by Diane Duane
She sat there with her hands folded in her lap for those fifteen minutes, every one of which seemed to crawl over Arrhae’s skin with excruciating slowness while she excoriated herself for being so foolish as to have used the public posts to send her message. Well, what else could I have done? she thought. Any other kind of transmission would have been immediately traceable to me. But at the same time Arrhae knew quite well that, in troubled times, the Intel people sampled the posts randomly, looking for just the kind of message she had sent: something without a return address on it, something that tried to pass itself as a message of no importance, trying to lose itself in the mass of normal postings. Now Arrhae saw what she’d done as utter folly. And she had done evil as well in asking poor Mahan to post the message for her. Now he would share whatever punishment came down on her. The whole household would. All the servants, and even her old master, would be hauled in and questioned, possibly tortured, for evidence that they had been complicit in her crimes....
The flitter grounded. Arrhae swallowed, trying to get some control over herself. It’s ridiculous, she thought then, trying to steady herself. If your contacts, whoever they are, had been caught already, do you think it’s to the Praetor’s house they’d have brought you? For the door had opened, and there was the walk up to the broad porticoed frontage, just as before, and no unusual guard-presence to be seen—not even the honor guard that had greeted her the last time. That could be a bad sign too, she thought, as the pilot handed her down. Yet at the same time, conditions might have changed. Possibly this visit was meant to be less public, less noticed, than the last one.
She walked up the paved path behind the pilot with her head up, greeted the door-opener of tr’Anierh’s house with a small polite nod, and followed him as he led her once more across the huge Great Hall to the side room where tr’Anierh’s office was. The door-opener touched a control, so that the office door swung open for Arrhae. He bowed her in.
Arrhae crossed the threshold, smiling, ready to greet tr’Anierh—and then froze. He sat behind his desk, and was rising to meet her. But two other chairs were set on either side of his side of the desk; and in them sat Urellh tr’Maehllie and Ahrm’n tr’Kiell, the other Two of the Three.
Arrhae couldn’t help but swallow once in sudden dread. Thinking that tr’Anierh was kindly disposed to her merely because he had treated her kindly was a great danger, and the sudden presence of these others reminded her of that all over again. And now here she was alone and defenseless in a room with the three most powerful men in the Empire. Fleets moved at a whisper from them; an annoyed look from one of these men had caused people to vanish without a trace and never be seen again. Any one of them by himself could potentially be deadly if you spoke the wrong word, and even under normal circumstances, it would take all your concentration to make sure that you did not. To be caught in the midst of all three of them at once would be like being trapped in a quaking bog. Too many directions in which you could misstep and be lost, too many things that one of them might take well, but one or both the others might take ill.
“Don’t freeze there like a bird under a thrai’s eye, young Senator,” said tr’Kiell. “Sit down. We have some questions for you.”
Arrhae made her way to the one empty chair that stood facing the other three, and sat down. Her mind was shouting with alarm at the way things looked, more like a setup for an interrogation than anything else.
Of course that’s what it is, you nitwit, said some chilly, matter-of-fact voice at the back of her mind. These men haven’t sent for you to have noonday herbdraft and wafers with them! Now concentrate, because you could possibly do more good during this meeting than those who sent you here ever dreamed possible!
She made herself as comfortable as she could, and tried to get the measure of the other two men without seeming to stare at them. Tr’Kiell probably looked the least threatening of the three—short, round, with bushy eyebrows and a broad face; but that look would be as much a weapon in his hand as anything he might pull out of a holster. Tr’Maehllie looked so like a nonentity that the effect had to be purposeful. Neither too tall or too short, too dark or too fair, with nondescript dark hair and eyes whose color was almost too neutral to make out, his features regular and unremarkable, it was easy to more or less discard him after you had summed him up. But by all accounts, this man was the most dangerous of them all, though tr’Anierh might look taller, more striking, more impressive in his broad-shouldered blondness. All three of them had their subtleties, and their dangers, or they would not be where they were now.
