“And you went to quite a lot of trouble to get em out of Compassionate Removal.”
“I did,” Ingray admitted. “I wanted em to do something for me.” And there had been, really, no guarantee e would have done it. “It was something only Pahlad could have done, you can’t do it for me. But maybe you can do something else.” She took a breath. Here it was again, that feeling that she was on the edge of a cliff, that if she backed up fast, right now, this instant, she might save herself. “Pahlad stole nearly all of the most famous Budrakim family vestiges. Ethiat Budrakim must have been beside himself when he realized they were gone, and who had done it. But Pahlad never admitted the theft, and e never said what e’d done with the things e stole.”
“You were hoping this Pahlad would tell you where these vestiges were,” e guessed. “You were hoping to sell the things back to Ethiat Budrakim. Or hold them hostage; he and your mother have never been friends. But now you can’t do either one. So I imagine you’re thinking I could pretend to be Pahlad well enough for you to leverage some money out of someone.”
Ingray opened her mouth to say my brother Danach, but having had some food, and a bit of rest and time to think, she found herself in a much less confessional mood than earlier. She regretted as much as she’d told Captain Uisine, but still couldn’t see how she could have avoided it. Doubtless her mother Netano would have found a more dignified, graceful way to tell the captain what he needed to know, without revealing more than she wanted, or coming so close to bursting into tears.
She sat down on the hard bench, half a meter away from the person who wasn’t Pahlad. It was uncomfortably hard—Tyr Siilas apparently didn’t want to encourage the sort of incomer who had to wait here for very long. Ingray herself had never even visited the Incomers Office before; she had always been automatically cleared before she got off whatever ship she’d arrived on. “I have …” She stopped at the sound of voices. Turned her head to see a man come into the lobby. Omkem, to judge by his sober brown-and-beige tunic and trousers, and his height. He strode to the wall opposite the door, touched it. “This is ridiculous,” he said, before the acknowledgment tone could sound, as the image of a functionary of the Incomers Office appeared on the wall. “I have always been preadmitted before. I have done business here for years. For decades. Why has my ship been denied docking? I had to find a shuttle to bring me here, and now dock authorities won’t let me go any farther into the station. This is outrageous!”
“Your pardon, excellency,” said the functionary. Ingray could not see them clearly from where she sat, not without very obviously turning her head and staring. She didn’t know what expression they might have on their face, but their voice was calm and dispassionate. “A moment. Ah, your ship is carrying cargo, and there appear to be difficulties with the manifest as it’s been reported to us. As soon as an inspector is available to verify …”
“An inspector!” fumed the Omkem man. “My ship has never needed inspection before. Customs at Hwae passed it, you’d think that would mean something.”
“Your pardon, excellency. We are on Tyr Siilas, and your ship must meet the requirements of Tyr law, not Hwaean. I do regret any inconvenience.”
“I demand to speak to your superior!”
“Of course, excellency,” replied the functionary, voice still calm. “My superior will be available in approximately six hours. If you will be so good as to return to this office at that time, or make yourself comfortable in the lobby.”
Ingray, looking studiously away from the Omkem man, still saw the wall turn blank again out of the corner of her vision. For a moment she was afraid he would sit on a bench and wait, and make continuing her conversation with not-Pahlad impossible, but the Omkem man turned and strode out of the room.
“Hwae,” said the person who wasn’t Pahlad. “Why did he come through Hwae? It’s two gates from Omkem to Hwae, and then another to Tyr. It’s much more convenient to go through Byeit. That’s why the Omkem are holding on to Byeit so hard to begin with, isn’t it? They don’t like the extra trip, and they don’t like paying fees at Hwae, or submitting to inspections. Makes everything more expensive, and reminds them they’re not just naturally in charge of everything everywhere.”
For a moment Ingray was astonished. “The Omkem/Byeit gate’s been down for ten years.”
Not-Pahlad frowned in what Ingray was sure was real surprise. Not Pahlad for certain, then. E had only been gone a few years; e would certainly have known about this. “How did that happen?” e asked.
“Byeit rebels took it down,” Ingray told em. “They deposed the Omkem puppet government that controlled the gates and destroyed the gate to Omkem. Now if the Omkem want to come to Tyr they have to go through Hwae.” Or if they wanted to get to Byeit, for that matter. Though the Byeit weren’t allowing any Omkem through the Hwae/Byeit gate.
“They took down the gate?” Still surprised. “That’s drastic.”
“Yes,” agreed Ingray. And then remembered what she had come here for. Looked around to be sure no one else would be coming into the room. “Look, I have a false identity already made up that was meant for Pahlad. You could use that, and we could go back to Hwae. You’re legally dead, whoever you are, so your records aren’t active and your return shouldn’t set off any alarms. I’ll give you half of whatever I get from this plan”—though at the moment there was barely anything like a plan—“and you can take that and do anything you want, go wherever you’d like.”
“And then what will happen to me? Pahlad was a Budrakim, yes? And e ended up sent to Compassionate Removal. For what, for theft? You don’t get sent to Compassionate Removal for a single theft, certainly not if you’re rich and well connected. But if e had done much more than that, you wouldn’t have ever done this. So it seems to me that Prolocutor Budrakim—one of the most powerful people in Hwae—really hates this Pahlad, or at the very least doesn’t care if e lives or dies. What happens when he thinks Pahlad is back? Or is that who you plan to leverage money out of?”
“He’s not, but I bet we could, if that happened.” E didn’t reply. “If we play the game right. But we don’t have to do that. The ship I bought passage on isn’t that fast; we’d have weeks to go over the details.”