“Because I’ve ordered it,” said Commander Hatqueban. “Get up.”
Ingray took another shaky breath, and climbed to her feet. She wasn’t certain her legs would support her. All the fear she’d felt before—making the trade that had brought Garal out of Compassionate Removal, despairing of getting away from Tyr Siilas and back home, when Danach had tried to kill her with the dirt mover, the terrible, desperate trip in the vacuum suit—it was all nothing compared to this moment, to looking at the end of a gun pointed at her by someone who had declared their intent to kill her. She wanted to curl up and cry. She wanted to scream and run away. Don’t do anything rash, Chenns had said.
She couldn’t afford to curl up and cry. There was no point to screaming and running away. Or no point that wouldn’t end with her dead. She made herself swallow and tried to slow her breathing. So that she could say, “Prolocutor, can I help you get up?” She wanted to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand, but the thought of startling the commander into shooting terrified her even more than she already was.
Still sitting on the floor, Nicale whimpered. “Get up, you stupid girl,” snapped Prolocutor Dicat. “Get up and open the case.”
“Prolocutor,” Ingray reproved, her voice still unsteady with tears, feeling as though she was watching herself speak, and wasn’t actually doing it herself. “There’s no need to be unpleasant. This is difficult for all of us. Now, do you need help getting up?”
Prolocutor Dicat gave Ingray a baleful look but took Ingray’s arm. Nicale got herself to her feet, sobbing now, too, but silently.
“Let’s walk,” said the commander, when they were all standing, and together they moved toward the case, Ingray and Nicale on either side of the prolocutor, the mech that had stood guard over them following.
Commander Hatqueban stopped them, several meters short of the Rejection. “Excellency Tai.” Nicale wiped her eyes on her sleeve and stepped hesitantly forward. The commander took Ingray’s arm and brought the end of the gun right up against Ingray’s head. As afraid as she had been before, now she found every muscle in her body frozen. Even breathing was difficult.
Nicale brushed her fingers on the diorite plinth the case sat on, then laid her hand flat on another part. Waited a moment. The front of the case split, though it had been clear and seamless the moment before, and at Nicale’s touch the two halves swung aside as if hinged.
“Take the document out,” said Commander Hatqueban, “and roll it up.”
Nicale turned, face indignant. “It’ll be damaged! It’s hundreds of years old, it …”
“Take it out,” Commander Hatqueban repeated. “And roll it up.”
“What good is it to you,” asked Prolocutor Dicat, on Ingray’s other side, still holding her arm, “if it’s destroyed when you take it out of the case?”
“I’ll help,” said Excellency Chenns, and bent to set his helmet on the floor and then stepped forward to help Nicale with the long, wide linen.
Between the two of them they unfastened it from the display, slowly and carefully rolling it up as they went. Stopping once near the end when the weight of the rolled fabric pulled too hard on what little was left and the edge ripped, a good six centimeters, and another two as they rolled past the tear. When they were done, Chenns left Nicale sobbing by the empty case and brought the Rejection over to the mech that had followed them from the middle of the room. The mech’s wide side panel popped open—with distant surprise, Ingray saw that her hairpins weren’t inside the compartment. They must be in a different mech—the ones Ingray had seen so far all looked alike, though she presumed the commander could tell one from another somehow. Chenns put the Rejection into the compartment, folding one end over to make it fit, to Nicale’s audible distress, and the compartment closed with a snap.
“Now,” said Commander Hatqueban, lowering her gun, “walk.”
“I don’t think the prolocutor can walk far,” said Ingray. The fact that the commander’s gun was no longer pointed at her was such a relief that it was nearly painful. She felt far more in danger of just giving up now, of just sitting down and crying. But she couldn’t.
“The prolocutor will be carried, if that’s the case,” said Commander Hatqueban. “Move.”
18
Ingray had always thought of the First Assembly Chambers as being practically next door to the System Lareum, but just walking to the lareum exit nearest the Assembly on one side of Prolocutor Dicat, still-weeping Nicale on the other, step by slow step, the distance seemed to stretch out to kilometers. And there was no distraction from each of those steps, no way Ingray could let her mind wander, knowing two hulking gray military mechs with guns were following behind, one pointing its weapon at the ceiling, the commander herself up front with her own sidearm ready in her hand, her head tilted to look up as well as forward.
They walked several minutes in silence through the lareum’s vestige-hung rooms. Beyond the space where the Rejection had once hung, spindly-legged pale blue escort mechs lay here and there, smashed, legs askew.
“There’s a tram,” Nicale said, as they neared the exit to the corridor the lareum shared with the Assembly Chambers. She spoke at a volume that was quite plausibly conversational but obviously pitched to reach the ears of Commander Hatqueban, three meters ahead of them. She sniffled. “There’s a little wheeled tram to get people through the lareum if they have trouble walking, and there’s another one just outside the entrance to take people to the Assembly Chambers if they need it.”
Without turning around Commander Hatqueban said, “We’re not taking the tram.”
“Why not?” asked Nicale.
“Don’t go getting us killed,” muttered Prolocutor Dicat irritably.
Commander Hatqueban said nothing. Beside her, Chenns glanced back for just a moment, expression apologetic, and then faced forward again.
“The tram between here and the Assembly probably isn’t working,” Ingray said, very quietly. “I bet it’s shut down. I’m sure nobody wanted to make it easy for the Federacy to use it.”
“Oh,” said Nicale. “Where are they all, anyway? There were more mechs when they first took over the lareum. But we’ve only seen maybe three or four since then.”
“Spread out, maybe,” suggested Ingray, still quietly. “Keeping our own soldiers out.” And then, struck by a thought, she whispered, “You may be right, Prolocutor, the commander probably wants to get away from here before anyone realizes what’s happened.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand. She was not going to cry any more than she already had. She would not think about Tic’s mech dead and bleeding back there. “So maybe we don’t want to suggest faster ways to get to the Assembly Chambers.”