Burning Bright

Melissa Scott Burning Bright

Part One

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Day 30

High Spring: Parking Orbit,

Burning Bright

Quinn Lioe walked the galliot down the sky, using the shaped force fields of the sails as legs, balancing their draw against the depth of gravity here in the planet’s shadow. Stars glowed in the mirror display in front of her; spots of dark haze blocked the brilliance of sun and the limb of the planet, so that she could see and read the patterns that gravity made in the vacuum around her. The low‑sail, under the keel of her ship, vibrated in its cup: the field calibration had slipped badly on the journey from Callixte to Burning Bright, would have to be adjusted before they left orbit. She sighed, automatically easing the field, and widened the cross‑sails’ field to compensate. Numbers flickered across the base of the mirror as the ship’s system noted and approved the changes; she felt the left cross‑sail tremble under her hand, as its draw approached the illusory “depth” of hyperspace, and shortened it even before the warning flashed orange and red across her screen. The galliot continued its easy progress as though there had been no chance of grounding.

“Beacon,” she said to the ship, to traffic control waiting somewhere ahead of her in the parking pattern, and a moment later a marker flared in the mirror’s display, ahead and slightly to the left of the galliot’s course. She sighed, wanting to hurry, wanting to be done and parked and free for the five days or more that it would take to recalibrate the fields, but disciplined herself to safe and steady progress. The galliot crept forward, sails beating slowly against the weak currents of hyperspace that were almost drowned by the local gravity. Her hands rested lightly on the controls; she felt the depth of space in the pressure of the sails, saw the same numbers reflected in the slow swirl of the currents overlaid on the mirror’s mimicking of reality.

At last she brought the galliot to a slow stop almost on top of the unreal marker, and shortened the sails until the system gravity took over, drawing the ship neatly into the designated space. She smiled, pleased with her precision, and kicked the lever that lit the anchor field. Lights flared along the mirror’s base–familiar, but nonetheless satisfying–and the ship said sweetly, “On target. Anchorage confirmed.”

“Nicely done,” a familiar voice said, and Lioe glanced over her shoulder in some surprise. She hadn’t heard Kerestel enter the pilot’s dome, had thought he was still back in cargo space sorting out what had and hadn’t gone on the drop. And, to be fair, cleaning up after the bungee‑gars.

“Thanks,” she said aloud, and ran her hands across the main board, closing and snuffing the sail fields. She set the anchor field then, watched the telltales strengthen to green, and turned away from her station, working her shoulders to free them of the night’s– morning’s, she corrected silently, it was the beginning of the new day on Burning Bright–painstaking work. “How’s it look back there?”

“Bungee‑gars,” Kerestel said. He leaned against the hatchway, folding his arms across his chest. His hands and bare arms were still reddened from the embrace of the servo gloves he used to move the canisters that held the cargo safe during the drop to the planet’s surface. “Gods, they’re a grubby lot.”

Looking at him, Lioe bit back a laugh. As usual, Kerestel was wearing a spacesuit liner, this one more battered even than usual, the long sleeves cut off at the shoulder to make it easier to work the servos. He had stopped shaving two days into the trip– also as usual–and the incipient beard had sprouted in goatish grey tufts. The hat that marked him as a union pilot–this one a beret of gold‑shot grey brocade, pinned up on one side with a cluster of brightly faceted glass–perched, incongruously jaunty, on his balding head.

Kerestel had the grace to grin. “Well, you know what I mean. And Christ, the pair of them couldn’t make up their minds what was to go in the drop–if they had minds.”

Lioe nodded, and turned to the secondary board to begin shutting down the mirror. Bungee‑gars, the hired hands who rode the drop capsules down out of orbit to help protect particularly valuable cargoes from hijacking after landing, were generally a difficult group to work with– you have to be pretty crazy to begin with, or desperate, to take a job like that–and the two who had come aboard on Demeter had been slightly more bizarre than usual. “What I don’t care for,” she said, “is running cargo that needs bungee‑gars.”

“You got a point there,” Kerestel said rather sourly, and Lioe allowed herself a crooked smile. Cargoes that needed bungee‑gars were valuable enough to hijack in transit as well as at the drop point, and the free space between the Republic and the HsaioiAn was loosely patrolled at best, with no one claiming either jurisdiction or responsibility. She shook the thought away–there had been no sign of trouble, from Callixte to Demeter or after–and keyed a final set of codes into the interpreter. Overhead, and across the front of the dome, the tracking overlays began to fade, first the oily swirls that showed the hyperspatial currents, and then the all‑but‑invisible blue‑black lines that showed the depth of realspace. The stars blazed out around them, suns strewn like dust and seed, tossed in prodigal handfuls against the night where the plane of the galaxy intersected the mirror’s curve. Then the shields that cloaked sun and planet vanished, and the brilliance drowned even the bright stars. Lioe blinked, dazzled, and looked away.

“But if they’d only make up their mind,” Kerestel said, and Lioe frowned for a second before she realized he was still talking about the bungee‑gars. “You probably felt it, Quinn, they kept changing which capsules were going, so by the time they’d decided, the whole ship was unbalanced. I’ll bet money that hasn’t helped the low‑sail projector.”

“I didn’t feel we were off alignment,” Lioe said. “She handled fine, and the projector didn’t feel any worse than when we left Demeter. You did a good job, Micky.”

She saw Kerestel’s shoulders relax, subtly, and realized that he had been looking for that reassurance all along. She hid a sigh–she liked Kerestel well enough, liked his ship even better, but his insecurities were wearing–and said, “Speaking of which, have you scheduled the repairs?”

“Yes.” Kerestel’s face brightened. “The yard says they can take us into the airdock tomorrow, and they’ll tear down the projector right away. The whole thing, including recalibration, ought to take about eight days. Not bad, eh?”

“Not bad,” Lioe agreed. Not bad at all, especially when it happens over Burning Bright. “I thought I’d take off, go planetside,” she said, carefully casual. “You’re not going to need me up here.”

Kerestel frowned slightly, said, after a heartbeat’s pause that seemed much longer, “You’re going Gaming, right?”

“That’s right.” Lioe bit her tongue to keep from adding more. This is Burning Bright, heart of the Game, where the best clubs and the best players–the greatest notables–live and work. I’m not missing this chance. Chances like this are only once a lifetime–

“It’s a game, Quinn,” Kerestel said.

“And it’s one I’m very, very good at,” Lioe retorted. She grinned, forced a lighter tone. “Christ, Micky, it’s not like I’m quitting.”

“One of these days, though,” Kerestel muttered, and Lioe reached across to touch his shoulder.

“Not likely, and you know it. Piloting’s a steady living, and I’m not stupid.” I had to work too hard to get the apprenticeship, coming out of Foster Services; I’m not giving that up anytime soon. But that was none of Kerestel’s business; she forced the smile to stay on her lips, said, “All I’m saying is, I think I’m going to spend the repair break planetside. All right?” She could force the issue, she knew–they were both union, and the union gave her the right to move off the ship anytime it was anchored in orbit for more than five days–but she liked Kerestel too well to use that lever unless she had to. And besides, he’s getting old, one foot on the retirement line. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

Kerestel nodded, reluctantly. “All right,” he said, and then made himself sound more enthusiastic. “And good luck with the Game.”

It was those efforts that made him worth working for, even if he was getting old and querulous. “Thanks,” Lioe said, and retreated to her cabin to collect her belongings.

It didn’t take her long to pack: her jump bag was easily large enough to hold a couple of changes of clothes, plus her Gameboard and the thick plastic case that held the half‑dozen Rulebook disks. She seized a hat at random, this one black, with a wide brim, shrugged on a jacket–her favorite, heavy blue‑black workcloth with a flurry of Game pins across the lapels–and tapped into the local comnet to find a taxi‑shuttle to take her across to the customs station. Kerestel was nowhere in sight when it arrived, and she hesitated, but called her good‑byes into the shipwide intercom. There was no answer; she shrugged again, caught between hurt and annoyance, and pulled herself through the transfer tube to the taxi.

The landing check was strict and time‑consuming. The officer on duty went over her papers with excruciating care, and ran the Rulebooks through a virus scan twice before grudgingly allowing her to carry them onto the surface. She made the orbiter with only minutes to spare, and collapsed into her seat, resolved to sleep for as much of the descent as possible.

She woke to the unfamiliar noise of air against the orbiter’s hull, sat up in her harness to see fire rolling across the viewport. The orbiter bucked and fought the sudden turbulence, and then they were down into the atmosphere. Servos whined underfoot and in the cabin walls, reconfiguring wings and lifting surfaces, and the orbiter became a proper aircraft, banking easily against the heavy air that held it. The engine fired, a coughing explosion at the tail of the taxi, and the craft steadied further, came completely under control. Lioe released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and craned her head to look out the viewport again.

“We’ll be landing at Newfields in about fifty minutes,” the steward said, from the front of the cabin. “It’s day thirty of High Spring, the end of High Spring–that’s day ninety‑four of our four‑hundred‑day year. Burning Bright has a twenty‑five‑standard‑hour day, and you should program your chronometers accordingly. If you are keeping Greenwich Republican time, the GRTC factor is eighty‑eight B‑for‑bravo one hundred fifty‑two. Ground temperature is twenty‑three degrees. If you need any assistance, or further information, please feel free to ask. Your call buttons are on the cabin wall above your head.”

No one seemed to respond, and Lioe turned her head back to the window. Clouds flashed past beneath them, thin wisps that only partly obscured the glittering water. Burning Bright was mostly water; the main–the only–landmass was largely artificial, the new land built on the inner edges of the giant atoll’s original islands, guarded from floods by a massive network of dikes and storm barriers. The city of Burning Bright–city and planet shared a name; the two were effectively identical–was one of the great engineering achievements of the nonaligned worlds: even in the Republic, and even in Foster Service schools, Lioe thought, you learn that mantra. And it was pretty much true. In all the time she’d spent in space, piloting ships between the Republic and the nonaligned worlds and HsaioiAn, she’d never been anyplace that was at all like Burning Bright.

“Can I get you anything?”

Lioe looked up to find the steward looking down at her, balancing easily against the movement of the orbiter, one hand resting on the back of the empty couch beside her. She shook her head, but smiled. “I can’t think of anything, thanks.”

The steward nodded, but didn’t move. “I couldn’t help noticing your pins.”

Lioe let her smile widen, grateful she hadn’t had to set up this encounter herself. “I saw yours, too.” She glanced again at the pair of Game pins clipped just below the company icon: one was the triangle‑and‑galaxy of the Old Network, but the other was unfamiliar. “Local club?” she asked, and was not surprised when the steward shook his head.

“Actually, it’s a session souvenir,” he said. “It was a Court Life variant, run by Ambidexter about five years ago.”

“I think I saw tapes of that,” Lioe said, impressed in spite of herself. The steward didn’t look old enough to have been playing at that level five years ago. “That was the one that featured Gallio Hazard and Desir of Harmsway, right? The one that really made Harmsway a Grand Type.”

“That’s right.” The steward glanced quickly around the cabin, then lowered himself into the couch next to her. “I’m Vere–Audovero Caminesi.”

“Quinn Lioe.” They touched hands, awkward because of her safety harness.

“You wouldn’t be the Lioe who wrote the Frederick’s Glory scenario,” Vere said.

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

Vere grinned. “That was a great session. There’s been a lot of talk on the net about it; I’m still trying to find someone at the club who’ll run it. Are you going to be doing any Gaming while you’re here?”

The conversation was going just the way she’d hoped it would. Lioe said, “I was hoping to. I don’t know the clubs, though.”

Vere spread his hands. “I can give you some names, if you’d like.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“There are really only three clubs that are worth your while,” Vere said, lowering his voice until she could just hear him over the noise of the engines. “Billi’s in the Old City, Shadows under the Old Dike in Dock Road District, and the Two‑Dragon House, in Mainwardens‘.” He grinned suddenly. “I think Shadows is the best of the lot–it’s where I play, so take it for what it’s worth.”

Lioe smiled back. “What’s the setup like?”

“They’re all about the same, really,” Vere answered. A chime sounded from farther forward in the compartment, and he lifted his head to look over the seatbacks for the source. Lioe followed the direction of his gaze, and saw a call light flashing above one of the seats. Vere grimaced, and pushed himself to his feet, but leaned down to finish what he had been saying. “Shadows has newer machines, but they’re not state‑of‑the‑art. Billi’s was that maybe four, five years ago. Two‑Dragon is pretty standard stuff, a little older than Shadows.”

“Thanks,” Lioe said, and Vere smiled down at her.

“Don’t forget me if you run an open session.”

“I’ll keep you in mind,” Lioe said, and meant it. She would be needing good players, if she managed to persuade a club to let her lead sessions, and anyone who could play for Ambidexter was good enough for her. It was just a pity Ambidexter himself was no longer in the Game.

She turned her head to the viewport again, was startled to see how far the orbiter had dropped. The water was no longer just a blue haze, had gained a crumpled texture, and flecks of white dotted the metallic surface. Burning Bright City was just visible in the distance, if she craned her neck, but mostly hidden by the orbiter’s nose. The craft banked sharply then, showing her nothing but the brilliance of the sky, and when it steadied onto the new heading, Burning Bright lay spread out beneath the orbiter’s wing. It seemed very small at first, an island split in three by a forked channel, but then the orbiter banked again, losing altitude, and she began to make out the smaller landformed islands that made up the larger masses. Most of them were thickly settled, furred with brick‑red buildings, light glinting occasionally from solar panels and interior waterways. Only the high ground at the outer edges of the islands remained relatively uncrowded. She frowned idly at that, wondering why, and the speakers crackled at the front of the cabin.

Vere said, “I’ve just been informed that we are starting the descent to Newfields. We should be on the ground in about fifteen minutes.”

The orbiter canted again as he spoke, and when it came level again, Lioe was looking at a scene she recognized. Twin lakes lay to either side of a piece of land like a small mountain, falling steeply to the sea on one side and more gently into settled country on the other. That was Plug Island, where the first‑in settlers had first dammed the shallow lagoon to create more land for their growing city. Double headlands cradled each of the lakes; the desalination complex and the thick white walls of the tidal generating stations that closed each lake off from the sea gleamed in the sunlight. Outside the generating stations’ walls, surf bloomed against the storm barriers that defended the Plug Island lagoons; it frothed as well against the base of the cliffs to either side. They were coming into Newfields. Even as she thought it, the orbiter rolled a final time, then steadied into the familiar approach. They flashed over the clustered houses of the Ghetto where the off‑worlders, and especially the hsai, lived–still on the inner edges of the island, overlooking the land, away from the sea–and then dropped low over the administrative complex. The orbiter touched down easily on stained and tire‑marked pavement, and she leaned back in her couch, no longer watching the blocks of warehouses that flashed past beyond the empty field. Not long now, she thought, not long. I’ll find a room in the Ghetto, and I’ll call some clubs, and I’ll have a Game to run. She smiled, losing herself in a dream.

Day 30

High Spring: The Hsai Ambassador’s

House, in the Ghetto, Burning Bright

The ambassador to Burning Bright knelt in his reception room, facing the hissing screen. A few check‑characters crawled across the blank grey space; the ambassador frowned, seeing them, and glanced over his shoulder at the technician who knelt in front of the control board.

“Sorry, Sia Chauvelin,” the technician murmured, and his hands danced across his controls. The characters vanished, were replaced by a single steady glyph: the link was complete.

Chauvelin glanced one last time around the narrow room, at the plain black silk that lined the walls, at the low table with the prescribed ritual meal–snow‑wine; a tray of tiny red‑stained wafers, each marked in black with the graceful double‑glyph that meant both good fortune and gift; a molded sweet, this one in the shape of the nuao‑pear that stood for duty–laid out in the faint shadow of a single perfect orchid in an equally perfect holder carved from a natural pale‑purple crystal. His own clothes were equally part of the prescribed ritual, plain black silk coat over the pearl‑grey bodysuit that served humans like himself for the hsai’s natural skin, a single knot of formal ribbons tied around his left arm, the folded iron fan set on the bright carpet in front of him. He glanced a final time at his reflection in the single narrow window, checking his appearance, and found it acceptable. It was night out still, the sun not yet risen; he suppressed a certain sense of injustice, and glanced again at the technician. “Is everything ready?”

“Yes, Sia Chauvelin.”

“Then you may go.” Chauvelin looked back at the screen, barely aware of the murmured response and the soft scuffing sound as the technician bowed himself out and closed the door gently behind him. The remote was a sudden weight against his thigh, reminding him of his duty; he reached into the pocket of his coat to touch its controls, triggering the system. The hidden speakers hissed for a moment, singing as the jump‑satellite bridged the interstellar space between the local transmitter and an identical machine on maiHu’an, and then the screen lit on a familiar scene. Chauvelin bowed, back straight, eyes down, hands on the carpet in front of him, heard a light female voice–human female–announcing his name.

“Tal je‑Chauvelin tzu Tsinraan, emissary to and friend‑at‑court for the houtaof Burning Bright.”

Chauvelin kept his eyes on the fan, dark against the glowing red of the carpet, staring at the five n‑jaocharacters of his name carved into the outer guard. There was a little silence, and then a second voice answered the first, this one unmistakably hsaia, inhuman and male.

“I acknowledge je‑Chauvelin.”

Chauvelin leaned back slowly, raising his eyes to the screen. Even expecting it, the illusion was almost perfect, so that for an instant he could almost believe that the wall had dissolved, and a second room identical to his own had opened in front of him. The Remembrancer‑Duke Aorih ja‑Erh’aoa tzu Tsinraan sat facing him in a carved chair‑of‑state, hands posed formally on the heads of the crouching troglodyths that formed the arms of the chair. His wrist spurs curved out and down toward the troglodyths’ eyes, their enameled covers–done in a pattern of twining flowers, Chauvelin saw, without surprise–glowing in the warm lights.

“This person thanks his most honored patron for his acknowledgment,” he said, in the hsai tongue that he prided himself on speaking as well as any jericho‑human, any human born and bred inside the borders of HsaioiAn. “And welcomes him with service.”

Ja‑Erh’aoa made a quick, ambiguous gesture with one hand, at once accepting and dismissing the formal compliments. The stubby fingerclaws, painted a delicate shade between lavender and blue to match the enameled flowers of the spur sheath, clicked once against the carved head, and were still again. Chauvelin read impatience and irritation in the movement, and in the still face of the human woman who stood at ja‑Erh’aoa’s left hand, and braced himself for whatever was to follow.

“I would like to know, je‑Chauvelin, what you meant by this report.”

For a crazy second, Chauvelin considered asking which report the hsaia meant, but suppressed that particularly suicidal notion. The Remembrancer‑Duke had shifted from the formal tones of greeting to the more conversational second mode, and Chauvelin copied him. “My lord, you asked for my interpretation of what the All‑Father and his council should expect from the elections. I gave you that answer.”

“You recommended that we support, or at least acquiesce in, Governor Berengaria’s reelection.” Ja‑Erh’aoa’s hand moved again, the painted claws clicking irritably against the troglodyth’s low forehead. “Am I mad, or do I misremember, that she supports the Republic quite openly?”

Chauvelin winced inwardly at the mention of memory–ja‑Erh’aoa implied that he had implied an insult–and said, “It is so, my lord.” He kept his voice cool and steady only with an effort: he had known that this would become an issue of an’ahoba, the delicate game of status and prestige, but he had counted on ja‑Erh’aoa’s support.

“Then why should we not stand in her way?”

