The departure brief took twenty minutes.
Zannah was at the desk in the study with the four folds from the previous evening still in their right-hand position. The lamp at its low setting threw the steady light. The morning correspondence was processed and set aside. The household clock at the south wall registered the eighth hour, and Cognus had been summoned at the seventh and forty-fifth.
Cognus stood in the cover’s assigned position across the desk.
“The coordinates are confirmed,” Zannah said. “Veshara Anchorage. Pelu is already aboard. Suite access is in the third habitation cylinder, suite designation he has provided through the encrypted channel. Tovek has prepared documentation for you under the cover identity of an Omek freight-acquisition agent. The documentation will pass at the station’s entry inspection without flag. You will travel under that cover from the moment you board ship.”
“Yes, Master.”
“What you will receive from Pelu is intelligence about the intermediary. You will receive what he is prepared to show you. You will not contradict him or correct him on any point of the doctrine he is unaware of. You will receive his report and you will return.”
“Yes, Master.”
“If at any point the meeting deviates from the parameters Pelu has indicated, you will withdraw immediately. If a third party arrives. If Pelu’s posture changes in a way that suggests he is operating under coercion. If the suite’s privacy field has been tampered with. The blades you carry are for that contingency only. You will not initiate any engagement that the meeting does not require.”
“Yes, Master.”
Zannah considered her across the desk for a moment longer than the briefing had required.
“Whatever Pelu shows you, you will report to me here, in this room, when you return. You will not transmit the report through any channel. You will carry it in your head and you will deliver it in person.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Withdraw. The conveyance is waiting.”
Cognus inclined her head and withdrew.
✦
The transit out took four standard days.
Cognus traveled commercial under Tovek’s documentation, in the second class of a mid-tier passenger freighter routed from Ciutric IV through two transfer points to the Praxon system. She took the meals in her cabin. She read the briefing materials Tovek had prepared on Veshara Anchorage twice. She worked the Drawn Breath at the diaphragm twice daily and the Quiet Hands continuously. She spoke to no one beyond the courtesies the cover identity required.
On the second day of transit she thought about what the elevation meant.
The Master would have made this journey herself in the period before the Drekka acquisition. The Master was now sending the apprentice. The apprentice was being trusted with intelligence the Master would, until recently, have insisted on receiving directly. Cognus did not know what to make of the trust. Trust this large was also exposure: it placed the apprentice in a situation where the apprentice could fail in ways the Master would have to absorb. The Master had decided the failure-risk was acceptable. Cognus did not yet know whether the Master had decided correctly.
The consideration went into the place where she kept observations she would, in time, be required to act on. She continued the journey.
✦
Veshara Anchorage came up out of the dark.
The freighter dropped from hyperspace at the Praxon system’s outer marker and proceeded under sublight along the standard approach corridor. Praxon itself was on its night side from the freighter’s angle of approach, a vast unlit shape that occluded a quarter of the sky. The station appeared first as a small rotating ring of lights against the planet’s shadow. As the freighter closed, the ring resolved into structure. The six-kilometer trading ring. The radial spokes connecting inward to four habitation cylinders. The docking gantries at the ring’s outer edge already populated with perhaps fifty freighters at various positions of mooring.
The station had been operating for three centuries. The metal of its exterior held the dull patina of three hundred years of work. The interior corridors glowed with the cool blue working light the administrator-corporation maintained during dark periods.
Cognus passed entry inspection without flag. The Sullustan customs agent at the gantry station processed her documentation in the brief manner the station’s code of professional discretion encouraged. She was issued a temporary credential disk. She made her way along the ring corridor at the slow pace of a tired commercial traveler, her cloak drawn close.
The suite was in the third habitation cylinder, accessed through a secondary corridor narrower than the main thoroughfare. She reached the designation Pelu had provided. She presented her credential at the reader. The door admitted her.
The suite was as Pelu had described: five meters by four, low table, four chairs, a small refreshment alcove against the far wall, the privacy field active at the threshold. The viewport in the wall opposite the door showed Praxon’s dark face filling most of the frame. Pelu was at one of the chairs.
Pelu rose when she entered.
“Mistress’s apprentice.”
“Pelu.”
