Judgment (39 page)

“It’s now or never,”
Kindred repeated. “You know that, Meyer.”
 

Slowly, Meyer shrugged then reluctantly nodded. “Fine. With the Ark opening today, it’s now or never. But it
can
be never. We don’t need to make this worse. We can return to the palace. You mentioned having some plans.”
 

Jabari looked up, reluctantly decisive. “They deserve to know. If we’re about to be put on trial, they should be told what’s coming, and what they’re facing.”
 

The room seemed to slow then hitch. On one wall, the view through a window began to change, no longer showing the view outside the mansion. Now they could see people, politely assembled beyond simple, civilized barricades. And they could hear subtle murmurs — the kind that unconcerned people make when going about their ordinary business, with no clue that doom is knocking.

There were no Titans guards. No Reptars. No signs of Astrals, save the moon-like gray bulk of the nearby mothership and Titan civilians milling among the humans: one big, happy family in the Capital of Capitals.
 

Okay,” said Jabari, moving for the door. “Me first. And when I wave, you know what to do.”
 

Kindred nodded and crossed his legs in the comfortable chair. Meyer sat in an identical posture beside him. Together they waited for it all to begin.

Peers’s comment that they were running out of time was intended as a general public service announcement, but Jeanine took it differently.
 

He’d checked a clock, realized there were only ten minutes or so left until the State of the City was scheduled to start, and whispered that they’d have to hurry. Cameron was supposed to wait until the Meyers took the stage and said whatever before he opened the Ark. That meant ten minutes before the address began, maybe another five or ten until Jabari yielded the floor, and probably no more than another five until the shock of dueling Dempseys gave way to the big, uncomfortable announcement. That meant they had twenty minutes until the Ark’s top was popped
at most
, and Peers worried it might be less. And even if there were twenty minutes left, it’s not like they
had
twenty minutes. Somehow, if they meant to stop Cameron from opening the Ark, they’d have to get him word. Ideally, they’d also get word to Jabari because she might postpone or handle things differently if the Ark weren’t to be opened.
And
there was the matter of commitment: Even if they figured out where Clara was in time, and even if they could get word out, there was no guarantee that would stop things. Jabari would be on stage. Cameron might be holding the metaphorical handle, ready to crack the seal.
 

Which all meant that they needed to hurry.
 

But rather than simply internalizing this and moving quickly and making mental notes, Jeanine took Peers’s words as license to kick Kamal’s office door open the second he cracked it, then hit him hard enough to spatter his desk’s polished wood with blood droplets and pin him to the floor.
 

“Jesus, Jeanine!”
Peers said as she climbed atop the man’s moaning form, sitting on his chest, incapacitating his limply flailing arms with the weight of her knees. Kamal’s head rolled back and forth, groaning, blood running from a superficial but freely bleeding scalp wound.
 

“Get his legs!”
 

Peers did as he was told, Jeanine rising above him like a cowgirl, the lamp-birthed weapon held high as if Kamal might rise and strike. But holding the viceroy’s attendant’s legs was like gripping dead fish, and Peers’s biggest concern was that Jeanine would clout him again for spite, just because adrenaline had her intoxicated.

“You got him?”
 

“I didn’t mean for you to—”

“Do you have him!”
It came out as a command, not a question.
 

“Yes! I have him!” Peers forced his panic down as blood surged into his head and blurred his vision. If this went on for long, he might tackle Jeanine himself because fight or flight commanded it. Calmer, fighting the sense that time was slipping away, he said, “Did you have to hit him?”
 

“You said it yourself. We don’t have time to ask him nicely.” She slapped Kamal’s face, and Peers watched the man’s head slowly wag, his eyes trying to climb into his brain. “Kamal! Where is she? Where is Clara?”
 

Kamal moaned. His eyelids fluttered, threatening to drift away. Knowing he was risking wrath, Peers moved up and abandoned the man’s motionless legs, grabbing the cloth skirt over an end table, pressing it to his bleeding head. It came away only moderately wet, the wound already slowing.

“You nearly killed him,” Peers said.
 

“You said he was Mullah.”
 

“I said I
thought
he was Mullah!” Now, with Kamal semiconscious due to Peers’s intel, the signs seemed suddenly dubious. Kamal had known about the sphere when it seemed even the viceroy didn’t know how the system worked, but did that mean he was Mullah? Kamal had also raised eyebrows at Peers when he’d come to the group late. But did that mean he knew what Peers had taken and why, or did it simply mean Peers had probably looked sketchy that particular day, his eyes bugged with guilt, face wet after the nervous sweat had been washed away?

“Well, what’s done is done.” She slapped his face again, but the man was fading. “Kamal. Kamal!”

“Great. That’s just great, Jeanine.”
 

“What would you have done? Ask him to tea?”
 

“I wouldn’t have tried to kill him!”
 

“He’s not dead. He’s just out.”
 

“Which is perfect. Because he’s sure as hell going to be a big help now.”
 

“Maybe he has a key or something. If he’s Mullah, he’d have a secret key to a hidden door somewhere, right? A place where he’s stuffed Clara.” Jeanine’s face clouded in sudden concern, more practical than emotional. “Oh, wow, I hope she’s not dead.”
 

“Jeanine!”

