“Of course, Captain,” I replied, and remained sitting as she rose, and bowed, and walked away across the mossy stones, angling toward the bathhouse. Sword of Atagaris fell quickly in behind her.
She had walked about halfway across the shaded green and gray yard, was directly in front of that curving end of the bathhouse window, when the bomb went off.
It had been twenty-five years since I’d seen combat. Or at least the sort of combat where bombs were likely to go off. Still, I had been a ship filled with bodies for fighting. So it was due to two-thousand-year-old habit that without any sort of effort at all, nearly the instant I saw the flash in the bathhouse window, and almost (but not quite) instantaneously saw the window shatter and its pieces fly outward, I was on my feet and my armor was fully extended.
I suspected Sword of Atagaris had never seen ground combat, but it reacted almost as quickly as I had, extending its armor and moving with inhuman speed to put itself between the flying glass and its unarmored captain. The front of glittering, jagged glass swept out from the window, tearing leaves and branches from the trees shading the stones, reached the ancillary, knocked it to the ground, Captain Hetnys beneath it. The barest moment later a scatter of small bits of glass and leaves and twigs reached me and bounced harmlessly off my armor. A quick thought told me that although Kalr Five had only just finished raising her armor, she was quite safe. “Give me your medkit,” I said to her. And when she’d done that, I sent her to call for Medical, and for Planetary Security, and then went to see if Captain Hetnys had survived.
Flames licked the edges of the shattered bathhouse window. Shards and fragments of glass littered the ground, some snapping or crunching underfoot as I went. Captain Hetnys lay on her back, awkwardly, under Sword of Atagaris. A strange, misshapen fin protruded from between the ancillary’s shoulder blades, and I realized that it must be a large shard of glass that had embedded itself before Sword of Atagaris could completely raise its armor. Its reaction had been fast, but not quite as fast as mine, and it and Captain Hetnys had been some twenty meters closer to the window than I had.
I knelt beside them. “Sword of Atagaris, how badly injured is your captain?”
“I’m fine, sir,” replied Captain Hetnys before the ancillary could answer. She tried to roll over, to shove Sword of Atagaris off her.
“Don’t move, Captain,” I said sharply, as I tore open Kalr Five’s medkit. “Sword of Atagaris, your report.”
“Captain Hetnys has sustained a minor concussion, lacerations, an abrasion, and some bruising, Fleet Captain.” Its armor distorted Sword of Atagaris’s voice, and of course it spoke with the expressionlessness typical of ancillaries, but I thought I heard some strain. “She is otherwise fine, as she has already indicated.”
“Get off me, Ship,” said Captain Hetnys, irritably.
“I don’t think it can,” I said. “There’s a piece of glass lodged in its spinal column. Lower your armor, Sword of Atagaris.” The medkit held a special-made general-purpose corrective, designed to slow bleeding, halt further tissue damage, and just generally keep someone alive long enough to get them to a medical facility.
“Fleet Captain,” said Sword of Atagaris, “with all respect, my captain is unarmored and there might be another bomb.”
“There’s not much we can do about that without killing this segment,” I pointed out. Though I was sure there had only been the one bomb, sure that blast had been meant to kill one person in particular, rather than as many as possible. “And the sooner you let me medkit you, the sooner we can move you and get your captain out of danger.” Uncomfortable and annoyed as she clearly was, Captain Hetnys frowned even further, and stared at me as though I had spoken in some language she had never heard before and could not understand.
Sword of Atagaris dropped its armor, revealing its uniform jacket, blood-soaked between the shoulders, and the jagged glass shard. “How deep is it?” I asked.
“Very deep, Fleet Captain,” it replied. “Repairs will take some time.”
“No doubt.” The medkit also included a small blade for cutting clothes away from wounds. I pulled it out, sliced the bloody fabric out of the way. Laid the corrective on the ancillary’s back, as close as I could to where the glass protruded without jostling it and maybe causing further injury. The corrective oozed and puddled—it would take a few moments (or, depending on the nature and extent of the injuries it encountered, a few minutes) to stabilize the situation, and then harden. Once it had, Sword of Atagaris could probably be moved safely.
The fire in the bathhouse had taken hold, fed by that beautiful woodwork. Three servants were standing by the main building, staring, aghast. More were running out of the house to see what had happened. Kalr Five and another servant hastened toward us, carrying something flat and wide—Mercy of Kalr had told her there was a spinal injury. I didn’t see Raughd anywhere.
Captain Hetnys still stared at me from under Sword of Atagaris, frowning. “Fleet Captain,” said the ancillary, “with all respect, this injury is too severe to be worth repairing. Please take Captain Hetnys to safety.” Its voice and its face were of course expressionless, but tears welled in its eyes, whether from pain or from something else it was impossible for me to know. I could guess, though.
“Your captain is safe, Sword of Atagaris,” I said. “Be easy on that score.” The last bit of cloudiness cleared from the corrective on its back. Gently I brushed it with a gloved finger. No streak, no smudge. Kalr Five dropped to her knees beside us, set down the board—it looked to be a tabletop. The servant carrying the other end didn’t know how to move people with back injuries, so Kalr Five and I moved Sword of Atagaris off of Captain Hetnys, who rose, looked at Sword of Atagaris lying silent and motionless on the tabletop, the shard of glass sticking up out of its back. Looked, still frowning, at me.
“Captain,” I said to her as Kalr Five and the servant carefully bore Sword of Atagaris away, “we need to have a talk with our host.”
16
The explosion had put an end to any mourning proprieties. We met in the main house’s formal sitting room, a broad window (facing the lake, of course), scattered benches and chairs cushioned in gold and pale blue, low tables of dark wood, the walls more of that carved scrollwork that must have occupied the entirety of some servant’s duties. Over in one corner, on a stand, sat a tall, long-necked, square-bodied stringed instrument that I didn’t recognize, which suggested it was Athoeki. Next to that, on another stand, was that ancient tea set in its box, lid open the better to display it.
Fosyf herself stood in the center of the room, Captain Hetnys in a chair nearby, at Fosyf’s insistence. Raughd paced at one end of the room, back and forth until her mother said, “Sit down, Raughd,” ostensibly pleasantly but an edge to her voice. Raughd sat, tense, didn’t lean back.
“It was a bomb, of course,” I said. “Not very large, probably something stolen off a construction site, but whoever placed it added scraps of metal that were meant to maim or kill whoever might be close enough.” Some of that had reached Captain Hetnys but had been blocked by Sword of Atagaris. It had arrived just the barest instant after that shard of glass.
“Me!” cried Raughd, and rose to her feet again, gloved hands clenched, and resumed her pacing. “That was meant for me! I can tell you who it was, it can’t have been anyone else!”