I gave you my reasons in my report, my lord. Chauvelin suppressed that answer, and saw the faintest of rueful smiles cross the human woman’s otherwise impassive face. He said aloud, “My Lord, the other candidates are not safe. They either have no backing among the people who matter”– or among the people in general, but that’s not something a hsaia would understand–“or are too young and untried for me to suggest that HsaioiAn place any trust in them.”

“It is not expedient that we support Berengaria,” ja‑Erh’aoa said flatly.

“Then, my lord, it is as though my report was never made.” Chauvelin sat back slightly, folded his hands in his lap.

“Unfortunately,” ja‑Erh’aoa said, “your report has become common knowledge in the council halls. I have suffered some–diminishment–because of it. It is even being said, je‑Chauvelin, that you are too close to the houtaon Burning Bright, and would perhaps benefit from a different posting.”

“Do you question my loyalties, lord?” Even as he said it, Chauvelin knew that was the wrong question, born from the sudden cold fear twisting his guts. It was too direct, put ja‑Erh’aoa in a position where he could only answer yes–and he himself was too vulnerable to that accusation to risk angering his patron. No chaoi‑mon, citizen by impressment, could risk that, particularly not when he was born on Burning Bright and served now as ambassador to that planet. He silenced those thoughts, kept himself still, hands quiet in his lap, face expressionlessly polite, with an effort that made the muscles along his spine and across his shoulders tremble slightly beneath the heavy coat. He made himself face ja‑Erh’aoa guilelessly, as though no one had touched his one vulnerable spot, pretended he did not see the Remembrancer‑Duke’s fingerclaws close over the troglodyths’ heads.

“No one questions your fealty, je‑Chauvelin,” ja‑Erh’aoa said, after a moment. “However, it is as well not to cause even the hint of a question.”

Bad, very bad, Chauvelin thought. He bowed again, accepting the rebuke, and said, “As my lord wishes.”

“I would also see to your household, je‑Chauvelin,” ja‑Erh’aoa said. “I am concerned that this report has traveled so far outside my knowledge, and yours.”

Chauvelin lifted an eyebrow at him, stung at last into retort. “My household is well known to me, save the guest I entertain at your command, my lord.”

There was another little silence, ja‑Erh’aoa’s hands slowly tightening over the troglodyths’ heads, thumbclaws perilously close to their carved eyes, and Chauvelin braced himself to offer his humblest apologies. Then, quite slowly, ja‑Erh’aoa’s hands loosened again, and he said, with apparent inconsequence, “How is your guest, Chauvelin?”

“The Visiting Speaker is enjoying the pleasures of the planet,” Chauvelin answered, conventionally. In point of fact, the Visiting Speaker Kuguee ji‑Imbao aje Tsinraan, cousin of the Imperial Father, is spending most of his nights attending parties and most days sleeping off the effects of Oblivion. Even so, I may have underestimated him–or at least his household. He made a mental note to make a second investigation of the half‑dozen attendants who had arrived with ji‑Imbaoa.

“You will convey our greetings,” ja‑Erh’aoa said, and Chauvelin bowed again.

“As my lord wishes.”

Ja‑Erh’aoa nodded, pushed himself up out of the chair‑of‑state, at the same time gesturing to the woman behind him. She said, in her clear voice, “The audience is ended.”

Chauvelin bowed again, more deeply, hands on the floor, straightened slowly when the click of the room door was not followed by the static of a broken connection. Eriki Haas tzu Tsinraan, ja‑Erh’aoa’s First Speaker, looked back at him without expression, came slowly forward to kneel on the carpeting in front of ja‑Erh’aoa’s empty chair. Chauvelin lifted an eyebrow at her.

“What’s made this report so different from all the others? My lord knows what I think of Berengaria.” He used tradetalk, the informal creole that was the common language of human beings in HsaioiAn, and Haas’s severity melted into a rueful grin.

“What makes it different is exactly what he said: somebody leaked it before it could be edited for the council. And my lord’s right, you should check on how that happened.”

“I fully intend to,” Chauvelin said. “This is not the most opportune time to have a visitor.”

Haas nodded. “The problem is, the je cousins have been getting a lot of attention at court lately–Norio Mann is a je Tsinraan, and he’s been the All‑Father’s favorite son since the petro strike on Hazuhonae. And the cousins are doing everything they can to consolidate their position.”

Chauvelin nodded back, wishing–not for the first time–that communications between the court on Hsiamai and the worlds outside HsaioiAn were a little more frequent. “If I had known–” he began, and bit off the words. The rivalry between je and tzu lines of the imperial family–between cousin and direct‑line family–was ongoing; if he couldn’t anticipate particular events and shifts in favor, he should at least have made sure nothing in his report could have affected the Remembrancer‑Duke’s position in that struggle. But I didn’t count on his dumping ji‑Imbaoa on me. Or his household.

Haas smiled sourly. “For some reason, Tal, they’ve decided to pick on you–you are in an anomalous position, after all. And my lord is vulnerable through you, don’t forget.”

“I don’t forget,” Chauvelin said.

“Good.”

“Tell me this,” Chauvelin said, and in spite of his best efforts heard the anger in his voice. “Do you want me to retract my report? It’s my best advice–my lord never used to prefer a political lie to common sense, but I am at my lord’s command.”

“No.” Haas waved one hand in a hsaii gesture, negation and apology in one. “What’s done is done. But you might look for some way to reaffirm your loyalties in public, Tal. My lord would find it helpful.”

“I’ll do that,” Chauvelin said, a new, cold fear warring with the anger. He had earned his place on Burning Bright, earned the right to return to his homeworld, a favor almost never granted to chaoi‑mon, and that did leave him open to just this accusation, that he favored his origins over the imperial clan that had adopted him.

Haas looked at him from under lowered lashes. “My lord is vulnerable through you,” she said again.

“The threat was clear the first time,” Chauvelin said.

“I hope so,” Haas murmured, and ran a finger along the elaborate enameling that decorated the cover of her implanted wrist spur. The picture wavered and died. Chauvelin swore, and reached for his own remote, closing down the local connection. Check characters flickered across the screen, and then the wall went dead, a blank grey space at the end of the room.

Chauvelin sat staring at it for a long moment, mastering his anger, and the fear that anger masked. So my lord will throw me to the wolves, he thought, testing the idea, and found he could view it without great surprise. So I will find a reason for him to have to keep me, and I think I will begin with finding something, or something more, to discredit ji‑lmbaoa. Not that that will be that hard, or particularly unpleasant. He pushed himself slowly to his feet, wincing a little at the ache in his knees. Outside the window, the sky had lightened visibly, the sky even to the west, over the city, showing clear signs of dawn. There was no point in going back to bed–the conference had been scheduled at ja‑Erh’aoa’s convenience, and he himself had other appointments later in the day. Better to eat– assuming the kitchen staff is awake, which they had better be–and then take steps to deal with this.

He returned to his own rooms to change clothes, discarding the unflattering bodysuit and heavy coat with a sigh of relief. One of the servants–the hsai preferred living beings to mechanicals; service given and received in kinship was the glue of their society, and this morning Chauvelin was oddly comforted by his place in the hierarchy–had laid out everyday clothing, shirt and plain trousers, and a less formal coat of green brocade. The fabric was of Burning Bright weave, shot through with strands of the iridescent pearl‑silk rendered from the discarded shells of the sequensa after the more expensive paillettes had been cut, and he hesitated for a moment, wondering if it would be more tactful to wear something less obviously identified with his world of origin, but then shrugged the thought aside. The damage was done; it was better to pretend he hadn’t heard about the rumors. And besides, the cool drape of the fabric was a reassuring luxury. He slipped it on, running one hand down the unshaped lapel just for the feeling of the heavy silk under his touch, and left the room.

The sun was fully up now, the rising light pouring in through the seaward windows, casting long shadows toward the city below the Ghetto cliff. The breakfast room, overlooking the gardens that dropped in terraces toward the cliff edge and the Old City, was pleasantly shadowed, only the food tables softly lit by the stasis fields. Chauvelin smiled with real enjoyment for the first time that day, and crossed to the tables to pour himself a cup of flower‑scented tea.

“Sia Chauvelin.”

He turned to face the speaker, recognizing his steward’s voice, and saw a second person, jericho‑human rather than hsaii, standing beside the steward, so close and so exactly even in the doorway that their shoulders touched. The woman was part of ji‑Imbaoa’s household, and Chauvelin set the tea aside untouched.

“Yes?”

“My lord wishes to speak with you,” ji‑Imbaoa’s servant said, her voice completely without expression.

“The Visiting Speaker has only just returned from the city,” the steward murmured, under lowered lashes. Her fingers curled with demure humor as she spoke.

Chauvelin lifted an eyebrow, his mind racing. What the ninth hell could ji‑Imbaoa want, at this hour, when he’s bound to be hung over, or still drunk, if I’m particularly unlucky? I should change to wait on him, but I’ll be damned if he deserves the honor–“The Visiting Speaker will have to pardon the delay,” he said, and indicated the informal coat.

“My lord will excuse,” ji‑Imbaoa’s servant said, still without expression.

“As the Visiting Speaker wishes,” Chauvelin said, and could not quite keep the irony from his voice. “Iameis”–that was his steward, who bowed her head in acknowledgment–“you’ll join me for breakfast after this. We have some things to discuss.”

“Yes, Sia,” the steward murmured, and stepped aside.

Chauvelin looked at the other woman. “Lead on.”

He let her conduct him through the ambassadorial palace, as was proper, for all that he knew the building far better than she ever would. She stayed the prescribed two paces ahead of him and slightly to his right, unspeaking, and Chauvelin watched her back, rigid under the black tunic, and the short swing of her left arm. A conscript’s mark was tattooed into her biceps, just below the fall of the cap sleeve. Chauvelin felt his eyebrows rise, controlled his expression instantly. Why would anyone be stupid enough to trust ji‑Imbaoa with pressed servants? Loyalty can only be created by favor, not by fear–though some of my own first masters were no joy to serve, but nothing like him. He filed the observation for later use, and braced himself as the woman came to a stop outside the door of ji‑Imbaoa’s suite. They were technically Chauvelin’s own rooms, by virtue of his rank as head of the ambassadorial household, but Chauvelin himself rarely used them, since any visitor of higher rank could usurp them. Ji‑lmbaoa had taken particular pleasure in moving his household into the rooms, and Chauvelin had had to keep a sharp grip on his temper to keep from betraying the existence of a second group of rooms. Ji‑Imbaoa would have been happy to move in there, at the expense of his own comfort, just to win a few points in an’ahoba.

“The ambassador Chauvelin,” ji‑Imbaoa’s servant announced to the invisible security system, and the carved and lacquered doors swung open.

The Visiting Speaker Kuguee ji‑Imbaoa je Tsinraan stood in the center of the suite’s reception room, feet firmly planted on the silk‑weave carpet that lay before the chair‑of‑state. At least he hasn’t chosen to take the chair, Chauvelin thought, and suppressed his anger as he saw the mud on ji‑Imbaoa’s feet, caked between the claws and trampled into the carpet. It was a familiar way of showing power, but Chauvelin added it to the Visiting Speaker’s account: the carpet was too beautiful to be treated as part of an’ahoba.

“ Ts’taa.” The word was untranslatable, carrying contempt and impatience and a concise statement of relationship, superior to inferior. Chauvelin raised his eyebrows, hoping that ji‑Imbaoa had finally made a mistake–he and the Visiting Speaker were too close in the hierarchy for that to be anything but a deliberate and deadly insult–and realized with regret that ji‑Imbaoa was addressing the woman servant.

“You are careless, and slow, and I am diminished by your habits.” Ji‑Imbaoa glanced sideways then, toward Chauvelin, and added, “ Chaoihave so much to learn.”

He had used the shortened term, the one that had once meant “slave.” The woman’s shoulders twitched once, but she mastered herself, and bowed deeply. “I abase myself. I beg my lord’s forgiveness.”

Ji‑Imbaoa waved a hand in dismissal, and the woman turned away, but not before Chauvelin saw the bright spots of color flaring on her cheekbones. It’s not wise–it’s downright stupid–to abuse your servants to get back at your enemies. He said, in his most neutral voice, “And yet the All‑Father commends the practice.”

Ji‑Imbaoa’s head lowered, suspiciously, but he said nothing. Chauvelin waited, running a quick and appraising glance down the Visiting Speaker’s mostly humanoid body. Fingerclaws and spurs were painted a vivid red, the spurs protected only by a small cap of filigree‑work. The bright ribbon clusters that flowed from bands around his upper arms, forming his only clothing, were badly crumpled, and Chauvelin glanced lower. The salmon‑pink tip of ji‑Imbaoa’s penis was only just visible at the opening of the genital sheath: still drunk enough to relax some inhibitions, but sobering.

“I’ve summoned you because I’ve been hearing worrisome news,” ji‑Imbaoa said abruptly. News you should already know about, his tone implied.

Chauvelin murmured, “Indeed?” They were close enough in rank to omit honorifics in informal speech, and ji‑Imbaoa had used the common forms.

Ji‑Imbaoa’s hands twitched, as though he regretted his choice, but he could not change modes without losing face. “You have an agent in the city, a houta, Ransome, it’s called.”

“Ransome is under my patronage, yes,” Chauvelin answered. “He’s been min‑haofor some years.” The gap between houta, nonperson, and client‑kinsman was vast; Ransome needed the respect and protection of min‑haostatus.

Ji‑Imbaoa flicked his fingers, dismissing the difference. “Decidamio Chrestil‑Brisch is showing a great deal of interest in him. I wonder why.”

And so do I, Chauvelin thought. He said aloud, “There are a number of reasons that Damian Chrestil might be interested in Ransome, not least that Ransome’s an imagist of some note in the city.”

“That may be,” ji‑Imbaoa said, “but what I have seen is that Damian Chrestil–or that woman, his whore–wants very much to lure your agent back into the Game. Why would that be?”

“I don’t know,” Chauvelin said.

“Such pressure against an agent of yours, I’d think you’d want to know what’s going on. They leave lures on all the nets, hints and pressures. It’s not like Damian Chrestil to care about the Game–”

“Cella, his mistress”–Chauvelin laid the lightest of stresses on the word–“is a well‑known Gamer, however, and Ransome was a notable for a long time.”

Ji‑Imbaoa flicked his fingers again. “I think it’s worth investigation.”

Chauvelin sighed. “So do I.”

“And I also think,” ji‑Imbaoa went on, as if the other hadn’t spoken, “that it would be worth doing what Damian Chrestil wants, if only to find out what’s going on.”

“If it seems a reasonable risk,” Chauvelin said softly. “I don’t send my people into difficult situations unprepared.”

“Of course, if he can tell you what they want,” ji‑Imbaoa said, equally softly, “it wouldn’t be necessary.”

“As you say.” Chauvelin got a grip on his temper with an effort, knowing his anger was sharpened by fear. “Will that be all? I have business this morning–”

Ji‑Imbaoa cut him off with a gesture. “There is one other matter. This Ransome: you say he’s not houtabut min‑hao?”

“Yes.” Chauvelin gave no other explanation, uncertain where this would lead.

“Then there is a matter of charges lodged against him on Jericho, which are actionable if he is min‑hao.”

“At the time, he was houta, and served sentence on appropriate charges,” Chauvelin said. Not now, he thought, not now, of all times, to bring that up. Christ, it was fifteen years ago, and he spent time in jail; that ought to be over and done with. But it had been a matter of an’ahoba, a game that Ransome played with regrettable skill and no status to match it– and I should have known this would come up at the worst possible time. I can deal with it.

“The larger matters still stand, in court record.” Ji‑Imbaoa made a small gesture, almost of satisfaction. “But I trust you will handle these matters appropriately.”

“Of course,” Chauvelin said, in his most colorless voice. Twice in one day–that’s twice someone’s threatened me, and it’s not yet midmorning. Not one of my better days.

“I am sure,” ji‑Imbaoa said, and gestured polite dismissal. Chauvelin bowed his thanks, and let himself out into the hallway.

He made his way back to the breakfast room through corridors that were slowly filling with people, responding mechanically to the respectful greetings of his household. Three things, he thought, three things I have to do. Find the weaknesses in ji‑Imbaoa’s household so that I can counter his threats, find out who leaked this report of mine, and then find out why Damian Chrestil wants Ransome back in the Game. And why it should worry ji‑Imbaoa so much. Which means I will have to talk to Ransome: it doesn’t do to have him keeping secrets from me. He paused in the door of the breakfast room, mentally reordering his list, then went in to give orders to the waiting steward.

Day 30

High Spring: Canal #291, Fisher’s

Isle District, Burning Bright

Damian Chrestil woke to sunlight and the steady sway of the john‑boat against the forward mooring. The stern tie had parted in the night. He was certain of it even before he stopped blinking, and moved his head out of the thin bar of sunlight that shone in through the gap between the snuggery’s canvas top and the side of the boat. He was angry even before he remembered what lay next to him in the bunk. It was his fault, the stranger’s–he had been the one to place the stern tie–and he propped himself up on one elbow to study the situation, and the body beside his. He couldn’t remember the stranger’s name, nor very clearly why he had picked him up the night before; whatever had been interesting or endearing had vanished with his clothes. Slumming, certainly–and the stranger turned over onto his side, dragging the thin sheet with him. That was quite enough, especially now that the inevitable headache was starting behind his eyes. Damian kicked away the rest of the sheet and reached for his discarded clothes, wriggling awkwardly into briefs and shirt and trousers. The stranger– whoever he is–was lying on top of the storage compartments. There was nothing useful in them, not in a borrowed boat, but Damian added the extra inconvenience to his account anyway, and crawled out of the snuggery to deal with the stern tie.

Luckily, he had had the sense to pick a quiet lay‑by. The john‑boat was swinging only sluggishly, the soggy impact of the hull against the piling barely audible over the gentle slap of the water, not even enough to bruise the paint. He made his way aft along the sun‑warming decking, and as the boat swung in against the pilings, caught the dangling ring and made the tie fast. He stood there for a moment, balancing automatically against the deck’s gentle heave, and blinked up at the sky and the white‑hot light. The john‑boat lay at the bottom of a blue‑toned canyon. Shadowed factory buildings rose six stories high along either bank of the canal, their unlit windows showing only blank glass. This was not a deliveryway; there were no lesser docks or vertical line of gaping doors beneath an overhanging cranehead. It was just a traffic alley, not much used–it might even once have been a natural stream, by the gentle curve of its banks. The rising sun was pouring down from the near end of the channel, a wedge of almost solid light that turned the murky water to liquid agate. No one was moving on the narrow walkways that ran alongside the factories; no one else was tied up to the mossy pilings, or tucked under the cool shadow of the piers. He made a face–the heavy sun was doing nothing for his headache–and went forward again, shielding his eyes from the shards of light that glinted off the water.

The stranger was still asleep in the snuggery, face now turned to the empty pillow beside him. Damian Chrestil squatted in the entrance to the cavelike space, staring into air turned honey‑gold by the worn cover, and felt a detached malevolence steal over him. Why should hesleep, when Damian himself was awake, and feeling unpleasing? There was nothing in the round face and showily muscled body that aroused the least compassion; his thin mustache was intolerable. I must give up slumming, he thought, and leaned sideways to release the lock that held the cover’s frame erect. He caught the nearest hoop as the wind took it, guiding it down onto the deck. The frame folded neatly, as it was supposed to, with only a soft creak from the well‑oiled mechanism, and the cover collapsed into a rumpled U‑shape at his feet. The stranger slept on.

