Baskin beamed. He stood and recharged their glasses from the bottle that was already half-empty.
‘You do a great thing for us, Merlin. Your name will echo down the centuries of peace to follow.’
‘Let’s just hope the Gaffurians hold it in the same high esteem.’
‘Oh, they will. After a generation or two under our control, they’ll forget there were ever any differences between us. We’ll be generous in victory, Merlin. If there are scores to be settled, it will be with the Gaffurian high command, not the innocent masses. We have no quarrel with those people.’
‘And the brigands – you’ll extend the same magnanimity in their direction?’
‘There’ll be no need. After you’ve taken back the Tactician, they’ll be a spent force, brushed to the margins.’
Merlin’s smile was tight. ‘I did a little more reading on them. There was quite a bit in the private and public records, beyond what you showed me on the crossing.’
‘We didn’t care to overwhelm you with irrelevant details,’ Baskin said, returning to his seat. ‘But there was never anything we sought to hide from you. I welcome your curiosity: you can’t be too well prepared in advance of your operation.’
‘The background is complicated, isn’t it? Centuries of dissident or breakaway factions, skulking around the edges of your war, shifting from one ideology to another, sometimes loosely aligned with your side, sometimes with the enemy. At times numerous, at other times pushed almost to extinction. I was interested in their leader, Struxer…’
‘There’s little to say about him.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Merlin fingered his glass, knowing he had the edge for now. ‘He was one of yours, wasn’t he? A military defector. A senior tactician, in his own right. Close to your inner circle – almost a favoured son. But instead of offering his services to the other side, he teamed up with the brigands on Mundar. From what I can gather, there are Gaffurian defectors as well. What do they all want, do you think? What persuades those men and women that they’re better off working together, than against each other?’
‘They stole the Tactician, Merlin – remember that. A military weapon in all but name. Hardly the actions of untainted pacifists.’
Behind Baskin, the doors opened as Teal came to join them. Baskin twisted around in his seat to greet her, nodding in admiration at the satin Havergal evening wear she had donned for the meal. It suited her well, Merlin thought, but what really mattered was the distraction it offered. While Baskin’s attention was diverted, Merlin quickly swapped their glasses. He had been careful to drink to the same level as Baskin, so that the subterfuge wasn’t obvious.
‘I was just telling Prince Baskin the good news,’ Merlin said, lifting the swapped glass and taking a careful sip from it. ‘I’m satisfied about the authenticity of the syrinx.’
Teal took her place at the table. Baskin leaned across to pour her a glass. ‘Merlin said you were feeling a little unwell, so I wasn’t counting on you joining us at all.’
‘It was just a turn, Prince. I’m feeling much better now.’
‘Good… good.’ He was looking at her intently, a frown buried in his gaze. ‘You know, Teal, if I didn’t know you’d just come from space, I’d swear you were…’ But he smiled at himself, dismissing whatever thought he had been about to voice. ‘Never mind – it was a foolish notion. I trust you’ll accept our hospitality, while Merlin discharges his side of the arrangement? I know you travel together, but on this occasion at least Merlin has no need of an interpreter. There’ll be no negotiation, simply a demonstration of overwhelming and decisive force. They’ll understand what it is we’d like back.’
‘Where he goes, I go,’ Teal said.
Merlin tensed, his fingers tight on the glass. ‘It might not be a bad idea, actually. There’ll be a risk – a small one, I grant, but a risk nonetheless. Tyrant isn’t indestructible, and I’ll be restricted in the weapons I can deploy, if the Prince wants his toy back in one piece. I’d really rather handle this one on my own.’
‘I accept the risk,’ she said. ‘And not because I care about the Tactician, or the difference it will make to this system. But I do want to see the Huskers defeated, and for that Merlin needs his syrinx.’
‘I’d have been happy to give it to Merlin now, if I thought your remaining on Havergal would offer a guarantee of his return. But the opposite arrangement suits me just as well. As soon as we have the Tactician, we’ll release the syrinx.’
‘If those are you terms,’ Merlin said, with an easy-going shrug.
Baskin smiled slightly. ‘You trust me?’
‘I trust the capability of my ship to enforce a deal. It amounts to the same thing.’
‘A pragmatist. I knew you were the right man for the job, Merlin.’
Merlin lifted his glass. ‘To success, in that case.’
Baskin followed suit, and Teal raised her own glass in half-hearted sympathy. ‘To success,’ the Prince echoed. ‘And victory.’
They left the facility the following morning. Merlin took Tyrant this time, Teal joining him as they followed Renouncer back into space. Once the two craft were clear of Havergal’s atmosphere, Prince Baskin issued a request for docking authorisation. Merlin, who had considered his business with the prince concluded for now, viewed the request with a familiar, nagging trepidation.
‘He wants to come along for the ride,’ he murmured to Teal, while the airlock cycled. ‘Force and wisdom, that’s exactly what it’ll be. Needs to see Struxer’s poor brigands getting their noses bloodied up close and personal, rather than hearing about it from halfway across the system.’
Teal looked unimpressed. ‘If he wants to risk his neck, who are you to stop him?’
‘Oh, nobody at all. It’s just that I work best without an audience.’
‘You’ve already got one, Merlin. Start getting used to it.’
He shrugged aside her point. He was distracted to begin with, thinking of the glass he had smuggled out of the dining room, and whether Prince Baskin had been sharp enough to notice the swap. While they were leaving Havergal he had put the glass into Tyrant’s full-spectrum analyser, but the preliminary results were not quite what he had been expecting.
‘I wasn’t kidding about the risks, you know,’ Merlin said.
‘Nor was I about wanting to see you get the syrinx. And not because I care about you all that much, either.’
He winced. ‘Don’t feel you need to spare my feelings.’
‘I’m just stating my position. You’re the means to an end. You’re searching for the means to bring about the destruction of the Huskers. The syrinx is necessary for that search, and therefore I’ll help you find it. But if there was a way of not involving you…’
‘And I thought we broke some ice back there, with all that stuff about Tierce and your daughter.’
‘It didn’t matter then, it doesn’t matter now. Not in the slightest.’
Merlin eyed the lock indicator. ‘It isn’t as clear-cut as I thought, did you know? I swiped a gene sample from his lordship. Now, if your blood had been percolating its way down the family tree the way it ought to have been, then I should have seen a very strong correlation…’
‘Wait,’ she said, face hardening as she worked through the implications of that statement. ‘You took a sample from him. What about me, Merlin? How did you get a look at my genes, without…?’
‘I sampled you.’
Teal slapped him. There had been no warning, and she only hit him the once, and for a moment afterwards it might almost have been possible to pretend that nothing had happened, so exactly had they returned to their earlier stances. But Merlin’s cheek stung like a vacuum burn. He opened his mouth, tried to think of something that would explain away her anger.