The Thousand Emperors

SIX

When Luc arrived home through the Hall of Gates, it was mid-afternoon in Ulugh Beg. Eleanor came to him later that evening, exploring his new skin with fingers and lips while the setting sun sent shards of orange light slanting through the window of his apartment.

Tell me what happened, she had asked him shortly after appearing at his door, obviously distraught and out of her mind with worry. Tell me where you disappeared to. When you didn’t come back, I really started to think maybe you were gone forever.

But he knew the risks of telling her too much and getting her involved, and her work in SecInt meant she understood the necessity of keeping secrets. She had not really expected him to answer. Even so, he felt a pang, as if by refusing to answer her questions he was in some strange way betraying her.

He lay back, head propped up on a pillow, Eleanor’s own skin limned by the city’s myriad lights as she moved above him, hands kneading his flesh. He noticed again the cosmetic alterations she had recently made to her own body: her hips were slightly narrower than they had been, her breasts fractionally and fashionably smaller. She shuddered, skin glistening, then pressed herself down against him, holding him tight as he came inside her. She held perfectly still for a moment, then slid down onto the bed beside him.

He lay there for a long time, listening to her sleep. He was still wide awake, despite his exhaustion. Sleep was impossible after everything he’d been through.

Sometime in the early morning, he had the overwhelming sense that someone else was in the room with them.

He lifted his head and saw a hunched figure with its hands pushed deep into pockets, staring out the window with its back to him.

The figure turned and looked at him: Cripps. A rainbow shimmer surrounded his outline.

Luc climbed naked out of the bed and pulled on a night-robe. Eleanor, he saw with relief, hadn’t woken. He gestured towards the living room and stepped through. Cripps took the hint, his data-ghost vanishing from the bedroom and reappearing in the living room a moment later.

‘There are laws about data-ghost voyeurism,’ Luc hissed the moment the door into the bedroom folded itself shut behind him. ‘How the hell long were you standing there watching us?’

Cripps shrugged. ‘A minute, no more. I want to know what you said to Zelia de Almeida, after she took you away from Vasili’s.’

Luc dropped into a seat and pushed both hands through his hair, still groggy. ‘Or what? You’re going to threaten me too?’

‘Charming as ever, was she?’ Cripps made a gesture, and Luc felt a flush of outrage when the house AI obeyed him, de-opaquing the window and allowing the morning light to come streaking in. Pioneer Gorge’s street-markets were already busy far off in the distance. ‘I, however, do not need to threaten you,’ he continued. ‘I need only remind you of your sworn duty to the Temur Council.’

‘To the Council,’ Luc snapped, ‘but not necessarily to you in particular.’

‘If you’d prefer, I can arrange to have you taken back to Vanaheim by force, and interrogated there at my pleasure.’ Cripps let his gaze drift towards the bedroom door. ‘Or perhaps I could have Miss Jaq arrested, and see what she might be able to tell us. Would that be preferable?’

Luc gripped the arms of his chair and reminded himself that the data-ghost had no actual, physical throat for him to take a hold of. ‘Does Father Cheng know you’re here?’

‘Father Cheng trusts me to ensure the safety of both the Council and the citizens it serves,’ Cripps replied. ‘To that end, I have an open remit to do whatever proves necessary to ensure the Tian Di’s survival and safety. Who else do you think I report to, Mr Gabion?’

‘All right,’ Luc said heavily, ‘fine. De Almeida checked me out in her laboratory and found nothing particularly wrong with me. I already knew I had lesions on my brain from Aeschere, which isn’t exactly surprising, given the level of trauma I suffered. That’s the most probable cause.’

‘And what else?’

Luc shrugged. ‘She asked me my impressions of the people gathered at Vasili’s, and if I had any particular insights. That’s about it.’

‘Tell me your insights, then.’

‘There’s really nothing to tell until I have a chance to interview each of the Councillors individually. She said she might be able to arrange that. I also asked to see the inside of Vasili’s home a second time.’

Cripps’ gaze was unwavering. ‘I’m sure you had more to discuss than that.’

‘I told her you’d come here once before and asked me a lot of questions.’

‘That probably wasn’t a very wise thing to do.’

‘Why?’

‘Well,’ Cripps responded, ‘Zelia is herself the most obvious suspect in Vasili’s murder, is she not?’

