Property of a Lady: Prologue I

Helena Cross glanced one way, then the other before crossing the quaintly cobbled street of the posh, quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Theed. In the distance, the waterfalls roared and the capital of the High Republic didn't quite sleep despite the obscene hour. She carried an attaché case that was discreetly affixed to her wrist with a handcuff and a conviction that whatever was inside it had, judging by how straightforward the recovery had been, would not be worth the trouble.

She was buzzed in at the gate and again at the front door. Once inside, she declined the offer of the butler to take her coat; she would not have been able to get it off over the attaché anyway. "Mrs. Tallis is expecting you," he informed her. "In the study. If you'll come this way."

A few minutes later, Helena was being ushered through a double-layered door, lined with buttoned leather for soundproofing. Tallis was waiting behind the broad desk, as if the hour had been arranged for her convenience and no one else's. She wore a dark suit, slightly rumpled from a day's work, but with the high-necked white blouse still as starched as when she'd taken it out of the closet. Her hair, silver-white by design and fashion rather than old age, was immaculate.

"No direct contact," Helena said without preamble as she watched Tallis touched control on the desk panel. Subtly, almost like a whispered curse, Helena heard the bolts slide home in the doors behind her. The older woman opened a door in her desk, plucked out something small. "Two possible observers in the arcade, neither persistent. One customs officer paid more attention than she should have, but not enough to raise a flag. The retrieval point was exactly as described."

Tallis beckoned her closer, then held out the object she had retrieved from her desk: a tiny handcuff key. "And that troubles you?"

"A little," Helena said, trying not to sound defensive. Tallis didn't respond right away. She merely allowed the corner of her mouth to be tugged upward. Helena took the key, unlocked the handcuff from her wrist, and held out the case to E.J. Tallis. "If an object is valuable enough to require this kind of preparation, it should not be sitting where I can collect it without a badge, a forged delivery order. Something."

"It required more than that," Tallis answered, taking the case. She sat and then nodded with her chin to one of the chairs opposite her across the desk. "Just not from you." There was no reprimand in her voice. Helena had worked with Tallis long enough to know that information was being withheld, and Tallis withheld information when there was a good operational security reason and when she didn't want one of her operatives to get too big for their britches. Helena thought she knew the difference.

"Then there was a secondary purpose to the exercise." She handed the key back.

Elinor Tallis opened her desk drawer, took the key and put it inside before drawing out a pair of white archival examination gloves. She donned them without hurry, but not before pressing her thumbs to the biometric locks on the case. "The item was handled and placed where it might have been discovered if an interested party looked the right way for it." She entered a keycode into the case's locking mechanism, then at last unfastened the lid and opened the case. "The Commonwealth had a possible line to it. The Heirate had another. The two most obvious candidates given the First Order pedigree. But there are Imperials out in the boonies making noises and the Sith would always be interested in this kind of thing. Even the Republic would have an interest, though in a very different sense."

Helena was trying not to look over the top of the now-open case to see just what she had ferried here. "And none of them came for it."

Tallis allowed a breath to linger between them. "And none of them came. Visibly."

"So they didn't know it existed, or didn't know where it was," Helena ventured. "Or they knew both and chose not to pursue it."

"It suggests one of the first two," Tallis conceded. She picked up a small loupe from her desk and placed it against one eye, squinting through it at whatever was in the case. "But it does not bar the third."

Liberated from the case, Helena shucked her coat gracefully, laying it across the back of the third chair before settling into the one into which EJ had directed her. She glanced at the case, then allowed her eyes to go up to Tallis' face; Tallis' eyes were locked on hers. "Can I -- see it?"

Tallis considered this a moment, then slowly turned the case on the desk. For a moment, it was only jewelry. A grand piece, certainly. Old-cut diamonds arranged in a severe spray around a central stone, in the vague impression of laurels. It had the look of something kept in old-moneyed family vaults, brought out for important dinners, photographed from a distance by society papers and up close by insurance assessors. It looked like the kind of jewelry that had a name. Beautiful in a formal, cold way. Not a bridal piece, clearly. Not decorative in the simple sense.

The kind of jewel she remembered seeing on her mother.

"All this for a pin?" Helena said before she could stop herself.

Tallis did smile then, sardonic but not quite cynical. "It's a brooch," she corrected Helena quietly. "I know what you're thinking. It's grand, but there are grander pieces in half the houses on this street. There are women within half a kilometer wearing family money, blood money, stolen money -- or all three -- around their throats this minute." Helena nodded. Tallis went on: "So what does that tell you?"

