“You’re bluffing.” McClannan didn’t sound convinced. “The Alliance has much more to offer than the Family Oldin.”
“You’re just spouting the party line, McClannan.” Vingi’s voice was suddenly harsh and strident. He spoke quickly, as if delivering a lecture to an errant student. “You, like most of the Diplos, know very little about the Trading Families, the Oldins in particular. Your d’Embry is an exception to that, and that’s why she fears FitzEvard so much. As for
me,
Seneschal, I’m a pragmatist and an opportunist—I pretend to be nothing else. I plan, and I take what’s offered to me. An example; I spoke with Thane Valdisa of the Hoorka yesterday. She’s going to ally the assassins with my guild, and I intend to take them. The Hoorka will give me fear, and I can use that fear to enhance my own standing. So if you think I’m bluffing, Seneschal, simply turn around prettily and walk out of this office and I’ll see you at the press conference in ten minutes. What I’ll have to say to the reporters isn’t in the script you’ve been given.”
Vingi waited, staring at the man before him, unsmiling. McClannan grimaced. His eyes squinted, then relaxed. His gaze could not stay with Vingi’s steady regard. He studied his hands, turning them over and curling the fingers. But he did not move toward the door.
“I can tell Niffleheim that the only alternative to losing Neweden to the Family Oldin is to replace d’Embry?”
Got him.
Vingi nodded slowly. “One should always tell the truth to one’s superiors—if it serves him to do so.”
Tight-lipped, McClannan nodded in return. “I’ll do it,” he said, simply.
Vingi smiled. With a groan of effort, he hoisted himself from his floater and arranged the expanse of his clothing. “Then let’s go to the damned conference and pretend to be signing papers.” A pause. “Regent McClannan.”
• • •
The day was windy and cool, with spatters of rain from scattered clusters of cloud. Few people braved the weather this afternoon. Tri-Guild Square was nearly empty. Even the Mason’s Guild, which had been repairing the jagged hole in the pavement, had retreated before the elements. McWilms walked past a temporary barrier of ropes, ignoring the sign warning him back. He gazed at the last mute remnants of the ippicator’s visit—the beast was now under study in a government lab.
McWilms didn’t know what he was looking for here—a sign, perhaps, a symbol, something to give him direction.
The last several days had been nothing but arguments in Underasgard. It had begun with the display of the ippicator. Many of the kin had wanted to see the mythical beast, the visible sign of She of the Five. But Valdisa had refused them permission to go. Too many people, she’d said. A potential hazard. Their presence might spark a confrontation. Her arguments had fallen with dull precision, and she had ignored all discussion on the subject.
Hands in the pockets of his nightcloak, McWilms stared down at the hole. Rain had pooled there, and not much work had been done thus far. He tried to imagine the violence of the explosion, how it must have been, bodies flung, blood everywhere. He could not visualize it well—his experience of death had always been closer, with a knife or a hand weapon, individual. As a Newedener, he didn’t truly understand this distanced, random killing that the Hag’s Legion had employed. It was foreign, alien. No honor was there; they didn’t even know who might be sent to the Hag. Who had they been after?
The argument about the ippicator had not been the last. A few days later, she had told the kin that she intended to alter the code—Hoorka would align itself with Vingi’s rule-guild. They would still accept contracts on the same terms from anyone, but the Li-Gallant would have the approval of them. A roar of protest had followed—they were then no better than the Li-Gallant’s personal assassins, and how soon after this would they no longer give Dame Fate Her chance, but agree to kill anyone contracted, without the victim’s chance of escape being given? Valdisa had been cool, logical; she’d opened the guild’s books to all of them, shown them how badly Hoorka fared. It would not get better; Neweden was changing. Ulthane Gyll had said you don’t change what works, but his code no longer worked here.
Neweden was changing. Had changed.
His ignorance bothered him more and more. Neweden society, after centuries of only slow evolution, had altered drastically. He could feel it. Neweden was more and more an alien place with alien mores, and none of the guilded kin had experience of that. Ulthane Gyll had become one of the outsiders, but
he
knew, McWilms was convinced. Valdisa wanted the Hoorka to remain ignorant; that, to McWilms, led to the death of the guild as certainly as the Thane’s alliance with Vingi, as Neweden’s contact with the Alliance had dealt a fatal blow to its society.
As the ippicators had died, unable to cope with evolution. But now an ippicator had returned, god-sent. What did it portend? If the gods of Neweden had any control, it meant something. It must.
