Star Trek: The Empty Chair (30 page)

“You’ll be fine,” McCoy said. “I wouldn’t have known that there was anything in particular going on with you when you first came in.”

Ael looked at him, wondering whether to believe him. “I hope you are right,” was all she could find to say, at last. She nodded to him, to the captain, and went out.

McCoy watched her go, and as the door closed behind her, looked over at Jim. “And as for you,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

“Well enough,” Jim said. “I’m a little more nervous than I was at Artaleirh, I’ll admit that much. We don’t have the guaranteed early warning of what’s waiting for us that we did before. But we’ve got a good force assembled for an intermediate engagement like this. Even if they threw all of Grand Fleet at us.”

“Perish the thought,” McCoy said, in genuine horror.

“Bones, they don’t dare,” Jim said. “There are still the Klingons to think about. If the Romulans pull everything out of the colony spaces, that whole side of the Star Empire will be hip-deep in Klingons in just a few days. To this extent, but no further, a de facto two front war is a good thing.” He rubbed his face.

“You getting enough sleep?” McCoy said.

“I’ll sleep in October,” Jim said.

“Don’t get cute with your old family doctor,” McCoy said. “You need your edge more than usual, right now. I’ll medicate you if I have to.”

“All right, all right.” Jim stretched, straightened himself. “Anything else I need to know about?”

“Just Gurrhim’s condition. Improving.”

“Good. Will he be all right during the battle?”

“You handle it like the last one,” McCoy said, “and don’t get us blown up, and he’ll be just fine.”

Jim grinned, nodded, and was gone.

With a sigh McCoy turned back to his desk and looked down at the New Waite deck again, reaching out to put it away. Then he paused. On an impulse, he made a bet with himself, then turned over the top card of the third “cut” deck.

The card showed a robed woman seated on a throne, in profile, very erect and still, and crowned. In one hand, point up, she held a sword. Behind her, in a windy sky, storm clouds blew, tattering past. At her feet sat a small black cat with a thoughtful look in its eyes; not in profile, but looking out of the card at the one who read.

Uh-oh,
McCoy thought, and looked at the Queen of Swords for a moment, as thoughtful as the cat. The card was replete with meaning, as all the cards were, from the superficial to the profound. Sorrow, mourning, separation, long absence, those were the general indications. But McCoy was tempted for the moment, however unusual it might be, to take the card literally at face value. The heart of the problem of the moment was a woman with a sword. The card’s usual meaning, when read in the personal mode, indicated a woman in a position of power—though not a position that would let her use it. More generally, it suggested that trouble was coming, and a very bad time.

Didn’t need a piece of plastic to tell me that,
he thought, picking up the card along with the rest of them. He tapped them together, gave them one last quick shuffle, slipped them back into their packet and tossed them into a desk drawer, then went off to check on Gurrhim.

In house Khellian on ch’Rihan, Arrhae was sitting in her dayroom and sipping a cup of hot herbdraft, trying to get some command of her nerves. It seemed that any chance noise or sudden occurrence could make her start. She lived in fear of the commlink going off again.

There was a scratch at the dayroom door. She jumped where she sat, and then cursed most fiercely at herself.

After a moment the door opened. “Mistress,” Mahan said, putting his head in the door, “my pardon.”

She found a slight small smile for him. “It wasn’t you I was cursing, Mahan.”

“I’m glad of that,” he said, and managed to sound slightly disapproving of her language. “But, mistress, there’s a person here at the door.” Mahan looked briefly confused. “He says he desires to speak with the noble
deihu—
and there’s something odd about him.”

Arrhae looked at him, her heart already starting to beat fast and hard enough to leave her certain it could be heard from right over there. “Odd in what way?”

“Mistress, it’s hard to say,” Mahan said. “He seems nothing much like the military or government people we’ve seen in and out, these latest days.”

“Perhaps that’s a relief,” Arrhae said.
Not military.
While she was relieved, there were still too many things that could mean.
Intelligence?
“Of what kind is he?”

“He is a dark-visaged man, and bears himself quietly,” Mahan said. “In fact, I may have misspoken myself. He is not in uniform, but he has something of the look of a man who might have been in service once himself.”

