned pro, creating a crisp, metallic shlack-shlack, the characteristic sound of a cycling scissor-action. Before Jathmar could even open his mouth to protest, Gadrial had lifted the gun to her shoulder, more-or-less sighted on the target, and yanked the trigger.
C-R-A-A-A-A-C-K!
Gadrial dropped the rifle.
Then stood there, gulping hard and staring down at the gun as though it had transformed itself into a venomous snake. She finally looked up. Looked around, searching almost frantically for Jathmar.
“It worked,” she whispered. Her lips had gone unaccountably dry.
“I noticed,” he croaked. His voice emerged as a hoarse, froglike sound—a hoarse, froglike sound even feebler and far fainter to ears stunned by the thunderous blast of a Thundergun which had just functioned perfectly.
“No,” she shook her head, eyes wide in growing fright, “you don’t understand. It worked. Not the rifle. I mean, that worked, too. It wasn’t the rifle I meant. Wasn’t the rifle I was talking about. Or testing.”
“Gadrial,” Jasak said in a down-to-earth voice, “you’re not making sense.”
She didn’t even seem to hear him, because she was too busy turning parchment white and battling the tremors that had begun to shake through her slender body.
“It shouldn’t have worked!” she said on a note of rising alarm that was heading rapidly toward panic and the onset of hysteria. “I didn’t expect it to work!” she gasped. “It was just a crazy idea, a half-baked notion that flashed into my head, an idea so nutty, I didn’t even stop to think it through. If I had, I would never have tried to shoot that…that thing.” She shuddered, staring down at the rifle on the ground with genuine horror in her eyes. “It was just a crazy idea, but my God, it worked. Rahil’s mercy…” She wrapped both arms around herself. “It’s impossible,” she whispered, lifting her gaze to stare into Jathmar’s totally bewildered eyes. She was shivering so hard, Jasak peeled off his uniform’s coat and wrapped her up in it.
“Jasak,” she gripped one of his hands in both of hers, “Jasak, what I just did—” she gulped. “I just took everything we thought we knew about reality and turned it inside out and upside down and raveled out half the garment we call physics.” She stared down at the rifle again and bit her lip. “Jasak, I’m scared.”
Jathmar glanced from Gadrial to Shaylar, who was as baffled as he was.
“But why?” Jasak asked. He, too, was bewildered. So was Sogbourne, by the look on his face, and more than a little worried, as well, since whatever Gadrial had just done had terrified a woman who was high on a very short list of candidates for the best theoretical magician in the whole of Arcana’s civilization. When Jathmar realized that, he felt an abrupt stab of sudden, unadulterated terror. What the hell had Gadrial just discovered?
“Gadrial,” Jasak said in a tone that was abruptly stern, “what have you done, just now? What have you discovered? And why has it scared you out of your seriously intelligent wits?”
“What?” she asked as though dazed.
He took her by the shoulders in a grip so firm, it was just shy of shaking her. That grip forced her to meet his gaze. “What have you just discovered?” he asked again. “And why has it scared a year off our lives?”
She gulped. Shivered. Pulled Jasak’s coat more tightly about her shoulders. “The connection I made,” she whispered, “about Jathmar’s ability to shoot the rifle you couldn’t. It isn’t what their weapons can do, Jasak, that’s a danger to Arcana. That’s so minor, it’s hardly worth mentioning—”
“Now see here,” Sogbourne snapped. “What the devil does that mean? Their terror weapons are minor? Weapons that blow apart human flesh? That can destroy an entire platoon in a matter of minutes? Have you lost your Ransaran mind?”
“No. I haven’t.” Gadrial’s hoarse whisper sent chills down Jathmar’s spine. “But what their weapons do is the least of our worries. It’s what they believe that will destroy us. Unless we’re very, very careful.”
* * *
Thankhar Olderhan sat gazing into the heart of the message crystal badged with the logo of Halka & Associates while cold, dark despair flowed through him.
He stared at it, longing for some spell to obliterate it, to change history so it had never been sent—would never be sent. But no magister had ever devised that spell, and no power in all the universes could protect him from what he had to do now.
He set the crystal on his blotter and leaned back in his chair, massaging his temples with both hands, trying to grapple with all the implications. Trying to imagine all the things he still didn’t know about this entire Jambakol-spawned monstrosity…and about who was deliberately shaping it into an even greater monstrosity.
He knew Commander of Two Thousand Mayrkos Harshu. Not well, but he’d met the man, spoken with him—even been briefed by him once. What he didn’t know was how the man he’d thought he knew could have lent himself to something like this, whatever the “military necessity” which might have justified it. Gods! How could someone as intelligent as Harshu fail to understand what this would do to the Army—to the entire Union—when it inevitably got out?
And deservedly so.
Yet even that paled beside what he knew he had to do now. Not in its inter-universal implications, perhaps. But on the personal scale, the scale where the things which made a man of honor who and what he was mattered, it was infinitely worse than any macro political considerations could ever be, and he wished with all his heart that he wasn’t a man of honor, because then he could have avoided it.
