by Timothy Zahn
“Not a chance,” Bink said flatly. “With every game the field’s average talent goes up a notch, which means the last few games will be long and brutal. No, the final table isn’t going to start until the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”
“I suppose,” Tavia murmured. “I wonder if Zerba or Lando will make it through.”
“That’s their problem.” Bink nodded back over her shoulder at the house. “This is ours. Come on—we’ve got work to do.”
Lando had known going in that his chances of making it all the way to the big table were extremely slim. There were a lot of players who’d swarmed in for the tournament, and many of them were as good as or better than he was.
But for once, Lady Luck seemed to be solidly at his side. Often the better players drew positions where they were competing at other tables and more often than not ended up taking one another out. On the occasions when he faced someone whose skills were superior to his own, the cards invariably ran in Lando’s favor.
In a normal tournament, that kind of luck wouldn’t gain him more than a temporary reprieve. In the long run, the whims of fortune would even out, and the better player would eventually emerge triumphant. But Jydor had set up the wild-card games to be single-elimination, which meant Lando only had to hold off his equals and betters for a single game each.
As the afternoon turned to evening and then to night, he slowly but steadily made his way from the edge of the ballroom inward toward the elevated table. By the time the games were called for the night, he was more than halfway toward his goal. Exhausted but with a deep satisfaction he hadn’t felt in a long time, he watched as the bodyguards formed their protective curtain around Jydor and the Tchine and they all marched from the ballroom and disappeared into the private turbolifts.
He hadn’t seen Bink or Tavia since that one meeting, but he caught a glimpse of Zerba as the players filed out and began dispersing to their own rooms. Apparently, the Balosar had also survived the night’s combat.
It was a good sign, he decided as he settled tiredly into bed in his own modest room. He could only hope Bink and Tavia were making similar progress.
The games downstairs were still going strong when Bink finally conceded defeat to her drooping eyelids and said her good nights. Tavia muttered a distracted good night in return, the bulk of her attention clearly still on the array of four datapads laid out in front of her.
Bink ran quickly through her pre-bedtime routine, wondering yet again at the complicated dance that must go on inside her sister’s head. For someone who hated the whole idea of stealing from people, Tavia nevertheless threw her whole heart, mind, and strength into the prep work that went into each job. Obviously, she was trying to make sure Bink made it through without getting caught; but the whole thing was still an interesting and no doubt tension-filled compromise between ethics and sisterly love.
Or maybe it was the challenge of the hunt that intrigued Tavia, the art and science of digging through floor plans and alarm zones as she searched for weaknesses and opportunities.
In some ways, Bink knew, the two of them really weren’t all that different.
By the time Bink awoke the next morning, the entry plan was finished and laid out on her datapad. Moving quietly so as not to wake her sleeping sister, she got herself a cup of caf and settled down to study the plan.
She was halfway through her second cup by the time she finished her examination. It would work, she decided as she gazed thoughtfully out the window at the city stretching toward the horizon. A nighttime sortie; and by the time the games once again broke for the night, she and Tavia should have a complete sensor scan of Carisica Vanq’s Tchine. All they would need then would be close access to the figurine Jydor had on display in the ballroom.
Hopefully, Lando and Zerba would make that happen.
“I just heard from Zerba.” Tavia’s voice came softly over Bink’s comlink clip. “He and Lando are both still in the game.”
“Glad to hear it,” Bink murmured back, studying the bedroom window as she hung in midair half a meter from the glass. The defenses at the edge of Lady Vanq’s grounds had been easy enough to penetrate, and she’d avoided the lower wall sensors by the simple expedient of using her syntherope dispenser to travel from hedge top to roof and then come down to her target window from the eaves. Now, as she swung gently back and forth in the warm night air, the last barrier lay before her.
As barriers went, it wasn’t much. Satisfying herself that she’d spotted all the alarms and sensors, she pulled out her mono-edge wheel cutter and got to work. Five minutes later, with the glass cut, the alarm disabled, and the window open, she eased herself carefully inside.
