Remember who you are? Would it make a difference to me to even remember who I was if I was tucked away at some isolated Bettelhine estate and wearing a sincere but frozen smile on my face as I poured drinks for family members who needed only a few more to decide just what they wanted to do with me in the privacy of a bedroom suite?
Remember who you are.
If that’s what awaited me, once this business was done, I didn’t want to live to see it.
Behind me, Philip said, “Counselor?”
Skye had looked away again.
Damn this. It wasn’t as if I had any choice anymore. Sooner or later, either the air or the water or the food or the power would run out. Whatever happened to me, the Khaajiir’s murderer still stood between us and the rest of our lives.
I took a deep breath and told Oscin, through Skye: “Bring everybody back up. It’s time.”
17
THE KHAAJIIR’S TESTAMENT
By the time the five of us left the suite and returned to the sullied magnificence of the Royal Carriage’s parlor, the others were already filing in and taking their positions around the bar. The most common denominator among them was not fear but exhaustion. They’d all been up many hours under the most stressful conditions, and the adrenaline that had kept them going in the early stages of the crisis had tapped much that might have been remaining in their reserves. Not all of them wore the pressure on their faces. But they all showed it in the resigned quality of their stride, as if gravity itself had grown more powerful in the hours since we’d all gathered around the table for a friendly meal.
Of them all, Dejah seemed to be the one least touched by the events of the past few hours. Were our deliverance to arrive at this very moment, I would not have been surprised had she suggested a nice ten-kilometer run or perhaps a mountain climbing expedition or two. She may have been even more hyped from her own time in Intersleep as the Porrinyards and I had been, but I wasn’t willing to declare that the sole explanation. Exhaustion was just not a state in her body’s physical vocabulary, nor despair in her soul’s emotional one. Even now, I read a hidden message in the nod she gave me as she passed by on the way to claiming her seat: I’m ready.
Dina Pearlman pierced me with her glare as she searched my face for signs of further accusation. Storming past me, she muttered something about hoping this would be over quickly.
Her husband, Farley, looked more sweaty and bloodshot and miserable than anybody I’d seen so far. There was a shiny, fresh stain on his jacket, at chest level. Since there’d been nothing to eat or drink downstairs, I deduced that he’d been ilclass="underline" not surprising, given everything he’d had to drink in the aftermath of the Khaajiir’s death.
Monday Brown gave me a professional nod before seeking out and standing beside Philip. It was hard to miss the way his very posture, ramrod-straight at rest, grew ever more formal the closer he approached the highest-ranking Bettelhine on board. I could imagine no other man being as formidable a right hand to the great Hans. But I now understood the air of sadness I’d sensed in him. I could only wonder what kind of man he would have been, had he been allowed the opportunity to live a life ruled by his own will.
Vernon Wethers picked a place by Philip’s other shoulder. Unlike Brown, who gained stature in the presence of his employers, Wethers diminished, becoming not so much a presence as another component of the overall atmosphere. When he saw me looking at him he just as quickly looked away. I wondered if he’d been conditioned to carry such a heavy burden of social inadequacy or if it was something he’d carried with him since childhood.
Arturo Mendez marched to a position beside the bar, his hands linked behind his back as he waited for the proper moment to excel at his personal duty. His ridiculous uniform, complete with sash and epaulets, had not been touched by any of the foul events of the day. Given what we now knew about him, it was tempting to imagine him in his natural habitat: tanned, stripped to the waist, his skin shining from a recent plunge into turquoise ocean waters. I suspected that some part of him, behind those obliging eyes, never stopped screaming.
Loyal Jeck chose an identical stance opposite him, his slight build and blander personality rendering him a virtual invisibility. There was nothing in his expression, nothing in his eyes, nothing in his personality suggesting anything but duty. He hadn’t said much in the hours we’d spent together. Nor had his input been missed. His brittleness, his hollowness, that gave the impression of a porcelain creature, just waiting for the moment when he’d be shattered.
Colette Wilson may have been no longer projecting light, but she still shone, her determined cheer and helpfulness showing on her face even as she entered this room filled with grim and scowling faces. She’d touched up her makeup at some point since I’d seen her last, and twinkled at me as she walked past, no doubt still imagining an immediate future being put to recreational use. To my special horror, she went back behind the bar, as if expecting to continue serving refreshments for as long as it took me to get around to pointing my finger at the guilty party. The Porrinyards saw her try to return to work, and Oscin took a moment to divert her to a nearby couch, and a seat beside Farley Pearlman. Her pretty face showed only obedient interest. If she was screaming inside, her cries must have been even more pitiful than Arturo’s. I did not want to know.
The party was now gathered in a semicircle, facing me. Colette Wilson and Farley Pearlman sat side by side on a couch, Dejah Shapiro and Dina Pearlman bracketing them in a pair of angled easy chairs. Arturo Mendez stood with Paakth-Doy to our left, Loyal Jeck at equal attention to the right. The Porrinyards stood a little behind me, Oscin on my left and Skye on my right. The Bettelhines and their execs remained standing five paces behind the couches bearing Colette and Farley, Jason to the far left beside Brown. After Brown came Philip and Wethers and, at the far right, Jelaine. It was impossible not to read Brown and Wethers as a pair of protective parentheses shielding Philip from the influence of his strange siblings, Jason and Jelaine.
The easy chair still bearing the Khaajiir’s body was behind us, his slumped figure just a shape sinking deeper into his cushions as everything inside him grew emptier.
If this was the way we’d march the rest of the way to the naming of the name, then so be it. It was not likely to go without blood.
I met everybody’s gaze one at a time, then coughed into my fist and began.
“I know this has been a long night. I’m sorry, but it’s going to get longer.
“A little while ago Mr. Bettelhine and Mrs. Shapiro offered the Khaajiir’s murderer amnesty in exchange for surrender. Those offers have been withdrawn, but I’m about to make another one. We already know who you are. I’ll be saying your name in a few minutes. If you step forward now and save me the trouble of explaining how we know, I promise that you won’t be injured or killed as we take you into custody.
“This is also a one-time only offer, and unlike the others I won’t add additional seconds at the end of my deadline in the hopes that you’ll relent.
“You have ten seconds.”
Nobody looked away from me. By this point, nobody expected an easy confession. I hadn’t either, but it was worth a shot.