“Only as much as we needed to make sure the man was dead,” Radnal answered.

“We?” the circumstances man asked. Radnal introduced Golobol. Liem got everyone’s statement on the wire: first Evillia, who gulped and blinked back tears as she spoke, then Radnal, then the physician, and then the other tourists and lodge attendants. Most of them echoed one another: they’d heard a scream, run out, and seen Evillia standing over Dokhnor’s corpse.

Golobol added, “The woman cannot be responsible for his death. He had been deceased some while, between one and two daytenths, possibly. She, unfortunate one, merely discovered the body.”

“I understand, freeman,” Liem vez Steries assured him. “But because she did, her account of what happened is important.”

The militiaman had just finished recording the last statement when another helo landed outside the lodge. The instant its dust storm subsided, four men came in. The Hereditary Tyrant’s Eyes and Ears looked more like prosperous merchants than soldiers: their caps had patent — leather brims, they closed their robes with silver chains, and they sported rings on each index finger.

“I am Peggol vez Menk,” one of them announced. He was short and, by Tarteshan standards, slim; he wore his cap at a dapper angle. His eyes were extraordinarily shrewd, as if he were waiting for someone around him to make a mistake. He spotted Liem vez Steries at once, and asked, “What’s been done thus far, Subleader?”

“What you’d expect,” the militiaman answered: “Statements from all present, and our circumstances man, Senior Trooper vez Sofana there, has taken some pictures. We didn’t disturb the body.”