Blindfold. Kevin J. Anderson

died.” He tugged the blue sash at his waist tighter. “But circumstances don’t always cooperate with our convenience. I vowed to do the best job I could.”

      “I’ll do the same,” Kalliana insisted, with a conviction she did not feel. She wondered what this pep talk was all about, wanting just to run back to her quarters and be alone again.

      Tharion’s face was stony as if he had come to a deep decision. “Fine. Then we have a new case for you to read, another accused murderer who claims he’s innocent. He may also be involved with … other crimes. You will verify that for us.”

      Kalliana went rigid, as if a spear of ice had shot down her spine. “Another truthsaying?” she said. “So soon? But there are so many other Truthsayers—”

      Tharion forced a smile. “I have no control over how frequently crimes are committed, Kalliana. It is your turn again. We’ve caught this man, practically in the act. The evidence against him is strong, but he claims he’s innocent—and I have reason to believe he may be telling the truth. We must grant him a swift trial. I would like you to handle this one in particular. Consider it a test.” He paused, apparently seeing her alarm. “Are you saying now that you’re not ready?”

      Kalliana tried to weigh the shades of terror in her mind. “When will the reading be?”

      “In three days,” he said.

      She opened the ready room door and faced the turbolift on the other side of the command center so the Guild Master wouldn’t see her trembling. “I’ll be ready.” Kalliana left the bridge.

      iii

      Tharion sat back in the command chair and watched Kalliana leave, masking his expressions until the ready room door had slid shut. Deeply troubled, he tried to distract himself with other Guild duties for the rest of the afternoon … but he continued to come back to Kalliana’s haunted afterimage.

      Tharion sympathized with the ordeal each one of his carefully trained telepaths went through with every criminal mind-reading—but it concerned him that Kalliana might be unstable. He pressed his lips together and hoped he was doing the right thing by assigning her to the case of Troy Boren. It might help her heal if she could read the mind of a man he knew to be innocent. An easy verdict that would restore her self-confidence without risking further exposure to murderous memories.

      He prayed that Franz Dokken wasn’t wrong.

      The distracting thoughts made Tharion less productive, and it took him an extra hour to review all of the recent disputes brought before the Guild. The numbers of filed grievances were increasing as the population on Atlas expanded.

      Tharion found himself alone when he finally finished and walked quietly down the metal corridors to his own suite of rooms, which had originally been the SkySword captain’s quarters. The cabin was dim and empty; the evening lights at floor level suffused the room with a comfortable yellow-orange glow.

      “Qrista?” he called, but heard no answer. Then he remembered that a long and complex meeting of the Landholders Council was being held in the lower briefing chambers, and his wife would probably come back frazzled and disgusted at the uncooperative representatives.

      Servants had placed the evening meal on the metal dining table. Tharion lifted up the thermal cover and sniffed at the meal of rice and chopped vegetables. He was just debating whether to sit down and begin without Qrista when she came in, heaving a weary sigh and closing her ice-blue eyes.

      He got up to greet her, ready to offer comfort and support. She sealed the door to their suite with great pleasure, as if she were blocking off the problems of the day. She straightened her white robe then untied the crimson Mediator’s sash and came to embrace him.

      “A long one?” Tharion asked.

      She nodded, resting her chin on his shoulder as if she wanted to melt into sleep standing in his arms. “Same old problems,” she said. “Different names, different details.

      “Toth claims that Dokken Holding is irrigating their kenaf fields too much and thereby depleting an underground aquifer that feeds the springs watering his pine forests. Bondalar and Carsus have jointly issued a formal grievance against Koman, alleging that the raw materials the mines are shipping for their mag-lev rail project are defective, resulting in months of lost work. The Koman representative brought out quality inspection sheets to prove that the raw materials had been undamaged when they were shipped from the Mining District, but Bondalar brought out their own analysis to show the flaws in the material as received.” She drew a deep breath. “And so on and so on.”

      Her pale hair was the colorless blond of all Guild members, done up in a long braid that spiraled like a helmet around the top of her head. “I can give you the mental details if you like, but frankly I’d rather spare you the misery.”

      Tharion laughed. “Let’s sit down before our meal gets cold.”

      She slumped into her chair and closed her eyes. Her sash hung loose, and her white robe fell open. “So how was your day?” she remembered to say, keeping her eyes closed.

      “Murder,” he said.

      Now she blinked and stared at him. “What? Another one?”

      Tharion nodded soberly. “I’m beginning to suspect the Veritas smuggling goes deeper than I thought. More than just a few stray capsules that somehow managed to trickle into outlying villages.”

      “And this murder had something to do with it?” Qrista said.

      “I believe it’s a vigilante killing, removing one of the smugglers. But Franz says our problems are all over now.”

      “Franz Dokken?” Qrista scowled. “If he’s behind it, I’m sure it’s not all over.”

      Tharion took a mouthful of rice and vegetables, chewing slowly to grant himself time to think. “I never said he was behind it, Qrista. He’s trying to help. Don’t be so hard on him.”

      “Give me the details,” she said skeptically. “I want to know what he really said.”

      Tharion raised his head, and she reached over the small table to stroke his forehead. She closed her eyes and gently ran her fingers through his thoughts, enhancing them with her telepathic abilities.

      “Convenient,” Qrista said. “And Dokken decides to play his own games with you, getting rid of your only direct connection before a Truthsayer can interrogate him. What about his suppliers?”

      “That information is lost. But if it cuts off the Veritas smuggling, I think it’s for the best,” Tharion said. “Otherwise, we’ll raise a lot of questions we don’t want answered. How could the Guild lose control so badly? Think of the outcry.”

      “Think of the outcry if people find out that we’re holding a man in the detention chambers who is almost certainly innocent! Dokken supposedly knows the identity of the real killer, but you never bothered to ask him. Are we supposed to ignore the unsolved crime?”

      Qrista was visibly upset, turning away from him. “It goes against all our ethical training. We can’t just ignore a crime.”

      “No, we can’t,” Tharion said. “But if Cialben truly was smuggling Veritas, taking it away from the Guild and giving it to … to outsiders who aren’t prepared to handle it, and if I declared him guilty—as he assuredly was—it would have been my option to sentence him to death.”

      “But you wouldn’t have.”

      Tharion sighed. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t.”

      “You’re just doing what Dokken wants,” Qrista said.

      Tharion shrugged. “I do what he wants only if it’s the same thing that I want. We can think alike, you know.”

      “That’s a scary thought,” she said in a noncommittal