The Tragic Accident

"Every person called before a tribunal has two rights: the right to speak, and the right to remain silent. Every person called before a tribunal makes the mistake of speaking when they should remain silent, and remaining silent when they should speak. Of course, the real mistake is getting called in the first place."

-from So, You've Been Accused of a Crime: A Self-Help Guide for Those Who Need It by Mikhail Shraber

Sid had never in his life seen Halen so angry. The man was like a caged animal. They were in Sid's office, which was an odd choice, but the venue mattered less than the discussion. They were waiting for Admiral Astwani.

The news had come in, just an hour or so before, about what had happened on Hanathue. Comparing the time stamp on the report, the time that it had landed on Sid's desk, and the time at which the events had occurred, there were large gaps. The delay was unacceptable, and smacked of either incompetence or malice in Astwani's department.

Halen paced back and forth in front of Sid's desk, clenching and unclenching his hands into fists. Sid stared out the high window, down into the courtyard of Stonecourt. Puffy clouds scuttled across the sky.

He didn't know how to feel. Astwani's team had failed in all the goals that had been set for them: kill Kino; capture or kill Calor; make sure that the girl, Kino's sister, survived; and, above all, don't let them escape. Kino was alive. Calor was alive. Bina Warez was dead. Kino and Calor were nowhere to be found, though probably still somewhere on Hanathue, and five Imperial agents were dead, including a sensitive.

It was a disaster.

Sid wasn't as angry as Halen was, and he couldn't really understand Halen's anger. It was unfortunate that Kino and Calor had escaped, and it was unfortunate that Bina Warez was dead, and it was unfortunate that the Fleet had taken the brunt of the losses, but none of that seemed to call for the towering anger that Halen was showing. His usually flushed face was almost beet red, and he was clearly restraining himself from yelling at anyone he came across.

"Come in," Halen said.

Someone must have been knocking on the door of Sid's office. It swung open, and Admiral Astwani stood there, looking the image of a professional.

"Good morning, Admiral," Sid said. "Shut the door, please."

He did, and he stepped inside the room, hands held behind his back, shoulders straight, looking between Sid and Halen, as though unsure of who was going to be leading the discussion.

"Feel free to take a seat," Sid said.

"I'd prefer to stand, thank you," Astwani said. "I'm sorry that I can't stay long; I have a meeting with Carcival in twenty minutes."

Carcival was the head of the IIF.

"Carcival can wait," Halen said. "I want to hear from you exactly how it is that every single objective that was given to you was somehow blown over. I would be grateful to hear that it was simple incompetence on the part of every single one of your subordinates."

"So, you read the report?" Astwani said.

"No thanks to people who decided to get it to me far later than it should," Halen said. "Do you care to explain that?"

"It was held up due to administrative error."

"Of what kind?"

Astwani, to his credit, held firm under Halen's glare. "The forces on Hanathue attempted to rectify the situation before it got out of hand. That held up the process of compiling the report."

"And yet, there was no mention in the report of anyone attempting to rectify anything."

There was a stutter, then, "Second Welslak, Halen, I apologize for the way this was handled. I can assure you that we are doing our best to correct this mistake."

"I'm not sure I trust that you will," Halen said. "You--"

"Hold on, Halen," Sid said. Halen looked at him with a constipated sort of expression, but Sid held up his hand. "Before we talk about the future, I really just want to understand what happened. I read the report, but--"

"Scant on details," Halen said.

"Please, take a seat," Sid said, pointing to the chair on the other side of his desk. Astwani took the seat, this time, perhaps because it was a direct order, perhaps because it allowed him to get a little bit further away from the menace that was Halen.

"Can you walk me, step by step, through what happened? I need to know the thought process, and maybe that will allow us to figure out how to avoid this kind of mistake in the future. Start from the beginning."

Sid pushed a tablet across his desk-- it had a flat map of Hanathue on it, one that had been included in the report.

Astwani cleared his throat. "Of course, Second Welslak."

"Start with how this woman killed two Fleet soldiers," Sid said. He tapped on the map, on the highlighted circle over the Hanathue capitol, and the picture of the tall woman, the one who had been with Calor and Kino when they came down to the planet's surface, came up. This image was grainy security footage, taken in the dark, and it showed the woman headed into an elevator. In a second image, two Fleet soldiers, dressed in plainclothes, were in the same hotel lobby minutes later, and headed towards a set of stairs.

"We don't have footage of the event itself," Astwani said.

"Start with telling me who she is, why she matters, and why your soldiers were half a planet away, tracking her down."

"This is Keeper-of-Promises Del, she's a pirate. Her home ship is the Warrior II. She has a long record, mainly as a smuggler, and my team's analysis decided that she was probably Mejia's and Calor's ticket off planet. It was decided that in order to prevent Mejia and Calor from escaping, and avoid information spreading too far, it might be best to eliminate her. She did not seem like enough of a threat to dedicate more resources to."

"An underestimation," Sid said. "And how did she kill them?"

"We're waiting on the coroner's report from Hanathue," Astwani said.

"It wasn't obvious?"

Astwani coughed slightly. "I have not had the liberty of seeing pictures."

"Fine," Sid said, moving on. "Was she acting alone?"

"Unknown. From the footage that we do have, she seemed to be alone at the time of the event--" That was a tactful way of putting it, Sid thought. "But she was on planet to conduct business of some sort."

"Do we know with who, and about what?"

"I'm sorry, Second Welslak, that would be a question better suited to being answered by the IIF."

Sid frowned. "There seem to be an awful lot of holes in this story."

Astwani leaned forward a bit, and Halen glowered at him. "Second Welslak, you must understand that this operation was completed on short notice, with forces already on Hanathue. I placed a certain amount of trust in my subordinates, but it's clear that they cannot work miracles."

"We weren't asking for a miracle," Halen said, frowning. Astwani ignored him.

"Fine, fine," Sid said. He ran his hand through his hair, still a strange thing for him. "So she killed the agents sent after her, and then..."

