“Me too. So what do we do? Bring up official charges?”

“No,” Jonah said. He saw it now. He’d been worrying about how to do this all day, and he suddenly saw exactly how it should happen, where his line should be. “No, we bring him in, you and me. We make sure he knows its serious, that things look bad. We bring him in and tell him to help us clear his name. Help us explain how this might all make sense.”

“Can we still assume he’s innocent? With all this?”

“Yes.” The firmest image of Gareth Sinclair in Jonah’s mind was from their days on Ryde. The meteor strike had shattered the entire ecology of the planet, causing stable fault lines to shift and dormant volcanoes to erupt. One such volcano had sent a river of lava streaming toward a refugee camp full of people who had already been pushed out of three other locations. Gareth was with them, darting around in his Black Hawk, blasting rock to divert the flow, digging trenches to slow it enough to allow the refugees to get clear, and staying behind until the last person was away. At the end, he was trapped in the middle of a lava plain. He attempted to jump away, and almost made it. His ’Mech’s feet landed in molten rock, but Sinclair churned forward, metal legs melting beneath him as he rocked forward. At least three times, Jonah thought the ’Mech was going to pitch backward, plunging Sinclair into the red stream. Each time, Sinclair steadied it. Finally, as the knees dissolved, he stumbled, rocked back again, then lunged forward. He no longer had any support beneath him, so his cockpit kept moving until it smashed into the ground ahead—firm, rocky ground. The body of the ’Mech made it clear of the lava.

Sinclair had saved hundreds of people that day, almost losing his life. The next day, he was in a trench, a bandage over his right eye, trying to divert the lava away from a chemical plant. When the Legate of Ryde sought him out to reward him, Sinclair was honestly surprised that anyone thought what he had done was special.

Jonah couldn’t see this same man plotting assassination and insurrection. He owed him a chance.

“We’ll lay all our cards on the table,” Jonah said. “Maybe he can explain to us where we went wrong.”

“And if he can’t?”

There was only one answer to that question. “Then we arrest him.”

Hotel Duquesne, Geneva

Terra, Prefecture X

18 December 3134

This is it, Jonah thought to himself sourly. I’ve really become a politician now.

One of the things he had always hated about politics was the game played through interpreting carefully chosen words, minor gestures and mundane actions. In this game, a mere tilt of the head by the right Paladin during an important speech by the Exarch could indicate agreement or displeasure, sending the whole city of Geneva into a spasm of rumor and shifting alliances. Every word, every move, every step people took carried the burden of potentially being a political message.

Jonah hated it when people tried to read him that way. His gestures were never calculated—if he scratched his nose during a speech, it was because it itched. He preferred that people, if they wanted to know what he thought, ask him, and then believe what he said. He treated others the same way, believing the Sphere to be big and complicated enough already without his taking part in this strange political dance.

But now, as he walked down the softly carpeted hallway leading to Gareth Sinclair’s room, he found himself practically assigning points to Sinclair’s every move, trying to find any evidence at all that could convince him who to believe, Sinclair or Morten. Sinclair, according to the desk clerk, was in his room. He hadn’t fled, wasn’t in hiding. That was good; he wasn’t acting like he had anything to hide. But he had hesitated before agreeing to let Jonah and Heather come see him, which might be an indication that he knew what was coming, which would count against him. Or it might just indicate that he was not looking forward to this particular conversation. Jonah could sympathize with that sentiment.

He knocked firmly at Sinclair’s door. He watched Heather’s hand flutter toward a weapon on her belt, before she remembered that they’d agreed to meet their fellow Paladin unarmed. It wasn’t an arrest, they’d reminded each other repeatedly, even though both knew that’s exactly what it felt like.

“One moment,” Sinclair called promptly. Another point in his favor, Jonah thought. He’s not scurrying away from us.

The door opened, revealing Sinclair casually dressed, framed by a room in which stacks of paper covered every available horizontal surface of a room at least three times as large as Jonah’s quarters at Pension Flambard.

“Paladin Levin. Paladin GioAvanti. Come in.” He sounded stiff, and again Jonah couldn’t blame him. He didn’t add a point to either side of the ledger.

They followed him into the room, and he turned and actually smiled, albeit wanly. “I apologize for all the paper. I feel like I’m back in the academy, studying for an exam.”

“What is all this?” Heather asked, idly picking up the sheet nearest to her.

“Information on all of you. All the other Paladins. Background, experience, political leanings. I’m going to have to vote for one of you in two days—a day and a half—after all.”

“Haven’t you heard of datafiles?”

Sinclair gave an embarrassed shrug. “I’ve always done better with paper. Things stick in my mind if I read it off a sheet.”

Jonah put a point into the column in favor of Sinclair’s innocence. The fact that he was taking his responsibilities so seriously, even after Jonah’s previous talk with him, was a credit to him.

On the other hand, there were hundreds of pieces of paper scattered across the room. Sinclair had not been Paladin long, but he had either amassed a considerable body of information in that brief time or, knowing he would become Paladin, he had been assembling it for months. A point went in the column against him.

“I’d like to think the two of you came here to pull me away from work and buy me a drink,” Sinclair said.

“I’d very much like to do that, Gareth,” Jonah said. “I hope I’ll be able to soon. But not now. We need to talk.”

Sinclair attempted another smile, even weaker than the first. “‘We need to talk.’ Four of the most dire words in our vocabulary.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. Talk.”

Jonah gestured at the papers all over the room. “This may not be the best place for a chat.”

“Not controlled enough of an environment, huh?” Sinclair said with an edge to his voice, then waved off attempted protests from both Heather and Jonah. “No, no, I’m sorry, you’re right. Where did you have in mind? And please don’t just say ‘Come with us.’”

“Let’s go back to my office,” Jonah said.

“Okay,” Sinclair said. “Should be quiet enough. And plenty of nearby security if you need it.”

Sinclair said the last with a light tone, but no one cracked a grin.

Sinclair came along quietly. None of them said a single word on the way to Jonah’s office, but Sinclair showed no signs of desperation, no sudden urge to escape. Another point in his favor.

In the hallways of the Paladins’ offices, they started walking briskly and then picked up the pace from there. Each of them was pushing the others, hurrying them along, until they were practically running by the time they reached Jonah’s office. They all wanted to get this over with.

All three sat. Sinclair was ramrod straight, hands resting on the end of his chair’s armrests as if he expected Jonah and Heather to shackle him there at any moment.

“We have Henrik Morten,” Jonah said to get things under way.