Damian stood for a moment longer, glaring down at him, automatically tugging his own thick hair into a neat queue. He remembered perfectly well howhe’d acquired the stranger–he was a bungee‑gar, and C/B Cie., the holding group that managed the Chrestil‑Brisch import/export interests, had successfully received a shipment of red‑carpet, the fungus that fed the family distilleries. Red‑carpet was expensive enough on its own, especially on a world that had few native sources of alcohol, valuable enough to justify employing bungee‑gars, but it had also served to cover the two capsules of lachesi that had traveled with the declared cargo. Oblivion was made from lachesi, and Oblivion was legal inside the Republic, but the Republican export taxes on drugs were deliberately high. Evading those duties not only increased his own profits, but allowed him to do favors for two important parties, one in the Republic, the other in HsaioiAn. And that was how Burning Bright had survived free of control by either of the metagovernments: the web of favors given and received that made it entirely too dangerous for strangers to interfere in Burning Bright’s internal politics. It was never too early to start collecting favors, either, not when he intended to be governor in five years.

The stranger shifted uneasily against the mattress, drawing Damian out of the pleasant daydream. His head was really throbbing now– Oblivion and bai‑red rum, not a wise combination–and he wondered again why he’d invited the stranger aboard. He was decent‑enough looking–a dark man, young, canalli dark, with coarse waves in his too‑long hair, heavy muscles under the skin, and buttocks Damian could vaguely remember describing as “cute”–but not cute enough, not with that silly mustache shadowing his full mouth. He hadn’t been that good a fuck, either: if the previous night’s performance had represented his sexual peak, his future partners were in for some serious disappointment. Damian slipped his foot under the sheet, flipped it nearly away. The stranger rolled over, groping blindly for it, mumbling something that sounded regrettably like darling, and fetched up with his shoulder resting on the edge of the boat. Damian Chrestil smiled slowly, and stepped onto the bunk beside him, his feet sinking only a little way into the hard foam of the mattress. He dug his foot under the stranger’s rib cage, saw him start to roll away automatically. The stranger’s eyes opened then, a sleepy and entirely too cocksure smile changing to alarm as Damian tipped him neatly out of the boat. Instinct kept him from yelling until he surfaced again.

“What the hell–?”

“Rise and shine.” Damian smiled, some of his temper restored, and turned his attention to the mess in the snuggery.

The stranger trod water easily, shaking his hair out of his eyes, but knew better than to try to climb back aboard. “What’d I do?” he asked plaintively, and pushed himself a few strokes farther down the channel, out of reach of the cargo‑hooks racked along the gunwales.

Damian paused, the stranger’s clothes in one hand. He had them all now, except for one crumpled shoe, and he found that almost in the instant he realized it was missing, tucked in between the mattress and the bulkhead. He rolled them all together into a compact ball, and tossed it, not into the canal as he’d intended, but up onto the walkway between the pilings. It was not, after all, entirely the stranger’s fault.

“I have work to do,” Damian said.

For an instant it looked as though the stranger might protest, but Damian scowled, and the other lifted both hands in dripping apology, the water drawing him down for an instant.

“Fine.” The stranger stopped treading water, lay back, and let the current take him, exerting himself only when he spotted the splintering ladder nailed to one of the piers.

Damian turned away, his mood lifting, and stepped out onto the narrow bow platform to loosen the tie there. His headache was fading now, in the morning air, was just an occasional pang behind his eyebrows. He could hear splashing as the stranger hauled himself up out of the canal, but did not bother to watch, walked aft instead and loosed the stern tie. He pushed hard against the piling, edging the stern toward the main current, and stepped down into the shallow steering well to hit the start sequence. The engine whined, then strengthened as the solar panels striping the deck woke to sunlight and began feeding power to the system, supplementing the batteries. The john‑boat had already caught the main current, was drifting stern first toward the shadow of the factories. He swung the wheel, felt the rudder bite, tentative at first, then more solid as the propellers came up to speed, and eased open the throttle. The john‑boat slowed even as the stern, the steering well, slipped into the wall of shadow. He felt the sudden chill on his shoulders, was blinded, looking out into the light, and then the propellers hit the speed that counteracted the current. The boat surged back into the sunlight, the water churned to foam in its wake. On the walkway, the stranger was shivering even in the sunlight, stamping his feet to let the worst of the water run off before he pulled on his clothes. Damian Chrestil wondered again, briefly, precisely who he was, and opened the throttle further, letting the pulse of the engine reverberate between the factory walls.

It was good to be back on the canals again, if only for a few hours, and he gave himself up to the pulse of the steering bar and the kick of the deck beneath his feet. You never really lost the skill, once learned; would always be able to run a john‑boat, but it was good to feel the old ease returning. He grinned, and gave his full attention to the delicate job of bringing the boat out of the alley and into the feeder canal that led down to the Factory Lane and the Inland Water. There wasn’t much traffic yet, none of the swarming mob of gondas that would fill the lane and the service canals in an hour or so, carrying midrank workers to their supervisory jobs. The water buses that carried the ordinary workers to the assembly lines had been and gone, were tied up in the parking pools along the edge of Dry Cut to wait for the evening shift change. He reversed the propellers, cutting speed, and slipped the john‑boat into the buoyed channel, bringing it neatly into line behind a barge piled high with shell scrap.

A light was blinking amber in the center of the control panel, had been for a few minutes, since before he left the feeder canal. He eyed it irritably, but knew he could not ignore it any longer. “Checkin,” he said, and the screen lit, the compressed in‑house iconage skittering into place in the tiny display. He scanned it quickly, still with half an eye on the traffic in the channel, saw nothing that required his instant attention. He was about to switch off when the string of messages vanished, and a second message replaced them: Jafiera Roscha received third endangerment citation; please instruct.

Damian Chrestil stared at the message for a long moment, all his attention focused on the tiny characters, and had to swerve sharply to avoid a channel buoy. He knew Roscha, all right: one of C/B Cie.‘s better john‑boat drivers, competent, aggressive, not one to ask awkward questions when she had a job to do. She was also what the canalli politely called accident‑prone, except that she usually caused the accidents. He shook his head, said to the speaker mounted just below the screen, “Check in, direct patch to the wharfinger. Authorization: Damian Chrestil.”

There was a moment of silence as the system hunted for an unused uplink, the hissing static barely audible over the engine and the rush of water along the hull, and then the day dispatcher said, “I’m sorry, Na Damian, but Na Rosaurin’s on another line. Can I give her a message, or will you hold?”

“Give her a message,” Damian said. “Tell her to find Roscha and bring her in. I want to talk to her. And get me a copy of this endangerment complaint.”

“Absolutely, Na Damian.” The dispatcher’s sharp voice did not change, but Damian could imagine the lifted eyebrows. “I’ll pass those messages to Na Rosaurin, and put out a call for Roscha.”

“Thanks, Moreo,” Damian said, and added, to the system, “Close down.”

The system chimed obediently, and a string of icons flickered across the screen, their transit too fast to be read. Damian glared at the now‑empty screen for a moment longer, then made himself concentrate on the increasing traffic as he came up on the buoy that marked the turn onto the Inland Water. He would deal with Roscha later.

The Water, the massive deep‑water channel that bisected Burning Bright, was as crowded as ever. Enormous cargo barges wallowed along in the main channel, warned away from the faster, lighter john‑boat traffic by lines of bright‑orange buoys. Dozens of tiny, brightly painted gondas flashed in and out of the double channels, day lights glittering from their upturned tails. Damian swore at the first to cross his path, matching his words to the jolting rhythm of the swells, and felt the john‑boat kick as it crossed the gonda’s wake. He lifted his fist at the gonda driver, and got a flip of the hand in return. He swore again, and swung into the lane behind a seiner, its nets drawn up like skirts around the double boom. It wallowed against the heavy chop–Storm was only two days away, and the winds had already shifted, were driving against the current, setting up an unusual swell. The seiner’s holds were obviously full: on its way back from the sequensa dredging grounds off the Water’s Homestead Island entrance, Damian guessed, and throttled back still further to clear its heavy wake. It was likely to be the last cargo they’d see for a few weeks, until Storm was past.

Even at the slower pace, it didn’t take long to come opposite the mouth of the Straight River, and he slowed again to thread his way sedately through the bevy of smaller craft that swarmed around the entrance. The main wharfs loomed beyond that, massive structures filling in the bend in the bank between the Straight and the channel that led to the Junction Pool and the warehouse districts beyond. He felt a distinct pang of regret as he edged the john‑boat into the channel that led to his own docks– if not for business, and if not for Roscha in particular, he could have spent more of the day on the Water–and transformed it instantly into anger. It was time Roscha learned her lesson: that was all. He edged the john‑boat between the barges tied up at MADCo.‘s end‑of‑dock terminal, and let himself drift down easily, nudging the boat along with short bursts of power, to fetch up against the worn padding almost directly beneath C/B Cie.’s antique ship poised against a flaring sun. A familiar face looked down at him–Talaina Rosaurin, one of the wharfingers–and a couple of dockers ran to catch the lines.

“Morning, Na Damian. I’ve the day’s plot set up, and Roscha’s on her way in,” Rosaurin said.

Damian nodded in acknowledgment, and leaned sideways to catch the webbing that covered the fenders. He held the john‑boat steady with one hand and tossed the stern rope up onto the dock. The nearest docker caught it, began automatically looping it around the nearest bollard. “Thanks, Rosaurin. Finish the tie‑up, will you?”

It was not a request. The wharfinger nodded, and dropped onto the bow.

“I’ll take a look at the plot as soon as I’ve seen Roscha,” Damian went on, and swung himself easily up onto the dock. “Send her in as soon as she gets here.”

“Right, Na Damian,” Rosaurin said, but Damian was already walking away.

His office was in a corner of the main warehouse, insulated from the noise and smell of the moving cargoes by a shell of quilted foam‑board, and well away from the wharfingers’ station at the end of the pier. He threaded his way past the gang of dockers busy at the cranes unloading the barge that had brought the drop capsules in from the Zone, and glanced sharply into the open cargo space. He was moderately pleased to see that only two capsules remained to be brought onto the dock, and made his way past a whining carrier into the shadows of the warehouse. A pair of factors looked up at his entrance, and the taller of the two touched his forehead and came to intercept him, leaving the other to preside over the newly opened drop capsule.

“I’m sorry, Na Damian, but there’s some minor spoilage in this shipment.”

“How lovely.” Damian bit back the rest of his response, said instead, “Finish checking it and give me a report. Is it TMN again?”

The factor nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“I need to talk to them,” Damian said, and continued on toward the office. The door opened to his touch, reading his palmprint on the latch, and admitted him to the narrow lobby, empty except for the secretary pillar that guarded the inner doorway. The sphere that balanced on the truncated point of its slender pyramid glowed pale blue, tinged with green at the edges; threads of darker blue danced in its center, shaping a series of brief messages. At least two of the codestrings signaled longer messages backed up in the system–probably from his siblings, if they were sent here–but he stepped past the pillar into the inner office.

Behind him, the secretary said, in its cultured artificial voice, “Na Damian, you have messages waiting.”

“Oh, shut up,” Damian Chrestil said, and closed the door behind him.

He kept clean clothes in storage here, and there was a small but comfortable bath suite tucked into one corner of the space. He showered and shaved, washing away salt and sweat and with it the last holiday feeling of freedom, took two hangover capsules, and dressed quickly in the shirt and trousers and short jacket that he found in the storage cell. He spent a little extra time coaxing his thick mane of hair into a kind of careful disorder; he was vain about his hair, thick and naturally gold‑streaked brown, and the fact that it looked good long did something to make up for the way the fashionable long coats sat lumpishly on his thin body. Willowy was good, scrawny was not, and he was forced to dress accordingly.

He returned to the inner office, and settled himself at the apex of the chevron‑shaped desk. The smaller secretary globe–really just an extension of the larger machine in the lobby–chirped softly at him, and he swung to face it.

“Well?”

“You have mail in your urgent file.”

“Well, isn’t that pleasant,” Damian said. “How many items?”

“Two.”

“Print them.” Damian Chrestil ran his hand over the shadowscreen to light the various displays set on and in the desktop, then leaned back in his chair as the tiny mail printer whirred to life. It buzzed twice, chuckled briefly to itself, and spat a sheet of paper with an all‑too‑familiar pattern. Damian took it, scowling down at the dark‑blue border marks of a formal Lockwarden complaint sheet, and scanned the sharp printing. Roscha, it seemed, had excelled herself–or had she? He read the complaint a second time, more carefully, then set the sheet aside, frowning. The complainant’s name was unfamiliar, but he was a journeyman member of the Merchant Investors’ Syndicate, and the MIS was particularly hostile to C/B Cie. It would be nice to know just what, or even who, had persuaded the man to file a formal complaint: the threat to throw him off the cliff face was not, on balance, a likely cause, at least not in a bungee‑gar bar like the Last Drop. He fingered the shadowscreen again, putting the complainant’s name into a basic inquiry program, and glanced at another screen, this one filled with the running reports from the factors working on the cargo they’d collected the night before. Roscha would have to learn better, however; for a start, she could pay her own fines.

“Na Damian,” the secretary said. “Jafiera Roscha is here.”

Damian paused, flicked a spot on the shadowscreen to mute the various displays. “Send her in.”

The door opened almost at once, and a woman stood for an instant outlined against the lobby’s buttery light. She was tall, and exquisitely built, her waist narrow between perfectly proportioned breasts and hips. Snug trousers and a dock‑worker’s singlet only emphasized that perfection; the light jacket that trailed from one hand was a shade of indigo that matched her eyes. Damian had forgotten–he always forgot, remembered again each time he saw her–just how striking she was, and despite the previous night felt a stirring of interest in his groin. Roscha came forward into the light, the corners of her wide mouth drawn down in an attempt neither to smile nor frown, and Damian slid the complaint across the desktop at her.

“What the hell was this?”

Roscha took it warily, studied the printed message, her eyes flicking back and forth between the paper and the other’s face. Somehow, despite the hours she spent on the Water, she had kept her skin dazzlingly fair, the color of coffee cream; her red hair flamed against her shoulders, held out of her eyes by a strip of black ribbon. More black bands–braided ribbons or strips of leather–circled each wrist, and Damian recalled himself sternly to the business at hand.

Roscha set the paper carefully back on the edge of the desk. “I guess I had too much to drink last night.”

“I guess you should be more careful where you drink,” Damian answered.

Roscha shrugged, looking rather sullen. “There were a bunch of us, celebrating, and enough of us making noise. I don’t know why they picked on me.”

“Just accident‑prone, I guess,” Damian said.

Roscha looked away, not quickly enough to hide the flash of anger. “I just got carried away. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t pay my people to get carried away,” Damian Chrestil said. “I pay you to do your job, and do what I tell you. Not to go around collecting complaint sheets.” He glanced down at the slip of paper again. “Do you even know this man?”

Roscha looked at the intricately patterned carpet, visibly mastering her temper. “By sight, mostly, and I know the name–he’s in the Game, I’ve seen him playing on the nets. I did know he works for the MIS.”

“Do you know what he does for them?”

“Works for one of the factors, I think,” Roscha answered. “Computer jockey.”

“Ah.”

In spite of his best efforts, there was enough satisfaction in Damian’s voice that the wary look in Roscha’s eyes faded to something more like curiosity. Damian glared at her, and she met his stare with a stony face.

“They give you a choice,” he said, after a moment. “Pay the fine, a hundred and fifty real, or take it to court. You’ll pay.”

There was another little silence, Roscha’s too‑large mouth thinning slightly, and then she said, without inflection, “I don’t have that much in my account.”

Damian looked at her for a long moment, and she returned the stare unflinching. A little color might have touched her wide cheekbones, but it was hard to tell. “All right,” he said, and ran his hand over the shadowscreen. The second printer, the one loaded with draft forms, chirred softly under the desktop, and spat a slip of soft paper. “Here, give this to Rosaurin, she’ll give you a voucher–and I’ll stop you twenty‑five reala paycheck to cover it. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Roscha still looked grim, but the tight set of her mouth eased a little.

Damian nodded, and slid the draft across the desktop toward her. Roscha took it, pocketed it without looking at the faint printing. “Right, then,” Damian said, and the woman turned away, accepting that dismissal. Even before the door had closed behind her, Damian reached for the shadowscreen, raising the priority of his inquiry about the MIS complainant. A member of the Merchant Investors, even a low‑ranking one, who was also a computer jockey and who was around his warehouses often enough for Roscha to recognize him by sight, was a man who would bear watching. It just might explain how local Customs had come to question a shipment of his last month. On the whole, he thought, it was worth paying Roscha’s fine–he might not even bother taking all of it out of her check.

He sighed then, and turned his attention back to the waiting messages. As he’d expected, his eldest sibling, Altagracian, the Chrestil‑Brisch Pensionary, was at the top of the list. Damian scanned the curt message– call at once–but dumped it into a holding file without answering. Chrestillio always overreacted; he could wait a little longer.

The secretary chimed again, and said, “There is an incoming message under your private and urgent code. Do you wish to accept?”

Damian frowned, but none of his siblings had that set of numbers. “Yes. Put it on the main board.”

The central panel of the unimpressive triptych on the far wall– I should commission something better, he thought, not for the first time–slid apart to reveal the main screen, and a moment later the connect codes streamed across the black glass. The Visiting Speaker Kuguee ji‑Imbaoa looked out at him, heavy body framed by the curtains of an enormous bed.

Ambassador Chauvelin does well for himself, Damian thought, and hid a grin. He said aloud, “Good morning, Na Speaker. I trust everything’s well with you.”

“Na Damian.” The Visiting Speaker was making an effort to be polite, unusual for him. Damian Chrestil waited warily.

“You had some concerns about one of the ambassador’s agents,” ji‑Imbaoa said abruptly, and Damian glanced involuntarily at the security telltales embedded in the desktop.

“Na Speaker, our conversation was rather more secure–”

“I have taken precautions,” ji‑Imbaoa interrupted. “My end of this transmission is safe.”

The hissing accent made the words even more of a rebuke, and Damian frowned, looking again at the security readout. “So is mine, but it’s not a chance I like taking.”

“You had been concerned about this agent, this Ransome,” ji‑Imbaoa went on, and Damian resigned himself.

“Yes. I was and am.” And I’ve been trying my damnedest to get him back into the Game and off the main nets. The bastard spends too much time on the nets, he’s bound to see what I’ve done to move the lachesi–

“I have told Chauvelin that you want Ransome back in the Game,” ji‑Imbaoa went on, “and that I believe Ransome should do what you want–so that we can find out what you are up to, of course.”

“Christ.” Damian controlled himself with an effort, said only, “Don’t you think that’s a little obvious, Na Speaker?” And what if he actually does find out?

“I rely on your bait to be good enough.” Ji‑Imbaoa inspected his fingerclaws, a smug and satisfied gesture.

“As I relied on you to get him off the nets,” Damian snapped. “Na Speaker, if you want this cargo that you’ve invested so heavily in to get where it’s supposed to be going, Illario Ransome has to be distracted.”

“I do not understand why he is so important.” Ji‑Imbaoa sat down abruptly on the bed, flicked claws in impatient dismissal.

Because he’s the best netwalker I’ve ever seen. And he plays politics. Damian said aloud, keeping a tight rein on his temper, “Illario Ransome is brilliant on the nets. He is also an imagist, he taps all the nets, all of them, he goes trawling for images for his story eggs, and he remembers everything. He’s the only person who would be at the right place at the right time to spot the paper trail, and the only one who has enough outside information to put the pieces together. Does that make it clear?”

There was a little silence, and then ji‑Imbaoa looked away. “Still, you should have what you want. He should be distracted, investigating your Game.”