"She took a private space-to-ground shuttle, one that had been in long term parking at a privately held airfield outside the capitol, and flew it to Traver City."

"Who did the shuttle belong to?"

"A businessman by the name of Valeri Olenya."

"And he's an acquaintance of this Keeper-of-Promises?"

"Probably a business associate."

"Do we know anything about him?" Sid asked.

"I have not had anyone compile what we know," Astwani said. "I'm sure that we would know something, if that information is relevant." Sid was starting to understand Halen's frustration with the whole thing.

"And so Keeper-of-Promises flew this shuttle to Traver City. Was she on the radar at the time?"

"Literal radar?"

"Who was tracking her?" Sid asked, trying to keep the frustration from his voice.

"At the time of her takeoff, no one," Astwani said. "We only realized that she had not been killed when her pursuers failed to check in. By looking through security footage, we were able to establish where she had gone, and from there track her shuttle."

"Alright. Continue."

Astwani pulled the tablet over to himself, flipped open the map. "She landed here, at approximately ten hours. Because she was in the vicinity of Traver City, we made the assumption that she was intending to meet up with Mejia and Calor, who we had not yet been able to track down."

"Why hadn't you found them yet? You seemed to find Keeper-of-Promises easily enough."

"We had to work within the Hanathue security net, which, while it has access to security feeds from across the planet, is somewhat constrained by its data set and programming. Unless something in the footage sets off a flag, such as having the face of a known smuggler be in the frame, it's very hard to search through the data. We know that Mejia and Calor left the train station in Traver City on foot, and from there they essentially vanished from trackable security footage, especially given the limited timeframe that we were working in."

"And you couldn't put Kino's face in the dataset because you were keeping this quiet."

"Yes," Astwani said. "We did input Calor's, but they seemed to stay out of the public eye for the most part."

"Unfortunate."

"Indeed."

"So then what?"

"We deployed our team to intercept Keeper-of-Promises. They found her, and with our sensitive, were able to subdue her."

"Okay."

"By that time, we had learned that Bina Warez was missing from her school, and the agent watching her house reported her taking Mr. Warez's car. He trailed, and saw them meet up with Mejia and Calor."

"Why didn't he intercept them?"

"It was determined that there was too much risk, both to Bina Warez, and to public exposure. He also was not a sensitive, and it would have been difficult or impossible for him to take on Mejia and Calor."

"Okay."

"As we expected, they drove to this location. We allowed Mejia, Calor, and Warez to proceed to the place where Keeper-of-Promises had left the shuttle, in the hopes of separating Warez safely from the group."

"And how were you going to go about doing that?"

"After subduing Keeper-of-Promises, our agents were able to take control of the shuttle. They would be able to use it to fly out, if they were able to get Warez in it."

"That didn't happen, though."

"As a failsafe, to prevent Mejia and Calor from escaping, an explosive was also put in the shuttle's engine, to be detonated if they gained control of the shuttle."

"I don't think Kino knows how to fly," Sid said.

"They've been aboard the First Star for a while now. There's been plenty of time for BarCarran or Maedes to teach them the rudiments," Halen said. It startled Sid that Halen called them by their last names. An element of professional distance?

"And who was holding the trigger on that?"

"Our sensitive, Aloi Kranz."

"She was in charge?"

"Yes."

"And who was with her?"

"She had a team of four others-- two were stationed in the shuttle, waiting for the group's arrival; two were in the trees, approximately here and here. They had instructions to shoot if they thought they saw an opportunity."

"I would like to think that Mejia wouldn't be so stupid as to let herself get shot," Halen said.

"Well, she didn't," Sid said. "So I guess she learned something." Ironically, Kino was the one person who had gotten shot during training.

"Indeed," Astwani said. "Regardless, they were there as an extra precaution. They survived, which is how we have any of this information."

"That's good, I guess," Sid said. "So. Kino and Calor show up. What happens?"

"In order to delay any confrontation, Kranz is using Keeper-of-Promises as a stand-in."

"What?"

"Her particular talent was in manipulating people," Astwani said. "I never met her, but I have been told that she was perhaps the best sensitive at it in a hundred years. She was able to take control of Keeper-of-Promises' body and use it to negotiate with the group."

"And?"

"She convinced Warez to go into the shuttle. Then Kranz attempted to use Keeper-of-Promises' body to shoot Mejia. Calor physically interposed, and Kranz abandoned using Keeper-of-Promises' body, and came out to assess the situation herself."

"That sounds dumb," Sid said flatly. "She should have stayed away. Kino isn't stupid. She's dangerous."

"I can't explain her reasoning. Perhaps she thought that because she is twenty years the senior of Mejia, that she had the upper hand. Regardless, she said she needed a better vantage point, and she left cover."

"Okay," Sid said.

"From there, there was a fight. Kranz was able to incapacitate Calor completely, but Mejia was resistant to her power."

"I read that in the report," Halen said. "Very interesting. A recent development."

"She's been practicing," Sid said. It was the only reasonable thing to say. He had to wonder if Kino's lessons, whoever they were with, were as brutal as the ones he had with Halen.

"Regardless, Kranz and Calor fought."

"What was going on with the shuttle?"

"Warez was inside, as I said, and the crew of the shuttle attempted to take off with her. One of the two, Calor or Mejia, held the shuttle down and prevented it from escaping."

"They probably should have let her go," Sid said.

"Hindsight is a clear glass," Astwani said. "At one point, the shuttle did manage to leave the ground, but one of them pulled it back down. During that, Warez freed herself and escaped."

"Smart girl."

"Unlucky girl," Astwani said. "The two soldiers in the shuttle chased her, but were killed when one of the sensitives dropped the shuttle on top of them. Kranz forces Warez back into the shuttle."

Sid had read that in the report, but the dry expression on Astwani's face made him suck in a breath. He had to wonder who was responsible for killing those soldiers. He thought that Kino was averse to killing, but he had also never seen her when her sister's life was on the line. And, frankly, he didn't know enough about Calor to say anything. She was slightly crazy, but he didn't know if that made her murderous.