Most collectors Bink had gone after over the years had situated their vaults or display rooms near their offices or, if they enjoyed showing off their collections, near the conversation room or some other public area. Lady Carisica Vanq’s vault, in contrast, was right off her bedroom.
That wasn’t entirely unheard of—Bink had known of other, mostly elderly, art hoarders who liked to look over their lifetimes’ accomplishments every night before retiring. But it wasn’t very common. It was rare enough, in fact, that Tavia had speculated that the vault had actually started life as a safe room and only been retasked after Lady Vanq decided that life in Danteel City was safe enough not to require a place of instant refuge.
Breaking into someone’s bedroom always made Bink a little nervous. The house droid had said Lady Vanq was out, but for all their electronic memories, droids occasionally got things wrong.
The room was dark, the only illumination coming from the muted city light leaking in through the drapes across the row of windows. Bink moved carefully across the floor, noting the shadowy shapes of chairs and lounge tables and wondering idly what sort of furnishings a wealthy Devaronian noble would indulge in. The bed was a little too big for her taste, with tall posts at each corner rising nearly to the ceiling and lifting the main part of the bed about half a meter off the floor. Probably an airflow thing, she decided, for nights when the temperature outside was uncomfortably high—
She froze, her breath catching in her throat.
The house droid had indeed gotten it wrong. Lady Vanq wasn’t gone. She was right there, lying beneath the blankets in the middle of the bed.
Bink stood motionless, her heart thudding, silently cursing her carelessness as she tried to figure out what to do. If the Devaronian was asleep, there might still be a chance to backtrack and escape.
And then, as Bink’s mind began to catch up with her, a fresh shiver ran up her back. Something was very wrong here. The figure in the bed was way too still.
She took a careful breath. “Tav?” she murmured. “What is it?”
“Hang on.” Steeling herself, she headed toward the bed. The figure still didn’t move, and as Bink drew closer she realized with a sinking feeling that she couldn’t see any rise and fall of blankets across the figure’s chest.
Lady Carisica Vanq was dead.
Bink took another careful breath. This time she caught a hint of a spicy-sweet aroma. “Tavia?”
“Bink, what’s wrong?” Tavia’s anxious voice came back. “If you need to get out—”
“There’s no hurry,” Bink said, the words aching through a suddenly burning throat.
“She’s dead.”
“Who’s dead?”
“The lady of the house.” A ripple of half-hysterical laughter bubbled through the acid taste in Bink’s mouth. Sternly, she choked it back down. “The droid said she was on a long journey. I guess he was right, after all.”
“I don’t understand,” Tavia said, her voice starting to shake. “You mean she died of—I don’t even know what kind of diseases Devaronians can die quickly of.”
“In this case, the same thing a lot of other people in the Empire die from these days,” Bink said, gingerly lifting the edge of the blanket from the body. One look was all she needed. “She was shot.”
“She—what?”<
br />
“Single blaster bolt to the upper torso,” Bink said. “Close range.”
There was a muffled gasp from the comlink clip. “Bink, get out of there. Get out of there now.”
“There’s no hurry,” Bink said, gently laying the blanket back and looking around. “From the smell of bio-suppressant around the body, I’m guessing she’s been dead for a while. Several days at least.”
“Or maybe two weeks?”
An eerie feeling seemed to flow across the room with the wind drifting through the open window. Was Tavia suggesting what Bink thought she was suggesting? “Stay with me,” she said, heading toward the massive door at the far side. “I’m going to check out the safe.”
Tavia hissed out a breath. “Be careful.”
Safes of this class usually took ten to fifteen minutes to crack. This one took less than two. Clearly, someone had already made it through the barriers. “I’m in,” she murmured as she pulled the door open and stepped inside.
“And?”
