“Inspector.”

She flinched with the shock of her return to the real world; blinked the corridor that led to her office, and Gundhalinu’s worried face, into focus. “Oh… BZ, what are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of her office, back at her, concern spreading on his freckled face. “Inspector, the Commander’s sitting down there in your office — and so is the Chief Justice. I don’t know what the hell they want, but I thought you ought to have some warning.”

“The Chief Justice?” Her voice echoed incredulously along the walls. “Shit.” She shut her eyes. “It looks like the waiting is over.”

Gundhalinu raised his eyebrows. “You know what it’s about?”

“Not exactly.” She shook her head, feeling cold despair settle in the pit of her stomach. The Chief Justice was at the pinnacle of the off world judicial system on Tiamat, the only man who could give orders to the Commander of Police. There was no reason she could possibly imagine for his being in her office… no good reason. This was Arienrhod’s revenge, then. Was she being dismissed, arrested, deported; charged with corruption, coercion, sex perversion? A thousand nightmares of unjust persecution peopled the silent hallway like a gauntlet of demons, waiting for her to pass. Maybe I should have gotten on that ship this morning after all. “Thanks for the warning, BZ.” Her voice sounded small and faraway.

“Inspector—” Gundhalinu hesitated, his eyes still asking the question he didn’t have the nerve to ask aloud.

“Later.” She took a deep breath. “Ask me later, when I know the answer.” She went on down the hall, knowing as she took each step that it was the bravest thing she had ever done.

She saw them through the clear panel of the door before they noticed her standing outside it. Mantagnes, formerly Chief Inspector and now the Acting Commander, sat tapping on her desk terminal with ill-concealed discomfort; the aging Chief Justice sat in a chair, gaunt with dignity in his tight-collared official robes. She felt her hand slip as she turned the tarnished brass knob on the door.

Both men rose abruptly as she entered the room. The unexpectedness of it left her staring; she recovered in time to make her salute, a fraction of a second before Mantagnes began his own. “Commander… Your Honor.” The Chief Justice acknowledged her; they both remained standing. She wondered whether they were waiting for her to sit down first out of some misguided sense of tribunal chivalry. She glanced at the emptiness behind her; if they were, then they must be expecting her to sit on the floor. “Please . don’t stand on my account.” The gracious tone rang very false in the small space. She didn’t try to match it with a smile.

Mantagnes moved out from behind her desk, offered her her own seat with a silent gesture. The anger that she read in his eyes made her skin prickle. He was a Kharemoughi, like the Chief Justice — Kharemoughis tended to rise to the top in the foreign service; not surprisingly, since their homeworld dominated it. She knew that on Kharemough women enjoyed relative social equality, since their society valued skill and class status more than sheer physical strength. But the foreign service, which included a wide variety of recruits from less enlightened worlds, seemed to attract the most regressive and autocratic Kharemoughis as well — Mantagnes included. She didn’t know anything about Hovanesse, the Chief Justice, but she could read nothing encouraging in his expression. She went to the desk and sat down, the feel of familiar territory easing her fear a little. She glanced from wall to wall, wished with more than usual feeling that the room had a window.

They were still standing. “You’re probably wondering why we’re here, Inspector PalaThion,” Hovanesse said, with pitiless banality.

She fought down a sudden, monstrous urge to laughter. // that isn’t the understatement of the millennium. “Yes, I certainly am, Your Honor.” She folded her hands on the gray-lettered keyboard of her terminal, watched her knuckles whiten as they formed a hopeless prayer gesture. She noticed a battered parcel sitting at the corner of the desk, read her name; considered absently that she did not know the handwriting. Her name was misspelled. I hope it’s a bomb.

“I understand that — former Commander LiouxSked and his family left Tiamat today. You saw them off?”

“Yes, Your Honor. They left on schedule.”

“The gods go with them.” He looked down grimly at the stained, ancient ceramic floor tiles. “How could he do such a thing to his family, and his good name!”

“Your Honor, I can’t believe—” She felt Mantagnes’s hostile gaze catch her, and faltered. They want to believe it; he wasn’t a Kharemoughi.

The Chief Justice tugged sharply at his tailored doublet. Jerusha pulled surreptitiously at the collar of her own tunic. It secretly surprised her to see him looking so ill at ease. Kharemoughis were made to wear uniforms; it was the Newhavenese who were miserable in the formality of any clothing. “As you know, Inspector, Commander LiouxSked’s… departure leaves us without an official head of the police force on Tiamat. Naturally, we need to fill the post as soon as possible, for reasons of morale. The responsibility for filling that post belongs to me. But of course it has always been the policy of the Hegemony to allow local rulers some say in the choosing of officials who will work most closely with them.”

Jerusha leaned back into her chair as Mantagnes’s expression darkened further.

“The Snow Queen has asked — has demanded — that I appoint you as the new Commander.”

“Me?” She caught at the desk edge. “Is this… is this a joke?”

“A monumental joke,” Mantagnes said sourly. “And we’re the butt of it.”

“You mean, you’re going along with it? You want me to accept the position?” She could not believe the words when she said them.

“Of course you’ll accept the position,” Hovanesse said tonelessly. “If this is what she wants from the police force that protects her people, this is what she’ll get,” suggesting that he thought Arienrhod had chosen her own punishment.

Jerusha pushed slowly up out of her seat, leaned across the desk. “You’re ordering me to become Commander, then. I don’t have any choice.”

Mantagnes put his hands behind him. “You had no objection to being made an inspector over men who deserved it, to please the Queen.” It was the first time anyone had ever acknowledged it openly. “I’d think you’d jump at the chance to become Commander of Police just because you’re female.”

“It’s better than never being promoted at all just because I’m female.” She felt pressure growing in her chest, until she thought her heart would stop. “But I don’t want this! Damn it, I don’t like the Queen any better than you do, I don’t want to be Commander — not if it only means being a puppet!” A trap, this is a trap

“That isn’t up to you, Commander PalaThion… unless of course you resign,” Hovanesse said. “But I’ll see that your doubts about your ability to do a satisfactory job as Commander are duly recorded.”

She said nothing, unable to think of a single appropriate response.

Mantagnes reached up to his collar, unfastened the insignia he had plainly been expecting to wear forever. He threw them down on her desk; she put out a hand just in time to stop one of them from skidding over the edge. “Congratulations.” He saluted with utter precision.

She bent her head stiffly. “Dismissed… Inspector Mantagnes.”

The two men left the room without a word.

Jerusha sat down again in her seat. Her hands closed over the winged Commander’s badges, felt them cut into her palms. This was Arienrhod’s doing, Arienrhod’s revenge. Commander PalaThion ,… The Queen had hung her up to twist in the wind, thrown a challenge at her that Arienrhod expected would ruin her career.