‘The other day,’ Luc reminded him, ‘you claimed I was a suspect, but there was no way I could possibly have known yet about Vasili’s death.’

‘That remains to be seen,’ said Cripps. ‘She brought your name up very soon after the discovery of Vasili’s body. Naturally, that aroused my suspicions.’

‘And how does that make me a suspect?’

One corner of Cripps’ mouth turned up in a smirk. ‘Perhaps you didn’t pull the trigger on the weapon that killed Vasili, Mr Gabion, but you might have been complicit in his death in some other way.’

‘Go on.’

‘Sneaking an assassin through the Hall of Gates and transporting them to Vasili’s island, as Father Cheng believes, is not something even Zelia, with her high level of access to Vanaheim’s security networks, could have done easily. She would have needed accomplices.’

Luc stared at Cripps in shock. ‘You think de Almeida recruited me to help her set up Vasili’s assassination, then brought me into the investigation to throw you off the scent?’ He let out an outraged laugh. ‘How long did it take you to come up with that? It’s the most—’

‘It might have been planned weeks or even months ago,’ said Cripps, interrupting. ‘Your side trip to Aeschere would have given you excellent cover.’

Luc shook his head, unable to believe what he was hearing. ‘And what about you, Mr Cripps? You turn up here twice, unannounced, and making threats – just the kind of thing a guilty man would do to try and cover his own tracks.’

‘No, it’s the kind of thing a police officer would do, and I’m the closest there is to one on Vanaheim. You can’t deny Zelia looks guilty as all hell, particularly since she’s perfectly placed to sabotage the same security networks she’s been put in charge of.’

Luc was finding it harder and harder to fight back a growing tide of anger. ‘I was there when Father Cheng agreed that I could come to Vanaheim and—’

Cripps stepped closer, until Luc could see the dim outline of the window through his data-ghost. ‘Let me make myself clear. You collapsed in front of several high-ranking members of the Council, and Zelia was very insistent on taking you with her, even though any one of us could have provided you with an equal level of medical attention, and a lot sooner as well. That, Mr Gabion, did not go without remark.’

‘For God’s sake, I’m just barely out of intensive regeneration therapy!’ Luc yelled, briefly forgetting Eleanor was still asleep next door. ‘Instead of getting the chance to recover, I got hauled off to play detective without any warning. And if de Almeida wants me back on Vanaheim, I don’t have much choice in the matter, and you know that.’ Same as I don’t have much choice but to be here listening to you, however I feel about it.

Cripps nodded. ‘Then just do what I tell you, and continue to keep an eye on everything Zelia says and does.’ He reached out to touch something Luc couldn’t see, his hand blurring as it reached outside of the range of the projector he was using. ‘We’ll speak again.’

The data-ghost winked out. Luc stared at the empty air where it had been for another minute, all thoughts of sleep vanished.

‘Luc?’

He turned to see Eleanor framed in the bedroom door, a look of alarm on her face. ‘Luc, what’s going on?’ she asked. ‘I heard you yelling.’

‘How much did you hear?’

‘Just the last few seconds.’ She glanced back through to the bedroom. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude, I . . .’

‘No, it’s okay.’ He gestured at her to come in. ‘It was just work.’

‘Archives called you in the middle of the night?’

‘And since when did you work regular office hours, Miss Jaq?’

She smiled and came to sit beside him, but he could see the strain and worry in her face, and wondered if she’d heard more than she was letting on.

He couldn’t help but admire the smooth, taut muscles of her body, carefully optimized to the physical standards required of SecInt agents. She had skills of endurance and prowess that remained unavailable – at least legally – to most citizens of the Tian Di, a necessary advantage in her line of work. And yet, in that moment, she looked almost frail as she reached out and clasped one hand over his.

‘There’s something going on I don’t know about, isn’t there?’ she said. ‘And it’s got something to do with Aeschere. Every time I look at you, you’re somewhere else.’

He thought of de Almeida, and her revelations about the lattice in his skull. ‘I want to tell you, but . . .’

‘But you can’t,’ she finished for him. ‘I get it. Though I do think you should talk to Director Lethe.’

Luc shook his head at this, and saw a flash of anger in her eyes. ‘Why not?’ she asked.

