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attack.” He hacked the meat with a heavy hand, bloody juice spilling across his plate. “That’s the initiator chip that’s set your ’pack to bleating. All it does is tell your scanpack that it’s about to scan a document. It’s basic, a throwaway, a nonissue, and your ’pack can’t read it.” He shrugged off Jani’s unspoken question. “I’ve been taking a crash course in chip placement, courtesy of your good friend, Frances Hals. It’s been a pretty goddamn interesting last couple of days.”
    Lescaux removed a slim packet of files from his briefbag and handed it to Jani. “Here’s our doc chief’s report, along with her affidavit that she stands by her conclusions. She’s worked for Exterior since her graduation from Chicago Combined. She has extensive colonial experience and she acted very carefully once she realized what she had.” His chin came up again. “Yes, I guess you could say we all understand the accusation we’re leveling.”
    Jani unbound the packet and riffled through the documents until she found the chief’s report. So, Roni McGaw, you think you know from idomeni paper. She read the first few lines. “McGaw’s basing her conclusion that this document is of idomeni origin on the fact that she and her staff can’t read a few chips.” She read further. “There’s no discussion here of prescan testing of any of the ’packs, no record of paper analysis stating whether it’s of human or idomeni origin, no mention of the conditions under which the documents were stored and transported or whether they were stressed by temperature or humidity extremes—”
    â€œYou’re grasping at straws, Kilian,” Derringer snapped.
    â€œYou realize that this level of subterfuge is alien to the idomeni mind-set?” Jani directed her attention at Lescaux, knowing Derringer a lost cause. “They despise lies and secrecy more than the crimes they’re meant to cover up. That’s why they accept me despite the fact that I was the first human to ever kill any of them in one of their wars, because no one ever tried to hide the fact that I had done it. That’s why they refuse to acknowledge Gisela Detmers-Neumann and the other descendants of the instigators of Knevçet Shèràa, because they’ve denied to this day that Rikart Neumann and his co-conspirators did anything wrong.”
    â€œHuman experimentation.” Lescaux looked down at his own rare steak, and nudged the plate aside.
    â€œRikart and crew couldn’t have arranged any experimentation without Laumrau participation.” Derringer took a sip from his water glass and grimaced as though he longed for wine. “Seems to me they took to secrecy and subterfuge rather well.”
    â€œAnd they paid for it during the Night of the Blade. What was the last estimate you heard of the number of Laumrau who were executed that night? Twenty-five thousand? Fifty thousand? An entire sect, wiped out within hours.” Jani pushed her chair away from the table and the stench of charred meat, the sight of blood, the memories of that final terrifying dash through the city. “That’s how the born-sect idomeni punish secrecy and lies among their own. Does this give you some idea of how they would punish Nema if they discovered he had perpetrated such a deception, and do you believe for even a fraction of a second that Nema doesn’t realize that?”
    Derringer pointed his steak knife at her. “Spies have always risked death. It’s part of the job description.”
    â€œYou’re basing your conclusions on human behavior. You’ve made that mistake before and damn it, you just won’t learn!” Jani returned the chief’s report to its slipcase. “The Elyan Haárin are outcast of Sìah and hard-headed as they come. They never had a great deal of patience with either