The Road to Hell

Chapter Twenty-Five

January 15

The winter air was crisp and the sunlight crystalline as it drenched the target range on the outskirts of Portalis. The temperatures had been freezing since Jathmar and Shaylar arrived, but Arcana’s use of magic to heat their homes and offices had produced one consequence no Sharonian would have anticipated: no coal smoke. As a result, the distant tree line was a sharp, dark thicket of bare branches, undimmed by the grey smudge of urban smoke. They were as clear here with Jathmar’s eyes wide open as they would have been in this same meadow in Sharona if he’d closed his eyes and stretched out his Mapping Talent.

He drew a deeper, fuller breath than any he’d taken since their arrival at Portalis. He didn’t try his Talent-he had no desire to face either a headache or the heartache of its extremely reduced range. It was enough to enjoy the familiar bite of cold air and the joy of being outdoors. They’d been confined in one room or another since their arrival, allowed outdoors only long enough to dash into or out of the duke’s motic or ornate, improbably speedy coach for trips between Garth Showma House and wherever the current day’s inquisition happened to be located.

For this trip the shiny new motic and its driverless GC had been deemed unacceptable. The angry crowds outside the huge townhouse undoubtedly had something to do with that-the motics’ restriction to pre-set, predictable routes would have been a nightmare for the duke’s security personnel-but Jathmar wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have preferred a vehicle controlled by the central traffic system. It might have been more susceptible to ambushes, but at least he’d have been confident the journey itself wouldn’t kill him!

The duke’s black coach horses, on the other hand, had whipped through the city streets so fast his hands had gone white-knuckled gripping the seat arm while Shaylar leaned against him, eyes shut tight, the whole way. He’d braced for collision so many times he’d spent the whole city portion of the ride stiff as a brick. Yet not even that speed had prepared him for what those horses could do on open roads, like the one leading to this army post.

He’d been convinced they’d sprout wings and fly. Instead, they’d merely whipped along the open highway so fast their coach might well have outraced a bullet. Not one from a modern gun, of course, but they’d have given one of those early, slow-moving balls from a Ternathian matchlock a real run for its money.

The journey to this firing range had scared him nearly pissless. But now that they were here…He could actually breathe, out here. The knowledge that they must go back to those hateful walls, which pressed more closely and more unbearably with every day, was a physical agony he could scarcely bear. Confinement was killing them. Slowly, cruelly killing them, and they had no hope of clemency from their captors.

Jathmar intended to enjoy every moment out here to the fullest, despite the unexpectedly large, avidly curious, openly hostile audience. He turned his gaze to the viewing stands where the entire Commandery sat in a glittering array of gold and silver and bronze devices on their fancy dress uniforms: forest green and gray for the army, a crimson as vivid as any tropical fish for the navy, and the velvet-ink black of night skies for the air force. He hadn’t seen anything resembling Marines and had opted not to ask, since giving his captors new military ideas was not on his agenda.

Also seated in the viewing stands were the members of the newly appointed Parliamentary War Operations and Intelligence Committee, led by the Speaker of the Union, himself. The committee’s interest in their planned demonstration was both obvious and intense ad, unlike the military’s board of inquiry or y court, the committee included two Mythlans: one garthan and one of the shakira he’d heard so much about, during their travels and since their arrival.

The shakira-Gerail vos Durgazon, the Union minister of industry-wore a supercilious sneer that appeared to be permanently etched into his face. Jathmar had detested him on sight, and not just because prior experience had amply confirmed Gadrial and Jasak’s attitude towards shakira in general. No, he had a very specific and personal reason to detest this individual representative of Mythal’s hereditary overlords: the truly filthy way the man had looked at Shaylar. Part cold-blooded hatred, part carnal lust, and part thwarted rage, that smugly superior, violently hostile look told Jathmar Minister vos Durgazon had no intention of abiding by military regulations or Arcanan law, should Shaylar ever fall into his custody.

The garthan, on the other hand, had the gentlest, kindest eyes Jathmar had ever seen. He hadn’t expected that, particularly from a Mythlan, but Gadrial had told him Jukaru Tumnau, the Minister of Health, although unGifted, with no trace of the Healing capability, was one of Arcana’s best psychiatrists. He’d also been a close personal friend of Halathyn vos Dulainah-which helped explain the notorious bad blood between him and vos Durgazon. Tumnau wasn’t about to accept anything the Sharonians told him without considering it very, very carefully, but he wasn’t automatically hostile, despite vos Dulainah’s death. In fact, what Jathmar read most strongly in Tumnau’s eyes was an almost childlike curiosity, which rippled through a deep and glimmering compassion.

A long table stood just in front of the viewing stands. That table provided seats for the officers of Jasak’s court-martial. There were five: three Andarans, one Ransaran, and one Tukorian, and Jathmar already had cause to view all of them with a cold hostility. They’d spent the entire day, yesterday, questioning each of the witnesses in what they referred to as a mere “preliminary inquiry.” Those questions had been fairly sharp when directed at Jasak Olderhan, patient and attentive when directed at Otwal Threbuch, grim and scornful when leveled at Bok vos Hoven, and gently respectful when addressed to Gadrial Kelbryan.

As for Jathmar and his wife…

The officers had badgered them with a remorseless barrage of questions that were hostile, scathing to the point of deliberate cruelty, and contemptuous of every syllable they uttered in response. The board of inquiry before which they’d first appeared had been difficult enough initially, but its members had quickly taken their tone from Commander of Wings Brith Darma and become almost courteous. Not so the court-martial board. If he’d been inclined to be charitable-which he wasn’t-Jathmar might have put that down to the fact that they were scared to death by what had already been reported to them and were taking that fear out on the closest example of what they were frightened of. The reasons for their attitude didn’t much concern him, however; its consequences, on the other hand, most assuredly did.

Of course, he thought with a certain bitter amusement, I have to say they learned better, too, didn’t they? And a godsdamned sight quicker this time around.

His lips quirked in a smile of memory, and he shook his head. There were huge differences between Sathmin Olderhan and his own mother, but under the skin, the New Ternathian farmer’s wife and the Arcanan duchess were more alike than either of them might have believed. Duchess Garth Showma had already tolerated quite as much abuse of her son’s shardonai as she intended to, and she’d sailed into the hearing room at Shaylar’s side like a Ternathian battleship breaking an enemy line.

Commander of Twenty Thousand Helfron Dithrake, Count Sogbourne, the senior and presiding member of the empaneled court-martial, had been less than pleased to see her, though he hadn’t been stupid enough to say so in so many words. His courteous suggestion that Her Grace might, perhaps, want to await the witness in the lounge had been answered only with the sort of cold stare with which governesses reduced unruly children to terrified obedience, and the count had shown he was even smarter than Jathmar had thought by dropping that line of suggestions immediately.

Some of his colleagues had been rather less discerning, however. They’d intended to treat Shaylar as a hostile witness, and treat her as a hostile witness they had. Squadron Master Olvarn Gerandyr, the court-martial’s Navy representative and second ranking member, had led the way. Gerandyr was a Chalaran, from the Arcanan equivalent of Esferia, the enormous island off the peninsula of Yar Khom, and Thankhar Olderhan (who’d known him for over twenty-five years) had warned Jathmar he was about as tactful as a brick at the best of times. He was also, the duke had said, a man of honor who would do his best to consider the evidence, but it had been obvious the squadron master was one of those who regarded all things Sharonian-and especially Sharonians with those unnatural “Talents”-with profound suspicion.

“So, Madam Nargra-Kolmayr,” he’d begun in a sharp, aggressive tone, “you continue to assert that your ‘party of civilians’ had nothing but peaceful motives, do you? Perhaps, then, you’d care to explain why all of you were armed to the teeth? And why, when you realized there was another survey force in the area your immediate response was to run-run in a body-for the nearest portal rather than sending a single member of your group, or even a small delegation of it, to attempt to establish nonviolent contact with it? Surely people with these ‘Talents’ of yours should’ve been able to locate and contact Hundred Olderhan’s platoon without precipitating a bloodbath if you’d chosen to make that effort instead of settling into what can only be described as an ambush position!”

Shaylar had stepped back half a pace, wincing under the power of the emotions rolling off of him. Then she’d rallied.

“I’m not ‘asserting’ anything,” she’d replied in an equally sharp tone. “I’m telling you what actually happened-exactly what happened-and your own lie-detection spells should tell you I’m doing it as honestly as I possibly can.”

