Warring States Read online

  So how was it that elements of physiognomy that interested Jils in Koscuisko’s face moved her to nothing more than dislike when presented in an even more extreme form in Nion? Her hair was as fine as filament-wire, all of the hair that fell to her waist still making up a single braid of no more than a thumb’s thickness, tied up into a depressing little knot at the back of Nion’s head. If it had been her, Jils decided, she would have gotten a weave, or cut her hair short. Something.

  “Yes, of course. Specialist Ivers is undoubtedly a significant asset in Chilleau Judiciary’s administration. I’m sure it’s very nice, being Bench specialist at the First Judge’s seat. You should get Tanifer talking, some time.”

  Nion, like Padrake, seemed to identify the specialist with the Judiciary a little more closely than Jils was accustomed to. Padrake at least knew better. Bench specialists were rotated precisely in order to avoid developing inappropriate relationships with any one Judge; her own long association with Chilleau had been mildly anomalous, but she hadn’t spent all of her time at Chilleau even when she had made it her base of operations at Verlaine’s request.

  Padrake’s apparent assumption that Jils was personally committed to the Second Judge’s cause was all the more puzzling in light of his own experience. They had teamed with each other five years ago. He had only been at Brisinje for two years or so, she remembered him telling her — she thought. No. Five years. No. Two years. Which?

  Shifting in her seat Jils swallowed back a sigh of exasperation. If anyone was in danger of identifying too closely with the agenda of any one particular Judge it was surely Padrake himself, on first-name terms with the First Secretary, and all. And these were not very comfortable chairs. They’d been brought in to the theater from one of the laboratory areas, light, flimsy things with a very thinly padded seat.

  Why she shouldn’t use the perfectly good seats that were already here in the theater room Jils did not know, but the procedures they had all agreed on called for the observer to be seated at right angles to the axis of discussion and not more than five eights distant from the table with the tiles, and none of the rather more comfortable chairs already here could be pulled off of their anchors and placed correctly.

  Since Jils was observing, Nion could make all the acid comments she liked without fear of reprisals; Jils was here to listen. Firmly pushing her pique away from her mind Jils crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in the chair, pushing off with one foot to tilt the seat toward the back wall and brace it there.

  “But, and Ivers is much too well disciplined to mention this, Rinpen, she knows as well as anyone that Chilleau is compromised and corrupt. There are rumors that a record has been compromised, by a clerk of Court at Chilleau Judiciary — Verlaine’s special pet, in fact. And more.”

  Balancing a chair between its two back legs and the wall could be delicate business. Jils used the opportunity it gave her to adjust and shift and cover her unhappy surprise. There was no doubt in her mind but that the Malcontent had controlled the information as carefully as possible, and the Malcontent was as good a secret service as Jils had ever seen. But secrets that were big enough couldn’t be kept forever.

  If Nion knew about the existence of the forged record, did that mean Nion knew that Jils had been there when the secret had been discovered? It could look bad. Sitting here in the theater of a research station she didn’t know how deep beneath Brisinje it suddenly seemed to Jils that it almost certainly looked much worse than she had imagined, before.

  “There’s no such thing as a Judiciary that has never been compromised.” Rinpen’s retort was gallantly fielded, but a little weak. “Citizens under Jurisdiction have already shown their willingness to move past the difficulties in Chilleau’s recent past. The Domitt Prison. The Nurail. Even with Cintaro making a persuasive case out of the Domitt, the selection was in Chilleau’s favor.”

  Well argued, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. Whether or not he’d heard about a forged record, he knew that there was an issue, now. Jils shifted her weight in her chair, irritated. She could have said something — but not without interfering unnecessarily with the discussion. Nion knew that. Nion was taking advantage. Jils was beginning to not like Nion.

  She was beginning to dislike her chair, as well; its variety of functional ceramic tube-and-brace construction might well be durable and inexpensive, but it didn’t feel quite solid to Jils in some obscure sense. Maybe she was just blaming it for Nion.

