He said nothing, but instead just looked at his hands. Juje help the hereditary leader whose personal strength has never been adequately tested; on the day that test comes, his very bones may turn out be made of sand. Maybe he’d stand up again, stronger than before. Maybe he wouldn’t.
I searched my fellow passengers for the unguarded expression or relaxed posture that would give away those to whom this development would have come as no surprise. I saw nothing. Jason looked pale and shaken, still determined to maintain a confident unfrightened veneer even if the reactions of his body were just as determined to betray him. Jelaine seemed angrier, though just as frightened, the gestalt of those two emotions a determination to hurt somebody once she knew just who deserved to be hurt. Farley Pearlman remained at the bar, working on what may have been his six or seventh drink, staring at his latest glass as if he envied the liqueur’s capacity to conform to its shape. Dina Pearlman glared back at me, but with a furious concentration that seemed, to me, testimony that she was struggling just as hard to figure out what was going on as the rest of us. Dejah was just angry. Monday Brown looked ill, the perspiration dripping from his forehead as if every moment the Bettelhines remained out of control required additional effort on his own part, just to cope. Vernon Wethers looked worse. The four stewards, Mendez, Colette Wilson, Paakth-Doy and Loyal Jeck all looked like the recipients of recent blows to the base of the spine, though even as I watched Doy and Colette both offered me their own highly different attempts at comforting smiles. Skye circled all of us like a herding animal, her eyes constantly moving as she searched for any cue I might miss. Oscin continued the task that had occupied him for long minutes now, examining the Khaajiir’s body from every angle he could find. Nobody seemed willing to step forward and identify themselves as the hijacker in charge.
Instead, it was Philip who spoke again. “We…still don’t know that this is anything more than a malfunction.”
“Please,” Dejah begged him. “Forget the rest of us. Tell us any other reason that the Stanley would want to keep its distance rather than do anything it could to rescue Jason, Jelaine, and you. Just one.”
“It’s impossible,” he said again. It was the very structure of his universe.
After him, the most likely sources of useful information were Jason and Jelaine. I studied them for a moment, saw them both willing to make eye contact with me, both straining with the awareness that they’d withheld vital information, both eager to tell me but unsure whether they should or not. I saw apologies in their eyes, even a brave half-smile on Jelaine’s lips. But they didn’t speak up, neither one of them, not in front of these others.
Fine. So it was time to come at this by some other angle. I turned away from Philip, making no secret of the disgust I felt for him and his denials, and addressed the group at large. “If any of you know anything, anything at all, that might shed some more light on what’s happening here, understand that I will find it out, sooner or later, whether you come forward now or continue to stay silent in the hopes that I’ll go away. That won’t happen. This is what I do for a living, and though I’m damn good at my job, I don’t particularly appreciate it being made difficult. Trust me. You don’t want me annoyed.”
The parlor was so still that the ambient sound excluded even our respective breath.
Jason seemed about to break. Jelaine seemed even more anxious. But there was something else there as well, something that worried me almost as much as whatever our culprit or culprits were prepared to do next.
Sadness.
Whatever their absent father Hans had to tell me, neither relished the thought of this being the time and place.
I picked one of the two at random and went to Jason, who slumped a little at my approach, not in fear but in resignation, the sadness spreading from his eyes to the planes of his face.
I said, “You told me before, that you wanted to be friends.”
He actually smiled at that. “Yes.”
“Forgive me for saying that, right now, I don’t.”
The smile did not falter. “I’m sorry to hear that, Counselor.”
“If you brought me this far, you already know about me, including my willingness to blight the lives of people who obstruct my investigations. Will you believe me when I tell you, right now, that I’ve already figured out more than you want me to tell the other people in this room? That I’ve confirmed that very sensitive deduction in just the few seconds since the two of us started this conversation? And that I have absolutely no problem with passing on what I know, right here, out loud?”
Had I expected that to break him, I would have been doomed to disappointment. If anything, he just looked more confident, probably because I’d phrased exposure as a threat rather than an inevitability. He glanced at his brother, who had frozen stock-still in anticipation of the secret now hanging in the air between us, and smiled. “Well, I’ll be damned. You did trip me up. I must give you credit, Counselor. You’re—”
“Please. Spare me the compliments about how remarkable I am. I’ve had my fill of that this evening, and I’m damn sick of it. I just want answers. Any answers. I’ll even start with a small one. How do I make the Khaajiir’s staff work?”
This, at last, surprised him. “His staff?”
I ticked off my observations at a hammering staccato rate rate that barely permitted intake of breath. “One: as I told Mr. Pescziuwicz earlier, Bocaians have never been especially known for their talent at learning languages beyond whatever native tongue they learned first. Two: in fact, they’re particularly bad at it. Three: despite that, the Khaajiir made part of his reputation as a scholar studying the past of another species, an endeavor that must have required substantial poring through primary sources. Four: he even demonstrated his fondness for multilingual puns, demonstrating several that required knowledge of extinct languages. Five: chatty as he was, the Khaajiir barely spoke at all during dinner, when his hands were so busy dealing with his meal that he could not retain a consistent grip on his staff. Six: when he did want to speak up, he grabbed his staff first. Seven: when he lost his staff upon falling to the floor, he asked for the staff in Bocaian. Eight: I’ve been told that I spoke Bocaian at some point today, not an impossible slip given that I grew up speaking the language, but still one sufficient to make me wonder how come I’m not aware of uttering words in a tongue I haven’t uttered since my childhood. Nine: just about everything else I said today was spoken in the presence of other people who had no difficulty understanding my words. Ten: the Khaajiir spoke directly to me while I was examining his staff, and I replied. Conclusion: during those few seconds it provided the same service for me that it provided for him. It translated for me. Corollary Number One: since it stores data, it might also contain information about his scholarly activities and about his mission here, information that may prove invaluable when it comes to determining just why an assassin of his species or any other would want to kill him. Corollary Number Two: since Jelaine’s actions after the emergency stop prove that the two of you have been apprised of its capabilities, you might as well take this opportunity to tell me anything I need to know about its operation or what data I should be looking for. I’ll have more pressing questions for you later, but that, at least, would be a fine start.”