“The Master did not travel.”
“She did not.”
He registered that and did not comment. The Sullustan’s face was difficult to read at any time. Pelu had been operating in his trade long enough that the difficulty had been refined into the kind of professional opacity that gave nothing back. But Cognus, with the Drawn Breath at full state and the Quiet Hands operating continuously, registered the small shift of his posture as he absorbed the absence of Zannah and recalibrated the meeting’s frame.
He had not expected the apprentice. He had been ready to deliver to the Master. The apprentice was an unanticipated variable. He was adjusting now.
Cognus took the chair across from him.
“Show me what you have.”
Pelu activated the holoprojector at the center of the low table.
The image stabilized. The carrier wave hummed. The first holo was of a small flat in the lower levels of Bilbousa. Narrow. Poorly lit. The kind of residential cube mid-tier brokers used as crash space when they did not want to maintain a more visible address. The body was on the floor near the center of the room. The intermediary had been a Devaronian, perhaps in his fourth decade, of modest professional reputation. The body lay on its back. The arms lay positioned along the sides. The hands had been removed at the wrists.
The hands lay placed on the floor near the body’s head, palms upward, fingers extended.
In each palm, three small objects was arranged.
“Look,” Pelu said.
Cognus looked.
The holo allowed her to zoom on the arrangement. She brought the view to the left palm first. Three smooth river-stones, each perhaps the size of a thumbnail, arranged in a small triangular formation near the heel of the hand. The stones were polished but not artificially smoothed; the shapes were natural. She brought the view to the right palm. Three different objects: two carved bone fragments and one polished metal disk. The bone fragments were small, perhaps two centimeters, carved with what appeared to be a continuous geometric pattern Cognus had seen in one of the texts Zannah had assigned her. The metal disk was darker than the bone, perhaps copper alloyed with something else, and bore a single mark she did not immediately recognize.
Cognus studied the configuration for some moments without speaking.
Pelu did not interrupt. Whatever he had been ready to deliver to Zannah he had arrived prepared to deliver in patience. He was extending the same patience to the apprentice.
The configuration was not random. The triangular arrangement of the stones in the left palm was a deliberate doctrinal pattern. She had read about a similar arrangement in the second of the Pelu volumes, in a passage describing the first preparation of a particular kind of Sith Working. The mixture of materials in the right palm matched the description in that same text. The text named them the six markers of will — items the practitioner handled to imprint their attention on them before the Working proper began.
She had not been certain, when she read the passage, that she had understood it.
Looking at the arrangement on Pelu’s holo, she was certain.
The killer had performed the first preparation. The body was the medium. The hands had been removed and presented as the doctrine described they should be presented. Whoever had killed the Devaronian had read at least one of the texts Zannah had been reading, and probably more. The doctrinal sequence had been executed with the precision of a practitioner who had performed it before.
None of this did Cognus share with Pelu at that moment.
No other markers was left. The killer had entered, performed the preparation, left the body in the doctrinal arrangement required, and departed. Pelu had photographed the scene. The local authorities, when they eventually found the body, would record the scene as an unusual mutilation murder of a small-flat broker. They would investigate to whatever depth their resources permitted. They would close the file when no leads emerged. Pelu’s network had reached the body first by some hours.
Returning her attention to Pelu, Cognus spoke.
“What do you read this as.”
“I read it as deliberate. I read it as a message. I do not read what the message says. The arrangement is too specific to be incidental, and it is not in any pattern my work has taught me to recognize.”
“Who knew the intermediary was working a matter that touched the Mistress’s acquisitions.”
“I knew. He knew. The intermediary above him in the chain knew, but in summary form only — he was not aware of the specific volumes being routed. The buyers and sellers he handled did not know whose acquisitions network they were participating in.”
“The intermediary above. Has he been contacted since.”
“He has been contacted in the standard manner. He is alive. He has not been threatened. He has reported no anomalies at his end.”
“Is there any other route by which the intermediary could have been identified as connected to the Mistress.”
Pelu considered the question for longer than the question alone required. Cognus, watching, registered the consideration as the kind of consideration a man performed when he was working through whether his own operational discipline had introduced the vulnerability. The consideration ended with a small fractional shift of his shoulders that Cognus read as honest doubt.