  “A forged record,” Nion repeated, as it seemed to Jils maliciously. “In a Judiciary characterized by the close working relationship between the First Secretary and Bench specialist detailed. What do you think the common citizen will make of the existence of a forged record, under those circumstances? Of the judicial insistence that a Fleet warship that leveled stolen battle cannon against Fleet defensive fortifications has committed no crime, when the only possible interpretation is that mutiny is being hushed up for the sake of the Dolgorukij Combine’s tender feelings about its ancestral aristocracy?”

  This was going too far. Arching her back to push against the wall with her shoulders Jils opened her mouth to say something; Rinpen looked at her — clearly worried — and Jils settled the chair back into its leaning position, though not without effort. Maybe the entire station had settled, sited as it was on the shores of an ancient lake which might well be unstable, and which had certainly never suffered the indignity of a structure of any sort until quite recently.

  Maybe the floor was uneven. The chair wobbled and was a little difficult to control, its structural tubing loose. Probably just needed an adjustment, Jils told herself. Her own attitude certainly did.

  “Which Combine, and the Judiciary in which it is located, can be counted on to exert themselves to stabilize Chilleau to the maximum extent of their ability.” Rinpen spoke slowly, as though he was sounding out his own argument as he spoke. He apparently found it persuasive, however, because his voice strengthened and grew more confident as he continued. Maybe he had just been afraid that she was going to attack Nion, Jils thought. It was a good idea. Nion clearly needed attacked, with her ghostly pale complexion and her watery and watering eyes and her teeth that looked like milk-teeth and which were just wrong in an adult jaw, and not much of a chin either.

  “The Bench expects its First Judge to show tact and discretion when dealing with locally influential persons.” Jils set aside her irritation for a moment to listen; she was interested in where Rinpen’s argument might be going. “And respects attributes that are important in minimizing conflicts that can lead to police actions.”

  Rinpen was sounding so self-assured now that it was almost as if he’d rehearsed this speech. Maybe he’d anticipated Nion’s attack. Jils took a deep breath to calm and center herself, frowning at the way the chair’s frame wobbled beneath her.

  “Within limits,” Nion insisted. “A Bench which enjoys the public trust and confidence will be granted credit by the other Judiciaries and the rest of Jurisdiction space, and only within limits. Chilleau does not.”

  That was perfectly true, but only as far as Bench specialists and senior Bench staff went. Oh, and senior Fleet officers.

  “Meal break,” Jils said, with one eye on the station’s master chronometer. “Please suspend your discussion until we reconvene, here, after mid-meal.” She wasn’t sure it was mid-meal. There was no sense of time in this station, not even with chronometers at hand. It could be dawn in Brisinje. It could be midnight. Here and now whatever it was it was time to go eat, so Jils leaned her head back to push off from the wall again and tilt her chair forward onto all four of its floor-points fore and aft.

  The front floor-points of the chair came down on the carpeted floor of the theater with a sharp impact that startled Jils. She had just enough time to realize that the chair had not stopped tipping forward when its front bar had struck the floor before something sliced up between her body and her right arm, tearing the fabric of her uniform, tearing her flesh.
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  Ceramics, she told herself. The sharp edge of a shattered structural tube caught against one of her ribs, taking her breath away in a manner that was familiar but not any more welcome for that. Ceramics, and brittle with age. She should have thought twice about leaning back in the chair, she should have noticed herself noticing that the chair didn’t feel quite right.

  She had a good long time to reproach herself as she struggled for breath against the pain in her side. She didn’t particularly want to breathe, not really — she knew that the moment she did the pain in her side would only be worse. But she did have to. She was not going to relinquish consciousness. There was more than just her failure to notice her own perceptions that was wrong, here.

  Jils took a breath at last, and found a black-humored sort of satisfaction in the fact that it did in fact hurt worse than anything she could call immediately to mind. She knew she’d been hurt worse. She knew she had good reasons for not thinking about that. She lay on her back and panted shallowly, half-hearing Rinpen beside her. Nion must have gone for the medikit. Jils hoped Nion had gone for the medikit. She hoped Nion wouldn’t try to use it on her.

