The Cause of Death (43 page)

"It doesn't matter," Darsteel put in. "The papers would have the same force in law in either--"

"Please!" Hannah snapped, cutting him short. "Just let him answer the question."

"I--I didn't see what happened, exactly," the courier said. "But I can tell you they brought those papers in, and took them out again after only eight or sixteen minutes. It might not have even been that long."

"All right then," Hannah said. "Fine. Now you get back to Thelm-Designate Georg--and make sure to address him by that title on our behalf--and tell him we would be honored to attend his ceremony declaring his accession--but first he must--
must
meet with us, an hour before the ceremony, in order to prevent a terrible error--an error that would endanger his ascension and his rule." She thought for a moment--but only for a moment. There wasn't much time. She glanced about the common room of their apartment. It would have to do. No time to look for some more suitable spot. "Tell him to come here," she said. "Yes. We will meet here. Tell him--tell him it concerns
Penitence
for past wrongs." She had been speaking in Lesser Trade, but she shifted to English for that one word.

"It concerns
what
for past wrongs?"

"
Pen-i-tence
," she said, saying the word slowly and carefully. "It's a human word. He'll know it--if you say it carefully. Be sure you get it right. It's
vital
you get it right. Now repeat it all back to me."

"What is--" Darsteel began, but Hannah held up her hand to quiet him.

"Repeat it all back," she said again.

The courier did, three times, before Hannah was satisfied. Once she was, she wasted no time shooing him out the door. When he was gone, she slammed the door shut and bolted it from the inside. "We'll have to clear a lot of the gear out of here, and you'll have to go get some things," she said to Darsteel, "but I want us locked in here just a little bit longer."

"What in the dark devils are you working at?" Brox demanded. "I can't be any part of this game of yours without being told what it is."

"I'm sorry," Hannah said. "You're quite right. But I didn't want to talk until the courier was gone. Let's just say I didn't get the impression that his loyalties were all that clear."

"But what is this about?" Darsteel asked.

"It's about getting what you wanted," Hannah said. "A real investigation that gets down to what really happened. We're nearly there, without even knowing it. And we're going to get there, I promise. But first--" she paused, and looked around the room at the three faces--a human, a Pavlat, and a Kendari--that were staring back at her. That was as it should be. If all of them, working together, brought in the truth, then no one would ever be able to say it was one side or the other, this faction or that, bringing in some of the truth, but not all. "But first," she said, "we've got a trap to set."

TWENTY-SIX
CONFRONTATIONS

Caldon Saffeer, High Thelek of the Realm, stood in the first light of a grim and frightened dawn, and stared out the windows-walls of his Grand Hall. He looked down at the fire-ravaged wreck of the Thelm's Keep in the valley below and lusted for knowledge of what, precisely, had happened.

The whole planet was in a panic, and no one knew anything. He could see the Keep, but the view told him nothing. The authorities on the scene had managed to cut off all outgoing comm as thoroughly as his transparent window-walls cut off all sound from the outside world.

There was the sound of a door opening behind him, and a scuffle, and a thud. The High Thelek turned around to find Nostawniek, full-time steward and part-time informant, standing between two guards and bowing so low that his head was practically burrowing into the carpet.

"Where is he?" the Thelek demanded.

Nostawniek at least had the wit not to feign ignorance, not to ask who the Thelek meant. "I don't know. Brox told me nothing," he said, his head still so low his voice was half-muffled. "He did not tell me he was going. I slept through the first alarm. I didn't even know he was missing before the guards woke me to ask about him."

"Your grand friend, the being you so proudly spy for, said not a word to you?"

"No, Great Thelek. Truly." Nostawniek gestured to the view. "I don't know the first thing about what happened, except what can be seen out the window."

"Take him away," said the Thelek, struggling to control his temper as he turned his back on the prisoner to look down once again on the Keep. "Keep him safe, but unharmed." The infuriating thing was that he, the High Thelek, and perhaps now already the Thelm of all Reqwar, knew almost precisely as much as that miserable little wretch--only what he could see from where he stood.

He dared not act until he knew, clearly and certainly, what the results had been. Who had lived, who had died?

But by the time he knew that for sure, it might already be far too late to act.

* * *

When Georg had been locked up for the night--in the most comfortable room available, he was assured--all that anyone would officially acknowledge were the two facts he knew already: There had been a major fire in a room where the Thelm was known to spend much of his time, and the Thelm himself had not been seen since shortly before the fire.

Georg did not try to get anyone to tell him more than that. Not that they needed to, anyway. You'd have to be a blind fool not to be able to guess, quite accurately, all that you weren't told. There was shouting and crying from downstairs. He did not envy her captors: Marta in a rage was something awesome to behold. He could not hear Moira, but, at a guess, she was somewhere on the ground floor. He worried about her, and the terror she must be feeling. But it would likely be safer for her if he stayed away. He was in great danger, and those near him were likely to be in danger as well.

He was going to have to think his way out of this. He arranged a pile of sitting cushions into a comfortable heap, sat down, and considered the situation. A few minutes' reflection showed there was, in fact, nothing he could do to help himself.
Yet.

That tiny thought was what sustained him. He knew how the planet Reqwar worked. He knew the turmoil that must be going on outside, the guessing, the rumors that must be sweeping everywhere. And he knew how the Reqwar Pavlat longed for order, for hierarchy, for things set out in a neat and orderly pattern. With the Thelm, the center of the pattern, suddenly gone, the need for order, for continuity, would come to the fore.