“Oh, really?” Gerandyr had scowled. “And how do we know our spellware even works against someone with your ‘Talent’? All we have is your word for that. And, frankly, I’m not at all convinced we should accept it. Besides that-”

“Magister Gadrial’s also explained that-” Shaylar had begun, but Gerandyr’s palm had slapped the top of the bench before him like a gunshot.

“I was speaking, Madam!” He’d glared at her, flushed with anger. “You’d do well to remember your situation here! In the eyes of this court, you and your husband-”

“Are my son’s shardonai.” Sathmin Olderhan’s cold, clear voice had cut through Gerandyr’s bluster like a scalpel. It had also snapped the ship master’s eyes to her, and her smile had been even colder than her words.

“Shaylar and Jathmar come under the house honor of House Olderhan and the civil protection of the Duchy of Garth Showma under the provisions of the Code of Housip,” she’d continued with merciless precision, “and that code-like the Kerellian Accords-was given formal force of law and incorporated into the Articles of War-by the Union’s Constitution at the time it was drafted. They are members of my family, Squadron Master, and I’ll thank you to remember that!”

“Your Grace,” Gerandyr had started, “I was merely-”

“I know precisely what you were doing, Olvarn Gerandyr,” the duchess had said crisply. “However, you will not verbally abuse, or threaten, or attempt to frighten a member of my family! Shaylar is not your prisoner, nor is she accused of any crime. The worst that can possibly be alleged against her is that she and her companions defended themselves against attack by a far larger force of trained soldiers. That they did it superlatively well is to their credit and no grounds for abusing her when she and her husband are captives so far from home! If you wish to lodge formal charges against her, then I invite you to do so.” She’d bared her teeth. “I don’t think you’d like how that would turn out, Ship Master, but by all means try, if that’s what you want. In the meantime, however, you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head when you interrogate a member of my family.” She’d paused, sweeping the assembled, momentarily petrified court with cold eyes.

“I trust,” she’d added then in velvet tones wrapped around a dagger of ice, “that I’ve made myself clear?”

She had.

Under the circumstances, the court had decided to excuse Shaylar from any further examination that day and allowed her to return to Garth Showma House. Clearly, they’d hoped the duchess would go with her.

She hadn’t.

With Shaylar absent, Jathmar had, perforce, borne the brunt of the officers’ questions about Sharona, but with the duchess sitting silent and watchful at his side, they’d been remarkably calm, even courteous about it. They hadn’t been any less suspicious or thorough, but they’d definitely watched how they asked those questions, and he was just as happy they’d been asking them of him. He might not be good at lying and prevaricating, but he was better at it than Shaylar. He’d succeeded in tiptoeing through the brutal day without once tripping the lie-detection spell’s alarm, which he considered quite an achievement.

But today, thank all the gods of Faltharia, he wouldn’t be formally testifying in a witness chair. He had little doubt he’d be questioned; but he felt more capable out here, more in control and far more comfortable with the subject matter at hand. Even breathing fresh, clean open air helped.

Jasak was explaining his plan to the officers of the court. Jathmar watched their faces, predicting an outburst at any moment. That outburst came twenty seconds later.

“Are you mad, sir?” Count Sogbourne demanded incredulously. “Allow a prisoner to touch-to operate-a terror weapon? In the presence of the Commandery of Arcana and the entire War Ops and Intel Committee? Including your own father and Speaker Skyntaru? Not to mention us? Are you mad?”

The “us” in question was the glittering row of officers selected to try Jasak, who remained perfectly calm and formally at ease.

“Jathmar Nargra is the most appropriate person to demonstrate these weapons, Sir,” he replied in a patient, firm tone. “My father, by the way, concurs with that opinion, because Jathmar understands their function and operation far better than I do. And he’s not going to commit suicide and leave his wife alone to face a lifetime of imprisonment, either, I assure you!”

His argument made perfect sense to Jathmar, but no member of the court was likely to care very much what he thought. For that matter, they didn’t seem overly impressed by what Duke Garth Showma thought, either.

Under the circumstances, he wasn’t surprised when Sogbourne insisted Jasak conduct the demonstration. In fact, they’d all expected that reaction, and Jathmar had spent two and a half hours the previous evening coaching Jasak on how to load and operate the rifle and handgun they planned to use today. Jasak had already fired each type of weapon, but that had been weeks and eighty-five thousand miles-and a multitude of universes-ago. Firing a weapon someone else had loaded, just enough times to realize its true power, was hardly sufficient preparation for a demonstration of this kind.

So Jathmar had coached him, resisting the fleeting notion of teaching him an incorrect technique that would cause the Commandery to dismiss the guns as unreliable and far less effective than they really were. It was so tempting he could taste it, but he couldn’t do that without putting Jasak at risk of serious injury, and he wouldn’t-dared not-risk the death of Jasak Olderhan.

He needed Jasak to stand between them and the rest of Arcana, beginning with the men in those bleachers. And truth be told, he liked Jasak. They were enemies, yet in an odd way he also regarded Jasak as a friend. Not a confidante. That was impossible. Nor did Jathmar feel the same easy camaraderie that he’d shared with his fellow survey crewmen. That, too, was impossible.

But Jathmar knew he could rely on Jasak Olderhan. He’d seen enough of Jasak’s interactions with superior officers, during “conversations” where he and Shaylar had been the sole subject of discussion, to know nothing would cause Jasak to deviate from the protection he offered. Watching Jasak’s father and even-or perhaps especially-his mother had merely reinforced Jathmar’s inclination to trust Jasak Olderhan’s word.

Those parents had raised the man who’d courteously but firmly refused every threat, bribe, and offer made in demand of turning them over to the speaker of the moment, in a dizzying and depressingly long line of speakers and tense moments. And that mother had descended upon the court-martial board which had traumatized Shaylar like the gods’ own wrath because Jasak had given his prisoners his word that he and his would protect them from anything. Whatever else might happen, Jathmar trusted Jasak Olderhan’s word, in a world where he could trust no one and nothing else.

So he’d gone to Jasak’s apartments and carefully and correctly taught him how to safely load, fire, and chamber a new round to fire again until convinced that Jasak could perform the drill on his own-safely-with a live-fire demonstration.

And so it was Jasak who strode out to the shooting bench on Fort North Hathak’s target range. Fortunately for him, there was very little breeze today, so he wouldn’t have to contend with bullet drift caused by high gusting winds. It had snowed a little overnight, but the sky was perfectly clear now.

Jathmar watched Sogbourne with a sense of intense satisfaction. The true danger this morning hadn’t been the threat of arming a prisoner in the presence of senior officers. It had been the inadequacy of High Hathak’s shooting range.

Its earthen berms were built to stop arbalest bolts, which had a maximum range of no more than eight hundred yards even from the Arcanan Army’s spell-assisted weapons. They were, to put it mildly, insufficient to stop heavy rifle bullets from a weapon with a maximum range which was four or five times that.

The look of horror on the faces of the Arcanan officers when Jathmar explained the problem during the questioning yesterday had been grimly satisfying.

“A mile?” Sogbourne had gasped. “Your hand-held weapons can kill a man a mile away?”

“There are some rifles that can take down a target even father away than that. Actually, the maximum range of the most recent rifles is as much as three miles, but I’ve never met anyone who could actually hit a target at that range. On the other hand, there are specially tuned weapons-we call them ‘sniper rifles’-which can hit a man-sized target at two thousand yards,” he’d added.

“‘Sniper’?” the count had repeated the Sharonian word carefully.

Jathmar had enjoyed that reaction, as well.

“Yes. The men who use them are called snipers. Their job is to find a vantage point like a branch in a tree or a spot partway up a rocky hillside or on top of a cliff. Once hidden, they locate and shoot specific targets-high ranking officers, artillery crews, soldiers who are particularly effective on a battlefield, or even visiting civilian dignitaries.”

He’d met horrified stares with a cool, level gaze and let the protests roll off his back.

“That’s murder!”

“It’s barbaric!”

“As barbaric as burning a man to death?” He’d raised an eyebrow. “I assure you, from personal experience, I’d far rather be shot from a mile away by a trained sniper than roasted alive.”

The silence in the courtroom had been profound, to say the least. If they’d expected him to be cowed they’d been grievously disappointed. He hadn’t been rude. He hadn’t been aggressive. He hadn’t even been belligerent. But he wasn’t going to roll belly up and let them eviscerate him, either-not yesterday and not ever. Pride was damned near all he had left.

