Gyll frowned. He’d suspected that such would be the case, but McWilms’s words made him face the truth of that speculation. “I wish that didn’t matter to me, Jeriad. But it does. It fails to change the essence of my decision, though.”
McWilms looked through the port at the expanse of Neweden, as if fascinated by the cloud patterns. “I wasn’t trying to change your mind, Sula, just pointing out something you might not have known. I understand your decision quite well, myself, unlike others.”
“I don’t,” Helgin grumbled. He glanced at McWilms, scowled at his back, and turned to Gyll. “I don’t understand at all.”
“You’re not from Neweden,” McWilms commented, staring at the world, “and you’re not Gyll. You’re not
anything
like Gyll.”
The dwarf shot a glance of venom at McWilms. Gyll spoke hastily, seeing the irritation in the dwarf—he knew the short-fused Motsognir temperament. “You know how the Hoorka are set up here, Helgin. A victim won’t die if it’s not his time to do so. Dame Fate rules Hoorka.”
“That’s superstitious rationalization that you don’t believe much more than me. And you also set it up to buy out the contracts.”
“There were always some of those who could afford to pay off the contract, and who still chose to run.”
“Yah, the idiots with death wishes, or fools who felt themselves invulnerable, like childish heroes.”
“Which am I, Helgin? Idiot or fool?” Gyll felt his own temper rising, his voice gaining volume to match the thunder of the Motsognir. McWilms had turned to watch them, his face grave, his left hand very near his vibro hilt.
Helgin gave each of them a look of disgust. “And people complain about
my
temper,” he said. “You’re neither one, Gyll. You’re my friend, whether you let yourself believe that now or not. The Motsognir don’t give friendship outside our race easily. I speak to you as I would one of my own: what the hell do you hope to accomplish?” Around and around: his finger toyed with his beard.
“I’ve no idea, Helgin.” Gyll took a deep breath. “It could be a whim, I suppose. But too much has gone on around me lately. You know what I’m referring to. Now someone’s gone to the trouble of signing a contract for my life. I want to know who that is—and there’s only one way, by my old code, to gain that information, and that’s to die. I don’t intend to do that, but neither do I want to feed Hoorka’s purse. That’s not all,” he said, raising a hand to silence the protest he saw forming on Helgin’s lips. “The reasons are all small and all internal.”
Yah, killing that unknown man, finding that I’ve been splendidly lied to, seeing the manipulation going on behind my back, even the finding of the ippicator.
“I’m not sure I could articulate them very well, but they add up to this—I want to take the chance. I want to see where I stand with Dame Fate.”
“It sounds damned silly to me.”
“Helgin—”
“I mean it.” The Motsognir lurched to his feet. Unsteadily, limping, he strode over to Gyll’s desk. “People don’t play frigging games with their lives. Not if they’re sane.”
Gyll rose as well, leaning on the desk, hands on the wood. “And you don’t tell me what I can or can’t do.” He stared at the Motsognir, but he could feel McWilms’s gaze on him as well. “I’m well aware that this isn’t a game.”
“I know what you’re after, Gyll—a sign from the gods that you’ve been doing the right things, that you’ve done all you could. You’re looking for absolution. If the answer’s ‘yes,’ then you live; ‘no,’ and you die. Very simple.”
“And my business.”
“No!”
The dwarf stamped a bare foot into the rug. “It’s not just your business. You’ve given allegiance to the Family Oldin. You owe them your services as Sula—you owe that to the Neweden Hoorka that have joined you.”
McWilms stirred. “Those Neweden Hoorka will, to a person, understand what Gyll is doing, Motsognir. Leave us out of your arguments.”
“The Oldins lied,” Gyll said stiffly. “That makes me wonder about loyalty.”
Helgin shook his head. “You’re stubborn, the lot of you. The Oldins didn’t so much lie as they did leave you out of their machinations.”
“Lies of omission,” Gyll half-shouted.
“Kindness to your frigging sensibilities, you mean,” Helgin roared back.
For a long minute, no one said anything. McWilms returned to his survey of Neweden. Gyll and Helgin stood in poses of defiance. Then Helgin, with a curse of disgust, spat on the floor and turned. He stalked from the room without looking back. Gyll watched the door close behind the Motsognir, his feelings twisted.
McWilms moved away from the wall. He smiled at Gyll with compassion. “I’ll bet he’s a real bastard when he’s mad.”
