A Treason of Truths Read online

  Lyre’s fingers dug down into the flesh of her wrist. Cian was speaking in a low monotone, calm—even in an emergency half his attention flicked regularly to the unseen screen in his lens. “—not compatible with asymptomatic seizure development—”

  “You seem surprisingly certain about your knowledge on the topic for a minor entertainment executive,” Sylvere interrupted, vinegar and suspicion. Cian was undisturbed.

  “But not surprising for a well-prepared prime minister boarding a flotilla of biotechnology.”

  “You can’t be saying you anticipated the young lord would fall into seizures.”

  “That would have been irrational,” Cian said. “I anticipated a poisoning attempt.”

  The implication stirred fresh alarm. Khait took up his duty as host, trying to quiet the waitstaff in attendance while Sylvere, flustered and perplexed, turned his attention to a new target. “My dear lady, it’s not wise to touch him until we can ascertain—”

  “Now,” Alais said, voice strained and lethal as a whisper, “is not a good time to test my wisdom, don’t you think, little man?”

  Alais was an altus noble, tall and vibrant and proud. Her relentless personality filled a room and was the frequent cause of court headaches. Sabine had thought she couldn’t be anything less than all-encompassing, but the woman had made herself small, crouched by the still body. She clasped his hand in hers, her own still covered in his blood. His fingers were yet pink, clinging to a fading warmth, but so still and limp in her grasp that it left no question that he was dead.

  He shared a likeness with Alais, Sabine realized. The length of nose, the down of pale eyelashes against even paler cheeks. Above the wound of his throat, there was a trickle of saliva at the corner of his lips. Orric’s temples were streaked with fast disappearing sweat.

  Alais refused to show tears through a strength of will. An iron resolve she normally kept hidden under layers of laughter and frivolity. Sabine knew it enough to identify that on sight. There was only grief and self-recrimination as she looked down at her cousin’s body.

  The conversation tipped. Leave it to her coddled fellow nobles to come up empty in the face of real hardship. Sabine felt grateful when Lyre chose that moment to step in. “No use blaming the nerd, Alais. Let me take a look.”

  “Did this happen because you stopped looking?” Alais’s voice was sharp, but there was no real sting behind it. She sighed and folded Orric’s hand back over his chest. She wiped her bloody hands on her pants, uncaring about the wide swaths of red it left behind on the white. She stood slowly, and Sabine only caught the tremor in her shoulders because she was looking for it. “I want to know what this is. Orric is—was—”

  “Yes, this is a diplomatic incident and we will all require answers.” Sabine stepped up, next to Alais but not touching. Demands, imperious actions, this was the kind of support Sabine was expected to offer in emergencies. Not comfort. Never comfort. She turned to Khait. “I suspect the Cloud Vault will have the resources to speed a complete and rigorous investigation.”

  “Of course.” A troubled shadow had taken up residence between Khait’s thick brows. “The Vault will get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, our honored guests should, should...”

  He seemed at a loss, but Sylvere slid in smoothly. “Retire to their rooms. Our honored guests will have to forgive us if we cut this evening’s welcome short in light of current events. You are, of course, free to continue discussion and refreshments in the guest solarium...”

  Sabine was being herded. It was blatant herding. Reasonable enough, remove the squeamish, stompy nobles from the potential crime scene. Sabine was a proponent of allowing professionals to do their jobs, but she objected to being herded. Too many people thought she had lost the ability to move her own feet since she lost the sight in her right eye.

  “Remove your hand from my elbow before my guard does it for you,” she muttered lowly. Kitra was there in an instant and the Vault attendant couldn’t release her fast enough.

  They appeared to be herding Lyre as well. No one herded Lyre. Dark eyes narrowed at Sylvere, but then strangely bounced to Sabine. Lyre’s frown softened into something like worry. Sabine could see her gaze sweep the body and the scene again, hungrily consuming any details into that rattrap of a brain before grudgingly moving.

  “Alais,” Sabine said quietly. The noble hadn’t moved. “Let’s go. We’ll get answers.”

