“Him? Everyone thought he was mad. There was a woman, about ten or twelve weeks earlier, asking about him. She was a League marshall, so when this wallah bike showed up, we thought she had meant to take him into cutody for his own safety.”
“The League marshall—the Hound—did you meet her?”
“Me?” Trayza laughed. “I am only a simple servant of the courts. We don’t see many Hounds here, so everyone was chattering about her. There was talk of a reception. But she landed in Nest Admantine on the western plateau, and the bad ones had cut the monorail line out of the mountains. So…What may I do for you, mistress harp?”
Méarana handed over the brain and a print copy of the warrant. “I have been requested by Greystroke Hound to secure a prisoner in your custody.”
The judge did not glance at the print copy. “Let me guess. The Wild-man, Nagarajan. You visited him two days ago.” Méarana was not surprised. Boditsya did not run a surveillance state, but that did not mean they lacked the means to discover where she had gone since landing.
“Yes,” said Méarana. “We—that is, the Kennel needs him as a material witness in a case.”
The judge grunted and held the print copy of the warrant. “What is the case, if I may ask.”
“Ah, this is embarrassing…”
The other woman made a face. “No need to rub my nose in it.”
“They don’t tell me everything, either,” Méarana said to take out some of the sting. “The warrant came to Siggy O’Hara because I was coming this way.” Donovan often said that the truth was the best sort of lie, and she understood now what he had meant.
“The Kennel is using harpers now?”
Méarana shrugged. “You know how thin the Kennel is spread. They often use auxiliaries for minor tasks. I happened to be in the right place, and I had a special advantage.”
“Really. What advantage does a harper have for the Kennel?”
“My mother is a Hound. You almost met her when she was here.”
The judge retreated a little in her bag chair. “The case involves her?”
“Yes, but you will understand that I can tell you no more than that.” Leave the matter vague, the harper told herself. Bridget ban had come to Boldly Go asking after Sofwari. Later, Sofwari appears. Then the Wild-man comes, apparently on a feckless adventure. Shortly after, the daughter of Bridget ban comes with a warrant chopped by Greystroke demanding the person of that very Wildman. Greystroke could not have known of Nagarajan’s imprisonment when he wrote the warrant. And that meant the Kennel really had intended to pick him up before he had even landed on Boldly Go. Perhaps the Wildman had deliberately gotten himself imprisoned to escape the Hounds—only to find he had jumped from the kettle to the fire.
Méarana let these thoughts circulate unspoken. It was a tissue of misdirection, and a tissue will bear not too much weight. Such things are more persuasive the less they are stressed, and when they hold just enough truth to give them substance.
Judge Trayza rose from her chair. “This is not something we like to do. It sets a bad example to other bikes, that they can come down here and get away with it.”
Méarana also rose. The judge would not contest the warrant. No one begins a refusal with such protestations. She would have to justify her compliance first. The harper followed the judge to the desk, where she took a chair designed to subordinate those who sat in it.
“I will release Nagarajan to you on a single condition; namely, that when the Kennel is finished with him, he will be returned to us to complete his original sentence.”
Meaning that the Nest of Boditsya fully intended to execute the man for the crime of being a man. Méarana unhesitatingly agreed. The important thing at the moment was to secure his person. She would decide what to do with it once she had it.
Trayza considered the harper. “Will you be able to retain control of him? It does neither the Kennel nor the Nest any good if turning him over means turning him loose.”
Méarana emptied herself the way her mother had taught her and sat very still, allowing her eyes alone to speak. Let them see the killer in your eyes, Nagarajan had advised her. “My mother is a Hound,” she said when the right amount of time had passed. “She taught me certain things, and that I know these things may certain you. I have people awaiting above on Charming Moon, and between here and Stranger Station, to where might a man escape?” All this in sweetly reasoned tones. Not sarcastic; certainly not threatening. But with just enough condescension to carry the conviction.
The judge dropped her eyes and muttered that she hadn’t meant to suggest that the Kennel would assign a task to one unqualified to bear it. She plugged the brain into her desktop ‘face. “You’ll need this requisition for the chief Warder at the…” She hesitated, unplugged the brain and reinserted it. “…at the prison, and you’ll have to sign a re…” She replugged the brain a second time. “…a receipt.”
“Of course.” Méarana refused to look at the balky insert. Donovan had warned her that his alterations might not pass the quality control checks.
The third time, the insert loaded up and the harper, with some effort, did not show relief. The judge checked certain fields on the screen against the corresponding fields on the paper copy, pursed her lips; then with a small sigh of annoyance added her own proviso about returning the prisoner once he was no longer needed. She did the same thing by hand to the paper copy, and Méarana initialed and dated the amendment.
Give her anything she wants, Donovan had advised, so long as we leave with the Wildman.
“I wish I knew what this was in aid of,” Judge Trayza said as she handed over the franked warrant and the release form.
Méarana took the paperwork and the brain and shook the judge by the hand. “No. You don’t,” she assured the woman. “There is one dead and one missing already in this affair. The less any of us know, the better.” Make it sound mysterious; make it sound deadly. Make it sound like Judge Trayza Dorrajenfer of the Nest of Boditsya did not want to inquire further.
On the shuttle to Charming Moon, Teodorq Nagarajan sat between Méarana the Harper and Dame Teffna bint Howard. He wore a pair of manacles, courtesy of Josang Prison, and grinned at the stares he received from the other passengers. A great many Boldlys resented his temporary escape from the death sentence. So, too, had the news faces from Alabaster and Sumday. “We came all this distance,” Jwana had complained at the hotel, “and now there’s no story.”
But Nagarajan was content with that. He would rather Novski gripe at his good luck than exult in his bad. He nudged Méarana with an elbow after the shuttle had entered free fall. “I knew you’d come back for me, babe. Just couldn’t let me go to waste.”
“Please,” said Méarana, “don’t make me change my mind.”
AN AISTEAR
Billy regarded the new member of the troupe with some disfavor and, on the crawl to Stranger Station, explained to the Wildman his position in the scheme of things. But Nagarajan took the Terran by the folds of his kurta and lifted him off his feet. “Hey,” he explained, “Teddy don’t take orders from no flunky. Lady Méarana is the boss. Wasn’t no mention of you in the bargain.”
“Dame Teffna” traveled with them on the same bumboat, but Méarana knew that Donovan and the Fudir were already reasserting control, for the Silky Voice grew huskier with each passing day, and from time to time she gasped a little in pain. “I control the androgens and estrogens,” she explained privately at one point, “so I could force them to live as a woman. But they could shut me up in the hypothalamus, and I’d rather not make my body a battleground.”