Tovek Sennar Phael arrived at the rear gate after dark.
Cognus received him alone. The household had been instructed that the visitor was a specialty supplier from off-world arriving on private business of the apprentice’s. The household had received the instruction with the calibrated incuriosity Jerris had trained into the staff for matters of this register. Telar was not present. The grounds keeper had been sent to the eastern boundary to inspect a section of wall that did not, this evening, require inspection. Cognus walked Tovek through the service entrance and along the rear corridor to the small interview room at the rear of the main block.
The room had been used once already in the household’s current operation. Its prior use was not visible. The floor had been cleaned. The chair Velt had sat in had been replaced with a different chair. The walls remained as they had been.
Allia was waiting.
Tovek took in the room and its occupant with the same scan he gave any client’s premises. He was tall for a Pyke, lean in the way Pykes were lean. The partial rebreather across the lower half of his face produced the slight resonant alteration to his voice that Cognus had learned to listen through across the contracts she had used him on. The mask’s left antennule housing was stripped. The right was intact. The asymmetry was the kind of thing another Pyke would read across a room. To Allia it would read as wrong without naming what was wrong; to Cognus it had been wrong long enough to be familiar. The little finger of his right hand was missing its last segment, the cut clean and old, the scar settled into the kind of pale ridge that took years to acquire.
He did not bow. He did not greet either of them. He took the chair across the small table and waited.
“Tovek,” Cognus said.
“Huntress.”
“The name does not travel here. You will use the name I am called now or no name.”
“Cognus.”
“Yes.”
Tovek’s eyes shifted to Allia. The shift took perhaps two seconds. In those two seconds his face did not change, but the small set of his shoulders adjusted by a degree that Cognus, watching, registered as the calibration she had been waiting for. He had worked out where the Huntress now stood in the architecture of the room. He had worked out who the woman across the table was. He had decided, on the strength of those two readings alone, that the meeting would be the meeting Allia required it to be.
“Mistress,” he said.
“Mr. Sennar Phael.”
“The apprentice has vouched for me.”
“She has.”
“Then we may proceed.”
Allia did not nod. She did not make any of the small social gestures that opened the kind of meeting this was not. She placed her hands flat on the table and spoke in the voice she used for instructions she expected to be carried out without elaboration.
“My brother is on Dweem. He has been there longer than is plausible for the acquisition he travelled to complete. He will not be returning. You will ensure that he died there, in a manner the Dweem authorities accept as natural cause, and that what remains of him is returned to Daplona for the burial his sister will arrange.”
Tovek inclined his head fractionally.
“Cause of death.”
“Cardiovascular. He was not a young man and his habits had been a sister’s concern for some years.”
“The body.”
“Sepp is six standard feet and four inches in height. He was, when I last saw him, two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle on a broad frame. Imposing in any room he entered, and the room knew it. His shoulders were unusually wide for a Daplona merchant. His hands were large enough that custom gloves were a household expense. His skin carried scars consistent with the practical life he had led. A pale line across the left forearm from a hauling accident in his fortieth year. A smaller mark below the right knee from a childhood fall. An old burn on the left shoulder from an industrial cleaning fluid he had once handled without proper care. His hair was dark and kept short. His teeth had received the work a man of his means received from a Daplona dentist of moderate reputation across the years. Two implants in the lower jaw. The dental records will be made available to your channel.”
Tovek absorbed the description without moving.
“Birthmarks.”
“A small port-wine mark on the inside of the right thigh, approximately the size of a credit chip. A second smaller mark at the base of the spine.”
“Distinguishing recent injuries.”
“None recent. The body that returns will not need to account for the period of the Dweem absence.”
“I will require the dental records and any medical files the household keeps. The local coroner on Dweem will perform the work the documentation supports. The body will be processed through channels I maintain in the capital. Your brother’s passing will be witnessed by hotel staff who will remember exactly what they need to remember and nothing else. The certifying physician will be a man whose signature on death certifications has been respected on Dweem for the better part of two decades.”
“The body will be embalmed for return.”
“Local custom on Dweem favors cremation. Your brother’s body will be embalmed because his sister, Mistress Omek, requires a Daplona ceremony. The local authorities will respect the request. The body will arrive at the Daplona freight terminal in a sealed coffin appropriate to the cause of death. It will not be opened in transit.”
“It will not be opened on arrival.”
Tovek’s eyes narrowed by perhaps a millimeter. He had registered what the instruction implied. The body that arrived from Dweem would not be opened by anyone at any point in the chain from the freight terminal to the burial. The funeral would proceed with a sealed coffin. The community’s grief would be conducted around an absence that no one would be permitted to look at directly.
“The ceremony will be the ceremony,” he said.
“The ceremony will be the ceremony.”
“I will arrange for the body to be of approximately the right weight and dimensions, with the surface markings consistent with the description you have given. The features will not need to match precisely. A sealed coffin requires only that the weight on the bearers’ shoulders is the weight the bearers expect.”
“The weight,” Allia said.
“The weight.”
Cognus, watching from the chair at the corner of the room, registered her Master’s hands on the table. The right hand had not tremored in any of the days since the chamber. Allia’s composure across the table was not Allia’s natural composure. It was the composure of a Sith Master who had decided what she wanted and was now arranging it through the operator most suited to arrange it. The Working that had cost her an eye vessel was, Cognus understood, the same Working that was not visibly present in this conversation, was not being applied to Tovek, and had no need to be.