Bink played her glow rod around the room. The late Lady Vanq’s collection was even more eclectic than Jydor’s, with art objects ranging from fist-sized flutterines to Wookiee-sized flat sculpts, their vintages stretching from the days of the ancient Rakatan Empire all the way up to modern oddments with no intrinsic value that Bink could see. Off to one side was an empty display pedestal.
The Devaronian’s Tchine was gone.
“You’re right,” Bink said. “Jydor’s second Tchine must be Lady Vanq’s—” Behind her, the bedroom door opened.
Bink froze, her head half turned toward the doorway. It was a cleaning droid, running a vacuum attachment across the threshold to the hallway and a meter or so inside the room. It finished its job, and its head rose and swiveled slowly around. Bink tensed …
The mechanical eyes passed the open safe door without any reaction that Bink could detect. Its gaze likewise swept without pause across the dead body in the bed. Backing out of the room, it closed the door behind it.
Bink took a careful breath. “Still there?” she murmured.
“Of course,” Tavia said. “What’s happening?”
“Oh, it’s pretty much bad news all around,” Bink said. She stepped out of the safe and closed the door behind her. “Any idea when the players’ next break is?”
“Actually, they’re finished,” Tavia said. “I don’t suppose it matters now, but Lando and Zerba both won their tracks.”
“No, it probably doesn’t,” Bink agreed, sitting down on the windowsill and reattaching her harness to the syntherope. “Go find them and get them to our room. We all need to have a serious conversation.”
Zerba’s eyes widened, the top part of his lacquered hair undulating like a small animal as the hidden antenepalps beneath it twitched. “She’s dead?”
“Take it easy,” Lando said, keeping his voice and face under rigid control. So neither of Jydor’s Tchines was fake … and one of them was in his possession because of theft and murder. The fake–Tchine thing had been bad enough, throwing an unpleasant pall over the whole tournament. With this new revelation, the situation had risen to an entirely new level of nastiness. “This is no time to panic.”
“Do be good enough to let me know when that moment comes,” Zerba retorted acidly. “Are you insane?”
“Lando’s right,” Bink said firmly. “Yes, it’s bad. But it could be a whole lot worse.”
“Bink, you were seen in there,” Zerba bit out. “Seen and recorded in a droid memory. The fact that you saw the body and didn’t immediately report it automatically makes you an accessory after the fact.” He snorted. “In fact, given that we all now know about it, we’re all accessories after the fact.”
“Two points,” Bink said. “First of all, Danteel law on these things allows for reporting delays based on certain mitigating factors.”
“Such as?”
“Such as it’s acceptable to hold off if you think that reporting it will put your life in danger.”
Lando grimaced. “With Jydor involved, that’s a pretty safe bet.”
“And second,” Bink continued, “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t seen. Not really.”
“You said the droid looked right at you,” Zerba reminded her.
“It looked, but it didn’t see,” Bink said. “The fact that none of the droids has apparently even noticed their mistress is dead implies that someone’s fiddled with the house’s overall programming matrix. They’re not being allowed to see anyone inside the house, alive or dead.”
Zerba snorted. “Call me stupid,” he said. “But this makes no sense at all.”
“It does if you’re a thief and murderer,” Lando pointed out.
“I meant it makes no sense from Jydor’s point of view,” Zerba said. “Why in the galaxy would you kill someone for something as easily traced as a Tchine?”
“Why not?” Lando countered. “There are plenty of collectors who keep their prizes hidden away for their own private viewing. A lot of them probably wouldn’t much care if an item or two in their vault happened to have been stolen from someone else.”
“Or it might have been the other classic motive for murder,” Bink said. “Tavia’s been digging into Jydor’s money deals, and it looks like Lady Vanq suckered him out of a big contract and a lot of money a few months ago.”
“How much money?” Lando asked.
“It’s rumored to be in the neighborhood of fifty to sixty million credits,” Tavia said. “Which is the same amount he’s just made back by selling those first six tournament seats,” Bink added. “Takes a creative man to combine revenge and profit into the same murder.”
