The Domino Pattern

“I won’t be long.” she promised. “Good night.”

“Good night.” I headed toward the doorway, stepping past the Spider into the corridor.

And paused. On any normal Quadrail. with a contingent of Spiders wandering around and the station sensors having successfully blocked out all weaponry, I wouldn’t have thought twice about leaving Bayta to wander the train alone.

But this was hardly a normal Quadrail. Not anymore.

And she was too important to risk letting our unknown assailant get a crack at her. Too important to our survival aboard this damn train. Too important to our war against the Modhri.

Too important to me.

“On second thought, you can set up your Greek Chorus from inside your compartment,” I said, gesturing to her. “Come on—we’ll go together.”

ELEVEN

Whoever our murderer was, he’d apparently decided to clock out for the night. I got Bayta to her compartment, made sure both our doors were locked, and just managed to get myself undressed and take one final QuixHeal before collapsing comatose on my bed.

I slept for ten hours straight, and when I finally dragged myself conscious I found the QuixHeals had done their chemical magic and I felt nearly back to full speed again. I took a quick shower, then opened the connecting door between our compartments to check on Bayta.

Only to find that she wasn’t there.

Muttering curses under my breath, I left the compartment and headed aft, fervently hoping that she was merely having breakfast and not off doing more solo sleuthing. I reached the dining car and went in.

To my relief, I spotted her sitting at a two-person table behind a plate of something Jurian-looking. “Good morning,” I said as I sat down across from her.

“Good afternoon,” she corrected, her eyes flicking measuringly across my face. “How do you feel?”

“Much better.” I said. “How about you?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I got a few hours of sleep before we reached the siding, and was able to sleep a little more afterward.”

“That all go okay?” I asked, lowering my voice.

“We think so,” she said. “But we can’t be completely sure.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” I said. “What’s good for breakfast today? Or brunch, or whatever?”

“The vistren is good,” she said, gesturing toward her plate. “But I understand the servers may run out of livberries before we reach Venidra Carvo.”

“Say no more,” I said. Livberries were my absolute favorite Jurian fruit. “A Belgian waffle with livberries, if you would, and a glass of sweet iced tea.”

Her eyes flattened briefly. No point in dragging a server all the way over to our table to get my order when Bayta had a direct line to the kitchen. “On its way,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about Dr. Aronobal.”

“What about her?” I asked.

“Mostly just wondering,” she said. “We talked a lot last night about the missing first-class pass. But Dr. Aronobal’s been moving fairly freely between third and first ever since Master Colix’s death.”

“So has Dr. Witherspoon,” I reminded her.

“True,” she said. “But Dr. Witherspoon wasn’t alone with Usantra Givvrac for several minutes before she called a conductor to help get him to the dispensary. Dr. Aronobal was.”

“You mean just before Givvrac’s death?” I shook my head. “No. The damage to his gleaner bacteria was done long before then. The poisons were already backing up into his system when we spoke to him in the bar yesterday afternoon.”

“But she could have done something to help the process along.” Bayta persisted. “The other two Filiaelians who were affected seem to be recovering just fine.”

“Givvrac was a lot older than either of them,” I reminded her. “Besides, unless Aronobal’s working with a partner, she’s off the hook for the attack on Witherspoon and me.”

“How do you know?” Bayta asked. “The only conductor in the area was waiting with Usantra Givvrac. Couldn’t Dr. Aronobal have followed you and Dr. Witherspoon to the rear, attacked you there, and then gone back to Usantra Givvrac?”

“For one thing, wouldn’t either you or the server in the dispensary have seen her double back?” I asked.

She grimaced. “Actually, probably not,” she said. “We were concentrating on di- Master Strinni’s body, preparing it for transport to the baggage car.”

So anyone could have been wandering around without being seen. That was useful to know. “It still couldn’t have been Aronobal,” I said. “Neither Witherspoon nor I heard the vestibule door open behind us, which means our attacker was already in the car waiting for us.”

“Because,” Bayta said slowly, “he knew you would come to help Osantra Qiddicoj. So could Osantra Qiddicoj’s poisoning have been a deliberate way of drawing you there so that he could get that hypo?”

“Possibly,” I said. “It’s not like the killer hadn’t already used the same stuff on Usantra Givvrac and the others. And of course, with di-Master Strinni gone, he even had the perfect hiding place to wait for us.”

Bayta’s lip twitched. “Di-Master Strinni’s empty seat.”

“Exactly,” I confirmed. “And since we saw Dr. Aronobal leave the dispensary heading the opposite direction, there’s no way she could have doubled back and gotten to Osantra Qiddicoj’s car ahead of us.”

“All right,” Bayta said. “But it still couldn’t have been Master Tririn.”

Privately, I’d already put Tririn low on my suspect list—poisoning your dinner companions without giving yourself so much as a stomach ache was a little too obvious for someone with our killer’s brand of subtlety. But it would be interesting to hear Bayta’s reasoning. “Why not?” I asked.

“Because even if he has the missing first-class pass, going up to di-Master Strinni and Usantra Givvrac would mean approaching people who knew he was supposed to be in third,” Bayta said. “Surely someone would have thought to mention that to us.”

“Good point,” I agreed, leaning back a little as the server appeared at our table and set my breakfast in front of me.

“Besides which, with di-Master Strinni’s death the team is back to an anti-Pellorian vote count,” she continued. “Why then kill Usantra Givvrac. too?”

“Let’s assume you’re right,” I said, spreading the berries across the waffle. “Here’s what we’ve got. Opportunity and motive are only so-so tor Tririn. Opportunity is good for Aronobal and Witherspoon, but we have no motive for either of them.”

“And both doctors also have method, assuming the poison was injected.”

“True,” I said, taking a bite of my waffle. Now that I knew the meals were prepackaged, damned if they didn’t taste prepackaged. Sometimes it didn’t pay to know how the magician did the trick. “But if either of the doctors is involved, why go to all that effort to clobber Witherspoon and me to steal a hypo? They have plenty of their own. And unlike the rest of the passengers, they have a legitimate reason to carry them around.”

“Except that most of the time their hypos are locked up and inaccessible, even to them,” Bayta reminded me.

“Unless they’re out using them,” I said, thinking that one over. “What about people who have to self-medicate? Type Four diabetics, for instance? Do they get to carry their own hypos aboard?”

Bayta shook her head. “The Spiders store them in the drug cabinets along with the doctors’ bags. The passenger has to go to his area’s dispensary to use them, under a server’s watch.”

“Any chance someone could smuggle one out of the cabinet?” I asked. “Take one while palming a second, for