  “Can’t leave you alone for a minute,” someone said. It was Padrake, here, now. She was beginning to focus, but not particularly appreciating it. Padrake held a long jagged spear of crazed and shattered ceramic tubing up where Jils could see it; “Just missed sliding up into your abdominal cavity,” Padrake said cheerfully. “Lucky you, Jils.”

  She didn’t like the undertone of worry that she could hear in his voice. She knew how to read him. He was shocked, frightened, almost. She’d thought that something was wrong. now she knew she’d been right, but that didn’t make her any happier than breathing had.

  “Lift,” someone said — Zeman.

  Jils appreciated the expert handling of the people who were moving her onto the gurney; she also appreciated the fact that nobody had given her any drugs yet. There was a heavy pad of medical compress laced around her now, to staunch the bleeding; that hurt too. They were going to have to move her; the sealers and the blood-fluid and the rest, all that would be in the little clinic. Jils began to wonder how badly she’d been injured. The idea was almost more than she could bear to contemplate — Bench intelligence specialist Jils Tarocca Ivers, to be assassinated by an old lab chair?

  “Ivers,” Zeman said. “Long bad graze, bleeding pretty good, scraped rib-bones. If the shard had slipped just a little we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We need to give urgent care, but you’ll be ambulatory again in about two hours. How about a dose of this or that?”

  She hadn’t been assassinated by a chair. That was what was wrong. Someone had watched her, seen her leaning back, had sabotaged her chair. Maybe not. Maybe she was imagining things. Maybe pain was making her paranoid. Paranoid was not necessarily a bad thing to be.

  “Let me have one of this. And at least five of that.” It was hard to choke out the words, because it hurt to breathe. More than that, though, part of her brain was desperate not to accept any drugs. It would be so easy, if she was drugged. She could have an idiopathic allergic reaction to a micro-fungus that had crept into the solution somehow. Her heart could absent-mindedly forget to beat. It wouldn’t take much.

  “Maybe a fraction of the other thing,” Padrake suggested. Jils hadn’t felt the dose go through; she could tell that she’d been dosed, though, because her thinking seemed to sharpen and focus all at once. Jils knew that Padrake was worried. He’d keep an eye out.

  Nobody who wanted her dead for the good of the Judicial order could decently murder her by stealth anyway; executions had to be announced. Jils Ivers, in the matter of the crime of assassination of a senior Bench official, it is my judgment and my decision that you are at fault and are appropriately to be punished therefore. Announced and then acknowledged; no games with chairs that had gone unused for too long, no tricks with drugs would satisfy the jury of a Bench specialist’s peers. She was probably safer right here, right now, than she had been since Verlaine had been murdered.

  “Two fractions of the other thing.” Jils held up two fingers to make her point, and then closed her eyes. Closing her eyes helped her concentrate on capturing her memories before they faded, before anesthetic drugs clouded her judgment.

  While they moved her to the tiny medical unit Jils focused her mind, listening only to be sure she heard Padrake from time to time. The furniture had been here as long as the station had, though new equipment had been brought in to support the special needs of Convocation — secured communications transmission equipment, among other things.

  The environment was stable, controlled humidity, minimal fluctuations. Structural tubing could fracture under stress, but there shouldn’t have been the sorts of stresses that could lead to materials fatigue on such a level. She needed to have a look at that chair, what was left of it. She needed to have a look at the other chairs as well.

  The shard had scraped up along her ribs to her armpit, or at least that was what it felt like. The pain was a dull ache, but they hadn’t given her enough drugs to deprive her of consciousness. They’d known better than that. None of them would have wanted to lose consciousness in a situation like this. All of them were fully capable of having the same questions about the accident as she did, so how could any of them hope to get away with sabotage?