Gyll’s face was still downturned with anger. “You can be certain of it.” Then he forced himself to smile in return—the effort was not entirely successful. “I’m sorry you had to watch this, Jeriad, but I wanted you to know what I intend to do. It doesn’t endanger your status here; Helgin will make sure of that, once he calms down.”
“I understand, Sula.”
“Helgin doesn’t.” Again, the frown. “He thinks I’m crazy. There’re times I’d like to wrap that beard of his around his throat.”
“Whenever you want to do it, let me know. I’ll give you a hand.”
Despite himself, Gyll chuckled. “Did you manage to find out anything in Sterka?”
“I checked around, as you asked, Sula. I think I have good news for you. Let me go and get the map I drew.”
Gyll nodded. McWilms reached out, grasped Gyll’s bicep with a firm hand. “We could wait until morning to do this, Sula.”
“If Dame Fate wills it.”
“She does. I’m certain.”
Gyll smiled. “I’m glad you think so. But no, we do it now.”
• • •
Outside her window, the sunstar was setting behind Sterka Port, sinking into a cushion of low clouds and touching the sky with a ruddy orange—not an overly pretty sunset, but adequate. M’Dame Tha. d’Embry stared into the last light of the day, shielding her eyes with a hand tinted the shade of the sunstar itself. She could see that the Trader shuttle had left the port—and she wondered whether it would return.
A spasm hunched her over, her fingers clenching the sill with whitened knuckles.
Falling apart, aren’t we, symbiote, just like this world. Falling apart, and all we can do is delay the inevitable.
She felt the release of the symbiote’s chemicals into her bloodstream, allowing her to slowly straighten. The sun had dipped lower, wrapping itself in the clouds, its light gone muddy.
Well, go ahead and make the grand gesture. It won’t do any good, but you’ll be able to tell your conscience that you tried.
She sighed, and made her way back to her desk. She was conscious of her walk, that it was stooped and slow—an old woman’s walk, an invalid’s hobble. She lowered herself down on the floater’s cushions, her arms supporting her. The effort made her wheeze asthmatically. She waited, felt her breath come slowly back.
So tired; gods, is it worth it?
And, as always when she had those thoughts, the symbiote—its survival dependent on hers—slipped a mild euphoric into her. So
you can sense the despair, symbiote? Too bad you can’t communicate—what a strange existence you must have, a leech listening to the maunderings of a worn-out mind.
She could feel the parasite lurking, just below the threshold of her thoughts, as if she could, in some deep concentration, reach out and speak with it.
She stretched out a tinted hand, touched the contact that activated her com-unit. It swiveled slowly up from the desk. She laid her fingers on the keyboard and stared for a second at the contrast of her wrinkled skin against the smooth and perfect keys.
The machines stay young while we fall apart.
She tapped out the familiar letters of her key entry, then asked for the line to Diplo Center on Niffleheim. She thought for a moment that McClannan had been smart for once and canceled her validation code, but the screen lightened with the menu of access codes for Niffleheim, as well as the local time there: 2:04 p.m. That meant, if she was lucky, that Arthol would be back from lunch. Maybe. It would be safer to wait, but she was afraid that she’d be too tired later.
She was always tired.
502G3486DC: ARTHOL PETTENGILL. She keyed in the code deliberately, one-fingered, pressing needlessly hard. The screen went into a flurry of static as the tachyon relays kicked in, and she heard the ocean roar of interference. A minute. Two. She thought of canceling the call, of trying again later; then there was the distant click of connection. A faint, shrill burring rode in the interference, and then a wavering, static-pocked face stared out at her; mustachioed, balding, but with surprisingly young eyes in the pudgy face.
“Tha! Good to see you . . . well, perhaps not so good, is it? Trouble, it has to be trouble or you wouldn’t look so serious, and you wouldn’t be wasting good Diplo money on the relay.”
She had never been one to mince words—she knew Pettengill would not expect it now. “Do the Diplos want to be called murderers?” she asked dryly. “If that’s trouble, then yes, you’re right, Arthol. And you’re looking good, young man—a credit to your teacher, I hope.”
Pettengill chuckled at the contrast between the two halves of her speech. “You were a tough one to follow, m’Dame, but I try. I try. Now, what’s this about a murder?”
“Your little Regent McClannan took out a Hoorka contract on a Trader—and an Oldin at that—Sula Gyll Hermond.”
