‘Obviously,’ said Kris, with a venomous look at Trine, who contrived not to notice her.
‘Specify your rates and remuneration, please,’ Kit piped up.
‘Ah, well.’ Sathiel spread his hands benevolently. ‘As you might imagine, what should be talks focused on the Architects’ return have degenerated. The Council of Human Interests and the Parthenon are engaged in mutual finger pointing.’ He sighed. ‘We need something to refocus them on the truly important things.’
‘You want the Oumaru,’ Kris divined.
‘I’m sure you’ve done the sensible thing and hidden it,’ Sathiel said. ‘A very wise precaution. However, if it was retrieved by my people and displayed above Berlenhof, the great powers might just abandon their brinkmanship. Then we can start dealing with the key issues at stake.’
‘And that’s your price for putting a word in?’ Olli asked.
‘I regret the necessity of being so mercenary, but yes,’ Sathiel agreed. ‘Millions, billions of lives are at stake, and I have a sacred duty.’
‘We’ll think about it,’ the specialist said.
‘Olli—’ Kris started.
‘I said we’ll think about it, discuss it maybe, free and frank exchange of views.’
Sathiel sighed. ‘I will be called before Aklu shortly, to reaffirm the disdain and rejection of the Hegemony towards the Unspeakable,’ he said. ‘There are proper diplomatic and ceremonial forms to these things, you understand. I will suggest you be brought out to witness this, and then most likely Aklu will make a start on you. You are aware, of course, that a great deal of Essiel cultural form is coloured by their early contact with the Architects. By which I mean that the proper behaviour of the Unspeakable is to make ruin an art form. Please let me help you.’
‘We’ll think about it,’ Olli repeated firmly, and just stared at the man until he’d taken his cultists and gone.
‘Well we could do worse,’ Kris said, after Trine had reluctantly reinstated their jamming field.
‘Question as regards the credibility of his contractual consideration,’ Kit’s translator spat emphatically.
‘Yeah, I reckon all the help we’d get from that quarter is a little hand-wringing and a “Well I asked him not to torture you, but . . .”’ Olli agreed. ‘We keep all our leverage close, and . . .’ But she didn’t have an ‘and’， not really.
‘Excuse me, but can someone at least explain to me who that even was,’ Trine complained. Kris gave them the potted history, including the Architected Oumaru, the Vulture being taken at Lung-Crow and their first clash with the Broken Harvest. At the end of it, Trine’s phantom face was staring at all of them simultaneously with an expression of exasperation.
‘You needed me a long time ago, my companions in adversity.’
‘We need you to tell us where the things are,’ Olli growled. ‘Or I will use whatever weird-ass influence I have with the Hook to have him do you first and make it slow.’
Trine manufactured a vast sigh. ‘If it comes to threats, my somewhat obstreperous cellmates, then know that sometimes the greatest treasures are to be found within oneself.’
Kris blinked. ‘Seriously?’ She stared at the Hiver’s barrel body. ‘And they’re still . . . potent? You cracked the containment system?’
‘Not exactly. I simply discovered that it was independent of the casing,’ Trine admitted. ‘But if it comes to blood, I will give these things up, despite the loss to science. In the hope it will soften the blow. Although you were the ones who robbed an Essiel gangster of a priceless treasure, so I don’t feel this is on my head.’
*
Soon after that, they were back in Aklu’s presence. True to his word, Sathiel had driven a wedge of cultists into the heart of the court. They were standing there, robes bright and regal, as though they’d turned up for a party everyone else had heard was cancelled. Aklu’s people didn’t seem to know quite what to make of the interlopers. The pack of thugs and heavies were probably not connoisseurs of Hegemonic theology. However, they were keen weathervanes for the mood of their boss, and the Essiel seemed to accept the cultists with equanimity, like some kind of ineffectual judgement on its ways.
The gilded Hiver spread their many arms towards the crew, in a gesture that eloquently conveyed Well? Kris glanced at her companions, because now they did know the location of the regalia. For a fragile moment, they retained a defiant camaraderie. Then Heremon appeared, pushing a simple six-by-four scaffold with obvious bindings for wrists and ankles, and a whole host of hooks and pins on jointed arms. You couldn’t have said for definite how those arms might be deployed, but they gave the imagination plenty to chew on.