Carnival

“A small one,” she confirmed, and moved forward with one hand upraised to stop Miss Ouagadougou from running into Kusanagi‑Jones’s back. Which was fortunate. Kusanagi‑Jones was not looking forward to apologizing to the first unwary New Amazonian who bounced off his wardrobe or was shocked by it…but he also wasn’t about to dial the safety features down unless he was actively engaged in shaking someone’s hand.

“Nkechi,” Miss Pretoria said, “I’ve been asked to hurry Miss Katherinessen and Miss Kusanagi‑Jones back to the government center. Can you see to the relocation of the cargo?”

Kusanagi‑Jones stepped aside and turned in time to see her nod and vanish back inside. He crossed the slight distance between the landing and his partner and took up station at Vincent’s side. His shadow still stretched long on the dock beside him, but the sun was climbing enough to sting where it snuck around the shade of his hat. “Is everything in order?”

“Perfectly,” Michelangelo answered.

Miss Pretoria turned back to them and held up a datacart. She ducked her head, speaking under the shadow of her hat. “A message from my mother, in her role as opposition leader. Countersigned by Antonia. Elder Kyoto, I mean.”

Their habitual security detail flanked them, just far enough away not to overhear if they kept their voices down. Two more women in plain black uniforms remained by the lighter.

“I’m not sure we ever heard her Christian name.” Despite his height, Vincent’s heels rang on the docks with the effort of keeping up with Pretoria; the warden could move when she had to.

She frowned. “That’s an odd term for it.”

Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t have to look at Vincent to know he’d led her into that particular trap on purpose, although his purpose was mysterious. “The first emigrants to Ur were religious refugees,” he said. “It’s just a turn of phrase.”

“Pregnant religious refugees? Miss Katherinessen–”

“Vincent.”

“–I suspect you’re pulling my leg.”

“Some of them were political refugees–”

“Some of usare still waiting to hear about the crisis,” Kusanagi‑Jones said irritably. It wasn’t Miss Pretoria’s leg Vincent was yanking. It was Kusanagi‑Jones’s chain.

“Sorry,” Vincent lied, biting back a widening of his smile.

I never should have fucked him. But he had, whatever advantage it gave Vincent. And he’d do it again.

At least the crisis couldn’t actually be a crisis. Vincent wouldn’t be playing cat‑and‑mouse games with him if it were.

It was a measure of his own stress and his reactions to the New Amazonian culture that his brain spent a full half‑second pinwheeling on the atavistic roots of the phrase cat‑and‑mouse,as archaic to Earth’s governed culture as saying hoist on his own petard. The New Amazonians probably had cats, or the native equivalent. And they probably set them on local herbivores for entertainment, too. When they weren’t enjoying a good duel or a round of cockfighting.

Savages.

Anyway, Vincent was enjoying toying with him far too much for the crisis to be anything overwhelming. In fact, confounding Pretoria’s careful observation of them into that slightly furrowed brow could be Vincent’s entire objective. In which case, Kusanagi‑Jones was content to play the game. He cleared his throat, deciding the silence had gone on long enough.

“In the car,” Pretoria said.

It waited where they had left it, a low‑slung honey‑brown groundcar complete with a wet bar and seats more comfortable than most armchairs. The doors hissed shut after they entered–a perfect seal–and Kusanagi‑Jones used every iota of his craft to appear as if he relaxed against the upholstery, while trying not to picture the animal it must have come from. Cool air shocked the sweat on his neck.

The car rolled forward like a serpent sliding over grass.

“The repatriation ceremony has been postponed,” Miss Pretoria said, and leaned forward in her chair to pull glasses and a decanter of cloudy gray‑green fluid out of the refrigerator. One at a time, she poured three glasses and handed the first two to Vincent and Kusanagi‑Jones. “Any allergies?”

If there were, the nanodocs should handle it. He shook his head and sipped; it looked like swamp water, but tasted tart, with complex overtones. “The reason for the postponement?”

Vincent said, “Officially, a delay in negotiations.”

The artifacts in the cargo pod, officially,were an expression of goodwill–not termed a gift because they already belonged to the New Amazonian people. Negotiations had nothing to do with it. “Unofficially?”

“A threat against the prime minister’s life,” Miss Pretoria said, after a glance at Vincent to see if he was going to speak. “And Miss…and Vincent’s.”

That moment of communication unsettled Kusanagi‑Jones. There was something behind it, and he thought if he had Vincent’s gifts he would know what it was. But Vincent’s hazel eyes were undilated and he met Kusanagi‑Jones’s gaze easily. “Do we know the source of the threat?”

“We suspect the Left Hand. A radical free‑male group. Although it could as easily have been one of the Separatist movements; they put Claude in power, and they can’t be pleased that she’s negotiating with…” Lesa shrugged apologetically.

“Men,” Vincent finished. “These Maenads you mentioned. Is that such a group?”

“The most radical of them. Claude doesn’t actually believe there’s much of a threat, you understand. If enough people wanted to get rid of her badly enough to risk their lives to do it, you’d hear no end to the challenges.” Lesa didn’t quite smile. “We’ve never had an assassination on New Amazonia, though two prime ministers have been shot down in the street when they weren’t fast enough on the draw. So no, we’re cautious, but not too worried.”

“Then why the rush?”

“The ceremony is delayed, but we’re still expected for breakfast. And we might as well see the art installed in the gallery, since we have the time after all.”

“And in the evening?” Kusanagi‑Jones asked, folding his hands around the moist, cold glass. Vincent might not be worried, but when it came to his own personal safety, Vincent was sometimes an idiot. And additionally, Kusanagi‑Jones suspected that Vincent wouldn’t show concern in front of the New Amazonian women.

She smiled. “My mother has invited you to dinner and sightseeing tonight. And of course, there’s Carnival.”

They attended the state breakfast, which thankfully involved less probing‑out of territorial limits and more honest gestures toward dйtente, and a generous quantity of sliced fruit and plain porridge, which Vincent was assured had been prepared without any animal products. He even got Michelangelo to eat, and drink half a pot of tea laced heavily with sugar, and almostmanaged it without pausing to wonder how his partner had survived seventeen years without him.

They’d returned to the gallery by the time Miss Ouagadougou arrived with three lorry‑loads of repatriated art. It came under heavy guard by New Amazonian standards: six armed women and the driver. Vincent couldn’t help comparing the way politicians and dignitaries walked everywhere, attended only by one or two personal retainers, and wondered how the death threat would affect that. On Old Earth, there would be a renewed frenzy of security preparations. Here, with the New Amazonians’ culture of macha, they might just flaunt themselves more. Bravado seemed to be the most likely response.

Michelangelo was going to have a few stern words to say about that, Vincent imagined.

An armed population might cut down on personal crime–although he wasn’t willing to gamble on it unless he had the analyzed statistics graphed on his watch–but apparently property crime was still a problem.

Strike two for Utopia. The problem with the damned things always comes when you try to introduce actual people into your philosophical constructs.

At the gallery, Vincent attempted to assist with the unloading and the decisions on what would be displayed and where, but there were burly men with laborer’s licenses and handcarts and floatcarts for the former, and Michelangelo and Miss Ouagadougou for the latter. And Miss Ouagadougou finally clucked at Vincent and told him that he might as well go for a walk, because he was more in the way than she wanted.

He’d thought he might find a quiet corner and go over his notes from the last day, and attempt to present the appearance of a serious diplomat, but half an hour’s restless flipping through the information on his watch and trying not to distract Michelangelo left him pacing irritably in the anteroom. His focus was compromised. It wasn’t just the variations in gravity, daylight, and atmospheric balance, or the unfamiliar food–in fact, New Amazonia’s oxygen‑rich air was a vast improvement over New Earth’s, to choose a world not particularly at random. He was as accustomed to those things as he was to the slightly folksy Colonial Christian persona he’d been using on Lesa all morning. Adaptation was his stock in trade.

No, he had mission jitters like a first‑timer, aftermath of what he’d just set in motion, and the fact that it was now out of his control. With luck, Robert would see the message in the chip into the right hands, the ones who could decodeit. With luck, they would get a message back to him, and the alliance he’d come to broker–the one in contravention of his supposed OECC loyalties, the one that could allow Ur, New Amazonia, and several other outlying colonies to resist repatriation and governance–could become reality. He might even learn who Katherine Lexasdaughter’s opposite numbers were, if they trusted him enough to arrange a face‑to‑face introduction.

Which they had to if this was going to work. Because the assurances and promises he carried weren’t recorded anywhere except in his head, and he wouldn’t commit them to anyone else.

It was out of his hands, in other words. And there was little Vincent cared for less than trusting to luck.

And the jitters were compounded by standing here, looking at Michelangelo bent in close, professional conversation with Miss Ouagadougou, remembering the smoothness of his skin, the tingle of their wardrobes meshing–

Stop it. He turned away and padded through the other, still‑empty chambers of the museum. One of the security detail detached herself and followed at a respectful distance. Vincent checked his stride to allow her to catch up, folded his hands behind his back, and turned. The chalky surface of the floor felt soft and slick under the balls of his feet. He wondered if the Amazonians ever used carpets or mats, or only bare floors and ubiquitous carpetplant.

The agent was another tall woman, broad‑shouldered and muscular, with a beaked nose, arched eyebrows over dark eyes, and coarse‑grained skin. “I’m sorry, Miss–”

“Delhi.” She didn’t quite smile, but she was thinking about it. “Shafaqat Delhi, Miss Katherinessen.”

“Vincent,” he said. “If I may call you…Shafaqat?”

And there went the smile. She had broad lips, small teeth, very white. A radiant smile. “What’s your pleasure, Vincent?”

No stumble. Much more comfortable with him than Miss Pretoria was. But then, also not personally responsible for the success of negotiations. Vincent had no illusions who would be the sacrifice if the whole careful structure of half‑truths and unmade promises came down on the New Amazonian’s ears.

She still might benefit from revolution. Vincent wanted to see the remnant technology remain in humancontrol, not that of the Governors. At least the Governors’ directive of ecological balance kept their powers in check. But he could envision a Coalition in which those limits did not apply. One in which further growth of the species was allowed, within limits, but every human was fitted not just with a watch, but with an entire series of governor‑controlled utility fogs. It wasn’t the most reassuring concept of the future he’d ever entertained.

And the human government, the Colonial Cabinet, was worse. The Governors were unconcerned with one’s mores,as long as one didn’t reproduce illegally or steal energy, though they’d enforce Coalition laws. God granted Adam and Eve free will and the first damned thing they did with it was find the nearest snake and hand it back.

The agent looked vaguely concerned. “Vincent?”

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “You asked my pleasure.”

“Within my professional capacity, of course.” There was definitely a flirtatious edge on that smile. He might have lost his mind but at least he hadn’t lost his charm.