Wringing sweat from the officers of Jasak Olderhan’s court-martial board was a fair accomplishment for a man figuratively in chains. As for the weapons demonstration, Jathmar had suggested stacking up piles of sandbags to strengthen the range’s berms, and now he felt a stir of satisfaction as he noted how high and deep the soldiers of Fort North Hathak had piled them. The targets they’d be using were, according to Jasak, standard military arbalest targets, and the range officer had set up a series of them at varying distances to demonstrate the effective ranges of both the handguns and the rifles.

Now Jasak picked up a scissor-action rifle and carefully loaded it with one round. He used great care in following the drill Jathmar had taught him, loading the tube-fed magazine through the loading gate, working the action to chamber the round, releasing the safety, lifting and anchoring the buttplate in the pocket of his shoulder, aligning the sights and carefully, gently squeezing the trigger.

Jathmar heard a faint mechanical click.

That was all.

Jasak stood uncertainly where he was, not sure what to do next. He glanced over one shoulder, carefully keeping the muzzle pointed down range.

“Jathmar? What happened? What did I do wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, genuinely baffled. “From what I could see, you didn’t do anything wrong. Work the action to eject the cartridge, then lay the rifle on the firing bench and bring me the cartridge case.”

Jasak nodded and followed his instructions meticulously. When Jasak handed him the unfired cartridge, Jathmar frowned. So did Shaylar, peering past his shoulder.

“That’s odd,” she said, gazing down at the cartridge on his palm.

“Yes. It is.” Jathmar scratched the back of his neck. “I’m damned if I can figure it out.”

The firing pin had punched a neat divot in the primer cup, a small metal cup inserted into the base of the cartridge case. Just as it should have done. But the primer had failed to ignite the powder.

“Maybe there was no priming compound in the cup?” Shaylar suggested.

“Maybe.” Jathmar was dubious, despite its being the likeliest explanation. Their ammunition was one thing on which Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl had refused to cut corners when it came down to supplying his crew. Ternathian Imperial Armory case-stamp was the only ammunition he’d allowed them to carry. And Jathmar frowned as he met Shaylar’s perplexed gaze.

“If this was one of those fly-by-night Uromathian brands, slopped together by a manufacturer more interested in profits than turning out a reliable product, I’d suspect something like that. But this is Ternathian Imperial Armory.

“It’s the civilian case-stamp, not the military, but I’ve never-not once-seen a TIA cartridge misfire. Neither had Ghartoun. That’s why he insisted we carry it. Even Barris Kassell agreed, and he’d been in the military before he joined our crew. That’s why most survey crews carry TIA cartridges and reloading supplies: primer cups, powders, and bullets.”

“Well, something went wrong, love,” she pointed out practically, and he nodded.

“Yes, it did,” he agreed, and turned back to Jasak. “Pull five rounds of the correct caliber from five separate boxes of ammunition, Jasak, just to be sure we haven’t got a bad batch. If the rifle doesn’t fire, work the action to eject the cartridge and pull the trigger again.”

Commander of Twenty-Thousand Sogbourne stared intently at Jathmar.

“You think like a soldier,” he said.

“A soldier?” Jathmar echoed. “Hardly, Sir. I don’t know the first thing about the military. Faltharia doesn’t even have an army. We’ve never needed one,” he added, as shock detonated in Sogbourne’s eyes-and Jasak Olderhan’s, as well. Jathmar shrugged. “I’m a good outdoorsman, is all. I’ve spent most of my life in wild country, whether it was a major wildlife park on Sharona or the wilderness of a barely settled or newly discovered universe at the frontier. When your life depends on attention to your equipment, you’re careful with everything related to the weapons you count on. You develop the same careful habits I’ve seen in Hundred Olderhan when it comes to caring for and using a tool as important as a sword and arbalest…or a rifle.”

Sogbourne’s eyes narrowed slightly. “There’s a great deal of interesting information in what you’ve said. Very well, Hundred Olderhan, pull the ammunition from different boxes and let’s see the results.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Jasak returned to the shooting bench. He pulled out the ammunition. Loaded the rifle with great care. Lifted it to his shoulder. Took careful aim. Pulled the trigger. Worked the action. Pulled the trigger again. The result was five mechanical clicks, five perfectly punched primer cups, and zero fired rounds. When Jasak recovered the rounds from the ground and brought them over to him, Jathmar stared at the unfired cartridges in baffled consternation.

“It can’t be the ammunition,” he frowned. “Did you bring any of the reloading tools out here with you, Jasak?”

“We brought one of everything we found in your camp. Including the loaded gear bags.”

“Good. I need to see them.”

Jasak escorted Shaylar and Jathmar out to the shooting benches, since she insisted on coming along. Commander of One Thousand Solvar Rinthrak, another of the officers from Jasak’s court-martial, also insisted on following them, and while the others watched closely, Jathmar used the tools in the reloading kit Jasak had brought to pry the bullets out of the cartridge cases. He tipped out the powder, piling it up on the table, then used a punch to remove the priming cups. He felt squeamish about doing that to “live” primers. There wasn’t enough explosive compound in a primer cup to do real damage, but the very idea of hammering on a primer that hadn’t been fired went against the grain.

Once he’d removed all five primer cups, he tipped them over in his palm and examined them closely. There was nothing wrong with them. The dried film of liquid explosive used as priming compound coated their interior exactly as it was supposed to. That film was shock sensitive, igniting under the sharp jolt of a firing pin, and he could see the primer painted into the cups. There were no voids, no spots where the coating was thinned out to let bare metal show through.

They should have fired.

Shaylar echoed that thought aloud. “They should have fired, Jathmar.”

“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying a hell of a lot, considering where we’re standing, right now.”

Shaylar had the temerity to chuckle, which startled Sogbourne into staring at her.

“Well, it is funny,” she told him, meeting his rather hostile scowl with a smile. “We see things that are flat-out impossible every day. Every hour. Even the way the bathroom works is weird enough to raise gooseflesh. But even with all of that, I have to agree with my husband. Those cartridges should have fired. But they didn’t. And that’s just as impossible as anything we’ve seen in your civilization.”

Sogbourne’s scowl shifted into a thoughtful frown.

“Maybe I did something wrong?” Jasak suggested.

“I was watching you very closely and I didn’t see you do anything wrong. Certainly not wrong enough to cause this.” He held up the five unfired cartridges, then added the first one Jasak had tried to fire to the pile. “One might be a fluke. But six…” He shook his head. “I don’t know why, but they simply failed to fire, and they should have.”

Gadrial, who’d been sitting quietly in the row of chairs reserved for witnesses, called out a request to join them.

“Yes, please, Magister Gadrial.” Sogbourne nodded. “Perhaps you can explain what’s going on.”

She crossed quickly to the shooting bench and stood beside Jasak while Jathmar explained the problem.

“How are they supposed to work?” she asked.

Jathmar glanced at Shaylar, who shrugged. He started to refuse, but then he returned her shrug, instead.

Why not? he thought. They can’t duplicate a formula that tricky to make from a generalized description.

So he explained the process of manufacturing the liquid explosive, explained how and why the spark from a tiny, controlled explosion caused the powder charge to burn, generating gas that was confined in such a small space that it pushed with terrific force against the place of least resistance: the bullet, which was merely held in place by a small crimp in the metal rim of the cartridge case. The one thing he didn’t explain was the ingredient list for the priming compound and powder. He preferred to keep that secret for as long as he could.

“It’s a very simple, very basic process of chemistry and physics,” he finished the explanation, “but the manufacturing process is something I don’t understand very well. I’m told it’s difficult to make some of the ingredients and the steps in combining them are very complex. Even small variations can ruin a batch. But I’ve given you the basics as I understand them.”

When Sogbourne glanced at Shaylar, she said, “Don’t look at me. Jathmar knows more about it than I do. I can shoot a rifle or a handgun and I’ve learned how to reload cartridges, but I don’t have the slightest idea how they make the components.” When Sogbourne looked at her with a clearly skeptical frown, she said, “Does a non-Gifted person have to understand how the spells that operate a cook stove are put together? How and why they work? Does a non-Gifted person need to know every single line of the incantations that run a slider chain or operate the controls that heat or cool your house?”

“Point well taken,” Gadrial nodded. Then she grinned. “Very well taken, in fact.”

Sogbourne glared at Gadrial and Shaylar with a belligerent air, then he muttered, “Oh, all right. Point taken.” But his eyes remained suspicious.

“So the primer explodes, which causes the powder to burn, which creates pressure?” Gadrial asked.

“That’s right.”

“How much pressure?”

“It varies from one type of gun to another and it varies from one type of ammunition to another.”

“Why?” Sogbourne asked, frowning again.