“But it’s stolen,” Zerba persisted. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to notice that Lady Vanq is dead and that her Tchine is missing. The minute they find that Jydor still has one, it’ll be obvious what happened.”
“Except that there’s a cute little glitch in Danteel law,” Bink said. “Possession of stolen property is a major crime on Danteel. But the Tchines are identical. Once Jydor’s gotten rid of one of them, unless the police can figure out which is which, they can’t touch him for that.”
“But they’ll know he had both of them at one point.”
“But they won’t have any proof that he was the one who stole it,” Bink said. “Without that, and without proof that the one in his display room is the hot one, they’ll have no grounds to dig any deeper.” She shrugged. “Like I said, it’s a glitch.”
Zerba shook his head. “Ridiculous. Who else could have stolen it?”
Bink’s lip twitched. “Yes, well, that’s the other problem,” she said reluctantly. “Aside from bringing in enough credits to make up his loss, this tournament has the side benefit of attracting a whole bunch of thieves to Danteel City. Which means that when the balloon goes up, there will be a lot of people Jydor can point fingers at.”
Lando winced. “People like you,” he said. “And since you’ve actually been in Lady Vanq’s home …”
“… the finger-pointing will likely start with me,” Bink agreed heavily. “Especially since, depending on what the thief did to the matrix programming, I may also have been recorded as having come to the front door yesterday afternoon.”
Zerba muttered something under his breath. “That’s it, then,” he said. “Nice seeing you again—nice meeting you, Lando—and I hope we run into each other under happier circumstances.” He started to get up.
“Wait a second,” Lando said, grabbing for the Balosar’s shoulder and missing. “Didn’t you hear her? She’s on the hook for this.”
“Which is why we need to scatter to the wind,” Zerba countered. “What else are we going to do?”
Lando looked at Bink. She was tempted, he could see. Tempted to run, to change her name from whatever she was using today to whatever she’d been planning to use tomorrow, and hope she could hide herself in the shadows of the fringe until Lady Vanq’s murder was forgotten. And really, given the state of justice in Palpatine’s Empir
e, it probably would be the smartest move.
And then he looked at Tavia. At her composed but smoldering expression.
Tavia had no intention of letting Jydor get away with this. Unlike most fringers—unlike even Lando himself, on certain days—she hadn’t totally given up on right and wrong.
Especially not when her sister was poised to take the fall for murder.
Lando squared his shoulders. A pity, really, that this wasn’t one of those certain days. “Fine,” he said to Zerba. “Go.” Turning to Tavia, he raised his eyebrows. “So how do we nail him?”
Zerba, already two steps toward the door, came to a confused-looking halt. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about nailing Jydor,” Lando said. “Tavia?”
“The reprogramming of Lady Vanq’s house is the key,” Tavia said, her eyes narrowed in thought. “If I can figure out what he did, I might be able to backtrack to the programmer. Then we’d have some proof.”
“At which point, we can sic the police on him,” Bink said, eyeing her sister. She was still not sure running wouldn’t be the best option, Lando decided. “If he’s smart, he’ll make a deal that fingers his boss.”
“It’s a start,” Lando said. “What do you need?”
“Right now, I mostly need time,” Tavia said. “If Bink’s right about the droids, we should be able to get back into the house without trouble. But it’ll take time for me to slice into the system.”
“Too bad Rachele Ree isn’t here,” Bink murmured. “She could slice it in nothing flat.”
“Well, she’s not,” Tavia said, a little crossly. “We’ll just need to figure out a way to stall the tournament.”
“We could call in a bomb threat,” Bink suggested. “Plenty of people don’t like Jydor. Or we could finger the Rebellion—that would stir up every Imperial in the hemisphere.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Zerba growled, coming back to his chair and sitting down. “The way to stall a game is to make sure no one wins for a while.”
Lando eyed him. “You mean throw our hands?”
