The Sacred Garden

Chapter Eight

"Report!"

Turquoise licked his lips and stared down at the tabletop. He knew he would not have the stomach for this. He had never been raised for it. You're soft, father had often said. "The dungeon guard reported that the prisoner had collapsed within his cell and would not be roused. When I got there, the prisoner was – dead."

"What was the cause?" asked Gold.

Turquoise shook his head. "I have sent the body to the medical examiner. I have no idea why he – what the cause was. He had no visible wounds. He looked ...." Turquoise paused. How to best describe the stiffened, blue face, the dull staring eyes? "He looked as though he had been poisoned, if I had to guess."

Magenta said snappishly: "It all reeks of a plot!"

Turquoise looked at her with deliberateness.

"Yes, it is all connected, I think," said Gold. "All of the other prisoners have escaped, and this one dies mysteriously in his cell?"

"There should be an investigation, certainly," said Yeuoluhred.

"That is unquestionable," said Turquoise, "but I beg you not to be precipitous. If there are --."

"Precipitous! We shall take the strongest possible line with Andican! This has all the odor of an Armonon attempt at sabotage."

"The peace should not be broken by--."

"Turquoise!"

The terrible sound of Gold's voice seemed to shake the very shadows of the room. Even Turquoise felt uneasy, as if sensing something larger speaking through the foolish, pedestrian little mouth of the man who ruled the council.

"Do not start down this path! Treasonous thoughts do not long prosper in war."

Death is waiting. Turquoise clamped a hand to his mouth, as though he had allowed the words to be voiced. It doesn't matter. But he had to say: "War shouldn't be this--."

"Turqouise, please report to your office."

For a moment everyone – even Turquoise himself – looked around in bafflement for the source of the voice. It came through the old, seldom-used speaker systems...

"Turqouise, please report to your office."

Turquoise blushed and bowed to Gold. "I forgot – I have a meeting. Excuse me."

He ran from the room.

He stopped outside to breathe and breathe. And to perhaps find some kind of courage. Death is coming. Somewhere lurking and stalking around these hallways. He might stop and stay it, perhaps.

Then he hurried toward his office, choking on his resolve. The long blue-green robes that had belonged to his father and his father's father and on and on fluttered out behind him. He passed a man walking in the opposite question, dressed all in gray. Turquoise ignored him. He knew the man – he had hired him to assassinate his fellows on the Color Council.

It was Turquoise's name that Andred first heard and understood again. He was able to move his head around now, and he had taken in the contents of the room – a desk in a corner, several chairs, a battered wardrobe. There was bright electric light in the room and plenty of it, which Andred had noticed of the courtroom and the council room also, before being aware of the significance. So – the means to produce electricity were not all exhausted.

"Turquoise! Turquoise! Where are you?"

A hissy radio signal was piping in from somewhere. Andred strained to discover the source of the sound.