The Thousand Emperors

that seemed misplaced given the surroundings. ‘Maybe we should give Mr Gabion your job?’

Nothing like making a very dangerous enemy, thought Luc, as Cripps’ hawk-like glare settled on him once again. The sweat had dried on his skin, coating him in a chill clamminess.

Luc glanced towards the nearest bookshelf, as much to avoid looking at Cripps as anything else. Many of the volumes there had become spotted with ash. He reached out and touched the spine of one, his fingertips black when he studied them.

‘Did the house put the blaze out?’ he asked.

‘Obviously,’ snapped Cripps.

<Bailey, I’ll have no more interruptions from you,> Cheng scripted.

‘How could it do that, if the house’s AI systems had been shut down?’ asked Luc.

‘Only the house’s higher cognitive functions were affected,’ Zelia explained. ‘Something like the sprinkler system wouldn’t have been affected by the sabotage.’

‘Would the killer have known that?’ he asked.

‘Why do you ask?’ Cripps demanded, his voice taut.

‘Maybe whoever did this meant for the library to burn down,’ said Luc. ‘Maybe they thought that when they disabled the house’s systems, that would stop it putting the fire out.’ Luc’s eyes darted nervously towards Cheng, then away again.

‘Why would they want to do that?’ asked Cheng.

‘If it looked like Vasili had just died of an accident, it might have taken you a lot longer to work out he’d been murdered.’

‘This is idle speculation,’ Cripps protested.

‘But very interesting idle speculation,’ said Cheng, eyeing Cripps carefully. ‘Surely,’ he said, turning back to Luc, ‘there would be no point to covering up Sevgeny’s murder, since we would inevitably have discovered both the sabotage to the house AI and to his instantiation backups?’

‘There’s no point,’ Luc agreed, ‘unless the killer was operating under a time restriction. For some reason, he or she wanted to delay the discovery that Sevgeny had been murdered.’

‘And why in God’s name would they do that?’ Cripps protested.

Luc forced himself to meet the man’s eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But it’s worth thinking about.’

It occurred to Luc that Cheng and his cronies could decide to blame him for Vasili’s murder, and no one would ever dare challenge it or demand supporting evidence of any kind. The idea squeezed his lungs like a steel vice, making it hard to breathe.

‘Before I go any further,’ he said, ‘I need to know who you think could have done this, whether or not you think you can prove it?’

It was almost comical, the way they regarded each other furtively.

‘That’s a very nearly endless list,’ said Zelia, her voice impatient. ‘Enmities can run pretty deep here.’

‘Zelia,’ said Karlmann Sandoz, a note of warning in his voice. ‘He’s a stranger here.’

‘He needs to know these things if he’s to do his job properly,’ Zelia snapped.

<Your pet detective’s clearly not up to the challenge,> Borges scripted. <Look at him, he’s terrified of us. You should dispose of him, Zelia, before he tells everyone he knows about what he’s seen here. Perhaps then you could make him into one of your little projects.>

<Enough.> This again from Cheng.

Luc tried not to think about what would happen if she and the rest of them realized he was entirely aware of everything they were scripting to each other. ‘Councilman Begum suggested Vasili might have been killed by someone outside of the Council,’ said Luc. ‘Is there any way someone could sneak through the Hall of Gates without being detected?’

‘To say that would be impossible is not an exaggeration,’ de Almeida replied firmly.

‘Who’s in charge of security?’

‘Planetary security is the responsibility of Miss de Almeida,’ Cheng informed him.

‘Which is why,’ Zelia added, ‘I’m qualified to know what I’m talking about. Anyone invited to Vanaheim who isn’t a member of the Council gets assigned their own dedicated mechant, all of which report directly to me – including the one that brought you here.’

‘But who else is involved in the security operation?’

‘Only me,’ Zelia replied, one of her cheek muscles twitching. ‘Everything runs on dedicated AI systems coordinated through my lattice.’

‘Surely that’s a lot of responsibility for just one person?’

‘Mr Gabion,’ Alicia interjected, ‘Vanaheim is our model for the future – the way every world in the Tian Di will be, one day. Maintaining surveillance on a whole world isn’t so hard for even just one person, if you have access to Council-approved levels of technology, and the systems Zelia controls are sufficiently transparent they only rarely require