“Miss Ouagadougou suggested that it might be all right for us to do a little exploring, as long as it wasn’t unaccompanied.” He waved backhanded the way they’d come. Miss Ouagadougou’s laugh followed Michelangelo’s reassuring rumble, their voices echoing from high arched spaces so reverberation obscured the words. “Would you do me the honor of escort?”

She laughed, and he thought he saw respect shade her expression at his willingness to venture out in spite of the threat. And that was important, too; he was sure now that he needed to show himself fearless if he wanted to be in a position to bring these women into an alliance with Ur.

Shafaqat said, “What a delightful invitation. Although I am detailed to protect you. You could have just told me where you wanted to go. It’s Carnival. You should get to play a little.”

“But that isn’t as much fun.”

“I’ll let them know we’re going,” Shafaqat said. “And find out what time your partner wants you home.”

8

WHEN SHE DISCOVERED THAT SHAFAQAT AND MISS Katherinessen were going for a walk, Lesa opted to join them. They left Miss Ouagadougou so enamored of her task that the abandonment barely drew a grunt. Miss Kusanagi‑Jones was less sanguine about the unescorted trip, arguing with Katherinessen in low tones. His unease didn’t seem assuaged by Lesa’s comment that she was capable of squiring Vincent undamaged through the streets, even on the first of Carnival.

As they returned through the galleries, Lesa noticed that Katherinessen was stealing surreptitious sideways glances, and she got the impression that he was looking for some evidence of the fate of the Colonial marines who had died here.

There wasn’t any. House wouldn’t permit lingering damage–and whatever damage there had been, had been from the marines’ weapons. The ghosts didn’t leave scorched or melted walls.

They paused on the carpetplant in the antechamber so that Lesa could slip into her boots, Katherinessen could adjust his wardrobe, and they could both retrieve their hats. The Coalition diplomats seemed to have adapted to the need to keep the sun off their heads. Which was more than she could say for Robert. Lesa could no more keep a hat on him than on their daughter.

Shafaqat seemed relieved to be part of the expedition, although Lesa was aware that the agent bore a certain healthy respect for herself. And that as they stepped outside, she was hovering protectively close to Katherinessen and not to Lesa.

At least, nothing in her manner suggested that she anticipated trouble. Lesa glanced over her own shoulder, made sure of the street, and led them along a latticed walkway that swung thick with garlands, threads of smoke from the incense swaying in the sultry air. “Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?”

“Carnival.” He ticked his fingernails along the lattice. “I’m familiar with a Christian holiday of the same name–”

“We celebrate it in honor of the Gaian Principle,” Lesa said. “Ten days of party before the summer fast of Contemplation. Not a complete fast,” she hastened to add, as Katherinessen turned to her, lips parting. “But we make a point of a bit of spiritual cleansing and contemplation.”

“But it’s not a religious holiday?”

“It’s a spiritualobservance,” she said. “Some follow it more than others. Simple food, no alcohol, meditation, and a focus on community service and charitable giving. A time of renewal, when the jungle dries in the heat before the rains.”

“Contemplation,” he said, shaping it with his lips as if tasting it. “How long is that?”

“Fifty days,” she said.

She saw him running conversions in his head–day length, and year length. “That’s a long time.”

“It’s a pretty good party,” she answered, and met his wrinkled nose with a grin. “It takes awhile to recover.”

She took him on a tour of the administrative center first, Shafaqat trailing them attentively. Seeing her own city through new eyes was an interesting process. He asked questions she’d never considered at any depth, although she was sure there were scientific teams at work on every one of them, and she knew some of the common speculations about this and that and whatever the Dragons might have intended: What are the colors for? Do you have any idea what the shapes of the buildings represent?

It was her city, after all. She’d been born here, and what seemed to Katherinessen alien and fabulous was to Lesa no more than the streets she’d grown up on, the buildings in whose shadows she had played.

“Why do the walls hum?” he asked eventually, when she’d been forced to shake her head and demur more times than she liked to admit.

“The ghosts,” she said, pleased to finally have an answer.

He laughed, as she’d intended, and lifted his fingers to his face to sniff whatever trace of the blossoms lingered there. “You’d expect them to smell sweet,” he said, gesturing to a heavy, wax‑white bloom. “Ghosts?”

Lesa knew what he meant. The New Amazonian pseudo‑orchid had a citruslike scent, not floral at all. “The haunted city, after all,” she said. “The walls hum. Sometimes you see shadows moving from the corners of your eye. Sometimes House takes it upon itself to make arrangements you didn’t anticipate. We still don’t know everything Penthesilea is capable of.”

“But you live here?”

“In a hundred years, it’s never acted in any way contrary to our interests. When the foremothers arrived, there was nobody here but the khir. It took care of them, too.”

“The pets.”

“Domesticated by the Dragons. We think. Symbiotes or pets.”

“And left behind when the Dragons–”

“Went wherever they went. Yes.”

“Reading the subtext of your remarks, the city adapts?”

“House. We call it House. And yes. It understands simple requests, makes whatever we need that’s not too complicated–appliances or electronics or fluffy towels–and cleans up. Most people don’t notice the hum. You must have sensitive hands.”

“The hum is its power source?”

“Or maybe its heartbeat. If it’s alive. But it’s probably just a vast, abandoned fog, still cleaning up after the family dog millennia later.”

Katherinessen didn’t answer for a minute. They were leaving the government center and the streets were starting to fill up. Not just the pedestrian galleries, but the roadways themselves were full of women and men, heads crowned with garlands and necks hung with beads, swathed in gaudy, rustling paper costumery that Katherinessen seemed to be making an effort neither to reach out for nor flinch away from.

“That’s sad,” he said. “When you think about it. You don’t know what happened to the Dragons?”

“We don’t,” she said, both alert to his prying for information and fighting the urge to trust him. Everything she could read on him said he was honest–as honest as a double agent could be–and the chip’s information confirmed everything she thought she knew. She had to raise her voice to carry over the street noise, the melodious thunder of a steel drum. “But I believe they died. Somehow.”

His eyes were shadowed under the hat when he turned them on her, but they still caught fragments of light and glowed like sunlit honey. “You have a reason to think so?”

“Miss Katherinessen,” she said, leading him around the crowd gathered about the musicians, out of the shade gallery and into the hotter, less‑crowded street, while Shafaqat followed five steps behind. “I guess you’ve never had a pet?”

It could have been a facetious question, but he saw by her eyes that she was serious. “No,” he said. “Tamed animals aren’t permitted in the Coalition. It’s unnatural.”

“A lot of animals have symbiotes,” she said, threading through the pressing crowd.

Michelangelo would have a fit. All these people, and not just close enough to touch, but packed together so that one could not avoid touching. The streets were a blurof people, brightly clothed, drenched in scent or sweat or both, hatted and parasoled against the consuming light. The clamor of music was everywhere, instruments he recognized from historical fiche and instruments he didn’t recognize at all, and ancient standbys like saxophone, trombone, and keyboard synthesizer, as if the entire city had spontaneously transformed into something that was half marching band and half orchestra.

Pedestrians threw money to some musicians. Others had no cup out, and accepted beads or garlands of flowers or offerings of food. He couldn’t follow one song for more than a bar or two–they laddered up each other and interwove, clashing. The sheer press of people was as dizzying as the heat.

Vincent surreptitiously dialed his wardrobe down and hurried to keep up with the warden. “You don’t think it’s immoral to enslave animals?”

“I don’t think it’s slavery.” She paused by what he would have called a square, a pedestrian plaza, except it was anything but square. Or geometrically regular, for that matter.

He should have known better than to continue the same old argument, but if he could resist an opening, he wouldn’t have the job he did. “And what about treating your husband as chattel? Is that not slavery?”

“I’m not married,” she snapped, and then flushed and looked down. Shafaqat coughed into her hand.

Vincent concealed his smile, and filed that one under touchy subjects. “And?”

“No,” Pretoria said. “It’s not slavery either. You hungry?”

She looked him straight in the eye when she changed the subject, which was how Vincent knew she was lying. And her smile when he rocked back said she saw him noticing. That would be entirely too convenient.

“I could eat,” he said, though the bustling mall reeked of acid sweetness and perfumes and scorched flesh.

“This is the place to get lunch. I think we can find you something that was never self‑aware, although you may be forced to eat it seasoned with a flying insect or two.” She extended her arm, which he took.

“I can live with the death of a few bugs on my conscience.”

“Hypocrite,” she said. But she laughed. “Doesn’t it get tiring being so damned morally superior all the time?”

Kusanagi‑Jones managed to forget Vincent’s absence quickly. Miss Ouagadougou was pleasant, efficient, and capable, and there was a lot of work to accomplish. The three largest pieces would form the backbone and focal point of the display. Two of the three were twentieth‑century North American–one just a fragment, and both remnants of a much larger public artwork.

Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t think those anything special. Perhaps they’d be more meaningful in context, but it seemed to him that their status as cultural treasures was based on their provenance rather than on their art. They were historical works by women; it might be enough for the New Amazonians, but Kusanagi‑Jones hoped his own aesthetic standards were somewhat higher.

The third piece, though, he couldn’t denigrate. Its return was a major sacrifice, big enough to make him uneasy. The level of commitment betrayed by the Cabinet permitting such a treasure to slip beyond its grasp indicated desperation. Desperation, or no actual intent to let the sculpture go for long.

Officially, Catharine Kimberly was considered a minor artist, but Kusanagi‑Jones had seen some of her other work, and he didn’t think Phoenix Abasedwas the aberration that most scholars maintained. It was a marble sculpture–real marble, quarried stone, one of the last. Larger than life‑size, it depicted a nude woman overcome with grief, her hips twisted by a drawn‑up knee, her upper body thrown forward as if she had been knocked down or she was prostrating herself, sprawled into the abject line of her extended arms, which she seemed–by the sprung muscles of her neck, buttocks, and torso–to be fighting the miring stone.

They weren’t precisely arms, though. Where reaching fingers should have splayed, consuming stone gave the suggestion of wings. Broken feathers scattered the base of the sculpture, tumbled down her shoulders, tangled in the mossy snarl of hair framing her pain‑saturated face. Her head was turned, straining upward, her mouth open in a hurtful Oand her eyes–roughly suggested, thumbprint shadows–tight shut. As if her wings were failing her, crumbling, shed, leaving her mired in unhewn stone.

And now that her wrappings were off, and he stood before her in person, he could see what the fiche couldn’t show. She did not merely grovel, but struggled, dragging against the inexorable stone and wailing aloud as it consumed her.

Her body was fragile, bony, imperfect. She was too frail to save herself. She was devoured.

Perhaps the artist was only a woman. Perhaps she’d never created another work to compare to this raw black‑and‑ocher‑streaked masterpiece. But then, she might have, might she not? If she had lived.

And this was enough. It had impact,a massive weight of reality that pressed his chest like a stone. His eyes stung and he shivered.

Whatever the evidence of her name–and Kusanagi‑Jones would be the first to admit that pre‑Diaspora naming conventions were a nightmare from which he was still trying to awaken–Catharine Kimberly had been a dark‑skinned South African woman who lived at the time of first Assessment and the rise of the Governors.

