Merlin waited until the Prince had taken his seat, folding his bones with care. ‘You mentioned Struxer back there.’
‘Did I?’
‘The intelligence briefings told me very little, Prince – even the confidential files I lifted from your sealed archives on Havergal. But you spoke as if you knew the man.’
‘Struxer was one of us. That was never any sort of secret.’
‘A senior tactician, that’s what I was told. That sounds like quite a high-up role to me. Struxer wasn’t just some anonymous military minion, was he?’
After a moment Baskin said: ‘He was known to me. As of course were all the high-ranking strategists.’
‘Was Struxer involved in the Tactician?’
If Baskin meant to hide his hesitation, he did a poor job of it. ‘To a degree. The Tactician required a large staff, not just to coordinate the feeding-in of intelligence data, but to analyse and act on the results. The battle computers I mentioned…’
‘But Struxer was close to it all, wasn’t he?’ Merlin was guessing now, relying on hard-won intuition, but Baskin’s reactions were all he needed to know he was on the right track. ‘He worked closely with the computer.’
‘His defection was… regrettable.’
‘If you can call it a defection. That would depend on what those brigands actually want, wouldn’t it? And no one’s been terribly clear on that with me.’
Baskin’s face was strained. ‘They’re against peace. Is there anything more you need to know?’
Merlin smiled, content with that line of questioning for now. ‘Prince, might I ask you something else? You know I took an interest in your constitutional history when we were on Havergal. Assassinations are commonplace, aren’t they? There was that time when almost the entire ruling house of Havergal was wiped out in one strike…’
‘That was twelve or thirteen centuries ago.’
‘But only a little after the visitation of the Shrike. That was why it caught my eye.’
‘No other reason?’
‘Should there be?’
‘Don’t play games with me, Merlin – you’ll always lose. I was the boy who dreamed of war, remember.’
The door behind them opened. It was Teal, awake sooner than Merlin had expected. Her face had a freshly scrubbed look, her hair wetted down.
‘Are we close?’
‘About thirty minutes out,’ Merlin said. ‘Buckle in, Teal – it could get interesting from any point onwards, especially if their sensors are a little better than the Prince believes.’
Teal slipped into the vacant seat. Befitting her Cohort training, she had adapted well to the two gees, moving around Tyrant with a confident, sinewy ease.
‘Have you run that genetic scan again?’ she asked.
‘I have,’ Merlin said. ‘And I came up with the same result, only at a higher confidence level. Do you want to tell him, or should I?’
‘Tell me what?’ Baskin asked.
‘There’s a glitch in your family tree,’ Merlin said, then nodded at Teal for her to continue.
‘I’ve already been to your world,’ she said, delivering the words with a defiant and brazen confidence. ‘I was on the diplomatic party, aboard the swallowship Shrike. I was with them when they sold you the syrinx.’ Before he had a chance to voice his disbelief, she said: ‘A little later, our ship ran into trouble in a nearby system. The Huskers took us, wrecked the ship, but left just enough of us alive to suffer. We went into frostwatch, those of us who remained. And one by one we died, when the frostwatch failed. I was the last living survivor. Then Merlin found me, and we returned to your system. You know this to be possible, Prince. You know of frostwatch, of near-light travel, of time-compression.’
‘I suppose…’ he said.
‘But there’s more to it than that,’ Teal went on. ‘My daughter stayed on Havergal. She became Cupis, Queen Cupis, after Tierce was promoted to the throne. You said it yourself, Prince: there was something in my face you thought you recognised. It’s your own lineage, your own family tree.’
‘Except it isn’t, quite,’ Merlin said. ‘You see, you’re not related, and you should be. I ran a genetic cross-match between the two of you on Havergal, and another since you’ve been on Tyrant. Both say there’s no correlation, which is odd given the family tree. But I think there’s a fairly simple explanation.’
Baskin glanced from Merlin to Teal and back to Merlin, his eyes wide, doubting and slightly fearful. ‘Which would be?’
‘You’re not Prince Baskin,’ Merlin said. ‘You just think you are.’
‘Don’t be absurd. My entire life has been lived in the public eye, subject to the harshest scrutiny.’
Merlin did his best not to sound too callous, nor give the impression that he took any pleasure in disclosing what he now knew to be the truth. ‘There’s no doubt, I’m afraid. If you were really of royal blood, I’d know it. The only question is where along your family tree the birth line was broken, and why. And I think I know the answer to that, as well…’
The console chimed. Merlin turned to it with irritation, but a glance told him that the ship had every reason to demand his attention. A signal was beaming out at them, straight from Mundar.
‘That isn’t possible,’ Baskin said. ‘We’re still three light seconds out – much too far for their sensors.’
Teal said: ‘Perhaps you should see what it says.’
The transmission used local protocols, but it only took an instant for Tyrant to unscramble the packets and resolve them into a video signal. A man’s head appeared above the console, backdropped by a roughly hewn wall of pale rock. Merlin recognised the face as belonging to Struxer, but only because he had paid close attention to the intelligence briefings. Otherwise it would have been easy to miss the similarities. This Struxer was thinner of face, somehow more delicate of bone structure, older and wearier looking, than the cold-eyed defector Merlin had been expecting.
He started speaking in a high steady voice, babbling out a string of words in the Havergal tongue. Tyrant was listening in, but it would be a little while before it could offer a reliable translation.
Merlin turned to Teal.
‘What’s he saying?’
‘I’m just as capable of telling you,’ Baskin said.
Merlin nodded. ‘But I’d sooner hear it from Teal.’
‘He’s got a fix on you,’ she said, frowning slightly as she caught up with the stream of words. ‘Says he’s had a lock since the moment you were silly enough to turn those scanning systems onto Mundar. Says you must have thought they were idiots, to miss something that obvious. Also that we’re not as stealthy as we think we are, judging by the ease with which he’s tracking our engine signature.’
‘You fool,’ Baskin hissed. ‘I told you it was a risk.’
‘He says he knows what our intentions are,’ Teal went on. ‘But no matter how much force you throw at them they’re not going to relinquish the Iron Tactician. He says to turn back now, and avoid unnecessary violence.’
Merlin gritted teeth. ‘Ship, get ready to send a return transmission using the same channel and protocols. Teal, you’re doing the talking. Tell Struxer I’ve no axe to grind with him or his brigands, and if we can do this without bloodshed no one’ll be happier than me. Also that I can take apart that asteroid as easily as if it’s a piece of rotten fruit.’
Baskin gave a thin smile, evidently liking Merlin’s tone.
‘Belligerent enough for you, was it?’ Merlin asked, while Teal leaned in and translated Merlin’s reply.
‘Threats and force are what they understand,’ Baskin said.
It took three seconds for Teal’s statement to reach Mundar, and another three for Struxer’s response to find its way back to Tyrant. They listened to what he had to say, Merlin needing no translator to tell him that Struxer’s answer was a great deal more strident than before.