He lowered his hands to the blotter, laying them on either side of the crystal, and sat for another thirty silent seconds. Then he drew a deep breath and rose with the expression of a man about to face a firing squad.
* * *
Shaylar looked up from the Andaran history book displayed on the crystal in her lap as the soft, musical chime sounded. She glanced across at Jathmar, who was immersed in quite a different book. His Andaran was still weaker than her own, but he’d been wading through the crystal—A Basic Introduction to Theoretical Magic, by Halathyn vos Dulainah—ever since the firearms demonstration. Gadrial had provided it at his request, and he was determined to somehow reconcile the differences between the Arcanan and the Sharonian concepts of science.
Somehow, she doubted he’d have much luck in that endeavor. Not that there was the remotest possibility of dissuading him from the attempt.
The chime sounded again, and she smiled faintly as Jathmar read on, oblivious to everything outside his crystal. Obviously, it was up to her.
She set her own book aside, climbed out of the comfortable, floating chair, and crossed the sitting room. She opened the door, and her eyebrows rose as the servant in the hallway bobbed a curtsy.
“Yes?” Shaylar asked as pleasantly as she could.
The acute hatred which had poured off of some of the Olderhan servants had eased considerably over the last week, for which she was grateful. The most hate-filled had simply disappeared, although she didn’t know if Sathmin Olderhan had found them other positions on another of the Olderhans’ many properties or simply fired them. Most of the remaining staff continued to regard her and Jathmar as profoundly unnatural beings from an alien and threatening universe populated by the gods only knew what monstrous threats, however. As Jasak Olderhan’s shardonai they were entitled to service and respect—even to protection, since those servants were also part of the extended Garth Showma household—but nothing seemed capable of banishing that penumbra of fear.
“His Grace’s complements, Madam Nargra-K
olmayr, and he requests that you and your husband join him in the Blue Salon.”
“Did His Grace say why he’d like us to join him?” Shaylar asked in some surprise, and the maid shook her head.
“He just told me to ask you to join him, Milady.”
“I see.” Shaylar gazed at the other woman for a moment, then shrugged.
“Please tell His Grace we’ll be there as soon as possible.”
* * *
The Sharonians stepped through the door to the enormous room called the Blue Salon holding one another’s hands and paused, just inside the threshold, in astonishment. They’d expected a private meeting with Thankhar Olderhan, but the Duke of Garth Showma wasn’t alone.
Jasak stood by the windows, gazing out into an evening which had turned gray and cold, burnished with a swirl of snowflakes and polished with wind moan. Gadrial stood beside him, her expression worried, and Sathmin Olderhan sat in one of the elegant, impossibly comfortable armchairs. Shaylar and Jathmar hadn’t expected the others, but at least they knew who all of them were. They had no idea who the man standing beside the duke might be, however.
He was a nondescript, brown-haired fellow in civilian clothes, yet Shaylar had the strangest impression that he ought to be in a uniform of some sort. Of course, that seemed to be true of an awful lot of the Andarans she’d met since that hideous day at Toppled Timber.
“Thank you for coming,” the duke said, crossing the room to personally usher her and Jathmar to a small floating couch which faced his wife’s armchair.
He waited until they were seated, then stepped back and clasped his hands behind him. There was something…frightening about the way he stood facing them, like a soldier bracing against an enemy charge. That was Shaylar’s first impression. Then she was sure she’d imagined it…until she glanced at Jasak and saw him watching his father with exactly the same sort of wariness she felt.
“I asked you here,” the duke’s voice was strangely formal, “in the presence of your baranal, because it’s my duty, as his father, as an officer of the Union Army, and as Duke of Garth Showma, to tell you—all of you—what I’ve learned this very evening.”
He paused and inhaled, nostrils flaring, then took one hand from behind him to indicate the stranger, still standing beside his desk.
“This is Sertal Halka. Once upon a time, he was Commander of Five Hundred Halka and served with me in the Second Andarans before he was invalided out of the service after the same fracas in which Otwal Threbuch saved my life. Since then, he’s had an…interesting career in Intelligence, and he and I have stayed in touch over the years.”
He beckoned, and Halka crossed to stand beside him. The retired five hundred walked with a slight but noticeable limp, favoring his left leg, which struck Shaylar and Jathmar as odd in a culture which had Gifted healers. Having seen people snatched back from the very brink of death—having been snatched back himself, in Jathmar’s case—by Arcanan healers, they had to wonder what sort of injury those healers hadn’t been able to completely cure for Halka.
“I asked Sertal to join us this evening because, at my request, he’s been investigating certain outside-channel reports which have reached me. In particular, I asked him to investigate a report from Fifty Therman Ulthar.”
Jasak’s eyes narrowed suddenly, and his father glanced at him and nodded ever so slightly.
“I apologize for not sharing the contents of that report with you sooner, Jas,” he said. “And I appreciate your patience, since I know how impatient you must’ve been to hear whatever he had to say.”
“Should I assume you’re about to share them with me now, Father?”
“Yes,” the duke said heavily. “And I wish to all the gods I didn’t have to. Unfortunately, you and I both have obligations which leave me no choice.”