“I hope so.” Damian paused, considering. It might work, at that, might give him the time he needed to–adjust–the customs nets to accept his new cargo. If Ransome did as he was told, of course, and if Cella’s scenarios were enough to catch his eye… But Storm was coming, too, and the first few days of Carnival were celebrated on the nets, as well as on the streets. The two things together might be enough to let him get away with it. “Have you gotten the destination codes?”

“I am still waiting,” ji‑Imbaoa said. “I will pass them on to you as soon as I have them, you need not worry.”

I always worry, Damian thought, but said, “All right. The sooner the better, though, Na Speaker, because without them I can’t get this cargo into HsaioiAn.” He paused, seeing annoyance in the sudden clenching of ji‑Imbaoa’s hands, made himself add, “Thanks for dealing with Ransome, though.”

Ji‑Imbaoa’s hands relaxed. “We are in this together, Na Chrestil. Now, I have had an active night, and wish to sleep.”

“Sleep well, then,” Damian answered, and cut the connection. He leaned back in his chair, ran his hand across the shadowscreen to close down the link. The triptych slid slowly back into place over the now‑empty screen, and he stared at it for a moment. I wonder what it would cost me to commission Ransome to do a piece to replace it? he wondered, and grinned at the thought. It might keep him busy for a while, and he’d be furious: it’s an insultingly minor job. Hell, it might be worth asking just to see the look on his face. He fiddled with the shadowscreen, filing the thought for later consideration, and touched another icon to bring up the rest of his mail. The secretary, programmed to be helpful, appended a to‑do list as well. Damian considered it for a moment, and succumbed to temptation. Rosaurin wanted him to approve the next week’s shipping plot, and that was much more fun than the painstaking records‑melding that needed to be done. He pushed himself away from his desk and out the door before he could change his mind.

Day 30

High Spring: Ransome’s Loft,

Old Coast Road, Newfields,

Above Junction Pool

Ransome half sat, half lay in the chair that conformed itself to his thin body, barely aware of the shifting cushions that held him exactly where he wanted to be. Images filled the air around him, ghostly yet substantial‑seeming, all but blocking out the cityscape spread out below the loft windows. The windows dimmed again, cutting out the sunlight–they had been dimming steadily since sunrise, following the house programming–but Ransome did not notice, lost in the flickering narrowcasts that held and surrounded him. The implants set into the bones at the outer edges of his eye sockets caught and amplified the conflicting signals; his wire gloves, thin and flexible and warm as blood, let him sculpt the space around him, defining each unreal volume according to his whim. The offerings of half a dozen different narrownets danced in the air around him: Gamers to his left, four different sessions played out in as many different venues, three old, pretaped, the fourth a late‑night session that had dragged on into the morning. Faces and streets and shadows, culled illegally from the Lockwardens’ security systems, wove in and through the other images, overlaying them with a bizarre patchwork of morning light and shade. The matching audio murmured on a dozen channels from the speakers at the base of the room’s walls, backing the images with the solidity of sound. His attention was fixed on a single image, floating overhead, at the apex of the cone of light and noise: flickering market glyphs from the port computers spun in delicate linkage, legitimate public numbers and private taps combined into a single database, strings of numbers combined into a dazzling three‑dimensional shape that had a weird organic beauty all its own.

He let the shapes wash over and around him, put out his hand to draw in another narrowcast band. The air glowed briefly amber, control icons sparking in the system space that he had placed within easy reach, and then cleared again. A woman’s face appeared, a mask of white paint and strong black lines and the vivid red of her mouth; he watched for a moment and pushed it away, to one side of the dancing market numbers. For a brief instant, his hand seemed to sink into the image, marring its edge, and then it moved, obedient to his touch. He reached again into the control space, found the symbols and the tool he wanted, and a second image, identical to the delicate, complex shape that was the graphic representation of the elaborate transformational database overhead, appeared in the air in front of him. He chose another tool, the wires of his gloves growing faintly warmer around his hands in confirmation of the choice, and then reached for the shape. He wrapped his hands around it, squeezed gently, compressing it, until it hung in a space no more than a dozen centimeters in diameter. Some of the delicacy had vanished in the compression, become little more than texture. He frowned, and reached for a second tool, used its all‑but‑invisible point to pry the numbers apart, untangling the channels, until the various strands were distinct again.

He lay back against the shifting cushions, studying the image, set it slowly rotating in front of him. The shape derived from those twining numbers would be the main focus of one of his story eggs, a commission for a Syndic of the Merchant Investors, a woman who lived and died by the movements of the trade that created the numbers coiling in the air in front of him. He reached for the face that hung in the air beside it, brought it down, until the strands of numbers slowly writhed behind the mask, like DNA beneath the skin. It was interesting, but not, he thought, what was needed now; it detracted from the bizarre beauty of the shifting numbers. He banished the face with a wave of his hand, leaving only the intertwining numbers, bronze and green and all the shades of metal, floating in unreal space. He smiled, contemplating it, and reached into the control space to preserve the image in one of the dataspheres waiting linked to the main consoles. The sphere would store both the algorithm that transformed the numbers to this graphic and the formulae for the connections to the financial nets–even the private ones, one of which had been donated by the client–that provided the raw data. All that remained was to set the image into a proper casing, and that was already waiting, ready on the shelf: a smooth, pale green egg the color of old, well‑weathered copper, with streaks and spills of stronger green, and the ghost of the metal showing through. He smiled, savoring the satisfaction of a job well done, and closed the particular volume.

A voice that had been speaking from one of the floor‑mounted receivers for some time now, he realized belatedly, was calling his name.

“–Ransome, I know you’re there. I can see your taps.” There was a brief pause, and then, reluctantly, “It’s important, I‑Jay.”

Ransome sighed, suddenly aware that it was morning and that he had been awake most of the night, and that it was Chauvelin himself who was making this connection, not one of the apparently numberless ambassadorial servants. He muted the remaining images with a wave of his hand, and reached into control space to connect himself with the communications channel. “I’m here.”

“About time.”

The familiar face, elegant and worn and lined beneath the brown hair just going cloudy with grey, bloomed in the air above him. Ransome winced, and moved it to a less dominating position. “I was working,” he said, and winced again at the defensive note in his voice. “What is it?”

Chauvelin smiled slightly, sourly, a faint quirk of one corner of his long mouth. “I need to talk to you–not on the nets. The Visiting Speaker has come up with some interesting information you and I need to discuss.”

“Fuck the Visiting Speaker,” Ransome said, and Chauvelin’s smile widened into something approaching humor.

“A privilege not likely to be granted.” Chauvelin’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Tell me something, why would Cella Minter want you back in the Game?”

Ransome blinked, wondering where this question had come from, and what it really meant. Cella he knew, both as Damian Chrestil’s mistress and as an accomplished Gamer, but only from a distance. “I’ve no idea,” he said, and then, because it was usually best to tell Chauvelin the truth, “I didn’t know she wanted me back Gaming.”

“So ji‑Imbaoa says,” Chauvelin said, and held up a hand, forestalling any answer from the other. Ransome grinned, and let him continue. “And so it looks to me, too, looking at the nets. I tied in to some of the club gossip boards. There’s a lot of talk about Ambidexter, and usually Cella hinting in the background that he ought to come back to show people how his templates are supposed to be played.”

Ransome shrugged, felt his face go wooden. “Ambidexter’s dead–”

In spite of himself, the words came out bitter, and it was the bitterness that Chauvelin answered. “You’re not dead yet. I don’t have time for self‑pity, I‑Jay, I need your help.”

Ransome lifted both eyebrows, a deliberate imitation of Chauvelin’s gesture. “You must be desperate.” He paused then, shook his head, shaking away the bad temper that was becoming a habit with him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why Cella would want me on the Game,” he said again. “Unless it’s something Damian Chrestil wants?”

“I’d say that was highly likely,” Chauvelin murmured. “Which raises the question of why he would want it. And that is something I don’t want to discuss on the nets.”

Ransome made another face, though he had to admit the wisdom of it. He himself was not the only netwalker on Burning Bright, or the only imagist who tapped unlikely lines looking for good sources. “I suppose you’ll want me to come to you.”

“Yes.” Chauvelin’s tone blended forbearance and the resignation of an adult dealing with a child. “I think that would be best.”

Ransome laughed, gestured apology, miming the hsai gesture that linked wrist spurs. The scars where his implanted spurs had been removed touched briefly, an odd, unpleasant feeling; he jerked his hands apart without finishing the movement. Chauvelin said nothing, did not move at all, as though nothing had happened, and Ransome said, “I’ll be there in an hour.” He knew he sounded curt, made himself add, by way of further apology, “It’ll take me a while to pull myself together. I was up all night working on a commission.”

Chauvelin nodded. “May I see?”

“It’s a private commission,” Ransome said, with genuine regret–Chauvelin was one of the very few whose opinions mattered to him–then grinned suddenly. “But I’ve done something for you, I’ll show you when I get there.”

“That will be the first good thing that’s happened all day,” Chauvelin said. He gave a twisted smile, as though he regretted the admission, and said, in an entirely different voice, “In an hour, then.” He cut the connection before Ransome could respond.

Ransome sighed, staring at the still‑busy images without really seeing them, then brought his chair upright. The net taps whirled around him, readjusting themselves to his position, but he waved them away, then closed both fists to shut down the system. Glyphs and codestrings flickered past, too fast to be understood at more than the subliminal level, and then the pictures vanished. Ransome sighed again, stretching, feeling the long night’s work claw at his back, the old familiar ache in the bones and tendons of his hands. He peeled off the tight gloves, wincing a little, and set them aside. His chest was tight, catching in his ribs; he could hear the fluids at the base of his lungs, a harsh rasp that cut each breath too short for comfort. He reached instinctively for the cylinder of Mist, flipping it backwards to unfold the facemask, but stopped abruptly. The red light glowed under the trigger button, warning him that he had taken a dose within the last two hours. He stared at it for a second, his mind forming a curse to override the fear, then made himself set it aside.

“Input,” he said aloud. “Housekeeper systems.” The words caught in his chest, the lack of air catching him by surprise. He coughed, hard, the spasm driving painfully deep. His mouth filled with phlegm that tasted like bitter copper; he spat it into a sheet of tissue, and saw the familiar thick white laced with a froth of red. That was answer enough. “Cancel,” he whispered, voice harsh and strange to his own ears, but the room responded calmly.

“Input canceled.”

Ransome scowled, hating the sickness, hating the fact that his systems remembered that choked voice as his own, and pushed himself up out of the chair. The injector lay on the shelf where he kept the story eggs’ shells. He went to get it, feeling the too‑familiar giddiness, laid the cold tip against the veins of his neck as he had been taught, where the skin was more or less permanently reddened from the injections, and pressed the trigger. The machine stung once, painfully, and he imagined he could feel the drug spreading like cold fire under his skin. The doctors swore it was a hallucination, a common side effect. It felt real enough, and he stood for a long moment, waiting, eyes fixed on nothing, as the chill spread through his chest and down his right arm, and the pain eased and his breath came easier, the rattling in his lungs fading slightly. It had been three years since the maintenance drugs, the ones that had kept the white‑sickness at bay, had failed him, as he had known they would: five to seven years, he could expect the injections to work, and then he was dead.

Ransome stuffed the injector into his pocket, made himself shower and shave and find a clean shirt and jerkin, going through the motions until the fear and anger had retreated again. White‑sickness was common in hsai space, a common killer of jericho‑humans; it was also incurable, though onset and death could be delayed for decades with the right drugs. It was just his bad luck to have shared a cell with a carrier, back on Jericho. My mistake to have been on Jericho at all, to have worked for the Chrestil‑Brisch in the first place… He shook the thought away, and glanced for a final time in his mirror. He was looking haggard– too little sleep; nothing new–but the hectic flush from the injection still burned on his cheeks, two ugly, fake‑looking spots of red. The black jerkin and trousers and the loose white shirt had been meant to complement his usual bone‑white pallor. He suppressed the instinct to rub his face, to scrub the red away, and reached instead for the handful of carved stones waiting on his workbench. He slipped those into his pocket, and left the loft, double‑sealing the palmprint lock behind him out of habit.

His flat was one of a dozen in a converted warehouse, purchased cheap by one of the artists’ cooperatives now that most cargoes moved through the new Junction Pool cargo lifts rather than the long way around, from the ramps at Dry Cut along the Old Coast Road that skimmed the cliff edge. The old warehouse districts were no longer convenient, or profitable; the buildings that had not been converted to other uses–ght manufacture, particularly, and in this district the embroiderers’ shops that made the embellished fabrics that were Burning Bright’s primary export product–stood empty, their windows cracked, frames emptied by last year’s Storm. The lift was occupied, as usual–there were enough heavy‑materials workers in the building to ensure that the single lift was always in use or out of order–and Ransome made his way down the side stairs. It had been a fire access once, running along the outside of the building, and the outer wall was pierced at intervals by narrow panels of wire mesh. The air that flowed in was soft and heavy with the salt smell of the canals, and warm with the promise of Storm. There were more signs of approaching Storm in the corners of the stair, or at least of the Carnival that took up most of the two‑week period: a raki bottle stood empty on each landing, and the lowest level, where the walls were solid to prevent unauthorized access, stank of urine. Ransome made a face, and stepped carefully over the puddles to unlock the gate.

The alleyway was crowded with denki‑bikes and two‑and three‑wheeled velocks, the latter chained to anything substantial enough to defeat a standard wirecutter, the denki‑bikes clustered around the charging bollards, a blue haze showing where the security fields intersected. Ransome reached cautiously into the tangle of cables and locks to free his own machine, and winced as the fizzing security stung his fingers. Then he backed the bike out of the tangle–for once without setting off someone else’s security system–checked the power reserve, and climbed aboard. The machine was woefully underpowered, for his taste, but it was serviceable, and better than the tourist‑trolleys. He edged the throttle forward–the bike whined and shivered–and let it carry him sedately into the traffic stream.

He took the short road to the Ghetto where Chauvelin lived with most of the rest of Burning Bright’s noncitizen residents, skirting the cliff edge above the delivery basins of Junction Pool, then cutting straight through the industrial zone past the spaceport at Newfields. A column of smoke and steam hung in the distance, the winds slowly bending and fraying it to nothing: someone was saving money on launch costs, flying chemical rockets. The pilots who ran the orbital shuttle would be cursing, Ransome thought, and smiled.

The ambassadorial residence stood on one of the highest points in the Ghetto–on all of the Landing Isle, the largest piece of the original landmass: the hsai liked heights, and most of Burning Bright’s inhabitants didn’t care. The household staff had been told to expect him. Ransome paused at the gate only long enough to identify himself–most of Chauvelin’s household knew him by sight, after nearly fifteen years in the ambassador’s service–and then a pair of hsai servants came out of the main house to meet him. The male took the denki‑bike, and the hsaii–Chauvelin’s steward Iameis je‑Sou’tsian, Ransome realized with some surprise–bowed politely.

“Sia Chauvelin has asked me to bring you directly to the garden,” she said, in tradetalk, and Ransome answered in low mian‑hsai.

“I’m honored by the courtesy.” And very surprised by it, he added silently. What the hells is going on, to make me rate this treatment? He followed without question, however–he knew better than to ask that question–and je‑Sou’tsian brought him through the sudden cool of a service passageway, bypassing the main house, and led him out as suddenly onto a path that ran between tall walls of flowering hedge. Ransome blinked, momentarily confused, then oriented himself. This was the maze, a part of the garden derived from hsai tradition, and one that Chauvelin rarely used. Je‑Sou’tsian followed the turns without hesitation, however– maybe it is true, Ransome thought, that there really is only one pattern in use on all the worlds of HsaioiAn–and let them out through a red‑lacquered gate onto the carefully landscaped lawn of the upper terrace. Chauvelin was waiting a few meters away, seated comfortably in the shade of a bellflower tree, a luncheon tray beside him and a data manager resting in his lap.

“Na Ransome is here,” je‑Sou’tsian said, and the ambassador looked up with an abstracted smile.

“Ransome. Join me, why don’t you?” To je‑Sou’tsian, he added, “Thank you. That’ll be all.”

“Yes, sia,” the steward answered, bowing, and backed away.

Ransome made his way down the terraced slope, stepping carefully around the elaborately casual plantings. He was very aware of the ambassador’s residence looming behind him, the sunlight polishing the white‑stone walls and glinting off the long windows. It felt unpleasantly as though someone were watching him, and he seated himself deliberately on the wall that overlooked the lower terrace. Chauvelin glanced up at him, gave a quick smile, and Ransome smiled rather wryly in return. If it had been the cliff wall, overlooking the hundred‑meter drop to the Old City, he would never in a thousand years have settled himself there, especially with Chauvelin sitting less than two meters from him, and they both knew it.

“So good of you to come,” Chauvelin said, with only the lightest note of irony.

Ransome let his smile widen. “I was working,” he said. “What is this about Cella, and the Game?”

“That’s the very question I’d like you to answer,” Chauvelin said.

Ransome spread his hands–a human gesture, not hsai, and deliberately so. “I don’t know. I’ve been out of the Game for three years, I barely pay attention to the Game nets except when I’m trolling for images. I don’t know what Cella wants–except that if she wants it, Damian Chrestil probably wants it, too.”

Chauvelin nodded slightly, though Ransome could not be sure if the movement was a response to his words or to something on his screen. “I need to know why. Ji‑Imbaoa came in this morning–”

“Sober?” Ransome murmured, with just the right note of shock, and allowed himself a brief smile when the word surprised a laugh from Chauvelin.

“Mostly so. At any rate, he came to me complaining that Damian Chrestil is interested in you, via Cella–he knows you as my agent, so don’t ask–and demanding to know why. When I checked him out, I found the same thing: lots of agitation to get you back into the Game, and usually Cella’s at the back of it. I want to know what’s going on.”

“I told you,” Ransome began, and Chauvelin nodded.

“I know you’ve been working. A commission for Syndic Leonerdes, and that big installation for the governor. But I need to know what’s going on, I‑Jay. Ji‑Imbaoa–well, I won’t bore you with hsai politics.”

“Bore me,” Ransome said.

Chauvelin grinned, sobered instantly. “Suffice it to say that ji‑Imbaoa has more influence than he should, and he wants this done. And that’s the other thing I want to find out: why the hell should he be so worried about Damian Chrestil?”

Ransome shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe they had a bar fight, their tastes seem similar enough. Though I don’t think Damian Chrestil drinks quite so much.”

“Let me put it this way,” Chauvelin said, and his voice was suddenly devoid of all expression. “Ji‑Imbaoa is worried enough to remind me that, since I made you min‑hao, you could still face charges in HsaioiAn, for lese majesty.”

“Lesser treason,” Ransome murmured, through lips grown suddenly stiff and unresponsive, “but still treason.”

“Just so.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, the only sounds the faint whistle of the seabirds and the whine of a denki‑bike passing in the street. Ransome slipped his hand into his pocket, found the handful of carved stones he had collected, turned them over one by one. He had been glad to be tried as houtaback on Jericho; insults up the social scale, from person to person or from min‑haoto a person, could be construed as a kind of treason, and the sentences for that were more severe than they were for theft. Insults by houta, on the other hand, were “no more than the barking of dogs,” or so the hsaii judge had said through the human translator, and therefore didn’t count against him. Unfortunately, the hsai had a very long memory for insults.