Operating under their own ruthless program, the Governors had first subverted the primitive utility fogs and modulars of their era, turning industrial and agricultural machines to the purpose of genocide. Domestic animals and plants had been the first victims, destroyed as the most efficient solution to a hopeless complex of ethical failings. Better to die than reproduce as chattel.

Then the Northerners had been Assessed, for their lifestyle and history of colonial exploitation. Following that, persons of European and Chinese descent, regardless of talent or gender.

Billions of corpses produced an ecological dilemma resolved through the banking and controlled release of organic compounds. Salvage teams were allowed to enter North American, Asian, and European cities, removing anything of cultural value that they could carry away, and then the cities were Terraformed under layers of soil produced by the breakdown of human and agricultural detritus.

After that, the tricky work began.

During the Vigil–the seven‑year gap between first Assessment and the final extensive round–those survivors who could find a way were permitted to take flight. At the end of the Vigil, those remaining on Earth had been culled, using parameters set by the radicals who had created the Governors and died to teach them to kill.

The exempt were an eclectic group. Among them were poets, sculptors, diplomats, laborers, plumbers, scientists, engineers, surgeons. Those who created with their minds or with their hands. A chosen population of under fifty million. Less than one in two hundred left alive.

Catharine Kimberly had been spared that first Assessment. And so she had completed Phoenix Abased. And then she had taken her own life.

Which was a sort of art in itself.

Kusanagi‑Jones reached out, left‑handed, and ran his fingers down the cool, mutilated stone. It was smooth, flinty to the touch. He could pretend that he felt some energy in it, a kind of strength. Mysticism and superstition, of course, but Kimberly’s grief gilded the surface of her swan song like a current tickling his fingertips. He sniffed and stepped back, driving his nails into his palm. And looked up to find Miss Ouagadougou smiling at him.

“It’s a powerful piece,” she said, kindly patronizing. Just an emotional male, after all.

He smiled, and played to it. “Never actually seen it before. It’s revered–”

“But not displayed?”

“Not in Cairo,” he said. “We don’t travel to other cities much. Wasteful. It’s different to touch something.” He shrugged. “Not that I would rub my hands over it normally, but–”

“Curator’s privilege,” she said. She bent from the waist, her hands on her knees, and stared into the wailing woman’s empty eyes. “Tell me about your name.”

“My name?”

She turned, caught him with a smile. Like all the New Amazonians, she seemed old for her age, but also fit, and his threat‑ready eye told him that she was stronger than she looked. “Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi‑Jones. Quite the mouthful. Are those lineage names?”

“Michelangelo–”

“For the artist, of course. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni.”

“Show‑off,” he said, and her smile became a grin. She straightened up, hands on her hips, and rolled her shoulders back. Volatile male, he thought, and Lied to her a little. It wasn’t hard. If he didn’t think about it, if he wasn’t consciously manipulating someone, it happened automatically. He wasn’t sure he’d know an honest reaction if he had one. And if Miss Ouagadougou wanted to flirt, he could flirt with the best.

Second‑best. There was always Vincent.

“Yes,” he said. “For the artist.”

“And Miss Katherinessen is named for Vincent van Gogh?”

He backed away from Phoenix Abasedand framed it with his hands. “Named for the twentieth‑century poet. Edna St. Vincent Millay. Ur has its own conventions. And his mother is a fan.”

“And what about the rest of it?”

“Katherinessen?”

“No, I understand a matronymic. Osiris.”

“Egyptian god of the dead. After the Vigil and the second Assessment, most of the survivors…you understand that it was rare for more than one member of a family to survive.”

“I understand,” she said. “I think the Glenna Goodacre piece should be in the middle. The Maya Lin fragment to block sight lines as one enters”–it was an enormous mirror‑bright rectangle of black granite, etched with a list of men’s names–“and then as you come around, Goodacre and Kimberly beyond.”

“Saving the best for last.”

She paced him as he continued to back away, trying the lay of the hall from various perspectives. “Precisely. So your ancestors…constructed new families? Renamed themselves?”

“After heroes and gods and historical figures.”

“And artists.”

“Sympathetic magic,” Michelangelo said. “Art was survival.”

“For us it was history.” Miss Ouagadougou slid her fingers at full extension down glossy black granite. “Proof, I guess–”

“Of what came before.”

“Yes.” The tendons along the side of her neck flexed as she turned to stare at him. “Do you wonder what it was like?”

“Before the Governors? Sometimes.”

“It must be better now,” she said. “From what I’ve read. But still, the price.”

“Too much.” Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi‑Jones. The futility of his own name stunned him. Five meaningless words. Five cultures, five entire racesof people. And all that was left of them, the living rememberer of all those millions of dead, was the syllables of a Liar’s name.

He swallowed. It hurt.

Her fingers brushed the wall again and fell away from the black granite. “It’s lunchtime,” she said. “I understand you have some dietary restrictions to consider. Shall we see what we can find to eat while the staff rearranges the display? We’ll come back to it after.”

“I’d like that.” He looked away from the wall, which was a mistake, because it put him face to face with Kimberly’s murdered angel. “I’d like that very much.”

9

VINCENT’S WARDROBE COULDN’T KEEP UP WITH THE sweat. It slicked his neck, rolled in beads down his face, and soaked the underside of his hair and a band where the borrowed hat rested on his head. His hands were still greasy from a lunch of some fried starchy fruit and tubers, served in a paper wrapper, and his wardrobe was too overwrought to deal with it.

He mopped his face on his sleeve, further stressing foglets already strained by the jostling crowd and the press of his escort on either side, and tried to regulate his breathing. The nausea was due to the heat, he thought, and not the food; his watch didn’t report any problems beyond mild dehydration and a slightly elevated body temperature, which he was keeping an eye on. It wasn’t dangerous yet, just uncomfortable, but Miss Pretoria was tireless. She tugged Vincent’s sleeve to direct his attention to a Dragon costume operated by two men, the one managing the front limbs walking on stilts and operating paired extensions from his wrists that simulated the beast’s enormous wings. “How could something that big fly?” he asked, checking his step to let the puppet shamble past.

“They must have been somewhat insubstantial for their size,” Miss Pretoria said. “The khir, which are the Dragons’ closest living relatives, have a honeycombed endoskeleton that leaves them much lighter than an equivalent terrestrial mammal. So the Dragons would have been about the same weight and wingspan as the largest pterosaurs. And we think they soared more than flew, and may have been highly adapted climbers.” She turned to watch the puppet proceed down the street, bowing and dancing, bells shimmering along the span of the wings.

Her eyes widened as she turned to him. “Miss Katherinessen, you should have said something.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I think we’d better get you out of the heat.” She turned to Shafaqat, gesturing her forward. “Would you call for a car, Miss Delhi? And get Miss Katherinessen something to drink? We’re going to find some shade.”

“I’m fine,” Vincent said, as Pretoria latched onto his wrist and tugged him toward a side street where the buildings would block most of the glaring light. “Nothing a cold shower and a glass of ice water wouldn’t cure.”

Pretoria clucked her tongue and bulldozed over him. “You’re not adapted to this climate, and I’m notexplaining to my mother why it is that a Coalition diplomat suffered heat exhaustion under my care, no matter how manly you need to prove you are.”

He checked over his shoulder. Shafaqat moved through the press of bodies efficiently, her height, bearing, and uniform gaining a certain deference even from costumed, staggering merrymakers. Vincent had never seen a crowd like this on a Coalition planet: jostling, singing, shouting, raucously shoulder to shoulder and yet decorously polite. He wondered if it was a side effect of living packed into their alien cities, encircled by the waiting jungle, or of their rigid social strictures and their armed obeisance to the code duello.

Pretoria’s hand cooled his skin as she pulled him into the shady side street, which wasn’t any less crowded than the square. She pulled his wrist out and up as he made the choice to let her touch him without resistance. It was foreign, invasive. His skin crawled and stung when she pulled back, steadying his hand with her other one, and bent over it.

“You’re burned,” she said. “Not too badly, I think, but it’s going to hurt by tonight.”

“That’s impossible. My wardrobe should filter UV–”

But his wardrobe was overstressed, and of course he’d had to dial it down to keep it from zapping pedestrians–or Miss Pretoria, with her frontier touchiness. She squeezed his wrist, and the cool pressure of her palm turned to shocking heat. He yelped and yanked his hand away.

“Sunburn,” she said. “Good thing you wore long sleeves.” And then she reached out and caught his shoulders, pushing him against the wall, and he would have shrugged her away but the blood roared in his ears and the orange status lights flickered in his watch. The street swam around him, aswarm with people who might have been staring at him curiously if he could have focused on their faces. “You know,” he said, uncertainly, “I don’t feel too well at all.”

Her hand closed on his wrist again, searing, as she tugged him into motion. Shafaqat reappeared on his other side. “Miss Pretoria?” Something icy and dripping touched his hand.

“Drink that, Vincent. Miss Delhi, did you call the car?”

“I’m fine,” Vincent insisted, even though he couldn’t quite lift his feet. He broke Pretoria’s grip, more roughly than he had intended, and ducked his head, blinking, as he tried to get a good look at the display on his watch. Nausea made him gulp. “I don’t think I should drink anything.”

They ignored him. “It’s on the way,” Shafaqat said. “Where are we going?”

“Redirect it to Pretoria house. We can get him there and into a cold shower by the time it could reach us and find a place to land in this crowd, and it’ll be a huge flap if we have to send him to the clinic.” Miss Pretoria cursed. “I’m an idiot. I thought he would tell me if it got to be too much.”

“Men,” Shafaqat said. Vincent could picture the twist of her mouth from her tone.

“Angelo would tell you it’s Vincent in particular, not men in general,” Vincent said.

“Vincent, can you walk a little way?” Pretoria said, concerned, carefully pronouncing his given name.

“I can walk.” He wove slightly, but steadied. “How far?”

Shafaqat answered, pressing the cold, sweating thing into his hand again. He closed fingers that didn’t want to tighten around the coolness of the globe. “Less than a kilometer. And you have to drink this.”

“I feel sick.”

“You feel sick because you’re dehydrated. You need fluids. If you can’t keep it down you’ll need an IV. Slowly, just a sip at a time. But drink.”

Her tone reminded him of Angelo’s. Not exactly hectoring, but assured. Somebody steadied his hand as he raised the globe to his mouth, found the straw, and sipped.

Once the fluid–something tart, with bubbles–flooded his mouth, it was an act of will not to gulp it all. Temperature shock chilled his teeth in the bone, replacing the dizzy headache with a stabbing one. He found his footing. “Better.”

Now that he’d become aware, the prickle of warmth across his shoulders and back and thighs took on new significance. He’d worn long sleeves, but if his wardrobe’s UV blocking had failed, those sleeves wouldn’t have protected him.