"Now, this is the part I'm less clear on," Sid said. "While Kino and your sensitive are fighting, the way it's described is that neither of them have the upper hand. How does your sensitive end up dead?"

"We don't know."

"What?"

"She was shot by Keeper-of-Promises-- that was easily observed-- but, as you said, you would like to think that no sensitive is stupid enough to let themself get shot. Perhaps Mejia was altering her mental state, in some way, or had a way of forcing Keeper-of-Promises' bullet through."

"Hm," Sid said.

"So, she's shot. The report says Calor is unconscious. Who gives the command to destroy the shuttle?"

"Kranz did," Astwani said. "She was the one with that power."

"Why did she do that?"

"I can't explain the last action of a dying woman," Astwani said. "It probably seemed like the right choice."

"So Warez is dead."

"Yes."

Sid shook his head. "What a mess."

"Yes."

Halen spoke up. "You mentioned that your people attempted to mitigate this problem. Since that wasn't mentioned anywhere in your report, I would like you to tell me exactly what you did, and what you plan to do going forward."

"Unfortunately, due to the fire started by the shuttle's destruction, emergency services turned up very quickly. It was vital that we spend the majority of effort containing the spread of that information."

"And what about Mejia and Calor?"

"They, along with Keeper-of-Promises, fled the scene."

"Did you track them?"

"We were able to track their vehicle, but they abandoned it."

"Do you have any idea where they could have gone?"

"My best and only guess is that they've taken shelter with Keeper-of-Promises' business associates."

"Valeri Olenya?"

"Or equivalent. As on every planet, there are plenty of people with ties to the black market."

"So they're still on the planet."

"Probably not for long."

"Are you trying to track them down?" Halen asked.

"That's what I was intending to meet with Carcival about." Astwani looked rather dismissive. "I would like to clear this up and put the whole matter behind us."

"It's not going get behind us," Halen said. "Not until everyone involved is taken care of. How far has this information spread? What's the situation with Bina Warez's family?"

"The Hanathue police told them that their daughter was involved in a fatal car crash."

Halen nodded. "And the emergency personnel?"

"Have all been sworn to silence. Do you have any other questions? I'd like to pass this matter off to Carcival. It was never a good fit for the Fleet."

"The Fleet can mobilize and coordinate ground resources better than the IIF can," Halen said.

"That may be true, but I don't like this game. If you don't have any other questions, Second..."

"It's fine. We will be in touch," Sid said.

"Of course you will." Astwani stood up, and, with a curt nod, left Sid's office.

Halen's anger, which he had kept mostly in check while Astwani was in the room, flared up again. "I hate that man."

"What is his problem?" Sid asked. "Was it just me, or was he being..." He didn't know exactly how to describe the sensation he had gotten from Astwani.

"No, he doesn't like taking orders from me," Halen said. "And he thinks that you're a child."

"I see," Sid said. "That's not the reason you're angry, though."

"He made a liar out of me," Halen said. "I hate that."

"What do you mean?"

"Bina Warez is supposed to be alive."

"Obviously."

But Halen didn't say anything else.

Unfortunately for everyone, the situation was one that refused to get behind them. Carcival, a woman who gave Sid the creeps, found him while he was taking a walk through the grounds of Stonecourt, clearing his head after a long lesson with Halen.

"Apprentice Welslak," Carcival said, coming up beside him from out of nowhere. She was a short woman, with hair that curled in brown ringlets around a childishly chubby face. For all her innocent stature, she was a dangerous woman to know.

"Director," Sid nodded.

"Do you have a second to talk?" Carcival asked.

"I'm not busy." Sid was still walking, and this forced Carcival to keep pace beside him. He didn't want to talk to her, but he didn't have much of a choice. He was going to have to get used to working with the IIF, if he was going to be First. He didn't like that at all.

"I have a meeting with First Sandreas in a half an hour," Carcival said. "But I'm glad I caught you here. I'm hoping to get your advice on something?"

"You'd be better off talking to Halen," Sid said, then immediately wished that he hadn't.

Carcival let out a short laugh, showing up on Sid's glasses as a punctuated 'Hah.' "That may be so. But there's no love lost between Halen and I, and this issue will probably concern you specifically."

"And what is that?" Sid asked.

"The problem with Hanathue is not getting any better."

"Still no sign of Kino and Calor?"

"That's not the trouble I'm talking about," Carcival said.

Sid frowned. "There's different Hanathue trouble?"

"You are aware of Bina Warez's parents."

"Sure. Tycoons or something."

"Very powerful people. Very strong connections to the Guild."

"And?"

"We found this ansible message, from Mr. Warez, addressed to..."

"Are you going to make me guess?" Sid asked. Carcival was slimy like that.

"Sure, guess," Carcival said. She was smiling, and the sun glinted in her eyes.

Sid thought for a moment, considered who he would least like to hear that the parents of Kino's dead sister were getting in touch with. "Nomar Thule?"

"That would be business as usual," Carcival said. "No." She handed him a slip of paper that she pulled from her pocket.

At the top, the message was addressed to Cpt. Pellon BarCarran, c/o the Iron Dreams. Sid clenched his jaw.

"Read the letter," Carcival said.

Sid did.

Dear Captain Pellon,

I know that you and I have never spoken in person, though I believe that we have several mutual friends-- one of whom being Captain Felicitas of the Roseheart. It may feel out of the blue for me to contact you, but I believe that you will recognize the situation that I am in.

I understand that you recently lost your cousin, Yan BarCarran, in tragic circumstances while she was in the care of the Empire.

My own daughter, Bina, has also died.

Before you lost Yan, how much did she tell you about her fellow apprentices? My daughter's sister, Kino Mejia, is one of those apprentices.

It's hard for me to express the depth of feeling that I have. Confusion, loss. I'm writing this letter to a near-stranger, a friend of a friend, because of something my daughter said to me.