He slipped one of the stones out of his pocket, fingering the delicate features without really looking at them. His eyes traveled instead beyond the lower terrace, beyond the Straight River, where he thought he could see the bow of the Crooked River, dividing the Old City from the Five Points District. It was a trick of the light, he knew that, of the hazy sunlight and the water‑heavy air, that turned all distances vague and soft‑edged, drowned in a blue‑grey haze like a watercolor wash. Even so, his mind filled in the outlines, drew a second steely curve beyond the more solid line of the Straight. Five Points proper, the five projecting pieces of cliff edge where the descendants of the city founders lived, lay beyond that curve, invisible, tantalizing, and the third of the points belonged to the Chrestil‑Brisch. He had been there once, years ago–before Chauvelin, before Jericho, before he’d even thought of leaving Burning Bright, when he had still thought he could play certain games without penalty even though he’d been born poor canalli, child of a Syncretist Observant, playing games on equal terms with the second child of Chrestil‑Brisch…

He put that thought aside. Cella Minter was nudging him back into the Game, and the hand behind her was Damian Chrestil’s: that was what mattered now, that and whatever hsai politics Chauvelin was tangled in. Chauvelin had been adopted into the tzu Tsinraan, and was relatively a modernist and a moderate even within the moderate faction that dominated the court. But where he stood in the greater conflict that lay behind the factional quarrel, Ransome had never been completely sure. HsaioiAn wanted to control settled space–the hsai needed to control settled space, because their culture could not admit that other species equalled their own; the whole elaborate fiction of adoptions and legal kin‑species had been set up to allow the hsai to pretend that other beings were really a part of their own species. Chauvelin had embraced that fiction, heart and soul, or he wouldn’t be here.

But he had been careful, all the years Ransome had known him, never to say whether he supported the wider definition of kinship, one that would eliminate the concept of houtaand replace it with an acknowledgment of a basic kinship between all intelligent species, or the older, more conservative version. Most conscripts Ransome had known supported the old, narrow definition: why should others get for nothing what they had worked so hard to win? That sort of selfish self‑aggrandizement wasn’t Chauvelin’s style–but then, it was equally unlike Chauvelin to keep silent even about risky political beliefs. More likely, Chauvelin had thought of himself as hsaie for so long that it no longer occured to him to think of himself as involved in that debate. Chauvelin had made one thing very clear. If Ransome didn’t serve Chauvelin’s interests, Chauvelin would no longer be able to protect him. That knowledge had a sour taste, and he looked away, stared over his shoulder toward the shimmering towers of Newfields. Even at this distance, he heard a rumble like distant thunder, and squinted skyward in spite of knowing better, looking for the pinpoint light of an orbiter already long out of sight. He looked back, dazzled–the sun was starting the decline over the highlands, turning the sky to a white haze–and saw Chauvelin looking at him.

“The sound of money,” Ransome said, and deliberately turned his back on the port. Chauvelin lifted an eyebrow, visibly decided the comment did not deserve an answer, and returned his attention to the data manager that rested on his lap. The subject was clearly closed, or else, Ransome thought, even Chauvelin was a little ashamed of himself for this one. He watched Chauvelin work for a little longer, the long hands busy on the input strip, the grey‑brown hair fading even more in the afternoon light, the slight, faintly quizzical hint of a frown as he studied something on the screen. Ransome did not like being ignored, did not like being ignored after being threatened, said, not quite at random, “Do you think it’s wise to annoy Damian Chrestil?”

“Why not?” Chauvelin’s voice sounded bored, his eyes still on the screen in front of him, but Ransome got what he was looking for, the subtle shift of expression that meant the ambassador was listening closely.

“He’s not a fool,” Ransome said. “Or a child. They say he’ll be coopted to the Select next year.”

“Is that what they say?” Chauvelin did not move, but Ransome smiled to himself, hearing the slight change in tone. He had confirmed something that Chauvelin had suspected–and a seat among the Select, the elite advisory council that handled much of Burning Bright’s foreign policy, was the first step toward becoming governor.

“Among other things.” Ransome lowered his eyes to look at the carved head, pinching it between his fingers, glanced up through his lashes to watch Chauvelin’s response.

“Well, that’s what I pay you for,” Chauvelin said. “And for finding out what in all hells Damian Chrestil wants.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching long legs in front of him, and touched the manager’s screen. The machine shut itself down obediently, its chime muted in the heavy air. He was wearing a hsaie greatcoat over plain shirt and trousers, a sweep of unshaped river‑green brocade that set off the weathered ivory of his skin. His hands were starting to betray his age. Ransome looked down at his own fingers, saw the same lines and shadows starting, tendons and bones starkly outlined under the roughened skin. Not that he was likely to see the end of the process: by the time he reached Chauvelin’s age–and there were not ten years between them–he was likely to be dead.

“Among other things,” he said again, putting aside the familiar recognition, and tilted his head toward the terrace, toward the hardscaping he himself had designed. Chauvelin nodded, acknowledging the point, and by coincidence a breath of wind shook the bellflower tree beside him, bathing them both in its musky perfume. It would have been a nice effect, Ransome thought, if I could’ve planned it.

Chauvelin set the data manager aside on the stones of the wall, leaned back in his chair, taking his time. The sunlight cast a delicate pattern of shadow over him, pouring down through the bellflower’s fan‑shaped leaves and striking deep sparks of color from the draped greatcoat. Even in the shadow, the lines that bracketed his mouth and fanned from the corners of his eyes were very visible. The crows‘‑feet tightened slightly, a movement that might become either a smile or a frown, and Ransome bit his tongue to try to copy the other’s silence, to keep from speaking too soon. The bellflower’s leaves rustled gently, and another orbiter rumbled skyward.

“I have to know what he’s up to,” Chauvelin said at last. “You’re the best chance I have for that.”

Do you mean ji‑Imbaoa, or Damian Chrestil? Ransome wondered. Or both? He sighed, looked down at the sculpted head that still rested in the palm of his hand. I would have done this anyway, regardless of threat or flattery–or love or whatever it is that’s between you and me, Tal Chauvelin. For the love of this game that’s better than anything the Game has ever produced. “All right,” he said, easing himself off the terrace wall, and reached into his pocket for the rest of the handful of carved stones. Chauvelin looked up, one eyebrow rising slightly.

“You said you had something to show me?”

Ransome nodded. “Hold out your hand.”

Chauvelin extended one long hand, both eyebrows lifting now, and Ransome opened his fist, letting the stones–grey‑silver, a shower of frozen mercury–fall into the other’s palm. Several of them bounced away before Chauvelin could catch them, but he made no move to gather them, sat staring at the four that remained in his hand. Ransome watched him turn the carvings, roll them curiously beneath one probing finger, then lean to pick up the ones that had fallen, one by one, until he had them all. The delicate faces, some white as the hazy sky, one dark as slate, the others grey and silver, stared at nothing with knowing, provocative eyes. Chauvelin nodded once, silent approval, looked up at the other man.

“I thought I’d pave your paths with them,” Ransome said, and, slowly, smiled.

There was another little silence, and then Chauvelin nodded again, this time in agreement. “How soon can you have it done?”

“And in place?” Ransome paused, thinking. The idea of paving the paths was new, had come to him on the denki‑bike ride from his loft; he hadn’t even begun to work out the quantities he would need, or the time it would take for an automated workshop to fabricate them from his models. “A week, probably–no, Storm’s coming, everyone will be working on Carnival stuff. A week and a half, two weeks, probably. Give or take a couple of days.”

“I want them in place by my party,” Chauvelin said.

Ransome frowned for an instant; he had forgotten how late it was, that tomorrow was the last day of High Spring, and the date of Chauvelin’s annual grand reception. “I don’t know,” he said involuntarily, and Chauvelin nodded.

“I know. But I’m willing to pay double costs, and a rush bonus on top of it, if you can find a way to get it done.”

“I can try,” Ransome said, absurdly pleased by the demand. There were a few places that might be able to do the production run on this kind of notice–stonecrafters didn’t get too much extra business for Storm, unlike most artisans–and Chauvelin’s own gardeners could handle the installation… This was one of the things he liked without reservation about Chauvelin: when he played patron, he did it in grand style. And the money wouldn’t hurt, either.

“I mean it,” Chauvelin said. “Post the costs on the house net, I’ll authorize the draft.”

“I’ll do it,” Ransome said, and added, knowing the workshops, “if I can.”

Chauvelin nodded, smiling slightly, and Ransome turned away, not waiting for the steward to take him back out through the maze, walking up through the garden toward the house and the well‑watched passage to the street.

Part Two

« ^ »

Evening, Day 30

High Spring: Shadows, Face

Road, Dock Road District

Below the Old Dike

Lioe started for Shadows just after sundown, riding the tourist‑trolley to the elevators at Governor’s Point, then one of the massive cars down the cliff face to Governor’s Point Below. The cab stand was empty; when she consulted the information kiosk, fingering worn keys while her other hand rolled the old‑fashioned ball that grated in its socket, she estimated Shadows was about twenty kilometers away. She hesitated, wondering if she should try one of the other clubs the steward– Vere, his name was, Vere Caminesi–had mentioned, but when she checked the kiosk again Shadows was the closest. She sighed, punched in the codes that would alert the velocab companies to a waiting fare, and lowered herself onto a stone bollard that seemed to exist to keep the cabs from getting too close to their prospective passengers. It was getting cool, would be a chill night, by her standards, and the breeze that swept up from the southeast raised goosebumps even under her jacket. It carried the faint tang, damp and salty, of the sea that was never far from anyplace in Burning Bright; brought with it too a whiff of heavy foliage from household gardens, the delicate mustiness that rose from basements, and even a momentary sharp taste of the oil that tainted the Inland Water, gone as quickly as it had come. She cocked her head, listening, but could not hear the dull polyphony of the bell buoys that tolled to mark the channel. She knew she should not be surprised–at this point she was almost as far inland as one could be and still stay on the Wet side of the Old Dike–but she was oddly, vaguely, disappointed.

The cab appeared a few minutes later, the whine of its motor audible well before it turned the corner. Lioe rose to her feet, slinging the bag that held her Rulebooks and Gameboard more securely over her shoulder, was aware of the driver’s frank stare as he keyed open the door to the passenger compartment.

“Evening, pilot.” He had a young voice, a cheerful voice, that went oddly with the lined and weathered face. “Where you bound?”

Lioe had almost forgotten she was wearing the hat, this one a small toque, suitable for Gaming, that marked her as a pilot of the Republic. “A place called Shadows,” she said. “I’m told it’s on Face Road, at the center of the Dike in Dock Road District?”

She was reciting the address from memory–no house numbers here, but all the buildings had names and were then placed within the district according to the nearest landmarks–and was relieved when the driver nodded.

“You’re a Gamer, then.”

“That’s right.” Lioe levered herself into the narrow pod. It smelled of smoke and fish, an odd, unfamiliar combination, stronger as the low door closed behind her.

“It’s a good club, Shadows,” the driver said. “Or so they tell me. I’m a home Gamer, myself.” The engine whined as he stood on his pedals to get the cab moving again.

Lioe leaned back cautiously against the thin padding, feeling the vibrations of the little motor through the soles of her feet. The cab swung left in a gentle arc that brought them out into a larger trafficway–not a busy street, only a few other vehicles, velocabs and pushcarts, moving between the bollards that marked the edges of the road. They swung left again, the driver hesitating for an instant to gauge the faster stream of traffic on the wider street, and then standing hard on his pedals to bring the cab up to their speed. The cab slid neatly into a gap between another velocab and an empty flatbed carrier belching steam, but Lioe was looking at the shape that soared above the street, cutting off the sky. The Old Dike was festooned with lights, strings and streamers of them flashing in sequence to warn off wandering helio pilots, but they only seemed to intensify the black mass of the wall itself. More light like fog flowed along its top, fading into the sky at least a hundred and fifty meters above them. Lioe shook her head, amazed and wondering, and the driver shot her a look of triumph.

“It’s something, isn’t it? That’s the Old Dike. The first‑in people built it to reclaim the Old City.”

Lioe nodded, still staring, barely aware of the other vehicles now crowding the road. “What’s that on top?” she asked, after a moment. “Another road?”

“That’s Warden Street,” the driver answered. “Runs all the way along the Dike, from Lockwarden Point to the Governor’s House. There’s good shopping up there, the best shops in town for fashion, if you’re interested.”

“Maybe,” Lioe answered. It must’ve been one hell of a project, building that, she thought, even if Burning Bright’s first‑ins were a different breed from the usual first settlers. Burning Bright had never been intended to be anything but an entrepot–could never have been anything else, at least under human settlement, given the minuscule landmass–and the first settlers had all been merchants and bankers, bent on turning the planet’s favorable position astride the main hyperspace channel between the Republic and HsaioiAn into solid profit. And they’d certainly done that: despite the best attempts of worlds like Ky and Attis/Euphrosyne, Burning Bright remained the busiest transshipment point for goods going from one metagovernment to the other. Even in the first years, the settlers would have had the capital to bring in the best technicians to build the Dike.

Traffic was picking up, more and more vehicles cramming the road, and crowds flowed along the walkways outside the brightly lit shops. Only the foodshops seemed to be open, but light and bright snatches of music spilled from their doorways, clear notes like plucked metal strings. She heard laughter as well, over the constant rumble of the crowd and the traffic, looked instinctively to see a woman caught in the blue‑white light of a store’s display window, her head thrown back, hair spilling in untidy curls around a lined, handsome face. Her skirt–no one wore skirts in the Republic, except for ethnic festivals–was starred with little mirrors, reflecting the store’s lights like chips of diamond. And then the cab was past her, and Lioe resettled herself against the padding, wondering what she had seen. A shape flashed through the pedestrians, a man’s head and shoulders moving with unnatural quickness above the people surrounding him, and then he shot between two men and a bollard, darting into the traffic stream on a battered bicycle. No one used bicycles much in the Republic, either.

The road rose ahead of them, and Lioe was suddenly aware, over the noise of the crowds and the snarling rush of the assorted vehicles, of the dulled, steady tolling of a buoy bell. She leaned forward a little, and the driver said, before she could ask, “We’re coming up on the Straight now.”

There were more bicycles in evidence on this stretch of road, and on the high‑arched bridge, as well as cabs and three‑wheeled cycles and a handful of the motorized denki‑bikes. Most of the cabs and human‑powered vehicles turned right or left onto the street that paralleled the as‑yet‑invisible river. As the driver stood on his pedals again to coax the cab up the steep rise, Lioe began to understand the reason. She could guess why there didn’t seem to be many fully motorized craft on Burning Bright–fossil resources were scarce and inaccessible, electrics were still impractical for heavy loads, and solar was even less practical on something as small as a velocab–but it was still strange to feel the cab wavering from side to side as the driver added his muscle power to the engine’s whining output. Strange, and somehow improper. Lioe was glad when the cab reached the top of the arch, and started the long glide down.

Across the bridge, the streets were quieter. The buildings turned blind faces to the road, and there were few pedestrians. Once or twice the cab crossed a wider street, both times with trees or flowers growing in a center island, framed by soft lights, and Lioe caught a glimpse of figures moving in that pastel radiance. More often, the cab flashed over the low hump of a bridge, and she saw shards of light reflected from the canal water less than two meters below. The driver–he had caught his breath, after the bridge–said, “This is Dock Road–Dock Road District, that is.”

“Mmm.” Lioe glanced from side to side, staring at the blank‑walled buildings. Most of them seemed to be four or five stories high, made of something dark that might have been poured stone. Nearly all of them had lighter inclusions: a band across the front, or outlining a door, or defining the corners of the building, but there were no windows, or at least nothing she recognized as a window. She had thought the on‑line guides had said that Dock Road was primarily a residential district, but these looked more like factories or warehouses than any house she had ever seen. And then the cab swept past a building with all its windows open, shutters folded back against the empty dark stone of the facade, a gate open too into a courtyard where people swarmed around a blue‑lit fountain, and music spilled out into the quiet street. She craned her head as they slid past, and out of the corner of her eye saw the driver smile briefly over his shoulder.

They pulled up outside Shadows a little before the nineteenth hour. The club was a more ordinary building, three stories high with bricked‑in windows and a brightly lit sign over the door, in a neighborhood full of buildings that had visible windows and doors that locked with metal grills. There was a food bar on the nearest corner–and a heavyset bouncer leaning his chair against the wall outside the entrance, so she shouldn’t have to worry too much–and some kind of shop across the street, its display windows shut down for the night. She paid the driver what he asked and added the tip the guides had said was appropriate, then turned toward the club’s well‑marked door. The cab’s motor whined behind her as the driver pulled away, but she did not look back.

After the glittering strangeness of the rest of the city, Shadows was refreshingly ordinary, another Gaming club like a hundred others she’d seen on other worlds. The door was painted with the images from hundreds of Gaming pins–conferences, competitions, specific sessions and scenarios, most of the Grand Types and even a few faces that had to be local favorites–but before Lioe could study them more closely, the door swung open onto a narrow hall.

The carpet was worn, with a few squares of a brighter shade of moss to show where the worst damage had been replaced. The white‑painted walls were mostly empty, except for a few display boards and a Gameboard under glass. The displays were of sessions that had attracted attention on the intersystems nets, and Lioe gave a mental nod of approval. There weren’t many–there couldn’t be many, if Shadows was as new as the steward Vere had said, and it was a good sign that the club hadn’t tried to inflate its reputation by adding displays of merely local interest. The Gameboard, the gleaming screen below it said, had belonged to the club’s founder, Davvi Medard‑Yasine. Lioe didn’t recognize the name.

The hallway ended abruptly in a softly lit lobby, walled on three sides with multiscreen virtual‑display‑in‑real‑time wallboards. Only four of the screens were displaying the broadcast bands, and two of those showed the same session, but telltales glowed green on a few of the others, and the couches opposite those boards were occupied by people whose faces were hidden behind the mirrored mask of their shades. Telltales flickered on the temples of the shades, too, indicating that they were tuned to a narrowcast from one or more of the wallboards. There were smaller, lower‑resolution VDIRT tables scattered around the rest of the lobby, but not many of them were occupied yet. They would be busy later, Lioe knew, when the main tanks filled up and Gamers needed to kill a few hours between sessions. That is, if Shadows was like every other club in human‑settled space. She glanced one last time at the session playing on the screen overhead–it was a Court Life variant, familiar iconography identifying Count Danile and the Lady Hannabahn, but it was impossible to follow the scene without the direct‑line voice feed–and turned her attention to the checkroom that controlled access to the club’s session rooms. A young man was sitting behind its counter, Gameboard balanced in front of him, but he looked up quickly as Lioe approached.

“Can I help you, pilot?”

“I hope so. Do you do temporary memberships?”

“We do.” The young man touched keys on a terminal tucked out of sight below the lip of the counter. “It’s forty reala week–we have a ten‑day week, you know–and you get all privileges except priority for limited‑access sessions.”

“So I can run sessions, if anyone’s interested,” Lioe said.

“Yes, no problem.” The young man consulted his terminal again. “Can I get your name?”

“Quinn Lioe.”

The young man looked up sharply. “The Lioe from Callixte?”

“That’s right.”

“I admire your sessions a lot.” His clear complexion was slowly turning a delicate pink, and Lioe watched in fascination. “We just got a good tape of the Frederick’s Glory session, downloaded from MI‑Net a couple of days ago. It looks wonderful.”

“Thanks,” Lioe said.

“Are you going to be running any sessions while you’re here?” the young man went on.

“I hope so,” Lioe answered. “I was wondering who I should talk to about it.”

“The night manager,” the young man said, and touched keys on a different machine. “She can help you–and we’re having a slow week right now, with Storm coming up.”

“Storm?” Lioe had heard the term half a dozen times since landing, hadn’t had the chance to ask what was meant.

“Yeah. It’s our fifth season, lasts twenty days, about. There’re so many big storms every year about this time that it makes more sense for things to shut down. So we hold Carnival.” A tone sounded softly under the counter, and the young man turned away to touch some hidden control. The door to the inner rooms swung open.