He was going to have one hell of a radiation burn.

“Drink more,” Pretoria reminded, keeping him on the shady side of the street. He obeyed, the sugary fluid a relief. He finished the globe quickly despite his attempts to regulate his intake. They’d stopped walking, pausing in a much smaller side street–more of a service access route, too narrow for a hovercar and tight even for ground transport–without the press of foot traffic. As Shafaqat pressed another globe into his hands–this one a little warmer, but also dripping condensation–Miss Pretoria turned aside and placed one hand on the wall of a nearby structure.

“House,” she said, “I need cold water, please, in a basin.”

He still felt unwell–disconnected–but it was his body, now, and not his mind. He sipped the second beverage, and asked, “Is this Pretoria house?”

“It’s the back wall of a marketplace,” Miss Pretoria said, and a cubbyhole appeared about a meter up the violet‑gray wall.

Shafaqat urged Vincent toward it. He went, finishing the second drink before relinquishing the spent globe into the security agent’s hands. She crushed it and made it vanish.

“Roll up your sleeves,” Miss Pretoria said. He didn’t bother; his wardrobe didn’t mind wet. He plunged arms webbed with distended veins in water as frigid as if it flowed from a cave. The cold first saturated his arms and ached in the depths of the bones, and then the slug of chilled blood struck his heart and spilled up his throat. He gasped and remembered to knock his hat off before sticking his face into the water.

When he straightened, water dripping down his forehead and under the collar of his shirt, he was suddenly clearheaded. He turned and slumped against the wall, tilting his head back to encourage the water to run from his braids down his neck and not into his eyes. He coughed water, blew it from his nostrils, and panted until the last of the dizziness faded. His wardrobe, out of the sun now and given half a chance to work, cooled him efficiently, evaporating sweat and water from his skin, drawing off excess heat.

“Thank you,” he said, when he dared open his eyes and try to focus. It worked surprisingly well. First he saw Shafaqat, and then, over her shoulder, he saw something less encouraging. Five women, sidearms drawn, faces covered by Carnival masks.

“Miss Pretoria?” He surreptitiously dialed his wardrobe up.

She turned, following his gaze, and stiffened with her hand hovering above her weapon.

“There’s only five of them,” Shafaqat said.

“Good odds,” Pretoria said. She sounded as if she meant it. Vincent pushed away from the wall and stepped up to cover her flank. If it were histarget, he’d have another team covering the side street. “Three more.”

“Thank you.” Pretoria’s right hand arched over her weapon, a gunslinger pose, fingers working. She’d unfastened the snap; Vincent hadn’t seen her do it.

Pretoria and Shafaqat shared a glance. Shafaqat nodded. “Run,” Pretoria said. Flat command, assumed obedience.

“I don’t know where I’m running to.”

“Pretoria household.” Miss Pretoria stepped diagonally, crowding him back.

“Lesa, there’s eight–”

Her grin over her shoulder was no more than a quick flash, but it silenced him. He looked again, saw the way the masked women paused to assess every shift of balance–Pretoria’s even more so than Shafaqat’s.

He recognized that fearful respect. Lesa Pretoria had a reputation. And for whatever reason, they didn’t want to kill her. He acquiesced, though she probably couldn’t see him nod. “How do I get there?”

“Follow the ghosts,” Pretoria snapped, as the first group of adversaries picked closer, fanning out. If Vincent were in Pretoria’s shoes, he’d wait until they were close enough to get in each other’s way. If he were gambling that they didn’t want to kill him.

“Ask House,” Shafaqat clarified. Slightly more useful. She stood with one shoulder to the street, narrowing her profile, her hand also hovering over her holster. “We’ll delay them. Go left”–through the line of three, rather than the line of five–“Go on. Go.”

Vincent went.

Angelo might looklike the dangerous one, but that didn’t mean that Vincent had no idea how to take care of himself in a fight. He charged, zigzagging, and trusted his wardrobe to soak up any fire he didn’t dodge.

When the fire came, it wasn’t bullets. A tangler hissed at his head, but his timing was good, and his wardrobe caught it at the right angle and shunted it aside. Gelatinous tendrils curled toward him, and sparks scattered where they encountered the wardrobe and were shocked off. Two of the masked women grabbed for him as he sidestepped the tangler, and his wardrobe zapped their hands. He shoved past them as shot from a chemical weapon pattered behind him, spreading the sharp reek of gunpowder, while he twisted against grabbing hands.

Firearms echoed again, and one of the women who was clinging to his arm despite the wardrobe’s defenses jerked and fell away. Vincent shouldered the other one aside and ran.

Leaving a couple of women to do his fighting for him. But they were security, and they had ordered him to clear the area.

If it had been Michelangelo, he would have done the same.

Once he reached the crowded street, he could no longer hear the footsteps behind him. He wove between clusters of merrymakers, half expecting some good Samaritan to trip him as a purse‑snatcher or runaway, but it was Carnival, and other than a few turned heads, bright laughter, and a startled exclamation–no one paid him heed.

He couldn’t run for long. His head started spinning again, and he’d left his hat lying in the damp dust. He let himself drop into a jog, then a walk, sidestepping drunks and Dragon dancers and wandering musicians. The toe of his shoe dragged on the pavement and he stumbled, his wet hair steaming. But Miss Pretoria had also told him that her household was close, and Shafaqat had told him how to get there.

He ducked down a side street strung with more cut flowers, past three men and five women carrying shopping bags, and stepped into the shade. “House,” he said, feeling ridiculous, although he’d waited until there was a gap in the flow of people, “show me how to get to Pretoria household.”

At first there was no reaction. But then a shimmer formed along the wall, neither an arrow nor a trace, but something like a ripple on water. It was a pale sheen of blue luminescence, dim in shadow and brighter in sunlight, and it led him further along the street he had ducked down.

It didn’t take him long to realize that he wasn’t being led by the most direct route. Instead, House brought him down side streets, less populated ways, and through shadowing courtyards. It concerned him, but he didn’t know which other way to go, and so he followed. The shimmer ran along walls, or sometimes immediately underfoot, always a half‑step ahead until it brought him back into sunlight on a quiet byway with only a little pedestrian traffic, not broad enough for a car. There, at the bottom of a set of broad shallow steps leading to a screened veranda, it abandoned him, vanishing into the pavement like oil dispersing on water.

He looked up the steps at the front door, which glided open. Behind it stood a young woman with Lesa’s broad cheeks but a darker complexion and curlier hair. “House said to expect you,” she said. “I’m Katya Pretoria. Come in off the street.”

That’s a bit more than a goddamned giant utility fog,Vincent thought, but he didn’t hesitate to climb the steps.

“Your mother might need help,” he said, pausing to glance over his shoulder, back in the direction from which he’d come.

“Household security’s on the way.”

10

“MISS KUSANAGI‑JONES,” MISS OUAGADOUGOU SAID AFTER he had entirely managed to lose track of the time after, “do you need to check in with your ship?”

He glanced up from sketching schematics on his watch, refocusing on Miss Ouagadougou through shimmering green lines that overlaid the physical gallery. His watch identified her as an individual rather than a part of the landscape, and backgrounded the display plan behind her. It looked odd, sandwiched between her and a Gerуnima Cruz Montoya casein‑on‑paper painting. “Sorry?”

“It’s past teatime. And the station should be overhead in a few ticks. We’ll eat upstairs, and I thought you might–”

“Very kind,” Kusanagi‑Jones said, recollecting himself. “Does this suit?”

“The schematics?” Her hair bobbed on the nape of her neck. “If you finalize them, I’ll upload them to the ministry net, and they’ll keep a crew in tonight to finish the setup. It actually works out better this way.”

“It?” He was already sealing the plans, satisfied with the exhibit. Miss Ouagadougou had a good eye. “Lead on,” he said, before she finished fussing with her headset.

They ascended the lift in companionable silence, Miss Ouagadougou still fiddling and Kusanagi‑Jones pulling up a sat‑phone license on his wardrobe menu. He’d need a relay station; his watch couldn’t power orbital communication.

If he was lucky, his communication would reach Kaiwo Marubefore she dispatched a packet‑bot back to Earth to swap mail. It would still take six months to send a message and get an answer, assuming The Pride of Ithacaor one of the other inbound ships was close enough to relay the bot’s signal. But at least this way the message would be in the queue.

If anything happened.

He coded two reports. The first used a standard diplomatic cipher, and detailed a strictly factual, strictly accurate report of his and Vincent’s doings since landfall. The second, concealed in the first and still largely innocuous to Coalition eyes, concerned itself with a perceived obstructionist element in New Amazonian government.

There was a third message, contained not in a discrete data stream, but in the interplay of the others. In the cracks between. Kusanagi‑Jones concealed an ironic smile.

This one, of necessity brief, must be sent when Vincent wasn’t present to record it. It was sealed eyes‑only, quantum coded. When Kusanagi‑Jones broke the seal on his own end of the code, a quantum entanglement triggered a wave‑state collapse on the other end of the system, alerting his principal that a message was en route. The only man in the universe who could read the message was the one who held the other half of the key.

That man was Siddhartha Deucalion Hunyadi Lawson‑Hrothgar. He was a senior member of the Earth Coalition Cabinet. And its contents, if they couldhave fallen into the wrong hands, would have meant surplusing and execution not only for Kusanagi‑Jones, but for Lawson‑Hrothgar as well.

Kusanagi‑Jones understood Vincent’s position. The great‑grandson of a Colonial Founder, the son of Captain Lexasdaughter–the most powerful head of state remaining under Coalition control–Vincent would work withinthe system, attempt to ease the Coalition’s stranglehold through diplomatic means.

Kusanagi‑Jones, with the assistance of a revolutionary patron, had chosen another path.

Which was the thing Vincent could never be permitted to learn about New Earth, and the destruction of the starship named Skidbladnir,and why they had been separated: that it had happened so because Michelangelo had planned it that way.

“When you report,” Miss Ouagadougou said, as they stepped out into brilliant sunlight, “I’ll have something to add.”

Kusanagi‑Jones wouldn’t show startlement. Instead, he stepped aside to give her a line of travel and fell into step behind. “Something about the plan I’d like to discuss. May I uplink the new version to your datacart?”

“Of course.” She pulled it out of her hip pack and flipped up the cover. “Password?”

He gave her one, and established a single‑photon connection. The security detail hung back, just out of earshot if they spoke in level tones. New Amazonian courtesy. But there were some things you didn’t say out loud.

Green letters flashed across his vision and vanished. The director of security is a radical,Miss Ouagadougou said. Get her to enlist.

Kyoto?he asked. That old dragon?

She’s inclined pro‑Coalition. A free‑maler. Claude’s a loss. Saide Austin holds her purse strings, and Saide Austin…He glanced at her as the text scroll hesitated. She shrugged, a slow rise of her shoulders, a quick tilt of her head. He recognized the name from the gallery. Saide Austin.

More than an artist, apparently. You’re a Coalition agent.

