Endgame (36 page)

 

Jani walked out from under the awning and across the river walkway to the end of the avenue. As she did, idomeni closed in on both sides, both bornsect and Haárin, Vynshà and Sìah and Oà, as well as the odd Pathenrau rebel, gold-bronze faces like shots of night amid their lighter-skinned brethren.

Aden nìRau Wuntoi walked toward her, shoulders curved in anger, Dathim and Meva serving as escort, the crowd closing in behind him and bearing him along. He slowed when he registered Jani standing at the end of the walkway, slowed even more when he saw the clothes she wore.

When they reached the end of the walkway, Dathim and Meva turned as sharply as Spacer recruits, coming to a halt beside Jani. That left Wuntoi standing by himself, an arm's length distant, idomeni pressing around him from three sides.

“The reason?” His English was unaccented. He had been working toward Pathenrau ascendance for a long time.

“One should always look into the faces of those you would kill.” Jani turned and pointed toward the awning-covered enclosure. “Now we shall go, and talk of them.” She waited for Dathim and Meva to walk ahead, then fell in behind them, allowing Wuntoi his place of precedence bringing up the rear.
With the Vynshà hard on his tail.
She held back her grin without much trouble. She still felt the tightness around her chest, the weakness and cold sweats. Val had rigged a cardiopack over her heart that would inject the appropriate drugs and proteins in case it misbehaved, and had hidden in the backseat of the double-length, a mere twenty-five meter dash away in case of medical crisis.

They entered the enclosure. Everyone rose, Scriabin immediately surrendering the stool, which was of the proper height and style for an Oligarch. Wuntoi smoothed his overrobe around him and sat, a lifetime's practice with bornsect furniture allowing him the balance to situate himself with nary an unseemly wobble. He looked around the sheltered space, then settled in, gesturing dismissively toward Jani's skimchair. “You sit in that chair because you are weak.”

“Physically?” Jani shrugged, ignoring the pull of her incision and the heft and drag of the cardiopack. “Mentally is another matter, and unless you wish to challenge me, it is the mental with which you will have to deal.”

“A second knife.” Wuntoi looked toward the crowds, who had encircled the enclosure as closely as Feyó's security would allow and now sat on the lawns and watched them. “Unseemly.”

“So is attempted murder within the circle. But knives have always been known to slip, and idomeni often die who are not meant to.” Jani replayed scattered moments in her mind. The moment when Cèel knocked away her blade. When he drew her in like a lover and rammed his own knife into her gut up to the hilt.

“I am here at your bidding, because you were favored
by ní Tsecha. And because you are weakened, and I pitied you.” Wuntoi fixed his gaze at a point over Jani's shoulder, on the border between disrespect and regard. “What do you want?”

Jani caught Niall's eye as he clenched his fists and arched her brow.
Calm down, Colonel.
Wuntoi was making a show of putting her in her place, but buried between his lines lay a certain inevitable conclusion.
He didn't have to come here.
He could have ignored her invitation-that-wasn't. Left her with a hatchery's worth of egg on her face, surrounded by idomeni who would wait and wait until they finally realized that ní Tsecha's toxin had provided them nothing worth waiting for.
You don't want to accede to the dictates of Temple, Aden nìRau Wuntoi. You don't want to slaughter the Vynshà.
All she had to do was provide him a way out that allowed him to fend off his propitiators, and she'd have an ally for life.

All she had to do…

“I know, and truly, why you wish to speak with me.” Wuntoi shot the cuffs of his overrobe. “Temple has dictated that which they wish me to do. The sin of Morden nìRau Cèel is too great to be set aside. It must be shared by all Vynshà. As they all partake of the shame, so must they all pay the cost of it.” He pointed to Jani. “You comprehend such. You, who helped damn the Laum.”

