“Papa, can I get you anything?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Can I ask?” the assassin asked.

“Cally, you have got to learn not to kill someone on a job just because he’s a bad man and he’s in your way,” the monsignor said. “In this case, he wasn’t even in your way.”

“What in the world was wrong with killing Erick Winchon, and if you didn’t want him dead, why the hell did you send me? Dead’s what I do.”

“The Aerfon Djigahr was your target, not Winchon,” Papa pointed out. “Also, if you remember, we didn’t pick you for this mission, your sister did. Not that we wouldn’t have anyway. Personally, I think the little prick looked a lot better as a corpse, granddaughter, but there have been… complications.”

“Michelle said she could deal with all that.” She absently brushed her hair back, tucking the strands behind her ear.

“No, she said she’d try,” O’Reilly said. “It didn’t work. We’ve been disavowed.”

“Disavowed by who and why? I thought violent mass-murderer scumbags like Winchon were persona non grata with all the races.”

“The Tchpth, the Himmit, the Indowy with whom we still had a minimal backdoor relationship,” the monsignor said with a sigh. “Thank God Aelool and Beilil felt too much personal responsibility to join the exodus. The whole reason the Crabs wanted Pardal dead was that plotting the death of one of only five emergent human mentats, the beginning of our species’ enlightenment, was a far worse evil. Turns out, they viewed it as a problem on the scale of the Posleen war. That is the only reason they authorized the killing of Pardal, to protect Michelle. And then you have to go and kill one of the other four mentats!”

“He was a freaking psychopath,” Cally said. “A powerful and dangerous one for that matter.”

“They feel they could have managed that,” O’Reilly said, holding up his hand to forestall a reply. “The point is, I’ve tried to find words to describe to you how angry they are, and I can’t come up with anything remotely adequate.”