“I confiscated these myself,” I answered. “I remember them.” We were all speaking very quietly, so that no one outside could hear.
“Then they would have been destroyed,” argued Lieutenant Skaaiat.
“Obviously they weren’t,” said Lieutenant Awn. And then, after a brief silence, “Oh, shit. This is not good.”
Silently I messaged her. Language, Lieutenant.
Lieutenant Skaaiat made a short, breathy sound, unamused laughter. “To put it mildly.” She frowned. “But why? Why would anyone go to the trouble?”
“And how?” asked Lieutenant Awn. She seemed to have forgotten her own tea, in a bowl on the floor beside her. “They put them there without us seeing them.” I’d looked at the logs for the past thirty days and seen nothing I couldn’t already account for. Indeed, no one had been to that spot at all besides Denz Ay and her daughter thirty days ago, and just the other night.
“How is the easy part, if you’ve got the right accesses,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat. “Which might tell us something. It’s not someone who’s got high-level access to Justice of Toren, or they’d have made sure it didn’t remember these guns. Or at least couldn’t say it did.”
“Or they didn’t think of that particular detail,” suggested Lieutenant Awn. She was puzzled. And only beginning to be frightened. “Or maybe that’s part of the plan to begin with. But we’re back to why, aren’t we? It doesn’t much matter how, not right this moment.”
Lieutenant Skaaiat looked up at me. “Tell me about the trouble Jen Taa’s niece had in the lower city.”
Lieutenant Awn looked at her, frowning. “But…” Lieutenant Skaaiat shushed her with a gesture.
“There was no trouble,” I said. “She sat by herself and threw rocks in the Fore-Temple water. She bought some tea in the shop behind the temple. Beyond that, no one spoke to her.”
“You’re certain?” asked Lieutenant Awn.
“She was in my view the entire time.” And I would take care that she would be on any future visits, but that hardly needed saying.
The two lieutenants were silent a moment. Lieutenant Awn closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was now truly frightened. “They’re lying about that,” she said, eyes still closed. “They want some excuse to accuse someone in the lower city of… something.”
“Sedition,” Lieutenant Skaaiat said. She remembered her tea, and took a sip. “And getting above themselves. That’s easy enough to see.”
“Yes, I can see that,” said Lieutenant Awn. Her accent had slipped entirely, but she hadn’t noticed. “But why the hell would anyone with this sort of access”—she gestured at the crate of guns—“want to help them?”
“That would seem to be the question,” answered Lieutenant Skaaiat. They were silent for several seconds. “What are you going to do?”
The question upset Lieutenant Awn, who presumably had been wondering just that. She looked up at me. “I wonder if this is all.”
“I can ask Denz Ay to take me out again,” I said.
Lieutenant Awn gestured affirmatively. “I’ll write the report, but I won’t file it just yet. Pending our further investigation.” Everything Lieutenant Awn did and said was observed and recorded—but as with the trackers everyone in Ors wore, there wasn’t always someone paying attention.
Lieutenant Skaaiat made a low whistle. “Is someone setting you up, dear?” Lieutenant Awn looked incomprehension at her. “Like maybe,” Lieutenant Skaaiat continued, “Jen Shinnan? I may have underestimated her. Or can you trust Denz Ay?”
“If someone wants me gone, they’re in the upper city,” said Lieutenant Awn, and privately I agreed but I didn’t say it. “But that can’t be it. If anyone who could do this,” she gestured at the crate, “wanted me out of here, it would be easy enough—just give the order. And Jen Shinnan couldn’t have done this.” Unspoken, hanging behind every word, was the memory of news from Ime. Of the fact that the person who had revealed the corruption there was condemned to die, probably was already dead. “No one in Ors could have, not without…” Not without help, from a very high level, she would surely have said, but she let the sentence trail off.
“True,” mused Lieutenant Skaaiat. Understanding her. “So it’s someone high up. Who would benefit?”
“The niece,” said Lieutenant Awn, distressed.
“Jen Taa’s niece would benefit?” asked Lieutenant Skaaiat, puzzled.
“No, no. The niece is insulted or assaulted—allegedly. I won’t do anything, I say nothing happened.”
“Because nothing happened,” said Lieutenant Skaaiat, looking as though something was beginning to come clear to her, but still puzzled.