"Assassination?" Jefferson repeated in a numb voice.
"Without that, I might actually have bought it," she went on in a voice like liquid nitrogen, "but the megalomaniac you created in that journal would never have failed to record his greatest triumph. Which, of course, suggested it was a fake, so I started looking for who else might have had the combination of clearances necessary to steal the bomb's blueprints, have it built, smuggle it through the mat-trans, alter the mat-trans log so subsequent investigators would know he had, and get a batch of assassins into White Tower. And guess who all that pointed to?"
"But I—" He cleared his throat noisily. "But if you suspect me of such horrible crimes, why wait until now to arrest me?" he demanded harshly.
"We waited because 'Hursag wanted to see who distinguished themselves in your 'investigation' of Jourdain." Colin's voice was as icy as Ninhursag's. "It was one way to figure out who else was working for you. But the timing for your arrest?" He smiled viciously. "That was my idea, Jefferson. I wanted you to be able to taste the governorship—and I want you to go right on remembering what it tasted like up to the moment the firing squad pulls the trigger."
He stepped aside, and Jefferson saw the grim-faced Marines who'd stood behind the Emperor. Marines who advanced upon him with expressions whose plea to resist mirrored that of their commandant.
"You'll have a fair trial," Colin told him flatly as the Marines took him into custody, "but with any luck at all—" he smiled again, with a cold, cruel pleasure Jefferson had never imagined his homely face could wear "—every member of the firing squad will hit you in the belly. Think about that, Mister Jefferson. Look forward to it."
Colin and Jiltanith sat on their favorite Palace balcony, gazing out over the city of Phoenix. Colin held their infant daughter, Anna Zhirnovski MacIntyre, in his lap while her godmother stood guard at the balcony entrance and her younger brother Horus Gaheris MacIntyre nursed at his mother's breast. Amanda and Tsien Tao-ling stood side by side, leaning on the balcony rail, while Hector and Ninhursag sat beside Colin. Tinker Bell's pups—including Gaheris and his regenerated leg—drowsed on the sun-warmed flagstones, and Gerald and Sharon Hatcher, Brashieel, and Eve completed the gathering.
"I do not fully understand humans even now, Nest Lord." The Narhani leader sighed. "You can be a most complex and confusing species."
"Perhaps, my love," Eve said gently, "yet they are also a stubborn and generous one."
"Truly," Brashieel conceded, "but the thought that Jefferson planned to implicate us in our Nest Lord's murder—" He bent his head in the Narhani gesture of perplexity, and his double eyelids flickered with dismay.
"You were just there, Brashieel," Colin said wearily. "Just as the Achuultani computer needed a threat to keep your people enslaved, Jefferson needed a threat to justify the power he intended to seize."
"And the Achuultani history of genocide made us an excellent threat," Eve observed.
"Indeed," Dahak's voice replied. "It was a most complex plot, and Jefferson's association with Francine Hilgemann was a masterful alliance. It not only permitted him to further inflame and sustain the anti-Narhani prejudices the Church of the Armageddon enshrined but gave him direct access to the Sword of God. A classic continuation of Anu's practice of employing terrorist proxies."
"Um." Colin grunted agreement and gazed down into his daughter's small, thoughtful face. She looked perplexed as she tried to focus on the tip of her own nose, and at this moment, that was infinitely more important to him than Lawrence Jefferson or Francine Hilgemann.
Jefferson's interrogation under an Imperial lie detector had led to the arrest of his entire surviving command structure. The last of them had been shot a week before, and it was even possible some good would come of it. The Church of the Armageddon, for example, was in wild disarray. Not only had their spiritual leader been unmasked as a cold, cynical manipulator, but the fact that she and Jefferson had intended to use their anti-Narhani prejudice to whip up a genocidal frenzy to support their coup had shocked the church to its foundation. Colin suspected the hardcore true believers would find some way to blame the Narhani for their own victimization, but those whose brains hadn't entirely ossified might just take a good, hard look at themselves.
Yet none of it seemed very important somehow. No doubt that would change, but for now his wounds, and those of his friends, were too raw and bleeding. Jefferson's execution couldn't bring back their children any more than it could restore Horus or the Marines who'd died defending Jiltanith to life. There was such a thing as vengeance, and Colin was honest enough to admit he'd felt just that as Jefferson died, but it was a cold, iron-tasting thing, and too much of it was a poison more deadly than arsenic.
Anna blew a bubble of drool at him, and he smiled. He looked up at Jiltanith, feeling his bitter melancholy ease, and she smiled back. Darkness and grief still edged that smile, but so did tenderness, and her fingers stroked her son's head as he sucked on her nipple. Colin turned his head and saw the others watching, saw them smiling at his wife and his son, and a deep, gentle wave of warmth eased his heart as he felt their shared happiness for him and 'Tanni. Their love.
Perhaps that, he thought, was the real lesson. The knowledge that life meant growth and change and challenge, and that those were painful things, but that only those who dared to love despite the pain were the true inheritors of humanity's dreams of greatness.
He closed his eyes and pressed his nose into his daughter's fine, downy hair, inhaling the clean skin and baby powder and stale milk sweetness of her, and the peaceful content of this small, quiet moment suffused him.
And then Dahak made the quiet electronic sound he used when a human would have cleared his throat.
"Excuse me, Colin, but I have just received a priority hypercom transmission of which I feel you should be apprised."
"A hypercom message?" Colin raised his head with an expression of mild curiosity. "What sort of message?"
"The transmission," Dahak said, "is from the planet Pardal."
" 'Pardal'?" Colin looked at Hatcher. "Gerald? You have a survey mission to someplace called 'Pardal'?"
"Pardal?" Hatcher shook his head. "Never heard of it."
"You sure you got that name right, Dahak?" Colin asked.
"I am."
"Well where in the blazes is it and how come I never heard of it?"
"I am not yet certain of the answer to either of those questions, Colin. The message, however, is signed 'Acting Governor Midshipman His Imperial Highness Sean Horus MacIntyre,' " Dahak replied calmly, and Jiltanith gasped as Colin jerked upright in his lounger. "It reports the successful reclamation of the populated planet Pardal for the Imperium by the crew of the sublight battleship Israel: Midshipwoman Princess Isis Harriet MacIntyre, Midshipman Count Tamman, Midshipwoman Crown Princess Consort Sandra MacMahan MacIntyre, and Mishipman Nest Heir Brashan."
Colin's head snapped around. His incredulous gaze met Jiltanith's equally incredulous—and joyous—eyes, then swept to his friends, the friends who were coming to their feet in joy that matched his own, as Dahak paused for just a moment. Then the computer spoke again, and even Dahak's mellow voice could not hide its vast elation.
"Will there be a reply?"