“Thankhar,” his wife said quietly, “you’re frightening me.”
“I’m sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to. But there was a very good reason young Ulthar sent me that message. He’s concerned about violations of the Kerellian Accords.” The duke’s voice was flat, hard as hammered iron. “Deliberate violations of the Kerellian Accords.”
Jasak snapped fully erect, so suddenly Gadrial reached out and laid a concerned hand on his arm, and Sathmin Olderhan stiffened in her armchair, her expression shocked. Shaylar had no idea what the “Kerellian Accords” might be, but her hand tightened on Jathmar’s as she sensed the sudden storm of tension rising all about her.
“Violation of the Accords?” Jasak’s voice was even flatter than his father’s had been, with an over controlled calm that sent icy fingernails up and down Shaylar’s spine.
“That was one of the things he reported,” his father confirmed in a voice hewn from granite. “His report was…comprehensive and very informative, and I took it seriously. In fact, I’ve already dispatched an inquiry team in response to it, although it will be some time before it can reach Thermyn to verify everything in it. Under the circumstances”—he met his son’s eyes levelly—“I sent it on my own authority, as hereditary commander of the Second Andarans, without involving the Commandery. The allegations contained in his message were that serious. But it was clearly incumbent upon me to verify anything I could from this end, as well. Which is how Sertal got involved.”
All eyes returned to the brown-haired man who squared his shoulders under their weight.
“Sertal left official government employment some years ago,” the duke said. “He established his own security firm, and he’s assembled a highly competent staff which has handled my personal security needs from the time he opened his doors. I want all of you to understand that there isn’t a man in the entire Union I trust more implicitly and completely then Sertal.”
He paused a moment, as if to allow that to sink in, before he continued.
“It turns out we’ve had at least some piecemeal communications from Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak which haven’t been made public. For reasons which I strongly suspect we won’t like very much once we find out what they are, the two thousand still hasn’t filed any official dispatches dealing with this material with the Commandery, even though the communications which have reached Portalis contain significant military information. Instead, they were sent to the Ministry of Exploration and the Directorate of Intelligence.”
He must have seen from the Sharonians’ expression that his last sentence meant little to them, because he grimaced and explained.
“The Ministry of Exploration is the civilian ministry charged with overseeing our exploration policies, and the Directorate of Intelligence is a civilian intelligence service. The Ministry’s in charge of developing the infrastructure in the explored out-universes and of coordinating our general exploratory policy, but the actual exploration mission belongs to the Army, and the Ministry has no direct authority over that aspect of its operations. And the Directorate of Intelligence is a department of the Ministry of Justice, not of Exploration or the Army. In fact, there’s been an ongoing turf war between the Directorate and Military Intelligence for at least fifty years, just as there are those in Exploration who’ve argued for years that they should control the actual exploration rather than leaving it in ‘the Army’s clumsy hands.’”
“Which would imply,” Jathmar said slowly, “that mul Gurthak wanted to avoid sharing his information with anyone in your military? Or even that he wanted to share it with someone who didn’t like your military very much?”
“It could imply that,” the duke corrected him. “It could also simply be a case of sloppy clerical work in the midst of an ongoing crisis. Sertal managed to…acquire copies of the material for me, and it’s not in the form of a formal report. Instead, it looks like some sort of internal memo that hasn’t yet been put into its final form.”
“So you’re saying it wasn’t supposed to be sent at all?”
“No, Jathmar, I’m saying it may have been sent by clerical error…or that it was deliberately sent in a format which would allow it to appe
ar to have been sent by clerical error.”
“But why would anyone do that?” Shaylar asked, sounding totally confused because that was exactly what she was. Voice transmissions didn’t get sent by “clerical error,” and she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around how that could happen to Arcanan reports.
“We don’t know that yet,” the duke told her. “I have some unpleasant thoughts in that regard, and Sertal’s helping to determine whether or not my paranoia is justified. If it is, then I’m afraid the entire Union of Arcana may be about to discover that we face more than simply external threats. That, however, is something for us to worry about, not you and your husband. The only reason I’ve described this aspect to you is so that you can understand why and how I’ve discovered what does concern you.”
“In what way?” Jathmar’s tone was courteous but sharp, honed with formless dread born from too much bitter experience.
“As you know, all the public’s been officially told—all anyone outside a handful of highly placed officials at the Ministry of Exploration and the Directorate of Intelligence knows—is that negotiations broke down, virtually all of our own negotiating team was killed in some sort of confrontation, hostilities have been resumed, and Two Thousand Harshu has advanced beyond Thermyn,” the duke replied flatly. “And all of that’s true. But if the information Sertal’s people have turned up is correct, the real reason those negotiations ‘broke down’ was because—according to Rithmar Skirvon and Uthik Dastiri—the Sharonians ‘made their warlike intentions clear’ from the outset by failing to stipulate that there would be no attack during negotiations. Because that clause is an essential hallmark of all serious diplomatic efforts to negotiate a cease-fire agreement, it was clear to Skirvon that Sharona had no intention of signing any peace treaty and intended to keep its hands free to attack at a time of its own choosing.”