My daughter was innocent, and now she is dead.

Was the same thing true of yours?

It is a difficult world we live in. If there is any mutual comfort I can offer to you in this time, allow me to give it. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me.

Yours in shared trials,

Shoto Warez

Sid folded the letter back up. "Very diplomatic," he said.

"Indeed," Carcival said. She was silent, waiting for Sid to say something.

"Do we know what he knows, and how he knows it?" Sid finally asked. "And do we know what he's planning to do? And, I guess I should ask, did Captain Pellon of the Iron Dreams receive this message?"

"While the Warez family was out of the house, after we intercepted this message, we searched for the answer for that question," Carcival said. "What we found, unfortunately, was a letter from the late Bina Warez, explaining her decision to run away with her sister, that the Imperial government was after her, and that in order to contact her, her family should contact the Iron Dreams."

"That's... unfortunate," Sid said.

"It could have been worse," Carcival said. "But you're right that it is not ideal."

"And the Dreams?"

"Did not get the letter," Carcival said. "I believe that Halen has vested interest in keeping them out of the path of, well, destruction. To that end, we exercised our better judgement. What letters they don't receive can't hurt them."

Sid thought for a second. "Halen also wanted Bina Warez left alive."

"Yes. He has a certain aversion to going after people's families." Sid couldn't hear her tone, but from the slight wrinkle of her nose, Sid knew that Carcival did not share that compunction. "Things would be cleaner if he didn't."

"I can't really blame him," Sid said. He hadn't really thought about what it would mean to go after the Iron Dreams, or the now-dead Bina, for that matter. He probably should have thought about it before now, when he was compelled to take the opposite position from Carcival simply because he didn't like her.

"Yes, he has a large sway over your mind, and over First Sandreas's."

"Do you not like Halen?" Sid asked. Something about the way that she referred to him felt wrong.

Carcival looked up at him, a frown lingering on her face. She studied him, as though he were a bug under a microscope. He couldn't help but wither under the scrutiny. "You spend much of your time with First Sandreas, and Halen. There's nothing wrong with that. You are his apprentice, after all. But may I give you a word of advice?"

"Sure," Sid said, though he had the feeling he did not want this advice.

"First Sandreas keeps himself isolated from the rest of the apparatus. That is his right, of course, but him lending his ear and his aid to a very close circle, especially those who do not have, shall we say, a certain pedigree, tends to breed resentment. You would do well to start forming relationships broadly, now, so that that type of resentment does not follow you."

"Is that some sort of threat?"

"My dear, I have absolutely no reason to threaten you. What could I possibly gain?"

Sid shrugged. "I'm sure there's some kind of power you can exert over me."

"I'm simply giving you advice," Carcival said. "In exchange for the advice that I would hope you can give me."

"If you want to know how to get on Sandreas's good side, I'm the wrong person to ask."

She laughed again. Funny, was he? "No. This is a far more mundane matter. I want to know how you would go about solving this little Hanathue problem."

"It's not exactly mine to solve," Sid said. "Sandreas wants me out of the path of danger. I can't go hunting down Kino, as much as I wish I could."

"Hmm..." Carcival seemed to be noting his response down in her mind, as though it revealed something deep about Sid's nature. It certainly didn't-- he was only repeating what he had been told. He might be Second, and Carcival knew that, but that was a long way from being First. "I wasn't really talking about Ms. Mejia."

"Well, she's the root of the issue, isn't she?"

"The universe is a web of string, Apprentice Welslak. At each intersection, there is a knot. You may wish to cut through the knot that Ms. Mejia has tied for herself, but it will leave the web intact."

"I have no desire to bring the whole universe down around me," Sid grumbled. "I think cutting through the one knot would be enough."

"It seems to me," Carcival said, "that Ms. Mejia is intent on unravelling the whole web."

"You think that she was in contact with Mr. Warez?"

"That is a wild conclusion to draw. No. But I think that Mr. Warez believing that his daughter was killed by the Fleet plays right into that unravelling. He's a powerful man on Hanathue."

"He's one person, on one planet."

"And what do you think, Apprentice Welslak, if one powerful man on that planet, decided that he was no longer going to pay Imperial taxes on the goods he shipped off planet? If he, perhaps, paid Guild ships who did not pay the tax double their usual rate to carry his wares. What type of influence would one man be able to have?"

"I somehow doubt that one grief-stricken man is going to try to start some petty tax rebellion."

"It's fortunate, then, that it is my job, and not yours, to keep my ears to the ground."

"You think that he will do that?"

"It's a possibility."

"We'd squash that if he did," Sid said.

"Think about First Sandreas. What would he say to that?"

And Sid did think, and the word came to his tongue. "Optics."

"Indeed. This is already an optically bad situation. We can only hope that Mr. Warez keeps his mouth shut."

"Yeah." Sid scuffed the ground, kicking a pebble across the path in front of them.

"So, Apprentice Welslak. What should I do about this problem? Between you and me?"

"You should talk to First Sandreas about it."

She smiled, a thin smile, an unpleasant one. "Someday you will not have First Sandreas to take shelter behind. I hope that you will think about what your answer to that question will be."

"There's nothing that I could say that would satisfy you," Sid said. "If I told you to quietly take care of the entire Warez family, that would be a mark against me in Sandreas's eyes. If I told you to do nothing, you would think that I'm hesitant and weak." The wind ruffled Sid's hair. "I could tell you to frame the Warez family for some sort of wrongdoing, to get them out of the public eye, but there's the danger of that getting out of hand." He shrugged and looked at her. "You're not my master; you don't have to test me."

"Perhaps."

Sandreas smiled, a tired expression, as he opened the door to his private suite. "Glad to see you, Sid."

"You look like you've been through the wash."

"Life as usual."

Sid stepped inside and sat on one of the couches. He successfully resisted the urge to kick his feet up onto the coffee table, and instead simply leaned forward, waiting for Sandreas to speak. Sandreas sat down across from him, and there was a moment of slightly awkward silence.