Jani nodded, struggled to ignore the ache in her chest. “I will never forget the Night of the Blade.” The escape from the consulate hospital basement, the dash through the streets to the shuttleport, and the realization that something horrible was unfolding before her eyes. “Ní Dathim Naré fought for Morden nìRau Cèel then. He was one of the Haárin who came down from the hills and rendered the justice of the gods upon the Laum.”

Hearing his name, Dathim turned to them, raising a hand in greeting and baring his teeth.

Jani ignored him. “Thinking back, I wonder at the decision. The vast majority of the Laumrau had no knowledge of
their dominants' collusion with humanish, or of that which occurred at Knevçet Shèràa.” She inhaled, smelled heavy bay air and imagined it light and hot and desert dry. “Do I believe that a laborer here in Rauta Shèràa shared the guilt of the dominants who planned, the warriors who surrounded the hospital and would have killed me and my suborns if I had not killed them first?” She shook her head. “I do not. I argued of this with ní Tsecha, as I argued with him of many things. When he died, he had repudiated the concept of Wholeness of Soul, a tenet of major idomeni faiths. I have no doubt that if he had lived, he would have repudiated the slaughter of the Laum as well.”

“You have no doubt.” Wuntoi rocked his head back and forth, the panspecies
sez you
gesture. “But you do not
know
.”

Jani pointed to the crowd seated on the lawn outside. “They are here because of their esteem for him. Because even though he is dead, they believe that he can deliver them. That his wisdom will find voice here, and change minds.” She sat back, ignoring the flutter in her chest. “Forget that there are also Sìah out there, and Oà, who supported Pathenrau in their ascension. Forget that there are also Pathenrau, who see fit to disagree with the decisions of their dominants.” She breathed in, breathed out. A glorious thing and truly, to breathe. “The Vynshà who are out there now did not wish to see ní Tsecha dead, and they should not be made to pay for the crimes of those who did.”

Wuntoi remained silent. His slouch had straightened somewhat. He didn't seem quite as angry as he had when he'd arrived. Maybe she was getting through. Maybe…

“Prime Minister Li Cao and her suborns are content to allow idomeni to decide this matter.” Wuntoi folded his arms, and looked for all the world like a negative image of Evgeny Scriabin. “Why do you butt in?”

Jani glanced at Scriabin, who seemed fixated on the state of his fingernails. “It is in Li Cao's interest to trade with the worldskein. It is in Li Cao's interest to encourage world
skein support for the Outer Circle colonies, so that she can hold back her own material support and expend it in other ways.” She felt Scriabin's stare burn a hole in her cheek, and ignored it. “It is not necessarily in Li Cao's interest for the worldskein to be united and strong, and a worldskein that has just slaughtered millions of its own and lost tens if not hundreds of thousands more in the resulting rebellion against this slaughter, is not united. It is not strong.”

Wuntoi fixed his bronze glare on Scriabin, whose face had reddened to sunstroke levels. “Humanish do not care. If they have nice tilework, and trueleather, and Sìah metal sculpture, they will not care about the history of those who produce such.”

“Maybe.” Jani gestured to Schiff, who paled and swallowed hard, but managed not to faint. “Yet they will record. They will transmit. They will remember.” She bared her teeth. “Now, when most humanish think of idomeni, they think of ní Tsecha, who looked them in the eye when he spoke with them, and made them laugh, and behaved in ways they understood. If the slaughter goes ahead as planned, ní Tsecha will be forgotten, and when humanish think of idomeni, they will think of blood in the streets and the hacked bodies of youngish, and Rauta Shèràa will come to mean anathema. Humanish will move on, together with hybrid and Haárin, and bornsect will be left behind to fester in a pit of your own making.”

“You say this to me?” Wuntoi waved his finger under Jani's nose. “You are sitting there in clothes that are stiff with the blood of those you killed.”

“Vengeance. Self-defense.” Jani once again pointed to the crowds on the lawn. “Slaughter.” She shrugged, lowering her arms slowly as her sightline darkened. “It's a fine line, granted, and not always logical. But you cross it, and humanish will be a long time forgetting.” She sensed Niall next to her, staring straight ahead, temper at the boil.
Sorry, Niall.
If a stronger worldskein made his job harder,
it wasn't her problem. She was not of the Commonwealth anymore.

