"The knife."
Attendants scurried. There came the sound of the blue box being opened. Presently, the knife handle was slapped firmly into McKie's palm. He closed his fingers around it, thinking as he did so of all those countless others who had faced this moment in a Gowachin Courtarena.
"Ceylang?"
"I submit to the ruling of this court."
McKie saw the Ferret Wreaves rise from their seats as one person. They stood ready to leap down into the arena and avenge Ceylang no matter the consequences. They could do nothing else but carry out the role which the Gowachin had designed for them. Few in the arena had misunderstood their presence here. No matter the measurement of the wound, the Gowachin did not suffer such things gladly.
An odd look of camaraderie passed between Ceylang and McKie then. Here they stood, the only two non-Gowachin in the ConSentient universe who had passed through that peculiar alchemy which transformed a person into a Legum. One of them was supposed to die immediately, and the other would not long survive that death. Yet, they understood each other the way siblings understand each other. Each had shed a particular skin to become something else.
Slowly, deliberately, McKie extended the tip of his blade toward Ceylang's left jowl, noting the myriad pocks of her triad exchanges there. She trembled but remained firm. Deftly, with the swiftest of flicking motions, McKie added another pock to those on her left jowl.
The Ferret Wreaves were the first to understand. They sank back into their seats.
Ceylang gasped, touched a tendril to the wound. Many times she had been set free by such a wound, moving on to new alliances which did not completely sunder the old.
For a moment, McKie thought she might not accept, but the increasing sounds of approval all around the arena overcame her doubts. The noise of that approval climbed to a near deafening crescendo before subsiding. Even the Gowachin joined this. How dearly they loved such legal nuances!
Pitching his voice for Ceylang alone, McKie spoke.
"You should apply for a position in BuSab. The new director would look with favor upon your application."
"You?"
"Make a Wreave bet on it."
She favored him with the grimace which passed for a smile among Wreaves, spoke the traditional words of triad farewell.
"We were well and truly wed."
So she, too, had seen the truth in their unique closeness.
McKie betrayed the extent of his esoteric knowledge by producing the correct response.
"By my mark I know you."
She showed no surprise. A good brain there, not up to Dosadi standards, but good.
Well and truly wed.
Keeping a firm lock on his emotions (the Dosadi in him helped), McKie crossed to confront Aritch.
"Client Aritch, you are innocent."
McKie displayed the fleck of Wreave blood on the knife tip.
"The forms have been obeyed and you are completely exonerated. I rejoice with all of those who love justice."
At this point in the old days, the jubilant audience would've fallen on the hapless client, would've fought for bloody scraps with which to parade through the city. No doubt Aritch would've preferred that. He was a traditionalist. He confirmed that now.
"I am glad to quit these times, McKie."
McKie mused aloud.
"Who will be the Mrreg now that you're . . . disqualified? Whoever it is, I doubt he'll be as good as the one he replaces. It will profit that next Mrreg to reflect upon the fragile and fugitive value to be gained from the manipulation of others."
Glowering, Aritch turned and shambled toward the doorway out of the arena.
Some of the Gowachin from the audience already were leaving, no doubt hoping to greet Aritch outside. McKie had no desire to witness that remnant of an ancient ritual. He had other concerns.
Well and truly wed.
Something burned in his eyes. And still he felt that soft and sleeping presence in his awareness.
Jedrik?
No response.
He glanced at Broey who, true to his duty as a judge, would be the last to leave the arena. Broey sat blandly contemplating this place where he'd displayed the first designs of his campaign for supremacy in the ConSentiency. He would accept nothing less short of his own death. Those shadowy puppet masters would be the first to feel his rule.
That fitted the plan McKie and Jedrik had forged between them. In a way, it was still the plan of those who'd bred and conditioned Jedrik for the tasks she'd performed so exquisitely.
It was McKie's thought that those nameless, faceless Dosadis who stood in ghostly ranks behind Jedrik had made a brave choice. Faced with the evidence of body exchange all around, they'd judged that to be a deadly choice - the conservatism of extinction. Instead, they'd trusted sperm and ova, always seeking the new and better, the changed, the adapted. And they'd launched their simultaneous campaign to eliminate the Pcharkys of their world, reserving only that one for their final gamble.
It was well that this explosive secret had been kept here. McKie felt grateful to Ceylang. She'd known, but even when it might've helped her, she'd remained silent. BuSab would now have time to forge ways of dealing with this problem. Ceylang would be valuable there. And perhaps more would be learned about PanSpechi, Calebans, and Taprisiots. If only Jedrik . . .
He felt a fumbling in his memories.
"If only Jedrik what?"
She spoke laughingly in his mind as she'd always spoken there.
McKie suppressed a fit of trembling, almost fell.
"Careful with our body," she said. "It's the only one we have now."
"Whose body?"
She caressed his mind.
"Ours, love."
Was it hallucination? He ached with longing to hold her in his arms, to feel her arms around him, her body pressed to him.
"That's lost to us forever, love, but see what we have in exchange."
When he didn't respond, she said:
"One can always be watching while the other acts . . . or sleeps."
"But where are you?"
"Where I've always been when we exchanged. See?"
He felt her parallel to him in the shared flesh and, as he voluntarily drew back, he came to rest in contact with her mutual memories, still looking from his own eyes but aware that someone else peered out there, too, that someone else turned this body to face Broey.
Fearful that he might be trapped here, McKie almost panicked, but Jedrik gave him back the control of their flesh.
"Do you doubt me, love?"
He felt shame. There was nothing she could hide from him. He knew how she felt, what she'd been willing to sacrifice for him.
"You'd have made their perfect Mrreg."
"Don't even suggest it."
She went pouring through his arena memories then and her joy delighted him.
"Oh, marvelous, McKie. Beautiful! I couldn't have done it better. And Broey still doesn't suspect."
Attendants were taking the eight prisoners out of the arena now, all of them still shackled. The audience benches were almost empty.
A sense of joy began filtering through McKie.
I lost something but I gained something.
"You didn't lose as much as Aritch."
"And I gained more."
McKie permitted himself to stare up at Broey then, studying the Gowachin judge with Dosadi eyes and two sets of awareness. Aritch and the eight accused of murder were things of the past. They and many others like them would be dead or powerless before another ten-day. Broey already had shown the speed with which he intended to act. Supported by his troop of Jedrik-chosen aides, Broey would occupy the seats of power, consolidating lines of control in that shadow government, eliminating every potential source of opposition he could touch. He believed Jedrik dead and, while McKie was clever, McKie and BuSab were not a primary concern. One struck at the real seats of power. Being Dosadi, Broey could not act otherwise. And he'd been almost the best his planet had ever produced. Almost.