Hugh rose and crossed the room, coming to stand by Jack’s side, where he drew a knife. Jack regarded him with quickly suppressed alarm; but Hugh seized his hand and spread it flat, palm side up, and with the point of his knife worried out the splinter. He handed the slice of wood to Handsome Jack. “Now, can we focus on the subject?” He spun the knife one-handed and it slipped neatly into its scabbard.
“Am I supposed to feel all warm and grateful, now that you’ve pulled a splinter from my paw? Thank you, but it doesn’t work that way.”
“I don’t care if you’re grateful or not. We shouldn’t have a disputed leadership when there’s a world needing reconstruction.”
Jack picked up the splinter and studied it. Hugh watched how dexterous he had become with only one arm, and wondered that he didn’t wear a bionic one. Or maybe he did, but preferred to use his infirmity in public. “We didn’t have one,” Jack said judiciously, “until a few days ago.”
“He means before you came back.”
Handsome Jack and Little Hugh turned to face the back of the room, where a bookcase had slid aside to reveal a hidden doorway in which the Fudir stood. Behind him, a flight of stairs spiraled downward.
“Who in Lugh’s name are you?” Jack demanded. “You keep popping up, but…”
“It’s gone,” the Fudir told Hugh.
“He’s a Terran I met on Jehovah,” Hugh said. “He helped smuggle me back here.”
Jack took in the Fudir’s worn, dun-colored clothing, the stoop-shouldered stance. “I’ve you to thank, then.”
The Fudir bowed and tugged his forelock. “I point out, sahb, that zero divided by two is no less than zero divided by one.”
Jack’s face puckered up as he considered that; then he laughed. “You’ve a lot of nerve for a fookin’ Terran.” Then he pointed a finger at Hugh. “Keep in mind what I’ve said. What you and I had, that’s history. It’s all songs now. We don’t need you showing up now to add a discordant note. I liked you better as an enemy than an opportunist. And tell your Terran friend, we shoot looters.”
The Fudir grinned. “Hast thou heard from the Red Sweeney, yet?”
“Sweeney?” Jack said in irritation. “No friend of mine. He’s one of your lot.” With that, he folded his data-slate and stylus, tucked it under his one arm, and marched from the room.
When he was gone, the Fudir grunted. “There’s your answer.”
“Which one? That Jack didn’t send Sweeney, or that he lies so well? I take it that the Dancer is gone. How can you be sure it’s not hidden somewhere?”
The Fudir tossed his head toward the stairwell. “It was. That was the hidey-hole.”
Hugh followed the Terran down the staircase. “You’ve been busy,” he said. “Jack thinks you’re looting.”
“He thinks the Molnar left any loot?”
“It’s not a joke.” But the Fudir had pressed on ahead.
At the base of the stairs lay a broad room lined with shelves and storage racks that had been tumbled about. A contour chair, attached to a post embedded in the cork-soft flooring, had been slashed and the frame bent. It faced a wreath on the farther wall. Debris was everywhere. The walls were made of a spongy material through which ran twisting veins of pallid yellow. Cartons and strongboxes were cut or pried open, their contents vanished or smashed. The vault door at the far end of the room hung twisted on one hinge.
“They were thorough,” Hugh said. Somehow the despoiling of the ICC vaults did not move him as much as had the destruction aboveground, though he knew some wealthy Eireannaughta had kept their valuables stored here rather than in Down Bank and Surety.
“I found Jumdar’s aide-de-camp in the field hospital, the poor beggar,” the Fudir explained. “He said they tortured her until she told them where the Dancer was; then they fashioned the Blood Eagle. They made him watch the whole thing—and burned his eyes out afterward so Jumdar’s body was the last thing he’d ever see. He doesn’t understand why they let him live.” Fudir stepped into the vault and looked around at the empty racks and safe-deposit boxes. “That’s because he doesn’t understand the depths of their cruelty. He said Jumdar brought the Dancer down here personally. That was a mistake. People began to question her orders after that. Not the ICC folk, who were oath-bound; but the Volunteers, who thought their experience with assassination and mob violence gave them an insight on military strategy. Not that Jumdar was a military genius, and not that it mattered. They should be thankful—Voldemar and Jack—that the Cynthians hadn’t come to occupy this world. Your guerilla campaign only worked on the Rebels because there were boundaries neither of you would cross.”
Hugh stepped around a shattered wooden box lined with chesterwood and decorated with enough artistry that it might have been worth something in itself. He lifted a paperboard sheet. A pallet separator, he thought. “I didn’t think there were too many boundaries left, at the end.”
“Did either of you target women and children?”
Hugh looked up sharply, let the separator fall to the floor, dusted his hands. “No.”
“Pull one of your ambushes on a Cynthian, they don’t even try to track you down. The next day, they round up a dozen civilians and kill them. I take that back. They don’t recognize the concept of a civilian. If you try again, it’s two dozen. How long would you have pressed your campaign?”
“You know a lot about them.”
“I looked them up in Fou-chang’s Gazetteer of the Spiral Arm while New Angeles was coming downsystem.”
“Why bother? They’re long gone.”
The Fudir came out of the vault. “Clean as gnawed bone,” he said. “No question Jumdar gave it up. It’s on its way to the Hadramoo.”
Hugh had paused before a large sculpture attached to the wall. A wreath of ceramic composite tendrils that twisted and twined around one another in a complex pattern that his eye could not follow. He turned away and stared at the Fudir. “Oh, no. You’re not thinking of chasing this fable into the Hadramoo, wherever to hell and gone that might be.”
“North-by-spinward of the Old Planets, out near the Palisade,” the Terran replied with a cheerful grin. “Don’t worry. I wasn’t thinking of a frontal attack on Cynthia. And you needn’t come with me.”
“Oh, needn’t I? Thank you. I thought we were hunting the Dancer because it would help me restore the rightful government here.”
The Fudir shrugged. “You never believed that. You told me so yourself.”
“Yes. But I’d wondered if you believed it.”
“By the time I can fetch it back from Cynthia, it’ll be too late to matter much here. Beside,” he added quietly, “there are other worlds needing their rightful governments restored.”
And there always had been. Hugh did not voice the comment; there was no need to. It had always been a mistake to trust the Fudir. He’d never had expectations from this far-fetched scheme, so he ought not feel betrayed.