Part 34 (2/2)

”A police officer hit me.”

Both his hands were clenched on the sheet as if he feared its being taken. Zed leaned more obviously on the chair back. Dana's hands relaxed. Zed said, ”This evening Rhani sent you on an errand.”

Dana tensed again. ”Yes,” he said.

”To locate Loras U-Ellen.”

The tension remained. ”Yes.”

”Did you?”

Dana swallowed. ”I found someone who can, Zed-ka. I paid her eighty-five credits to deliver Rhani's message.”

”And then?” Zed prompted.

”Then I left to return to the house. Binkie met me at the corner.”

”In the street.”

”Yes. He said -- ” his shoulders lifted, ”he said that you and Rhani had had a fight, and that you were very angry. He said Rhani sent him to find me, to warn me not to come back. He brought me a cloak.” He glanced toward the wardrobe. ”It's there.”

Zed wondered if it was one of his. ”Was that all he said?”

Dana nodded, and then said, ”No -- he told me to stay away for six hours.

That's all.”

”Did he say what Rhani and I were fighting about?”

Dana's eyelids flickered. ”No,” he said.

Zed stretched. Dana watched him move. Zed let his hands drop to his thighs. ”Binkie set the fire,” he said softly. ”He sent you away so that you'd be blamed for it, after everyone but you and he was dead. He told us -- in such a way that we would believe him -- that you were planning to escape.” Dana's eyes went wide. ”I told the police to look for you. Then you called. Binkie heard Rhani tell me that you called. He went out the door. The alarms went off, and in the confusion, he triggered the fire, I don't know how, yet, and got away. He may have had help. They'll catch him, of course. Rhani, Corrios, and I got safely to the cellar. I suppose he didn't think of that. Amri was standing too near the source of the explosion. Her clothes flamed.”

There was genuine shock in Dana's face. ”That b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” he said.

”Yes,” Zed agreed, and rose, kicking the chair away. ”Did you know it was going to happen, Dana? Did Binkie tell you, did you help plan it? Is that why you stayed away?”

It took a moment for the accusations to register. Dana's mouth opened.

”No,” he said. ”No!”

Zed walked to the bedside and leaned over him. Dana recoiled until his head touched the wall. Cupping his chin, Zed felt with careful fingers for the pulse beneath the jaw. It raced. He found the nerve and pressed inward, lightly, as Dana breathed in gasps. Then he waited until he felt the deep involuntary shaking begin to rack Dana's muscles. ”If you lie to me,” he said, very gently, forcing the frightened man to listen, ”if you lie, I promise I'll rip you apart.”

He let the words linger, and then dropped his hand. Dana did not move.

Sweat beaded his face. Zed said, ”Let me hear it again.”

Dana whispered, ”I didn't know.”

Zed watched the trembling fade. Before it could vanish completely, he reached out and ran a fingertip over the ugly bruise on Dana's jaw. ”I believe you.” Lightly he tipped Dana's chin. ”But I'm tired, I've watched an innocent child die tonight, and my temper's very short. And I know you, Dana. You are lying to me, about something.”

The muscles around Dana's eyes contracted, released. He said, ”Yes, I am.

But it doesn't have anything to with Binkie, or with the fire -- none of that.

It isn't my lie, it's someone else's.”

Zed nodded. ”So,” he said, ”you want me to let you go on telling it.”

”Please,” Dana said.

Zed wondered what he should do. With a hand at Dana's throat, he searched the young face, looking for pride, for the telltale conceit of the manipulator.

He didn't find it. A strong part of him wanted to reject the plea, to force Dana to speak -- it would take ten minutes, no more -- but that, he knew, was anger talking. It had not been easy to sit in the hot, darkened cellar and wait for the fire to burn out, or to be put out, feeling Rhani's terror and knowing that he was frightened too, frightened, and impotent....

He lifted his hand. It was one of his rules: he played fair with his victims. Walking to the door, he slid it open, and turned around. Dana was staring at him, his pale face a study in disbelief. Zed said, ”I owe it to you, I think. I told the police to treat you gently, and they didn't. Another time, and I might not leave -- but it's late, and we're both tired, and this isn't my house. I'll let you have one lie, Dana.”

Rhani lifted her head from a pillow.

For a moment she couldn't remember where she was. The texture of the sheets was unfamiliar. Suns.h.i.+ne through pink (pink?) curtains suffused the room with rosy light. The light made her think of fire.... Her fingers curled in the sheets; she remembered flames, the curtains like a torch, and Amri screaming.

Her sinuses ached with the tears she hadn't cried. This was the Kyneth house, yes, and she had arrived here the night before in a police bus, with Zed and Corrios and Dana. But not with Binkie -- Binkie was in a cell, Binkie had killed Amri, Binkie had burned her house.

She scrambled from the bed. An embroidered bell-pull dangled down the wall; she pulled it. In a moment, someone knocked on her door. ”Come in,” she called. A slave entered with clothing in her arms.

”Dana,” she said, trying to bow with the burden, ”these are for you.” She put them on a chair and trotted into the bathroom -- to run a bath, Rhani thought. Rhani looked through the pile of clothes. Her own filthy pants were nowhere in sight; Aliza must have taken them to give the computer a pattern, and then discarded them. There were four s.h.i.+rts, four pants, two tunics and a dress, all in fabrics and colors she liked, silky silvers, and blues, amber, and red- browns.

”What time is is?” she asked the slave.

”Domna, it's three hours past dawn.”

Rhani hated such circ.u.mlocutions. She hunted through the room until she found the wall chronometer. It was in the headboard of the bed. Throwing on the pink robe, she strode into the washroom and splashed her face with cold water.

The bath was waiting for her. She bathed quickly. Kyneths evidently preferred baths to showers. When she emerged from the bath, her skin felt silky-smooth; the slave had poured some kind of scented depilatory oil into the water. When she returned to the bedroom, swathed in a towel bigger than she was, the bed was decorously rearranged and the slave had drawn back all but the inner curtains.

Through their gauze, Rhani saw the mathematical sprawl of Main Clinic, and, farther north, the brown, bald pate of the Barrens. Her mind jumped. She had to talk to Imre, and to Zed; she had to find a new secretary, she had to talk to Dana. She wondered if he had managed to locate Loras U-Ellen.

She dressed in blue-and-silver. She missed her room; it was hard to think in this alien place, where the pastel colors made the air seem fuzzy. She wanted the hard bright dimensions of her house. She had never cared for it, before.

And Binkie had burned it. Anger shook her like a benediction. The door opened wide; Zed came through it. He, too, was dressed in blue-and-silver, the Yago colors: she hugged him fiercely for a moment. Once more their responses had run alike. Twin! she thought.

”Did you sleep?” he questioned.

She smiled at him. ”Always the medic. Yes, Senior, I slept very well.”

”What shall you do this morning?”

<script>