She shook her head. “Mahan, I will go to the door with you. Perhaps with a precaution or so.”

He nodded. Together they made their way through the front hall, and to the door, and there Mahan paused for a moment. He glanced at Arrhae, and then at the little cupboard inset behind the hinge side of the door. She understood the look quite well. In there, finger-locked to her and Mahan and a few other trusted household staff, were several small but highly effective hand weapons. Mahan quietly turned to the little cupboard and put his thumb to the lock. The door popped open.

Arrhae glanced at the cupboard. “If it is an Intelligence operative, and he really wanted me, none of this would stop him. Nevertheless, open the door, Mahan. Let’s see this strange caller.”

Mahan touched the door open, stepping into place behind it, as was proper when he was opening it in the presence of the mistress of the house. The dark-clothed shape standing on the doorstep now turned as the door opened, looking into Arrhae’s face.

For a moment or so, Arrhae’s mind went quite blank with confusion. She fumbled for recognition as one will sometimes do on seeing a person from a shop or stall out on the street and out of their normal place. For that frozen moment, as she and the man looked at each other, Arrhae felt disoriented. But a second later, memory locked into place, and she realized whom she was looking at. The only reason she hadn’t instantly recognized him was that he hadn’t been trying to feed her something. Standing there on her doorstep was Ffairrl.

He gave her a bow of considerable respect, seconds
longer than she was used to, even from a servant. “Gracious and noble
deihu,”
he said, as he straightened, “I am sorry to trouble you here on the threshold of your very house.”

“You do not trouble me at all, Ffairrl!” Arrhae said. “Please favor me by crossing my threshold. Mahan, this good gentleman cared for me while I was on
Gorget.
He was steward of my apartments, and kept me out of all manner of trouble. Mostly by feeding me until I could barely move.”

Mahan smiled, gave Ffairrl a bow of moderate respect, and closed the door behind him as he entered. Arrhae noticed that somehow or other, Mahan had also managed to quietly shut and hide the weapons locker without anyone noticing. “Anyone who has cared for the lady of House Khellian,” Mahan said, “is very welcome here.” He turned to Arrhae. “Noble mistress—”

What do you want me to do next?
he was asking, without saying as much. “Mahan,” Arrhae said, “be so good as to lay out a pitcher of ale for us, and some wafers, in the retiring-room.” She gestured into the hall. “Ffairrl, please come into the room and sit down for a bit. Eat and drink and tell me how things have been for you.”

Privately, she was already beginning to suspect what might have brought Ffairrl here. He had been released from his duties aboard
Gorget,
and was looking for work. She had never been entirely certain of what his formal status aboard ship was, as there had been too many other things occurring on
Gorget
that had been occupying her attention. Certainly, Fleet had many civilian or semicivilian employees, doing jobs on which Fleet did not care to waste its own personnel.
Yet also,
Arrhae thought,
there could well have been many on the vessel who seemed to be such personnel, but were not.

She wondered if in Ffairrl’s case she wasn’t being a bit paranoid. It was so hard sometimes to successfully walk the line between paranoia and foolishness. Yet for a long time now, Arrhae had been happy to stay on the paranoid side of
the line; it had kept her alive this long. True, sometimes the attitude started to seem foolish.
Possibly,
she thought, a
good sign for my sanity. But also possibly not so good for my survival.

She walked Ffairrl calmly enough through the Great Hall, bringing him back to the media room where she had previously sat and watched those unsettling crowd scenes unfold.
Terrible,
she thought,
how events can change one. Two nights ago, I thought those were the most frightening things I had seen or heard. Now, though, after the news
…

She touched open the door of the media room and waved Ffairrl toward one of the comfortable chairs there.

They talked pleasant nothings about the weather for some moments, until Mahan came in with a tray of ale and wafers and a bowl of soft
khefai
on the side. Arrhae nodded approval at him, and said, “I think we will need no other care than those for some while, Mahan. If the commlink goes, let me know if it’s something urgent. Otherwise, let us be awhile. I will call you if you’re needed.”