"I know you're dying to talk about Hanathue," Sandreas said. "Say what you need to say."

"I wouldn't describe myself in quite those terms. But it has been on my mind."

"Unpleasantly so."

"There's nothing pleasant about it." Sid spread his hands on his lap and looked at them for a moment. "Kino's not there anymore, right?"

"The rational thing for her to do would be to leave the planet immediately," Sandreas said. "She clearly has the connections to make that happen. So, unless her connections abandoned her, or she has decided not to do the rational thing, yes, she's long gone."

Sid knew that was the case, but he had still been keeping an eye on every piece of information coming off the planet, in the hope that someone would report an errant shuttle launch, or a stray security camera would pick up their faces.

"Carcival talked to me a while ago," Sid said finally, looking up at Sandreas.

"I'm aware," Sandreas said. "Did you think that I don't keep tabs on what my staff and Second are up to behind my back?"

"I wouldn't have called it behind your back," Sid said. "We were in public."

"Oh, Carcival knows what game she's playing," Sandreas said. "Anyway, continue."

"She thinks that the trouble on Hanathue is only just starting, even if Kino is gone."

"She is a woman who sees sunset's shadows at noon."

"You don't think that there's going to be trouble?"

"I think that the Hanathue council representatives are smarter than Mr. Shoto Warez gives them credit for. They won't be so easily pressured by him into doing something outlandish."

"But he is pressuring them."

"Of course. And he will continue to do so," Sandreas said. "Until he makes himself too much of a nuisance and I am forced to take care of the problem."

"But—"

"I suppose Carcival told you that I wouldn't do anything against Halen's wishes, didn't she?" Sandreas said. He leaned back in his seat and looked up at the ceiling over Sid's head. "Can I tell you something, Sid?"

Slightly chagrined, Sid responded, "Of course."

"People understand that the balance of power in Stonecourt is shifting, or that it will shift in the future. They're all trying to ride that wave."

"But you're still First—"

"I won't be forever, Sid." Sandreas's face was still and sad. "And everyone around can feel the weight of that future pressing down on them, faster and faster.

"When I was Second, people looked at my own master, Caron Herrault, and they saw the flaws in the way that she conducted things. She was too soft, too sentimental, at times. She had distinct favorites— planets, people, ways of doing things. People saw this, and they made it clear to me, as her successor, that they did not want that pattern to continue.

"I am not in an invulnerable position. I'm certainly not in an all powerful one, though I do wield an inordinate amount of power. But I'm the head of an apparatus that is larger than myself, and in some ways, I am carried along by its momentum, and forced to adapt to its sweeping moments of change.

"I don't play favorites," Sandreas said. "I never have. That has made some people very happy, and others, who lost their in with Herrault, very unhappy. But it comes at the cost of me keeping my own council.

"I listen to Carcival, and I respect her, and I think that she is a very useful resource. But I do not trust her implicitly; I do not favor her; I do not consider her advice to be set in stone. I make my own decisions, and the list of people who can change my mind is very, very small."

Sid couldn't help but interrupt and ask, "Who's on that list?"

Sandreas smiled slightly, staring off into space as he began to list. "I shouldn't think you have to ask," he said. "The Emperor. Halen. A few friends I've known since the Academy, who I don't believe you've met— it's probably for the best that they stay far away and out of Imperial politics. You're on the list, though I take most things you say with the few grains of salt that your youth provides. At one point, the list would have included Yan and Kino, though obviously, that was a mistake. Ms. Rosario, but she knows not to give advice unless I ask it. Obra, and Jalena, and Frae— but they've been dead for many years. It's a small list."

"God's not on it?"

"The day that God starts giving advice in a voice that sounds like something other than my own internal narration, then God can get a spot on the list," Aymon said, a wry expression on his face.

"So, what are you saying?" Sid asked. "Should I trust Carcival or not?"

"That's not what I'm implying at all," Sandreas said. "I only mean to warn you that people are going to try to get close to you, for many reasons, and you will need to use your own judgement about who is worthy of being in your confidence."

"So I should pick a small group to be close to me?"

"Sid, there's no possible way I can tell you how your rule will be. I wish that there was something real I could say to you, a list of people who are safe, a list of people who are not. But I can't. It's the nature of things that you will be different from me, in small ways and in significant ones. I—" He paused, and Sid waited for him to continue. "I will always be here for you. But I can't make your decisions, your mistakes, your friends for you. Everyone, myself included, is just looking for you not to make the same mistakes that I have."

"I don't think you've made any mistakes," Sid said.

"If you say things like that, people won't think you're nearly as fierce as you try to be."

Sid flushed a hot red.

"I didn't mean that in a bad way," Sandreas said. "I am, in a way, grateful for your confidence in me, unfounded though it is."

Sandreas didn't seem eager to say anything else, and his face betrayed none of his quiet interior thoughts, aside from the contemplative sadness that seemed to hang over him.

"So," Sid began. "Hanathue?"

"That again," Sandreas said. "My thought is to let it work itself out in its course."

"You just established that you would take my advice."

Aymon laughed. "Perhaps I shouldn't have admitted that, especially if this advice is from Carcival, filtered through you."

"It's not," Sid said. "She didn't suggest any of this to me."

"Oh?"

"Let me go to Hanathue," Sid said. "It's not dangerous, now that we think that Kino has fled. Let me talk to Shoto Warez, in person, give my condolences, and convince him not to do something that everyone will regret."

"And why do you think that this will help?"

"He knows a lot," Sid said. "If he starts figuring out who to ask questions, he might be able to escalate things. He probably has figured out that we've been stopping his mail to the Iron Dreams— if he turns to underground communication..."

"Indeed," Sandreas said.

"I just think it would be better. Nip it in the bud." He finished rather lamely, but he leaned forward, trying to convey his earnestness.

"Have you talked to Halen about this?"

"No," Sid said. "I wasn't planning to."

"Why not?"