Wuntoi pushed a handful of braided fringe behind an ear ringed with gold studs. “And your solution to the Vynshà problem is?”

“They were his. Now they're mine.” Jani held out her hands to the crowd. “Give them to me. Declare them Haárin, as a sign of your ascension. Declare them what you will. But give Tsecha's people to one who was also of Tsecha, and release them.”

Silence fell, so profound that Jani could hear the breeze rustle the awning flaps. Then Scriabin cleared his throat. “That's fifteen million bornsect and over three million Haárin.”

Jani shrugged. “He doesn't want them.” She twitched a thumb at Wuntoi. “He would kill them. I am of Tsecha, as they are.” She bared her teeth again. “I have died several times, and they are as dead. The dead leading the dead. It makes perfect sense.”

Wuntoi regarded her with narrowed eyes. “They would need to leave this place and go to another.”

Jani nodded. “And they will need places in which to live, and work to do and food to eat when they get to wherever they're going. The transit systems of two civilizations should be able to handle the load. We have experts to work out the logistics. We have builders and food experts. It will not be an instantaneous transition—it may take years. But it can be done.”

Wuntoi cocked his head, as though considering. “You, as the dominant of a small enclave of most strange hybrids, are empowered to negotiate this agreement?”

“As dominant of Thalassa, I am acknowledged to be a Head of State by the Outer Circle colonies.” She nodded toward Scriabin, who groaned softly. “If you doubt, propose such to Feyó, who will see her Outer Circle enclaves quintuple in size. Propose it to your suborns, who will elimi
nate Vynshà from their lives without blood. Propose it to Temple, and hear their screams—” That drew the equivalent of a nasty grin from Wuntoi. “—and if it serves, they will negotiate it, and come to the same conclusions, and you will have the diplomatic imprimatur you seek.”

Wuntoi sat quietly. Then he looked up at Jani and bared his teeth. “To hear the screams of Temple would be a good thing, and truly.” He stood. His shoulders held no curve.

Jani worked to her feet a little more slowly. Val's cardiopack had done
something
. The weight on her chest had lessened, and she felt tired rather than weak. “Humanish say that if a decision does not anger someone, it's the wrong decision.”

“Do we really say that?” Niall managed to keep most of the sarcasm out of his voice.

“It is a good thing to say.” Wuntoi seemed a different male than the one who had entered the enclosure a quarter hour before. His eyes had brightened. His voice sounded higher as the anger leached away. “I look forward to using it often, and truly.” He nodded once to Jani, then walked out of the enclosure as the idomeni scrambled to their feet and parted for him once more.

Scriabin pressed a hand to the back of his neck. “Li Cao is going to have a stroke when we tell her this. She won't allow it.”

“Then delay the final treaty signings, and make damn sure you win the next election.” Jani patted his shoulder on the way out of the enclosure. “It's the best solution.”

Scriabin followed after her. “It tips the population balance of the Outer Circle toward idomeni.”

“If it's a good place, more humanish will come.” Jani felt a looseness across her upper back, which was the only indication of how much it had ached previously. “What other decision could there be?” She started down the incline toward the double-length, where Val stood waiting.

“You know, I think I've figured it out.”

Jani stopped and turned to find Niall standing at the top of the rise, lit 'stick in hand.

“On the first day of Creation, a Kilian cried out, ‘It's dark in here—someone take care of it!' And then there was light.” He doffed his lid and flipped it up in the air. “It's the only possible explanation!”

Val's medical magic held. By the time Jani arrived at the embassy to see what diplomatic pitfalls and pushbacks awaited, it had once more donned its party finery. The mood seemed more subdued, however, as technical types in ill-fitting daysuits and uniforms bearing the white trouser stripes of the Sideline Service sat around tables with handhelds and trackboards and shook their heads in between trips to the open bar.

