Chapter Seventeen

There was a pause that, to Kei’s ears, was of a length so interminable she already knew the answer before it came.

“I’m afraid we can’t do that just yet,” the voice on the other side of the shutter said. Speaker-President Evanson closed his eyes and let out a breath.

“Why on Earth not?” he said.

“Mr. Speaker, I’m sure you understand that this is a volatile situation.”

“Of course we understand that,” Kei snapped.

“Who’s that?” the voice asked.

“It’s one of the people you’re supposed to be keeping safe,” she spat, “so let us out!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the voice said, choosing her words carefully. “I’m not able to do that right now. First, we intend to sweep the whole station for intruders or anyone who shouldn’t be where they are, then we’ll assess the situation again. As it stands, we can’t say for certain that it’s safe to let you all out.”

“You think somebody here could have done it,” Sofia said.

“We’re not ruling anything out, señorita,” the woman behind the shutters said, either recognising her or picking up on Sofia C-Castilian accent.. “But considering that all of you were present in the room when it happened, it’s going to be safest for us to keep you together for now. I will restore the lights just as soon as I can.”

“Thank you, Ms. Palomo,” Geraint said before anyone could protest further. “Do update me with anything new as soon as possible, please.”

“Of course, Speaker.” Footsteps leading away from the door quickly gave way to silence, as everyone looked around. Kei wasn’t worried – she reasoned that if there truly was a murderer among them, then they had done their job already. They presumably weren’t looking to murder indiscriminately. Still, she wasn’t happy about being stuck here all night. She had only come because Isi had asked her, after he was invited to nominate himself for the Vice Presidency. It had been just a few hours, but it already felt like days ago.

“What should we do?” she asked Isi as they moved off to a quiet corner.

“Well,” he sucked in a breath, “We’re stuck here until they decide to let us out, which they’ll only do when they think none of us did it. So maybe we try to prove our innocence?”

“We don’t even know how this happened – how do we prove we didn’t do it if we don’t know what it is?”

Isi shrugged. “What have you got?”

Kei looked around. Either she was being tested, or Isi had no plan. Considering her assets, an idea came to her. “We have someone who says they’ve seen poison like this before – maybe she can have a look at the body.” Kei gave a subtle gesture towards Mairin, who was in conversation with Sofia.

“Ah, good. But we know that Garden aren’t normally forthcoming with that stuff.”

“This is an extraordinary situation – a Garden delegate who can’t escape us. I can do it,” she said. She still had something to prove, after everything that had happened. Isi thought they would all be shipped out as soon as Nano Dex sold off their seats, so there was really nothing left here for them. But she was from a world where there were always new opportunities, if you knew where you were supposed to look. She had climbed the ladder and made it to space on her own merits, and she wanted to do this for herself if nobody else.

He nodded his assent. “Careful,” he said. She nodded back, and went to lurk by Mairin.

The older woman was explaining something to Sofia. It was metaphysics of some kind, and Kei was only barely able to follow the abstract conversation because both women were struggling to find the words in Gaean. Clearly it was complex, but she could just about deduce that they were discussing cause and effect, as well as probability, and how this related to the war on Garden somehow. Sofia was nodding and taking notes in her native tongue, before she noticed Kei watching them.

“Can I help you?” she asked, shielding her notes.

“Relax,” Kei said. “I can’t read those anyway. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t really care.”

Mairin turned to size her up. “What do you want, then?”

“You said you had seen poison like this. Could it have come from your world? I’m not accusing you of anything,” she quickly added as she saw Mairin prepare to argue. “I’m just investigating the possibility.”

Mairin nodded to Sofia first, and said “We can finish this up later.” When Sofia started to protest she just shook her head – that was enough to send the Carmen woman packing. Now alone with Mairin, she said in a lower tone. “I know that you and your faction don’t exactly like being up here. You want to leave, right? Close off the rift, to stop your enemies from getting aboard.”

“What are you… how do you know that?”

Kei gave a small grin, and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “You share your secrets with one person, and it goes viral. Honestly, over at Edo we’re starting to feel left out. We didn’t bring any scandals up here.”

“What about the time you tried to blackmail a whole faction into letting you complete a weapons deal that you hadn’t even agreed on with the buyers?” Mairin said, sliding down to sit next to her.

Kei shrugged. “Yeah, you got us there. But it didn’t work, so…”

“You’re straying from your theme, Morishita.”

“Right. We know you want to leave, and it looks like Powell had already had enough. But I don’t think you want to burn all your bridges while you do so. You don’t mean any of us harm – you’re trying to protect us from your true enemies. Am I right?”

Mairin slowly nodded, her eyes shrewd and careful. “You got lucky that we found the rift first. If any of the other groups that we fight made it up here… there would be no Audacity. They don’t believe in talking through issues like we do. Every time there’s been an attempt at peace talks in the last century, we’ve been the first ones at the table, and nobody else has ever seriously tried.”

“What would they think if they knew we were up here, eh?”

“Oh, they know,” Mairin said casually. Seeing the surprise on Kei’s face, she said “Back home, it’s hard to keep anything secret for long. But they know about this place, and about you all. Hell, we have news teams just like you – they’ve seen the chamber footage, they’ll know your faces.”

“That’s an unsettling thought,” she said.

“I wouldn’t worry, they can’t touch you up here. If they tried to fly a shuttle of their own anywhere near this place, they’d be toast before they left orbit. And we’d see them coming a month away.”