"I know the wrong answer here would be to say that he is not my master— you are. But I also think that he would be alright with it. The danger is minimal, and..."

"And?"

"He didn't want Bina Warez to die. I think he feels pretty bad about it," Sid said. "I don't know. He's not usually the type to go out of his way to talk to strangers, but I don't think he would have a problem with me trying to offer something to the family."

"I'll think about it."

"Think about it and say yes, alright?"

Sandreas laughed. "You can't sway me that much."

And so it was that just a short while later, after having hitched a ride aboard the Fleet ship Vortex, Sid found himself in the windy and rainy Traver City. It was a miserable place. Ervantes had returned from his vacation, and had accompanied Sid, as it had been arranged that he would act as Sid's Fleet liaison for the foreseeable future. Sid didn't mind that at all. The rest of his entourage was familiar: Hernan was with him, of course, serving in the same advisory and coordinating role that he always did; and there was a contingent of security from the Vortex who followed him down to the planet. Sid could have done without them. At this point, he felt quite secure in his ability to defend himself, but Halen would have told him that such pride tends to immediately precede a fall.

Sid had plenty of things to accomplish on his visit, a whole laundry list, but his first stop today was to visit the Fleet offices where the two surviving witnesses to Kino and Calor were stationed. Apparently, there was also a whole lot of weird... stuff... that had been recovered from the hotel room that Kino and Calor had been staying in. Sid was not an expert on stuff, but he was as close to an expert as they were going to get on Kino, so he had agreed to stop by and take a look at it.

The Fleet offices were in a modern office building, a couple stories high, with mirrored glass windows in long strips up the sides. It was somehow both menacing and nondescript. In his Fleet uniform, Ervantes Cesper blended right in. In his cassock and short red cape, Sid stuck out. The building was not particularly busy. Though the Fleet interfaced directly with the Hanathue Civil Service, most of their joint operations took place on the other side of the city, in the HCS Traver City headquarters. This Fleet building was mainly an administrative zone, for recruitment and planning. Sid was meeting here, though, and not at the HCS, because the HCS had been explicitly kept in the dark about, well, everything.

The leader of the Fleet in Traver City had the rank of Captain, though no ship of her own, and she met Sid and Ervantes in the open lobby of the building. She was a medium height woman, with grey hair tied up in a severe bun, and thick frown lines in her forehead.

"Apprentice Welslak, it's an honor to have you here," she said.

"I'm glad to be here, Captain Seig. This is my Fleet liaison, Lieutenant Ervantes Cesper," Sid said. They shook hands, and Sid and Ervantes followed Seig to her office, on the second floor. It had a window that looked out at the city, but from this far away from the city center, there were really only other nondescript office buildings to look at.

Captain Seig was not a sensitive, and she prefaced her introduction to the "stuff" that had been taken from Kino and Calor's hotel room with a note of caution. "I'm sorry that I'm having to drag you down into the weeds with this triviality, Apprentice Welslak, but I'm not well equipped to deal with things that have the smell of the power on them."

"It's fine," Sid said. "I needed to be on-planet anyway, to meet with Mr. Warez."

"Sad business, that," Seig said, walking over to the back of her office, where she unlocked what looked like an equipment closet with a press of a pin on a pinpad.

"It is. How did you find all of this, anyway?" Sid asked. "I thought that part of the problem came from not being able to track down where Mejia and Calor were staying in the first place." He felt awkward using Kino's last name, but this was a different situation than he was usually in. It probably wouldn't make a good image to give any hint that he had lingering attachments to Kino. He hated her, felt confused and angry, but he couldn't help that he had been calling her by her first name for the entire time he knew her, and still thought of her, in some sense, first as his coworker and partner. If he pictured Kino and Yan in his mind, it took a moment for the remembrance that they were gone to settle into place, and he still remembered them as they had been— in cassocks and capes, trotting behind Sandreas along with him.

"We have a special agreement with hotels," Seig said. "When they find something that looks like trafficking, they call us. Since Calor and Mejia fled town unexpectedly, they left behind a big trunk full of this. We were able to positively identify them then." From the closet, Seig pulled a brown paper wrapped package. Gingerly, like it was about to explode, she handed it to Sid.

"What is it?" Sid asked. It had some heft to it, but it wasn't heavy. He figured it was about as dense as a block of wood.

"There were about a hundred of these. I took this one from the evidence locker downstairs, because, well, these have been disappearing in a rather alarming way."

That said more about shoddy evidence containment procedures than it did about the package to Sid, but he wasn't in the business of writing people up for mismanagement, so he just nodded.

"I have to say, it's a definite relief handing this over to you. Glad to get it out of my hands," Seig continued. She did look visibly less stressed as she sat down in her chair.

"Is it dangerous?" Sid asked.

"Not particularly, as far as I can tell. But I would like your expert opinion on it."

"Thoughts?" Sid asked, looking at Ervantes.

"It's probably not going to bite you," he said. "Might as well open it and see what the fuss is about."

Sid peeled back the brown paper, revealing the plain black back side of a book. Harmless. He flipped the book over to see the title, and then immediately dropped it onto Seig's desk, as though he had been scalded. All the blood drained from his face as he looked at the image— a raised relief, really— emblazoned on the front cover of the book. A genderless metal figure, face wrought in gold, raised a sword high above their head, ready to strike.

"What's the matter?" Ervantes asked.

"That's—" Sid said, finding the words hard to come by to explain.

Seig looked at him curiously. "So, you recognize this?"

Sid pulled out his phone and flipped through the photos for a minute, going through a veritable journey back in time, until he came to ones that he had taken around graduation from the Academy. He picked a photo of himself standing next to his statue, the one he had made as his final project, the thing that had gotten him selected as Sandreas's apprentice. He flipped the phone around and showed it to Seig and Ervantes, who both looked at it with intense expressions on their faces.

"That's my final project from the Academy," Sid explained. "This is some sort of message to me." He wanted to tack on 'from Yan', but Yan was still officially dead, and Seig had no reason to know that she wasn't.