Mako met her at the opening to the garden, drink in hand. Whiskey, by the look of it, with no ice worth noting. “You realize you've set in motion a nightmare that will cause the logistics experts of two systems to awake screaming in the night for years to come?”

Jani shrugged. “It's good to spread the nightmares around.”

“Hmm.” Mako sipped his drink, then stared into his glass. “For someone who's just upended two governments and increased her own power and influence exponentially, you don't seem very happy.”

Jani walked with him to an empty table near the stone wall. “It was his dream, this blending together. And he didn't live to see it.”

Mako studied her for a time, then moved on to the sweep
ing tree branches that brushed to the ground. “I got to know ní Tsecha a little before he left Chicago. Niall always called him ‘that wily old bird.'” He sat down and pondered his drink. “You reach a certain level in government, in the Service, you assume that…some might prefer if you did not exist. You don't dwell on it—you'd go mad if you did. It just crosses your mind occasionally that the day you're currently living might be your last.”

Jani didn't say anything, even as the thought that she had earned membership in a very select club settled in her stomach to lie there and burn.

“He expected it, I think. The attempt, at least. No one could have written what he did, made the enemies he made, and not expected to have someone endeavor to extract the ultimate price.” Mako rubbed the edge of the table with one thick finger. His hand was a battering ram, broad and brown and heavy-knuckled, the hand of a man who could handle any opponent face-to-face. Which was why he now concerned himself with the opponent that had been schooled in the use of sight mechs and long-ranges and explosives.

“He prepared as well as he could have, I think.” Mako's voice grew tempered. “Feyó is sound. Not as much of a risk taker as she used to be, but she has managed to bring the conservatives to her side without losing the firebrands like Dathim and Meva, and that says something. There were those he influenced, the common idomeni, Haárin and bornsect both. The humans like Scriabin, who admired him.” He looked out over the garden. “And then, in case all that failed, he had his second knife.” He glanced up at Jani, then rose and headed for a table beneath the trees, where Cal Burkett had already opened the second bottle.

Jani sat in the chair Mako had vacated and watched the party. She had cleaned up with Val's aid, and changed into a dark blue wrapshirt and trousers that hid all her medical attachments and helped her blend in with the shadows. She gestured to a passing waiter and ordered iced water with bitter lemon. Sat back, and breathed, and closed her eyes.

“He told me, ‘Meva, if anything happens to me, you must take her there.'”

Jani's eyes snapped open. Her heart skipped. “Dammit, Meva.”

The female bared her teeth. She stood in front of the table, still dressed in her propitiator's overrobe, the object of stares from every part of the garden. “‘You must take her to Shèrá,'” she continued as she sat across the table from Jani, “‘because if anything ever happens to me, it will be from Shèrá.'” She picked up the tiny coffee service and poked through the sweetener packets, occasionally holding one up to the sun to examine it more closely. “‘You must allow her to do that which she does, even if such maddens you. Even if such drives you to challenge her yourself.'” She set down the service with a clatter. “And I wished to, most certainly. When you accused Haárin of his death, I wanted to meet you at Guernsey and fight you in the middle of the concourse.”

“I didn't accuse the Haárin…” Jani waved a hand, let it go, surrendered to the futility of trying to explain reality to those who preferred their altered truth. “I don't know how you talked Feyó into going along after she found out.”

“I persuaded her.”

“You bullied her. You're a bully, Meva.”

“Pot. Kettle. Black.” Meva bared her teeth. Sat back, hands folded in her lap, and watched the party, which gradually returned to its previous volume and activity levels once everyone adjusted to the propitiator in their midst.

Then the waiter arrived with Jani's bitter lemon. He set it down, then looked at Meva.

“That.” She pointed to Jani's drink. “Galas thinks much of it,” she added, as the young man headed back to the bar, aplomb itself but for the occasional backward glance.