McWilms couldn’t read meanings from shattered tiles and broken ground. The square had been washed clean—nothing except the mute hole remained to show the violence that had erupted there. McWilms scuffed a piece of tile over the crumbling edge—it splashed in the muddy pool.
It began to rain again, cold and hard, beading on the cloth of his nightcloak. McWilms pulled the hood over his head, moving back over the barrier once more. His head down against the wind-driven shower, he went to the center of the square, where the ippicator had been displayed. Blinking water from his eyes, he looked around the square. Tri-Guild Church was lopped off at mid-spire by low clouds. A few uncomfortable-looking kin hurried diagonally across a corner, cloaks flying. Incongruously, a break in the clouds let the sunstar touch a cluster of tall buildings a few blocks away, light sliding quickly up the sides. The gap closed as McWilms watched; Sterka became dreary again.
Suddenly McWilms laughed, loud and long. His amusement echoed from the buildings around the square. “Gods,” he said, “I’m looking for signs in the weather, omens in the dirt. Jeriad, you’re quite an ass.”
Chapter 14
“I
WANT TO SEE that frigging son of a bitch McClannan. Now!”
D’Embry slapped the com-unit’s contact without waiting for her secretary’s answer. She could feel the hot flush of anger on her cheeks. She leaned back, breathing hard and loud. The symbiote squirmed on her back, and slowly she felt her breathing ease again, her face cool. When she felt somewhat normal, she bent forward with a groan and picked up the flimsy on her desk. Her hands trembled as she glared at it, the paper rustling so that she could hardly read the words. She didn’t need to see them; they had burned their image into her mind the first time they’d been read.
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: IN APPRECIATION OF YOUR LONG SERVICE TO THE ALLIANCE AND THE DIPLOMATIC RESOURCES TEAM, AND CONSIDERING YOUR UNCERTAIN HEALTH, YOUR RESIGNATION HAS BEEN ACCEPTED. ALL BENEFITS ACCRUED TO YOU ARE NOW RELEASED PENDING YOUR ARRIVAL AT NIFFLEHEIM CENTER. YOU ARE TO GIVE REGENT MCCLANNAN ACCESS TO ALL DIPLO CODES AND RECORDS, AND FACILITATE THE QUICKEST TRANSFER OF POWER TO HIM. REPORT TO NIFFLEHEIM CENTER ON 6:22:225. PASSAGE ABOARD THE CRUISER MENGELO HAS BEEN ARRANGED, DUE IN NEWEDEN ORBIT 3:5:225. DEAR LADY, SOMETIMES EVEN THE ELDEST HAVE TO GIVE WAY.
It was signed “A. Pettengill, Director,” over the stamp of the Legatis Primus de Matraup. The last sentence was Pettengill’s, she knew, telling her that this time there was no way around the forced resignation—it had been Arthol who was at the end of many of the strings she’d pulled to keep the Regency after the Heritage fiasco. All debts have been paid, he was saying.
She had a sinking feeling that he might be right.
D’Embry stared at the flimsy as if the intensity of her gaze could alter the words. The symbiote fed her cooling balms that did little to quench her fury.
Santos McClannan entered her office without knocking. He strode over and extruded a chair from the floor before her desk. He sat, watching her. She let the flimsy fall to the desk. A thin forefinger tinted bright orange skidded it across the slick surface toward McClannan. “I assume you’ve seen this,” she said dryly.
Something between smile and frown tugged at his mouth. He picked up the paper with a strange gingerness. One hand ruffled through his hair as he scanned it—as she had somehow known it would, his hair fell back perfectly in place. “I was aware of the decision,” he said at last. He was not sure how she was going to respond, and he was also a little frightened—d’Embry could see that in the way he sat, in his fiddling with the edges of the flimsy, in the fact that he could not look at her directly for more than a few seconds.
Damned frigging coward. I wonder where he got the courage to go over my head?
“I’m not going to make any pretense, McClannan,” she said. “You’re responsible for this, aren’t you?”
His face shifted to shocked innocence an instant too late. “M’Dame, I—”
She shook her head. The motion stopped his protest. “I could still fight this, McClannan. I don’t have to accept this forced resignation.” She said it merely to see how he would react—she was not disappointed.