Since before the war.

He wondered what they’d given her to buy her loyalty–money, access to Coalition art treasures–or if hers was an ideological treachery.

She put her hand on his arm. I’ve imbedded an information packet in your copy of the plan. She transmitted a code key, which he saved. “I’m starving,” she said. “It’s been hours since lunch.”

“Miss Ouagadougou?”

Kusanagi‑Jones looked up. One of the agents had stepped forward. He might as well have been a shadow on the wall.

“Cathay.” Miss Ouagadougou smiled. “Problem?”

“Miss Pretoria requests you and Miss Kusanagi‑Jones join her at Pretoria house.” Cathay–Kusanagi‑Jones was uncertain if it was her first name or last–smiled. “A car is waiting.”

Miss Ouagadougou wet her lips, and Kusanagi‑Jones’s pulse accelerated. Problem.

“My uplink,” he said. He’d been hoping, frankly, to get another look around the galleries and see if he could find whatever passed for a power conduit. Wherever they had the power plant hidden, there had to be wiring. Electricity didn’t transmit itself, and he’d seen no signs of microwave receivers. Room temperature superconductors, he’d guess.

“Do it in the car,” she said, fingers closing on his wrist.

Problem. Yes, indeed.

Kii touches the cold illation machines that populateKaiwo Maru ’s core. They are intelligent, in their own way, but Kii is not of interest to them. They process Kii, and ignore.

Kii contemplates, and the Consent observes. There is no determination yet, as Kii analyzes the Governors’ decision trees. The Governors are aware. They are adaptive. They are goal driven, and they are improvisational.

But their entire purpose, Kii soon understands, is the maintenance of the encroaching bipeds. They are a predator. A constructed predator, a coolly designed one. They exist to assure the bipeds do not overburden their habitat. They are ruthless and implacable, and their disregard for Kii is not founded on a lack of intelligence or awareness. Rather, Kii is external to their parameters. Their only interest is the bipeds. They are created creatures, as Kii is a created creature, a program contained in a virtual shell. But unlike Kii, they are not alive.

They are notesthelich . They are not alive. In this fragment, Consent is reached with ease.

Vincent shouldn’t have been so relieved that it was Robert who took charge of him once they were inside. It was unprofessional. But for all his size, scars, and shaven head, the big man was a calming presence, revealing no threat‑registers. It was the easy kind of personality that deservedly confident, competent, unthreatened people projected, and Vincent really was not feeling well at all. He let Robert bring him into the cool depths of the house, under more of those swags of dead flowers, and show him into the fresher. Or…make one for him. Now that he was watching for it, he could see how it worked, the way the building anticipated and fulfilled requests. A limited teachable AI, at least, if not sentient.

The city was not so much haunted as programmed.

“Take off your shirt,” Robert said as the door irised shut behind them. He reached to grab cloth, and Vincent, who hadn’t dialed his wardrobe down, stepped back fast and tilted his chin up to look Robert in the eye. White teeth shone in contrast to Robert’s plum‑colored lips, and Vincent sighed.

“No,” Robert said. “That’s not a proposition.”

Vincent knew. There was no erotic interest at all, either predatory or friendly. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Robert backed off, and Vincent touched his wrist and made his wardrobe vanish, dialing down the protection, too. He turned, showing Robert his back, and bit his lip not to shiver away when Robert reached out, slowly, making sure Vincent could see him in the mirror as he paused his hand a centimeter from Vincent’s shoulder blade. The heat of his palm made Vincent flinch; when Robert drew his hand back, he scrubbed it against his vest as if to rub the radiant warmth away. “That’s going to blister. Have you ever had a sunburn?”

“No,” Vincent said.

“You’ll feel nauseated, achy, tired. You’ll experience chills. House, some burn cream, please? Miss Katherinessen, into the shower. Cold water will help. Essentially, you’re experiencing a mild radiation burn.”

“I’ve had those,” Vincent said. His watch would handle the worst of it: he could manage his chemistry to alleviate the flulike symptoms, and his licenses included both powerful painkillers and topical analgesics.

Another aperture expanded before him, leading him into a smaller chamber. He ducked through, stepping over the ridge while it was still opening, and sniffed hard. The pull of raw skin across his back and thighs was an unsubtle reminder toward caution. He paused a moment, giving his wardrobe enough time to collect its foglets so they wouldn’t wash away. There were no controls in the stall and no obvious showerhead.

“House,” he said, experimentally, as the aperture closed between him and Robert. “Cool water, please.”

It pattered on his head like rain.

Once Miss Ouagadougou had ascertained that Vincent was well, Kusanagi‑Jones breathed a sigh of relief and set about working out how to adapt his watch to the car’s hub. He’d have to piggyback on its signal, which meant all the more opportunities for the transmission to be intercepted, but it wasn’t as if there were a secure channel on the entire damned planet. You closed your eyes and put your trust in cryptography.

He sent the message with Miss Ouagadougou’s addendum, unlinked, and sat back against the upholstery. Cloth rather than leather. He permitted himself to sag into it. “What happened?”

In spare details, Cathay told him. “Miss Pretoria?” he interrupted, when she paused to draw a breath.

“Fine,” she said. “Uninjured. She has arranged to meet us at Pretoria house. You and Miss Katherinessen are asked to limit your movements until we sort out which faction is responsible for the kidnapping attempt.”

“Of course.” And of course, the attempt itself could be nothing more than a smokescreen to justify tightening the leash. But that was Vincent’s department, not his.

He was still going to shave thin strips off Vincent.

The car ride was brief. It still amused Kusanagi‑Jones that the automobile had to be putsomewhere when they arrived rather than vanishing in a blur of fogs. It was, in point of fact, too large to fit down the narrow alley that led to Pretoria house, and he and Miss Ouagadougou and Cathay disembarked at the bottom of the street so the driver could take it away. Cathay, he noticed, stuck as close to his side as he would have stuck to Vincent’s, shielding him with her body.

He’d expected Lesa Pretoria. The young woman who waited at the top of the stairs looked tolerably like her, but younger and softer around the eyes. “Katya Pretoria,” she said, beckoning. She didn’t step out into the sun, and Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t blame her. The brief walk from car to porch was enough to make his skin sting. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Kusanagi‑Jones. Your partner’s being seen to–”

“Vincent wasn’t injured?”

“He just got a little too much sun,” she assured, extending her hand. Kusanagi‑Jones brushed his wrist to dial his wardrobe down and accepted the handshake as he crested the stairs. She pulled him up the last step easily. He wasn’t tall, but he weighed more than he seemed to and probably had twenty kilograms on her. She braced to take the weight, but didn’t grunt. “You can speak with him as soon as he’s out of the shower.”

“Sorry to be so early to dinner.”

Her smile broadened, unmistakably flirtatious. Miss Ouagadougou cleared her throat from the bottom of the steps, but Katya ignored it. “It’s good to have fluid plans, don’t you think? Miss Ouagadougou, thank you for a safe delivery. We’ll have him home in time for the ceremony tomorrow, I promise.”

And before the historian could quite answer, Katya took Kusanagi‑Jones’s wrist and drew him into the house, security following. As soon as they were inside, though, Kusanagi‑Jones stepped away from her to get a sense of the space. The house was cool inside, shadowed by the broad verandas and rich with breezes. “How much seeing to did Vincent require?”

“Miss Katherinessen has made himself quite at home,” she said, and the grin turned into a wink. “One of the senior males is seeing to him. He’s in good hands.”

Kusanagi‑Jones snorted. He let a little jealousy show. It couldn’t hurt, and it was easy enough to feel jealous of Vincent. He had a way of getting what he wanted, after all. “The question is, is your male safe at Vincent’s hands?”

“Robert’s my sire,” she said. “He’s safe most places. He’s a three‑time Trial champion, all city, and before he retired he was third overall.”

A gleam of pride reflected through her voice. He wasn’t likely to forget the Trials quickly. And he remembered Robert from the docks, and Robert had had scars. And had been beautiful and dark.

Just to Vincent’s taste.

But interesting, that pride. My sire. A young woman proud of her father, even here. He supposed just because you kept someone as chattel, it didn’t mean you didn’t care for him. Especially if you thought it was for his own good. “Well, I hope he’s not driven to defend his honor at Vincent’s expense,” he joked, waiting for her response.

Which was a chuckle. “Don’t you envy him that? That sense of…entitlement?”

She’d picked that up on a moment’s acquaintance, had she? Kusanagi‑Jones snorted hard enough that it stung. “Envy Vincent? Not the entitlement. Sometimes maybe the privilege that produced it. Trying to drive a wedge between us, Miss Pretoria?”

“Of course not,” she said, maintaining a perfect deadpan. “That’s what they hired my mother for.”

11

AFTER THE SHOWER, VINCENT LET ROBERT SMEAR HIS BACK with a gelatinous yellow substance that stung and soothed, and smelled of cucumbers and mint. He could have pulled up a license, but there was no reason to give away more of the capabilities of his wardrobe than he needed to. Robert worked steadily and quickly, and when he was done and Vincent summoned a new outfit from his wardrobe, he made sure he programmed it not to absorb the gel. It slid and stuck, but it did help. He turned back and offered his hand to Robert for yet another of the endless New Amazonian handshakes. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Robert answered. His clasp was firm.

Vincent was unsurprised to feel the edged corners of a chip pressed into his palm as he dropped his hand, and he cupped his fingers slightly to hold it. The outfit he’d chosen had pockets suitable for the nonchalant shoving of hands, so he did.

“Your partner’s arrived,” Robert said. “Shall we meet him?”

Vincent’s wardrobe dried the water from his braids and tidied his hair. He took a breath and drew himself up, the carpetplant cool under the soles of his feet.

He’d erred, and taken chances. And he didn’t have anything to show for it, in terms of his public mission or either of his private ones. Angelo was going to kill him. Slowly. Probably by ripping strips off his slow‑roasted back.

He might as well get it over with. “Ready as I’ll ever be. Have you heard from Miss Pretoria and Miss Delhi?”

Robert nodded. Vincent had known the answer before he asked. While he was in the shower, Robert’s affect had changed, from controlled concern to concealed relief. There was something else under it, though–a sidelong glance, an even breath. Vincent honestly couldn’t say howhe knew–it was a complex of cues too subtle to verbalize–but there it was. Robert was withholding information.

And he was concerned for Vincent, too. Not in quite the same way as he was concerned for Miss Pretoria. Of course, he wouldn’t be, if Vincent understood the relationship. This would be the man Lesa intended to marry, when she established her own household and become an Elder in her own right. He had special status in Pretoria house, the way, historically, a…a house dog would have had more status than a hunting dog.

He wasn’t livestock. He was a pet.

And he was also the one passing Vincent data chips. Which meant that he could either be operating as an agent on behalf of someone in the household who wished her identity concealed…or be doing it on his own.