‘What I’m involved in is at a higher level even than Lethe.’

‘The Temur Council?’

He didn’t reply, and her eyes darted towards where Cripps’ data-ghost had been standing until just a minute ago.

‘You have to be careful when dealing directly with the Temur Council,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘Very, very careful.’

‘Believe me,’ he said, reaching out to her, ‘I know.’

By the next evening the walls of Luc’s apartment felt as if they were closing in, and he decided to head into Archives rather than spend any more time on his own.

He could have simply data-ghosted himself there – some of Archives’ employees spent their entire careers working remotely, via transfer gate on other Tian Di colonies – but there were certain questions that were best asked face-to-face. That meant a trip to the Pioneer Gorge facility, and to Vincent Hetaera, the Archives Division’s Head of Research.

He travelled by overhead tram, watching as the wafer-thin buildings bordering the north-east quadrant of Chandrakant Lu Park gave way to the classical architecture of the Old Quarter. The tram carried him past the crescent shapes of biomes that preserved the planet’s original flora and fauna, then down into the Gorge itself, before leaving him at the entrance to Archives, a vast, truncated pyramid of a building more than two centuries old.

He found Vincent Hetaera standing by the window of his office. ‘It’s wonderful to see you whole and well,’ said Hetaera, stepping over to Luc with a wide grin on his face.

He stopped and regarded him with a shocked expression. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, his tone apologetic.

‘What?’

Hetaera’s grin grew wide once more. ‘I should have addressed you as Master Archivist Gabion, shouldn’t I?’

‘Luc will do just fine. And I’ll have the same as you’re having,’ he said, gesturing to the glass in the other man’s hand.

Hetaera glanced down at the glass he held as if he’d forgotten it was there. ‘It’s just kavamilch,’ he said. ‘Sure you don’t want something stronger?’

‘Kavamilch will be fine.’

Hetaera shrugged and picked up a pot, pouring some of the warm brew into a second glass and handing it to Luc.

‘I got your request,’ said Hetaera as they sat down opposite each other on couches by the window. ‘But there might be a problem,’ he added with a grimace.

‘What kind of problem?’

‘The author of the book you’re looking for,’ Vincent explained. ‘Javier Maxwell. He never wrote a book by that name, at least not that we know of.’

‘A History of the Tian Di?’ The book Vasili had taken hold of in the last moments before his death. ‘How sure are you about that?’

Hetaera raised an eyebrow. ‘Very sure. Where did you hear about it?’

‘I saw a copy,’ Luc replied, ‘a physical, printed copy, with my own two eyes. Is it possible we just don’t have records of it?’

‘I suppose it’s possible, but ever since Father Cheng locked Maxwell away and took control of the Temur Council, his name’s had restricted access flags attached to it wherever it turns up in our files. Even with your recent promotion, I doubt you’d be able to get permission to find out if it ever did exist without petitioning Father Cheng himself directly.’

Luc nodded tiredly. He’d come across any number of such restricted access flags during his years of researching Winchell Antonov’s endless tangle of connections with terrorist groups scattered far and wide across the Tian Di.

‘May I ask,’ said Hetaera, ‘how you came across this book?’

Luc had been dreading the possibility he might be asked precisely this question. ‘It’s a confidential source,’ he replied carefully.

‘Then if the book ever existed, it’s more than likely been wiped from the official records.’ Hetaera spread his hands. ‘If it was a printed book, how old would you say it was?’

‘I couldn’t begin to guess.’

‘Pre-Schism old?’ Hetaera hazarded.

Luc shrugged. ‘Maybe. I guess it could have been.’ He studied Hetaera, wondering just how much he could get away with telling him. ‘It was part of someone’s personal collection.’

‘Well, there you go,’ said Vincent. ‘We all know how much turbulence the Tian Di went through following the Schism. A lot of things were lost forever back then, and not just books.’

‘But I saw this book. It exists.’

‘Yes, but not as far as Archives is concerned, unfortunately.’ Vincent gave him an apologetic smile. ‘Seems to me that your life hasn’t got any less interesting since you got back from Aeschere.’

‘Yeah,’ said Luc. ‘That’d be an understatement.’ He’d almost forgotten about the kavamilch in his hand, and swallowed it down. It tasted sweet and warm.

