“You’ve done enough, excellency,” said Prolocutor Dicat, eir voice dry and sardonic, in Yiir though Chenns had spoken Bantia. Nicale’s quick and shallow breathing seemed to slow. Was that a good sign? Ingray vaguely remembered learning about the signs of shock, something about breathing fast and being cold and confused. She wanted to ask Prolocutor Dicat and Excellency Chenns if Nicale’s skin was cold and clammy, or at least look up to see if they’d raised up Nicale’s feet, but that was foolish. Aid kits came with instructions, and besides, both Dicat and Chenns very probably knew what they were doing. She would only be in the way, and besides, she’d caused this, it was her fault that Nicale was hurt, even if it had been Commander Hatqueban or one of the mechs who had fired the gun. It had probably been Commander Hatqueban who had fired.
The light moved away, leaving them in the dark. Footsteps circled the gallery—Commander Hatqueban, it must be, checking the exits. “Condition trapped,” said Commander Hatqueban’s voice once she’d finished the circuit, coming down the ramp from the sound of her steps, and from the returning light. “Certainly ours present forcibly open upon awareness.” The weird results coming from Ingray’s limited translation utility were making at least some minimal sense to her. The commander thought her soldiers would begin working to break into the meeting room as soon as they realized they had lost contact with her. “Time is finite, but possession condition possession.” Ingray frowned into the floor. There wasn’t much time, or time was running out. But what in the world was possession condition possession supposed to mean?
“Hatqueban!” The alarm in Excellency Chenns’s voice was enough to make Ingray push herself partway up.
Chenns still knelt at Prolocutor Dicat’s side, next to Nicale. But he wasn’t looking at Nicale. He was staring at the diorite plinth, with its glass case.
Its empty glass case. Commander Hatqueban aimed her light straight at it, but there had been no mistake, no trick of the shadows. The bowl and spoon were gone.
“What did you do?” she demanded, turning her light on Ingray.
Ingray blinked, suddenly unable to see anything except that light in her face. “Nothing! I threw the decanter, and then the lights went out and I fell off the bench.”
“Stand up!” Hatqueban demanded.
Slowly, carefully, using the bench beside her as support, Ingray got to her feet. “I hurt my knee,” she said. Commander Hatqueban still shone the light in Ingray’s face, but she seemed to have reached some point beyond fear. Beyond guessing or even caring what might happen next.
Brusquely Commander Hatqueban patted down Ingray’s legs and momentarily flicked up the hem of her skirts.
“She doesn’t have it,” said Chenns, in Yiir. “The bowl was too large to hide that way.” And Nicale certainly didn’t have it. Or Prolocutor Dicat.
After a moment the light turned away, and Commander Hatqueban strode over to the mech that lay beside the ramp. She leaned over and pressed something on the mech’s side, and the compartment lid snicked open. The commander pulled the lid all the way up and shone her light inside. “Rejection absent!”
“The Rejection is gone?” asked Ingray.
“That’s impossible,” said Prolocutor Dicat. “When the alarm went off, the doors will have closed and locked.”
“That’s what the intelligence said would happen, yes,” agreed Commander Hatqueban. “Perhaps they didn’t close and lock right away.”
“It wasn’t even ten seconds before you turned your light on,” argued Chenns. Still speaking Yiir. “Someone came in here when the lights went out, and in less than ten seconds they opened the case and took the bell, and then forced open the mech’s compartment and took the Rejection, and left without us knowing it? And they left behind the Prolocutor of the First Assembly, and the daughter of an Assembly representative? Not to mention a badly injured keeper of post-Tyr vestiges? No, Commander, it’s impossible.”
It couldn’t be Tic. He wasn’t here. Even if the Geck had been willing to risk breaking the treaty by sneaking him in when Garal and Ambassador Tibanvori had come, he would likely have been detected by now. Again.
“Undefined person condition present,” said Commander Hatqueban, very calmly, and turned to Ingray, still standing in front of the bench, knee aching. “What did you do? What was the plan?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Though she did. There had indeed been a plan—or at least a plan to make a plan.
“You set that alarm off on purpose.” The commander’s voice was steady, and icy.
“You were going to shoot me, or Nicale. You said so. And you were …” Her voice shook too hard to continue. She swallowed and tried again. “It was obvious you didn’t want to set the alarm off because it would make things more difficult for you. So I set it off.” Fresh tears welled, and she didn’t try to stop them.
Silence. Commander Hatqueban didn’t move.
“You can shoot me if you want,” said Ingray. “The children are safe, and my mama. That’s all I came here for.” Her voice still trembling so much she could barely speak. She tried to make herself lift her chin defiantly, wasn’t sure if she managed it, or if she was only shaking so hard that it seemed like she might have.
The silence stretched out. She let the children go, Ingray reminded herself. Still weeping. She gave Prolocutor Dicat the chair. That didn’t mean the commander wouldn’t kill anyone—she was a soldier, after all—but maybe, just maybe, she would go to some lengths to avoid it, to avoid being cruel if she could.
After a few more seconds of silence, Commander Hatqueban said, brusquely, “If you move from that bench, or if you speak one more word, whatever it is, I will shoot you.”
Ingray sat, and after a moment Commander Hatqueban began a circuit of the room, very slow and methodical, shining her light into every shadowed corner.
Tears still ran down Ingray’s face. She sniffled, as quietly as she could, and shifted uncomfortably on the cushioned bench and then, careful of her injured knee, pulled her feet up and lay down, her arms crossed over her body. Commander Hatqueban made two more slow circuits of the room, ducking to shine her light under every table and bench, occasionally knocking on a wall or stomping one foot on a floor tile, as though searching for some secret hollow space.
Ingray didn’t seem to be able to stop crying. Commander Hatqueban’s light moved as she still slowly circled the room. Either Prolocutor Dicat or Excellency Chenns had put some cushions under Nicale’s feet, and there must have been a thin blanket in the aid kit, because it lay across Nicale’s body and Ingray didn’t want to think about the puzzle—the far too simple a puzzle—of whether it was her fault Nicale had been shot. She wanted to be home, in her room. With a plate of fruit and cheese and a decanter of nice hot serbat, and rain outside the window and nowhere to be, no one needing her for anything. And there was no way she could be, probably never would be again. There was nothing she could do about any of it but lie here and cry.
Halfway through the commander’s sixth slow circuit of the room there was a loud thunk and then the hiss of a door opening, and suddenly light shone through a doorway and the mech by the ramp shuddered, and then righted itself. Ingray didn’t move. She refused to move, to speak, to do anything. Across the room another mech rose that must have been concealed from her view by benches and tables until now. Of course—two mechs had followed them into the Assembly Chambers.