***
Soren Foln stared down at the scorched remnants of what had once been Henri’s lab. The techs had already scoured through the debris, but as expected they hadn’t found anything. The burnout protocols here might not have been up to the standards of a heavily-funded Convectorate science station, but they were plenty sufficient to annihilate every trace of the serum and subsequent research. He was frankly amazed the techs had found enough residual bone samples to identify Henri’s body in the ashes.
Letting out a long, tired breath, Foln closed his eyes and stretched out with his mind. Tayla was coming up the lift, hopefully with news about potential backup files on the Golem. He hadn’t sensed her presence until just that moment, however, which meant that his latent fears were already coming true: the serum’s effects were still only temporary. The formula was a huge improvement over the last batch— he hadn’t blacked out or had a heart attack, after all—but his powers were already fading. Within a few more hours, he would once again be trapped inside his withering old body, struggling to walk up stairs or go ten minutes without coughing…
The thought made him nauseous. And staring at the blackened remains of Henri’s research made him homicidal.
The lift door whooshed open, and Grier stepped up beside him. “My lord,” she greeted. “We found the doctor’s backup database on the Golem. He’d uploaded new data as recently as yesterday.”
“Good,” Foln murmured, his eyes narrowing as he continued to stare into the piles of ash.
“I know he disagreed with you about synthesizing more samples, but…” She shook her head. “It’s still hard to believe he would go this far.”
“I don’t believe he did.”
“My lord?”
“If he were really so determined to keep us from synthesizing his serum, then why would he leave the records on the Golem for us to find?” Foln asked.
“He might not have felt like he had the time,” Grier suggested. “Or maybe he knew that we didn’t have anyone else with the expertise to work with the raw data.”
“I knew Henri for fifty years, Tayla. He was not a man who took chances. He would have made certain.”
Grier turned back to the ashes. “If he was desperate, he might not have been thinking clearly.”
“No,” Foln said. “He didn’t do this to himself. Either it was an accident, which is all but impossible…or someone murdered him. And we both know who that someone is.”
Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “You’re not seriously suggesting Selaris.”
“She left my quarters shortly after he did, and several of our soldiers in the Agora reported that she followed him into his lab and then left alone.”
“I can’t believe the girl would have the stomach for it,” Grier said. “And you know how she felt about Varm. He’d been tutoring her for over a year.”
“I also know that his guilt about Davin had been slowly getting the better of him these last few days. He might have broken down and told her the truth about her father, and I’m not sure how she would react.”
Grier folded her arms across her chest. “I still don’t think she’d be capable of something like this. She’s a child.”
“Everyone is capable, given appropriate circumstances,” Foln said. “You still haven’t managed to get ahold of her, have you?”
Grier pulled out her holopad and tapped the screen. “Not yet. I left a message about an hour ago, but she hasn’t responded.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. A few hours ago, he might have been able to sense Selaris all the way across the city, but now… “I’ll head to her apartment, but assemble a squad to fan out across the city and track her down. She may be hiding.”
“What do you plan to do once we’ve found her?”
“That depends,” Foln murmured. “If she killed Henri, then she is going to answer for it.”
Grier glanced away, her tongue pressing hard into her cheek. “The other humans here still respect her, my lord. They see her as the legitimate heir to the Keledonian throne. Harming her in any way will jeopardize our relationship with them.”
“They will fall into line because they have no other choice,” Foln said flatly. “I will not allow this to go unpunished.”
When she didn’t reply, he took a step forward and folded his arms across his chest. “Is there a problem?”
Grier’s lip twitched fractionally. “I don’t see how this is any different than what you did with Gantrell.”
Foln’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”
“You ordered Doctor Varm to continue taking soropan samples knowing it would ultimately kill Gantrell, but you insisted it was for the greater good,” Grier said. “You did the same thing with Coveri four years ago. He was responsible for the deaths of thousands at Mirador, but we ignored it because we needed his help. I’m sorry, my lord, but justice has never been one of our virtues.”
A surge of white-hot rage bubbled up in Foln’s veins, and he was tempted to reach out with his mind and break her arm for a third time…but he didn’t. No matter how hard he glared at her, Grier didn’t flinch. She knew exactly what he was capable of, and yet she was just standing there waiting for his explanation—an explanation they both knew he couldn’t give.
“Assemble your team and find her,” Foln growled, the rage fading away as he turned back to stare at the ashes of his best friend. “Now.”
For a dozen simmering moments Grier just stood there behind him, silently staring at the back of his head. He could feel the confusion and doubt swirling together inside her, two emotions he never would have associated with his best officer, and for the first time since he’d known her he actually thought she might flat-out refuse an order. But eventually she turned and departed in silence, and Foln pressed his eyes shut and continued to seethe.
The last thing he’d seen on Henri’s face had been fear—fear that he’d unwittingly unleashed a monster. It was an ignoble end to a five decade friendship, to be sure, but the bottom line was that he’d been wrong. Fear of using one’s power was as dangerous as not having it at all, Foln’s father used to say, and the Mire had suffered in weakness far too long. Whether this serum was technically a cure or not didn’t matter. The point was that it was power, and Foln had every intention of using it.
Unfortunately, it seemed like this was a jump corridor he was going to have to enter alone, but that was all right. He still had one remaining dose in his office, and with luck it would be enough to get him through. Given time, the techs would be able to synthesize more from Henri’s research, and maybe one of them could even figure out how to improve upon it.
And in the meantime, their war machine was already rolling. Even now the aliens were whipped into shape, and soon enough they’d be able to launch their first real campaign against the Convectorate. His closest allies might have lost faith, but ultimately the war could go on without them. Grier was right that he’d been willing to make plenty of sacrifices before, and nothing had changed.
But first, however, he was going to find Davin’s daughter. And if she really had taken Henri away from him…
Well, then the ancient familiar feud between the Foln and Gantrell families was about to come to a final and bloody end.
The Spider and the Fly Page 49
