“HK!” he shouted, seeing no one, hearing nothing else. “SB!” The others followed him, through a cavernous storage area half full of cryptically labeled bins, and then another, half full of house-sized crates. The green lights that marked their presence on his map closed inexorably with two stable points of red. He shouted his brothers’ names again, still getting no response. He wondered what in the name of a thousand ancestors they thought they were doing. Why didn’t they answer … why didn’t they run—? Instead they were just standing there: silent, waiting; caught red-handed but still humiliating him, forcing him to come to them.
He pushed off, too hard, trying to reach the access to the next storage area. He collided painfully with the metal doorframe; steadied himself, blinking his vision clear. His hand was slippery on the butt of his gun as he pushed through into the next room, and the pinpoints of light on the map converged.
In front of him the floor of the room was red: a lake of red, wet, shining, as if someone had spilled a vat of paint. He wrenched his body with his sudden attempt to stop moving; still landing with both feet in the spillage. A drop of red hit the sea of redness in front of him, from somewhere above; and then another. The gun slipped from his nerveless fingers, hit the floor, splattering his pantslegs with red. He raised his head, moving in slow motion, as time itself seemed to redshift around him, as compulsion closed its inexorable fingers around his throat, forcing him to look up.
His brothers were up there. Hanging from the ceiling, suspended high out of his reach. They hung from a chain like meat, the spine of a grappling hook driven clear through each of their chests, stone dead. He watched as two more drops fell, watched them hit the sea of blood in front of him like silent tears.
He turned, stumbling, collided with the mass of bodies directly behind him. He saw then-faces—the stunned disbelief of Donne and Zarkada and Tilhen, the horror in Vhanu’s eyes. Vhanu turned and bolted back through the doorway.
“Get them down,” Gundhalinu muttered, forcing his eyes to stay on Donne. “Find somebody … get them down.”
Donne nodded, gesturing to Tilhen and Zarkada. They went out. Her eyes left his face fleetingly, glanced upward, fell again. Gundhalinu pushed past her. She followed him out; following the blood-red tracks his boots made every time his feet came down.
They were outside. He stopped moving, staring in surprise at the unchanged light, the unchanged view his eyes found in front of him. Vhanu stood against the building wall, wiping his mouth, his eyes red-rimmed. Gundhalinu looked away from him. His own eyes felt as dry as sand. He couldn’t blink. “Why—?” he murmured to Donne.
Donne pressed her hand against her mouth, shook her head once, before she could meet his gaze. “Don’t know, Commander. …” Her voice was matter-of fact, when she answered. “My best guess would be, they did it to make a point.”
He frowned. “Because the codes my brothers had were useless?”
“Or because they were your brothers,” she said. “Maybe the whole thing was a setup. To prove that even if the Brotherhood doesn’t dare lay a hand on you, they can still … hurt you. I’m sorry, Commander. …” Her voice faded to a whisper.
Gundhalinu took an unsteady breath, watching his own hands become fists. The sound of process and progress boomed and reverberated and clattered and whined, nearby, far away, echoing echoing hollowly all around him, through him, inside his head where no meaningful thought would form.
“BZ—” Vhanu said hoarsely, and came back to his side; he was aware of Vhanu’s hand laid hesitantly on his shoulder, although there seemed to be no feeling at all anywhere in his body. “I’m going to call for help. I’m going to—”
“No,” Donne said. “We’ll take care of it, Vhanu. No Police involvement. No scandal. No one wants that for the Commander. It will all be taken care of. You understand?”
Vhanu stared at her for a long moment, his jaw set. At last he nodded. “Understood,” he murmured.
Gundhalinu turned back to Donne, trying to find words adequate to thank her, and failing. He put a hand on her arm, meeting the gaze of her clear, dark eyes. “In your debt…”
Donne smiled briefly. “Let’s go, Commander. We’d better go.”
He turned away from them, from the warehouse door still gaping like an open wound, and started back toward the streets.
KHAREMOUGH: Gundhalinu Estate
Gundhalinu watched the last of the mourners depart, moving away through the passionate colors of the gardens dressed in somber gray. He stood where he had stood all through the memorial service, motionless, emotionless, the perfect model of gracious, civilized inhumanity. Waiting… he wasn’t sure for what. Waiting for it to be over. Waiting to feel something. Waiting.
He knew what he must do now: what he had avoided doing during the entire week that he had been home, keeping himself too busy with details and arrangements that could have been handled by others, too busy communicating with the people he had left in charge of the shipyards up in orbit, to do this one thing… .
He glanced back at the manor house rising behind him, as servos began to move among the clustered seats, clearing them away. The vine-traced wall, fitted together out of blocks of native stone, still stood as solid as he had always believed his family’s reputation to be. Its windows gleamed with the sun’s reflected light, making him squint, the brightness making his eyes burn until the colors of the gardens swam, like colors in an oil slick.
He turned back again, starting across the smooth stones of the patio with a lump in his throat … stopped.
One final guest stood limned by garden colors at the far side of the open space: a woman, in a characterless gray robe, her hair swept up and back, twisted and pinned in deft, fluid folds that made him think of wings. He changed his trajectory to intersect her. She did not move, making him come to her—although he sensed that it was not arrogance but uncertainty that held her there.
His footsteps slowed again as he saw her face clearly. “Netanyahrkadda,” he murmured, in surprise, as he recognized the woman who had once owned his estates.
She bowed, lifted her head again as he crossed the final distance between them. “Gundhalinusathra,” she said, and for a moment he could not think why there was such sorrow in her voice, such compassion in her gaze. “I imposed upon an invited guest to bring me with her … I hope you will forgive me, for committing trespass upon your goodwill again. I did not wish to embarrass you, but I wanted to—to see you again. To offer my condolences—” she went on hastily, as he felt his own expression change. “I was so terribly sorry to hear about your brothers’ accident.”
Don’t be, he almost said, didn’t.
“I wanted you to know that after all this time I hadn’t forgotten you—your extreme kindness to me. Simply to send you a meaningless message of sympathy, among thousands of others, was not enough. But I was unlikely to meet you by chance. So I came, to tell you that.” He nodded acknowledgment, saying nothing. “And now I will leave you alone.” She bowed again, and after a moment’s further hesitation, turned away.
He watched her begin to disappear among the flowers; she was almost lost from his sight before he could free his body from its paralysis and call her name.
He entered the path between rows of shrubbery massed with golden blossoms, walking quickly; found her waiting for him beside the octagonal, blue-and-gold tiled fountain. “Thank you for coming,” he said, before he even reached her. He stopped, meeting her gaze, and suddenly was struck speechless again.
She looked at him expectantly; he looked away. “Netanyahrkadda …” he said at last. “I was about to go down to the family shrine and pray.” Try to. “I would be pleased if you would care to accompany me.”