Lioe turned, her idle question already forgotten, and found herself facing a tall, greyhaired woman, who held out her hand in greeting.

“Na Lioe? I’m Aliar Gueremei, ditLia.”

Lioe murmured a greeting, and clasped the fingers extended to her. Gueremei was weather‑beaten, as though she’d been in space, but more so, her brown skin crossed with a web of fine lines and faint, bleached freckles. She wore coarse workman’s trousers, but with an expensive‑looking and impractically wide‑sleeved jacket over it, clasped at the waist with a circle that glittered with tiny iridescent disks. Even if sequensa were less expensive on Burning Bright, where the shells were seined and cut into tiny perfect shapes, they would never be cheap, and Lioe found herself revising her assumptions about Shadows and Burning Bright’s Gamers.

“Come on into the back,” Gueremei went on. “I know your work, from the nets, and I’m delighted you thought of coming here. Can I ask where you heard the name?” She palmed open the door as she spoke, and gestured for Lioe to precede her into the inner hallways.

“The steward on the inbound shuttle–orbiter, I mean–recommended you,” Lioe said, “and then of course your name is good on the Game nets.”

Gueremei nodded, though whether in agreement or thanks Lioe could not be sure. “Were you looking to run sessions while you were here–how long are you staying, anyway?”

“Probably about five days,” Lioe answered. “The ship I was piloting for is down for repairs, recalibration of the sail fields. And, yes, I would like to run a session or two.”

Gueremei nodded again. “I’ll be frank with you,” she said, as she led the way quickly through a maze of corridors. “We’d be very interested in your running something here. I’ve seen your Frederick’s Glory scenario–and the Callixte board summaries, of course, the ones that went with the award–and a couple of others, and I’m very impressed.”

“Thanks,” Lioe said again, and waited. This was familiar territory, like the white‑painted walls filled with quick‑print sheets of network downloads, the padded doors and one‑way glass windows that gave onto the session rooms, the banks of food‑and‑drink vendors tucked into every available alcove. Gueremei, or Shadows through Gueremei, wanted something, and the praise was just a prelude.

Gueremei touched another doorplate, this one badged with the Gameops glyph, and ushered Lioe into a crowded and comfortable office. The air smelled faintly of cinnamon, and there was a thin, dark‑red stick smoldering in a holder on top of the VDIRT table that served as a desk. The chairs were Gamer’s chairs, designed for long hours of relative immobility, and when Lioe lowered herself into the nearest one at Gueremei’s absent invitation, she felt more at home than she had since she’d come to Burning Bright.

Gueremei settled herself on the other side of the VDIRT console, and unearthed a workboard from the mess of faxsheets, quick‑prints, Rulebooks and supplements, and a couple of expensive‑looking Gameboards. She touched keys, peering down at the tiny screen, then looked back up at Lioe. “As I said, Shadows would be very interested in hosting you. There was word on the Callixte nets you had a new scenario in the works.”

So that is the way things are going. Lioe smiled, and said, “Yes, I’ve been working on a new scenario–Rebellion variant with Psionics overtones, set on Ixion’s Wheel.”

“Baron Vortex’s prison planet,” Gueremei said, testing the words. “That sounds hard to pull off.”

Lioe shrugged. “I’m using one of the rival claimants as a primary focus. I think that gives them enough firepower to stand a chance.”

“Interesting.” Gueremei glanced down at her workboard again. “If you were willing to give us an exclusive deal for the duration of your stay–and copies for later use, of course–we’d be willing to offer you twenty percent of the special‑session fees.”

“That’s a generous offer,” Lioe said automatically, temporizing while she sorted out the implications. It wasn’t a bad deal at all, but twenty percent of fees was the standard rate, and if Shadows wanted to buy a copy of the scenario, they ought to pay more. “Still, I’d like a little more if you want to keep the scenario for your own use–either a higher percentage, or, better still, a flat purchase fee.”

“That’s hard to come up with when we haven’t seen the scenario,” Gueremei said. “We might be able to offer a slightly higher percentage, though, maybe as much as twenty‑five percent.”

“That really doesn’t cover what I’d make from the nets,” Lioe answered. “I’d need at least thirty‑five.”

Gueremei glanced down at her board again, shook her head with what looked like genuine regret. “I don’t have the authority for that. What if you run the session here first, we’ll give you twenty percent of the fees, and you’ll be under no obligation to stay with us beyond tonight. If it’s good, I’m sure Davvi–Davvi Medard‑Yasine, our principal owner–will want to purchase more rights.”

And you’ll have the prestige of having run the first session, whatever happens, Lioe thought. Still, it seemed worthwhile; it would be a nice bit of extra money, and there was a good chance she could sell the scenario afterwards. She nodded, and said, “What about players?”

Gueremei consulted her board, then touched the input strip to light a second screen under the surface of the VDIRT table. “Actually, we’ve a very respectable crowd in tonight. How many slots will you have?”

“Eight. Six‑player minimum.”

Gueremei nodded. “I can get you eight players, all rated A or higher. That’s MI‑Net rated, by the way.”

Lioe nodded back, impressed in spite of herself. MI‑Net was the toughest of all the Game nets, demanded the most from its players. “Then I’m willing. Twenty percent of the take, up front, and no strings.”

“Agreed,” Gueremei said, and, quite suddenly, smiled. “I’m looking forward to this, Na Lioe.”

“So am I.”

Gueremei fingered the workboard’s input strip again, studied the results. “Room five is free for the night. It’s a standard tech setup, Gerrish table, standard Rulebooks already in place, and we’ve got all six editions of Face and Bodybacked up on a separate datalink, so you get instant access when you need it.”

“That sounds good,” Lioe answered. She could feel the edges of her disks through the thin fabric of the carryall, wanted suddenly to get to work again. “When can I load in?”

“Anytime,” Gueremei said, and pushed herself back from the table. “I’ll get you started, then I’ll see who’s free to play.”

“Excellent,” Lioe said, and followed the other woman from the room.

Gueremei led her through a second set of hallways, and then out into a wider corridor where one wall opened onto a central courtyard. There were more VDIRT tables set out under the carefully tended trees. Lioe tilted her head, curious, and saw light reflecting from a glass dome that enclosed the courtyard. A group of players, perhaps half a dozen, were clustered around a bank of food‑and‑drink vendors: probably on intermission, she thought, and turned her attention to her own scenario. It was solid; if the players were halfway competent, it would go well. If they weren’t–well, she would have to trust to luck and her own improvisational talents.

Gueremei stopped in front of a door marked with horizontal silver bands on a deep, brick‑colored background, and laid her hand on the touchpad beside the lock. The mechanism hissed softly, and the door popped out from the frame. She tugged it open, and motioned for Lioe to precede her into the dimness. Lioe did as she was told, and swung her carryall onto the massive VDIRT table that dominated the space. She found the room controls, set into a dropboard at the session leader’s seat, and touched the keys that brought up the lights. The room was just as it should be, banks of blank‑faced processors, telltales red or unlit, and she settled herself in the heavily padded chair. The chair shifted under her weight, squirming against her as the oilcushions adjusted themselves to her body, but she was only dimly aware of the movement, concentrating instead on the panels that opened to her touch. She checked the air and temperature– comfortable and stable–and folded that board away, reaching for the table controls. The VDIRT display came to life under her fingers, the tree of lights that defined the library and display connections slowly changing from red to orange to yellow, and for a moment a faint haze of static filled the air above the center of the table. Lioe smiled, seeing that, imagining it filled with her own images, and touched keys to tune the system to her own specifications. A red light flashed instead, and glyphs filled the smaller, monitor screen.

“I need a password,” she said.

“Sorry.” Gueremei pulled herself away from the doorframe where she had been leaning, came around the table to lean over Lioe’s shoulder. She touched keys; the screen, as usual, showed nothing but placeholders, but Lioe looked aside anyway, out of old habits of politeness. “I’m setting up a temp account for you,” Gueremei went on. She worked one‑handed, like a lot of older Gamers, using chord‑keys to speed her input. “You can set your password now.”

Lioe hesitated for a moment, then typed a single word: hellequin. The letters hung on the screen for a moment, and Gueremei lifted an eyebrow.

“What’s it mean? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Lioe shrugged one shoulder, already regretting the impulse. It was no more than superstition that made her use that name; she should have known better. “It’s my full name. Quinn’s the short form.” It was the only name I could remember when the Foster Services people found me, the only thing I have that isn’t theirs.

“So.” Gueremei nodded, and touched another sequence of keys. “Like Harlequin, right? You’re all in,” she added, and stepped aside.

“Thanks,” Lioe said, and was glad to concentrate on the larger screen that windowed under the tabletop. Familiar glyphs and query codes filled the blank space, laid out in an outline form as familiar to her as the hyperspatial maps of a star system’s deeps and shallows. She spilled the rest of her disks out onto the table’s smooth, slightly spongy surface, and began slotting Rulebooks and databoards into the waiting readers. On the screen, glyphs changed shape, queries smoothing into acknowledgment as the VDIRT systems found the data they required and forged the links between them. More lights flared on the wall systems, the machines whirring slightly as they came on‑line. Faces and shapes, familiar icons, began to appear in the haze of static.

“That’s Desir of Harmsway,” Gueremei said abruptly, and Lioe looked up in some surprise. “And Gallio Hazard. You did know they were local Types?”

“Yes,” Lioe said, and wondered why it mattered. Notables generally didn’t mind other people using their character templates–that was one of the definitions of a notable, someone whose characters were played by a lot of different people.

Gueremei’s smile widened. “I think I’ll definitely sit in on this session.” Lioe looked at her questioningly, and Gueremei turned away. “Oh, don’t worry, there’s no problem. It’s just they’re Ambidexter’s templates, and he hasn’t played in years.”

And in a situation like that, Lioe thought, I bet there’s one hell of a debate about how to play those characters. Oh, well, too late to change now. She looked back at the screen, saw the standby symbol fade, indicating that file transfer was complete. The planning form for session parameters was flashing in the screen, and she touched a key to submit the various supplemental rules she preferred to use. Those slots lit, and vanished from the screen, leaving her with the bare bones of the situation. It was a convention of the Game that Baron Vortex, the villain who opposed the Rebellion and wanted to make himself Emperor, was involved in secret psionics research; it was also a convention that he controlled the prison world of Ixion’s Wheel, from which no prisoner had ever escaped. She had combined the two, made Ixion’s Wheel the center of the Baron’s illegal research project–aside from the ethics involved, psions were illegal on the worlds of the Imperium–and then given the Golden claimant to the Imperial throne, Royal Avellar, a good reason to get himself sent to Ixion’s Wheel. Avellar was a secret telepath, one of the last four survivors of a clone‑group who had shared a telepathic link; and the one person who could restore his power, the electrokinetic Desir of Harmsway, was a prisoner in the research sections there.

“It looks good,” Gueremei said, and Lioe jumped at the sound of her voice. An instant later, one of the printers whirred to life, spat a piece of paper, and Gueremei retrieved it. “I’ll get you some players, then.”

“Thanks,” Lioe said. Her eyes were on her screens before the door closed behind the other woman.

Most of the relationships in the Game were familiar, formalized; everyone who played knew the characters and their backgrounds, and the pleasure of a session came from seeing how well a player could perform within those constraints. About half the characters on Ixion’s Wheel were drawn from someone else’s scenarios: Harmsway and Gallio Hazard from Ambidexter’s sessions of five years ago; Avellar from an old, old session that everyone had said was wonderful, but no one had used; Lord Faro and Ibelin Belfortune from a session she herself had played on Demeter a few months before, whom she had salvaged from certain death because their templates were more interesting than her players had been capable of making them. The rest–the telekinetic Jack Blue, unofficial leader of the prison population; the Rebel technician Galan Africa, who hated blood telepaths, with good reason; the research scientist Mijja Lyall, part of the prison staff, living in fear that someone would discover her own low‑level talent and transfer her to the experiment–were her own creations, but she had been careful to tie them to familiar places and characters within the larger Game. She studied the numbers for a moment longer, balancing skills and quirks and basic numbers, then touched the keys that dumped the templates to the system. A light flashed, confirming her choice, and she turned her attention to the setting.

She had a good library with her, settings she’d laboriously compiled through her years of travel, walking through the various cities on all the worlds she visited with her palmcorder in her pocket, waiting for just the right combination of light and space, of architecture and atmosphere and attitude, that would make a perfect place in some Game. Ixion’s Wheel had been harder to find than most, and she had had to transform her stored images more than usual, to get the harsh world suggested by the planetary statistics.

Frowning a little, she pulled her shades from the carryall, plugged the datacord into the socket on the temple, and touched the keys that opaqued the heavy lenses and displayed the image directly in front of her eyes. She touched more keys, and the statistics for Ixion’s Wheel hung in blank space: a hot planet, desert‑dry except for sparse bands of grassland to the north and south. The prison complex lay just south of the dry line, in the softer desert; the port lay to its north, just far enough away from the complex to seem unreachable. She had already pulled images for the prison–mostly from government buildings on Ardinee, a cheerless place if she’d ever seen one–but the port was less defined. And there wasn’t much time; she would have to fall back on her old standby for hot planets, images taken on Callixte itself, her home base.

She pulled that file, let it open, the images blossoming in front of her eyes. Plain, flat‑fronted buildings painted in sweeps of shocking pastels floated against a multitude of skies. She picked a dozen buildings at random, pulled a port‑and‑city blank from a general pattern file, and began fitting the buildings into the open spaces of the map. A town, a port town, took shape behind the shades, outlines only at first, as she moved the buildings like the pieces on a chessboard, shuffling them for maximum effect. She rotated the image until she was seeing it edge‑on, to view the skyline; then, as satisfied as she would be with this set of images, touched the controls to fill in the rest of the buildings. She chose a sky as well, the hot, thunder‑hazed blue of Callixte’s summer, and was pleased with the vivid splash of the painted walls against that metallic background. She replaced that sky with a storm, and watched the light bleed away into an ominous luminosity, the ramparts of cloud looming over the low roofs. It was good, an effect to be stored for later, but the first sky was the one she wanted now. She recalled it, and filled the empty space around the town with a generic grassland. It would do–nothing unique, and maybe not as good as some of her efforts, but it would do.

“That’s very nice,” Gueremei said, and Lioe jumped.

“I didn’t hear you come in.” She worked the toggle that cleared her shades, then dumped the cityscape to the main library.

“Sorry,” Gueremei said, not sounding particularly repentant. “I’ve got a cast for you.”

“Thanks,” Lioe said, and held out her hand for the disk. Gueremei slid it across the table, and Lioe slipped it deftly into the last reader.

“You should be pleased,” Gueremei went on. “I had to turn some people away. I’ve pulled you a good group, though, if I do say so myself. Roscha’s a handful, sometimes, but she’s a damn fine player, and she likes the scenario outline. I think she’ll behave. Savian’s a Republican, of course–” She stopped abruptly, bit off a laugh. “But so are you. I’d forgotten.”

“That’s all right.” Lioe smiled, and did her best to hide the excitement welling up in her, making her movements too quick and clumsy.

“So you’ll be used to the style,” Gueremei went on, as though the other woman hadn’t spoken. She came around the curved side of the table, leaned over Lioe’s shoulder to strike a chord of keys. “This is what I’ve done.”

A secondary window bloomed in front of the main datatree, displayed a double list of names. Lioe stared at it blankly, matching unknown names to the characters opposite. Roscha–Jafiera Roscha, who could be a “handful,” according to Gueremei–would be playing Galan Africa: not a bad part for a troublemaker, Lioe thought. At least there should be enough meat in it to keep her happy. Savian, Peter Savian, the other Republican, would play Lord Faro–and a name seemed to leap out at her from the foot of the list: Audovero Caminesi, cast as the telekinetic Jack Blue.

She highlighted the name with a touch, and looked up to see Gueremei nod.

“He volunteered,” she said, “and I like his style. You said you’d met.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was oddly formal. “Does this meet with your approval, Na Lioe?”

“It looks fine to me,” Lioe answered, and swept the disks she had prepared for the players into an untidy stack. “Bring them in.”

Gueremei nodded, stepped back to work the door controls. The door sagged open, and at her gesture the players filed into the room, carryalls and cased Gameboards in hand. Lioe looked up from her screen to watch them file in and take their places at the players’ seats around the curved side of the table. A big bearded man came first, followed closely by a slimmer, hard‑faced man with the silver disks of implant lenses gleaming in both eyes. They sat side by side, the bearded man grinning at something, and a young man in a supportchair followed them in. His thin wrists were heavy with jeweled bracelets, and there were more jewels in his ears. The silver‑eyed man pushed one of the chairs away from the table, and the other eased his supportchair into the new space, murmuring thanks under his breath. A handsome, hook‑nosed woman with an expensive Gameboard followed him, and then Vere, still in his steward’s uniform, as though he’d come directly from Newfields. He glanced at Lioe with a smile that hoped for recognition, and Lioe grinned back at him, grateful for something like a familiar face. The striking red‑haired woman behind him raised an eyebrow at the sight, her dark blue eyes, the color of the sea seen from near orbit, flicking up and down in insolent assessment. Lioe cocked an eyebrow at her, still smiling, and was rewarded by a faint, betraying flush of color: not used to someone taking up her challenge, Lioe thought, and filed the notion for later use. A slim man, with Asian eyes and implanted hsai spurs on both wrists, followed her, bony face expressionless. Lioe’s attention was caught by the spurs– is he hsaia, jericho‑human, or adopted, or does he just admire the hsai principle of kinship?–but pulled her thoughts sternly away. Politics had no place in the Game. That was only seven, and Lioe frowned. It would be hard to eliminate any of the characters–easier to be rid of two than one–and she glanced sharply at Gueremei, then back at the cast list. All the names were filled, so they were still one short.

“I’ve decided to sit in myself,” Gueremei said. “I play under Fernesa–Gameop’s privilege.”

A mixed favor, Lioe thought. Gueremei would be good–you didn’t get to be a Gameop without being at least a double‑A player–but it was also a little unnerving, having her on‑line for the first session. “Suit yourself,” she said aloud, and Gueremei settled herself in the remaining chair.

“All right,” Gueremei said, not loudly, but all attention shifted instantly to her. “This is Quinn Lioe, everyone, who wrote the Frederick’s Glory scenario some of you played last week. Na Lioe, let me introduce your players. Peter Savian–”

That was the bearded man, sitting so close on her right that he could extend a hand, Republican‑fashion. Lioe murmured a greeting, met and matched the pressure of his grip, and saw a new amusement gleam for an instant in his dark eyes.

“–Kazio Beledin–”

The man with the implant lenses touched his forehead, a formal gesture that went badly with his crumpled, brightly dyed and patched shirt and dock‑worker’s trousers.

“–Alazais Mariche–”

The hook‑nosed woman nodded very seriously, her fingers playing over the controls of her expensive equipment.

“–Vere you know, and Serenn Imbertin–”

“ Dit–everyone calls me Imbertine,” the young man in the supportchair said. Lioe nodded in acknowledgment, wondering if the chair were a permanent necessity. It was hard to tell–he was thin, certainly, but not wasted–and it was none of her business, in any case.

“–Garet Huard–”

The man with the hsai spurs looked up from his Gameboard to nod a greeting. He didn’t have a hsai name–most adoptees used some hsai forms–and Lioe wondered again what the connection was.

“And Jafiera Roscha,” Gueremei finished.

Lioe nodded to the redhead, startled again by the contrast between the woman’s striking beauty and the aggression in her face.

“It’s good to meet you,” Roscha said, her voice low and unexpectedly musical.