“When the length of the cartridge case changes, you can either pack in more powder or be forced to put in less, depending on whether it’s larger or smaller. The size of the grains of powder and the number of those grains determines how much pressure will develop inside the case. Beyond that, some gun types are more robust than others, which means you can safely add more powder to a cartridge, generate higher pressures, and end up with higher speeds for the bullet when it leaves the gun barrel.

“When you start reusing them in the field, you also have to take into account how old your cases are. If a case is new or nearly new, you can put more powder into it than into an older case. Older ones are more brittle from the heat generated by repeated firing, which can cause them to split or tear apart inside the chamber if you load them as heavily as you would a new case.

“You also have to consider how high the metal quality is to start with. The metal in the gun, itself, is a factor. An old gun that’s been fired thousands of times is more likely to crack or split during use than a new gun. If the metal quality’s lousy to start with, you can create problems from the very outset. I’ve seen guns with parts that sheared off, from cheap metallurgy and shoddy manufacturing and poor maintenance, and a couple of those broken guns caused serious injury to the men shooting them. So you see, there isn’t an easy or definitive answer to your question.”

“Well,” she responded reasonably enough, “what about this gun?” She pointed at the rifle Jasak had tried to fire. “With this ammunition?”

“That combination would yield about forty thousand pounds per square inch of pressure inside the cartridge case and the rifle’s chamber. That kind of pressure would propel a bullet of this size, shape, and weight at a bit over two thousand feet per second at the muzzle. The speed drops, of course, once it leaves the gun, but it’s still moving fast enough to kill a man a mile or more away.”

Sogbourne stared at him, his horror at the weapon’s power once again clearly evident. “No wonder those accursed things blow flesh apart!”

“Yes,” Gadrial said, but she was frowning thoughtfully. “But if this is merely a physical process, a simple burning of natural compounds that works in your universe, but not in ours, we need to find out why it doesn’t work here. It may be that some step in the manufacturing process used to make these cartridges renders them inoperable here, although I can’t imagine what that might be.”

“Neither can I,” Jathmar agreed.

“I find it interesting that your Talents don’t work as well here and your weapons apparently don’t work at all. It’s odd…very odd.…”

Her voice trailed off, and then a sudden flare of inspiration lit her eyes. She met Sogbourne’s gaze. “I want Jathmar to try shooting the rifle.”

“What use would that be?” Sogbourne asked sharply. “And I still don’t want a prisoner to handle a weapon.”

“If it doesn’t function in our universe,” Gadrial said in a patient, reasonable tone, “there’s no risk in letting him hold it. It wouldn’t be anything more dangerous than a simple wooden stick. Speaking as a scientist, Twenty Thousand Sogbourne, I want as complete a dataset as possible. Right now we have only one set of data to work with: the priming compound doesn’t ignite the powder, or it doesn’t ignite the powder because Jasak Olderhan is operating the rifle.”

Sogbourne stared at her as though she’d taken leave of her senses. So did Jathmar. Even Shaylar was astonished. He could feel it even through their malfunctioning marriage bond.

“Frankly, Sir,” Gadrial went on, raking one hand through her hair, which promptly rearranged itself into the sleek coif she’d laid a spell to create this morning, “that’s seriously insufficient data. Scientific research demands that we find a way to prove that something will work. We already know this weapon works under some conditions. What we need to know is how to make it work under our conditions. That’s the basis of good magisterial science.”

Jathmar blinked in surprise. “Your science is based proving something can work, instead of looking for conditions that prove it doesn’t?”

Gadrial blinked in turn. “Your scientists look for ways to prove a theory doesn’t work? How in the world do you ever manage to invent anything?”

“I don’t mean inventing technology,” Jathmar tried to explain. “I mean coming up with ways to explain how the universes work. You start with a hypothesis, an idea. You test it every conceivable way to see if any of those conditions cause the idea to fail. If it fails, your hypothesis was wrong. Only after multiple people have tested it in many different ways, over a long period of time, does everyone assume it’s true, that it’s an accurate description of how the universes work.

“But it’s still considered only a theory. If any new data come to light that causes the idea or even part of the idea to fail, then the theory has to be revised or eliminated and replaced with a new theory that includes the new discovery. Then that new idea is tested again and again before it’s assumed to be valid.”

Gadrial looked stunned. “That’s…my God, Jathmar, that’s backwards, totally opposite of the way magisters approach scientific research-”

“I fail to see the need to discuss this nonsense,” Sogbourne growled. “We’re here to demonstrate Sharonian battlefield equipment, not develop new explanations of science! We don’t have time to waste on folderol and curiosities of the magisterial mind!”

Gadrial’s eyes glinted. “Oh, really? Then you’d better resign yourself to losing this war.”

“Why?” Sogbourne demanded.

“Because this,” she pointed at the malfunctioning rifle, “is the greatest scientific mystery to come along in two centuries. Their Talents don’t work properly in our core universes. Their military technology doesn’t work properly here, either. If their technology doesn’t work in our universes, it’s logical to assume our technology won’t work in theirs.”

Sogbourne swallowed hard. “Oh, dear gods…”

“Yes. This isn’t some mere ‘curiosity of the magisterial mind.’ It’s a matter of Arcana’s survival if we can’t find some way out of this shooting war with Sharona. This,” she touched the rifle, “is simply an object. It either works or it doesn’t work. It worked in the battle of Toppled Timber, in a pristine universe. It worked on the way back to Arcana, when Jasak and Otwal Threbuch and I fired them at targets made of paper. But it doesn’t work now. To find out why it doesn’t, we have to start testing it under as wide a variety of variables as possible, to see if we can find a condition under which it does work. The most obvious variable is also the easiest and fastest to test. Jathmar’s people built this object. Jathmar’s used it many times, and so has Shaylar. Let one of them operate it and see what does-or doesn’t-happen.”

Sogbourne frowned. “I don’t like it,” he muttered. “You don’t hand a prisoner a weapon.”

“There are enough armed soldiers here to turn Jathmar into a crisped pincushion if he tries to attack one of us. Are you planning to stand there quoting regulations or do you intend to try winning this war?”

“Magister Gadrial-” Sogbourne glowered at her. “You’re obviously going to be as great a pain in the arse as Magister Halathyn ever was. Maybe greater. Oh, all right, I withdraw my veto. Conduct your research. I just hope to hell you know what you’re doing.”

“I haven’t a clue,” she said brightly, “But I mean well. And I guarantee I’ll know more in just a few moments.” She rested a hand on Sogbourne’s arm and said more seriously, “You have your duty to Arcana, Sir, and I have mine. You may trust that I’ll take that duty very seriously, indeed.”

He sighed and nodded. “Very well, let him proceed.”

“Thank you, Commander.” She turned to Jathmar. “All right, Jathmar. Let’s find out what happens.”

Jathmar turned to Jasak. “Will you go with me to the firing line, please? I’d like someone from Arcana to observe closely what I do. I don’t want anyone to doubt my actions-or my intentions.”

The request caught even Jasak by surprise, but the hundred’s eyes glinted with amusement. “Of course, Jathmar. That’s a very accommodating request. In fact, I’d like to ask an officer of the court to accompany us to the firing line, if you don’t mind?”

“That’s a good suggestion,” Jathmar nodded.

Sogbourne stepped forward briskly. “Let’s go,” he said, eying Jathmar with curious speculation.

Jathmar pulled ammunition from several boxes, as he’d asked Jasak to do, then loaded carefully. “Very well, gentlemen, shall we see what happens when I try to fire it?”

Sogbourne nodded.

Jathmar lifted the rifle with care, moving slowly enough to keep the suspicious guards satisfied that he wasn’t going to shoot any of the officers or ministers of Parliament. He sighted carefully, acquired the x-ring on the paper target, and squeezed gently on the trigger. He wasn’t entirely certain what to expect, having witnessed that inexplicable series of misfires.

So he squeezed gently down on the trigger, taking up the slight amount of slack, waiting for the crisp snap as carefully machined inner parts sent the firing pin forward through the breechface, into the primer.

A sharp c-r-a-c-k! tore the crisp morning air. The rifle had fired. But the buttplate had barely nudged Jathmar’s shoulder. He stared down the barrel past the front sight at the target, which was pristine. It was only fifty yards away. There was no wind. His sight alignment had been perfect, he knew it had been, but the bullet hadn’t struck the target. He hadn’t missed a shot that simple since childhood.