  She was making assumptions based on expectations of common values that might not be universally common at all. How was she to know? Could she go up to Rinpen or Nion or Rafenkel and say “Pardon me for asking, but if you were going to assassinate me do you mind telling me how you’d go about it?”

  Medical unit. Someone eased her arm up and away, someone cut her uniform blouse and exposed her side. She smelled a sterile field generator in action, felt a familiar prickling tingle traveling up her side as the quick-knit unit worked its way from point of entry to the endmost extent of the wound.

  The transparent membrane would seal the wound and keep it clean while open for observation, and would gradually shrink toward its vertical midline over time, drawing the new skin back over the wound to heal without a scar. Or much of one. You could have the scar tissue peeled, and there’d be a new scar, but a fainter, thinner one. Two or three peels and there was no scar left to speak of, but it was a tedious process that Jils had never had patience for.

  The quick-knit’s resonation was exquisitely uncomfortable against newly scraped rib-bones. Jils set her teeth and waited; it would be over soon enough. She’d take a break, sleep for a few hours. If there was something to be found out about the chair she’d find out about it. If someone didn’t want her to find out about the chair, she’d find that out too.

  And then she was going to find a way out of here. She had no intention of sitting quietly and waiting to be killed. Under the new procedure, her role could be safely terminated at the front of the process. The longer she could keep Chilleau’s bid alive the longer she would live; but if someone had just tried to kill her they clearly weren’t waiting. Neither would she.

  There had to be other ways to get to the surface than just the lift-car. There had to be. She would find them, because if she didn’t find something to do soon, some way to take charge of her own destiny, something that would give her the illusion of control over her fate, she was going to go to pieces. If that happened she’d never know who’d killed Sindha Verlaine, and why.

  ###

  “Timurcillium must be as close to untraceable as you can get,” Rafenkel observed in as neutral a tone as possible. Ivers would already have noted that; it was hard to ignore. The chair had been carefully painted with an antiquing agent, something used extensively on the forged objets d’art market and otherwise mostly ignored because it was in everything — a component of packing materials.

  For instance, the pre-pack packaging material, in an inerted form, could be pulverized and washed out with a mildly acidic solution to pull the substance out of its inerting matrix. And the packaging was pulverized in the kitchen
after every meal service, and many of the things people mixed in their water yielded a mildly acidic solution. Kilpers was one of them.

  “But only where the tubing meets the seat. And then only on one or two chairs,” Ivers said, as if meditatively. They had found two other chairs in the theater treated in the same manner, the ceramic tubing carefully painted with timurcillium to create a line of weakness that would shear under sharp pressure and split off just such a spear as had nearly skewered Ivers. They were out in storage, now, tagged as hazardous, waiting for forensic examination.

  They had all been grouped together, so that Ivers could easily have selected any one of them — or none at all. Ivers had been observing a debate. Someone had moved the chair that had been there for the observer, but whoever had done it had waited until the theater had gone off-monitor. Ivers might have selected a treated chair anyway. Ivers liked to lean her chair up against the wall, and the more comfortable chairs didn’t tip.

  “Target,” Ivers said. “The chair only fails on impact. It’s still load-bearing. And if it went when someone was just sitting on it, the knife-section of the tube wouldn’t have enough momentum to do much damage. The only person likely to be actually hurt is the one who is letting her chair fall four-square to the floor again. Me.”

  Rafenkel could see the argument; it was clear enough. Why Ivers might have rigged the accident herself was a little less clear, but to look at Zeman he wasn’t sure. Rinpen had been talking to Zeman. Rinpen had been talking to her, too, but she hadn’t been able to buy the argument at all.

  There was no need for Ivers to stage an attack to divert suspicion away from herself because, prior to the chair’s collapse, there had been no other incidents in which Ivers had been suspected of anything — except for the problem of Verlaine’s murder, of course, but the incident in that case did nothing to absolve Ivers of Verlaine’s murder and everything to endorse suspicion of Ivers’ guilt by making it clear that someone thought she might very well be guilty, and need killing.