After some time had gone by and the night was well advanced, the door slid open and Inner Child nudged the Fudir awake. A figure slipped into the room, paused to assess motion, and flowed swiftly toward the bed on which the scarred man ought to have been lying.
Partway there, it paused in watchful silence and the Fudir noted a club of some sort in its hand. Then, apparently satisfied, it backed away and strode to the holostage, where it seated itself at the play deck. The scarred man slipped up behind it in the dark and placed one hand over its mouth and with the other plucked the club from its hand.
“Rigardo-ji Edelwasser, I presume,” he whispered into its ear.
Donovan felt the man stiffen, try to turn. “Nu, nu, nu,” he said with the Silky Voice. “Gentle, my good sir. Be not afraid. You are Rigardo-ji, the Rightful Owner of this vessel? Nod your head.” The head bobbed once in his grip. “I will release you, but you must make no move nor cry. I have destroyed all the Eyes in this room, citing my modesty, and she has assented by not replacing them. But we will speak in whispers, in case she has salted this room with Ears. She is accustomed to my self-conversations, but speak too loudly and she might wonder if I speak with too many voices. Do you understand?”
Again, a single, spastic nod of the head.
“Good, good. We are in the same boat, you and we. There is no need to struggle.”
When Donovan unloosed his hold, Rigardo-ji turned to face him. “Are you a madman? I’ve been watching, and I think you are mad. That’s why she locks you in here.”
“Wouldn’t that make you mad? Why have you been lurking in the wainscoting all this time?”
“Am I a fool? A poor, honest smuggler, me, just trying to make a living. I’d been drinking and, when I heard her bang through the lock, I hid in one of my…”
“One of your hidey-holes. Go on.”
He shrugged. “And I passed out. Came to after we were under way. Guess she never realized I was still aboard. I figured out what she was, toot sweet, and I ain’t no match for a Confederal Shadow. I didn’t dare try to take her on myself. ’Sides…” The smuggler flipped his hands. “She was going the right direction, so there wasn’t no rush. I come out now and then just to check the headings. I figured if I just waited, something would come up.”
“And something did.”
“Yeah. You.”
“But you’re not sure about me, or you would have approached me sooner.”
“It was pretty clear you were her prisoner. That made you her enemy, but it didn’t make you my friend. For all I knew, you were Confederal bound too, and you’d gang up on me if I showed myself. I overheard some of what you two was saying, but I don’t speak birdsong, and I wasn’t always where I could eavesdrop.”
Donovan considered the man before him. He could see, even in the dim-lit darkness, the tightness of his mouth and eyes. “Why come out tonight?”
“I thought … it was time we made contact.”
Liar, the Sleuth said. He checked the bunk to make sure we were sleeping—and had a club in case we weren’t. But Donovan only said, “You didn’t wake me. You went to the console.”
“I’ve been dead reckoning. I needed to check our position, and it’s safer to do that here than in the control room. I been out a coupla times, but sometimes I have to cross a hallway and that sets off her damn motion sensors. How does she bear? The ship, I mean.”
“Four days out from the Megranome Road.”
“Oh.” The smuggler’s concern was palpable. “That ain’t good. We need to take the Biemtí to the Cynthia Cluster.”
“To deliver a geegaw to the Molnar.”
Donovan felt hesitation in the smuggler’s posture.
“You read through my work orders,” Rigardo-ji said. “I thought I snatched them in time. Look, that’s top secret—need-to-know—and the penalty clauses Foreganger lays down…”
The Brute tightened his grip on the smuggler. “Keep the voice down, I toldja.” Then Donovan said, “I promise not to tell the People. I scanned your current invoices, to see if you had anything aboard I could use as a weapon. Short of breaking a vase over her head, I didn’t find anything.”
“There may be something we can use,” the smuggler allowed. “I can read between the lines when I gotta. With two of us, we got a chance. I’ll go get it out. Then you distract the ’Fed, and I pot her. No offense, good buddy, but you’ve had three chances already to kill her and passed up each one.”
Donovan thought about it and reluctantly agreed that the roles had to split that way. If Rigardo-ji suddenly appeared from nowhere, Olafsdottr would recognize it precisely as a distraction and the element of surprise would be irretrievably lost.
“You’ll only get one shot,” Donovan said.
“I’ll only need one. But it’s got to take her by surprise. I woulda tried something already, but I got no illusions. A microsecond’s warning, and I wouldn’t even get the one shot.”
Donovan did not know how good a shot the smuggler might be. Many an eye and hand, steady on the range, grew uncertain when a living person was in the target hairs. Rigardo-ji sat rigid, Donovan’s arms upon him, eyes wide, stinking of sweat. Slowly, as if disengaging, the scarred man released him, stepped back.
“It will have to be soon,” he said. “Before we enter the Roads.” And before you lose your nerve. He did not voice that thought.
“Tomorrow,” the man said. “After dinner. There’s a T-intersection where…”
“I know it.” It was where the false alarm had been tripped the other day.
“There’s a storage space behind the cross hall. Sometimes, they bring containers up the long hallway, and I open the panel and they dolly them straight in. It’s empty right now. I can make my way into it. You come past, turn up the long hall like you do. Your backs are to the panel. You get her to stand still. I slide the panel open and…” He made a gun of his fingers. “Pop. Pop. I got her.”
Donovan said nothing, and after a moment the smuggler looked at his fingers and self-consciously wiggled them, as if throwing the imaginary gun away. “That’s the important thing,” he said. “You gotta distract her while I open the panel or else she’ll hear it. I mean these are cargo doors; they ain’t exactly stealthed.”
“In the back,” Donovan said.
“Safer that way, don’t you think? I don’t wanna give her the chance. Confederal Shadows, they’re ruthless. I’ve read the stories.”
“Do you have something nonlethal, something to disable her instead? I know some people on Dangchao who wouldn’t mind getting her as a sort of house present when I visit.”
“Who do you know that would keep a Confederation agent as a house pet?”
“People who ask Questions.”
Rigardo-ji shrank from him and made Ganesha’s sign to ward off bad luck. “I shoulda known you was no ordinary prisoner. Yeah. Yeah, sure. There’s something in my stock. It’ll knock her out, but not kill her, if that’s what you want.”
Inner Child heard the scraping of a steel bar. “<Quick,>” he whispered through the scarred man’s lips. “<She’s coming!>” Donovan added, “Tomorrow, after dinner.”