“Longstride,” Copely told him. “He was found in the Kordan stables with his throat cut. You’ll find all the details in your console brief.”
No attempt to make it look like an accident, then. They came to the High Council Building without further talk. It was there they would hear testimony via remote visuals and ultimately render their verdict.
The hallways were crowded with visitors who’d come to gawk at the three arbiters. They all had that same angry look that Copely had, some of them even seething; the place seemed ready to explode. “Best wrap this up fast,” Duncan said in a low voice to the other two as they entered the judgment chamber.
Copely activated their consoles for them and retired to a corner, making herself available if needed while the three arbiters studied the brief the High Council had prepared for them. Regardless of all that might be going on in the background, the facts of the crime were fairly simple.
At dawn eight days earlier, a stablehand at Roj Kordan’s main facility had been getting ready for the day’s work when he’d caught a whiff of the sickly sweet smell of blood. He’d followed the scent to an unused stall, where he’d found Longstride lying on the floor and bleeding profusely from the deep gash in his throat. By the time the stablehand was able to summon help, Longstride had died; the stablehand must have missed the murderer by only minutes. Suspicion immediately fell upon Verdoris, the woman who was Kordan’s only real rival on Pirmacha.
“Who was this Longstride?” Hartley asked. “Did he work there?”
But Britt had guessed it. “Longstride was a horse,” she said disgustedly. They’d been brought across four star systems to determine who murdered a horse.
“Not just a horse,” Copely spoke up from the corner. “He was the premiere stud on Pirmacha. His get has the best win record in the galaxy, bar none. Kordan had a seven-year waiting list for Longstride.”
Hartley stood up. “I don’t care if he had a seventy-year waiting list. You brought us here through false petition of duress — do you know the penalty for that?”
“There is nothing false about it!” Copely protested. “Longstride’s murder has generated violence here — Kordan’s people and Verdoris’s have already come to blows on a number of occasions. Someone’s going to get killed if this isn’t settled soon. We may even have civil war!”
“Over a horse?” Duncan asked mildly.
“Not just a horse!” Copely was practically screaming at them. “How can you render a just verdict when you don’t even try to understand?”
“We don’t intend to,” Hartley said angrily. “At least, I don’t. I refuse to hear the case.”
“Hartley!” Mother said sharply. “Remember why you’re there!”
“Keep out of this, Mother,” Duncan commanded. “This is our bailiwick.”
“What?” Copely said, confused.
“Talking to the ship,” Britt explained.
Hartley whirled around. “I’m leaving,” he announced.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Mother huffed, ignoring Duncan’s instructions to mind her own business. “You’re on duty — get back there!”
“I’m going on private time as of now.”
“You have no private time coming.”
“Then take it out of next week’s allowance!” Hartley snarled, and slammed out of the room.
The third arbiter calmed down quickly enough, once Duncan and Britt followed him out of the High Council building. They looked for, and found, a quiet watering place where they could talk. Copely trailed in after them, their angry shadow, and took a seat where she could keep an eye on them.
“You aren’t seriously thinking of hearing this case, are you?” Hartley asked Duncan once their drinks had been served.
“I think we’d better find out more of what’s going on here. Mother? Are you there?”
“Of course, Duncan.”
“Can you access the Pirmachan newsnets? Give us a rundown on just how serious a schism has developed here?”
“One moment.”
Britt took a sip of her drink and said, “That should have been included in our briefing.”
“A lot of things should have been included in our briefing,” Duncan agreed. “But it’s clear why the Pirmachans held back. Central would never have sent an arbitration team if they’d known the murder victim was a horse.”
“Not just a horse,” Britt said wryly, mimicking Copely.
Hartley shot a glance at the council woman, who was nursing a drink and glaring at them angrily. “She has a lot of hostility, that one.”
“Personal involvement, you think?” Duncan asked. “More than she’s told us?”
Hartley just shrugged.
Mother had completed her scan of the local newsnets. “Evidently the schism is more serious than we thought.” Duncan winced at the “we.” “Not only have there been outbreaks of violence,” Mother went on, “but normal business operations have been interrupted to a dangerous extent. I’ll give you an example. Off-planet animal transport is handled by a monopoly whose employees all have ties to either Kordan or Verdoris. A docking chief has a brother who supplies feed to Verdoris, a safety inspector moonlights as a scout for Kordan, and so on. When Kordan wanted to ship a consignment of Arabian brood mares to Burleigh’s Planet, all the Verdoris-supporters refused to handle the shipment. The mares are still here, unpaid for. That sort of divisiveness has affected every aspect of Pirmachan life — food, machinery, simple maintenance.”
“Every aspect?” Britt asked dubiously.
“Just about,” Mother replied. “Like the Pirmachan Research Institute. Kordan commissioned them to do some specialized research in horse DNA. But a Verdoris-supporter managed to sabotage the institute’s back-up generator and then cut off the power supply for an hour, until Security broke into the control room and arrested him. But an hour was long enough for the experiments to be ruined — at enormous cost to the institute, which of course was not paid by Kordan.”
“So you’re saying Pirmacha’s economy is in danger?” Duncan asked.
“Most assuredly.”
Hartley snorted. “And all because of a horse named Longstride!”
“Longstride is the excuse, Hartley,” Mother said mildly. “This economic war between Kordan and Verdoris has been building up for a long time.”
The three arbiters were silent for a moment. Then Duncan said, “We’re going to have to hear the case. There’s too much at stake not to.”
The other two reluctantly agreed. Then Britt squinted her eyes and announced, “I think we have company.”
A stocky man in his middle years stood talking to Copely, both of them eyeing the three arbiters. Then the man nodded and headed their way, broadcasting animosity as he came. “What’s this I’ve been told?” he demanded in a bellicose voice. “You’re not even going to hear the case?”
“On the contrary, sir, we have every intention of hearing the case,” Duncan replied with exaggerated courtesy. “And you are...?”
Taken aback, the man pulled out a bright green kerchief and mopped his balding forehead. “Forgive me, Arbiters. You are our last chance to resolve our... difficulties. My name is Thorin Glimm.” He sat down at their table uninvited and said, “I’m Roj Kordan’s Chief of Veterinary Services. I can’t get the medicines I need or even ordinary lab supplies. Shipping is crippled here, virtually nonexistent — Verdoris’s people have seen to that. And with Kordan locked in Security Isolation, nobody’s making the decisions that have to be made.”
“But surely Verdoris has need of shipping, too,” Britt pointed out. “It can’t be all her fault, Dr. Glimm. If you’re aligned with Kordan—”