'Were there any cigars?' Dexter asked. 'I don't smoke.'
'There should be cigars,' Zack muttered. 'What's a poker night without cigars? It's like.... um.... well, like something without something that should go with it.'
'Well, there aren't any cigars, so what does it matter?'
Julia rolled her eyes. 'And you wonder why you can't get any women to come to your poker nights?'
'Tradition,' Dexter replied, smiling. Julia had a tendency to act a lot older than she really was, sometimes.
She had taken them to the Sector 301 guardhouse, refusing to elaborate on what it was they were meant to be seeing, saying only that they would undoubtedly not believe her unless they saw it with their own eyes.
'We arrested it about an hour ago,' she was saying as they went towards the cells. 'There was a report of an assault and a suspicious person sighted down-sector. We caught the suspect almost immediately. Like it didn't care if it was spotted or not.'
'You keep saying 'it',' Dexter observed. 'An alien, or something?'
'I certainly hope so.'
Cells were meant to be secured by an electronic force field over the more conventional locked doors, but this was the Pit, where the budget was a little skimpy. As a result, the cells here were little more than locked doors. At least there were more security guards than there had been, and all of them were honest these days.
'Have a look,' Julia said, gesturing at the screen in the office just off the cell block. Each cell had a camera, naturally.
'There's nothing there,' Dexter said. 'You've got the wrong cell.'
'No, that's the right cell.'
'Then the camera's faulty,' Zack said. 'That's not exactly unusual around here.'
'No fault detected. Besides, it's showing the interior of the cell well enough. Just not the occupant. And yes, we know it's still there. We couldn't take any photos or electronic records either. Not even fingerprints.'
'Okay,' said Dexter. 'Now I'm interested. Can we see this.... individual?'
'I'm not the boss here,' Julia shrugged. 'I would recommend a lot of people standing by ready though. This thing is.... dangerous.'
'Dangerous how?' Zack asked.
Julia shook her head. 'I don't think I could explain, and I don't think you'd believe me if I could.'
Dexter looked at the empty cell in the picture again. Something caught his gaze, something just off-centre of his perception. He looked again, harder.
There was a brief flicker of light, and in his mind, a voice. Come to us. Come and see the light.
He frowned.
* * * Whispers from the Day of the Dead — III She knows why she has come here. It is not for diplomacy, not for strategy, or tactics, or alliances. It is not for the good of her people. It is for herself, one selfish action in a lifetime of service to the Minbari.
It is warm this night in the capital on Brakir. There are many people moving and dancing in the streets, processions and carnivals. The Day of the Dead is a holy event to these people, and even more so now, a time of celebration. There are so many dead to speak to. Yesterday there was mourning, tomorrow there will be morning. Tonight, there is a chance to meet again with old friends, old enemies.
Old loves.
Tomorrow, Satai Kats will return to Minbar to continue the slow rebuilding. Tomorrow, the faint semblance of diplomacy that brought her here will be concluded.
Tirivail understood. She alone would understand, Kats knew that. 'Go,' the warrior had said. 'And if you see him, tell him.... tell him....'
'Tell him what?'
'I was wrong. He was not a coward. He was never a coward.'
'I will.'
Kats had not dared to hope. No one in living memory had experienced a Day of the Dead. The last had been over two hundred years ago. The very concept of the dead returning went against everything she had ever been taught. The warrior caste believed in ghosts and ancestor-spirits, but the religious caste taught that souls returned to the ether, to be endlessly reborn.
And even if the legends were true, who could say she would meet again with Kozorr? Why not her father, or Hedronn, or anyone?
But she had to hope.
She stood on the balcony, looking down at the people passing by in the street below. A tall, dignified-looking Centauri man moved with steady conviction, but he had the same air of desperate hope she had herself. In the alleyway beneath her room, a human sat moaning and whispering to himself. A Narn in a simple robe made for a nearby temple, and a Brakiri in the uniform of a Dark Star captain looked up at the sky, staring in wonder at the comet overhead.
'There you are,' said a voice, and Kats stiffened, unable to believe that she had truly heard the words. Scars both old and new throbbed with remembered pain as she turned to see Kalain move from the shadows into her room.
He looked as he once had, before the illness had ravaged and torn his body. He looked proud and haughty and arrogant, a prince of all he surveyed. He had always belonged to a different time, the earlier days, where he could have walked beside Marrain and Parlonn and shaken the world with the sound of his footsteps.
But he had been born into the wrong time, and he had dedicated his life to changing that.
'You thought you were free of me,' he said, his voice commanding and proud, not the hoarse rasp it had later become. 'You thought you could escape from your sins.'
Kats looked at him. 'Why?' she said softly.
'Is this one of your worker tricks?' he asked. 'To ask questions which make no sense?'
'Why did you do all the things you did to me? You enjoyed it, Kalain. Don't say you did not. Was that all there was to it?' She remembered his voice growing louder and louder, exhorting her to beg for forgiveness. She remembered his laughter at her screams and her pleas for mercy. Sebastian had been brutally cold and efficient. He had taken no pleasure in his work. But Kalain had.
'I did it to purify you, to make you repent your sins, to make you....'
'You are not of the religious caste. Why should you care for my sins? You are a warrior. Was I truly the most fitting opponent for you? Was I the only person you could fight?'
'Stop this! You lie! Have you forgotten who it was who massacred the Grey Council? Have you forgotten...?'
'No! I have not forgotten, and I never will forget. It was not I who did that, and you knew that. You always knew that. So, I ask you again, Kalain. Why?'
'Because.... because you deserved it! There was a day you would have knelt in the mud at my feet as I walked past, and you would have thanked the ancestors that I even deigned to look upon you! There was a day when you would have addressed me with downcast eyes and spoken only when given permission. There was a day when we were warriors, and that was understood by all, when we did not have to make people aware of anything, when we had but to speak to be obeyed, when....'
'When you had true power. When you had true respect?'
'Yes!'
Kats sighed. 'Then that was what you wanted. You wanted respect and power, even if it was only from one person, only over one person. The rest of the Grey Council followed you only at Sinoval's orders. You had lost all respect from them when you faltered at Mars.
'But I was there. I was a worker who thought herself worthy to stand at your side. I thought