“I cannot rule it out,” he said. “I have used him on three matters that touched the Mistress’s acquisitions in the past eighteen months. He worked under the cover identity I assigned him for that period. The identity has not, to my knowledge, been compromised. But the Mistress’s acquisitions are unusual enough in their pattern that a sufficiently attentive party watching the rare-text market could have identified the buyer of a specific volume. The buyer’s arrangements could have been traced back through the chain. The trace would be difficult. It would not be impossible.”
“The party would have to be sufficiently attentive.”
“Yes.”
“And sufficiently competent.”
“Yes.”
“And operating with resources that permitted the trace work.”
“Yes.”
Cognus did not say what those three conditions taken together implied. Pelu could draw the conclusion himself or he could decline to draw it; either was acceptable to her. She returned her attention to the holo.
“Capture all the imagery. I will carry it to the Mistress.”
“It is captured.” Pelu produced a small data crystal from his coat pocket and slid it across the table. “Standard household encryption. It will not survive interception.”
Cognus took the crystal and placed it in the inner pocket of her cloak.
Behind her, through the viewport, the planet was beginning to show its lit edge. Praxon’s amber band was creeping into the suite’s visual register, warming the cool blue station illumination by small degrees. The dark period was ending. The station’s day had begun.
“There is one further matter,” Pelu said.
“Continue.”
“I want the Mistress to know that I have not been compromised. I will accept whatever assessment she reaches. I will accept whatever changes to our arrangement she requires. But I want her to know that my own discipline has not been the source of this, and I would ask that the assessment be conducted with that representation considered.”
Cognus regarded him.
The man across the table had been working with Zannah for some years now and had handled a substantial quantity of the household’s acquisitions traffic without flag. The request he was making was the request a professional made when he understood his entire commercial standing rested on whether the principal trusted him after a breach. His posture, his cadence, the small fractional adjustments of his hands as he made the request — all of it registered, in Cognus’s reading, as the posture of a man who was telling the truth.
“The assessment will be conducted fairly,” she said. “The Mistress will reach her own conclusion. I will represent your statement.”
“Thank you.”
Pelu did not say anything further. The meeting had, by the standards of the work it had completed, run its course. Cognus rose. He rose with her.
“Pelu.”
“Mistress’s apprentice.”
She left the suite. She left the third habitation cylinder. The next outbound freighter that connected to her return route took her off Veshara Anchorage.
The amber of Praxon followed her along the ring corridor as the station rotated. By the time her ship undocked, the gas giant was at full lit face. The station against the planet’s amber was a small bright thing Cognus watched recede from the freighter’s viewport for as long as the angle permitted.
✦
The return transit took four days.
The data crystal stayed in the inner pocket of her cloak, against her ribs, where she could feel it through the cloak whenever she shifted in the freighter’s narrow cabin. She did not work it during the journey. Across the four days she thought about what she had read in the arrangement. She thought about what Pelu had not been able to read. She thought about what the difference between the two readings meant for what she had become in the year and a quarter she had been at the household.
The Master had sent her to receive Pelu’s report. The Master had not sent her to perform the doctrinal recognition. The Master would have performed the recognition on the holos when Cognus returned. Cognus had performed it on the station, in real time, in front of Pelu, without any external aid beyond what the texts Zannah had assigned her had taught her to see.
The recognition had not been the Master’s only on the station.
It was hers also.
The realization went unannounced. She did not write it. She kept it in the place where she had been keeping the observations of the past year. The Quiet Hands had been teaching her to maintain that space. There the things she had become, but had not yet been required to be, lived.
The freighter completed the last of its transfers and made the final approach to the Ciutric system on the morning of the fifth day.
✦
Zannah received her at the desk in the study at the eleventh hour of the night of return.
The lamp was at its low setting. The four folds was moved to the left-hand position. The right hand of the desk was cleared.
Cognus produced the data crystal and placed it on the cleared surface.
“Pelu has produced the imagery and the report.”
“Sit.”
Cognus sat.
Zannah took the crystal and inserted it into the desk’s reader. The display surface activated. The first holo of the small flat in lower Bilbousa came up, rotated, settled into the reader’s display field. Zannah looked at it for some moments without speaking. She brought the view to the body. She brought the view to the hands. She brought the view to the left palm and zoomed.
