Ingray, astonished, could not speak. How could Garal know this? No one knew it. No one, so far as she knew, had noticed Danach; all the grown-ups had been intent on exchanging polite greetings.
But obviously someone had noticed. And Garal—or whatever eir real name was—had learned all sorts of small details about the system’s wealthy and prominent families. Such details were, after all, part of eir stock-in-trade as a forger of vestiges.
“How’s your foot, Danach?” Garal continued. “I do hope you limped for a few days afterward.”
“I didn’t remember you were there,” said Ingray.
“I’m willing to forget the past,” said Danach, picking a piece of bread up off the tray, “if you’ll tell me where the Budrakim vestiges are.”
Could it be that easy? Ingray had imagined carefully working to convince him that Garal was, in fact, Pahlad, and that e knew where those vestiges were. And that Danach would have some reason to be interested in that information. “No, Danach,” she said, renewing her efforts to towel her hair dry, as though she was completely untroubled by any of this, “I don’t think so.”
“Have you been at Tyr Siilas all this time, Pahlad?” asked Danach, ignoring Ingray. “I can’t imagine you ever actually went to Compassionate Removal, because if you’d gone in you’d never have come out. So you must have found some way to escape being sent there. I imagine it involved lots of money, which you probably got from the sale of at least some of the vestiges you stole. And no doubt you’ve made some of that back from my sister, unless, of course, she spent all of her money and quite a bit more that wasn’t actually hers just to find you.”
Garal kept silent, just smiled that small smile, and took a drink of serbat.
“Whatever the plan,” Danach continued, “it has to involve those vestiges. Because you have nothing else to offer, do you?” He did not wait for a reply. “No, you don’t. So, where are they? I’d assumed you’d sold them outsystem—no one in Hwae would be stupid enough to buy them, no matter how much money they had, no matter how much they wanted them. But here you are, and there must be some reason for that.”
“You’re right,” said Garal. “Those vestiges would be impossible to sell. So why would I have stolen them?”
“Spite,” replied Danach, pleasantly. He took a bite of the bread he held, chewed and swallowed. “Resentment. Watching over the Budrakim Lareum was your entire future, likely from the day you were adopted. If I were in your place I’d have wanted to burn that lareum down. Though, you know, I’d have tried to implicate my father’s heir in that, and tried to take that place myself. I can think of several ways you could have done it.”
“Then why didn’t I?” asked Garal.
“Because you’re not as smart as you think you are,” said Danach. Evenly, dispassionately, as though he were talking about the weather, or the latest ki-ball scores. “Neither is Ingray. You’d think she’d have learned better after all these years, but no.” He smiled at Ingray. “You’re in serious trouble. If anyone finds out that you’ve brought Pahlad Budrakim back from Compassionate Removal—in theory back from Compassionate Removal, anyway—I don’t think even Mama could help you. And that’s assuming she’d want to.”
Ingray considered pointing out that if Danach got what he wanted here—payment from Ingray to keep quiet, preferably in the form of the location of the stolen vestiges—he would be in just as much trouble if they were discovered. Instead, she bit her lip in the hope that she could keep her face as expressionless as possible, and continued drying her hair.
“That would be it for you, too, Pahlad,” Danach continued, scooping up some cheese to add to his bread. “Whoever kept you out of Compassionate Removal certainly won’t want that exposed, and you’ll be on your own.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Garal. “If nothing else, how can I be blamed for the crimes of someone who is legally dead?”
Danach made a snorting noise. “You really aren’t bright, are you. All it would take would be a request for Pahlad Budrakim’s identification in the archives and a bit of DNA from you. And the Garal Ket identity, well, it won’t stand up to serious scrutiny.”
Garal considered Danach for a few moments. “Fine,” e said then, and set eir cup of serbat down. “I see you’ve thought this all the way through. I suppose we don’t have any choice but to bring you in.”
“No!” cried Ingray. The note of alarm in her voice was quite real. This was going too fast; she wanted to talk to Garal first. “No, don’t!”
“Sorry, Ingray,” said Garal. “You’re a nice kid, and I’m grateful for your help so far, but I’m not going back to Compassionate Removal. And this has turned out to be way more complicated than we thought.” E turned back to Danach. “The real vestiges are in Eswae Parkland.”
Ingray nearly laughed. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? she’d asked em, and e had been. She bit her lip again and made herself frown, so that she wouldn’t laugh.
Danach wasn’t watching her. He stared at Garal, unblinking for a few moments. “You can’t be serious. Why would you put them there?”
“It’s under protection,” said Garal. “No one can do much of anything there without a permit. And it’s in Arsamol. Netano’s district.”
“So if someone found them, it would look like she’d done it?” guessed Danach. “Or whoever found it might bring it to Netano’s attention and she wouldn’t fail to use it against your father?”
“Take your pick,” said Garal.
“Gods of the afterlife!” Danach swore. He threw the fragment of bread and cheese he was holding onto the table. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He pointed toward the floor. “Those travelers downstairs, they’ve just promised a donation to Netano’s reelection fund large enough to finance another run at prolocutor. And just coincidentally Netano is supporting their application to dig up the ruin glass in Eswae Parkland. It’s a huge project, and they’re obviously stinking rich, which means they’ll hire help, and they don’t like using automated mechs for that kind of digging—something about soil layers, I’m told. It made no sense to me. But the upshot is, there’ll be mech-pilots all over the parkland. And it’ll be months before any work actually starts, assuming Mama can get this through the right committees, but there’ll be all kinds of surveys before then. Those two are supposed to go out to the parkland tomorrow, in fact. Supposedly they can see recent disturbances of the ground, and where it’s been dug out and filled in again, and they’ve been talking about looking for exactly that sort of thing. And on top of that Netano’s close to getting things tied up in the District Council—this has been under serious consideration since shortly after Ingray left for Tyr Siilas, and the amount of money involved gave Mama a very strong motivation to push things through. Fucking ascended saints! We’ll have to get there before they do. Where are the vestiges, exactly?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” said Garal. “I never intended to retrieve them, so I didn’t pay much attention.”