Jani waited until he returned with Meva's drink. Waited longer, until the music and dancing started and she knew no one else could hear. “Dathim told me what you said to Tsecha about me.” She breathed in until her chest ached. “You're right. I'm not a priest.”

Meva nodded, eventually. Poked at the ice cubes with her straw. “This, I know. So did Tsecha, in the end. He saw that you did not study. He knew that you did not believe.” She paused to sip. “But then he realized that which you were. You are the bringer of pain and change.” She held out her glass to Jani. “Do that which you do. Leave the gods to me.”

Jani hesitated. Then the token dropped, and she clinked her glass against Meva's, took a sip to seal the toast. “I think I saw him. After Cèel stabbed me. He was standing outside the circle. I heard him say, ‘Nìa.' And he bared his teeth.”

“He reminds you. His soul waits for release.” The first hint of shadow crossed Meva's face, and she grew more subdued. “He asks you to do so.”

“I thought you would do that.”

“He would wish you to do so, I think.”

“At Temple?” Jani shook her head. “Temple tried to push Wuntoi into slaughtering the Vynshà. It doesn't seem the right place.” She paused, raked through all the Vynshà theology that she'd struggled to remember and now tumbled about her brain as though it had always been there. As though she had always known it. “Can I ask you…?” She spread out a napkin and asked the waiter for a stylus, and talked while Meva listened. Until the music ramped up and the laughter and talking grew louder. Until Meva tucked the napkin into her overrobe, said that she needed to speak to those at Temple whom she trusted, and left.

 

Val came eventually, with John in tow, but the undercurrent of tension made conversation too painful to pursue. Lucien missed out due to the fact that this time he actually had pulled desk officer duty. No one mentioned Anais or regretted her absence.

As night fell, Jani pleaded fatigue and left, but instead of retiring to her suite, she departed the embassy and headed for the base. Stopped at the gate, asked if Colonel Pierce was on site, and received the surprising news that she had
been cleared. That she was expected. That she would know where he was.

She found Niall sitting on a bench that had been set in a patch of lawn next to an office annex. The bench fell under the building's shadow and the lighting was poor. She would have walked past the spot if she hadn't seen the telltale pinpoint glow, stark as the reflection off a predator's eye.

“It actually does cool off at night.” She sat near the end of the bench, an arm's length away. Close enough, but not too. “I remembered that it did, but then I wondered if it was just memory playing tricks.” She quieted, let the silence settle. Her job wasn't to talk, but to sit, wait, listen. To be there.

“Haven't had time to think about this much over the past few days. Every time I turned around, you were getting yourself killed or pulling some diplomatic rabbit out of a hat. I suppose I should thank you for the distraction.” Niall took a last pull on his 'stick, then rolled the gold-striped cylinder between his fingers. “It happened over there.” He pointed to a place about twenty meters distant, the current resting place for a cluster of skimmer charge-stations. “Those stations weren't there, of course. Nothing was. Just a piece of open land in between the buildings.” He sniffed. His face was in shadow, and maybe it was a good thing. “I wonder if anyone knows what happened there? Someone. One of the old-timers.”

Jani looked toward the spot and imagined a night twenty years before. The darkness shattered by bombs and artillery. The shouts. The panic. And in the middle of it all, a twenty-one-year-old sergeant, sent to perform a very special task. “How do you feel?”

Niall laughed, a single, humorless jerk of his shoulders. “I really shouldn't bother to eat decent food until after we pull out of here.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and continued to work the spent 'stick. “But the offices are open at all hours now, thanks to you. Always a bathroom handy. A can to kneel before.”

Jani studied his profile, details muted by the half-light.
Sharp nose and line of jaw, set off by his brimmed lid.
He could take it off.
Yes, they were outdoors, but they were seated, and, technically at least, having a conversation.
But he won't do it.
He was an officer in the Commonwealth Service, with a tradition to uphold. Standards to maintain. An ideal to live up to.