He peered at the rifle in consternation. It had fired, which was comforting to his violated sense of normalcy, but the recoil had been so puny as to be almost non-existent and the bullet had failed to punch a target only fifty yards away. Even the sound of the rifle had been off. That sharp crack wasn’t anything like the deep-throated bellow the Ternathian Model 9511 was famous for producing when fired. That characteristic roar had earned the rifle its most common nickname: Thundergun. Only this Thundergun had barely wheezed.

Jasak’s voice punched through his shock.

“It fired!” Jasak was saying again and again. “It fired. But why? I don’t understand. It fired.”

“Ye-e-s-s,” Jathmar said slowly, “but it didn’t fire properly.”

Sogbourne frowned. “What do you mean by that? Explain.”

Jathmar scratched the side of his head, trying to figure out where to begin. He was still scratching when Gadrial called out a request to join them at the firing line. A moment later, she and Shaylar were standing beside the shooting bench, staring down at the rifle in Jathmar’s puzzled hands.

“Well,” Jathmar said, “for one thing, the sound was wrong. Much too quiet.”

“Quiet?” Sogbourne gaped. “That hellish crack was quiet?”

“You know,” Jasak frowned, “now you mention it, the noise was louder the last time we shot this gun.”

“Yes,” Jathmar said, although his voice was distracted by the thoughts colliding uselessly in his head. “For another thing, the recoil was all wrong. It was much too soft.”

“Recoil?” Sogbourne asked.

“Yes, the recoil that occurs when the gun is fired. The release of all that gas pressure moving forward shoves the butt of the rifle, this part,” he carefully moved the rifle into a new position, muzzle-up, to show them which part of the rifle was the butt-plate, “back against my shoulder.”

“Why?” Jasak asked, looking mystified.

“Because of physics. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. When the gas propels the bullet forward at such a high speed, with all that tremendous gas pressure, the energy released propels the rifle backwards, in an equal and opposite direction. The bullet goes one way and the rifle goes the other way, so it punches your shoulder. The faster the bullet moves out of the gun barrel, the more energy there is to slam backwards. If you have a big, heavy gun, some of the weight will tend to compensate, but there’s still an opposite reaction. The gun will travel backwards while the bullet travels forwards, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

The Arcanans, he discovered, were staring at him as though he’d lost his mind.

“Ah, Jathmar,” Gadrial said carefully, “that’s a very interesting theory. But it doesn’t work that way here.”

Others were shaking their heads.

“But that’s impossible,” Shaylar said. “There’s always a reaction.”

“Oh, well we’re familiar with the idea of recoil,” Gadrial reassured her. “We just don’t let it get in the way.”

“‘Get in the way’?” Jathmar repeated. “That’s one of the basic laws of physics. It underlies everything. It has to ‘get in the way,’ Gadrial!”

Gadrial’s brow furrowed. “Not here. Half of what we do on a daily basis wouldn’t work if that was a physical law underlying everything. Heavens above, dragons couldn’t fly if we had to worry about silly things like recoil all the time!.”

Jasak Olderhan exchanged a long and worried look with Commander of Twenty-Thousand Sogbourne.

“I want to shoot this,” Gadrial said abruptly. “I shot it before. I want to shoot it again. Jathmar, I’ve forgotten how to operate it. Could you show me again, please?”

“Well, certainly, if you really want to.” He loaded it for her, slipping half-a-dozen rounds into the tube-fed magazine, worked the action to chamber a round, then showed her again how to hold it, how to aim it, and how to fire it. She had trouble holding it steady and on target, because the weapon was much too heavy for her, but she did a creditable job of aligning everything, and then she squeezed the trigger…

It clicked.

Just clicked. Not even a crack, let alone a roar.

Jathmar stared in utter consternation.

“That’s impossible!” he blurted. “Why didn’t it fire? It should have. It just did!” He did something he shouldn’t have done. It wasn’t safe. It certainly wasn’t smart. He took the gun from Gadrial, thumbed back the exposed hammer to cock it without working the action, tucked it against his shoulder, and squeezed.

C-r-a-c-k!

The buttplate jostled his shoulder. The target remained pristine, but the cartridge that had failed to fire for Gadrial had fired on the first try for him. He nearly dropped the rifle. In fact, he had to fumble for it as the gun started to slide out of his numb hands and a film of sweat broke out across his whole body. His hands actually shook as he lowered the rifle gingerly to the shooting bench.

Jathmar stared at Gadrial.

She stared back.

“That’s impossible,” he said, voice flat with shock.

“Why?” Jasak asked, brow furrowed.

“It just is,” Jathmar insisted. “The primer should have worked for Gadrial, too.”

“Does this kind of thing ever happen in Sharona?” Gadrial asked.

Jathmar started to answer, then halted. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “there are misfires or hang fires. A misfire is a cartridge that doesn’t function at all. A hang-fire is one that for some reason doesn’t ignite properly. It goes off more slowly, usually due to the powder not burning at the proper rate, which is one reason we always point a gun’s muzzle downrange, away from anything we don’t want to shoot. A hang-fire can go off a second or two later.”

“Maybe,” Jasak suggested, “we should experiment with more shooters?”

Jathmar nodded, feeling dazed.

Ten minutes later, he was so confused, he could barely think straight. It was flatly impossible, but they’d given it a thorough, rigorous testing. When Jasak Olderhan, Gadrial Kelbryan, or Twenty Thousand Sogbourne tried to fire a Sharonian gun, nothing happened. When Jathmar or Shaylar pulled the trigger, the gun fired-but with only a fraction of its original power. A bullet that should have nailed a target a thousand yards away wouldn’t travel fifty. They had to move the target back to the twenty-five yard line before Jathmar’s bullet would even reach it.

Even Twenty Thousand Sogbourne was puzzled by the admittedly weird performance of Jathmar’s hunting rifle. “What’s going on, Magister Gadrial?” he demanded in exasperation.

“I don’t know. Jathmar, tell me again how the guns work. What makes the bullet leave the gun?”

Jathmar drew a deep breath and launched into another explanation of powders and primers and gas expansion. He told her what gunpowder was, how and why it burned, what priming compounds were and why and how they exploded when struck with a sharp blow. He didn’t do a very good job of it, in part because he was thoroughly rattled and in part because he wasn’t an expert in arms manufacture or the chemistry of weapons development. But he told her what he could.

Gadrial listened intently.

“In essence,” she said with a frown that only seemed abstracted, since Jathmar was perfectly well aware of how agile her mind was, “what you’re describing is the incarnation of motive energies, which are harnessed through a distillation process that transfers their latent arcane energy from the etheric plane to the physical, and the action of this device, this ‘fire-making pin,’ is a physically expressed incantation that causes the latent motive energies distilled in these various compounds to combine in a sudden, complex spell of release. Ye gods, Jathmar, it’s mind boggling!”

Jathmar’s mind was certainly boggled, since he hadn’t understood a single word of that crazy mishmash. Judging by their expressions, neither had Shaylar or even Jasak Olderhan and Twenty Thousand Sogbourne. Gadrial, however, was gazing at the rifle with a smile of childlike delight. She moved with sudden authority, taking Jathmar by surprise.

There were five more rounds loaded in the magazine. Gadrial racked the action like a seasoned pro, creating a crisp, metallic shlack-shlack, the characteristic sound of a cycling scissor-action. Before Jathmar could even open his mouth to protest, Gadrial had lifted the gun to her shoulder, more-or-less sighted on the target, and yanked the trigger.

C-R-A-A-A-A-C-K!

Gadrial dropped the rifle.

Then stood there, gulping hard and staring down at the gun as though it had transformed itself into a venomous snake. She finally looked up. Looked around, searching almost frantically for Jathmar.

“It worked,” she whispered. Her lips had gone unaccountably dry.

“I noticed,” he croaked. His voice emerged as a hoarse, frog-like sound-a hoarse, frog-like sound even feebler and far fainter to ears stunned by the thunderous blast of a Thundergun which had just functioned perfectly.

“No,” she shook her head, eyes wide in growing fright, “you don’t understand. It worked. Not the rifle. I mean, that worked, too. It wasn’t the rifle I meant. Wasn’t the rifle I was talking about. Or testing.”

“Gadrial,” Jasak said in a down-to-earth voice, “you’re not making sense.”

She didn’t even seem to hear him, because she was too busy turning parchment white and battling the tremors that had begun to shake through her slender body.

“It shouldn’t have worked!” she said on a note of rising alarm that was heading rapidly toward panic and the onset of hysteria. “I didn’t expect it to work!” she gasped. “It was just a crazy idea, a half-baked notion that flashed into my head, an idea so nutty, I didn’t even stop to think it through. If I had, I would never have tried to shoot that…that thing.” She shuddered, staring down at the rifle on the ground with genuine horror in her eyes. “It was just a crazy idea, but my God, it worked. Rahil’s mercy…” She wrapped both arms around herself. “It’s impossible,” she whispered, lifting her gaze to stare into Jathmar’s totally bewildered eyes. She was shivering so hard, Jasak peeled off his uniform’s coat and wrapped her up in it.