“Thanks,” Lioe said. She looked around the table, feeling the familiar excitement building in her, and said, “Na Gueremei has outlined the scenario to you, I assume?” Most of them nodded, but she continued anyway. “This is a Rebellion/Psionics variant, set on the prison planet of Ixion’s Wheel. Baron Vortex has, unknown to anyone until now, been running a secret research project in the prison complex, trying to find a way to bring psis of all types under his personal control. You are all part of that project, either as prisoners or as part of the prison staff. One of you, however, has an ulterior motive: you have come to rescue an old friend and antagonist, now a prisoner, and in order to escape yourself you will all have to work together.” She smiled then, and most of the players grinned back, even Roscha softening slightly, caught up in the preliminaries of the Game. “Assuming no one wants to back out, I have casting disks and the scenario supplements.”

No one did. Lioe felt her smile widen even as she tried to control it, and looked down at the display to check the cast list a final time. She dealt the disks around the table, and slid the session supplements after them. Huard, with his hsai spurs, would play the key role, Royal Avellar, potential if distant claimant to the Imperial throne; she wondered for a moment if he were really jericho‑human, and if he was, what it would do to his play. Savian would play Lord Faro, Beledin the half‑mad vampire Ibelin Belfortune–a good choice, given the visible chemistry between the two men–and Vere would play Jack Blue. Imbertine and the hook‑nosed woman, Mariche, would play Gallio Hazard and Desir of Harmsway–not easy parts, requiring a lot of coordination, and Lioe hoped they had played together before. Roscha would play the technician Africa, and Gueremei would play Mijja Lyall. That was an interesting choice–Lyall was superficially a minor character, but could become pivotal if played right–and Lioe gave a little nod of approval. She fiddled with her own controls as the players slid disks and supplement boxes into their Gameboards, and linked the boards to the VDIRT table’s main systems, bringing the prison complex into focus just above the tabletop. She kept it dim, the outlines vague and colors dulled, but she saw her players glance warily at it, assessing the setting. Savian ran a fingertip along the ridge of bone below one eye–there was a scar there, Lioe saw, faint as a thread against his brown skin–and studied the displays on his screen. Mariche busied herself with a pull‑out input strip, typing something into her Gameboard, her face still and intent as she studied the shifting numbers.

“Is everything clear?” Lioe said at last, when the first flourish of activity slowed, and there were nods and mumbled agreement from the players. Even Roscha looked almost eager. Lioe glanced at her main boards a final time–everything was ready to go, all the linkages in place and the libraries on line–and looked back at her players, excitement coursing through her. This was what made the Game worthwhile, all of them gathered for the one purpose of playing her scenario–She put the thought aside and said, “Then let’s go.”

She reached for her own shades, settled the temples on her ears. The broad double screen, dipping almost below her cheekbones, stayed black for a moment, and then she adjusted the controls so that she was watching her players through one completely transparent lens and watching the Game they would create in the other, darkened lens. Savian lifted a half‑helmet, settled it very deliberately on his head. The matte silver backing hid eyes and nose, but his mouth, framed by the neatly trimmed beard, remained visible and expressive. Most of the others wore shades similar to her own; bands of black or grey plastic covered half their face, turning them into icons of justice. Imbertine leaned back in his chair, hands caressing the bright stones of his bracelets. Looking more closely, Lioe could see the thin cables that connected each one to the sockets of his Gameboard. She smiled to herself, unable to resist prolonging the moment, then touched her controls to bring a scene slowly into shape in the players’ view. The buildings of the prison complex, blank grey walls, a single row of slit‑windows visible just below the tops of the buildings, grew more solid in the air above the tabletop. The same image was reflected in her shades. She touched controls again, and wind swirled around the buildings, driving great sheets of sand against the prison’s force dome.

“Welcome to Ixion’s Wheel.”

Evening, Day 30

High Spring: Ransome’s Loft,

Old Coast Road, Newfields,

Above Junction Pool

Ransome sprawled in his chair, caught in his web of images that all but blocked out the cityscape spread out below the loft windows. A solitary firework burst into a flower of golden rain–someone on the far side of the Water getting a head start on Storm–and he watched it fall and fade into a last trail of sparks, ignoring the dancing images. Most of them were Game nets–he was trying to do what Chauvelin wanted–but his heart wasn’t in it. There was nothing new in the Game, had been nothing new for years, only the same sterile repetitions, theme and variations all gone stale with overuse. His eyes stole to the image sitting alone to the left of his chair, a direct feed from one of his dataspheres. The last of the tiny stone heads looked back at him, a faint, sly smile on its carved mouth. Idly, he reached into a secondary control space, flicked on the controls that would allow the Imani Formstone Works to produce copies of his originals. The head looked back at him, caught now in a maze of numbers and guidelines. It had taken him most of the morning to find a workshop that would admit it could do the job in the time required–and the hefty surcharge, twice what the job should actually cost, was the only reason the shop manager had agreed at all. But the ambassadorial accounting system had accepted the charges, and he was left to deal with the Game. Voices babbled from the floor speakers, no channel given priority; Ransome made a face at the noise, but did not bother to adjust the tuning.

A light flashed in communications space, and at the same time an identifying glyph crackled in the air overhead. Ransome sighed, recognizing the image–knowing too well that the caller was the kind who did not give up–and muted his images with a wave of a gloved hand. With the other hand, he reached into the main control space to connect himself with the communications channel. “What the hell do you want, Sanci?”

“About fucking time, Ransome.”

There had been no delay. Ransome sighed again, shoved the familiar face–sharp chin framed by a short and tidy beard, eyes always slightly narrowed, as though he were looking into a bright light–to one side of the Game net images. “What do you want?”

“Have you been tracking the Game nets–the Old Network, by any chance?” Sanci smiled. “You might want to tune in.”

“I doubt it,” Ransome said.

Sanci’s smile widened, and Ransome realized the other man was tracking his net hookups. “Someone’s playing with your toys.”

“What channel?”

“The mainline feed out of Shadows.”

Ransome shoved Sanci’s image farther to his left, reached into control space to fiddle with the icons hanging there. He opened a connection to the Old Network, not even thinking of the costs. Shadows was easy to find, its distinctive icon flashing to signal an interesting session in progress, and he brought it on‑line, feeding the image into a small space directly in front of his eyes. Figures moved in an unfamiliar, cell‑like room, altogether too like Jericho’s prison system. He reached for the session precis even as he recognized two of the templates. Lord Faro was an old favorite, and so was Ibelin Belfortune, and if they both were there… He flicked the precis into prominence, skimmed quickly through the screen. Desir of Harmsway’s name seemed to leap out at him.

“Who’s running this?” he said aloud, and felt rather than saw the malice in Sanci’s look.

“I knew you’d be interested in this one. And it’s not a fill‑in‑the‑background session, either. That’s Ixion’s Wheel you’re looking at.”

I put those characters on Ixion’s Wheel to keep them out of other people’s hands. And Desir of Harmsway is my character, my property–more than that, my creation. Who the hell does this session leader think s/he is, using my persona in a session? Ransome bit back his instinctive reaction–Sanci didn’t deserve the satisfaction–and said again, “Who is it?”

Sanci sighed, rather theatrically. “Woman named Lioe, out of the Republic. She did the Frederick’s Glory scenario everyone was so hot about.”

Ransome said, “She’s good, or so I hear.” His hands were busy in the control space, expanding the picture, so that hand‑high figures moved in a cube of space half a meter square.

“Good enough?” Sanci murmured, still with that knowing smile, and Ransome managed a shrug.

“It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t follow the Game that closely these days.”

Sanci sneered, but said nothing. Ransome hesitated, wanting to lie, to deny that he would follow this scenario now that it had been brought to his attention, but knew that Sanci would recognize the truth–knew too that Sanci would probably try to trace the taps, and blocking him was hardly worth the trouble. But I’ll be damned if I’ll thank him for this. “Good‑bye, Sanci,” he said instead, and flicked away the other man’s image. The movement cut the communications channel as it sent the bearded face spinning, so that it turned end over end three times before it disappeared.

The gesture had done something to soothe his feelings, but Ransome was still frowning when he sat up fully. The image‑shell shifted with him, so that he looked down at the narrowcast from Shadows as though it were a desktop screen. He banished the rest of the images with a quick gesture, brought up the sound until he could follow the dialogue in the little world that hung in the air in front of him. One did not forget the Game, not when one had spent as much time in its worlds as he had done, but one did get out of practice. He scowled at the characters, reading the iconography of clothing and Face/Bodynumbers, and reached into control space to tap the session leader’s display bar. In the Game, Belfortune and Lord Faro whispered together, fearful of interruption, and a familiar figure moved through the hall behind them, deliberately eavesdropping. Avellar…

He studied the string of glyphs and numbers that bloomed along the base of the main image, skimmed quickly through the overlapping screens to confirm what he suspected. The overall shape of the Game was almost as familiar to him as the layout of his studio, and it was easy to see where this scenario would fit into the whole. It was ostensibly a Rebel scenario, but it was tied both to the Psionics variant and the Rival Claimants offshoot of the Court Life Game– and all of that done through Avellar and Desir of Harmsway, who was my character, and the situation between them was my invention–Ransome reached out to expand the image, drawing out the details. Some of the players were old friends, old rivals in the Game–Peter Savian he’d known for years, and Kazio Beledin; Imbertine was another familiar name, as was Roscha, though he’d never met the latter off‑line. But they were players, not session leaders: it was the leader who’d chosen to play with these characters– my characters, and it should have been my Game. This Lioe’s got nerve… He rolled the name over in his mind, recalling the little he’d heard. She was a notable‑in‑the‑making, or so everybody said, a pilot out of the Republic, off Callixte, which was a good introduction in the Game… and her first name was Quinn, Quinn Lioe. He hesitated for a moment, running down the list of friends who still followed the Game and who would give information, and reached into control space to open another line. The Game session still swam in front of him, the characters murmuring to each other, and he pushed it aside to make room for the new image.

A disk of static appeared, a hazy oval that flickered through so many colors so quickly that the eye could only read it as grey: the system had made contact. “Hally?”

A face took shape, forming from the disk itself, so that it became a mask hanging in space, a face thin and rather fine beneath the canalli weathering. Earrings gleamed in both ears, and a fine chain–a datawire, Ransome guessed–ran from one particularly elaborate stud to a jewel‑rimmed socket at the inner corner of his right eye. The iridescent strand seemed to glow against his pale brown skin. “Ransome?” Thin, delicately arched eyebrows rose in surprise, then contracted into a frown. “I’m watching a Game,” Hally Ventura said, and broke off, seeing the face in his own screens.

“From Shadows?” Ransome asked, and was answered by a brief, lopsided smile.

“That’s right. So what do you want to know about her, I‑Jay?”

“What do you know?”

“About what everyone does. She’s been a name on Callixte, everyone says a notable‑to‑be. And she’s a pilot, union pilot, also works out of Callixte for that. Angele up at the port says her ship’s in for repairs, and she’s come to play. People’ve been at her to quit space, go into the Game full time, but she’s not been interested.”

“Piloting’s a good job,” Ransome said. “I’d think twice before I quit.”

Hally shrugged. “She’s very, very good at the Game.” His eyes shifted, looking at something outside his own display. “Look, I‑Jay, I want to watch this session. Was that all?”

“I just thought, if anyone knew anything, it would be you,” Ransome said, and was rewarded by a quick smile: the apology was acceptable. “Thanks, Hally.”

“Not at all,” Hally answered, and the hanging mask dissolved into the oval of static. Ransome cut the connection.

The Game session floated back in front of him, expanded at a gesture to display its full detail. Belfortune sat with his head in his hands, answered, low‑voiced, Lord Faro’s questions. The tension between them was palpable: the players’ affair had been over for years, but its memory still informed their play. Mijja Lyall, the scientist/technician, watched uneasily, her gaze flickering between the two men and the metal face that hung on the wall overhead. Baron Vortex, the Game’s great villain, was overseeing this himself.

Ransome frowned, reached for the library icons, and had to shuffle access spaces until he found dead storage. It had been a long time since he had gone looking for his template libraries. He flicked them back into the working volume, searched the most recent issues until he found Lord Faro’s listing. He had forgotten that Faro had become one of the Baron’s henchmen–that had happened almost two years ago, just after he’d quit the Game. He leaned back in his chair, the images tilting around him, and saw another firework flare through the pattern of the Game. You couldn’t ask for better, he thought, and reached for a hand‑held remote to summon the drinks tray.

The machine trundled over, the lid sliding back to give access to the freezer compartment. Ransome chose abstractedly, opened the container, his eyes still on the session unfolding in front of him. Faro was clearly torn between his loyalty to Baron Vortex–a loyalty bought with fear and the promise that Faro’s lost estates would someday be returned–and his– love? desire?–for Belfortune. Belfortune clearly shared both passion and fear, and Baron Vortex watched from the wall. Lioe was handling him well, he admitted grudgingly. Too many leaders made the Baron too villainous right from the start; Lioe was keeping him just reasonable enough–though still with that edge of madness–that it seemed suicidal to oppose him.

Abruptly, he wanted to be there, at Shadows, watching firsthand–or, better still, to be in the control booth with Medard‑Yasine. It was the first time in three years that he’d actually wanted to attend a Game, and his lips quirked upward as he realized that at least he now had an excuse for doing what Chauvelin wanted. He closed both fists, shutting down the system–in the corner of his eye, glyphs tumbled headlong as the slaved machines ran through their shutdown procedures–and reached for a stand‑alone com‑unit and punched codes that would cycle through the helicab companies until he found one that could respond. It took perhaps two minutes, the bar of light flashing in front of him, not quite blocking his sight, and he spent the time searching for his jacket and the cylinder of Mist he was forced to carry. The com‑unit beeped at him before he found the red‑banded tube, and he scrabbled impatiently for the hand‑held unit.

“How can we be of service?”

It was a machine voice, or so the telltale at the base of the unit said–it would have been impossible to tell from the sound alone. Ransome curbed his impatience, and smoothed his tone to be as emotionless as possible. “I need transport to the helipad closest to Shadows–Face Road, by the center of the Dike in the Dock Road District. I think that’s Underface.”

“Just a moment, please.” There was a little silence, not even the hiss of static, while Ransome scanned the cluttered space of his loft for the missing cylinder, and then the machine said, “Yes, Underface is closest. Your location code is Warehouse?”

“That’s right.” The cylinder was lying on the shelf beside the shell for the Syndic’s egg.

“Thank you. Your helicab will arrive at the Warehouse helipad in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks,” Ransome said, in spite of himself, in spite of knowing it was a machine, and broke the connection. He collected the cylinder, shoved it and his credimeters into the pocket of his jacket, and left the loft.

It took him almost fifteen minutes to reach the helipad–the computers were scrupulous in their calculations–and he barely had time to catch his breath before he heard the soft beat of the muted rotors. Somewhat to his surprise, there was a live pilot, who grinned cheerfully at him as she popped the passenger hatch.

“To Underface, right? Going to Shadows?”

Does everyone on the planet know about this fucking game? Ransome wondered. “Yes, to Underface–and, yes, to Shadows, too.”

The pilot nodded, closing the hatch behind him. “I hear there’s one hell of a session in progress there. You’re like the fifth person I’ve dropped there in the last two hours.”

“Really.” Ransome settled into the center seat, the most comfortable of the three, and adjusted the door controls so that the whole panel went transparent, an enormous curved window on the city spread out below the cliff face.

“Yeah.” The pilot manipulated her controls, and the helicab lifted easily, pivoting toward the cliff edge and the descent to Underface. She was on‑line, Ransome saw, bound into the cab’s systems so that her arms and legs seemed to end in the black boxes of the control consoles; more wires, a complex, braided band of them, fell from the junction box at the base of her skull. Her hair was shaved around that connection, but the rest of it fell in a scarlet tail from an untidy topknot. “I wish I wasn’t working.”

“You’re a Gamer, then?” Ransome asked, and saw, too late, the pins studding her left sleeve. MI‑Net, Court Life V, Vimar Nessen’s Game, RedApple, Old Network, and dozens of others: she was a Gamer, all right, and a committed one.

She didn’t seem offended, however, just shrugged that shoulder to make the pins glitter in the light from the instrument panel. “That’s right.”

“So what have you heard about this Lioe?” Ransome asked. This wasn’t his style at all–this was the kind of information he preferred to find on the nets–but the chance was too good to pass up.

The pilot shrugged again, both shoulders this time. “What haven’t I heard, really? Frederick’s Glory got an Adouble‑star on Callixte, which those judges don’t hand out like candy, and she wrote it. She’s supposed to just be running a sample session for Davvi tonight, but what everyone’s saying is that it’s turning out to be something kind of special.” She looked sideways, into the space that showed her the passenger camera view. “What I heard from one woman was, she’s pulled one of Ambidexter’s characters out of storage, playing him as a major character.”

Ransome nodded, caught up in spite of himself in the old habits of the Game. “Desir of Harmsway. I was watching for a while on the nets.”

“ Sha‑mai.” The pilot’s curse was more admiring than anything. “Ambidexter’s going to murder her. Very God, I wish I wasn’t working.”

Ransome gave her a bitter grin. If he’d ever wanted confirmation of how the white‑sickness had changed him in the past three years, he had it now–not that he’d really needed it. Even a year ago, before the disease really took hold, she would have recognized him as Ambidexter, even if he hadn’t been in the clubs for a year or so before that… He shook the thought away, annoyed that he’d even acknowledged it, made himself pay attention to the pilot.

“That’s assuming Ambidexter’s still around, of course,” she went on, quite cheerfully. “There was talk he was dead, not long back.”

“I don’t think so,” Ransome said, with involuntary pique, and the pilot shrugged again. The helicab banked sideways into the airpath that paralleled the Old Dike; its lights, and the glow of the shops on Warden Street, filled the cab’s interior with patches of bright color.

“The work on the nets under that name hasn’t been very like him, that’s for sure.”

Ransome drew breath for an indignant response– how dare she accuse me of not being myself?–and stopped suddenly, wondering if this was Cella’s doing. It wouldn’t be unlike her, to whisper that he was dead, that his work was not his own. He opened his mouth, trying to figure out how to phrase the question, but the helicab tilted again, and he realized that the pilot’s attention was once again on her craft. After a moment, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. That would be very like Cella, to assume that the rumor of his death would bring him back onto the nets– and it would have worked, too, if I hadn’t been so busy with other things.

The helicab tipped again, responding to wind or air currents or an unseen traffic signal, and the door panel was filled with the city lights. Ransome stared, caught once again by the breathtaking beauty: the tidy geometry of the well‑lit squares and canals of Dock Road, bounded by the twin lines of the Straight to the north and the Crooked to the south. In the distance, the broad triangle that was the landformed extension of Mainwarden Island jutted into the Water, dividing the massive stream into two channels. A line of light ran from apex to base, broke slightly at the edge of the low cliff that rose to Mainwarden Island proper: Compass Road, where the Lockwarden Society had their main offices. The Society’s certification officers, the elite of the Wet Districts around the Water, generally lived in the tidy, decent neighborhoods to either side of that main thoroughfare. The Great Island light blazed at steady intervals from the tip of the Extension, directing the all‑but‑invisible traffic that filled the Water even at this hour.

“Coming down,” the pilot said, her voice distant and professional again. The helicab straightened and slowed to hover, almost motionless. Ransome craned his neck to see through the lower curve of the door, and could just make out the blue concentric lines of the helipad below them. One band of light blinked, as though something had moved across it, and a moment later another one did the same. Kids, probably, Ransome thought, and in the same instant a strong white light flashed from the cab’s underbelly, all but drowning out the landing lines. Ransome saw a last small figure scramble over the low barrier. The pilot smiled, and the helicab began to sink delicately toward the ground. They touched down almost without a thud, and the credit reader unfolded itself from the wall of the passenger compartment, beeping politely but insistently. Ransome fed his card through the reader, winced slightly when the total was presented, but touched the confirmation code without further protest. The door opened, and Ransome swung himself out onto the brightly lit pavement. The cab lifted away as soon as he was clear, trailing a diminishing cone of light.

