“It’s very nice,” Biryar said.
“You’re young yet. I’m not. There’s this thing when you get older where you have to make a choice. Everyone does. You have to decide whether you care more about being your best self or your real one. If you’re more loyal to who you ought to be or who you really are. You know what I’m talking about?”
Biryar nodded. He was weeping.
“Yeah,” the old man said. “I thought you might. I’m going to tell you a secret. I’ve never told anyone this, not my girlfriends, not my closest allies. No one. You listening to me?”
Biryar nodded again.
“I miss my real fucking arm,” the old man said. “I liked it better when I was me.”
Biryar sobbed, and it sounded like a cough.
“I don’t want anything from you, Governor. But I would ask you this. Looking at where you are now, and the choices you’ve got? Is there anything you maybe want from me?”
The wind howled, threw a handful of hail at the window. Biryar barely heard it.
“You can’t make this go away,” he said. “Overstreet will find it. He’ll know.”
“He will,” the old man said. “You know. If.”
They were quiet. Biryar felt something happening in him. Something he both didn’t recognize and also knew as well as the sound of his own voice. “Could you have done it? Could you have killed me?”
“Yeah,” the old man said. “Half a dozen times. Easy. But it would have been a risk. I don’t get to pick your replacement, right? Thing about this Overstreet fella? He’s not on his home pitch. If something happened to him, maybe it’d be a good idea to put together some locals to take over the security jobs. People who know the lay of the land. How things work here.”
“If something happened to him?”
“Yeah. If,” the old man said. And then, “Do you want it to?”
Biryar breathed yes.
The one-armed man relaxed and stood up. He put on his gloves again, looked out at the sleet and rain and hail. The half-hidden mountains. “This isn’t just you.”
“What?”
“Don’t feel bad, because it ain’t just you,” the one-armed man said with a lopsided shrug. “There are, what, a couple hundred decent-sized colony worlds with shiny new Laconian governors on them? And this thing has or is going to happen on every single one. It’s the basic problem with religion, be it Jesus or Vishnu or God Emperors. Ideological purity never survives contact with the enemy.”
“I don’t—” Biryar started.
“Yeah, you do,” the one-armed man said, then stepped out and closed the door behind him.
Biryar sat for a moment, waiting for the guilt and horror to come, for his conscience to overwhelm him. Half a planet away, Major Overstreet was probably just waking up. There was time to call him. To warn him. Mona was waking up too, in their bed. Biryar took a long breath and let it out through his teeth. He felt something deep and profound, but he didn’t know what he felt. It was too big to judge.
The liaison came in, and Biryar tucked the handheld in his pocket. The liaison’s eyes widened at the pistol, but Biryar pretended not to notice that it was there. They walked together across a covered bridge and into the theater where his audience was waiting.
* * *
Mona felt the hair on the back of her neck go up the moment she stepped into her house and found Veronica Dietz waiting in the parlor. It had been a long day that followed a restless night. Biryar had been in Carlisle, and she never slept as well when he wasn’t on the other half of the bed. She’d wanted nothing more than to come home, take off her shoes, drink some wine, and relax. Finding Veronica lying in wait was like feeling a snake move in her pillowcase.
“Veronica,” she said, feigning pleasure.
“Yes, ma’am,” Veronica said, and then stopped. It was like she was waiting for Mona to say something. The moment stretched.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” Mona said, carefully.
Veronica blinked, confused. “Oh,” she said. “I had a request from the governor’s office. I thought… that is I assumed that you—”
“I’m sorry,” Biryar said, coming into the room. “That was me.” He took Mona’s hand, squeezed it gently, and kissed her fingers. “I missed you.”