The commander stood silent by the plinth for several minutes. Nicale and the prolocutor sat silent on their own benches. Ingray clutched at her creased and grimy skirts and looked sidelong at the cup of serbat on the table beside her. Some of the liquid had evaporated and left a white line on the side of the cup, just above the surface of the serbat itself. There was probably dust in it, too. Entirely unappetizing, but Ingray realized she was thirsty. She clutched her skirts harder to keep herself from reaching for the decanter to see if there was anything drinkable in it.
After a while Chenns came into the Chambers, helmet in his hand. Blue blood smeared his armored forearm. “They’re gone,” he said, in Yiir. Whether because he’d been speaking that language the last while and was still thinking in it, or because he wanted them all to hear and understand what he was saying, Ingray wasn’t sure. “Mx Ket insisted on getting … all of the ambassador, and it took a while to find … well, we got all of her. I had Mx Ket say it in Ambassador Tibanvori’s hearing, that e agreed we’d gotten everything, and Ambassador Tibanvori agreed she’d heard em say it. Mx Ket refused to speak any further about the issue, e said e wasn’t authorized to do that. But Tibanvori said it might work out mostly all right, she doesn’t think the Geck want the treaty broken any more than we do.”
Prolocutor Dicat had been silent all this time, but now e said, “Of course the easiest way to make it work out would be to hand the ambassador’s killer over to the Geck.”
For a moment no one replied. Ingray wondered why the prolocutor would say something so guaranteed to distress or even frighten their captors. Then she remembered Ambassador Tibanvori saying that things like this couldn’t be planned on the spur of the moment. The commander had failed to take control of the First Assembly, but she couldn’t just leave, or she probably would have. No, she must have to achieve at least something before … before more Omkem ships arrived? At any rate, she was working with limited time. And that was before Commander Hatqueban had thought they’d shot the Geck ambassador. The business with Garal taking the mech away, with Tibanvori saying she’d try to straighten it out, doubtless came as quite a relief to Commander Hatqueban.
But Prolocutor Dicat was shrewd enough to realize that the more flustered or frightened their captors were, the more likely they would make a mistake. Of course, that mistake was as likely to be fatal to Ingray or Nicale or the prolocutor emself as it was to injure the Omkem. Ingray shivered as she realized the prolocutor was surely shrewd enough to realize that, too. No one was looking at her but she clutched her skirts tighter to keep her hands from trembling.
“I’ll patch that leak when the pressure drops,” said Commander Hatqueban, still in Yiir. “Prolocutor, can you open this case?”
“I imagine it’s under the authority of the Assembly’s vestige keeper,” said Prolocutor Dicat. “He’ll be the one who knows how to open it.”
“He’s not here,” said Commander Hatqueban.
“What a pity,” replied Prolocutor Dicat, drily.
Silence. Commander Hatqueban didn’t reply. Then Chenns said, in Bantia, “Every child in every Hwaean crèche knows what the Assembly Bell is, and that the First Assembly can’t do business without it. I know—I’ve tried to explain to the commander—that it’s futile to think that holding you hostage affects First Assembly business at all.” Prolocutor Dicat snorted, contemptuous. “The commander doesn’t understand Hwae. But then, if she’d understood, she’d have let you go with the children, before I could convince her of the importance of some of the vestiges here. And then we wouldn’t have anyone who could open this case for us.”
“Open the case, excellency,” said Commander Hatqueban, in Yiir.
Prolocutor Dicat looked at Commander Hatqueban a moment, then said, “Or else you’ll shoot Miss Aughskold? Or will it be Miss Tai?”
“Either one,” agreed Commander Hatqueban. “And if you still refuse, the other.”
“If I say I’ll open the case,” asked Prolocutor Dicat, “will you let Excellency Tai and Excellency Aughskold go?”
“You don’t ask to be released yourself?” asked Chenns.
“I’m dispensable,” replied Prolocutor Dicat, eir voice cold.
“Not to us, Prolocutor,” returned Chenns.
“Let them go, and then I’ll open it for you,” said the prolocutor. Voice still cold and even.
“No,” said Commander Hatqueban.
“If we let them go,” Excellency Chenns pointed out, “you have only to refuse to open it for us, and we have no way to compel you.”
“But you don’t actually need me to open the case, excellency,” said Prolocutor Dicat. “One of your mechs could break it open for you. It probably wouldn’t take more than a minute.”
Ingray blinked, and then tried very hard not to otherwise visibly react to what the prolocutor had said. If the commander had one of her mechs smash the glass, alarms would go off. Nicale had said, back in the lareum, that the doors would close. The Omkem would be trapped here. Or at least it would take them time to get out.
Was that why all the mechs Nicale and the prolocutor had seen before were somewhere else? Because if the alarm was triggered by accident they’d all be trapped and it would be easier to contain them? Or maybe just make it more difficult for them to defend the path back to the freighters the mech had come on. Or the freighters themselves.
But in that case, why were the commander and the ethnographer still here in person? When it came time to open the case—this one, or the one back in the lareum—wouldn’t it have been better to have only more or less disposable mechs present, so that if they were trapped when alarms went off, at least there would be no people lost?
They’re cut off, Ingray realized. Or if not cut off, getting back to the freighter they’d come on must be riskier than staying here. Maybe Hwae System Defense was already pressing the Omkem. That, on top of the time limit Ingray guessed the commander was working under. Add in worry over the reaction of the Geck to the apparent murder of their ambassador. Commander Hatqueban was under a lot of stress right now, and maybe without many resources. There must be some way to push her into making some kind of mistake that would give System Defense a chance to finish this.
Commander Hatqueban raised her sidearm and pointed it at Nicale. “The time for discussion is past. Open the case, Prolocutor.”