‘And what about Archives?’ asked Hetaera. ‘I know you turned down a promotion to the Security Division before. Now that Antonov’s gone, do you think you’ll change your mind and move upstairs?’

The corner of Luc’s mouth twitched. ‘We’re on the top floor, Vincent. There is no upstairs.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Luc sighed. ‘To be honest, there’s nothing to stop me retiring right now. Never do another damn thing for the rest of my life.’

Hetaera watched him for a moment. ‘Sitting around and doing nothing isn’t your style.’

‘No.’ Luc played with his empty glass. ‘Staying in Archives feels like the best option. I feel at home here, and now at least I can pick and choose what work I do.’ His eyes flicked towards his superior. ‘Right now, I’ve been asked to consult on something on behalf of a member of the Council.’

‘Ah.’ Hetaera nodded, regarding him shrewdly. ‘That would explain the sudden interest in officially non-existent books, so I’ll ask no more.’ He gestured with his drink. ‘There are a thousand jobs in Archives needing investigating, once you’re done with this. Tying up the loose ends from Antonov alone could take a lifetime.’

Luc nodded. ‘Is Offenbach in the usual place?’

Hetaera laughed. ‘Where else would he be? Good to have you back, Luc.’

Luc smiled. ‘Good to be back, Vincent.’

‘There you go,’ said Jared Offenbach, leaning forward in his chair. ‘Dummy corporations, black market accounts, traceable and currently non-traceable funds, as much as you could want. A lot of it doesn’t even go anywhere: it’s chaff, designed to lead you far away from where the real money is going. Which is Black Lotus, of course.’

Cascades of colour-coded financial information filled the office of Senior Archives Librarian Offenbach, swarming around both men. The office itself was only dimly visible with the windows opaqued, but Luc could just about make out shelves filled with antique reading devices used to recover legacy data from obsolete hardware.

Luc shifted in his own seat, causing nearby strands of information to ripple in the air as they attempted to maintain their integrity. He watched Jared pull yet more data from out of deep virtual stacks. Flags indicated that some of the information flowing around them hadn’t been accessed, in certain cases, for more than a century, perhaps longer. Offenbach gestured expertly with his fingers, untwining dense braids of data into finer and finer branches, rapidly surrounding himself in a glowing tapestry of light. His nearly hairless pate gleamed under the constant assault of visualized data.

For reasons that remained obscure to Luc, Offenbach preferred to maintain an outward physical appearance considerably more advanced than most. Liver spots dotted his hands, while a hawklike nose that always made Luc think of a half-opened flick-knife jutted from the centre of his face.

‘I’m looking for something very specific,’ said Luc, grasping at a set of brightly coloured filaments just within his reach. Tiny clumps of words, names and reference numbers pulsed like jellyfish as his fingers brushed against them. He made a claw of his hand, then flung his fingers wide, causing the clumps to suddenly expand, revealing more details, along with the broad outlines of the financial links that connected the filaments together, almost fractal in their compact density. He performed another deft sleight of hand, and the filaments of data shrank once more.

To one side of the two men floated several dense clusters, rendered in luminous orange and green, representing the financial concerns of more than a dozen Benarean resistance movements. Dark nebulae of restricted or missing data weaved in and out of these brightly glowing clouds, but Luc knew that even this vast quantity of interconnected data represented only one very minor sub-branch of the complete Black Lotus data-set.

‘Something specific?’ Offenbach spluttered. ‘Well, I should hope so.’

Luc leaned back. ‘The focus I want is on a medium-broad spectrum of interconnectivity, representing whatever relationship existed between Winchell Antonov and Sevgeny Vasili.’

Offenbach blinked a couple of times, clearly choosing his next words carefully. ‘I can tell you right now that any such records are likely to be heavily flagged and restricted.’

‘That’s hardly news to me, Jared.’ Luc’s work on the Black Lotus data-set had been a constant struggle with restricted-data flags. If Offenbach hadn’t been able to help him circumnavigate a number of them in the past, he might never have succeeded in tracking Antonov down. Offenbach was, in many ways, Archives’ unsung hero.

