“When you practice assassination,” Lian said, while Moth held the weapon on Eton’s friend Yls, “recall that Moth and I are oldest.”
Yls died. Men and women screamed and tried to bolt their seats. Moth continued to fire. There were bodies everywhere, on the floor, draped over seats, over the rail, in the aisles. At last she stopped, and the half of the Council that remained alive huddled against the door.
“Resume your seats,” Lian said
Slowly, cowed, they did so. Moth still had her weapon in hand.
“Now,” said Lian, “the matter of a vote.”
Someone was sick. The stench of burning was in the hall. Raen clenched her arms about her and shivered.
“Raen a Sul hant Meth-maren,” Lian said.
“Sir.”
“You may go. I think that it would be advisable to leave Cerdin and seek some House in obscurity. You have outlived all your enemies. Count that fortune enough for a lifetime. I don’t think it wise that you shelter with another House on Cerdin; you could too easily become a cause, and the Family has seen enough of that.”
“Sir,” she began to protest.
“There’s no reason to detain you for proceedings. The vote is only a formality. Kethiuy, is gone; that is a fact over which Council has no control. You broke the Pact and involved majat. The ones principally involved are dead; their influence is ended. Your own judgement in what you’ve done was that of a child, and under compulsion. You refuse guardianship; I daresay you are competent to survive without it. So I charge you this, Raen a Sul: avoid insist hereafter. You are given all the privileges of majority, and if you cross Council’s notice again, it will be under those conditions. You are free to go, with that understanding. I suggest Meron. Council liaison there wall be sympathetic. I have an old estate there that you can use. You won’t be without friends or advice.”
“I don’t need it.”
It was out of bitterness she said it. She saw Lian’s mouth go to a taut line, and reckoned that she should not have refused; but it was not in her nature to bend. She looked on Moth, looked on Eldest, and turned, walked, with difficulty, to the door and her freedom.
She did not stop, nor look back, nor shed the tears that urged at her. They dried quickly. She knew the passages from the Old Hall at Alpha to the beta City. She carried nothing, but the clothes she had been given and the identity on her hand.
Leave Cerdin: she would, for there was nothing on Cerdin she wanted.
x
The betas of the City were shocked, alarmed that a Kontrin appeared alone among them, with bodyguards. Perhaps they had some apprehension of trouble, having heard of the decimation of Kontrin Houses, and of blue-hive, and therefore feared to involve themselves in her affairs; but they had no means to refuge.
She bought medical care, and drugs for the pain; she slept a time in a public lodging, and recovered herself. She bought clothing and weapons, and engaged a shuttle up to station, where she hired a ship with the credit of the Family—the most extravagant she could find. She was moody and the beta crew avoided her.
That was the first journey.
It brought her to Meron. She did not take Eldest’s offer, but bought a house and lived there on the endless credit which the chitin-pattern of her right hand signified. There were Halds onworld: her interest pricked at that . . . Pol and Morn; she stirred to care again. Plotting their assassinations and guarding against her own occupied her time . . . until Pol and Morn turned up boldly on her doorstep, and Pol swept her a mocking curtsy.
Pol Hald. She had passed her sixteenth birthday; he was unchanged, whatever age he really was. He stared her up and down and she looked at him, and at Morn, who stood at his shoulder; and she realised with a chill that her gun was on safety in its belt-clip; she could not possibly be quick enough.
“Your operation is entirely too elaborate,” Pol said, grinning at her. “But well-thought, little Meth-maren. I applaud your zeal . . . and your precocious cleverness. Please call them off.”