"Something's happened to him," she said, her eyes widening and her
body tensing.

"Yes, Zinganna. At about 2010, this evening," he said, "Councilman
Salgath was murdered."

"Oh!" She leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes. "He's dead?"
Then, again, statement instead of question: "He's dead!"

For a long moment, she lay back in the chair, as though trying to
reorient her mind to the fact of Salgath Trod's death, while Vall and
Dalla sat watching her. Then she stirred, opened her eyes, looked at
the cigarette in her fingers as though she had never seen it before,
and leaned forward to stuff it into an ash receiver.

"Who did it?" she asked, the Stone Age savage who had been her
ancestor not ten generations ago peeping out of her eyes.

"The men who actually used the needlers are dead," Vall told her. "I
killed a couple of them myself. We still have to find the men who
planned it. I'd hoped you'd want to help us do that, Zinganna."

He side-glanced to Dalla again; she nodded. The relationship between
Zinganna and Salgath Trod hadn't been purely business with her; there
had been some real affection. He told her what had happened, and when
he reached the point at which Salgath Trod had called Tortha Karf to
confess complicity in the slave trade, her lips tightened and she
nodded.