Zannah did not move for some time.
Cognus watched her Master’s face in the lamp’s low light. The expression did not change. The shoulders did not change. The hands resting on the edge of the desk did not change. But the radius around Zannah, the Veiled Course at its operational baseline, registered to Cognus’s now-trained reading. Zannah’s pulse had adjusted by the same small degree it had adjusted on the night of the second Pelu holo, two months before.
Zannah brought the view to the right palm. She held the view there. She did not speak for some time.
“You read this configuration,” Zannah said. The voice was even.
“Yes, Master.”
“At the meeting.”
“Yes, Master.”
“In real time.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Without consulting any text or reference at the station.”
“Yes, Master.”
Zannah looked at her across the desk. The gold of her eyes held the lamp’s light steadily. Whatever she was registering she did not name.
“The configuration is the first preparation,” she said. “The text is in the second of the Pelu volumes. You read it in the third month of your training in this household. You will recall the passage.”
“I recall it, Master.”
“The configuration on the body has been performed correctly. The practitioner who performed it has read the same text. The practitioner has also read texts I have not yet acquired, because the second volume describes the first preparation but does not describe the variations the doctrine permits. The configuration on the body uses one of those variations.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Which means the practitioner is reading from a deeper source than I currently have access to.”
Cognus did not answer. The implication did not require her answer.
Zannah brought the view back to the wider shot of the room and the body.
“This is a message,” she said. “The body is the medium. The configuration is the message itself. The message is addressed to me. The practitioner who killed the intermediary did so in order that I would see the pattern and understand who could have made it.”
“The buyer.”
“Yes.”
“They know the network.”
“They know the network. They know the texts the network has been routing to me. They know, presumably, who I am, or they know enough about me to have identified that the network connects to a practitioner of comparable depth. They have chosen, instead of contacting me through any commercial or scholarly channel, to communicate by leaving a body configured in the doctrine we both read.”
“Why this method.”
Zannah considered the question. The lamp held its small steady light. The night beyond the high window held the warm westerly that came up from the canyons.
“Because the method tells me what they want to be telling me,” she said. “The method tells me they are not afraid. The method tells me they consider themselves my peer or my superior. The method tells me they want me to know they have killed someone connected to my work and that they are willing to do it again. The next body, or the body after that, may be closer to me than this one. The method is also a doctrinal demonstration. They are showing me what they can do. They are not showing me everything they can do.”
“The intermediary above the deceased.”
“Will be moved to a different cover and a different chain within the week. Pelu will arrange it. The acquisitions network will be restructured. The next acquisition I attempt will be at a different tier and through a different routing.”
“Yes, Master.”
Zannah set her hands flat on the desk. She did not look at the holo any longer. The display continued to show the wide shot of the room.
“You did good work at the station,” she said. “The recognition was correct. The reading of Pelu was correct. The decision to withhold the recognition from him until you reported here was correct.”
“Thank you, Master.”
“Withdraw.”
Cognus rose. She inclined her head. She walked to the door of the study.
At the door she paused.
“Master.”
Zannah looked up.
“You knew I would read the configuration before you sent me.”
Zannah considered her across the lamp’s small light for a moment longer than the question alone required.
“I suspected you would,” she said. “I did not know.”
Cognus inclined her head a second time and withdrew.
In the corridor she registered the rhythm of her own working state. The Quiet Hands at full state, the Drawn Breath at its slow steady rhythm. What had happened in the room behind her was not an end of anything. It was the beginning of a new period. The apprentice was no longer measured against what the apprentice was when she arrived. She was now measured against what she could become. The Master had made the assessment on the data of the journey. The assessment was favorable. The favorable assessment was its own escalation. The Master would not, going forward, send the apprentice on tasks below the level the apprentice had now demonstrated. The level was the new floor.
Cognus walked the corridor toward the eastern wing. The household ran on toward its standing condition of late night. The four folds in Zannah’s study had become five. The fifth contained the data crystal. The crystal contained the message that someone the Master could not yet name was speaking to her through the arrangement of a dead man’s hands.