Offenbach gave him a look of wry amusement, then reached out, manipulating the data before him with practised ease. The entire set rotated on an invisible axis, bringing clusters representing the relationships between the Temur Council and Sevgeny Vasili into clearer focus. Luc could see that most of the clusters reached back for centuries, all the way to the pre-Schism days. Many of the strands were colour-coded brown and grey, to indicate their special restricted status.

‘Strange,’ Offenbach muttered.

‘What?’

The librarian shook his head. ‘Your revised security rating should have gone through now you’ve been promoted to Master of Archives, but these data-sets simply won’t respond to your new rating. They still appear restricted to your eyes, don’t they?’

Luc glanced again at the brown-and-grey coded links and nodded. Each member of SecInt, depending on their personal security ratings, saw different things even when looking at the same visualized information. What might appear restricted to Luc might instead show as fully available to Offenbach, and vice versa.

Luc reached out and touched a grey strand, but it vibrated without expanding.

‘You’re right,’ he said, staring at the restricted strands. ‘I can’t access a lot of these.’ He glanced at other, neighbouring strands, which appeared not to be flagged in the same way. ‘But I can see others that look like I could access them, if I wanted to.’

Offenbach nodded distractedly. ‘But all of these should be accessible to you now.’ He tapped one finger against the arm of his chair. ‘Maybe your new rating is taking time to percolate through the system.’

‘That sounds like bullshit even to me, Jared.’

Offenbach sighed and nodded. ‘A lot of these threads were capped following Antonov’s death. If that much has propagated through the data-sets, then your new rating should have taken effect, unless . . .’

‘Unless what?’

Offenbach looked suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Usually, when something like this happens, it’s because of orders coming from way, way up the food chain.’

A member of the Council, in other words. Luc had a mental flash of Cripps, standing in his apartment.

Offenbach raised one magnificently hairy eyebrow. ‘You mentioned when you came in that you were asked to help in an investigation of some kind. Would that investigation perhaps be connected to stories I’ve been hearing about your trip up to the White Palace?’

Luc made a face. ‘I see I’m the talk of the town.’

Offenbach let out a half-muffled giggle. ‘Yes. So much intrigue.’

Despite his outward appearance, Luc sometimes wondered if Offenbach might actually be a good deal younger than himself. He certainly acted like it at times.

‘I want to show you something,’ said Offenbach, his face lit up with nearly palpable excitement. He sent data-sets flying by with disorienting speed, galaxies of information vanishing into the darkened recesses of his office in rapid order. Finally a single, vast constellation appeared, orbited by dozens of other, smaller clusters.

‘What you’re looking at here,’ said Offenbach, ‘is the total data-set for the preparations for Reunification. I don’t need to tell you the predictive power of a set like this, do I?’

No you don’t, thought Luc, his eyes automatically tracing lines of real and potential influence. ‘You don’t need to work in Archives to guess a lot of things are going to change following Reunification, Jared.’

‘But look here at these subsets. They show regions of unusually high activity surrounding Sevgeny Vasili over just the last few days, considerably more than might be expected even given his role in making Reunification a success. Clearly something is up.’

Luc tried not to show his surprise. ‘You were already looking into Vasili?’

Offenbach clapped his hands in excitement, his eyes glittering from across the room. ‘Not officially, no. But that level of activity naturally draws our attention and raises flags. Now, as for Vasili’s links to Antonov, all we really have to go on is a relatively scant quantity of publicly available data. You know, of course, that they were both on the Committee for Reconstruction following the Abandonment.’

Luc nodded. ‘I know that before Antonov turned against the Council, the two men had worked together.’

‘In the early days,’ Offenbach agreed. ‘And later, of course, they became diametrically opposed when Father Cheng took power.’

Luc nodded. ‘I’m looking for something deeper than that,’ he said.

‘I thought you might be,’ Offenbach replied. Screeds of text appeared, flickering by at a speed even Luc, despite his experience, found difficult to follow.

For the thousandth time, Luc recalled Vasili’s last message to posterity, recorded on the pages of a book the head of Archives couldn’t prove existed: Winchell, I was wrong, so very wrong. I see that now.

A lifetime of questions were contained within that one simple statement.

‘What I can tell you,’ said Luc, ‘is that there should be a recent connection between the two men, possibly as recently as within the last year.’

Offenbach raised his eyebrows in surprise, suddenly sober. ‘That recent?’

