“No, she didn’t,” Ingray agreed. “But this isn’t really about Zat. For one thing, Excellency Zat has only been dead a few days, and the ship you probably came on had to have started out weeks ago. And for another, it was Zat’s affine Hevom who killed her. None of us here has anything to do with that, except for them both having stayed at my mother’s house.”
“Excellency Hevom doesn’t deserve to be condemned for a murder he surely didn’t commit,” continued Excellency Chenns, as though Ingray hadn’t spoken. “Your own Planetary Safety arrested Pahlad Budrakim for Zat’s murder. What’s more likely, that an escaped convicted criminal killed her, or that her own affine, who couldn’t touch her, couldn’t even speak to her, did it? And I know the ruin glass is mostly just a nuisance or a curiosity or a building material to you, but Zat’s crackpot theories about the origins of that glass had political implications. Implications that would offend most Hwaeans.”
“Yes,” Ingray agreed, “she wanted to prove that Hwae was the original home of the Omkem. Or at least the original home of the Omkem who were related to her. I know. She told me. But it’s a crackpot theory, as you’ve said yourself. She could have dug up every piece of ruin glass on the planet and not proved it.”
“She’d have made whatever she did find fit whatever suited her,” Chenns replied. “And there would have been repercussions in the Federacy. Believe me, Miss Aughskold, it was always about convincing possible allies in the Federacy. Convincing Hwaeans wasn’t ever the point. Zat couldn’t have cared less what Hwaeans thought, except where it might get her what she wanted. I can’t imagine your mother didn’t realize that when she invited Zat to stay with her.”
No, Ingray couldn’t imagine it, either. What had her mother been doing? But then, refusing to let Zat dig up the parkland might only have allowed Zat to cry conspiracy, where the actual results of the digging might well speak for themselves. “Listen to me,” Ingray said. “I was there that day. I was there when Zat died. She went up the hill—you know the one with all the glass down to the river, it’s in all the pictures of the parkland. She went up there to have a view, I suppose, while she sent her little Uto mech searching for whatever it might find on the surface.” Which would have been precious little. “She went up the hill, and sat down, and nobody went near her until lunchtime and I went up to get her because she wasn’t answering messages, and she was …” Ingray stopped. And she was dead. Chenns watched her, saying nothing. “Garal … Pahlad Budrakim, but I didn’t know that’s who e was then, was with me the entire time. And don’t tell me e was piloting a mech. E wasn’t, I was talking to em the whole time, and the only mech that went up the hill was Uto. Garal doesn’t have the right implants to pilot a Federacy-made mech. The only person nearby who did was Hevom. And Hevom was the only person nearby who hated Zat enough to kill her. I was there.”
Excellency Chenns just looked at her, frowning slightly, and said nothing.
“Why did she even bring Hevom along? They couldn’t speak to each other; it would have been better to bring an assistant she could actually talk to, who didn’t resent her so much.”
Chenns grimaced. “It was cruel of Zat to make him come along. More cruel than I think you can understand. Some of Hevom’s senior relatives had defied Zat’s family over a, I guess you would say a political matter. The … the affinage I guess you would say”—the word he used was an awkward coinage, a Yiir word with an unaccustomed element pasted on—“was meant to settle the consequent dispute, but Zat herself did what she could to make its terms as humiliating as possible to Hevom’s family. Hevom made the mistake of protesting. Zat compelled him to come as a sort of lesson, for him and for his relatives.”
“That sounds like a motive to me,” said Ingray. “And once he’d resolved to kill her, it was easy enough to pin the murder on an innocent Hwaean. After all, we’re …” How had Hevom said it? “Ignorant and uncultured, and our legal system is a joke. So are our lives, it seems.”
Excellency Chenns sighed. “I wouldn’t exactly call Pahlad Budrakim innocent.”
“Eir name is Garal Ket now. And e didn’t kill Zat. I was there.” And it was beside the point anyway. The Federacy couldn’t have Garal, because Garal was Geck now. And none of this was happening because of Zat, or Hevom. These people, these mechs and soldiers, had shipped through the Enthen/Hwae gate long before any of it had happened.
Unless of course someone knew ahead of time that Zat would die and Hevom would be accused of the murder.
“You still don’t understand,” said Chenns. “You can’t. Murdering Zat would have been literally unthinkable for someone in Hevom’s position. Even if I try to explain it to you, you wouldn’t understand, because your families don’t work that way. Imagine … imagine someone killing their parent.”
“Someone might call that unthinkable,” replied Ingray. “I can’t even imagine what sort of person would kill a parent. But it’s happened.”
Excellency Chenns looked over his shoulder at the still-armored commander, then back at Ingray. “You’re here, Miss Aughskold, because of your involvement with Zat’s death. Commander Hatqueban would never have agreed to the exchange otherwise. She’ll want to speak to you directly about it. Not now, at the moment there are more pressing issues, but sometime soon. She doesn’t speak Bantia at all”—Ingray had already guessed as much—“and her Yiir isn’t very good. She has a translation utility, it’s not bad really, but she doesn’t quite trust it, so I’ll be there to translate for her if she feels she needs it.”
“Is she related to Zat, too?” asked Ingray, as innocently as she could manage.
“No,” said Chenns. Did Ingray detect some chagrin? “She’s related to Hevom. She won’t appreciate you dragging her … cousin, I suppose is best. She won’t appreciate you dragging her cousin’s name through the mud.”
“Chosen especially for this mission, was she?” asked Ingray. “What an incredible coincidence.”
Some reaction Ingray couldn’t quite read crossed Chenns’s face. But he only said, “Go sit down with the others, Miss Aughskold.”
“Whoever planned this didn’t care much about what happened to Hevom,” said Ingray. “I suppose they promised him they’d get him out of it, but you’d think they’d have given him better resources to do it with.” If this were an entertainment, Hevom would have come with forged evidence, with a way to put fake fingerprints or DNA on the knife, and to place falsely incriminating messages in the system for Planetary Safety to find and eventually unravel. The Federacy could probably do some of that, if not all, with enough planning. If they thought it would be worth it. Hevom apparently wasn’t.