  “Answers,” Alais repeated. The mocking smile, so standard on her face, had a bleak edge to it. “Yes, I suppose my tragedy will play to great political advantage to you. How fortunate.”

  “Save the squabbles for private, m’lady.” Lyre hauled Alais forward, somehow managing to propel the much larger woman toward the doorway by strength of personality alone. “You’re my meal ticket, and disagreement makes wee common folk like me nervous.”

  Sabine sincerely doubted that, but it did get Alais moving. They rejoined the diplomats, and Sylvere continued to herd them down the hall with apologetic promises that were smooth and discordant. Sylvere reached out to pat a condolence into Alais’s shoulder as they passed, but his hand was stopped cold with a look.

  “Orric was my least annoying cousin. There will be answers for this,” Alais said simply and continued on. Sabine had to admire the cold dread that seeped into Sylvere’s eyes in her wake. For a moment, she remembered she admired Alais despite the political divisions between them. She would need to foster that, if they were to get answers. Sabine was far too experienced to believe anyone simply fell ill at an international summit.

  “I will require a bath.” Sabine used her empress voice.

  “And I want a pony,” Lyre added, simply because she could.

  Chapter Nine

  Twilight softened the shadows of the solarium by the time they were guided in. It was housed in one of the many glittering domes of the central city, and the air was thick and sweet with night-blooming flowers. It was a riot of creeping vines and bushes, with a tidy path of glass stones kept clear with military precision. Lyre wouldn’t be surprised if the nano-enhanced greens were programmed to fall short of their edging. Despite the greenery it had a sterile feeling. Suffocatingly perfect. The Vault’s way.

  Lyre had no doubt that Orric had suffocated precisely to that perfected plan. Either the Vault had allowed Syndicate sabotage to slip through, or had orchestrated the death themselves. Why, was the question, but a more immediate problem occupied Lyre’s mind at the moment: how to warn and protect the damned woman walking in front of her.

  Sabine murmured a word to Kitra and immediately swept through the double doors leading to her suite of rooms. Lyre had to stifle the impulse to follow. She needed to take Sabine by the shoulders and shake her. Both to explain the real danger they were in, and—if Lyre was being honest with herself—to reassure herself that Sabine was still intact. She needed to feel her skin warm, her pulse rushing fierce and arrogant and unassailed under her fingers. She needed—

  But the door was already closing in her face. Later. First she needed to make sure her erstwhile employer didn’t go off the deep end.

  “Alais.” Lyre found Alais sorting through her things in her room. Her possessions had been packed via a repulsor chest. The expense of the technology was only compounded by gilt scrollwork and tiny beads of garnet crusting the outside. The northern lords had spared no expense throwing their weight around for this summit. Alais was interested in throwing something else, namely, clothes. Half a dozen suit jackets were in various states of escape from the chest, helped along as Alais dug through, muttering to herself.

  She’d washed the blood from her hands at least. Lyre lingered by the door, knowing better than to barge in on an altus in the middle of a tantrum of grief. “Alais,” she said again, a little louder.

  “I heard you.” Alais spoke into the trunk. “If you truly wish to make yourself useful, help me find a damned m
ourning band.”

  Lyre decided to cut to the chase. “Orric’s death wasn’t a natural seizure.”

  “Of course not. He was murdered.” Alais surfaced with a bit of lurid yellow crepe. Yellow was the color of fading, of withering leaves and sickly skin, a symbol of death in the Empire. “What do you think, will it do? It will clash horribly with my dinner attire but needs must...”

  “It’s dreadful,” Lyre deadpanned and Alais’s expression bloomed.

  “Excellent.”

  Lyre turned her eyes to the ceiling in a silent search for strength. She normally loved nothing more than to indulge in a good old-fashioned, emotionally stunted snark-off. It was, in fact, her favorite pastime and the entire basis of ninety percent of her working relationships. But they didn’t have the time. “We’ve got a noble assassinated on Vault grounds, the Syn flirting with war, and Sabine is not listening to a fucking word I say. I appreciate annoying nonsense is your shtick, but indulge me for a moment.”

