Pescziuwicz’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened, then closed. He appealed to Oscin. “Is she always like this?”
“No,” Oscin mourned. “She’s being concise today.”
Pescziuwicz might have exploded then, were it not for the interruption: a signal, unseen and unheard by us that nevertheless commanded his full attention as he warned us to silence with a single index finger, held upright. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, reflecting his own subvocalized responses. His manner grew heated, then disbelieving. He glanced at me, then closed his eyes, substantial tension visible in the throb of his temple and the set of his jaw. “That was the boss. The big boss.”
Hans Bettelhine. Might as well say Genghis Khan or Vlad Dracul or Adolf Hitler or Peter Magrison. Any characterization of myself as a monster had him as instant rebuttaclass="underline" You think I’m bad? Look at him. “Yes.”
“It’s his planet. His laws. I can’t help it if he wants you released into his custody.”
“But,” I provided.
He folded his arms. “A cautionary tale. A few years ago, your corps sent an unfortunate young man named Bard Daiken to appeal the terms of a debt incurred by a world we don’t need to talk about right now. The member of the Bettelhine Inner Family handling the negotiation is a reasonable man and had no problem negotiating an equitable settlement, but Daiken imagined himself a ball of fire and wanted total debt forgiveness. He wanted to do even better than the terms his superiors had set for him, better in fact than the terms any self-respecting person could be expected to accept. Even then, Mr. Daiken was safe. An agreement could have been reached, eventually, but Daiken exerted certain pressures on Mr. Bettelhine’s negotiators that Mr. Bettelhine considered criminal.”
“Were they criminal, Mr. Pescziuwicz?”
“Just asking the question proves you miss the point. Xana may do business with the Confederacy, but we’ve never been a member world. This is an independent fiefdom, a kingdom unto itself. The Bettelhine Family determines what is criminal here, and it determines how to prosecute those who think they can challenge their law.” He shifted position in his chair and went on. “Ninety-nine point nine nine whatever nine percent of the time, this is not a problem, for us or for our visitors. But then we run into that fraction of one percent, usually in the person of arrogant visiting dignitaries who think they can do or say anything and still trust in their own diplomatic immunity to protect them. I’ve had enough exposure to your personality to warn you that attitude alone didn’t help Daiken.”
Even asking the next question was a sign of weakness, but I could afford it. “What did you do? Torture him? Kill him?”
Pescziuwicz showed teeth. “Local fashions go in and out of style. But if you ask me, what happened to him was worse than both those options—This was a warning, Counselor. Not a threat. I hope you have a productive stay.”
Not a nice stay, I noted. I nodded and rose to my feet, aware without looking that the Porrinyards had also risen behind me, reading my mood with an accuracy that could not have been improved even if my mind had become a third, wired into theirs. Then I hesitated. “You need to issue an alert. There’s a third assassin still at large.”
His spine turned to iron. “Oh, really.”
“Yes, sir. I don’t know if he’s still on Layabout, but if you move quickly and shut down the elevators, you might be able to catch him before he escapes.”
“Did you see this individual? Or are you just guessing?”
Behind me, the Porrinyards moaned as one, either forgetting or ignoring Pescziuwicz’s distaste for simultaneous speech. “Please. Don’t ever accuse her of guessing.”
I merely turned my trademark chill a couple of degrees colder. “I never guess.”
Pescziuwicz was not impressed. “Go ahead.”
“Equipping two conspirators with one handheld weapon amounts to the waste of a perfectly good assassin. Under normal circumstances, one would expect the other to carry something of equivalent lethality. Empty hands suggest a certain imbecilic quality of planning that I would not credit to anybody capable of obtaining this Claw of God thing.”
He regarded me with a certain wary respect. “Agreed.”
“Even assuming for some reason that they could only obtain one weapon of that kind, why would the assassin without the exotic weapon be without any kind of weapon? By any measurement, it’s just poor planning.”
Pescziuwicz’s smile, now broad enough to escape the cover of his mustache, was much easier to read as pure appreciation. “What are we missing, Counselor?”
“The safest course is to assume that they planned better than we believe, that there were weapons on both sides of that concourse, and that the other one was no longer available by the time I showed up. We must further assume that it became unavailable only a short time before my arrival, as there had not been enough time to replace it. My guess? He’d needed to get rid of it in a hurry. And there are a couple of possible explanations for this, chief among them the fear on his part that he’d somehow revealed himself to your Security forces and therefore needed to discard the evidence. But since none of your security people have reported giving these two any special attention, we’re forced to another explanation.
“That’s where the third assassin comes in.
“Imagine a spotter, not involved in the planned attack. The only possible reason one of these two would put a weapon in his hands, and leave himself empty-handed, would be the sudden appearance of a target they hadn’t expected to see, somebody they wanted dead even more than they wanted me dead, somebody this third party needed to start chasing.
“I suspect that you’re running out of time to save whomever he wants to kill.”
Silence filled the air between us.
I saw Pescziuwicz trying to find some flaw in my reasoning, and perceived the moment of resignation when he knew that he could not. His throat muscles moved as he commenced subvocalizing again.
The corridor outside his office began to shake with the sound of pounding feet.
2
ROYAL CARRIAGE
The Security shutdown of Layabout inconvenienced thousands of travelers that day, a number of whom complained at great length while Pescziuwicz tasked all the men and machines at his command to finding my hypothetical third assassin.
There were additional baggage inspections, random passengers pulled out of line for special interrogation, even one or two body-cavity searches of travelers who’d asked that indignant question, “Do you know who I am?”
(Yes, we know who you are. You’re somebody not nearly as important as you think you are. We will now demonstrate this you in terms that will calibrate your self-image to its proper level, once and for all. Please bend over. This will hurt.)
Since four elevator cars had already departed Layabout for the planetary surface between the attempt on my life and the precautionary shutdown of the station, additional security was called to the dirtside terminal, Anchor Point, and ordered to take all passengers into custody upon their arrival. This measure would lead to the temporary detention of hundreds more, most of whom were going to be irate indeed when they discovered that their respective positions among Bettelhine’s work force and clientele were not sufficient to declare them above suspicion.
The third assassin, if there was one, remained absent. Pescziuwicz connected the two Bocaians we knew about to the Grace, a passenger liner of Bursteeni registry that had arrived at Layabout only ten hours before I did. But he’d failed to evidence any special interactions between the Bocaians and other passengers. Nor had they interacted, in any special way, with anybody except for a couple of food vendors, in the hours they’d waited for me.