“That one I did personally, I recall. It came through in a batch of forty-one and you signed all forty-one in about nine minutes, which I remember because I was told about it afterward and I thought it was rather sad.” He shrugs. “You’ve never once read a batch amendment in eleven rotations. It’s not a criticism. It’s simply true.”
“And the murders.”
“Which murders?”
“Their parents.” Grytel’s voice cracks straight across the middle of it. “The Margol male and his mate. In their bed. Eight rotations ago.”
“Ah.” The old male considers. “Yes. That was a correction. The male had found the survey discrepancy in the deep levels and had begun asking questions of beings who might have answered him, and he could not be bought, which was inconvenient, and he could not be transferred, because the union would not permit it.” A small, dismissive movement of one hand. “So. A correction. Regrettable, and entirely necessary, and I’d do it again tomorrow.”
“Why me?” Grytel says it quietly. It’s the only thing he’s said that sounds like it cost him anything.
“Why youwhat?”
“Why my administration. Why my name. You could have run it out of any office on this planet — “ He stops. Starts again. “Was it because you thought I’d help you? Did you think I was — “
“Oh, good gods, no.” The old male looks honestly startled. “Grytel. No. You’d never have helped. You’d have gone straight to a Chronos arbiter in tears.”
“Thenwhy?”
“Because you’reharmless,” he says. “You’re a minor line and a distant one and you have no ambition, no talent, and no curiosity whatsoever,” he continues, not unkindly, which is the worst part. “You sign what’s put in front of you. You’ve signed what was put in front of you for eleven rotations. That is precisely —precisely— what the position required, and it is exactly why I put you in it, and I want you to understand that you have performed the role flawlessly.”
Grytel doesn’t answer.
“You were never a collaborator, Grytel,” the old male says. “You were achair.”
“He did do something, he filed the Bounty,” Cayzor says.
The old male turns. “I’m sorry?”
“Two diurnals ago.” Cayzor’s voice is completely flat. “Grytel of Thirty-Nine filed a formal complaint of sabotage against Illibrium infrastructure and posted a Bounty in his own name, against your House, knowing what it would cost him with his own blood.”
Something happens in the old male’s face. Not fear. Something much smaller and much more satisfying.
Surprise.
“He did what?”
“He signed it,” Cayzor says. “He read it first.”
They take him up.
It’s very ordinary in the end, which I did not expect. There’s no fight, because he’s ninety-four and he wasn’t ever going tofight. Ines is recording everything and has been since the lift doors opened. The two hired males are separated and processed and neither of them says a single word.
And at the transport level, when they walk him past us to the shuttle that’s going to take him up to a Hunter ship in a legal parking orbit, he stops in front of Cayzor.
“Which one are you? The youngest? No, the face. You’d be the one from the house.”
Cayzor looks down at him.
“Cayzor of Eighteen. Mm.” The old male studies him with mild, detached interest, like a specimen. “You’ve cost me a great deal of currency and eleven rotations of work, and I’d like you to know that it changes nothing. The Illibrium is too important to be left in the hands of beings who dig it with their claws. That was true before your parents and it will be true after you. Another House will simply do it better.”
“Perhaps,” Cayzor says. And then he leans down, until his ruined face is level with a Royal Pigment elder’s and he says, very quietly, “But you won’t see it. You’ll be in a cell. And I’ll be here.”
Daxon takes them at fourteen-twenty.
We stand out on the surface to watch it, all of us, in the wet green heat at the edge of the jungle — the whole family, and Grytel, and half the crews who’ve worked out that something enormous is happening. There’s nothing to see. Just a shuttle going up, and then a long silence, and then Chief’s comm crackling.
“I have them,” Daxon says. “Bounties confirmed. Hold’s sealed.”