“Deihu,” tr’Anierh said, “be comfortable. There’s nothing to fear. But you do look unwell. Were you ill on the trip? Do you have trouble with space travel?”
She looked at him in surprise, almost with gratitude; he’d offered her as good an excuse as any. And suddenly Arrhae saw what to do, all laid out clearly before her. They’re treating me the way they would if I were truly a hru’hfe, just some charlady that they’d sent off to space—a creature essentially out of her depth. Whatever I may have feared, they have no idea I might be anything more than I seem. Play into it! “Fvillha, it seems I do,” Arrhae said. “And the last few days of the trip were…unusual. Perhaps more exciting than I had expected.”
“Yes,” said tr’Kiell. “Well, put that out of your mind, as we have other things to discuss.”
“We have all read your report,” tr’Anierh said, “and my colleagues have questions about some of the details.”
“The tone,” said tr’Maehllie, “was unduly gossipy.”
Arrhae suspected that she was supposed to be scared by this reprimand. She let her reply sound subdued, but not cowed. “Fvillha, so was the tone of those whose conversations I reported. At first I didn’t know how to take it; we tend to think of the great ones, our political masters, as being above such. I thought at first that I ought to improve the delegates’ tone in the report, so as not to seem disrespectful. But then that seemed a disservice to my patron,” she nodded, not too deferentially she hoped, at tr’Anierh, “who looked to me straightforwardly for news of what I saw, not my own gloss on it. If those on the mission with me seemed to be acting badly, that was the honorable Praetor’s judgment to make, not mine.”
Arrhae watched them. She saw tr’Anierh glance at his colleagues, especially number two, with just the slightest expression of a man not only satisfied with an answer, but more satisfied because it had proved him right about something.
“Let the tone pass for the moment, then,” said tr’Maehllie. “There are some details that seem to have been skirted in your discussion of the negotiation sessions.”
“Sir,” Arrhae said, “whatever you desire to know, I’m at your disposal.”
There followed a difficult half hour or so during which Arrhae was grilled over the general attitudes and specific responses of nearly every delegate who had been involved in the sessions Arrhae had attended. This was all in the report, she thought quite early on. They’re just judging my off-the-cuff responses, trying to see whether what I wrote was composed, figured out after the fact, or genuine observation. And probably they’re also interested in how my impressions compare to reports from the other spies they had there. Though the other Two of the Three were at great pains to seem in control of the questioning, the thought kept occurring to Arrhae that they were uneasy, uncertain about something. Uncertain, perhaps, about their own spies? she thought. Amusing. Uncertain even about the people they had spying on me? Entirely possible. And now I wonder, did they indeed have someone else spying on me besides tr’Radaik? Ffairrl the steward would have been a perfect candidate. Or that poor little chambermaid I saw about twice.
She put the thought aside and concentrated on answering these men’s questions. Tr’Anierh did not say much, except to occasionally ask Arrhae to expand on an answer or two already given. Mostly he seemed to be watching his companions. And they, for their part, seem mostly to be watching each other. I may be a pawn in this game to some ex
tent, but I have leisure to see here something that perhaps only few Rihannha ever perceive: how little these three trust one another, and how divided they are. That insight turned Arrhae’s thoughts in another direction entirely. Is it possible that either tr’Kiell or tr’Maehllie is interested in seeing whether I would be worth subverting to his own uses, as a weapon against tr’Anierh? The idea produced an obscure annoyance in her, but this too she put aside for later examination. Answer their questions for the moment. There’ll be time to analyze this later.
There came a brief lull after that first half hour or so. “There were some events that were rather scantily covered in your report,” said tr’Kiell after some moments’ thought. “I speak particularly of the gathering before the first negotiating session—”
“There were quite a few people there, Fvillha,” Arrhae said, “and it was difficult to watch them all at once, especially without being seen to do so.”
Tr’Kiell looked amused. “So tell us about that. Who was uncomfortable at that gathering? Who stood in corners speaking furtively?”