In the welter of interference, Pettengill frowned. “Hermond was the head of your assassins’ guild, wasn’t he?—the one we think killed Guillene on Heritage?”
“Yah, and he’s been with the Oldins for the last eight standards. McClannan, over my protest, bought a contract on the man—a damned ugly way for a Regent to deal with his problems, if you ask me. I want McClannan taken out of here, Arthol. He’s not competent. If you have to have him as a Regent, put him somewhere else. Not here. He’ll botch it, I guarantee you.” She paused for breath, ready to resume her commentary against McClannan, but she waited too long.
“And put yourself back in as Regent, Tha?”
He said it gently. It stopped d’Embry in mid-word.
For a moment, she was silent with shock, both at the soft accusation and at the fact that she’d not anticipated it, when it seemed so logical a conclusion to make. “Arthol, I think you know me better than to sling that particular piece of mud at me,” she said carefully. “My interest in this is the image of the Alliance, as damnably altruistic and self-sacrificing and false as that sounds. And in any case, I think . . .” She halted again, realizing that what she was about to say was the truth.
So you’ve come to that decision at last. Good.
“I think that my health would preclude any reappointment. Hell, Arthol, I’m all done, both with Neweden and the Diplos. All I care about is making it through the next day. I’m an old woman, good for the occasional lecturing and speechifying, the relic you’ll drag into your classrooms once a standard for the entertainment of the current batch of bright young hopefuls.” A breath, again, and this time Pettengill did not interrupt. “Just let me do one more thing for the good of the Alliance, my friend. Bounce McClannan out of here. Put him somewhere safe. Make him rescind the frigging contract. It’s not the way we should deal with crises, this method of his.”
She sat back, waiting. Beneath the view of her screen, his hands would be moving, clasping, unclasping—nervous habits she remembered well. His face shuddered with some vagary of the relays, breaking apart and reforming. “As I understand the Hoorka, Tha, the victim can pay off the contract. The Oldins are rich enough. Why not bleed their pockets a little?”
“McClannan—for some reason or other—thinks Hermond will run. And in any case, that’s not the point. We’re talking about a moral position, Arthol, not a game of chance. And I wouldn’t be surprised if FitzEvard regards the contract as a violation of the Alliance-Trading Families Pact. He may even be right. You’re likely to have to fight a long legal battle, whichever decision Hermond makes.”
A hand, wavering in the mediocre transmission, came up to run a thumb along the line of his cheek.
That’s bad—he’s got that frown to his mouth. You’ve lost, old girl. It’s just going to be words from here on unless you can come up with something good.
“I don’t think you’ve judged the situation correctly, Tha.” She strained to hear him against the storm of the background. The friendly warmth seemed to have seeped from his voice, though it might have been only her own perception. “Again, as I recall
your
Hoorka”—he stressed the word—“the signer of a contract is revealed only if the contract is successful, the victim killed. I think we all agree that this is unlikely to go that far, in which case, all FitzEvard has are his suspicions, and he’s not going to waste a lawyer’s fees on those.”
“So you’re willing to take the risk as well.”
“I think so.”
“If we were to lose Neweden, we lose the ippicator bones as well as the other resources of this world.”
“We won’t lose Neweden.”
She sighed. “What if Hermond should die, Arthol? What if it was learned that you’d been informed in advance of the contract? When FitzEvard raises the stink you know he’ll raise, your career will go down with McClannan’s, and you’ve got a lot farther to fall. You’ll lose everything.”
That threat was not a gambit she liked to play, both because it was weak and because it would lose her whatever affection the man might have for her. But she had no more strings to pull, no more favors to call in. All she had were empty bluffs, and a knowledge of a bureaucrat’s instinctive fear for his reputation.
Pettengill’s eyes had narrowed—in his fleshy face, that looked almost porcine. “I didn’t think you’d stoop to threats, m’Dame. It’s not like you. Why don’t we just forget you said that?”
Arthol, I’m sorry for what I’m going to do. Really I am.
“Why don’t you worry about your future a bit?” she replied. “Diplo Center has a log of this call—that’s automatic. Even if I’m gone when the investigation starts, they’ll start checking the texts of all the incoming relays from Neweden in the past few months, and they’ll find that I just told you about the whole problem—unless you are going to say that you’ll erase the recordings after I sign off. In that case, Arthol, I’d ask you to consider that I could be making a copy here myself.”