"What does it mean?" Seig asked. "If it is a message."

"I don't know," Sid said. Now that some of the initial shock had worn off, he was able to pick up the book and investigate it more closely. Flipping through the pages, he saw that they were full of text, but he didn't read it right away. He stretched out his power into the book, examining it with every sense that he had. He could feel, almost immediately, the threads of power that wound their way across the surface of the book's cover. Perhaps there was no special message; perhaps this was just Yan's little joke. She did always have a kind of humor.

"What do you think?" Seig asked, after giving him a long moment to look it over.

"Oh," Sid said. "I don't think it's dangerous, if that's what you're worried about."

Relief did flash across Seig's face, and she nodded. "That's good. But what is it?"

"It's a book," Sid said. "I'd have to read it to find out more. Mind if I keep this?"

"It's yours," Seig said. "What should I do with the rest of them?"

Sid sighed, not really wanting to get bogged down with this minutia. "Uh. Have them sent up to the Vortex. I'll deal with them back on Emerri."

"I'll have it done."

"Thank you," Sid said. "Was there anything else I can clear up for you while I'm here? I would like to interview the two surviving members of the team who went after Calor and Mejia."

"Of course. I'll call them right in."

Sid and Ervantes had a late lunch in a warm café overlooking a busy street in the center of Traver City. Sid poked unhappily at his salad, and the coffee he was drinking had already given him the jitters, sending the itch of wanting to move all through his arms and legs. Ervantes ate a turkey club with a vigor that Sid couldn't muster.

"Did you not think that the meeting with Captain Seig went well?" Ervantes asked.

"It went fine. It's not that," Sid said. "I just hate everything about all of this."

"That goes without saying."

"Is that your way of telling me to stop whining?" Sid asked with a smile.

"I would never say something quite so undiplomatic to my superior," Ervantes said, a small smile back.

"Perhaps I should have the Fleet discharge you, so that there's no risk of workplace entanglements."

"On one hand, that would mean I get to be as undiplomatic as I want. On the other, I'd be out of a job, and wouldn't have any excuse to travel the Empire."

"I want to see you at your most undiplomatic," Sid said. "I'm sure it would be thrilling."

"Tell you what, you give me a signal and I'll blurt out something horribly offensive in front of Mr. Warez. Something about how the Guild is a smuggler's den, maybe."

Sid laughed, then sighed as he thought about his meeting with Shoto Warez. "I don't think this is going to go well," he admitted.

"I have the utmost confidence that you'll be able to handle it," Ervantes said.

"That makes a whole one of us."

"As I recall, it was you who asked to come here."

"Yeah..." Sid trailed off and poked at his salad some more. Wanting to speak to Shoto Warez had been an excuse to get him off planet, and itchingly close to Xuanhuan station, where, in theory, Yan was supposed to appear. He was turning over and over in his mind, beyond just this meeting, how he might be able to get there and force a confrontation. Yan's book had been a message to him. On the journey to Hanathue, he had almost given up on his plan, but now the image of Yan burned in his mind. She held a sword above his head.

The Warez family home was a nice building. There were dry and barren stems of ivy that clung to the sides of it; in warmer months, it would certainly lend a distinguished air to the place. Now, though, it looked dead and vacant, with curtains drawn across all the windows. Sid rang the doorbell and waited.

He had an appointment, if it could be considered that. He wasn't an unexpected guest, at the very least.

Ervantes stood behind him, his birdlike frame erect in the position of a model Fleet officer. The rest of Sid's security was watching from afar. There would be no funny business.

The door swung open, and a short, pale man who was definitely not Shoto Warez looked Sid and Ervantes over.

"Mr. Welslak, come in."

Odd, to not have the respect of being addressed as apprentice. Sid didn't pay it much mind, though.

"May I take your cloak? Mr. Warez is waiting for you in his office."

Sid peeled off his fall cloak, and Ervantes took off his jacket. The man draped them over his arm before leading them down the hallway. The interior of the house was rich, but, just like the outside, it had a somber air. The whole place was deadly silent, and a little too cold; even with his cassock, Sid felt chilled.

The manservant knocked on a closed wooden door and announced the visitors. After a moment (and presumably an inaudible response from inside the room), he pushed the door open.

Mr. Warez's office reminded Sid of Halen's home in Stonecourt-- dark, and with odd personal memorabilia on the tables and shelves. Mr. Warez was sitting at his desk, but he stood up when Sid and Ervantes stepped inside, and he came over to greet them, unsmiling. In contrast to the usual colorful garb of Hanathue, Warez was dressed in a dull grey suit, and his hair, which had been long in the photographs that Sid had seen of him, was cut quite close to his head.

"Mr. Warez," Sid said, trying to offer a smile of his own, though finding it difficult. "It's a pleasure to meet you, though I wish it were under different circumstances. This is my Fleet liaison, Lieutenant Cesper."

"Indeed. Lieutenant," Warez said. "I mean no disrespect, but I would prefer to have this conversation with Mr. Welslak in private, if you don't mind."

Ervantes glanced at Sid, who was torn between several different thoughts. He didn't want to get this meeting off on the wrong foot, and, to be honest, if Warez were about to try to murder him (unlikely), there would be little that Ervantes could do to stop it. But, at the same time, it felt very rude, and like a personal slight, to have him wait in the hall. Sid shrugged apologetically at Ervantes, who smiled.

"That's fine, sir," he said. "I'll just wait out here."

"Thank you," Warez said. "This shouldn't be long."

Ervantes stepped out, and Warez closed the door behind him, then returned to sit behind his desk. Sid felt rather like he was in Sandreas's office, getting yelled at for something, so he picked the chair that was an approximation of where he would sit there to perch in. Across the room, looking down on them both, was a framed family portrait, with smiling parents each holding one of Bina Warez's shoulders. Sid looked away from it, trying to not let it be obvious that he had been looking.