  “Indulge you.” Alais cinched the yellow sash around her arm, less like an armband and more like a tourniquet. She bit the end off with her teeth. “Don’t you feel like all I’ve done is indulge you? I know why you’re here, and it’s certainly not to advise or protect me.”

  “To serve Imperial interests—”

  “You mean Sabine’s interests.”

  “The empress’s interests are Imperial interests, isn’t that right, Senator?”

  A tremor went through Alais’s jaw and for a moment Lyre thought she might have a real argument on her hands. But the noble dropped her gaze. “You see nothing but Sabine. Would that my family had such a fervent protector as the royal family does. Perhaps my cousin would still be alive.”

  Lyre wasn’t made for apologies. She’d tried before, but words brambled up behind her lips and came out with thorns. That’s what she was made for. “I’ll deliver who did this, Alais.”

  “Don’t bother. I never had the taste for vengeance like the rest of you.” Alais leaned back on the desk, drawn from grief. “Go. Your empire needs you. Whether the empress admits it or not.”

  She was pale when she looked at Lyre. Pale enough to allow the steel to show through. For a moment, Lyre saw the senator she could have been in a different family, in a different country, in a different time. It deserved the time Lyre wasted to sketch a deep, respectful bow. “Yes, Lady.”

  * * *

  The solarium was empty as Lyre crossed it. Uneasy and vulnerable, diplomats had withdrawn to their rooms for the illusion of safety behind solid doors. The doors to the empress’s quarters swung open as Lyre approached, and she found a well of shadows out of habit. It afforded her a view of Khait making his exit, flanked by what looked like a tech in a haz coat.

  Well, it wasn’t as if she were anywhere she didn’t have a right to be. Weighing her options, Lyre stepped forward as Khait made for the exit. He paused in a swath of the moonlight seeping in from the solarium’s wide glass. It threw his craggy features into sharper relief and brilliantly displayed the frown as he stopped. “Scarab.”

  “Lyre, actually. Short name. You should work on remembering it, Grumpy.” She caught a flinch from the tech. Ah, yes, this was the glorious thing about nicknames. Everyone took them so damned seriously. Lyre had been taking the names given to her since she could walk. Lyre, Kid, Rat, Wench, Scarab, the Liar. Names held no power, not when you didn’t know who you were anyway. Lyre supposed it was different for people who’d only ever grown up with one.

  Khait, at least, had the practice of ignoring irritants. Probably from working with Sylvere. “Just as well you made yourself known. You’ll need to provide a sample of blood.”

  A tilt of unease cut Lyre’s amusement short. “I don’t think I need to do anything you tell me to, at the moment.”

  “It’s an investigative matter. The empress has already agreed to comply.” Khait rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily. “We are taking samples of all the attendees of the event to rule out any contamination.”

  “Contamination.” Lyre put together the presence of the tech. “You discovered what killed the young lord. It wasn’t a seizure. Was Cian right? Poison?”

  Khait’s grave lips thinned. “Of a sort.”

  “What sort of poison could cause ‘contamination’ concerns when Orric stabbed his own airway after two sips of soup?” Lyre asked. The tech fidgeted. His tool case was steel, and rimmed in that silver-white beading Lyre saw all over the Vault labs. A sealant, to avoid escaped microscopic creations. “Nanobots?”

  Lyre had a rule when working with outside people: never ask a question you didn’t already know the answer to. But she really, really did not want to know the answer to this one.

  “Orric appears to have suffered a convulsion caused by activated nano agents in his bloodstream.” Khait confirmed her worst fears with his usual gruff honesty. “But there’s no telling where these agents entered his bloodstream. He could have been infected before arriving at the Vault.”

  “Yes, let’s not safely assume that the nexus for all known nanotechnology advances was the common vector. By all means.” Lyre found herself mimicking Sabine’s Imperial lilt, posh and withering, when she was being particularly sarcastic. She wondered when she’d started that, an infection of her own.