Luc nodded slowly and Offenbach whistled. A moment later the window de-opaqued, letting afternoon light seep in. A thin layer of dust became evident, coating many of the ageing data-readers stacked around them.

‘My guess,’ said Offenbach, ‘is that whoever decided to restrict your access to some parts of the data-sets doesn’t want you to find something out.’

‘They might stop me from finding those things out,’ Luc agreed, ‘but clearly that’s not a concern for you, since they can’t lock everyone out of those data-sets without attracting too much attention. So anything you feel like telling me,’ he said, glancing again at the restricted threads, ‘is just between us.’

Offenbach’s fingers tapped at the arm of his chair. ‘All right,’ he said, as if coming to a decision, ‘then let me ask you a question. Were you aware that no one has seen Sevgeny Vasili for days?’

Luc did his best to keep his face impassive. ‘How did you find that out?’

Offenbach gave him a sly look. ‘By inference, as well as observation. You know how we work: intelligent filters identify trends and highlight nodes of activity that at first glance might only appear circumstantial or unconnected. Once Reunification gets rolling, there’s going to be a massive exchange of cultural and scientific data between us and the Coalition, all mediated by Vasili. And Vasili has been at the heart of the preparations for Reunification for a very, very long time.’

‘And your point is?’

‘Up until several days ago,’ Offenbach continued with a note of triumph, ‘Vasili was all over Archives like a rash. That exchange of data I mentioned can’t take place without Vasili’s direct involvement. But now Vasili’s vanished from sight, on the cusp of something he’s been working towards for longer than most of us here have even been alive. And yet there hasn’t been a single adequate word of explanation from anyone in the Council.’

Offenbach shifted in his seat before continuing. ‘Now, I know you’ve been out of the loop since they brought you back from Aeschere, Luc, but you have to understand that unless he pops up again sometime very soon, there is going to be a major stink. And then you turn up here asking about connections between Vasili and Antonov. I think that’s what any self-respecting Master of Archives would call a significant correlation.’

Luc sighed and let his shoulders sink in defeat. ‘Fine, now that you put it that way, I suppose it’s obvious I’m interested in Vasili’s . . . recent absence.’

Offenbach leaned towards him, his manner theatrically conspiratorial. ‘This isn’t official Archives business, is it, Luc?’

‘No, it’s a commission, from a member of the Temur Council.’

‘And of course you can’t talk about it. Am I right?’

Luc shook his head ruefully. ‘I know you’re itching to find out the details, because all your stats indicators are saying something significant is up.’

‘Well, that much is obvious,’ the other man huffed. ‘A word of warning for you. Sometimes, when ordinary people get caught up in Council intrigue, their strings get yanked so hard their heads get pulled off.’

First Eleanor, and now Offenbach was taking the trouble to give him essentially the same warning. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for that delightful image.’

‘Just an observation.’ Offenbach fidgeted for a moment, and Luc sensed he was leading up to something. ‘You know, a lot of the data recovered from your trip to Aeschere is still strictly embargoed, despite our department’s protests. It leaves us just as handicapped in the fight against Black Lotus as we were before, and I have no idea just how long it’s going to be before we can get our hands on that data – assuming the Sandoz ever let us have access to it.’

Luc nodded. Offenbach wanted something in return.

‘I think I can do something for you, Jared.’

Offenbach’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Such as?’

‘I still have special access privileges to Sandoz’s own archives.’ Those privileges had been hard-won on Luc’s part, and had fostered what Vincent Hetaera had hoped would become a new era of inter-agency cooperation. From what Luc had been hearing since his recovery, that era was already proving short-lived.

‘You can get hold of the Aeschere data?’

‘It’s the least I can do,’ said Luc. ‘Is there anything else you can think of that might be useful to me?’

Offenbach thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps. But it’s not something that can necessarily be corroborated. You’d just have to take it at face value, I’m afraid.’

‘Rumour, then.’

Offenbach moved his head from side to side. ‘More than rumour, less than verifiable fact.’

‘Listening at doors, in other words.’

Offenbach leaned forward, his voice dropping to a husky half-whisper. ‘It’s my understanding that over the past several decades, Vasili became isolated not only from Father Cheng, but from the rest of the Eighty-Five. A pariah within Cheng’s inner circle, essentially.’

