“Because we’re not. You want to go first?”
“Not particularly. But I will.”
She reviewed her day at the bank. Jonah knew he should be dismayed, but he had already hit his absorption limit of bad news for the day. Her words just sank into a numb spot in his mind.
“I don’t know if Morten is anything more than a hired gun,” Heather said. “He probably doesn’t have any particular ideological loyalty. If he was helping the Kittery Renaissance, it’s because people told him to. And right now it looks like one of those people is Gareth Sinclair.”
Jonah nodded ruefully. Before he threw his evidence on the fire, though, he wanted to at least glance in another direction.
“What about Senator Derius? She had contact info for Morten, something very few people knew. He’s practically a fugitive. So how does she get this info?”
Heather pounced, seeming happy to move in another direction. “That’s a question worth asking,” she said. “She closed down on me, hard, when I was talking to her, and all I really wanted to know, at least right then, was the depth of her connection to Morten. It’s worth probing more in that direction.”
She paused. “But as far as what’s happening with Kittery Renaissance, I don’t think she was involved. We have no direct connection from them to her. Morten was at the riot finishing the tail end of a transfer that involved Gareth, not her. And I hate to say it, but she wasn’t covering up her connection to Morten, not like Gareth.”
“I know. Morten’s interrogation is supporting that connection.” He passed the printouts to her.
She read them, then closed her eyes. “We have to bring him in.”
“I know.”
“Do you think he knew? Was this his plan all along, to get Victor out of the way and take his place? If so… God, how long must he have been jockeying for position? How much effort did he put into impressing the Exarch to get this nomination? How deep does this plan go?”
These were the same questions Jonah had been asking himself for the past couple days. He answered with his gut. “I don’t think he knew he was going to become Paladin. I don’t think he planned any of this to happen this way. I don’t even want to think he’s involved, but the evidence keeps pointing to him. I hope he just got mixed up in something over his head and he hasn’t been able to pull out of it. I hope.”
“Me too. So what do we do? Bring up official charges?”
“No,” Jonah said. He saw it now. He’d been worrying about how to do this all day, and he suddenly saw exactly how it should happen, where his line should be. “No, we bring him in, you and me. We make sure he knows its serious, that things look bad. We bring him in and tell him to help us clear his name. Help us explain how this might all make sense.”
“Can we still assume he’s innocent? With all this?”
“Yes.” The firmest image of Gareth Sinclair in Jonah’s mind was from their days on Ryde. The meteor strike had shattered the entire ecology of the planet, causing stable fault lines to shift and dormant volcanoes to erupt. One such volcano had sent a river of lava streaming toward a refugee camp full of people who had already been pushed out of three other locations. Gareth was with them, darting around in his Black Hawk, blasting rock to divert the flow, digging trenches to slow it enough to allow the refugees to get clear, and staying behind until the last person was away. At the end, he was trapped in the middle of a lava plain. He attempted to jump away, and almost made it. His ’Mech’s feet landed in molten rock, but Sinclair churned forward, metal legs melting beneath him as he rocked forward. At least three times, Jonah thought the ’Mech was going to pitch backward, plunging Sinclair into the red stream. Each time, Sinclair steadied it. Finally, as the knees dissolved, he stumbled, rocked back again, then lunged forward. He no longer had any support beneath him, so his cockpit kept moving until it smashed into the ground ahead—firm, rocky ground. The body of the ’Mech made it clear of the lava.
Sinclair had saved hundreds of people that day, almost losing his life. The next day, he was in a trench, a bandage over his right eye, trying to divert the lava away from a chemical plant. When the Legate of Ryde sought him out to reward him, Sinclair was honestly surprised that anyone thought what he had done was special.
Jonah couldn’t see this same man plotting assassination and insurrection. He owed him a chance.
“We’ll lay all our cards on the table,” Jonah said. “Maybe he can explain to us where we went wrong.”
“And if he can’t?”
There was only one answer to that question. “Then we arrest him.”
47
Hotel Duquesne, Geneva
Terra, Prefecture X
18 December 3134
This is it, Jonah thought to himself sourly. I’ve really become a politician now.
One of the things he had always hated about politics was the game played through interpreting carefully chosen words, minor gestures and mundane actions. In this game, a mere tilt of the head by the right Paladin during an important speech by the Exarch could indicate agreement or displeasure, sending the whole city of Geneva into a spasm of rumor and shifting alliances. Every word, every move, every step people took carried the burden of potentially being a political message.
Jonah hated it when people tried to read him that way. His gestures were never calculated—if he scratched his nose during a speech, it was because it itched. He preferred that people, if they wanted to know what he thought, ask him, and then believe what he said. He treated others the same way, believing the Sphere to be big and complicated enough already without his taking part in this strange political dance.
But now, as he walked down the softly carpeted hallway leading to Gareth Sinclair’s room, he found himself practically assigning points to Sinclair’s every move, trying to find any evidence at all that could convince him who to believe, Sinclair or Morten. Sinclair, according to the desk clerk, was in his room. He hadn’t fled, wasn’t in hiding. That was good; he wasn’t acting like he had anything to hide. But he had hesitated before agreeing to let Jonah and Heather come see him, which might be an indication that he knew what was coming, which would count against him. Or it might just indicate that he was not looking forward to this particular conversation. Jonah could sympathize with that sentiment.
He knocked firmly at Sinclair’s door. He watched Heather’s hand flutter toward a weapon on her belt, before she remembered that they’d agreed to meet their fellow Paladin unarmed. It wasn’t an arrest, they’d reminded each other repeatedly, even though both knew that’s exactly what it felt like.
“One moment,” Sinclair called promptly. Another point in his favor, Jonah thought. He’s not scurrying away from us.
The door opened, revealing Sinclair casually dressed, framed by a room in which stacks of paper covered every available horizontal surface of a room at least three times as large as Jonah’s quarters at Pension Flambard.
“Paladin Levin. Paladin GioAvanti. Come in.” He sounded stiff, and again Jonah couldn’t blame him. He didn’t add a point to either side of the ledger.
They followed him into the room, and he turned and actually smiled, albeit wanly. “I apologize for all the paper. I feel like I’m back in the academy, studying for an exam.”
“What is all this?” Heather asked, idly picking up the sheet nearest to her.
“Information on all of you. All the other Paladins. Background, experience, political leanings. I’m going to have to vote for one of you in two days—a day and a half—after all.”