“Mostly the Intelligence operatives,” Arrhae said, “because how else would they be seen to be doing their jobs?”
Even tr’Maehllie’s chilly look broke a little at that, and he produced a small smile, though an edged one. “I would be as interested to see who did not look uncomfortable,” he said. “Especially among the Federation people.”
Arrhae spoke briefly of Kirk and McCoy, and was not surprised to see how interested they all were in Kirk, but the more she spoke, the more she got a feeling that there was something more they were waiting to hear about him—ideally, something bad. “He did have perhaps more ale than was good for him,” she said, sheerly to see how they would react. “The Praetor Gurrhim tr’Siedhri inveigled him into it.”
Tr’Kiell snorted. Tr’Maehllie looked grim. Tr’Anierh had no reaction at all, merely watched the others.
On a sudden urge, Arrhae said, “Sirs, if I may ask: what became of the Praetor?”
“You may not,” said tr’Maehllie, brusque.
“Oh come, Urellh,” tr’Anierh said. “The bruit of it was all over Gorget, you know that.” He looked back to Arrhae. “Dead. He was in no condition to have survived being moved so much as a cubit, and the kidnappers haled him off a support-bed and through disruptor fire, and then who knows where else aboard that ship, before they all vanished at last. It was unfortunate. He will be a loss to the Senate.”
A lie, Arrhae was suddenly certain, on top of a lie, with yet another lie beneath. Yet at the same time she got a sense that tr’Anierh knew perfectly well that she knew this was a lie. This could become dangerous, she thought. Did the others know he was lying? If they did…
She put the complications away for later pondering. If she had trouble sleeping that night, the puzzle would at least be entertaining. The Three looked at one another. “Well,” tr’Anierh said, standing up, “we have at least one meeting to attend within the hour, so I think we must end now, unless the two of you have questions still unanswered.”
The other two rose. Arrhae rose with them, bowed a little. “Senator,” Urellh said, “our thanks for your time. Your service to the Empire is appreciated.”
“That the Fvillhaih asks it, honors me,” Arrhae said, as tr’Anierh came out from behind his desk. She bowed again, turned; he saw her to the door.
“Arrhae,” he said very quietly, when they were at the threshold.
“Fvillha?”
“You did well. A bad business, being caught amid the three of us.”
She was tempted to agree with him to his face, but restrained herself. “If I gave satisfaction,” Arrhae said with one more slight bow, “I am content.”
“You did. One word before you go, however. The news today may have some unusual items in it. If you wish to be of use to me, I will be needing your reaction to that news, and the reactions of others in the Senate over the next few days. Obviously you will keep this business between us.”
“Fvillha,” she said, very softly, “you may rely on my discretion.”
“I know that. I thank you. You will hear from me shortly. There is one more piece of work I would like to entrust to you.”
He turned away from her, back to the room, and the door shut behind him. Arrhae made her way out into the building’s Great Hall, nodded a courteous good-bye to the door-opener, and made her way out to where the flitter waited for her. Arrhae climbed into it and rode home, too preoccupied even to look out a window at the view.
The household was quiet. It was time for daymeal, and most of the staff would be down in their own quarters. Only old Mahan was still at his post, and as she came in he locked the door and looked at Arrhae closely. “A long day,” he said.
Arrhae felt as if she had had about three long days at once. Her body ached with her earlier terror and its abrupt relief, and her brain was buzzing with unanswered questions. She could not get rid of the feeling that something had been going on in that room that was more than a mere elucidation of her report. Once again tr’Anierh had been at the heart of it, and Arrhae was at a loss to know what it had been about. “Mahan,” she said, heading for her sleeping chamber, “maybe you would leave me some ale and a little bowl of stew in the retiring room? Or something cold from the larder. I have to catch up with the news.”
“There’s some stew of fresh theirnh and skyroot from the market today, hru’hfe. And last week’s ale is just ready. I’ll put a tray on the sideboard for you presently.”