“Jasak,” she gripped one of his hands in both of hers, “Jasak, what I just did-” she gulped. “I just took everything we thought we knew about reality and turned it inside out and upside down and raveled out half the garment we call physics.” She stared down at the rifle again and bit her lip. “Jasak, I’m scared.”

Jathmar glanced from Gadrial to Shaylar, who was as baffled as he was.

“But why?” Jasak asked. He, too, was bewildered. So was Sogbourne, by the look on his face, and more than a little worried, as well, since whatever Gadrial had just done had terrified a woman who was high on a very short list of candidates for the best theoretical magician in the whole of Arcana’s civilization. When Jathmar realized that, he felt an abrupt stab of sudden, unadulterated terror. What the hell had Gadrial just discovered?!

“Gadrial,” Jasak said in a tone that was abruptly stern, “what have you done, just now? What have you discovered? And why has it scared you out of your seriously intelligent wits?”

“What?” she asked as though dazed.

He took her by the shoulders in a grip so firm, it was just shy of shaking her. That grip forced her to meet his gaze. “What have you just discovered?” he asked again. “And why has it scared a year off our lives?”

She gulped. Shivered. Pulled Jasak’s coat more tightly about her shoulders. “The connection I made,” she whispered, “about Jathmar’s ability to shoot the rifle you couldn’t. It isn’t what their weapons can do, Jasak, that’s a danger to Arcana. That’s so minor, it’s hardly worth mentioning-”

“Now see here,” Sogbourne snapped. “What the devil does that mean? Their terror weapons are minor? Weapons that blow apart human flesh? That can destroy an entire platoon in a matter of minutes? Have you lost your Ransaran mind?”

“No. I haven’t.” Gadrial’s hoarse whisper sent chills down Jathmar’s spine. “But what their weapons do is the least of our worries. It’s what they believe that will destroy us. Unless we’re very, very careful.”

* * *

Thankhar Olderhan sat gazing into the heart of the message crystal badged with the logo of Halka amp; Associates while cold, dark despair flowed through him.

He stared at it, longing for some spell to obliterate it, to change history so it had never been sent-would never be sent. But no magister had ever devised that spell, and no power in all the universes could protect him from what he had to do now.

He set the crystal on his blotter and leaned back in his chair, massaging his temples with both hands, trying to grapple with all the implications. Trying to imagine all the things he still didn’t know about this entire Jambakol-spawned monstrosity…and about who was deliberately shaping it into an even greater monstrosity.

He knew Commander of Two Thousand Mayrkos Harshu. Not well, but he’d met the man, spoken with him-even been briefed by him once. What he didn’t know was how the man he’d thought he knew could have lent himself to something like this, whatever the “military necessity” which might have justified it. Gods! How could someone as intelligent as Harshu fail to understand what this would do to the Army-to the entire Union-when it inevitably got out?!

And deservedly so.

Yet even that paled beside what he knew he had to do now. Not in its inter-universal implications, perhaps. But on the personal scale, the scale where the things which made a man of honor who and what he was mattered, it was infinitely worse than any macro political considerations could ever be, and he wished with all his heart that he wasn’t a man of honor, because then he could have avoided it.

He lowered his hands to the blotter, laying them on either side of the crystal, and sat for another thirty silent seconds. Then he drew a deep breath and rose with the expression of a man about to face a firing squad.

* * *

Shaylar looked up from the Andaran history book displayed on the crystal in her lap as the soft, musical chime sounded. She glanced across at Jathmar, who was immersed in quite a different book. His Andaran was still weaker than her own, but he’d been wading through the crystal-A Basic Introduction to Theoretical Magic, by Halathyn vos Dulainah-ever since the firearms demonstration. Gadrial had provided it at his request, and he was determined to somehow reconcile the differences between the Arcanan and the Sharonian concepts of science.

Somehow, she doubted he’d have much luck in that endeavor. Not that there was the remotest possibility of dissuading him from the attempt.

The chime sounded again, and she smiled faintly as Jathmar read on, oblivious to everything outside his crystal. Obviously, it was up to her.

She set her own book aside, climbed out of the comfortable, floating chair, and crossed the sitting room. She opened the door, and her eyebrows rose as the servant in the hallway bobbed a curtsy.

“Yes?” Shaylar asked as pleasantly as she could.

The acute hatred which had poured off of some of the Olderhan servants had eased considerably over the last week, for which she was grateful. The most hate-filled had simply disappeared, although she didn’t know if Sathmin Olderhan had found them other positions on another of the Olderhans’ many properties or simply fired them. Most of the remaining staff continued to regard her and Jathmar as profoundly unnatural beings from an alien and threatening universe populated by the gods only knew what monstrous threats, however. As Jasak Olderhan’s shardonai they were entitled to service and respect-even to protection, since those servants were also part of the extended Garth Showma household-but nothing seemed capable of banishing that penumbra of fear.

“His Grace’s complements, Madam Nargra-Kolmayr, and he requests that you and your husband join him in the Blue Salon.”

“Did His Grace say why he’d like us to join him?” Shaylar asked in some surprise, and the maid shook her head.

“He just told me to ask you to join him, Milady.”

“I see.” Shaylar gazed at the other woman for a moment, then shrugged.

“Please tell His Grace we’ll be there as soon as possible.”

* * *

The Sharonians stepped through the door to the enormous room called the Blue Salon holding one another’s hands and paused, just inside the threshold, in astonishment. They’d expected a private meeting with Thankhar Olderhan, but the Duke of Garth Showma wasn’t alone.

Jasak stood by the windows, gazing out into an evening which had turned gray and cold, burnished with a swirl of snowflakes and polished with wind moan. Gadrial stood beside him, her expression worried, and Sathmin Olderhan sat in one of the elegant, impossibly comfortable armchairs. Shaylar and Jathmar hadn’t expected the others, but at least they knew who all of them were. They had no idea who the man standing beside the duke might be, however.

He was a nondescript, brown-haired fellow in civilian clothes, yet Shaylar had the strangest impression that he ought to be in a uniform of some sort. Of course, that seemed to be true of an awful lot of the Andarans she’d met since that hideous day at Toppled Timber.

“Thank you for coming,” the duke said, crossing the room to personally usher her and Jathmar to a small floating couch which faced his wife’s armchair.

He waited until they were seated, then stepped back and clasped his hands behind him. There was something…frightening about the way he stood facing them, like a soldier bracing against an enemy charge. That was Shaylar’s first impression. Then she was sure she’d imagined it…until she glanced at Jasak and saw him watching his father with exactly the same sort of wariness she felt.

“I asked you here,” the duke’s voice was strangely formal, “in the presence of your baranal, because it’s my duty, as his father, as an officer of the Union Army, and as Duke of Garth Showma, to tell you-all of you-what I’ve learned this very evening.”

He paused and inhaled, nostrils flaring, then took one hand from behind him to indicate the stranger, still standing beside his desk.

“This is Sertal Halka. Once upon a time, he was Commander of Five Hundred Halka and served with me in the Second Andarans before he was invalided out of the service after the same fracas in which Otwal Threbuch saved my life. Since then, he’s had an…interesting career in Intelligence, and he and I have stayed in touch over the years.”

He beckoned, and Halka crossed to stand beside him. The retired five hundred walked with a slight but noticeable limp, favoring his left leg, which struck Shaylar and Jathmar as odd in a culture which had Gifted healers. Having seen people snatched back from the very brink of death-having been snatched back himself, in Jathmar’s case-by Arcanan healers, they had to wonder what sort of injury those healers hadn’t been able to completely cure for Halka.

“I asked Sertal to join us this evening because, at my request, he’s been investigating certain outside-channel reports which have reached me. In particular, I asked him to investigate a report from Fifty Therman Ulthar.”

Jasak’s eyes narrowed suddenly, and his father glanced at him and nodded ever so slightly.

“I apologize for not sharing the contents of that report with you sooner, Jas,” he said. “And I appreciate your patience, since I know how impatient you must’ve been to hear whatever he had to say.”

“Should I assume you’re about to share them with me now, Father?”

“Yes,” the duke said heavily. “And I wish to all the gods I didn’t have to. Unfortunately, you and I both have obligations which leave me no choice.”