  “And that’s why we’re the best place to get to the bottom of it. No one else has fallen ill yet, but I’ve put status monitors on the empress and prime minister.” Khait made an impatient gesture, supposedly summoning the tech, who looked none too eager to draw near Lyre. “Now, your elbow if you please.”

  Lyre rolled up her sleeve. It was a better use of energy to pick the fights you could win. But that didn’t mean she had to give something for nothing. She eyed Khait thoughtfully. “I assume you still got my bloodwork on file to compare?”

  She didn’t actually want to assume that, and was displeased when Khait nodded. “Assuming you haven’t picked up any new bugs of your own during your time with the Imperials.”

  “Go on, say doglords and fleas. I know you want to,” Lyre goaded.

  “I leave the petty humor for Micha.” Khait’s lip twitched. “Dr. Sylvere.”

  If he hoped Lyre wouldn’t pick up on that slip, he was going to be disappointed. “You two work together long?”

  “Only since he joined the Vault last year.” There was a hurdle of privacy there, one Khait was not willing to cross. He returned his attention to supervising the totally routine blood draw. “You shouldn’t antagonize Dr. Sylvere. He has no love lost for the Syn.”

  Lyre’s natural means of breathing was antagonism, but she let that slide to keep the information flowing. “And how do you feel about our little neighborly squabble, Dr. Khait?”

  The tech finished up, slapping a needless dermastrip over the bend of her elbow. Khait frowned and appeared to consider before answering. “I was born on the Vault. Never so much as vacationed in the Empire or Syndicate. I’ve got no stakes in this game, besides how much it means to Sylvere.”

  Lyre tilted her head as she tried to make those pieces fit. “Yet you’re hosting a monumental peace summit.”

  Khait shrugged. “Needed done. Sylvere sits on the board. He convinced the directors and volunteered to run the damn thing, and I keep an eye on him.”

  “He’s lucky to have such an attentive colleague.”

  Khait dismissed that with a solid and decisive snort and sadly took his leave before Lyre could goad more out of him. She liked the grumpy ones. They were straightforward as far as information went.

  Nanobots, though. Nothing about those was straightforward. Lyre flexed her mental fingers over the puzzle. If it had really been an assassination attempt at dinner, why target the young lord? If throwing the northern lords into imbalance was the goal, Alais made the much more impactful target. If it’d been a political move, aiming closer to either the empress or the prime minister
would have caused more immediate problems. It was possible their opponent had simply missed, but nanobots was a precise kind of weapon. Each dose had to be calibrated for a patient’s general health. It could have just as easily been Sabine.

  Sabine. Lyre gritted her teeth as she approached the door to the royal quarters. She was split between worry that this nanobot attack could target Sabine next, and resignation that no one—least of all Lyre right now—was going to convince Sab to do anything she didn’t want to do. She still had to try. She needed to convince Sabine to abandon this ridiculous summit. Someone was playing with nanobots, and surely wouldn’t stop with Orric. Even if Sabine wasn’t the target, she’d experienced the horror of nanobots before. There was no way her past trauma wouldn’t be leveraged against her.

  Lyre wouldn’t let that happen.

  Sabine had to get out of here. Sabine didn’t have to care for her, or even trust her, as long as she came out alive by the end of this. It should have been comforting, repeating that to herself. Instead she only found it depressing.

  The doors swished open before she could buzz for entrance. Kitra appeared in the gap, more composed than when Lyre had seen him last. His veil was straightened back on his head, so Lyre couldn’t read his eyes, but judging from the clench in his jaw he was embracing knightsguard mode in the face of the emergency.

  “I need to speak to Sabine,” Lyre said.

  “The Empress has retired for the evening.”

  “You learn that line from CHARIS?” Lyre asked. Kitra even sounded like an AI. “Look, kid, I know this is the big time for you, and I don’t mean to step on your toes but I need to deliver this information personally.”

  Lyre stepped forward and was met with a gauntleted arm. “Deliver your information to your Lady Alais. That’s your employer, right?”