With a ninety percent fatality rate, Jay wished they had used the damn wild card. He wasn’t feeling too terribly generous toward Takisians in general, and Ilkazam in particular right now.
His perambulations brought him back to where Tisianne and Meadows sat in hunched misery. Their hands were tightly clasped as if the support would somehow help, but they were both drowning, and they knew it. Jay didn’t feel a lot of sympathy.
“He played it so well. The cadets and swords may suspect that he was behind Onyze’s death, but they can’t prove it. Mark” – she reached up and pushed back a straggling tendril of dirty blond-gray hair – “you should never have let him manipulate you so.”
“They were going to kill you, Doc. You and the baby. What was I supposed to do?”
“Let Zabb do his own dirty work -”
“Or you,” interrupted Jay. “You’re pretty good at doing the expedient thing too.”
He hadn’t meant to say it, but the memory of that pitiful, shrunken creature being callously put to sleep rose up and gagged him. Folding his arms across his chest, he started to sit down.
With a sweep of a foot Mark kicked the chair out from under him. Jay landed painfully on his tailbone and found himself staring up and up at the immensely tall ace. There was a light in Meadows’s mild blue eyes which Ackroyd had never seen.
“Don’t be so fucking self-righteous. So you haven’t killed… yet. Maybe you just haven’t faced the time when… like, someone special is in terrible danger, and you’ve gotta… well, you’ve just gotta do… things.” Meadows’ voice trailed away into silence, and Jay was acutely aware that his eyes behind their distorting lenses were awash with tears.
Tisianne’s voice was dead level, but anger hummed along the edges of each word. “If it will make you any happier, Mr. Ackroyd, I can assure you that I am suffering.” She contemplated some internal vision, and it was not a happy one. After several moments she gave herself a shake and resumed. “You can despise me, Mr. Ackroyd, I’m not paying you for your friendship or your approval. I’m paying you – both of you – to protect me, and for you to succeed in that task, you must work together. So at least call truce.”
“Let’s see if I can boil down the flowery Takisian bullshit into plain English. So I can be bitched off at you, but I have to be nice to Meadows?”
“Yes.”
“That I can handle,” Jay concluded as the crowd settled, and the council resumed their chairs.
Responding to a telepathic call, Tisianne left her place in the audience and walked front and center. After a few minutes twenty-three stern-faced men joined her, Taj among them. Despite the portentous expressions it was tough to take any of it seriously. They were all so tiny, and so improbably dressed. Jay kept expecting them to burst into song like the Mayor of Munchkin Land welcoming Dorothy. It actually wasn’t a half-bad analogy, the detective mused, Tachyon as Dorothy.
“Meadows is definitely the scarecrow,” Jay muttered. “I’ll be the tin woodsman. Too bad the cowardly lion didn’t have the stones to board the ship.”
Trips speared him with an elbow, and Jay realized Taj had begun speaking.
“Shaklan is dead. A direct-line heir has returned. I have served as caretaker to the honor and power of this House, but a grave crisis faces us. The time for caretakers is past. I relinquish my office to Tisianne brant Ts’ara.”
“How say the swords?”
It was like high-stakes bidders at a Las Vegas blackjack tournament. A single finger would be lifted, an eyebrow raised, but no words spoken. Jay didn’t know if they were just an uncommonly surly lot, or if they didn’t want to be formally on record.
The old lady gave a wintry smile. “Twenty ayes and three??* amp;##*.” It was a word Jay didn’t understand, but since it didn’t sound like the various forms of negatives he knew, he assumed it meant abstentions. “An unprecedented display of unanimity for the Ilkazam,” she said. “We must be in very grave trouble.”
Nobody responded to her gallows humor. In fact the swords all stood staring down at their toes like unruly little boys faced with an indignant mother. The seven old ladies leaned in toward one another. With their gray-and-white heads and the silver-and-gray dresses, the effect was like watching Stonehenge monoliths gathering for a conference. The confab didn’t last long. The spokeswoman swept the crowd with imperious eyes, then bent that quelling gaze back on Tisianne.
“Tisianne brant Ts’ara, the regency being at an end, and the council having previously established your identity, we place in your hands -”
Meadows slewed around to face Jay. A huge smile split his face, and he gave the detective a thumbs-up signal. Jay forgot how pissed he was. He felt the smile coming and raised his hand -
“Excuse me.” Zabb was sauntering up the central aisle.
“Oh, fuck,” moaned Mark.
“This is no longer Tisianne the son of Ts’ara. This is Tisianne the daughter of Ts’ara.” There was a sharp murmur throughout the watchers. “The position of Raiyis is barred to women. Theirs is a higher purpose. One that my cousin is manifestly fulfilling.” And Zabb laid a hand tenderly on Tisianne’s swollen belly.
The slap rang loud in the silent room.
Tisianne, her hand still upraised, stood quivering with unleashed fury. Zabb kept smiling. Kept his hand on her stomach.
Taj jerked forward, anger and shock making him clumsy. “You miserable abortion. Tisianne is a man.”
“Have you ever seen a pregnant man?” To the council he said, “I agree, the mind is male, but the body… You’ve all borne children. You know where her focus is.” He slapped her belly. “Do you want her leading this House when we are on a war footing?”
“She’ll recover her rightful body,” Taj objected.
“And when she does, I’ll be happy to allow her… er, him, to resume his station.”
“You monster.” Tis’s voice was husky, shaking with emotion. “Without the power of this House I can never recover myself. Congratulations, Zabb, you have what you’ve always wanted, and you didn’t even have to kill me for it.”
Softly Zabb said, “Which is precisely why I arranged it this way.” The nobleman faced the council. There was a manic light in the pale gray eyes. “Rule, Kib’r, is it a man or a woman?”
Jay could see the answer even before the old woman spoke. “Woman.”
“And who is now direct heir?”
“Wait!” yelled Taj. “I am the regent -”
“You abdicated that position,” snapped back Zabb.
“Rule, Intayes! Who now has the right to rule House Ilkazam?”
“You.” No emotion crossed that lined face. It could have been a death mask.
Zabb swung Tisianne up into his arms. Jay expected the alien to start spitting and fighting. Instead she seemed stunned. Zabb started walking for the door. Mark, dragging his briefcase, went blundering in pursuit, barking his shins on chairs, tripping with agitation. Jay followed. They caught Zabb at the door. Pissed as he was at the little shit, the blank look in Tisianne’s eyes frightened Jay. He wondered if this latest blow had snapped her mind.
Zabb held up a restraining hand, palm out. “No, gentlemen. I am taking my sweet cousin to quarters more appropriate for her sex and condition. And unneutered males are not permitted.”
There must have been a telepathic summons, for suddenly the two humans were caged by a ring of guards.
Trips remembered late-night and drunken conversations with Tachyon when the alien had talked of the murder of his mother. Of the plots and counterplots that swirled about the harem, and he called out desperately to Zabb’s retreating back, “She’ll be killed there.”