“No, it’s unsettling that you weren’t able to keep Audacity a secret when the King was.”

Mairin laughed. “Yes, I know. Not exactly living up to our reputation. But who knew he had it in him -“ she waved over to the body, then leapt to her feet. “Oh no, no no no.” she cried as she ran over to the room’s centre.

Kei craned her neck to try and see what was wrong. Then the lights came back on with a slam! and the room went from dim red and black to bright white. Momentarily blinded, it wasn’t until she could see again that she the smoke curling up from the centre of the room.

The body was melting.

Mairin was standing over it, her jacket up against her nose to shield from the smell. Fat bubbled and something unspeakable was leaking from the cavity formed in the King’s chest. Everyone in the room either gasped, shrieked, or ran over to take a closer look.

“Stay back!” Isi said. “It could be contagious, or something.” He tried to pull Mairin back, but as soon as he laid a hand on her she whirled around and had his arm in a lock faster than Kei could blink. She shoved him away.

“Don’t touch me. And it’s not contagious. You can only get this from ingestion.”

“What is it?” the Speaker asked in undisguised horror. The stench was starting to fill the chamber.

Mairin turned to look at them all, her eyes eventually settling on Kei. In that moment, Kei knew she had been right – the Garden delegate had recognised the poison, because it was from their world.

“It’s Overkill,” she said. “That’s what we call it, anyway. But every faction has it, or something like it.”

“you mean, back home?” Sai said, still apparently catching up.

“Mmm,” Mairin said. She moved away from the body. “Like I say, it won’t kill you unless you ingest it, but even a little could kill you. So I would stay away.” She winked at Isi, still rubbing his arm. It wasn’t bruised, but his dignity likely was.

“You realise,” said Panagos, “this makes you the primary suspect, Ms…”

“Hanmer. But Mairin will do for now. And maybe it does, but I’m done keeping secrets. That’s all Powell wanted to do – keep things away from you, unless it was for trade. But that hasn’t worked, and I don’t work for Powell any more. I don’t work for anyone, in fact. So I’ll tell you what you need to know if it gets us all out of here safely.”

“Overkill?” Sofia prompted.

“Right. It’s a cocktail of toxin, different compatible poisons synthesised together. Some people have built up tolerances to one, but it’s impossible to have a tolerance to all of them – they preclude each other.”

“You know a lot about poisons, for a philosopher,” Isi observed. Arthur had told both him and Kei about his meeting with Mairin back in Luna, and Kei saw what he was doing – if she was claiming to really not care about her secrets, she wouldn’t mind him outing her that way. Not that Kei could see why her job was so important.

“I’ve seen it before,” she said, dead serious. “I’ve seen what it can do. It’s not the poison you want to use when you need an alibi – when you want to pretend it was natural. It’s a sledgehammer, not a knife.”

“Hence the name,” Kei said.

“Right.”

“Could they have this… Overkill on other worlds?” Lars asked. His eyes were watering.

“I suppose they could,” Mairin said. “In theory. But this is exactly how it operates. It chokes your air supply, causes internal bleeding, and then burns a hole through the chest that eats you inside out.”

“I feel sick again,” Sofia said.

“You’re not the only one this time,” Kei said, shielding her own nose now. She watched Sai reach up to the top of their head and flip a switch, and guessed they were turning off olfactory receptors. The rest of them weren’t so lucky.

“Any more questions?” Mairin asked. When nobody responded, she returned to Kei, still slumped on the floor. She slumped down right next to her again. “If Overkill is involved… whoever did this wanted it to be violent. Maybe they make this on other worlds, but…”

“But you think only your world would use it.” Kei said.

“People can be barbaric anywhere. They can be cruel and spiteful anywhere. But we’ve spent time studying you all. I don’t think you have it in you. Any of you.”

“What are you saying?”

“Powell thought there was a mole aboard the station. An enemy of ours, disguised as an other-worlder. I thought she was wrong, but maybe she’s proven herself right again.” Mairin sighed.

“A mole? How would they survive up here? They’d have to learn Gaean, fit in totally… it’s not possible. And getting up here in the first place!”

Mairin nodded as though she agreed, but Kei could tell she was still unsure. Paranoia was a hard habit to kick, she supposed.

“What did the King eat today?” she asked the room.

“Oh, yes, let me just pull up my list of the King’s daily menu,” Panagos said. It took a beat before Kei realised he was being sarcastic. Mairin, rather than chewing him out, just turned to the rest of the group.

“Overkill is fast-acting – it has to be, with all those different poisons mixed together. A sledgehammer, like I said. We’re talking minutes, an hour at most.”

“He didn’t eat anything – we’ve been here for hours,” Sofia said. “Except…” she looked up at the President’s chair, and everyone looked with her. A cooling cup of coffee was balanced on the edge of the desk in a clean white mug.

Mairin leapt to her feet again – she had a lot of energy for her age, Kei thought. “Who else had coffee?”

Kei raised her hand. So did everyone else except Sai, Mairin, and the Speaker.

“Do you all feel fine?”

“As fine as can be expected,” said Lars.

“So the coffee wasn’t all poisoned. It would have got one of you by now if so.”

“So?”

“So it was the King’s cup that was poisoned,” Kei finished. She saw where Mairin’s train of thought led. “Who served the coffee?”