Arrhae went into her sleeping chamber, changed into a long comfortable tunic and trews and some soft slippers, then went out and made her way down the corridor that led from the Great Hall toward the back of the house. Here was the retiring room, a comfortable place that housed the library and mediascreens, with windows that opened onto the peace of the back garden. To Arrhae’s surprise, Mahan had been in and out already; ale in a goblet, and the stew, steaming gently and sending a most appetizing scent of goldspice and desiv into the air, sat on a tray beside the hardwood panel behind which the viewer was hidden.
Arrhae touched the control that would pull up the concealing panel, and the screen came on and showed Arrhae the menu of available entertainments for that afternoon and evening. Where has the day gone? she thought, looking out over the lawn at the lengthening shadows of the trees. She picked up the bowl of stew, tapped the screen several times to scroll out the menu of news channels, selected the most sober of the lot, and went to sit down in the comfortable chair facing the screen.
She put up her feet on the nearby hassock and had the first few bites of stew. The crunch of the vegetables, the savory gravy, and the relief of being alive and well to eat them, were too wonderful for the first few seconds for Arrhae to pay any attention to what was happening on the screen. The sound of shouting, though, made her glance up.
She found herself looking at an urban landscape, parkland surrounded with tall structures. Smoke hazed the view of what was happening; flames licked out of buildings’ windows, vehicles plunged through the chaos and out of view again. People were fleeing in all directions, shouting, screaming. Where is that? Has there been some kind of disaster?
“—has occurred in a number of cities on ch’Havran,” the announcer was saying. “Security forces were obliged to move in to pacify the areas where the disorder broke out. A number of arrests were made of ringleaders of the gangs that declared themselves responsible for the disruptions. Other citizens are assisting the authorities with their inquiries.”
Arrhae watched as helmed and armed men and women, dark-clad in the subdued uniforms of the security forces, dragged away Rihannsu who struggled and cried out. Some of these were being beaten by the security people pulling them along. One man dashed in front of the pickup of the crew recording the incident and cried, “The Empire’s making slaves of us all! Rise up now, take back our sun, take back your freedom and your mnhei’sahe! The Sword is coming, follow her, follow—”
A truncheon descen
ded. The man who had been shouting in front of the recorder fell abruptly out of view. The recorder was jostled, went sideways, went dark. The next shot showed the same streets quiet, empty of everything but some litter scattered about; but smoke still hung in the air, like the echoes of the cries that had been silenced. “Local authorities say that the disruptions were short-lived, and were the actions of a minority of malcontents and seditionists in the Havrannssu population.”
Without looking away from the viewer, Arrhae put the bowl down on the little table by her chair, staring at the images in near disbelief. She couldn’t remember ever having seen anything like this on the news services. But there had been rumors in the Senate of late, whispered even in the hearing of relative newcomers like Arrhae, of places where there had been demonstrations, even riots, against some of the government’s more repressive actions. The increase in surveillance, the new war tax—there had even been demonstrations in favor of a certain person—but no one would say the name out loud. It had, after all, been thrice written and burned. The rumors said those demonstrations had been put down most brutally of all.
But what Senators whispered one tenday, people in the street would be whispering the next. Soon enough they wouldn’t be whispering. And now, Arrhae thought, possibly because there’ll soon be no way to cover it up anymore, I’d guess the news nets have been told that they may show these “disruptions.” Or ordered to show them, and how they’re handled. The population’s meant to take warning from what they see.
Arrhae then thought of what tr’Anierh had said to her, and shivered a little. He has found me satisfactory as a spy, able to operate without causing suspicion in a small group, and so now he extends my role a little further, to a larger group. The Senate. I am meant to see what they think of this, and to betray those who aren’t in favor of it.
“Loyal Rihannha are urged to notify the government of such treasonous actions, which only give comfort to our enemies in this time of war. The following commlink addresses can be used to contact local authorities to notify them of suspicious activities.”