Luc thought about it for a moment. ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘If that were the case, Father Cheng would hardly have given him such a prestigious job as preparing the Tian Di for Reunification.’

‘But then again,’ said Offenbach, ‘who amongst his trusted advisors would Cheng have given the job to? None of them would have wanted the job. Recall that the Eighty-Five first came into existence as a pressure group within the original Temur Council, agitating for complete separation from the Coalition. And out of all of them, Vasili was easily the most vocal in that regard. Don’t you think it’s strange that one of the primary architects of the Schism wound up being given the job of rebuilding our links with the Coalition?’

‘So giving Vasili that job was a kind of punishment?’ asked Luc. And a very ironic one, if true. ‘That’s genuinely fascinating, but I can’t see the relevance.’

‘Wait,’ said Offenbach, still clearly enjoying the moment, ‘there’s more.’

He waved a hand, and the window behind him opaqued yet again, the room becoming dimmer.

‘What,’ asked Offenbach, peering from out of the shadows, ‘does the name Ariadna Placet mean to you?’

It took Luc a moment to place the name. ‘She was Director of Policy for Thorne at some point, wasn’t she?’ As, he recalled, had been Zelia de Almeida, although Placet had held the post first. ‘I seem to remember something about her suffering permanent death while she was there – an accident of some kind.’

‘But before that,’ Offenbach prompted. ‘What is it that links her to Antonov?’

‘I’m aware that she was in a relationship with him a long time ago,’ Luc replied, wondering just where Offenbach was leading him. ‘Starting from not long after the Abandonment. They were both engineers, and sided with the Tian Di Hui resistance fighters when they fought the Coalition occupying forces here on Temur.’

‘And?’

Luc sighed. He wished Offenbach would get to the point. ‘Their relationship ended long before the Schism. After Cheng took power, she enjoyed a long and fruitful career in the Temur Council until her death.’

Ariadna Placet had been one of the few Council members for whom the instantiation technology had failed. When she had died in a flier accident on Thorne, her backups proved to have been lost or corrupted.

Just like Vasili’s, Luc realized with a start.

‘What if I told you,’ Offenbach continued, ‘that there were accusations of foul play regarding her death?’

‘There was an inquest, wasn’t there?’ asked Luc, feeling a rush of adrenalin. ‘I don’t recall hearing about any such accusations.’

Offenbach grinned. ‘Then you might also be interested to know that not very long after her relationship with Antonov ended, Placet became Sevgeny Vasili’s lover.’

Luc thought of icebergs grinding together in a half-frozen sea, their vast bulks hidden in shadowy waters. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Vasili has a reputation for being a very private man,’ Offenbach continued. ‘Few people outside of the Temur Council knew about the relationship.’

‘Who made the accusation of foul play?’

‘Vasili did. He never accepted the inquest’s findings. He’s always insisted the flier Placet was in when she died must have been sabotaged or shot down on purpose, and her backups deliberately vandalized.’

Luc stared at him in amazement. ‘Why the hell have I never heard about any of this?’

‘Because it’s inner circle gossip,’ said Offenbach. ‘The kind of thing that rarely trickles down from the Eighty-Five to the likes of you and me. From what I gather, Vasili wasn’t the kind to keep quiet about his suspicions. He was absolutely convinced Placet had been murdered, along with a couple of other passengers unlucky enough to be on board the flier with her at the time. That, I think, is the reason Vasili became so isolated from Cheng and the rest of the Eighty-Five.‘

‘But if that were true, what would be the motive for murdering her?’

‘Assuming all this is true, and Vasili isn’t as crazy as the rest of the Council seem to think he is? I have no idea.’

Luc rubbed at his temple. Antonov, Vasili and Placet. ‘You’ve given me even more than you realize, Jared.’

‘That’s the beautiful thing about data,’ said Offenbach. ‘Things that only at first appear to be unconnected frequently prove, at a later date, to be intimately intertwined.’

I couldn’t have put it better, thought Luc, rising to his feet. ‘Thanks, Jared. I’ll get that Aeschere data through to you as soon as I can.’

‘I can only hope I’ve been able to help,’ replied Offenbach.

Luc headed for the door. ‘More than you can possibly imagine,’ he said as he departed.