You’re mad, she said, wanting very much to wake up now.
Neither of us is mad, Lady Sharrow, the Gun said.
The man got up to leave the cabin.
Anyway, we’ll see what we can do.
What do you mean? she said.
About destroying everything. We’ll see what we can do.
She clenched her injured hand, trying to wake herself with the pain, but it wasn’t sore enough.
What are you? she asked it.
The man was at the door. I’m you, the Gun said. I’m the last of the eight.
It winked at her.
We’ll see what we can do.
Now go to sleep.
She awoke to a smell of food and saw a laden tray sitting on the desk. She just missed seeing whoever had left it; the room’s door clicked shut with a solid, massive sound and sucked itself tightly closed.
She lay there, thinking about the dream she had had, and shivered. Then the smell wafting from the tray dragged her back to the immediate.
The tray contained a breakfast sufficient for two hungry people; she ate all of it. It was mid-morning. The screen was working, so she watched the news.
The Huhsz were in trouble because they’d irradiated senior officials on Golter, Miykenns and Nachtel’s Ghost; the World Court was under severe pressure to allow the terminally afflicted bureaucrats access to war-time restricted medical technology. The Court in turn was leaning heavily on the Huhsz for apologies, scapegoats, financial recompense and guarantees of future behav-iour, all of which the Order seemed comprehensively unwilling to give. The World Shrine was virtually under siege and there was talk of force being used; Huhsz cantonment defences and Lay Reserves Martial throughout the system had been mobilised.
There was a news blackout around the Embargoed Areas and the Security Franchise, with rumours of an air clash between the Franchise forces and the Rebel States. Travel in the far south of Caltasp was restricted.
People were apparently still talking about and commenting on the attempted assassination-seen live on screen on Nachtel’s Ghost and still being repeated and re-repeated throughout the system-of some new philosopher-guru from the Ghost called Girmeyn.
She sat closer to the screen, dialled up a news archive and found the filed item from a couple of days earlier; a studio, a live debate; politicians and religious representatives arguing against Girmeyn, and he winning charmingly but decisively.
Girmeyn looked as she remembered him; black hair and dark eyes, and that strange sense of empowered calmness. Then a figure lunging from the audience, stretching over a table, swinging something. Confusion and shouts and a sequence of brief, wild camera angles, most with people getting in the way; a shot of a vicious-looking sacrificial knife lying bloody on a desk with security officers waving guns behind; Girmeyn bleeding from a head-wound, holding one hand up to it, motioning aides and others out of the way with the other hand and talking to the man being held down.
Then came a silent shot from behind glass of Girmeyn, head discreetly bandaged, in a room with the same man; just the pair of them sitting in two small seats facing each other, talking, and the man breaking down, putting his head in his hands, and Girmeyn hesitating, then putting his own hand out, touching the man on the shoulder.
She watched it again, then a third time. The last word on Girmeyn had him in retreat on some asteroid habitat.
She returned to the current news. The usual small wars and civil conflicts, minor and major disasters and the occasional heart-warming filler item.
She sat back in the seat, watching the main news items again. She felt dizzy, the way she had when she’d seen the Lazy Gun and looked into that storehouse of ancient treasure under the stone tower.
After a while she shook her head and switched the screen off.
She showered, and afterwards caught sight of herself in the bathroom’s full-length mirror as she towelled behind her back. She stopped and looked at herself. An artificially bald woman in early middle-age. A dressing on one hand. The skin under her eyes dark. A face that had aged recently.
Alone, she thought. Alone.
She wondered what was behind the mirror, looking back at her.
She dressed in a dark suit of trousers and jacket and a pair of heavy, sensible shoes. In the course of dressing she effectively searched the room, but found nothing that would serve as a weapon.
She sat down eventually and watched some screen; an old fast-paced slapstick comedy that kept her from thinking too much. The smartly uniformed young emissaries came calling at her door half an hour later and invited her to an audience with Molgarin.
The two young men walked on either side of her. Two guards followed a few paces behind. An elevator took them even further down, pausing occasionally while muffled whirring and thudding noises announced what were probably blast shutters opening and closing.
Finally a short corridor walled with roll-doors brought them to a shallow ramp leading up to darkness. The guards stayed at the foot of the incline. She walked up between the two young emissaries; they took one of her arms each, gently but firmly. A rumbling noise behind them closed off the light.
The space they arrived in was a giant circular bunker, blackdark save for a series of twenty or so slit-like projections spaced regularly round the walls, apparently looking out across the cold grey desert to the distant ring of ash-coloured mountains she had seen the day before. She wondered if the projections were recorded images, but guessed they were real-time. The sky above the mountains looked clear and thin and blue.
Distance was hard to estimate, but as they marched her towards the centre of the bunker she guessed it wasn’t less than forty metres in diameter. The darkness made the encircling desert views shine, hurting her eyes.
The two emissaries halted; she stopped, too, and they let go of her arms.
Ceiling spotlights blazed in front of her, shining down onto a black circular dais; steps were just visible, gradations of shade against shade. The dais was crowned by a tall, plain throne made from a gleaming black material that might have been glass, jet or even highly polished wood.
The man sitting in the throne was dressed in a sumptuous robe of many colours, though purple and gold predominated. The thick robe hid his frame; he could have been anything between an average build and obese. His face looked plump but healthy; he was clean-shaven and his head, covered in short, black curls, was bare. There was at least one ring on each of his fingers, and he wore two sets of earrings and a pair of jewelled nostril scuds. A brow-brooch glittered over his right eye.
His fingers sparkled magnificently as he clasped his hands lightly together. He smiled.
“Lady Sharrow,” he said. “My name is Molgarin. We met once long ago, but I don’t expect you remember; you were very young.”
His voice was even and quiet; it sounded older than he looked.
“No, I don’t remember,” she said. She thought her voice sounded flat. “Why did you kill Miz like that?”
Molgarin waved one hand dismissively. “He cheated me out of something that was rightfully mine, many years ago. One of the skills one develops during the course of a long life is that of relishing one’s revenge, and both planning and executing acts worthy of that skill.” Molgarin smiled. “Finally, though, the truth is that I had him killed to distress you.” The smile faded. “Please, sit down.”