It was not a long walk from the Underface helipad to Shadows, but Ransome felt his lungs clog and falter, stopped in the mouth of a half‑enclosed courtyard to breathe from the cylinder of Mist. He grimaced at the bitter taste, grimaced again as the drug took hold, the cold pain clearing his lungs. He waited a moment longer, listening to a strand of distant music, a single violo drawn against the night, that floated down from somewhere above him, closer to the base of the Dike. The pain faded, and he kept walking. Shadows appeared out of the darkness a few minutes later, all its windows unshuttered and blazing with light, a suppressed excitement humming in the air around it. Even the food shop across the intersection seemed quiet by comparison, both the bouncers, conspicuous in their rusty black jerkins and studded wristbands, sitting comfortably in chairs just outside the doorway, a thermoflask on the ground between them.

There was no trouble gaining admission to the club, despite the crowd that overflowed from the main lobby into the access hall. Most of them wanted only to maintain their view of the large display screens, and were perfectly willing to let Ransome past as long as he showed no desire to linger. He fetched up against the far wall, beside the little office. The dreamy‑eyed woman behind the counter only reluctantly took her attention from the display board balanced in her lap.

“What can I do for you?”

“Is Davvi here?”

The abrupt request raised her eyebrows, and then she frowned, visibly searching her memory to match the face in front of her. Ransome smiled, unable to keep the expression from turning sour, and said, “Tell him Ambidexter’s here.”

The dreamy eyes widened almost comically. “At once, N’Ambidexter. It’s good to see you back again.”

A few of the Gamers close to the desk heard the name even over the direct‑input sound from the room systems, and turned to look. Ransome met the stares blandly, and turned his attention to the displays overhead. In the screens, Gallio Hazard confronted a figure he didn’t recognize, an enormously fat man in prison clothes. Bricks and stones, a halo of debris, floated in the air around him, and Ransome realized that the fat man was a telekinetic.

“She is good, isn’t she?” Davvi Medard‑Yasine had come quietly through the door that led to the session rooms, and smiled at Ransome’s shrug.

“So far, yes,” Ransome answered. “Look, Davvi, I need a favor.”

“You can ask,” Medard‑Yasine answered, but his smile widened.

“I want to watch, up close. Can you get me into the control room?”

“I figured,” Medard‑Yasine said. “Come on.”

He led the way through the door and into the depths of the club. These hallways were less crowded, but in nearly every side room a group had gathered around the VDIRT tables, and the same tiny figures moved in each tabletop display. The central courtyard was busier than Ransome had ever seen it, groups standing three deep at the larger tables there. Security was standing outside the control room, a thin unsmiling woman with specialists’ badges on her shoulders, and the Gamers who had ventured into this area gave her a wide berth. They clustered at the far end of the hall, where someone had hooked a trio of series‑linked Gameboards into a datanode, dividing their attention between the display screens and the door that led to the control areas. Medard‑Yasine ignored them, said something quietly to Security, who nodded and stood back from the door controls. Ransome waited while Medard‑Yasine keyed the entrance codes, looking politely down the hall away from the keypad. The people on the edges of the group looked back at him, frankly curious, and a couple of them put their heads together, murmuring to each other. Ransome smiled then, and a woman in the front row nudged the man next to her. Her voice carried quite clearly: “That’s Ambidexter, I’m sure of it.”

“You’ve been found out,” Medard‑Yasine said cheerfully, and pushed open the door.

Ransome followed him into the control room, crowded with Gamers and display equipment. A massive VDIRT table, twice as large as most club models, dominated the room; the scenario played in the air above the tabletop, the images almost solid enough to block out the real objects behind them, and the virtual screens in the tabletop itself glimmered with technical displays. Ransome glanced quickly at them, skimming the lines of symbols, looked away again to scan the crowd. Most of the Dock Road notables were here, all right–and there were maybe a dozen of them; Dock Road was a Gamer’s ghetto, especially around Underface–and the flickering tie‑in lights on the wall consoles meant that a lot more people were tapping in through MI‑Net. He looked sideways, at Medard‑Yasine, and saw a faint, feline smile of satisfaction on the other man’s face. Ransome touched his forehead in acknowledgment, and turned his attention to the Game.

–––

Interlude

Game/varRebel.2. 04/

subPsi. 1.22/ver22. 1/ses 1.26

They crouched in the uncertain shelter of the cargo bay, hearing the clatter of boots on the walkways to either side. The overhanging shelves, piled high with crates, gave some cover, but they all knew that if the Baron’s guards came out onto the center catwalk it would take a miracle to keep from being seen. Galan Africa/JAFIERA ROSCHA worked frantically at the powerpack of their only heavy laser, trying to mate a salvaged blaster cell into the nonstandard housing. Mijja Lyall/FERNESA crouched at his side, unable to concentrate on either the gun or on Jack Blue/VERE CAMINESI, who sprawled gasping against the nearest stack of crates. His bulk had displaced the lowest one slightly, and Gallio Hazard/IMBERTINE gave the whole stack a wide berth, kneeling well clear of its line of fall, his pistol drawn and cocked. He had laid the fresh clip on the decking beside him, ready for use. Lord Faro/PETER SAVIAN and Ibelin Belfortune/KAZIO BELEDIN crouched as always a little apart from the rest, Faro a little ahead of the wild‑eyed Belfortune, as though he could somehow protect him.

“Where the hell is this contact?” Desir of Harmsway/ALAZAIS MARICHE hissed, his light pistol already drawn and ready. “Come on, Avellar, you can explain this one, too.”

Avellar/GARET HUARD ignored him, went to kneel on the warped flooring beside Jack Blue. “How is it?” he said, as much to Lyall as to Blue, but it was the telekinetic who answered.

“Not so good.” Blue’s voice was thin and wheezy, and Lyall shook her head, reaching into the much‑depleted medical kit.

“If you weren’t so damn fat,” Harmsway sneered, and Blue frowned sharply. A cracked piece of the floor tiling snapped loose and flung itself at Harmsway’s face. He ducked away from it, but it still struck him a grazing blow along one cheekbone, raising a thin line of blood. Avellar snatched the falling tile before it could hit anything else.

“That’s why I’m so damn fat,” Blue said. The mass a telekinetic could move was directly related to his/her body weight; that he could throw even a kilogram, exhausted as he was, was the direct result of his obesity.

“Save your strength,” Avellar said to Blue, and looked at Harmsway. “The ship is there, Desir, and my contact’s waiting. Go right ahead.”

Harmsway looked longingly at the cargo door, just twenty meters away across the width of the warehouse. It was even open, the ship’s hatch gleaming in the loading lights, and he could feel that the last barrier was sealed only with a simple palm lock, the kind of thing he could open in his sleep… if he could only get there. His lips thinned, and he looked away.

“Avellar.” Lyall’s voice was suddenly sharp with fear, and Avellar swung to face her.

“I think–” Lyall began, then shook her head. “No, I’m sure. They’ve brought in a hunter.”

Harmsway swore, and Hazard looked back over his shoulder at him.

Africa said, as if he didn’t really want to know, “Hunter?”

“Another telepath,” Blue said. “One who specializes in sensing out his own kind.”

“How close?” Harmsway demanded, and Lyall shook her head again.

“I can’t tell. He–she–it’s shielded.”

Avellar’s lips tightened, and he looked at the two men who stood apart from the rest. Faro shifted his position slightly, almost in spite of himself, putting himself between Avellar and Belfortune. Belfortune did not seem to notice, but his free hand rose to the stained bandage on his left shoulder, pressed hard as though that would ease the pain. Avellar lifted a hand and looked instead at Africa. “How’s it coming, Galan?”

The technician shrugged, his hands never slowing on the balky connection. “We won’t know until I try to use it. I think I’ve got it.”

Avellar grimaced, looked back at Belfortune. “Bel.”

“Let him be,” Faro said. Belfortune passed his hand over his face, then reached for the gun he had laid beside him on the tiles. He still would not meet Avellar’s eyes.

“Bel,” Avellar said again. “We need you.”

“There’s nothing I can do.” Belfortune spoke flatly, without lifting his eyes from the floor. His useless left hand was tucked into the front of his jacket, held as if in a crude sling.

“Bullshit,” Harmsway said. “That’s fucking bullshit, and you know it. Just because you don’t like thinking you’re one of us, just because you and him”–his free hand swept out to indicate Lord Faro, who lifted an arrogant eyebrow in response–“have had the Baron’s favor, you don’t want to admit what you are. You could get us all killed, or you could save us. You’re a vampire, damn you, and right now that could save all our lives.”

Belfortune’s good hand closed convulsively over the gun, and he brought it up in a single smooth motion, leveling it at Harmsway. Harmsway stared back at him unmoving, handsome face set in his mask of habitual contempt. Avellar stirred, but said nothing after all.

“I’m not a vampire,” Belfortune said after a moment, and the gun’s muzzle wavered and fell. “Yes, I’m psi, I’ve never denied it–”

“Like hell,” Harmsway said.

Belfortune swept on as though he hadn’t spoken. “–but I’m only an interference maker. All I can do is fuck up somebody trying to use their psi. I can’t stop them. I can’t take their power away.”

“But you can.” Lyall’s voice was very soft, but they all heard her. “The tests were conclusive, I was there, I ran them. When you want to, you can stop all psi use cold.”

“And then what?” Belfortune asked. He smiled bitterly, without a trace of humor. “That’s the part no one ever asks about, do they, Mijja? Because what happens is they die. I take their power, and they die without it.”

“Bel.” Faro’s voice was gentle, as though there was no one else near them, and all the time in the world.

“You know what happens.” Belfortune’s voice scaled upward, toward hysteria. “You know how they die. Oh, God, the taste of it in my mind–”

Faro reached out to him, but Harmsway cut him off. “Jesus Christ. It’s a hunter. And if you don’t kill him, we’re dead.”

“Shut up, Desir,” Avellar said. He looked at Belfortune. “Bel–”

Belfortune shook his head. “I can’t, Avellar. Not won’t. I can’t do it.”

“Let it be,” Faro said, with unexpected authority. He and Avellar locked stares for a moment, and then Avellar turned away.

“Ready,” Africa said, and held out the laser. Hazard took it warily, slipped his pistol and its spare clip back onto his belt.

“What do we do now, Avellar?” he said.

“Without Belfortune–” Lyall began, and broke off with a gasp.

Avellar took a deep breath. “We have to get on board the ship. And if the Baron’s brought in a hunter, they’ll know where we are any minute now. We’ll have to fight.”

“What a wonderful plan,” Harmsway jeered. “And how typical of your planning. Damn you, Royal, why didn’t you leave me here?”

Avellar looked at him, face absolutely without emotion. “I told you once, I need you, need your talent. I can’t take the throne without your help.”

Africa looked up as though he’d been stung, and Hazard spoke quickly, cutting off anything the technician might have said. “But to fight, Royal?”

Jack Blue said, “He’s right, Avellar. The odds aren’t in our favor.”

Avellar looked at Belfortune. “You hear them, Belfortune. It’s your choice.”

“I can’t,” Belfortune said, his voice little louder than a whisper. “I can’t.”

“He’s found us,” Lyall said. Her eyes were closed, face furrowed with concentration as she brought her minimal telepathy to bear on the problem. “He’s at the east entrance, and the chase squads are joining him.”

“Oh, shit,” Harmsway said. “Shit, shit, shit.” He flung himself out from under the shelter of the shelves, started down the corridor toward the eastern entrance. Overhead, a light fixture exploded in a shower of sparks; to his left, a cargo robot spun awkwardly on its treads, and started toward the entrance as well. Fat sparks gathered around him, snapped from his fingers and flickered away from him across the metal shelves and the walkways overhead as he tapped into and overloaded the cargo bay’s electrical systems. He turned down the first side corridor, and vanished.

“Desir–!” Avellar began, closed his mouth over whatever he would have said. “Hazard, get after him, get him back if you can.”

Hazard nodded. “But not for you, Royal,” he said, and started after the electrokinetic, the laser still gripped in his hands.

Avellar looked down at Belfortune, who still crouched against the cases. “Damn you to hell, Belfortune,” he whispered. “Give me a reason I shouldn’t kill you now.”

Belfortune did not answer, did not even seem to hear, and Faro said, “You pushed him too hard, Avellar, you and Harmsway. If you’d given me time–”

Avellar stared at him for an instant, but then nodded, acknowledging the rebuke. “All right,” he said, “get moving, all of you. Head for the hatch.”

“We can still back him up,” Africa said.

Blue shook his head, said, in a voice suddenly as old and tired as he looked, “He’s dead, man. They’re both dead. They’ll be on him in a minute.”

As if to underscore his words, the whine of laser fire sounded from somewhere near the east entrance, followed a moment later by the distinctive crack as an electrokinetically induced overload destroyed a laser’s powerpack.

Avellar winced. “All we can do now,” he said, “is get to the ship.”

“He’s right,” Blue said, and hauled himself to his feet, steadied by Lyall and Africa. “Let’s go.”

–––

Game/VarRebel.2.04/subPsi.1.22/ver22.1/ses1.27

Harmsway moved through the corridors in a hailstorm of electricity, glorying in a strength and skill he hadn’t known he possessed. Lights exploded overhead, spilled streamers of fire from the open circuits; he caught and shaped that inchoate power into bolts, and flung them in the faces of the Baron’s troops as they moved to engage him. Outside the sphere of his influence, lights flickered, control panels flashing yellow and red as he overloaded the system. He felt it, reached out to compensate, groping for access to the main power grid.

The first laser bolt spun him sideways into a stack of crates. He caught himself against their metal sides, electricity crackling unheeded from his hands, turned to point at the soldier, using his finger as focus and guide for his power. Stored electricity leaped from the nearest output node, flashed along his arm and across the intervening meters to strike the laser’s powerpack. It blew in a sheet of flame, and the soldier fell, screaming. Harmsway caught his breath, aware of a new pain in his chest, tried to flex his shoulder and failed, and shrugged the other shoulder and kept walking, back toward the east entrance where the hunter had been waiting.

There were more of the Baron’s guard waiting around the next corner, crouched behind the shield of a heavy gatling. Harmsway took a deep breath that burned in his lungs, concentrated, and reached out for the gun’s control circuits. The guards fired in the same instant, a brief hail of lead before Harmsway found the gatling’s electronics and destroyed the system. They had barely had time to aim, but two of the bullets struck his hip and leg. He staggered against the nearest stack of crates, tried to take a step, and fell, sliding against the bare metal until he was barely sitting, propped up against the crates. The first of the two surviving soldiers leveled his laser. Harmsway fought back the pain, and reached for the nearest output node. He drew power from it, but his side and leg burned and throbbed, and the electricity streamed out uncontrolled, writhed across the intervening metal of the floor like a fiery snake. The soldiers fell back for a moment, but then the second man, better protected by the gatling’s smoking carcass, raised his laser again. There were more soldiers coming up the corridor behind him, and an airsled rode in their midst: the Baron himself was coming to see the end of the hunt. Harmsway braced himself to die.

Hazard rounded the last corner at that moment, and the soldiers swung instinctively to cover him. He took in the situation at a glance–Harmsway down, blood and burned flesh everywhere, the soldiers with leveled lasers and the rest of the troop coming up behind them–and started to raise his heavy laser for the last time.

“Don’t shoot,” a whispering voice said from the airsled’s closed cabin, and Hazard froze. Harmsway made a small, painful sound, but the voice went on anyway, as though no one had spoken. “Hazard, you’re not a fool. Put down your gun, and I’m sure we can come to some agreement.”

Hazard hesitated, the muzzle of the gun wavering slightly–to fire was suicide, his and Harmsway’s, but the speaker was Baron Vortex, and his word could never be trusted.

“Your friend is badly hurt, maybe dying,” the voice went on. “But he could be saved. Put down your gun, Gallio Hazard, and I’ll see that he lives.”

“And me?” Hazard asked, with a short laugh.

“And you,” the voice agreed. “Both of you will live.”

“Why?”

“You’re running short of time,” the voice murmured, with a note like amusement, and Hazard shook his head.

“Why?” he said again.

“I need telepaths,” the voice said. “Electrokinetics of Harmsway’s talent are rare, to say the least; he may even be unique. You were not badly treated here, and if you cooperate, you can live quite well–you both can live quite well. Is Avellar’s rebellion worth that much to you?”

Hazard hesitated for a moment longer, then, very slowly, laid his laser on the tiles, slid it hard toward the waiting soldiers. “All right,” he said. “We surrender.”

“Excellent,” the voice purred, and changed instantly to a snap of command. “Medics, see to that man. You, guard, search this one properly.”

Hazard lifted his hands, and submitted to the search, watching over the soldiers’ shoulders as a medical team swarmed over Harmsway’s unconscious body, loaded it into a medsled, and sped away. The nearest soldier prodded him, and he forced himself to move, walking back toward the entrance and the long trek back to the prison complex.

–––

Game/varRebel.2.04/subPsi.1.22/ver22.1/ses1.28

There were only two guards by the cargo door, both staring nervously toward the sound of Harmsway’s attack. They were sheltered by the hatchway, not an easy shot at all, and Avellar paused in the shelter of the final rack of crates, considering them cautiously. After a moment, he beckoned to Africa. The man frowned, but slipped forward to join the rebel leader.

“You’re the best shot of all of us,” Avellar said, leaning close, his voice an almost soundless whisper. “Can you take them?”

Africa frowned. “Not with a pistol.”

Avellar made a face, but eased back into the shelter of the crates. After a moment, Africa followed, still frowning.

“Let me,” Faro said.

Avellar shook his head. Before he could say anything, Jack Blue interrupted.

“I can draw them out, Avellar. Leave it to me.”

Avellar looked uncertainly at him for a moment–a fat man, wheezing, leaning awkwardly on Lyall’s shoulder–but slowly nodded. “If you can lure them out here…”

“We can take them,” Africa said. “Can’t we, Faro?”

Lord Faro nodded, snapped the last power cell into the butt of his pistol.

“Do it,” Avellar said.

Blue closed his eyes, frowned, and let himself sink cross‑legged onto the tiled floor. Slowly, the frown eased away from his heavy features, and his hands lay lax on his thighs. A few moments later, something stirred in the corridor to their right: it sounded like someone walking, the heavy, uncertain footsteps of a wounded man.

Lyall said, almost in the same moment, “They’re buying it.”

The first of the guards peered out of the hatchway, put up his faceplate to listen more closely. Africa leveled his pistol, but Lord Faro laid a restraining hand on his arm.

“Wait for the other one,” he said, very softly.

Africa nodded, lowered the pistol again.

Blue was sweating lightly now, forehead furrowed in concentration. In the corridor, the footsteps faltered, something metal fell with a clatter, and then the footsteps picked up again, more slowly. The guard cocked his head to one side, listening, then pulled the faceplate down again. Avellar held his breath, afraid to move. Very slowly, Lyall crossed her fingers, closed her eyes, and played out her minimal power the way a fisherman plays a line, easing out a tendril of curiosity to draw the guard toward the strange noises. The guard held up his hand at last, and beckoned to his partner. The second guard came up to the edge of the hatch, but stopped just inside the heavy frame. Africa breathed a curse: the hatchway still blocked their shot.