“Thankhar,” his wife said quietly, “you’re frightening me.”

“I’m sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to. But there was a very good reason young Ulthar sent me that message. He’s concerned about violations of the Kerellian Accords.” The duke’s voice was flat, hard as hammered iron. “Deliberate violations of the Kerellian Accords.”

Jasak snapped fully erect, so suddenly Gadrial reached out and laid a concerned hand on his arm, and Sathmin Olderhan stiffened in her armchair, her expression shocked. Shaylar had no idea what the “Kerellian Accords” might be, but her hand tightened on Jathmar’s as she sensed the sudden storm of tension rising all about her.

“Violation of the Accords?” Jasak’s voice was even flatter than his father’s had been, with an over controlled calm that sent icy fingernails up and down Shaylar’s spine.

“That was one of the things he reported,” his father confirmed in a voice hewn from granite. “His report was…comprehensive and very informative, and I took it seriously. In fact, I’ve already dispatched an inquiry team in response to it, although it will be some time before it can reach Thermyn to verify everything in it. Under the circumstances”-he met his son’s eyes levelly-“I sent it on my own authority, as hereditary commander of the Second Andarans, without involving the Commandery. The allegations contained in his message were that serious. But it was clearly incumbent upon me to verify anything I could from this end, as well. Which is how Sertal got involved.”

All eyes returned to the brown-haired man who squared his shoulders under their weight.

“Sertal left official government employment some years ago,” the duke said. “He established his own security firm, and he’s assembled a highly competent staff which has handled my personal security needs from the time he opened his doors. I want all of you to understand that there isn’t a man in the entire Union I trust more implicitly and completely then Sertal.”

He paused a moment, as if to allow that to sink in, before he continued.

“It turns out we’ve had at least some piecemeal communications from Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak which haven’t been made public. For reasons which I strongly suspect we won’t like very much once we find out what they are, the Two Thousand still hasn’t filed any official dispatches dealing with this material with the Commandery, even though the communications which have reached Portalis contain significant military information. Instead, they were sent to the Ministry of Exploration and the Directorate of Intelligence.”

He must have seen from the Sharonians’ expression that his last sentence meant little to them, because he grimaced and explained.

“The Ministry of Exploration is the civilian ministry charged with overseeing our exploration policies, and the Directorate of Intelligence is a civilian intelligence service. The Ministry’s in charge of developing the infrastructure in the explored out-universes and of coordinating our general exploratory policy, but the actual exploration mission belongs to the Army, and the Ministry has no direct authority over that aspect of its operations. And the Directorate of Intelligence is a department of the Ministry of Justice, not of Exploration or the Army. In fact, there’s been an ongoing turf war between the Directorate and Military Intelligence for at least fifty years, just as there are those in Exploration who’ve argued for years that they should control the actual exploration rather than leaving it in ‘the Army’s clumsy hands.’”

“Which would imply,” Jathmar said slowly, “that mul Gurthak wanted to avoid sharing his information with anyone in your military? Or even that he wanted to share it with someone who didn’t like your military very much?”

“It could imply that,” the duke corrected him. “It could also simply be a case of sloppy clerical work in the midst of an ongoing crisis. Sertal managed to…acquire copies of the material for me, and it’s not in the form of a formal report. Instead, it looks like some sort of internal memo that hasn’t yet been put into its final form.”

“So you’re saying it wasn’t supposed to be sent at all?”

“No, Jathmar, I’m saying it may have been sent by clerical error…or that it was deliberately sent in a format which would allow it to appear to have been sent by clerical error.”

“But why would anyone do that?” Shaylar asked, sounding totally confused because that was exactly what she was. Voice transmissions didn’t get sent by “clerical error,” and she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around how that could happen to Arcanan reports.

“We don’t know that yet,” the duke told her. “I have some unpleasant thoughts in that regard, and Sertal’s helping to determine whether or not my paranoia is justified. If it is, then I’m afraid the entire Union of Arcana may be about to discover that we face more than simply external threats. That, however, is something for us to worry about, not you and your husband. The only reason I’ve described this aspect to you is so that you can understand why and how I’ve discovered what does concern you.”

“In what way?” Jathmar’s tone was courteous but sharp, honed with formless dread born from too much bitter experience.

“As you know, all the public’s been officially told-all anyone outside a handful of highly placed officials at the Ministry of Exploration and the Directorate of Intelligence knows-is that negotiations broke down, virtually all of our own negotiating team was killed in some sort of confrontation, hostilities have been resumed, and Two Thousand Harshu has advanced beyond Thermyn,” the duke replied flatly. “And all of that’s true. But if the information Sertal’s people have turned up is correct, the real reason those negotiations ‘broke down’ was because-according to Rithmar Skirvon and Uthik Dastiri-the Sharonians ‘made their warlike intentions clear’ from the outset by failing to stipulate that there would be no attack during negotiations. Because that clause is an essential hallmark of all serious diplomatic efforts to negotiate a cease-fire agreement, it was clear to Skirvon that Sharona had no intention of signing any peace treaty and intended to keep its hands free to attack at a time of its own choosing.”

“What?” Jathmar stared at him. “That’s crazy!”

“In fairness to Skirvon’s interpretation, the agreement by both parties not to attack during negotiations is, indeed, a fundamental part of traditional Arcanan diplomacy,” the duke said heavily. “Traditionally,” he emphasized the adverb heavily, “there was no obligation to agree to any such thing, and it was understood by all parties that unless it was specifically agreed to, either side was free to-and probably would-resume active operations at the moment it felt would be most advantageous. Mind you, no one’s negotiated any peace treaties since the establishment of the Union, so I think it’s safe to say our procedures are a little rusty, and we haven’t had any true ‘diplomats’ in the better part of two hundred years. I’d think that gave us plenty of opportunities to get it wrong from our side, as well. More to the point, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that we’re dealing with someone from a completely different-a totally alien-society which might not understand all of our own diplomatic niceties.”

“Diplomatic niceties?” Jathmar visibly gripped his temper in both hands. “No Sharonian would even think about that! It’s obvious that anyone seriously interested in negotiating a cease-fire wouldn’t be planning to attack in the middle of the talks! One of the first things each side’s Voices-”

He broke off, and the duke nodded unhappily.

“Exactly,” he said softly.

Silence hovered for the better part of a minute before he cleared his throat.

“One of the minor points which hasn’t yet been officially reported to Parliament or the Commandery is that the ‘diplomatic incident’ which resulted in the deaths of at least one of our negotiators and most of their military escort occurred because Two Thousand Harshu’s offensive began with a preemptive attack predicated on the supposition that Sharona was preparing to attack us. In other words, contrary to what most of the citizens of the Union believe, there was indeed treachery and a ‘sneak attack,’ but it wasn’t launched by the Sharonians.

“Skirvon and Dastiri were involved in face-to-face negotiations with the representatives of the Sharonian Empire when the attack kicked off. They were supposed to keep the Sharonians talking right up to the moment our troops arrived. In fact, although there’s no way to confirm it at this point, I suspect our ‘diplomats’’ ceremonial guard detail was supposed to kick off the entire operation by capturing-or killing-the entire Sharonian negotiating team.”

The duke’s expression showed what he thought of that tactic.

“Unfortunately for the attack plan, that particular bit of treachery apparently came a cropper. By the time our cavalry reached the negotiation site, the Sharonians were long gone, leaving behind the bodies of Uthik Dastiri and most of the ‘ceremonial guards.’ As far as I’m aware, the Sharonians are still at large somewhere behind our lines.”

Shaylar felt her hand tighten like a claw on Jathmar’s, yet it was obvious the duke wasn’t done. There was worse to come, and she tried to brace herself to meet it.

“There are suggestions in the material,” he continued, turning to glance at his son instead of the Sharonians, “which appear to confirm Fifty Therman’s report of Kerellian Accord violations. At the moment, I can’t even begin to decide which of the ones he’s reported is the most egregious. There’s going to be hells to pay over any of them, but the worst are that the head of Two Thousand Harshu’s intelligence staff-a five hundred named Neshok-is using torture to-”

“Neshok?” Gadrial blurted, then blushed as she realized she’d interrupted the duke. The senior Olderhan paused, cocking an eyebrow at her, and she had the oddest sensation he was actually grateful for the discourtesy surprise had startled out of her.

Or for the interruption, anyway.

“That was the name, Magister Gadrial,” he said. “An Alivar Neshok, I believe. According to the memo that went to the Directorate of Intelligence, he was specifically requested by Two Thousand Harshu and given the acting rank of five hundred so he’d have the necessary seniority. Should I take it you met him?”