It would be awfully easy for somebody who shared Lesa’s bed to get a tracking device on her, and the assailants in the street had known where to find them. The chip in Vincent’s pocket swung against his thigh as he followed Robert across the cool floors. The pieces might be falling together after all.

They passed through a heavy, old‑fashioned door that swung on apparent brass hinges. Given House’s ability to reinvent itself, Vincent assumed they were a cunning approximation. On the other side was a tiled, pleasant porch whose sides lay open on a balmy afternoon, a courtyard in which four or five children played with a pair of khir. The feathered quadrupeds were nimble and agile, coordinated in their movements as they raced after whooping and tumbling children.

Inside the balustrade, a group of adults sat at ease. Obviously dominating the group, Elena Pretoria wore cool cream and peach, her bare feet callused along the edges though the toenails were painted. Beside her, Lesa sat on a wicker stool, her feet hooked over the bottom rung, Katya sprawled on bolsters at her feet. Michelangelo had arranged himself cross‑legged on a cushion on the other side of a low glass table suitable for resting mugs and feet upon. It was the lowest vantage in the room, but it had the advantage of putting his back to an angle of wall so the only one behind him was his security officer, a wiry berry‑eyed young woman with a golden‑brown fox’s face.

Shafaqat leaned beside the door. She gave Vincent the right half of a smile as he came in, and didn’t acknowledge Robert at all. Robert patted Vincent’s elbow and kept walking down the stairs, out among the children and pets. “Please, Miss Katherinessen,” Elena said without rising. “Join us.”

Vincent took the gesture at face value and crossed the tile to a cushion beside Michelangelo’s, wincing as he lowered himself. Michelangelo raised an eyebrow. “A Colonial would forget that UV radiation is dangerous.”

“It doesn’t hurt until later,” Vincent answered.

“That’s why it’s dangerous.” Michelangelo might have said something more–he had that tension around his mouth–but apparently Vincent’s discomfort was showing in his face. Instead, Angelo reached out lightly, without seeming to shift, and brushed the back of his knuckles against Vincent’s knee. A slight curve lifted one corner of his mouth, and he spoke even more softly. “The big brute at least take good care of you?”

Vincent sighed. Forgiven. Or at least Angelo was willing to pretend he was. “Not his type,” he mouthed, and was rewarded by a slightly broader smile. “How was your day?”

“Edifying.” Michelangelo raised his voice, reincluding the rest. “The warden was telling us about your admirers.”

“They must have been tailing us for some time,” Vincent said. “Waiting a break in the crowds. And we gave them one.” He shrugged, then regretted it. “I’m relieved to see Lesa and Shafaqat made it out all right.”

There was an unspoken question in the words. Lesa fielded a glance from the security agent and took on the question. “They were carrying nonlethal weapons. And I don’t think they expected Vincent to shrug off two tanglers quite so nonchalantly. If he hadn’t, they would have concentrated harder on entangling Shafaqat and me, to slow us while they made their escape with Vincent.”

Shafaqat’s eyebrow asked a question. Vincent nodded, as a shadow entered the door and a cool drink appeared at his hand, already sweating beads of condensation onto the rippled glass tabletop. The servant placed a pitcher of amber fluid flecked with herby green on the table, removed an exhausted one, and withdrew. Vincent noticed that the others already had glasses, picked his up, and sipped.

“They weren’t prepared to deal with my wardrobe’s defense systems,” he said. “Next time, they’ll be forewarned.”

“First one’s free,” Michelangelo muttered.

Down in the courtyard, one of the children shrieked laughter as Robert caught him under the arms and hoisted him overhead, before settling the child on his shoulder. Khir leapt and reared around him, chittering and yipping.

“Walter, down,” Robert said firmly, as the larger khir put its paws on his chest and pushed. For its size, the animal must be light. The big feet flexed, but Robert didn’t. The animal dropped to all fours and leaned against the man, exhaling heavily enough that Vincent heard it from where he sat.

“Is that safe?” Michelangelo asked quietly.

“Robert’s good with children,” Elena said.

Katya, who had not spoken, blinked at her. “Yes,” she said. “You’d hardly know he was a stud male.”

Vincent winced, and Lesa shot her daughter a look, but for Elena the irony must have passed unnoticed. “Exactly.”

Michelangelo nudged Vincent lightly. Vincent wondered how long it would take them to process this particular cultural divide, in all its peculiarity. Michelangelo had been asking about the animals. Not Robert, who bore a striking resemblance to the boy on his shoulder, and whom the child obviously adored, as he clung to his father, pulling Robert’s ears.

And then Walter, spurned, trotted up on the steps and sniffed Vincent curiously. Vincent forced himself not to flinch from the brush of sensitive feathers, despite a close‑up look at flaring nostrils and odd, pink pits lining the scales along the animal’s upper lip. Then the creature walked around him, sniffed Michelangelo, too, and flopped down on the cushions beside him with the feathered back of its head pressed to Angelo’s thigh.

It sighed, braced its feet against the base of a nearby chair, and shoved, moving him into a more comfortable position–for it–and appropriating part of the cushion.

Michelangelo paused with both hands raised toward his face. He lowered them slowly, and glanced down at the khir. Walter turned slightly, stretching its neck out, and wheezed a small snore as Katya and Lesa shared a laugh.

“They like to sleep in confined spaces,” Katya said. “And back up against a pack mate, if they can.”

“I’m a pack mate?” Michelangelo kept his hands up, at chest level, as if afraid a sudden move would startle the animal.

“You can touch it. It likes to be scratched at the base of the skull,” Lesa said. “And you’re in its den, and the rest of the pack is feeding you and treating you as welcome, so you must belong here. They don’t differentiate between khir and humans, if they’re socialized. They just know friends and strangers.”

Gingerly, Angelo lowered his hand to the khir’s shoulder. It whuffled, but didn’t wake. His fingertips brushed scales and feathers, his face assuming a curious expression, slack and focused, and Vincent found himself watching, breath held.

Vincent reached out and picked up his drink, folding his palm around cool, wet glass. It smelled minty and astringent as he used the rim to hide his face. The beverage was cold, but helped the chills that crawled across his stinging shoulders.

Michelangelo looked up, his fingers moving in the sleeping animal’s ruff, and gave Vincent a quizzical smile. The relaxed vulnerability around his eyes was more than Vincent could bear. He had to work for that, and nobody else got to see it, ever.

It was a hint of what Angelo would look like at peace.

“Right.” Elder Pretoria leaned forward, sliding her own glass across the table with her fingertips. She lifted it and sat back. “Miss Katherinessen, have your adventures left you any appetite? Or should we see about getting you home?”

He glanced away from Angelo, who looked back down at the khir. “Oh,” he said, “I think I could eat.”

Dinner was served in an even more informal style than the supper and reception they’d endured on their first night on New Amazonia. Kusanagi‑Jones found himself separated from his partner–not forcefully, but with the ease by which an accomplished hostess maneuvers her guests–and seated at a long low table in a spacious room. The carpetplant on either side and at the head and foot was protected by thick rugs, the floor underneath banked into comfortable seats. Another table ran crosswise at the foot of the first, and Kusanagi‑Jones was surprised when he realized that it was populated by the household males, children, and servants. He’d expected that they would be required to eat separately, and perhaps after the adult women and “gentle” guests–but once the food was brought out, the cook and two male and two female servants settled themselves alongside the table and began passing plates and chattering along with everyone else.

The total assembly was about twenty‑five. Five males other than the servants, counting Robert and an older man to whom he deferred, two boys, three girls, and the balance made up in teen and adult women, with the addition of Cathay, Shafaqat, Vincent, and Kusanagi‑Jones himself. Michelangelo noticed that the female and what he presumed were gentle male servants sat between the stud males–recognizable by their scars and the street licenses worn on leather cuffs at their wrists like barbaric jewelry–and the children, and the males largely conversed among themselves.

He also noticed that the same dark‑complected boy of about six or seven New Amazonian years–who had been riding Robert around the courtyard earlier–slithered out of his seat as soon as the cook’s back was turned, scrambled into the big man’s lap, and no one seemed to think much of it.

The table arrangements had left Kusanagi‑Jones seated next to Katya Pretoria on one side, and another woman–Agnes Pretoria, who he gathered was something like the household chatelaine or seneschal–on the other. “Is that your brother?”

Katya followed the line of his gaze. He looked down and continued ladling food onto his plate. Someone had apparently asked the cook to take pity on them, because the food on offer included legume curry, rice, bread with a nut butter, and a variety of other animal‑free choices. He’d have to find out to whom to send the thank‑you note.

“Julian.” Katya’s quick glance at Lesa gave away more than she probably knew. “Yes. He’s the last of Mother’s obligation. I don’t think she’ll marry until he starts the Trials, though, and finds a position. Unless…”

Kusanagi‑Jones caught her eye and then looked down, waiting her out while applying himself to the curry.

Her hesitation became a shrug. “Mother hopes he’s gentle,” she said. “He’s very smart.”

Kusanagi‑Jones washed his food down with a mouthful of wine. The consideration of a good meal itself was enough to lower his defenses. “Like his father?”

“You noticed. Yes. Robert’s special…” she paused, and picked up her fork. “Julian and I are full siblings. The third, Karyn–” The fork clicked on the plate. “She was older. Mother’s first. She died in a duel.”

“And do you duel?” he asked, because she didn’t seem to wish her discomfort noted.

She twirled her fork. “No,” she said, glancing up to locate her mother before she spoke. “It’s a stupid tradition.”

After dinner, the servants rose to clear the plates and bring more wine, coffee, and cakes before reseating themselves. Lesa surveyed the table and brushed Vincent’s sleeve. “There’s no butter, honey, or eggs in those.”

He didn’t flinch away from the contact–a small positive sign–and served himself from the indicated plate with tongs. “Thank you for this afternoon,” he said.

She snorted. “Just doing my job.”

“Any word on who might have been behind it? Or what the goal was?”

She shrugged and slid a pastry onto her own plate. “We’ll know soon enough. I wounded one of them. As for what they wanted–a hostage? To open negotiations of their own? To demand a Coalition withdrawal in return for your life?” She lowered her voice and obscured her mouth behind her hand as she ate. “It all depends what faction we’re talking about.”

Which was a code phrase, one that should have identified her as his contact, based on the information in the chip he’d slipped Robert. But he just rolled his eyes and sipped his wine, far too relaxed for her to believe he had made the connection. “Then security will be tighter from now on.”

“No more slipping through the streets incognito,” Lesa agreed. She glanced at Elena; Elena frowned and tilted her head. Back off. Yes. Lesa thought she’d know if Vincent were dissembling. He might be just as good as she was, but he wasn’t any better. Instead, Lesa leaned around Vincent and caught Robert’s eye, beckoning with a buttery finger. “Would you like to meet my son, Vincent?”

He followed the line of her attention. “Very much,” he said. “You have two children?”

“The obligation is three,” she answered. “My eldest died, but I’ve met it, yes. I could start my own household, become an Elder in my own right.”