He shouldn't have worried, though, because Mr. Warez was looking at it as well.

"Would it be crass of me to ask, Mr. Welslak, in what capacity you're here?"

"Not at all," Sid said. "I'm here as an official representative of the Imperial government."

"I see. And, officially, what business does the Imperial government have with my family?"

A delicate question, one which Sid had considered the answer to beforehand. "Your daughter's sister, Apprentice Kino Mejia, is my friend and coworker. She's currently with the Fleet, far out of contact range. I am here in her stead, to offer my condolences on the loss of your daughter."

"You did not attend the funeral," Warez pointed out.

"Travel from Emerri takes time," Sid said.

"Why now?" Warez leaned back in his seat, looked up at the picture of his dead daughter on the wall. "Why now, when there's nothing left to be done?"

"There's always something left to be done, isn't there?"

Warez frowned. "You killed my daughter." The line was delivered without any anger showing on Warez's face. He was just still, frowning up at the picture.

"Your daughter died in a tragic car accident," Sid said, as mildly as he could.

"She was melted. They didn't want me and my wife to see the body, but I bribed the morgue," Warez said. "You didn't have to do that to her. She was a child, for God's sake."

"A tragic accident," Sid repeated, sincere this time. "Please do not misunderstand."

"Why do you have to play this game with me?" Warez asked. "Isn't it enough that—" He coughed, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.

Sid waited for him to finish, then said, "Sir, the last thing I would want to do is play a game." He felt odd to be this deferential— he had never even been this way with Sandreas— but he had no desire to upset Warez further.

"Speak with me openly, then," Warez said. "Don't give me bullshit."

"You're asking me to confirm things that you suspect but don't understand," Sid said. "Things that even you don't state outright, because you don't know what you have to state. It's dangerous to fixate on shadows, Mr. Warez."

"You wouldn't be here if there wasn't something. Are you threatening me?"

"Sir, I'm not a smuggler trying to shake you down," Sid said. "I have no reason to threaten you."

"Your presence here alone is meant to intimidate me, Second Welslak."

Sid was surprised, but not that surprised, at the title. He didn't deny it, even though he should have. "On the contrary, Mr. Warez, I have a great deal of respect for you and your family. I am here in your interest."

"To prevent further tragic accidents from happening."

"I wish you could understand that I am telling the truth," Sid said. He thought, 'This is as close as you will get to an apology.' He laid his hands on his lap and looked at them, feeling some kind of itch to explain, but having no ability to. He was beginning to regret this conversation that he had put himself in.

"There have been a lot of tragic accidents recently," Warez said after a second of letting Sid stew.

"Mr. Warez," Sid said, deciding he had had enough with this. "You are talking about Yan BarCarran, who was my closest friend."

"There have been others," Warez said.

"But it was Yan's family that you tried to get in touch with," Sid said. He didn't care if Warez knew they read his mail. The game was long ago up with that one, and he had to use whatever power he had. Warez raised an eyebrow.

"Then yes, I am talking about the late Apprentice BarCarran."

"I have two questions to ask you, then. Please don't tell me that they contradict each other, because they make a certain kind of sense together."

"Go on," Warez said. He still was clearly sad, but he looked at Sid with a keen interest in his eyes all the same.

"If, and I should make this crystal clear that this is a hypothetical," Sid began, practically spitting out the words. "If the Imperial government had killed my best friend, Yan BarCarran, do you really think that we would have gone to such lengths to introduce her back into the world after her kidnapping? Don't you think that it would have been better to simply say that she had died then? Rather than show her on the news, looking miserable but saying she was ready to go back to work? Then immediately after make it look like she killed herself?" Sid was a pretty good actor, but some of the hysteria in his voice was real. "She went through something that you or I can't even imagine, and it broke her. And now she's gone."

"That wasn't a tragic accident, then?" Warez said, studying Sid, or perhaps the dark wood wall behind him.

"Just a tragedy," Sid said, catching his breath. He realized that he had been yelling, and felt like maybe he should apologize, but Warez seemed unfazed, so he didn't.

"And what's your second question, Second Welslak?" Warez asked.

"And even if it was... Something else..." Sid said. "Which it isn't, I should be clear with you. You know that the entire crew of the Iron Dreams is alive, unharmed, going about their business, less one distant daughter. You feel as though you are in the same situation as Captain Pellon of the Dreams. I understand how you feel this way, but look at it. Why do they remain as they are?"

"Tell me why, Second Welslak," Warez said.

"Because there are people in the Imperial government, myself included, who have an interest in not dragging civilians into the messes we make," Sid said, as cautiously as he could. "Do not try to talk to the Iron Dreams again. They have their own road to walk."

Warez steepled his hands on his desk. "I know what I know, Second Welslak," Warez said.

"No, you don't." Sid looked at him steadily.

"I know that the Imperial government is responsible for the death of my daughter."

"And I am here to offer my condolences for your daughter's tragic and accidental death," Sid said. "Please accept that, and speak nothing more of it."

"How can I possibly accept that?" Warez asked. "How can you ask me to let go?"

Sid looked at him, feeling rather helpless. "Because it will only hurt more to continue prying. There is nothing that will bring your daughter back, even if I wish there was. There's nothing," Sid's breath caught for a second, "that will bring Yan back. It doesn't matter what you think you know."

"And what do you know, Second Welslak, that you're not telling me?"

Sid thought of something that Sandreas had said to him, a while back. Quoting the theology is always a good choice. "Every word and thought and action which passes in the shadow of heaven is known to God alone. Time falls through human hands like grains of sand, lost forever in the dunes."

"That's a polite way of claiming to know nothing."

"Your words in my mouth," Sid said. "But you understand that I will neither confirm nor deny nor speak nor remain silent-- it's not something that I can do as a representative of the government."

"I understand. I have just one more question for you, Mr. Welslak," Warez said.

"I will do my best to answer."

"When someone goes to visit your family on Galena on the business of some kind of tragic accident, what do you hope that that will look like?"