“We all have, Father,” Jathmar said grimly. “At least I’m pretty sure we have. Hundred Alivar Neshok was the officer who wanted to separate Shaylar and Jathmar from us in Erthos. The one Gadrial backed down when she told him to put her in the same cell to make sure nothing…untoward happened to them. Are you saying he’s who’s been in charge of Two Thousand Harshu’s intelligence this entire time?”

“Yes, I’d say I am, although I confess I hadn’t connected him with your description of your time in Erthos.” The duke’s tone was even grimmer than his son’s had been. “I don’t think the name’s a coincidence, at any rate. And apparently he’s been just as…untrammeled by any scruples as Gadrial was afraid he might be. Therman informs me that there have been numerous reports of torture and of prisoners dying under questioning. In fact, he says that according to healers to whom he’s spoken, they’ve flatly refused to heal prisoners undergoing interrogation because healing them only allowed them to be tortured even further.”

Jasak’s face could have been hewn out of granite. Gadrial held his hand tightly, her own expression anxious as she looked up at his profile. Despite the weakening of her Talent, Shaylar physically felt the fury raging through him behind that stony mask, and she found herself clutching Jathmar’s hand even more tightly.

“I wish I could say that was the worst thing Fifty Ulthar had to report,” the duke said even more heavily. “Unfortunately, it isn’t. According to Therman’s brother-in-law, the lie that Magister Halathyn was shot down in cold blood by the Sharonians after surrendering, not in a ghastly friendly fire accident, isn’t just a wild story concocted by rumor mongers and so called reporters desperate for a story. According to Ulthar, the troops have been told-told officially-the same lie by their own intelligence officers.”

“That’s insane!” Gadrial snapped, and this time there was no hint of apology in her expression when the duke looked at her. “One of the few things we knew for certain before we ever started for home was that Magister Halathyn was killed by one of our own infantry dragons! That was absolutely established in the earliest reports, whatever lies may’ve hit the crystals since!”

“Precisely.” The duke shook his head, looking older in that moment than Shaylar had ever seen him look. “Precisely. Apparently whoever’s feeding the troops the false reports is at least attempting to cover himself by saying his information is ‘unconfirmed,’ but as far as I’m concerned, that’s simply a glaring tipoff that it’s deliberate and authorized at the highest levels. Harshu has to know the truth. For that matter, he has to know that eventually the truth is going to come out. But it’s evident from Ulthar’s report-assuming he’s got it right, and I’m very much afraid he does-that at the very least none of the Expeditionary Force’s senior officers are attempting to correct the ‘rumors’ sweeping through the ranks. And you know as well as I do, Gadrial, exactly how that’s going to inflame our people. Especially the garthans like Ulthar’s brother-in-law. I can’t think of anything better calculated to generate atrocities than to allow our own troops to believe the Sharonians routinely commit them.”

A crackling silence invaded the room, lingering like a static electricity on the skin, until Shaylar broke it.

“You Grace,” she said very, very carefully, “why do I think those ‘atrocities’ are the reason Jathmar and I are here this evening?”

“Because they are.” The duke faced her squarely, and his shoulders braced. “I’m afraid Two Thousand Harshu, faced with your own people’s huge advantage in communications-apparently on the advice of Five Hundred Neshok-settled on a technique to prevent your Voices from warning anyone up-chain about our advance.”

Shaylar blinked. Sharona had been forced to develop techniques for neutralizing the Voice Talent long ago, but it hadn’t been easy and it had taken centuries. How could the Arcanans, who’d never even heard of Talents before Toppled Timber have devised one so quickly?!

Then she felt the spike of pure, unadulterated fury coming off of Jasak and the sudden horror radiating from Gadrial. The emotions were so powerful-and so focused on her, for some reason-that they almost knocked her breathless despite the weakening of her Talent.

“I don’t care who he is, Father,” Jasak snapped. “I’ll cut his black heart out on the dueling ground!”

“I understand your sentiments, Jasak,” the duke said. “And I share them. But that’s getting ahead of where we are now. What we have to do now is find out if what Ulthar’s reporting is true. We have to confirm that, with evidence that will stand up before any tribunal, before we can do anything else. And we have to find out whose idea it really was. Harshu’s for the dragon as far as I’m concerned, no matter who came up with it, but given how this information’s reached Portalis-and who in Portalis has it-I have to wonder who else could be manipulating the situation…and why?”

“Mul Gurthak,” Gadrial hissed. “We keep hearing about Harshu, but mul Gurthak’s his superior, and this has the stink of shakira all over it, Your Grace!”

“That’s exactly what I think, my dear. Unfortunately, we can’t prove it. In fact, at the moment, we can’t prove any of this.”

“Any of what?” Shaylar demanded. “What do you all talking about, and why is Jasak so…so furious about whatever it is?”

Jasak crossed to the couch upon which she and Jathmar sat. He dropped to one knee in front of her, reaching out and taking her free hand in both of his while he looked straight into her eyes with that unyielding personal integrity she’d come to know so well.

“I’m furious because I’m your baranal,” he said. “Because you and Jathmar-all your people, even those I’ve never met-have already suffered and lost so much because of this entire stupid, unforgivable nightmare. And because whoever came up with Harshu’s ‘technique’ for neutralizing your Voices only knew they had to be neutralized in the first place because I reported the capability.”

“That’s not fair, Jas!” Gadrial said sharply. “You had to report that, and you had no idea-no idea at all-anyone would use that information for this!”

“For what?!” Shaylar demanded again, and Jasak drew a deep breath.

“There’s only one way we could ‘neutralize’ a Voice, Shaylar.” His voice was gentle, yet it was cored with steel, hammered on the anvil of his fury. “We don’t have a spell to do that. The only way we know to…‘turn off’ a Talent is to kill whoever has it.”

Shaylar stared at him for a second or two longer, unable to process what he’d just said. And then understanding filled her like a sea of poison. It rushed into her, filling every nook and cranny of her soul with a black, crushing tide of horror. And of guilt. And of hatred.

She snatched her hand out of Jasak’s and slammed back against the couch’s luxurious cushions. Of course that was what they’d done. It was what they did. They butchered anything they didn’t understand! But they couldn’t have done it-couldn’t have known to do it-if not for her. If she hadn’t survived, if she hadn’t told them about her Talent, if Jasak hadn’t passed that information along, then Sharona couldn’t have been surprised the way it clearly had been! And all of those Voices, all those people whose only crime had been to be Talented…

“Monsters,” she whispered, staring back and forth between Jasak and his father. “You’re all monsters! Mother Marthea, how do you live with yourselves?! I knew some of those Voices! I’ve touched their minds, shared their thoughts. They were part of me, and some of them were only children!”

Jasak reached out to her again, but she shrank away, shaking her head convulsively.

“Don’t touch me, Jasak Olderhan!” she snapped. “Don’t! Not now!”

“Shaylar-”

“No, Gadrial.” Shaylar shook her head again, even harder. “I don’t want to hear it! Not now.” She released Jathmar’s hand to wrap her arms about herself, huddling in on her bones as if she were freezing. She rocked on the couch, like a mother morning the deaths of her own children, and tears ran down her face.

“I don’t want to touch an Andaran-any Andaran. I want to wake up and find out this was all some hideous nightmare, but that’s not going to happen. I’m going to have to live with this. I’m going to have to live with knowing what monsters you can be and knowing I helped you. I helped you, Gadrial-whether I wanted to or not-and the gods only know how many others-how many other Voices-are dead because I did that!”

“No, you didn’t,” Jasak said stonily. “You were a prisoner. You did absolutely nothing wrong, Shaylar. And you’re right, the people who did this, who ordered it-who permitted it-are monsters. I promise you we will find out who those people are and why they’ve done what they’ve done. And I promise you-I promise you, not the Union of Arcana-that when I do find out, they’ll face justice for their actions. I don’t care who they are, I don’t care who tries to protect them, and I don’t care whether or not I can do it through the courts. I will find them, and they will pay.”

She stared at him, hating him in that moment with every fiber of her being, but she couldn’t shut down the incandescent edge of sincerity and determination blazing from him like the sun. And when she jerked her eyes from his face, looking over his head at the Duke of Garth Showma, she saw only matching fury and the same flinty determination. The pain and the guilt and the anguish within her fought to reject that recognition, but she couldn’t. As hard as she wanted to, she couldn’t.

“I can’t give your people back their lives, Shaylar,” Jasak Olderhan told her very, very quietly, “but I will see to it that whoever took them pays for it.”