I wished the peacocks were still around. They could have transported this clot-head into an active volcano.

"My report was the truth," I said. "It doesn’t matter whether you believe it."

"It doesn’t matter whether you believe it," the Muscle answered, dead calm. "As we’ve said before, Ms. Smallwood, with that link-seed in your brain, your thoughts may not be your own. Enemy powers may have implanted false experiences into your mind, to sow disinformation with the Admiralty."

Enemy powers? Disinformation? Christ Almighty. What fairy-tale universe were these guys living in?

"When Admiral Ramos wakes up," I said, "she’ll confirm everything I reported."

"So what?" the Mouth sneered. He did love to sneer, that boy. "Ramos is hardly a reliable witness. She’s always been openly hostile toward her superiors. For all we know, she may be the one plotting insurrection — using you as a pawn to shake public confidence in the fleet. Not to mention the navy’s confidence in itself. After all, how can we trust starship security if any of our Sperm-tails could be telepathic aliens, tapping into the minds of fleet personnel?"

Fleet personnel with minds? These guys were living in a fairy tale. "So I suppose we’re back where we started," I said. "You want to rip open my brain, hack inside, blah-blah-blah."

"That’s the only way to be sure," Muscle replied. "If Ramos has been filling your head with false input, we’re doing you a favor finding out."

"Some favor," I muttered. "I’ve got a better idea. Suppose I show you real evidence."

The Mouth gave a beady-eyed glare. "What do you mean?"

"Are we still close to Sallysweet River?" I asked.

"A tourist chalet on the outskirts of town," Mouth replied. "It’s secluded, the owners aren’t home, and the security system was a joke."

"Then I’ll show you a Greenstrider bunker," I said. "Just minutes away. And I’ll bet it’s the bunker where the Peacock kept his headquarters three thousand years ago. The best place on the planet to find peacock information."

"If you mean the bunker by Lake Vascho," Muscle said, "it’s still crawling with police."

"No," I told him, "this is different. Once the Peacock fused with that Greenstrider, he dug bunkers all over Great St. Caspian — maybe to house his people, maybe just decoys, I don’t know. But I’ve figured out where the real central headquarters was… and I didn’t mention it in my report."

"Why not?" the Mouth asked.

I looked back and forth between them, wondering if I should tell the truth — that I’d just doped out the solution a moment before they attacked. No. The truth was too innocent. These chumps were only going to believe something sordid.

"This site is the mother lode," I said, hushing down my voice. Mom-Faye telling goblin stories to the tots. "In the Greenstrider war, how do you think the Peacock kept charge of his tribe? How do you think he intended to make ‘peace’ with enemy factions?"

Muscle looked at Mouth. Mouth looked at Muscle. "Weapons?" the Mouth asked.

"What else could it be?" I lowered my voice more. "Think about it: after the Peacock locked up Xe, why did he keep cooling his heels on Demoth for thousands of years? Especially since it was centuries between the last strider dying and the first Ooloms showing up to colonize. Why did the Peacock hang around, with nothing to Ride but leaners and siren-lizards?"

I waited for them to make a guess. They didn’t. Unimaginative sods. "Because," I finally said, "the Peacock couldn’t leave for fear of the League! He was every bit the murderer Xe was. They were two of a kind, making weapons to slaughter each other’s people. The only difference is, Xe beat my Peacock to the punch; she cobbled together her germ factory, after which everything else meant bugger-all. But the Peacock’s whole arsenal is still intact. Practically under our feet. When I show you this bunker, I guarantee you’ll find a whole slew of goodies you can commandeer for the Admiralty."

"Why should we believe you?" the Mouth asked. Not "I don’t believe you." He damned well wanted to believe; he just needed an excuse.

"Because I don’t want you prying my brain open," I replied. "And because it’s dick-easy for you to check whether I’m telling the truth."

"How do you know about this place?" the Muscle asked… just as eager to believe as Mouth was. The two must be panting-desperate for something to show their superiors; they’d screwed up and given the Admiralty a bad name, not just on Demoth but on every planet that hated the idea of military bullyboys running roughshod over civilians. The High Council had bailed Mouth and Muscle out of jail because admirals are obliged to stand by their people… but my captors were in deep dip-shit with their bosses, and finding a cache of high-tech goodies would go a long way toward saving their rumps.

"I’ve known about this place for a long time," I lied. "You’ve checked my reports. How did we learn about Maya in the first place? Because she wanted Chappalar to help her get an excavation permit. But why did she care about a permit? She and Iranu were already working plenty of sites illegally — they didn’t mind breaking laws when they were hot on the scent. So why was a permit important this time?"

I waited. Neither Mouth nor Muscle had a guess. Christ, when I made up stories for the kids, they always had a guess.

"Maya needed a permit," I said, "because she wanted to work a site in a reasonably public place. Somewhere folks would see her coming and going, and wonder what she was up to. Her letter to Chappalar said the site was owned by Rustico Nickel… and the only mine that fits all the criteria is a place I know, out on the edge of town."

"You never told anyone about this?" the Muscle asked.

"A smart woman always keeps an ace in the hole."

The Mouth gave a short chuckle… and it galled me to hear how it was tinged with admiration. "You’re a shark, Ms. Smallwood. I knew you couldn’t be the goody-goody you pretended. Not with your previous history."

Bastard.

Mouth put a hand on his partner’s arm and drew him back toward the door. They both went outside to discuss their next step. Me, I didn’t even try to overhear what they were saying — I was too dazed, half by the rampaging headache banging the inside of my skull, and half by the words that’d come out of my mouth on the spur of the moment.

Why had it taken me so long to figure out what Maya’s letter meant? The story I told the dipshits had completely nailed the explanation; she wanted to investigate a bunker that was so public she knew she’d need a permit. The only possible site was the mine where we’d buried the Ooloms during the epidemic.

I’d gone down that mine dozens of times playing little-girl Explorer, and had never found bugger-all. But that was before we’d filled the tunnel with corpses, and some drunk touched off a gas explosion. What did the kaboom open up? What had the Dignity Memorial androids seen the day they carried out the dead?

Iranu senior must have suspected they’d find something; that’s why the Iranu group sent the androids in the first place. But our local authorities had closed up the shaft as soon as the bodies were removed, to make sure no more little-girl Explorers risked their lives down there. After that, no archaeologist, Maya or the Iranus, could do much around the place without attracting attention. Maybe a few forays in the middle of the night, but even that was risky — in a town full of miners, people working odd shifts might well go for a stroll at four in the morning.

Which is why Maya needed a permit. I should have figured that out long ago.

As for what I said about the Peacock — that he’d made weapons, that he didn’t dare leave Demoth, that my noble protector was as much a murderer as Xe…

I thought of that moment beside Lake Vascho, snow falling thick, when the Peacock appeared gloomy as a ghost above the water.