“If you wanted?”

“There’s a male whose contract I want to buy. Until it’s available, there’s no point.”

“You wouldn’t have to breed to get married if New Amazonia accepted the Coalition,” he said, dryly.

She smiled. “And you wouldn’t have three sisters and a brother if Ur had fallen into line a few years sooner.”

The look Katherinessen gave her was ever so slightly impressed. It was public record, and Katherine Lexasdaughter’s conceit in naming each of her five children–Valerie, Victoria, Vivian, Vincent, and Valentine–made the bit of data stand out in Lesa’s recall. As Robert came around the table holding Julian’s hand, she smiled at them and scooted back, opening a gap. Her son tugged loose of his sire’s grip and came to her, plopping himself onto her thigh. It wouldn’t last, of course. Any day now, Julian would decide he was too old for sitting on laps and listening to Mother, and not long after that, he’d enter the Trials. If he lived, he’d earn a contract in some other woman’s house.

Unless he beat the odds, of course. And grew up gentle. “Julian,” she said, when he had wiggled himself comfortable and Robert had settled down cross‑legged, not far away. “I’d like you to meet Vincent Katherinessen. He’s a diplomat like me.”

“He’s a male,” Julian said, with childish solipsism. “He can’t be a diplomat. That’s for girls.”

Whatever he thought of Vincent, he held out his hand anyway, and Vincent accepted it. “Pleased to meet you, Julian.”

“Vincent’s gentle,” Lesa said. She met Katherinessen’s golden‑brown eyes, noticing the splinters of blue and yellow around the pupils. “He can be anything he wants.”

Their hands interlaced, Julian’s smaller and darker and more callused, and Julian winced. “You got burned.”

“I did,” Vincent said. “My sun protection failed.”

“That was silly. You need a sunpatch.” He pointed to the shoulder of his jerkin, craning his neck so he could see what he was pointing at–a small patch in colors that matched the one Robert wore on his wrist cuff. “It changes color when you get too much UV. So you know to go inside.”

“I think I do need one of those. May I look?”

Julian nodded, but Vincent had been looking at Lesa when he asked. She slid her hand against her son’s neck and lifted his hair aside, tacit permission. Julian wriggled; the touch tickled. But he sat mostly still as Vincent leaned forward to inspect the sunpatch, oblivious to Kusanagi‑Jones watching from farther down the table with an expression that even Lesa found unreadable adorning his face.

“Where do you get one of those?” Vincent asked. He addressed Julian directly again, and Julian, charmed, smiled shyly and looked down.

“House,” he said.

“Do you think House would make me one?”

Julian ducked further, still smiling, and nodded, his courage for strangers exhausted.

“If you asked,” Lesa supplied.

Vincent leaned back, a half‑second after Lesa would have, and let Julian tug away. He drew his knees up and buried his face against Lesa’s shoulder, hands in front of his mouth. He was a warm compact bundle of muscle and bone, and she closed her eyes for a moment, leaning her chin on his hair. “He likes astronomy,” she said. “And computers.”

Vincent picked up his wineglass and leaned back, raising his eyes to the slow gorgeous burn of the Gorgon transmitted to the ceiling overhead. “Bad planet for getting to look at the stars from,” he commented, without audible irony.

“I know,” Lesa said. “Are anyof them any good?”

12

THROUGHOUT DINNER, KUSANAGI‑JONES WAS AWARE OF AN increasing level of noise from the street. Vincent gave him an arch look at one point–the invitation had been for food and Carnival–but Kusanagi‑Jones answered it with a sidelong shake of his head. I’ll chain you to a wall if you even suggest going out there.

Fortunately, in the constellation of VIPs that Kusanagi‑Jones had secured over the years, Vincent ranked as one of the few who was capable of learning from a mistake. He tipped his head, mouth twisting as he acknowledged the undelivered ultimatum, and turned to Elena Pretoria. “Elder,” he said, when there was a lull in the conversation, “may I inquire as to our plans for the evening?”

“We have balconies,” Elena said. “I think you’ll be sufficiently safe from abduction there. And you’ll get to see at least some of the proceedings.”

Kusanagi‑Jones bit his lip. Abductions were one thing. He was worried about snipers.

To say that Pretoria house had balconies was akin to saying that Babylon had gardens. Vincent would have liked to go to the edge of the one they occupied, three stories or so above the street, and lean out to get a better view of the merrymakers. But Angelo and Shafaqat had other ideas; they kept their bodies between him and the street, while Lesa and Katya flanked him. Elena, Agnes, and the older man that Vincent had met at dinner were off to the left and slightly above his vantage point, and the rest of the household scattered about, above and below.

Miss Pretoria had been right. It was indeed a pretty good party.

The street that the balconies overhung was narrow, the buildings opposite lower and more rolling than the twisted spire of Pretoria house. And even three stories up, Vincent could smellthe mass of humanity below. Not just the liquor or the perfume or the crushed flowers draped around their necks and threaded through their hair, but the meaty animal reek of all that flesh pressed together. They moved like a many‑legged, meandering insect, singing and laughing, banging drums, playing portable instruments that were remarkable to Vincent in their familiarity–gourds and flutes and saxophones and kalimbas.

There were a lot of weird worlds, a lot of political structures based on points of philosophy. Not all the ships of the Diaspora had been faster than light, even; humanity had scrambled off Earth in any rowboat or leaky bucket that might hold them, and dead ships were still found floating between the stars, full of frozen corpses.

Vincent found it alternately creepy and reassuring when he considered that no matter how strange the culture might be, every single world out there, every instance of intelligent life that he had encountered, claimed common descent from Earth.

As the Gorgon brightened overhead, the crowds grew heavier. Someone on stilts paraded past, her head nearly level with Vincent’s feet. He returned her wave, laughing, and she tossed him a strand of holographic beads that cast pinpoint dots around them as they whirled through the air. Vincent reached to catch them, but Michelangelo intercepted and enfolded them in his hands.

For analysis, of course. His wardrobe wasn’t doing anything that Vincent’s couldn’t, but it was Vincent’s job to let Angelo take the risks for him. He hated it.

Angelo finished his analysis and threat assessment and handed Vincent the necklace. It was spectacular, some light, cool substance with a high refractive index and pinpoint LEDs buried deep within, so the facets cast multicolored sparks in all directions. More brilliant than a necklace of diamonds, and not dependent on available light.

Below, there was more music, more dragon dancers. A roar echoed from the street’s narrow walls as tumblers passed, given so little room by the crowd that it seemed they must stumble into bystanders at any moment. Vincent ran a backup analysis on the beads–nothing, not even a microprocessor–then pulled the necklace over his head and let it fall across his chest. It settled over his wardrobe, casting dancing pinpoints down his torso and across his shoulders, up his cheeks and into his hair. He turned to grin at Angelo, half wishing they were down on the street amid the revelers, and caught Angelo looking at him with a particular, aching, focused expression that set him back.

Angelo blinked and looked down quickly, leaving Vincent adrift with one hand half extended. It might almost have been an honest reaction.

“What’s that?” Michelangelo asked, pointing down the alley. The music was swelling again, a new group of performers pushing by. Katya Pretoria pressed a cold drink into Vincent’s hand.

On the left, amid the coiling river of pedestrians, a group of men clad in red carried a platform on their shoulders. At first Vincent thought it was another Carnival float, and the person slumped cross‑legged on the litter would begin throwing beads or lift up a trumpet at any moment.

But his head lolled against one powerful shoulder, and when Vincent leaned forward, peering down into the street–trying to see in the half‑light provided by flickering torches and the glowing hemispheres that adorned the building walls–he could see that the man was propped up between slats, and his hands were bound together before his chest. The litter bearers were singing, Vincent saw, their voices rising over the tumult of the crowd, and even the dragon dancers made way for them.

Angelo nudged Vincent, and Vincent stepped back. “He’s–”

“It’s a funeral procession,” Katya said. “It’s an honor.”

When Vincent turned to her, she stared straight ahead, her eyebrows drawn close above her nose. “Is it an honor afforded to women, as well?”

“If they die in combat,” Katya said. She nodded down over the railing, then looked away from the litter and the dead man’s singing bearers. She pulled a wreath of beads and flowers from the balcony railing and shouted down to a teenage boy walking unattended amid the tumblers. The boy looked up, and Katya tossed the necklace into his hands.

Vincent didn’t see his license, but he suspected the young man wouldn’t be allowed out alone if it were not Carnival; he glanced about himself wide‑eyed, and waved the bruised flower over his head, calling out to Katya.

“Combat?” Vincent asked.

She stepped back from the railing. “That’s Philip they’re burying, who was of Canberra house. He was killed in the Trials yesterday.”

Vincent’s voice came out of nebula‑tinted darkness, just loud enough to carry over the cries of merrymakers in the street. “Do you remember Skidbladnir?”

Kusanagi‑Jones, who had been poised on the edge of sleep, came sharply awake, his heart jumping in response to an adrenaline dump. “Vincent?”

A warm hand rested above his elbow. Too warm, and Vincent was shivering. “The ship. Remember her?”

Kusanagi‑Jones turned, eyesight adapting, collecting heat‑signatures and available light. “Your temperature is up.”

“Sunburn,” Vincent said. “Robert warned me. I’m cold.”

Which was an interesting problem. “How much does it hurt?”

“I’ve got chemistry,” Vincent answered. Which was Vincent for a lot. He didn’t use it if he could avoid it.

“May I touch you?”

“Please.”

But when he reached around Vincent’s shoulders, Vincent yelped behind clenched teeth. Kusanagi‑Jones jerked his hand back. “I’m more sore than I thought,” he said.

“How’s your chest?”

“Not bad. Not as bad. Just a little sore at the top.”

“Well then.” Kusanagi‑Jones flopped on his back, shaking the bed, and tented the covers. “Get comfortable.”

Vincent slid over him, a blessed blanket of warmth in the chill of the over‑climate‑controlled night. Kusanagi‑Jones was used to sleeping warm everywhere but on starships, and he found himself sighing, relaxing, as Vincent spread out against his chest. Vincent made a little sad sound and stiffened when the blankets fell against his back, but settled in once his wardrobe established an air cushion. He propped himself on his elbows so he could look Kusanagi‑Jones in the face. “Skidbladnir.”

“What about it? Seventeen years ago.” Kusanagi‑Jones rearranged himself so Vincent could stretch comfortably between his legs. In the middle distance, someone was singing, and he shifted uncomfortably, remembering the dead man on his litter.

“It was the last time–”

When they were still half convinced they could keep their relationship a secret. When they thought they had,and the sex had, all too often, been furtive and hasty, and–

“Yes.” The words scratching his throat. “I remember.”

“Do you remember what you said to me?”

He knows,Kusanagi‑Jones thought. He stroked Vincent’s hip lightly, feeling heat and skin slick with moisturizer and analgesic. “Told you,” he said, picking over each word, “no matter what happened, I wanted you to know I–” He shrugged. It wasn’t something he had the courage to say twice in one lifetime. “I did. Want you to know.”