They would come to him. His guards, for a start. The lawyers, the judges, the police officials, the nobles. They all
needed
a Thelm at the center for any of the rest of it to work. And if the only possible Thelms available were the dangerously ambitious High Thelek and an alien with a strangely mobile face and half his thumbs missing--then a great number of Reqwar Pavlat would turn to him. And sooner rather than later, for the longer the Thelmship was unclaimed, the more likely the High Thelek was to snatch it for himself.

They would come for him. And soon. Perhaps very soon, in a matter of hours. Which meant he had to
think
, and think hard. He had to figure out what had happened, why it had happened, what it meant. And he had to figure out how to protect his family.

It was a tall order--an impossibly tall one. But Georg was used to thinking big, and thinking fast. If he could not work through every possible variant of likely next events, he could at least work out some sort of rough plan ahead of time.

And he spared a thought for Thelm Lantrall. His Thelm. His adoptive father. Georg allowed guilt, shame, sorrow to wash over him, at least for a time. But he could not afford the luxury of wallowing in such feelings. Not now. Not in the midst of crisis. Later, if he lived through all this, would be time enough to mourn. But it was hard not to think about the grand, garrulous, scheming, generous, cantankerous old character, dead in the midst of those flames.

But he had no official knowledge of the Thelm's death.
Be careful what you say, what assumptions you reveal, what certainty and uncertainty you expose
. It was sensible advice he gave himself. If only he knew how to act on it. It might well be just as dangerous to know too much as too little--and just as deadly to feign knowledge instead of ignorance.

It all came down to some very simple conclusions: There was great danger ahead, for all of them. And it would be safer for all concerned--including one Georg Hertzmann--if he took that danger on himself.

After all
, he reminded himself,
you're the only one with a license to kill
.

Not exactly a comforting thought, but at least it left him feeling a bit less helpless. And there was another encouraging thought along those lines. If he lived through the next few days, he would be the most powerful person on the planet. And if
that
didn't given him some ability to protect his family, he might as well give up here and now.

But there was one other thought that was entirely comforting.
Now, at least, Marta and I don't have to worry about Moira growing up on Penitence
. Putting
that
nightmare behind them was worth a bad night, and even a bad conscience.

And it was enough to ease his mind, at least far enough to let him sleep.

When he woke, he was profoundly grateful that he had not dreamed.

* * *

It was an hour after dawn when they started to come to him, even sooner than he had expected. A note concealed in the tray at breakfast. Another note, from another source, when the tray was taken away. A whispered conference with a guard, who offered to smuggle in a law-reader who might be helpful. And the law-reader who showed him the findings of the Court of High Crime, and also brought a judge who brought papers to sign.

But he had worked it all out by then. He knew what he had to do to protect the ones he loved and the planet that had fallen, all unwillingly, into his care. He would push past being the mere Thelm-Designate as soon as possible, rush the ascension ceremony, and make a strong and clear declaration that would draw followers to him, before the doubts and rumors could spread, before the investigators could ask too many questions.

He would take the Thelmship, seize it, use it as a shield and a wall--and as a sword and a battering ram, if need be, to do what had to be done. He signed whatever they put before him, boldly, almost blindly. It didn't matter anymore. Not really. Either the Thelmship would be taken from him, in which case the High Thelek would see to it that all the papers were of no use to anyone in protecting him--or else Georg would become Thelm, and the power of the office itself would be a defense against any flaw, any fraud, any double-dealing in the documents he signed so hurriedly.

It was after he had signed the last of them that the change truly began to take place. He could not mark any one precise moment as the one where he ceased to be a prisoner or started to be treated as the Thelm. But the time came when the door to the room in which he had been held locked stood open, and the armed officers were no longer watching over a prisoner but mounting a guard of honor and defense around their sovereign. It was heady. It was exciting. It made it easy to imagine more hopeful days, not too far off, as the couriers and assistants and helpers rushed back and forth, bringing news of the investigation, sending the invitations, and making the plans for his formal declaration of ascension to the Thelmship of all Reqwar.

And it made the crash back to the ground all that more abrupt and jarring, the doubts and fears that much stronger, when one of the couriers brought back a spoken message that contained the single English word "Penitence."

And when a single word from a low-level investigator from a far-off planet could bring all his plans to a shrieking halt and tie his stomach up in fear, then it was plain as could be that he was far, far, far from being Thelm of anything at all.

* * *

Hannah never had the least doubt that Georg Hertzmann would come. Not with the vague and implied threat of Penitence hanging over him. Not when she warned of a terrible error that could endanger his rule, and he had just signed a stack of papers without the slightest hope of knowing all that was in them. Getting the rest of the guests to come had not been much of a challenge, either, of course, as most of them were in custody. The exceptions, for two reasons, were the Stannlar. One, they weren't
exactly
in custody, and two, it wouldn't be physically possible to fit them into the room where the event was to be held.

The solution was, of course, obvious once thought of, and Hannah chided herself for being surprised when two Pavlat police came in, each carrying a flat, plate-sized disc. The discs were set down on a table, and promptly popped themselves open to reveal two cheerful and animated six-legged starfish, one purple and the other green.

No, the audience had pretty much taken care of itself. The hard part had been in arranging the stage, dressing the set, and, most of all, getting the props ready. But all that was done. She could hear the sounds of a small group in the corridor approaching their apartments.
And now the show begins
.