Helena's mind had already begun to turn it over in her mind. "Break the stones down and you'd get enough at hock for a frigate, maybe. Unless there's more to it than that that makes it valuable, or you're not after it for the credit value." Tallis took another item out of her desk, this time a weathered photograph, which she slid across to Helena, who picked it up carefully. The photo showed a woman at a formal function, caught in profile as she turned away from someone just outside of frame. Old as it was, weathered as it had become, the salient details were still present: a pale gown; dark hair arranged with almost military precision; a composed face, unsmiling, already accustomed to the permanent attention of history. At her shoulder, fastened exactly where it would draw the eye without demanding it, was the brooch.

Neither women said the photographed woman's name. They didn't need to, and its absence became another item on the polished desk. It wasn't that Helena didn't recognize her; everyone had seen that face, in one version or another, in news archives or official portraits, hostile essays, sympathetic retrospectives, state footage repurposed into propaganda.

Helena made a small noise. "That would change the estimate." She allowed a pause, then said: "And the risk." Tallis raised an eyebrow, not answering verbally but silently encouraging Helena to finish her thought. Helena leaned forward, crossing her ankles. "People will pay for association alone. Collectors, loyalists, enemies. Tedious, sentimental types. Hell, even the woman herself might pay a pretty penny to get it back. But none of that explains the level of caution."

Tallis' smile was enigmatic. "No. Because sometimes a diamond isn't just a diamond." She reached over, tapping the photo with an exquisite manicured fingernail. "Sometime between here and the resurrection, it was turned into a carrier for data. The thought was, I gather, to make it seem valuable but not make the presence of data to be obvious."

"It's a drive?" Helena asked, eyebrows lifting in a rare unguarded moment of surprise. "What's on it?"

"Biotechnical data."

Helena was quiet for a few long moments. The word did not belong in this room, at this hour, in the presence of that photograph and that pin -- all right, brooch. It made an immediate, ugly sense of the care around the object. Tallis had not said weapon but that only made it true insofar as every other carefully chosen word or omission was true. "First Order origin." Tallis lifted her chin in assent. "Official program?"

There was hesitation. "Official enough to be dangerous. Distant enough to be deniable."

"How did you know where to find it?" Helena asked.

Tallis was beginning to remove her gloves, finger by finger, slowly and deliberately. "You did well on this, Ms. Cross," she said.

"That wasn't an answer."

"Imagine that," Tallis said, and she let Helena wait. When Helena leaned back fractionally, Tallis went on. "You followed instructions. You recovered the item without making yourself interesting to the wrong people. You made almost all the right observations and disliked what I would have disliked in your place. That's something."

"But," Helena prompted her.

"But," Tallis said in the tone of a concession. "You aren't inside yet. Not enough for all that." She tucked her gloves into the disposal sleeve and shut the case. "What you are inside enough for is to know that you will be selling it. An auction, for lack of a better word."

"When?"

Here, Tallis shrugged. "When the timing is right. But first, I have something else for you. An event on Gilaria. Our Republic contacts got you on the list, which is one of the odder sentences I've heard recently. You'll attend as a provenance and sensitive-assets adviser connected to private collections. You'll make contacts there. Commonwealth, Sith -- if the avenue presents itself. If your cover is blown, you're there on private reconnaissance to ascertain details of life behind the Blackwall, but Cross?" Eyes met over the desk. "Do not blow your cover. You would likely die."

Helena's eyes flicked to the case. "And that?"

"You'll make it known, in the correct places and without making a fuss, that certain First Order era intelligence materials are expected to come under the hammer in the near future. The language should be... unspecific. Provenance sensitive. Technically significant. Politically damaging. Militarily relevant. That will be serious enough to get the attention of people who have any business at all being there."

"And if they ask whether she's connected?" A brief nod toward the photo still in Tallis' hand.

"You ask them what makes them think so. And if they know about the brooch, you find out how."

Helena inclined her head, a tight smile on her lips. "You expect the Heirate to hear something."

"I expect everyone competent to hear something eventually. What I need you to do is tell me which way they turn when they do."

Helena nodded. She looked up at Tallis again. "If it contains what you suggest it does, there are people who won't wait for a private sale. They'll try to steal it, or destroy it, and my credits are on killing whoever is standing nearby." Tallis nodded, tucking the photograph into her drawer. "You seem comfortable with that."

"Cost of doing business," said Tallis. She stood and went to an unobtrusive urn on a side table which, when tipped, disengaged a panel elsewhere, behind which was a safe. If Helena hadn't seen it herself she wouldn't have even thought a panel was there to open. Tallis busied herself tucking the case into the safe and returned with an envelope. "Your itinerary, tickets, per diem. You leave for Gilaria tomorrow morning."

Helena recognized a dismissal when she heard one, and she stood to accept the envelope. "Very good. Good night, Mrs. Tallis."

"Good night, Ms. Cross."