“So, presuming that they need to have a conspiracy because their intent is revolutionary . . .”
“The True Line nonsense,” Hemmit said.
“That is very troubling,” she said. “Especially in light of today’s assassination attempt.” She shook her head, and started gathering her clothing off the floor. “I should be getting back.”
“And I should get back down to the press,” Hemmit said. “Maresh and Lin will be cross if I’m gone this long.”
“Always duty,” she said, getting her uniform coat on. She kissed him on a part of his cheek with no beard. “But it’s good to get out of my head now and again.”
“Pleasure to serve, madam,” he said with a mock salute.
“Hush,” she said. “I’ll keep my eyes open and stay in touch.” She left with that. There was still so much they didn’t know, but she was certain that Colonel Silla Altarn was someone at the center of the problem.
“We have an Amaya Tyrell problem,” Colonel Altarn said.
Lady Mirianne Henson did not care for her tone or her intrusion. No one was even supposed to know about the secret stairwell from the Grand Ten meeting room to Miri’s office in Henson’s Majestic, but yet Colonel Altarn emerged from Miri’s private door with this pronouncement.
“We would have a real problem if one of my managers or secretaries came in and found you,” Mirianne said.
Altarn waved her hand, and the door shut and latched. “There. No mundane person could get that door open. And if they did, they’d see an empty room.”
“Colonel,” Miri said sharply, “we have established rules of contact, which you are breaking.”
“Because I don’t want a meeting with all ten of us. I want to talk to you about our Amaya Tyrell problem.”
“Oh?” Miri asked, closing her books of accounts for the store. It was clear that Colonel Altarn would not leave without some satisfaction, so she wasn’t going to get other work done until this was handled. Altarn made that point all the more clear by sitting in the chair opposite Miri’s desk. “Is this one of those situations where you act like you are in charge of things, and give me orders, and expect me to take care of them?”
“It’s a situation where I have seen a problem, and it’s one that you are in a position to handle. I come to you directly to not embarrass you in front of the others.”
“So considerate,” Mirianne said, standing up from the desk and smoothing out her coat with her hands. “Those uniforms don’t do anyone justice, Silla. Do you want me to have one of my designers make something for you?”
Altarn looked down at her gray Intelligence uniform. Miri had noticed that she had taken to wearing it far more often since her promotion to colonel. Like a trophy pelt. It was an odd choice, indeed, since the Intelligence uniform was rarely worn outside of the hallways of the central office. Plus, the cut was deeply unflattering.
“It’s perfectly comfortable,” Altarn said.
“At least let me have one of my girls measure you and properly fit it,” Mirianne said. “I mean, you’re already skinny enough. You look like a child playing soldier.”
“Stop that game, Lady Mirianne,” Altarn said firmly. “I’m not some insecure baron’s daughter you can manipulate.”
“The offer is open,” Miri said. “Though you are the one who mentioned embarrassing me in front of the others.”
“I said I didn’t want to do it.”
“And why would I be embarrassed?”
“Because Amaya Tyrell is directly—even intimately—connected with your paramour, Dayne Heldrin.”
“They haven’t been intimately connected in years,” Miri said. Though frankly she found the idea of Dayne and Amaya intimately connecting again quite invigorating. She would enjoy seeing that. “But I get your point. You feel a problem with Amaya is my problem, specifically. Though I would argue it would be the Grandmaster’s.”
“He’s not quite ready yet to accept the solutions we’ll need to use,” Altarn said. Miri found that phrasing more than a little troubling, especially given the resources Altarn now had at her disposal. “Amaya Tyrell has been working with one of your newsmen, also. So she’s very much your problem.”
“I thought she had just taken him as a lover,” Miri said. “So the two of them are, what, finding their way into your dirty business?”
“My dirty business is all of ours,” Altarn said, though Miri had her doubts about that. There was definitely other business that Silla Altarn had her fingers in, and Miri didn’t want to think too much about that.
“Why do you think she’s now a problem?”
“I know when I’m being watched. And her attention was firmly on me at the palace today.”
“I didn’t notice,” Miri said.
“She was close to Master Denbar, after all.”
That was a point. Master Denbar had gotten too close to the Grandmaster’s involvement, to the Grand Ten as a whole. Perhaps he had passed some information on to Amaya before dying, and she had been searching for them all.
They had been careful, but Miri was well aware that no amount of care was foolproof.
“You think she knows about all of us?”
“I think she suspects there is an all of us. As does Hemmit Eyairin—”
“You have an odd love of using full names.”
“And we know he’s got a connection to that fool from the Patriots who traced his way back to Millerson!”
That was a cause for worry. That boy definitely had figured out far too much, and he had gone completely to ground. And it put Millerson—who thought himself as being in control of things as The Man of the People—in a precarious position. That would require adjustment. “I’m handling Hemmit and the Veracity. It’s all part of the plan.”
“Well, the plan will have to eliminate Miss Tyrell.”
“Eliminate?” Miri asked. She went back over to her desk. “No, that would never do. She dies, we might have a martyr. That will drive Hemmit further toward conspiracy.”
Not to mention Dayne. She knew, as much as Dayne loved her, his bond with Amaya was deep. He would not let her death