Mahan bowed and took himself away, but not without something of a warning glance at Arrhae. She smiled a little as he went out. “You see,” she said, “I am well cared for here on my own ground. And I have not forgotten how well you cared for me at so troublesome a time.” Then she wondered if she had just said, a little too baldly,
See, I do not need any additional household help right now.

“I am glad to see you well served,” Ffairrl said. “And it doesn’t surprise me that perhaps you think that prospective employment is the errand on which I’ve come. Indeed,” and his eyes suddenly acquired a shadowy chill that Arrhae had never seen in them before, “I much hope that others may think as much, for I am sure that I was seen coming here.”

Arrhae sipped her ale, and tried to maintain in her face a composure that was definitely not present in her heart or her mind. “Ffairrl, I would not have you in trouble with some
other employer—past or future. If such is the case, tell me how I can help you.”

“Lady,” Ffairrl said, “the trouble is not mine, but yours.” He glanced around him. “This room—do you feel secure here?”

She knew what the question meant well enough. “Ffairrl, if I may speak to you familiarly—you’re not in my service anymore, if you ever were—yes, we have had some workmen in recently, but they installed nothing but the commlink, and that only in the front hall. They went nowhere else. We watched that with some care.”

Ffairrl let out a breath. “It will have to do.” He looked at her, and she saw, behind his look, far more than his old concern that she’d grown so used to—the mere matter of when she’d last eaten or drunk.

There was too much at stake for Arrhae to lose her composure now. “Ffairrl,” she said, “bearing in mind the position to which I’ve been elevated, it’s only to be expected that I’m being watched. So far, only the certainty that I am a very minor player in the game going on around us has kept me from becoming much more unsettled than circumstances already seem to require. I was glad enough to come out of the madness that beset
Gorget
when its mission came undone. I was relieved indeed to come back to my own home and shut the door on all of that. But now I think you may be trying to tell me that it’s not as shut as I thought it was.”

He bowed to her a little where he sat. “Noble
deihu,
your caution is commendable, as it always was. But I think now you must not pretend to peer at the world’s dangers through your fingers, like a child looking at some harmless game. The moment requires a different response, so I will be blunt, to save time.” He looked at her earnestly. “I think that perhaps the commlink that you watched installed with such care rang once yesterday.”

Arrhae put down her cup of ale on the tray at her elbow,
folded her hands in her lap, and looked at him with her best expression of mild interest.

“And?”

“They know,” he said.

She sat quietly and thought about that.

“Two words,” she said, “so brief. But how many folk in this world might panic on hearing them? Just think of the trouble you could cause by sending, to everyone on this planet, a post-scroll or wire-scroll that said, ‘All is revealed: flee while you can!’” She smiled at him. “All one would have to do then is sit back and amuse oneself watching all those who have something to hide, running about and revealing the fact. For myself, I prefer to sit still and watch matters unfold.”

“Lady Arrhae,” Ffairrl said, “that is exactly what I fear you do not have the leisure to do.”

“You fear?” Arrhae said. “Or you know?”

It was Ffairrl who was studying her now—an uncomfortably assessing look. She had never seen anything of the kind from him while they were on
Gorget.
He had often seemed embarrassed enough to meet her eyes at all. Yet the look of the moment was frank and thoughtful. “It is always very hard to tell with you,” Ffairrl said, “when you are being bold on purpose, when you are bluffing, and when you are simply using your questioner’s own thoughts against him. It is a considerable skill, this gift you have for misdirection. It has taken you into interesting places of late. But even the company you have been keeping may not be sufficient to save you from some of the
other
company your company keeps.”

He too took a drink of his ale, and put the cup down again. “The man who made that commlink call to you yesterday is dead. He died a silent death, a matter of great annoyance to those who sent him to it. Only the fact that this man had no connection to any Intelligence service anywhere,
and no connection to any politician or anyone else of any possible interest—only this has so far kept the Intelligence services from your doorstep. They fear to offend your employer, and they fear that the link might genuinely have been nothing more than a circuit error—in which case they would pay dearly for your assassination. But they are seeking cause against you even as we speak.”