“Timing,” Tovek said.
“Three to five weeks. The community here has been prepared for news that is not good. The news will arrive when your work permits.”
“The terms of the arrangement.”
Allia did not consult any document. She had thought through the offer she would make before Tovek arrived and she made it now in the cadence she used for terms that would not be revisited.
“You will remain in Daplona. The household will provide a residence in a neighborhood appropriate to your stated profession. We will cover your expenses. You will hold yourself available for whatever forgery and documentary work the household requires, on demand, indefinitely. In return, the per-contract payment for this work and any subsequent work will be structured into your living arrangement. You will not be paid in the ordinary way.”
Tovek considered the offer. He considered it for perhaps four seconds.
“The arrangement is permanent.”
“It is.”
“I will not be permitted to depart Daplona without your authorization.”
“You will not.”
“And in time, mistress?”
Allia did not smile. The expression that occupied her face for a brief moment was not a smile. It was the expression of a Sith Master communicating to an operator of high competence that the arrangement she was offering carried a long horizon. The horizon was not a thing she would name in a single meeting.
“In time,” she said, “the work that develops from this arrangement may produce opportunities of a different scale than per-contract payment provides. We will discuss those opportunities when the work has earned the discussion.”
Tovek understood. The forger’s calculation had taken the four seconds it had taken, and the answer had been favorable to Tovek, and Tovek did not require Allia to elaborate beyond what she had elaborated. He inclined his head.
“The arrangement is accepted.”
Allia placed her right hand flat on the table in the small formal gesture that closed the kind of meeting this was. Tovek mirrored the gesture with his left hand — the right hand, with its missing segment, did not perform that particular gesture in the years since the cut. The arrangement had been struck.
In the architecture inside Zannah where the spirit had been carried since the duel, Bane spoke for the first time that day.
‘This is the work,’ he said. ‘I am pleased you have made it yours.’
Zannah did not answer him. She did not need to. The spirit who had withheld through the planning and the deciding and the orchestration had now offered, briefly, the thing he was capable of offering. Pride, in his register, was pride. She received it without engagement and let the moment close.
Tovek rose. Cognus rose with him.
“The dental records and medical files will be delivered to you within the day,” Allia said. “The residence will be arranged by the end of the week. Cognus will provide the address.”
“Mistress.”
“Mr. Sennar Phael.”
Cognus walked Tovek back along the rear corridor and out the service entrance. They did not speak. At the rear gate Tovek paused. He turned and regarded her for a moment in the dim light that the household maintained at the perimeter at this hour.
“She is not what I expected,” he said.
“No.”
“You will not tell me what she is.”
“I will not.”
“Then I will not ask.”
He moved off into the dark beyond the gate. The shape of him receded along the path that led to the side road where his transport was waiting. Cognus closed the gate behind him and walked back along the corridor to the interview room.
Allia was still at the table. The room had not changed. The chair Tovek had occupied was empty. The small lamp at the side of the table was at the low setting Allia preferred for work that did not require more.
Cognus took the chair.
“He is competent,” Zannah said. Allia had left the room with Tovek; the woman who remained at the table was no longer performing the role. “He is more competent than he was when you used him. The cut has done what cuts of that kind do. He has had years to refine what he is good at because he has had no syndicate beneath him to provide the easy work.”
“Yes, Master.”
“The arrangement we have made is the kind of arrangement that requires patience to land correctly. The first task will be the test. The body must arrive in the manner he has described. The funeral must proceed as I will require it to proceed. No inquiry from any quarter must raise a question we cannot close. If those conditions hold, the arrangement holds. If any of those fails, the arrangement does not hold. We will revisit it at that point.”
“Yes, Master.”
“He will not fail this task. He understands what failure costs.”
“Yes, Master.”
Zannah looked at Cognus across the table. The lamp at its low setting caught the gold of her eyes and held there. The white of her right eye had begun to clear; the small faded ring of color at the lower edge was the only remaining sign of the working.
“You brought him to me,” Zannah said. “The network you carried before me has now begun to be the network we carry between us. The rest of it will follow, in its time, by routes we will work out together. The work we did this evening was the work the apprentice prepares the Master to do. You did the preparation. I have done the work.”
“Yes, Master.”
The acknowledgment was given. Cognus received it without expression. The Quiet Hands held through the receiving and held through the brief moment after. The Master had not said it, but had communicated through the structure of what she had said, that the bringing of Tovek had been counted. The counting would not be revisited.
“You may withdraw.”
“Yes, Master.”
Cognus rose, inclined her head, and walked out of the interview room toward the corridor that led back to the main hall and from there to the eastern wing where the night’s remaining work waited. The lamp in the room behind her stayed at its low setting. Zannah remained at the table for some uncertain duration before she rose herself.
The household ran on toward its standing condition of evening. The work had been commissioned. The body would arrive in three to five weeks. The community had been prepared.
Sepp Omek would be buried in the cemetery on the southern edge of Daplona, beside his parents, with the household and the Daplona corridor in attendance.
The coffin would not be opened.