Braddock would have to learn more about that, and many other things, come morning, he thought, as well as bring an old friend some very bad news. He would go and visit Reza, not as a friend, but as his legal counsel in a trial that he knew could only result in Reza’s execution.
“…and that’s where you stand, Reza.” Having finished outlining his friend’s situation, Tony sat back in the chrome chair next to Reza’s bed, feeling drained. A week had passed since he had first resolved to visit Reza, but the doctors had refused any visitors other than Nicole, who seemed to be a catalyst in Reza’s recovery. But after seven days the patient’s condition had improved enough that the doctors had finally allowed Reza one additional visitor. His defense counsel.
Reza showed no reaction, but continued to stare out the window as he had the entire time Tony had been talking.
Braddock frowned. “Reza, did you hear anything that I just said?”
“Yes,” Reza said, at last turning to face him, his face an unreadable mask. “I heard and understand.”
Braddock’s temper flared. “Dammit, Reza, they’re not just trying to throw the book at you, they’re trying to dump the whole library on your head! Everyone who knows you knows that you would never have committed these crimes, but the court will–”
“I did, Tony,” Reza said quietly, his eyes glinting in the light.
Braddock’s mouth hung open for a moment. “What?” he said. “What did you say?”
“I killed Belisle and the Territorial Army soldier,” Reza went on, his voice not showing the keening in his blood. “The killing of the soldier was unfortunate, an act of self-defense, but I killed Belisle with forethought.” He paused, noting the blood draining from Braddock’s face. “And if I had to do it again in front of the Confederation Council itself, I would. He was an animal, a murderer. Had I not killed him, or had the Kreela not come and destroyed the city, many of Erlang’s people would even now lay dead at his hands. As for Melissa Savitch, her death was Markus Thorella’s deed. And I shall yet find a way to avenge her.”
“Can you prove that Thorella killed her?” Braddock asked, seeing his case to defend Reza foundering as surely as a scuttled ship. But perhaps there might be enough to hang Thorella for murdering Savitch. At least that bastard could swing beside Reza on the gallows.
“None but my word.”
“That’s not good enough, Reza.”
Reza nodded gravely. In the world in which he had been raised, the world of the Kreela, one’s word was a bond stronger than steel, a commitment backed by one’s very life. Among those of this blood, among humans, however, it often meant little or nothing. Especially if one stood accused in a court of law. “I would have taken his head, as well, had he not outwitted me,” Reza told him, describing Thorella’s scheme and what exactly had happened in Belisle’s office. “He shall not deceive me again.”
Reza was warmed but amused by his friend’s determination to keep him from the hangman’s noose. He shook his head. “My friend Tony, you know far better than I that the Council will do no such thing. They cannot. I killed Belisle and the soldier, but not Melissa Savitch. To try and convince anyone otherwise would be to lie. And what of the charge of treason?”
Braddock shook his head, wishing that this were all a bad dream and that he would wake up in a warm bed next to Nicole. Even if he could get the murder charges dropped or reduced, the treason charge would not be let go. “How could you have done this Reza?” he asked more to himself than his doomed friend. All Tony could do now was to ensure that due process was given and the procedures themselves were legal. “You don’t have a prayer with the judges. You may as well have just stayed there and died.”
“I tried,” Reza said quietly.
Braddock frowned. “The only other alternative I can think of is to ask the president to pardon you. I mean, since you are the only real authority on Kreelan affairs, maybe–”
“Impossible,” Reza said quietly. “I am accused of capital crimes, Tony, two of which I am guilty by my own admission. How can it be that your society, which claims to hold justice so high, could simply allow me to go free? I do not well understand the politics of the Confederation, but I do not see how even the president could manage such a thing without devastating repercussions. He would not pardon me; he could not. And I do not wish it. I knew what I was doing when I took Belisle’s head. I simply did not intend to survive to receive the punishment I must under Confederation law.”
“You could escape,” Tony said quietly. He was not suggesting it as a counsel, but as a friend. He knew that Reza would not have done what he did without good reason, but that would not hold up in a court, especially if Reza confessed. “It would be easy for you,” he said. He knew as well as anyone that Reza could disappear like a ghost if he wished.
Reza shook his head. “And go where, Tony? To the hills of this planet? To the desert? Even if I could whisk myself to Eridan Five and dwell among the saurians there, I would not. What would be the point? Even without a trial, I am an outlaw among your kind, having forsaken the cloth of the Corps and the Regiment, and I cannot return to my own people without disavowing the oath I made that banished me. And that is something I can never do, even at the price of my own head.”
Braddock did not say anything for a while. He felt like his guts had been ripped out and stomped on.
“What about Nicole?” If Reza had resigned himself to death, then so be it. There was nothing more he could do for him. Now he had to worry about Nicole. His wife. “How will she handle your death?” Tony asked, imagining the metal cable tightening around Reza’s neck, Nicole writhing in agony as it happened, filling her with the same grisly sensations that Reza would feel. “What is this bond, or whatever it is, between you going to do to her?”
Reza had been devoting a great deal of thought to that, but he had no answer. He simply did not know. Even the memories of the Ancient Ones that only seemed to unlock themselves in his dreams had left him no clue. “I do not know,” he said helplessly. “There is no way to undo what has been done.”
“Does this link still exist?”
Reza shook his head. “I do not know. I have not sensed her since I awakened, but that means nothing. The Blood that flows through her is much diluted, for there is little enough in me. The bond has always been little more than a filament between us. Perhaps the shock of what happened broke it…” He shrugged helplessly at Braddock’s uncertain expression, his own heart filled with fear on her behalf. “Tony, if there was any way at all to guarantee her safety, I would do it. But I just do not know.”
“Sometimes, when she dreams, she speaks in a strange language. Would that be the language… your people speak?”
Reza nodded. “It would be the Old Tongue,” he explained, “the language used in the time of the First Empress. She would only speak it if the bond was unbroken.”
Braddock’s heart sank. He was afraid that would be the case. “She spoke that way last night.”
Reza closed his eyes, his heart beating heavily in his chest with grief. “Then I fear that whatever I feel, so shall she.”
“She’ll die, Reza.”
Opening his eyes, Reza looked his old friend in the face, his own twisted in a mask of emotional agony. “I know,” was all he could say.
“Now tell me, Markus,” Borge said cheerfully, “isn’t this far better, even after having had to wait so long?”
Markus Thorella smiled as he cut a strip of sirloin that was among the usual delicacies served at Borge’s table. “Yes, your Honor,” he said honestly. “I have to admit that I thought you were wrong all this time, but now…” He shrugged. “I was wrong. Publicly humiliating Gard has been more fun than I possibly could have imagined.”
In many ways, an outside observer might have thought that the two were like father and son. It was a
