“The third is Hallie’s.”
“My contact in the Vaszneth records office came back,” Hallie says. “Six moon cycles of nothing and then four diurnals ago he sends me a message that they’re asking about Timbur again and somebody’s going to fix what’s wrong. That’s not a memo, that’s what you say when an operation has stalled and somebody upstairs has become impatient.”
“Six moon cycles of quiet,” Ines says slowly. “And now they’re moving again.”
“Put Daxon on the screen,” Chief orders. He looks at Grytel. “We’re bringing Daxon in on this because he’s a Bounty Hunter and can get us into Chronos.”
Grytel nods in agreement. “Good idea.”
The wall screen brightens, and there’s my eldest brother. Daxon fills the frame the way he fills everything, and there’s noise behind him because the Hunter Station is never quiet. There’s always some being shouting down a corridor about a docking fee.
He smiles at us. “You’ve all got very serious faces.”
“Because it’s serious business,” Chief says.
Daxon sits up. “Understood. Tell me everything.”
So Chief, Ines and I tell him everything, which means Grytel learns everything too. The grid. The rosters. Ordek of Six on that list twice, and dead the diurnal before I could reach him. Andrew Wilson, and the debts, the three payments, and the dates that mean he was bought on New Earth before he ever set foot here. The money he lost inside a moon cycle. The whole architecture of it laid out on my family’s floor.
Daxon listens without interrupting once, which is not something he was capable of at nineteen. Grytel knew most of it, but I can see that hearing the story as a whole again is helping him to fill in gaps. It’s a large, complex, puzzle and it’s good for all of us fighting for justice for
When it’s finished he’s quiet for a while. “Say the name of the House again,” he says.
“Vaszneth,” Hallie says.
“And they went after Father because he’d found something in the deep levels and started asking about it?”
“Yes.”
“Hm.” Daxon shifts. “Then you’ve all got the order wrong.”
“What order?” I question.
“The order it happened in. Scar, you’ve been running it from the murder forward. Everything in your file starts the night our parents died.”
“Yes.”
“That’s the middle.”
“Think,” Daxon says. “What was I, before?”
“You were head of the Miners’ Union,” Grytel growls.
“Yes, I was head of the Miners’ Union. Elected. Two terms. Eleven thousand Margol on this rock and I was the male who stood between them and Admin, and I wasgoodat it, and Grytel’s predecessor hated me so thoroughly he tried three separate times to have the position abolished.” A pause. “Askyourself what a House with plans for that mine does about a male like that.”
“They remove him,” Ines says.
“They remove him. And they do itfirst, before anything else, because as long as there’s a union with a Margol leader who can call eleven thousand miners off the rock in a diurnal, you cannot phase the Margol out of anything.” He looks at me. “So who removed me?”
“Kryzon,” I say.
“Our cousin Kryzon. Who brought the charge. Who produced the manifest that never existed. Who stood up in front of the union board and said he was doing it for the good of the workers and was very sorry about it.” His jaw works. “And who took my seat about four diurnals after they put me on a transport.”
“I have been chasing this for eight rotations,” I snarl. “I have never once put it in this order. Buy Kryzon. Kill our parents. Banish Daxon on Kryzon’s charge…and Kryzon takes the union. Demote the family to the end of the road, where nobody has to look at us. The Miners’ Union of Timbur run by a male who did whatever Minecorp Admin wanted, and no Margol leader with any real power left to ask a single uncomfortable question about anything. It was one operation. The whole time.”
“The union wasn’t ran by me,” Grytel interjects. “When you say Minecorp Admin, that was not me. Kryzon barely spoke to me during his entire tenure. He was obviously in contact with someone else the whole time.”
“Gods,” Roxy says quietly.