“Go ahead and say it.” Niall glanced at her, then faced front once more. “When you're this quiet for this long, I can just about hear the hum of machinery.”

“That's the animandroid.” Jani raised her left arm, then let it fall. Twitched her left leg. “Bad joke.”

“You're allowed, gel.” Niall sighed. “After the day you've had, you're allowed a lot.”

Jani pondered for a time. Then she tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to his spent 'stick. “Got any extras?”

Niall stared. “Parini will bloody kill me.”

“If it weren't for me, he wouldn't have anything to do around here but dance and pick up unsuspecting lieutenants.” Jani held out her hand. “C'mon.”

Niall scrabbled into his trouser pocket and pulled out his case. “When was the last time you smoked?”

“Years.” Jani took a 'stick, crunched the tip, then paused to wipe a tiny fleck of the bulb material from her tongue. “I don't remember—can you swallow this stuff?”

“It's safe.” Niall grinned as he pulled out one for himself and bit down. “Years ago, if the pieces were big enough, we'd have spitting contests.” He shook his head. “I've said it before, gel. Just when I think you can't surprise me anymore.”

“Drinking's a waste of time. I want to see if nicotine still has any effect.”

“First Doc, then you.” Niall paused to take a deep drag, then blew out a quartet of rings. “Gonna work on Meva next.”

Jani eyed the 'stick warily, then took a drag. Her throat closed as the fragrant smoke flowed into her mouth, and she coughed. She bent double to take the pressure off her chest. Her eyes teared.

“Jesus wept—don't try to pull like me! I've been at it since the days o' me youth.” Niall took the 'stick from her and tapped her between her shoulder blades until she quieted. “Baby puffs, until you work up to it.”

“Thanks.”

“What I'm here for.”

Jani took back the 'stick and tried again. The merest sampling. “Taste's a little like the way
vrel
blossom smells.” She dabbed her eyes with her sleeve, then stilled and watched the smoke stream upward until the night breeze took hold and scattered it. “If you had to do it again, now, how would you secure them?”

Niall sat back, one arm crossed over his stomach, the other straight, the 'stick dangling from his hand. “I'd have demanded more people. One guard per, and two to back them up in case friends decided to come to the rescue.” His eyes narrowed as he considered the problem. “Armored skimvan right here near the building. None of this escorting through the base shit.” Pause to inhale. “If I could coax a medico to come along, I'd just drug 'em and stack them in the van. Wouldn't even give them the chance to see one another, to get excited.”

Jani nodded. “And if you had been put in that situation a year or two earlier?” She waited for him to speak, and knew it would be some time before he did.
Because he knows the answer.
“I think you'd have shot them without a second thought.” She took another puff, and tasted the
vrel
blossom. “You were once a remorseless bastard, Niall Pierce, untempered by finer feeling or much of a moral sense. It wasn't that you lacked those things. They were there, and always had been. They were just…dormant. You lived a life in which you couldn't afford them, so you set them aside.” She lowered her voice as a brace of file-laden clerks trotted past. “Then you met Mako, and somehow he instilled in you the notion that there was still a modicum of honor left to be mined from that calloused orphan heart. You learned that you could be part of something bigger than yourself,
and that realization hit you like a sockful of rocks. All those sensibilities that you'd set aside awakened and roiled to the surface.”

Niall sat still, eyes fixed straight ahead. Breathing a little quick, a little shallow. Might have been nicotine. Or memory.

Jani kept her voice level, soft. “The problem is, you need tools to deal with bigger than yourself, and you hadn't acquired them yet. So, when the shit hit the fan, you fell back on the bastard because that was still your default. It was the man you still were, to some extent. But then, as time passed, you changed. You became a better man, the man you wish you had been twenty years before.” Her throat tightened, and she blamed the smoke. “One of the best I've ever known. But I've told you that before.” She watched a wad of paper skitter down the walkway, coaxed by the breeze. “The bill's been paid, Niall, with hard-earned coin. Give yourself a break.”