“Yes, right. I’ll ask the Emperor to turn me loose so I can open up the secret passage into his dungeon. What about you? Do you have a plan?”
“In fact,” Shaa said, “I do, at least a tentative one, at least if your brother can get into your Archives and survive the experience, and could legitimately wear your ring of office.”
“That could work,” Leen said. “You want to send him alone? Do you think you could do anything with the computer?”
“Not I,” said Shaa, shaking his head regretfully. “Max would be the one. Indeed, you could say Max has been training himself his entire life for this opportunity, even if he failed to make much headway the time he was there with you. Of course, one has to ask oneself what Max would do with the opportunity once it was in his grasp. But enough speculation in that quarter, I suppose; after all Max’s is not the only strand in this story. The Hand, for example, have been heard from again, and my brother has been up to more than his share of nastiness. Would you like to hear about it?”
Shaa’s own subsequent exposition took Leen into her outfit of state, an absurdly gaudy ensemble with its sparkling slouch cap and bright spinal weave and flashing dendritic arborizations swooping out across her back; thank goodness for the hat, at least, which let her get away with a minimum of attention to her hair. She managed to get all the fasteners squared up herself, even without the nattering help of Florence, then squared her shoulders and went out into the sitting room. Shaa had moved to an assiduous examination of the contents of her own local floor-to-ceiling wall of the Archives. “It’s too bad my lodgings weren’t rendered totally uninhabitable,” he added, scrutinizing her incunabular Horst Villaments. “I could move in with you, sleep on this couch, and have enough reading material within reach without setting foot on the floor to last for the next five years.”
“While I’m on my honeymoon you can stay up here and watch the place.”
“How about while you’re locked up at the command of the new Emperor?” Shaa suggested blandly. “No, I suppose that wouldn’t do; all your possessions might be forfeit to the state.” He straightened up and brushed off his hands.
Leen crossed her arms and stood in the doorway. “So I see you’re busy and thanks for coming by, but as long as you’re here would you mind helping me escape?”
“Now why would you want to do something like that? I would think at the right hand of the Emperor is not a bad place to be.”
“Ha ha,” Leen said deliberately. “Right. Are you saying you can’t help me, or you won’t?”
“Can’t now, might be able to later. Did you see those five fine fellows outside with your other friends, the ones without any weapons except those odd little daggers, the ones with the lightning bolt insignia above their unit patches? They’re elite commando types. I’d have to use spell-work to sneak you away, and that’s just what that squad’s trained for. Unless their reputation is based totally on air, which I would certainly not count on, we wouldn’t get far.”
“But couldn’t I just go out with you the way you came in? Didn’t you use magic for that?”
“No magic, just physical conditioning and a lack of sound good sense and the recent rebound boost to my metabolism you already know about, and something in my heredity that makes me comfortable hanging off ledges and trees. I am also, as you see, appropriately cloaked in black. It wouldn’t be safe, trust me.”
“So I have to go out there and sit in the very place the Scapula is bound to see me when he pulls whatever he’s bound to pull. And if I survive the Scapula’s attention there’s always the Emperor’s.”
“If you survive my brother you can blame his machinations for everything,” Shaa pointed out. “You might want to do that anyway as soon as you get the Emperor’s ear. Believe me, my friend, you may find yourself the most strategic asset of all.”
“I’m sure being an asset goes hand-in-glove with serious hazard,” Leen said, her expression gloomy.
“You’ve been reading the manual,” Shaa observed.
“I suppose you know because you wrote it.”
“That claim is far too generous,” said Shaa, poo-pooingly. “I could rightfully claim no more than contributor credit. Maximillian -”
He was interrupted by a deliberate rap on the front door. “My lady?” came the captain’s voice. “Do you require assistance?”
“No, thank you!” Leen called. She and Shaa had been keeping their voices low; there was no evidence they had been overheard. But it would clearly be best not to give her escort the suspicion to come in and check around again. “I’ll be ready in a moment!”
“Very well,” said the captain. “We await.”
“I’m sure you do,” murmured Leen. She swung back to Shaa, then hesitated.
“You look quite striking,” Shaa offered. “All elements of your trousseau seem in place.”
Leen gave him a dirty look. “I’ve been thinking about all this, your brother in particular. Where did he get all the knowledge he’s needed to make himself a god, and the rest of it? He hasn’t been in the Archives - I don’t think that information is in the Archives, I’ve certainly never found it, but you’d think he would have made the effort... unless there was no need for it. Is this - is this knowledge part of your family lore, is that why he didn’t need to research it? Do you have the same insight he does?”
“I was wondering if you would pick up on that question. The proximate answer is no, I am not privy to the inner workings of his behind-the-scenes machinations, but I have been asking myself the same questions. I suspect my brother has cultivated a confederate. And not the ones we know about, either, the ones he’s already betrayed.”
It made sense. It felt right. But there was more. “That might imply this confederate shares the same goal as your brother,” Leen thought out loud. “But which goal? Making the Scapula master of the world? Dethroning the other gods?”
“I would think the latter,” said Shaa. “It would be reasonable to assume this hidden associate to be closer to the center of my brother’s plots, which would also imply a fuller understanding on their part of my brother’s carnivorous habits and past history, which in turn would imply they would have a plan to offset Arznaak’s inevitable treachery... or would think they have such a plan.”
“Maybe this other person really is clever enough to outwit your brother - you don’t think so? You wouldn’t bet against your brother, then?”
“Would you? When he’s on such a major roll? My brother has a regular diet of appetizers made from people who thought they had the drop on him. But you’re right, this case might be different. As you started off, we’re postulating this compatriot to have knowledge Arznaak needs but can’t yet duplicate himself - unless my brother has already chewed them up and thrown them away. I don’t think that’s happened yet, frankly, since I still seem to feel the whiff of an additional motivator behind the scenes. But unless my brother has fallen in love with this accomplice - which I suppose is possible, although where he’d find a puff adder who could give him this level of assistance I’d never know - then clearly the way to bet is against this accomplice being long for this world.
“So.” Shaa pivoted on his heel and paced deliberately back in the other direction along the rug. “Whoever this hypothetical co-conspirator might be, my brother would know better than to trust them, which means he would do his best not to be dependent on them, which means he would throw himself into learning everything he could about the guts of their contribution as fast as he could, so as to be able to do without them when the time came... but then again things have been moving so quickly, he may have run out of time to learn everything he needs to know. Or maybe his confrere really is clever enough to successfully keep their secrets intact, making their expectation for longevity greater than a matter of minutes.”