“Don’t just sit there playing nurse, Peers! Search his pockets! Search his desk!” Jeanine snapped her fingers in front of Kamal’s face, tapped his cheeks, called his name louder.

Peers scrambled along Kamal’s side as he rolled slightly on the floor, consciousness barely hanging on. Jeanine took the opposite side, moving to his other set of pockets. They searched pants, shirt, and suit jacket. But of course they found nothing. Because any keys he’d have, if the man was Mullah, would look like any other keys. Unless he had the ring key — which, come to think of it, he’d
have
to because there’d been a Mullah keyhole where Peers had found the sphere. The locks weren’t
really
locks and were simple to pick with nails or pins, but a true Mullah would still own and probably proudly wear a ring that …
 

But there were no rings on Kamal’s hands. No necklace or bracelets. Nothing hard at the seams of his clothing, nothing obvious in or on his shoes.
 

Peers moved to the man’s desk, glancing at the clock, seeing they’d already lost nearly five minutes. In another five or so, Jabari’s face would probably pop up on every quiet screen in the house, triggering the catastrophe that Meyer and Kindred would finish. A second scream of sorts — all that new emotion streaming across the plaza and into the Ark, distracting the thing as the speech sidetracked the people, urging the lid open as Cameron turned his key, the true clock ticking for the first time in thousands of years.
 

“Keys. Notes. Anything at all,” Jeanine said, now standing above Kamal with her makeshift weapon raised. Kamal had mostly stopped bleeding below her, barely moving, his chest rising and falling in an almost empty rhythm.
 

“There’s nothing.”
 

“There has to be something. Look harder.”
 

“There’s nothing, Jeanine!”
And there wasn’t. The desk drawer was a study in minimalism. Peers saw a single pen, a pad of Post-Its, and a pair of paperclips. He yanked it out and held it up, furious, near panic, then threw it down near Jeanine’s feet.
 

“You said he was Mullah.”
 

“I said
it made sense
that he was Mullah! That’s why we were going to talk to him! That’s why I wanted to ask him questions!”
 

“And he’d just admit it? Just come out and say, ‘Oh, you want to know if I’m Mullah? Why yes, sure.’”
 

Peers practically growled his answer, feeling impotent. “I had a way I wanted to ask.”
 

“A special way,” Jeanine mocked.
 

“Yes. A special way.”
 

“And in just a few minutes, you’d get the answer for us. No violence required.”
 

That was the plan, yes. He’d have pushed Jeanine back and talked to Kamal in private. They each thought they knew what the other was, Peers had thought. He’d confirm it, say a few things that proved his membership.
Then
violence might be needed, but even then Peers doubted it. The Mullah had never responded to threats. But maybe he could trick him, suss out where the girl had gone. It was a thin chance at best, but at least it
was
a chance compared to whatever this had become. And given what the sphere had shown him about the last times the Ark had rendered judgment, it was a chance worth taking, no matter how thin.
 

“Now we’re fucked.” His frustration broke. Peers took Kamal’s single pen from the desk and threw it hard at the polished wood surface. It bounced like a spring and rolled into a corner. “Thanks a lot. But in a way, it’s a relief. Now we don’t have to go through the effort of trying.”
 

“Don’t you blame this on me!”
 

“Oh, no. You’re fucking commando. I’d
never
blame
you
. It was stupid of Kamal, to run into your head-clubber like he did.”
 

“You were just going to sit in your room. You think this is such a big problem, what were you going to do about it? You weren’t even ready when I came back! ‘We have to hurry,’ I said. ‘Get your shit and be quick about it.’ What did you do after I left? Lie down and rub one out to clear the dust?”

“Oh, that’s so mature. So helpful.”
 

“You’re the one with the scary insights. How do you know who’s Mullah anyway, Peers? More of that luck that always goes your way, winning you the horde of Astral technology, spying on them from your suspiciously well-furnished Den, always in the right place when—”

“I took a guess. I thought he might be Mullah. But now we’ll never—”

A new voice interrupted Peers: Ravi, the kid.
 

“Kamal isn’t Mullah.”

Peers turned. Jeanine turned. The kid was standing in the doorway with a pistol leveled.
 

“But I am,” he said.
 

Cameron crept closer. He looked back once, saw Charlie squatting just inside the gate as if expecting something tall to come along and spot him, and decided not to look back again. Charlie’s posture was one of someone who could easily come forward but was deliberately staying back — the posture of a man who feels he could help but is glad he hasn’t been asked. The way the protected cower when the protector goes to see what went bump in the night.
 

The way Charlie was squatting made Cameron feel more alone than if he had been truly here by himself. Charlie had told him what he knew, but it was Cameron who’d have to face it without so much as a hand on his shoulder.
 

The courtyard was deserted. They’d watched this space through the windows during their stay in the palace; you couldn’t see the Ark from inside, but you could see the space it called home. Normally, as Ember Flats went about its civilized business, people crossed this space all day long. No particular reverence was given. It had become a mundane presence in the city: a symbol of triumph and history rather than anything that might ever be relevant again. Peers had compared the archive in the courtyard to the Sword in the Stone, but as far as Cameron had seen or heard, nobody had come to the Ark to try his or her hand. They simply walked by as if the Ark were a bus stop.