It was still on the meadow's floor. But the Place of Smokes was not silent. The wind whipped the tops of the conifers in a steady roar.
Sten, Alex, Cind, and Otho stood near one of the embassy gravsleds. Their Gurkha security element had deployed smoothly from the accompanying gravlighter into a perimeter.
The poacher discovered by Alex's bottomless purse had given them nervous instructions from the rutted road down the track into the clearing. When he had seen Cind unload recording gear, he had wanted his credits on the spot. Alex had paid and asked the man if he would wait: when they were finished, they would return him to his village.
No. The man insisted he would walk home. Thirty kilometers? It did not matter. The poacher walked backward into the trees, turned, and pelted away with devils on his heels.
Sten did not know whether the man had been more afraid of someone recording his face, or of the long, shallow furrows that stretched across the meadow.
"City beings dug those," Otho said. "Rustics would have known earth subsides once it's put back. And they'd have mounded the trench when they covered it over."
No one commented.
"How many?"
Sten shook his head. He had little background as an undertaker.
"There's five thousand that people have had the guts to report missing," Cind said.
"Square thae," Alex said absently, his eyes fixed on the covered trenches. "Which'll mean thae'll be—other places yet t' find." He turned to Sten. "How d' we play th' card, boss?"
Sten thought, then walked to the gravsled and opened an equipment locker. He removed two shovels and gave one to Kilgour.
"I guess," he said, "we'll treat it like an archaeologist's dig. We'll cut a slit one meter wide across one trench. Cind, I want you recording. Make sure the film shows the ground has not been disturbed for some time. There's little plants—"
"Lichen," Alex said.
"Lichen, then, grown up. No footprints except those we'll make approaching the..." He let his voice trail off.
"Sir," Otho said. "The soldiers can do the digging."
Sten shook his head and motioned to Cind to start the recorder. Then he walked to the nearest trench and marked the limits of the exploratory slot with his shovel's blade. He started digging carefully. The sandy loam took little effort to dislodge. Alex dug with equal care on the other side of the trench.
Sten was down less than a meter when he suddenly stopped. "Otho. There's a trowel in the locker." He knelt and dug still more gently with the tool. He grunted. Then he coughed hard and threw up to one side of the trench.
Otho brought him a canteen and a breathing mask. He gave a second mask to Alex. "It is a smell you never become used to."
Sten rinsed his mouth out and put the mask on. He was glad it concealed his expression. "Two... maybe three months?"
"Thae's aboot th' right time, boss. Cind? I' y' c'd gie us a shot, straight doon int' th' crypt?"
Cind moved closer.
Through the finder, she could see a woman's back. Her hands had been tied behind her with plas cuffs. Next to it, was a man's face. The remains of his eyes were wide, and his mouth was open, the scream silenced with dirt.
Cind told her eyes to stop recording—the machine would do the work. They did not obey.
"Why," Otho wondered, "did Iskra not dump these bodies into the sea? Or burn them with his fire?"
"Being buried alive," Sten said, "is an honorable death here on Jochi."
Otho growled. "And how can murder ever be honorable?"
Sten gave Alex a hand out of the grave.
"Y' dinnae answer m' question, boss, on whae use w' put this atrocity to? Ah cannae say Ah think thae'll be aught good i' we call in th' penny dreadfuls, an' let th' deed be howl't 'crost th' Altaics. Thae'll be more tinder f'r th' firestorm i' we do."
"You're right. We'll cover the hole back up. And all we'll do—at least at first—is ship a copy of Cind's record to Prime."
"Eyes Only frae th' Emp? Sten, this isn't th' first, it's just th' worst ae what we've been tellin't th' boss. Whae makes y' think he'll pay this any more heed—Ah ken he's seen more gashly sights o'erth' aeons."
''I don't know, "Sten said. "But he'd damned well better start—because you had it when you said there's a firestorm building. And we're right in the middle."
Then they fell silent.
And there was no sound but the shovels scraping dirt back into the mass grave... and the high roar of the wind as it built up force overhead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The question of whether the revelation at the Place of the Smokes would change the Emperor's course would not be answered.
Her family was not rich, not poor. Or at least not what the citizens of Rurik called poor-on many other worlds she would have been thought a slummer. But she knew both her father and mother, and only two of her brothers had died as babes. She had always eaten at least once a day, and her clothes were clean, if restyled and resewn garments her older sister had owned.
She was a Jochian. But she did not remember, as a child-at sixteen E-years, she of course considered herself adult-having any particular hatred for Suzdal or Bogazi. Even though she seldom saw either of the ET species in her sector. And she never felt anything more than pity for the few Tork families she encountered.
Some years before she had heard stories that her world would change, change for the better. Once that tyrant the Khaqan was gone-she had never thought of him one way or another before-a new day would dawn.
It would be brought by a man named Iskra. Some of her friends gave her pamphlets that talked about how this noble man had always believed in the Altaics, had believed they were to be civilization's center, and that the new fire would be sparked by Jochians.
She did not, of course, actually read any of this doctor's writings. She had been told they were far too complex for someone of her sex and education, and she did not need to waste the time.
She joined a small organization, a secret organization, of course, and was oath-sworn to help bring that new day in whatever way she could.
And then Iskra returned to his home world. She had been part of the roaring throng that welcomed him. She thought she had actually seen him-a dot far away on a balcony of the palace that had belonged to the Khaqan.
Then the stories had started. The new day was not dawning fast enough. The Torks still paraded and showed off their riches, riches that had been ill-gotten from Jochians. And worse, Jochi was still polluted by the presence of Suzdal and Bogazi.
Even when the "aliens" left, there were still evils plaguing Dr. Iskra's attempts to bring a firm hand to the madness. And of course, once her cell leader explained, she saw the real villains clearly: those Imperials who were trying to use Dr. Iskra as their cat's-paw, just as they had used the Khaqan. Now she realized Dr. Iskra was being held as a near-captive in that palace-not ruling freely as she once believed.
She wanted to do something. Something that would bring the change even faster.
Somehow, some way, she could help.
On the livies she saw what others had done. Two young men and a woman-a woman even younger than herself-had doused their bodies with flame, willingly shaming themselves with this dishonorable death, because only by such a stroke would all of Jochi realize they were the ones who were shamed.
She told her cell leader of her willingness to die. He said he would ask his counselor if such an act would be good.
Two days later, he told her that this was not to be her fate. Instead, she would be allowed to perform an even greater task, a task that would drive the Imperials from their worlds like a great wind from the north.