The younger diplomat simply sat there, jaw hanging, as if his brain flatly refused to accept what his eyes were reporting to him.
'If you move so much as an eyelash without my permission,' chan Baskay continued in that same icicle of a voice, 'I will shoot you squarely in the head. Is that understood?'
Skirvon only stared at him, and chan Baskay's thumb cocked the revolver's hammer. It wasn't necessary
– the Polshana was a double-action weapon-but it had the desired punctuating effect.
'I asked if that was understood,' he said in a very soft voice that sounded bizarrely quiet and calm even to him in the wake of the unexpected thunder. He had no idea where that self-control-if that was what it was-was coming from, but whatever his voice sounded like, something in his expression had Skirvon nodding with sudden, spastic speed.
Chan Baskay gave him one more glance, then looked up as Chief-Armsman chan Hathas stepped up beside him.
'I've got these bastards, Platoon-Captain,' the chief-armsman grated, covering the Arcanans with his heavier, longer-barreled H amp;W.
'Thank you, Chief.'
Chan Baskay slid his pistol back into its holster and stood. He turned his back on the two Arcanan diplomats … and on the almost overwhelming temptation to simply shoot them out of hand. Everything around him was absolutely crystal-clear, yet all of it also seemed to be much further away than he knew it actually was. He glanced down at his hands and discovered that they were completely steady, despite the quivering tingles running through them. Then he drew a deep, cleansing breath before he looked at Arthag.
'How bad?' he asked.
'About as bad as it could have been,' Arthag replied, sounding preposterously matter-of-fact to chan Baskay. Then the Arpathian gave his head a little twitch. 'Actually, that's not really true. We could all be dead. Short of that, however, I don't see how it could be much worse.'
Chan Baskay looked past him to Rokam Traygan's contorted, broken body. The dead Voice's face was twisted in a final grimace of agony, and chan Baskay swallowed the foulest curse he could think of as he saw Chief- Armsman chan Treskin's body ten yards from Traygan's.
'How did they know?' the Ternathian officer demanded in a crushed-gravel voice. 'How could they know to kill both of them?'
'I don't know. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure they did know,' Arthag said.
'They must have. They went for Rokam first. That means he was their primary target all along. And that means they must have realized not only that he was a Voice, but what a Voice could do, in the first place.'
'Maybe. No,' Arthag shook his head, 'not 'maybe.' You're right about him, at least. But chan Treskin wasn't even the intended target of the … whatever the hells it was they used. He just caught the very fringe of one of those blasts, and the bastard who killed him was already going down when he fired. I think it was simply a wild shot that just happened to take him out.'
Chan Baskay gazed at the Arpathian for a moment, then shook his own head. Not in disagreement, but to clear it. They still didn't know how long Shaylar had lived after she was wounded, but obviously it had been long enough for the Arcanans to have learned at least a little about Talents and how they worked. It was the only way they could have realized just how vital the Voices were, and they obviously had. On the other hand, if Arthag was right about what had happened to chan Treskin, then the Arcanans hadn't realized how important the Flicker was. It was only sheer, incredibly bad luck that they'd gotten him, too.
Not that it mattered.
'We can't tell Company-Captain chan Tesh or Company-Captain Halifu about this.' Chan Baskay knew he was stating the obvious. 'So, the question is, what do we do?'
'They didn't just do this on the spur of the moment,' Arthag replied. 'And you're right, they obviously hit us first because we were the communications link between Company-Captain chan Tesh and New Uromath. I'm guessing they were pretty confident they could get us all, but I doubt they would have bet everything they had on that, however confident they felt.'
'Which means they're going to be hitting chan Tesh anytime now, assuming they haven't already,' chan Baskay agreed harshly. He closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead as if to clear away the last lingering cobwebs of shock while he thought furiously. Then he looked at Arthag once more.
'If they've planned this as carefully as I think they have, they probably allowed for the possibility that at least some of us might get away. From where I stand, that means they probably figure they can get here before any of us could reach Halifu.'
'How?' Arthag's question was genuine, not a challenge, and chan Baskay shrugged.
'I don't have the least damned idea,' he admitted. 'Given what we've seen of their boats, and what they just did here, though,' he waved one arm at the carnage sprawled about them, 'I'm not going to assume they can't do it. Gods, man! If they can make conference tables float, maybe they can conjure up flying carpets for their people, too! Until I know different, I'm certainly not going to say they can't, at any rate.'
'Me neither.' Arthag tapped two fingers on his chin for a moment. Then it was his turn to shrug.
'I'll get the troops saddled up,' he said.
'Good. And while you're doing that,' chan Baskay's smile was razor-thin and cruel, 'I'll just have a little chat with our guests.'
Skirvon wrenched his eyes away from the revolver in Chief-Armsman chan Hathas' hand as Viscount Simrath waded back across the clearing through the deep leaves. The Ternathian's expression was no more comforting than the gaping bore of Hathas' revolver.
'So, Master Skirvon,' he said in a voice fit to freeze the very air about him, 'this is Arcana's idea of talking instead of shooting.'
Skirvon kept his mouth shut. His belly was a frozen knot, and he swallowed convulsively, again and again. Somehow, despite everything, he'd never imagined anything like this. He'd been far too focused on what was going to happen to the Sharonians to consider what would happen if the carefully orchestrated plan failed.
'Not so talkative now, I see,' Viscount Simrath observed. 'I think, however, that you might want to reconsider that, Master Skirvon. In fact, I think what you really want to do is tell me exactly what's happening.'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' Skirvon managed to get out. 'I had no idea Narshu was going to do anything like this!'
'Trekar?' Simrath glanced at the other apparent civilian standing beside him, and Trekar chan Rothag shook his head.
'That was a lie,' the viscount said flatly, turning back to Skirvon. 'Not that I really needed Trekar to confirm that. However, perhaps I should warn you that Trekar is what we call a 'Sifter'. You obviously know more than you wanted us to realize you do about our Talents. Well, Trekar's Talent is that he can always tell when someone is lying. I would strongly advise you not to lie again.'
'Or what?' Uthik Dastiri asked. The Manisthuan had apparently recovered the ability to speak, although Skirvon wasn't at all certain that that was a good thing. He might be speaking again, but his eyes were still only half- focused and his expression was belligerent, and Skirvon recognized his associate's anger with a sudden, sinking sensation. Dastiri's temper had always been too close to the surface for a professional diplomat. Now his sense of shocked disbelief had transformed itself into unreasoning rage, and his hands twitched at his sides as he glared at Simrath.
The viscount seemed singularly impervious to his anger.
'You've systematically lied to us,' the Ternathian said, and his eyes were far colder-and far more lethal
– than Dastiri's. 'You've violated the truce between us and killed our soldiers. No doubt, you intended to kill or capture Trekar and myself, as well. In short, you're guilty of premeditated murder, and the penalty for that is death.'
'You wouldn't dare!' Dastiri shot back.
'I wouldn't?' Simrath repeated in a deadly calm voice.
'We're diplomats,' Dastiri said. 'Even barbarians like you ought to understand what that means!
Besides, it's only a matter of time until our soldiers get here.'
'Barbarians, are we?' Simrath's voice was very soft. 'The sort of barbarians who massacre civilians, perhaps? Or who systematically lie when they claim to want a negotiated end to the violence? Or who commit murder under
