Dragon and Judge

"Told me about what?" Alison asked, shrinking back as his fingers dug into the skin beneath her thin shirt. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the Brummgan corridor guards reaching warily for their weapons.

For a long, tense moment they stood there, Frost staring hard into Alison's face. Then, slowly, his hand relaxed its grip. "The first two guys Mr. Arthur brought in blew up the safes they were supposed to open," he said at last. "Well, blew up the contents, anyway."

Alison swallowed hard. So that was what was in the mysterious packet Taneem had seen fastened to the safe's inside ceiling. Like Neverlin had done with his own vault aboard the Advocatus Diaboli, the K'da and Shontine advance team leaders had thoughtfully added a self-destruct mechanism to their safes. "What did— I mean—did it kill them?"

"In a way," Frost said. "The Patri had them both shot."

"I see," Alison said, forcing herself back on track. "And none of you were planning to mention this bit of recent history?"

"I think Mr. Arthur would probably have said something when you got ready to actually open it," Frost said. "Only so far, you haven't gotten that far, have you?"

Reaching up, Alison pushed at the hand still holding on to her arm. For a moment Frost resisted, probably just to show her that he could. Then, he let her push the hand away. "You just let me work my own way," she told him. "I'll get it open."

"You'd better." Turning, Frost started down the corridor again.

Neverlin and the Patri were seated in their usual armchairs, well back from the safe resting on a transfer platform in the middle of the room. "Good morning, Alison," Neverlin greeted her, his voice neutral. He wasn't any happier about the delay than Frost, Alison knew. But at least he hid his impatience better. "Is this going to be the day?"

"I don't know," Alison said. "We'll see."

Neverlin inclined his head to her. "Then let's begin."

Alison nodded back, then nodded politely at the Patri. The old Brummga made no response, but remained slumped in his chair, his eyes half-closed as if he were about to fall asleep.

It was all an act, of course. Brummgas were hardly the most intelligent or insightful beings in the Orion Arm, and it was easy to dismiss them as mobile stacks of brainless muscle. But their personal survival instinct was as good as anyone else's. The Patri had entered into this scheme with every expectation of making a huge profit out of it.

But things were not going well. They were certainly not going the way Neverlin and Frost had originally intended. It was entirely possible that the Patri's glacier-speed thought processes were even now reexamining the whole situation.

In fact, as Alison turned and stepped over to the safe it occurred to her that perhaps that was the real reason for Frost's nervousness. Maybe this grand alliance was starting to show cracks.

In the meantime, Alison had a safe to open.

She laid out her tools, studying the safe as she did so. It was a big thing, about the size of a small desk, rectangular in shape, its single door equipped with a double-twist combination lock and a break bar for pulling open the door once it was unlocked. Along the safe's left-hand wall, midway between top and bottom, was a horizontal line of twenty indentations big enough and deep enough to fit the first joint of a Brummga's finger. The whole thing was made of an incredibly hard metal that the Patri's experts had apparently been unable to identify.

A hard metal that had impact and heat-stress marks over nearly a third of its surface, and that had been warped visibly from its original shape. Clearly, this was the safe that had been aboard the Havenseeker, the only one of the four advance team ships to crash.

Frost had now said two other safes had been destroyed. Neverlin had apparently decided, not unreasonably, to let her practice on the one whose contents might already have been ruined by the crash.

Which meant there was a fourth, undamaged safe somewhere. Possibly somewhere in this very house.

"You said yesterday it was a simple combination lock," Neverlin reminded her as she put together her audio sensor.

"I said it was straightforward," Alison corrected. "I didn't say it was simple."

"Then what's the delay?" Neverlin persisted.

"There are still a few problems to work out," Alison said. "Unless you want this one to blow up like the other two did."

She had the minor satisfaction of seeing Neverlin turn a dark glare on Frost. Setting the end of the sensor against the door above the lock, she pretended to be digging out yet more deep, mysterious clues.

And tried desperately to think.

Because the lock really was pretty simple. The problem was much farther in.