He sat back, dumbfounded, hands clenched into fists on her desk. “That would be a waste of time, m’Dame.” The fact that he neglected her title didn’t escape her. “Surely you know that,” he said in his darkest tones, full of gentle sympathy whose falseness burned at her. “You’d simply compound the difficulties here, maybe wreck all that you’ve worked to gain on Neweden. Simply for spite? I don’t believe you’re that selfish, m’Dame. I won’t believe it.”
She didn’t answer for long seconds. McClannan looked more and more uncomfortable with her silence. When she did speak, it was to say one word. “Bullshit.”
She closed her eyes and felt dizziness.
Make it stop, symbiote. Come on, you damned Trader slug.
And with that came an unbidden afterthought:
Maybe they’re right. When you must divide your attention between crises and your health . . .
McClannan’s soft voice interrupted her reverie. “M’Dame—”
“It used to be ‘Regent.’” She did not open her eyes.
“M’Dame,” he persisted, “all that you’ll gain by fighting this decision is dissension, both within the Neweden government and our staff here.”
“Our
staff?” Her eyes opened, blue-gray eyes blinking. “You mean
your
staff, don’t you,
Regent
McClannan?”
“I’d hoped you wouldn’t be bitter, m’Dame.”
“Just what the hell did you expect me to be, McClannan?” She shouted as loudly as she dared, feeling the raggedness in her throat. She forced down a fit of coughing.
Not now, symbiote. Punish me later.
“Did you think I’d sidle up to you, all sweetness, and kiss your cheeks proudly? Did you want me to tell you how glad I am that you stabbed me in the back?”
“I did nothing.”
“Gods, spare me your protestations. I
know
what you did, McClannan, at least some of it—my com-unit logs all calls from this Center, and I know you contacted Niffleheim two days ago. Don’t tell me that’s coincidence.”
This time, at least, he didn’t deny the allegation. “M’Dame, didn’t you defy those in power when you felt they were wrong?” He seemed to be mouthing someone else’s words. She wondered whose they were—Sula Hermond’s, the Li-Gallant’s, or some other traitor within her staff. “Who told you that trash?” she snapped.
He did not lie well. He almost stuttered his reply “M’Dame, your reputation . . . in the classes at Diplo Center they talked about you, about some of your, ahh, old confrontations with authority. And the teachers, the Diplos who’d known you . . .”
D’Embry waved a hand as if brushing aside a troublesome insect. Multihued flesh broke off McClannan’s sentence. “It’s not important, I suppose. You’ve done it, McClannan. You’re now the Regent. I hope that Dame Fate sees that you receive what you deserve for it.”
He looked relieved, knowing that she would not fight the resignation. “M’Dame, I think you’ll be surprised to find that I’m quite competent.”
“You’re right, McClannan, I will be. Let me tell you what I think will happen.” She leaned forward, elbows on the desk. Her thin, much-lined face was intent with the force of her emotions. “You’re a conceited, ineffectual fool—a good toady because you frighten easily. You’d make someone a fine assistant as long as they didn’t give you too much responsibility.”
He stiffened in his chair. His voice was suddenly formal and distant. “M’Dame, I don’t have to sit here and be insulted. As Regent, I have much work facing me. Neweden—
your
old regency—is a mess.” He began to rise.
“Sit down,” she said. “If you think I’m a toothless old beast, you’re wrong. None of the staff knows about your appointment yet. I could have you incarcerated on some trumped-up charge, and how do you think Niffleheim Center would react to that? They’d still replace me, but they’d send someone to replace
you
as well, just to be safe. So sit down and listen, if you really want this job.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said. He did not sit, but neither did he move toward the door.
“Then walk,” she replied. Her finger poised over contact on her desk. “I’ll have Karl put you under house arrest as soon as you touch the door. Embezzlement should be a good charge—easy to fix, hard to disprove.”
Still he hesitated. Then, fists clenched at his side, his mouth a hard line, he sat again.
“You see, McClannan, that’s one of your problems. You can’t judge the risks properly. If you knew me at all, you’d know that I’ve given my life to the Diplos, the Alliance. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt them because I believe in what we’re doing, if not always in how we go about it. And if you knew that, you’d have known that I also realize when I’m beaten. It was a bluff, McClannan, but you took it, so you might as well stay and listen to the rest.” She paused, winded. The shortness of breath was returning, and with it the paroxysms of coughing, the bile she would spit up from her ravaged lungs. A
while longer, symbiote. A few minutes more. Please.