“And something happened.”

“Yeah.” Kusanagi‑Jones closed his eyes, filtering out the charcoal‑sketch outline of Vincent’s face. “Had to eventually.”

“I didn’t answer at the time,” Vincent said. “I–”

Michelangelo reacted fast. Just fast enough to get his hands into Vincent’s braids–careful of his burned neck–and pull Vincent’s mouth down to his own before Vincent could say anything stupid. Before Vincent could give him back his own words of nearly two decades before.

Vincent’s voice trailed off in a mumble that buzzed against Michelangelo’s lips for a moment before Vincent’s mouth opened, wet, yielding, returning fierceness for fierceness and strength for strength. The confession, however it might have begun, turned into a pleased, liquid moan. Teeth clicked and tongues slid, and Michelangelo arched his spine to press their groins together, not daring to hook his ankles over the backs of Vincent’s calves. Vincent pulled back, panting, drawing the scratchy cords of his braids through Michelangelo’s fingers.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” he ordained. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Vincent asked, archly, lowering his head to claim another kiss.

“Nothing interesting.”

Gray on gray in Michelangelo’s augmented sight, Vincent’s eyebrows rose. Nothing,Michelangelo thought, because I’m going to sabotage this mission, too. Because I’m going to give you up again. I have it in my hands, sod it, and I don’t…care…enough to sacrifice a whole culture for you.

So I’m going to help New Amazonia get away, the same way I helped New Earth get away, and they’re going to take me away from you again.

What he said was, “Vincent. Your turn tonight.”

Kii understands. The bipeds do this themselves. They choose. As the Consent chooses, in its own time. The way of life is growth and consumption, blind fulfillment.

This is not the way of the Consent. As the Consent chooses to enter a virtual space and achieve a burdenless immortality, the bipeds, unpredatored, invent a predator. Something that keeps them in balance. Something that kills their culls, forces them to evolve when they outstrip their native predators.

A stroke of genius. An entire society bent to poetry.

They areesthelich, after all.

Vincent waited while Angelo pushed the pillows aside and stretched on his stomach, breathing shallowly until Vincent covered Michelangelo with his body again, licking the warm curve of Angelo’s ear as Angelo turned his head to breathe. Vincent caught Angelo’s hands in his own and pressed them to the bed. Playing at restraint.

Angelo squirmed, panting, muscle rippling as he pushed against Vincent, so powerful and so contained, and so soft where it counted. He had always loved this, loved and feared it, rarely permitted it, almost never asked. He hated letting anybody, even Vincent–perhaps especially Vincent–far enough inside his armor to see the vulnerabilities underneath. To see him need anything.

And he would never forgive Vincent if he understood how transparent he was, in this one particular, and how well Vincent understood this aspect of his psyche. Because Michelangelo was a Liar–and while Vincent couldn’t tell when Angelo was lying, he knew how it worked. Their talents were the same at the root. But Angelo’s was broken.

Vincent had been born with a cognitive giftedness. He was a superperceiver. Michelangelo had the same gift. And if he had grown up in the environment Vincent had, chances were he would have been as skilled at understanding and compromise and gentle manipulation. But he’d been raised under harsher circumstances, and Michelangelo’s gift had been shaped by a history of verbal abuse and neglect into something else. Where a less talented child would have been driven into a borderline personality, Michelangelo had been warped into a perfect machine for survival. A chameleon, a shape shifter.

A glossy exterior that showed only the reflection of the person looking in.

Except for now, when Michelangelo lifted himself, asking, and Vincent came to him. Exertion stung the tender skin on Vincent’s back and buttocks and sweat dripped into his eyes, scattering over Michelangelo’s shoulders as Angelo stretched under him. Vincent’s wardrobe was overloading again; he didn’t care. Headfucks and Venus flytraps and feedback loops were all right, but they didn’t satisfy the inner animal the way good, old‑fashioned, biological sexdid. Heart rate, brain chemistry, blood pressure–it all benefited from this: competition, cooperation, intercourse. Conversation, as much game as release.

He rocked against Angelo, hands and mouth busy on whatever he could reach. Michelangelo answered him with sounds that might have indicated pain, if they hadn’t come in tandem with the eager motions of his hips and the clench of his hands in the bedclothes. Michelangelo flexed to meet his final, savage demands, and then they slumped together and pooled, relaxing.

Everything’s better with a friend,Vincent thought, snorting with laughter.

“Glad to know I amuse you,” replied the dryly muffled voice, Michelangelo slipping into their code.

Vincent resettled against his back, racing heartbeats synchronizing. “What did that Ouagadougou woman want with you?”

“You caught that?” Angelo sounded sleepy. “One of ours.”

“Coalition?”

“Mmm. Our contact. Slipped me a map this afternoon. Might do some exploring in a bit.”

“Alone?”

“Easier to countermeasure one than two, and I spent more time in the gallery than you did.”

“What’s the gallery got to do with anything?”

“Seems to be how you get there, if I’m reading this thing right–” Shoulders already whisked dry by utility fogs rose and fell against Vincent’s chest. “What’d you find out?”

Vincent thought of the unexamined chip concealed under the table edge, and dropped his chin on Angelo’s shoulder. “House–The city, I mean. Lesa called it House.”

“Yeah?”

“I think it’s an AI. Not sure if it’s sentient–I mean, self‑aware–or not, but it’s sure as hell sapient. It problem‑solves. And works from limited data to provide a best‑response.”

“Tells us how the marines died.”

“Sure. The city just…lured them where the Elders wanted them brought. And then walled them up. For as long as it took.”

That brought a long silence, and then a sigh. “Hope the countermeasures work.”

Vincent grunted. Michelangelo stretched again, the restless motion of hips and shoulders that meant get off me, oaf.

Vincent rolled clear. “How will you bypass security?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Angelo. “Going to turn invisible.”

Lesa made sure Agnes knew she wouldn’t be expecting Robert that night. She sat before her mirror, combing the brighteners into her hair, and contemplated the blankness with which Vincent had met her code phrase. A code phrase encoded on the chip he’dprovided, at the meet prearranged by Katherine Lexasdaughter.

Which Robert had taken directly from his hand, palmed, and pressed immediately into hers. Vincent didn’t know who he was to meet on New Amazonia. Couldn’t know, before he made planetfall. It was too dangerous for everyone concerned.

Which was why the elaborate system of double blinds and duplicity. Isolation. Containment. Any good conspiracy needs fire doors. Lesa had required a chance to assess Katherinessen before she–and more important Elena–revealed herself. But when she’d tried to make the final connection…

Robert had palmed the chip and handed it directly to her.

Lesa’s comb stopped in her hair. Robert had also been left alone with Vincent for at least half an hour before Lesa attempted to seal the contact.

She untangled the comb carefully, reversed its field with a touch on the controls, and redacted the brighteners. When her hair was clean, she folded the comb into its slot in the wall and stood. She stepped over Walter to reach the house com on the wall by the door. “House, please contact Agnes.”

A moment later, Agnes answered, and Lesa told her that under no circumstances was Robert to leave the Blue Rooms. Agnes wanted details, and Lesa was forced to admit she had none to offer, “–but trust me on this.”

She was already pulling on her boots as she said it. When House ended the connection, she called through the fabric of a thin black mock‑neck for a car. She strapped on her honor, pulled her hair back into a plain tail, and hit the door at a trot.

The car was waiting at the end of the alley. There were some perks to being a government employee.

There were days when Kusanagi‑Jones wished he were better at lying to himself, and then there were the days when he was pretty sure he had it down to a science. While Vincent made idle conversation, he split his wardrobe under the covers of the bed they had made love in, left the remainder to assemble a warm, breathing, nanometer‑thick shell, and set what he retained to camouflage mode. When he stood up, as promised, he was invisible.

Well, not trulyinvisible. But his wardrobe handled minor issues like refracting light around him through the same process by which it could provide a 360‑degree prospect in a combat situation, a lensing effect. It contained his body heat, presenting an ambient‑temperature surface to any thermal imaging devices, and it filtered carbon and other emissions.

The drawback was that it would get hot and stuffy in there rather quickly. He would have to move fast.

Kusanagi‑Jones stood against the wall beside the door as Vincent opened it and called Cathay inside on the excuse of wanting a late snack. She came, yawning, and Kusanagi‑Jones slipped past her before the door could iris shut.

The second security agent outside wasn’t Shafaqat. They must be trading off. In any case, she was standing against the wall, admirably placed to see anyone coming in either direction down the short curved hall, but with only a peripheral view of the door at her back. Kusanagi‑Jones slipped past in complete silence, the only clue to his passage the dimpling of the carpetplant underfoot. She didn’t notice.

The lift was a challenge, but it was out of sight around the curve of the hall. He spoke softly and the door glided open. He stepped inside. He wanted to breathe deeply, to savor feeling alive in his skin and the lingering tenderness of sex. But he kept his breaths short and slow, giving his wardrobe as much help as he could. He couldn’t afford to dwell on pleasant memories when he was here to fail the man who created them.

Vincent waited until Cathay returned with a tray, toast and tea for two. He thanked her, then cleared Angelo’s solar collector from the edge of the open window. He sat on the ledge to eat the toast and drink the tea. Then he climbed back into bed beside the homunculus and repeated Angelo’s trick of mitosis. When he stood, he collected the unviewed chip from its hiding place and slotted it into his reader. The chip contained a map. He studied it while leaning out the window, examining the teeming city below.

Then he put one foot up and rose into the frame.

Anyone in the room would have registered nothing. No movement, no shifting of the light except a faint sparkle of mismatched edges if they had happened to look at the window just as he stepped up into it.

It was a long way down. Vincent let go of the window frame, lifted his arms, and stepped out.

Unlike a parachute, there was no shock as his wardrobe unfurled, growing filaments and tendrils festooned with catch pockets. The air resistance slowed him before he could build up falling velocity. He ballooned down like a spider, steering for a smooth dimple at the base of the tower, and landed squarely where he’d aimed. But faster than he should have; he rolled with it, but his knee twinged, and his wardrobe couldn’t quite absorb the shock enough to protect his sun‑seared shoulder. He whimpered when he hit, but the street noise was enough to cover that. In camouflage mode, his wardrobe would damp most of the noise anyway.

Once the wardrobe contracted, he slithered down the curved roofline to drop to street level, earning another twinge from his knee. He checked the map; the meeting place was one square over, in the open. No proof against listening devices, but if his suspicions were right, a member of security directorate would be making sure no records remained.

He slipped through the crowds into darkness, following the map through quieter streets. There were only a few reeling revelers here, and he avoided them easily. Somewhere in the distance, he heard fireworks or gunfire.

He fully expected that the shadow awaiting him in the darkness under an arched walkway would be Lesa Pretoria. He hadn’t been sure until that evening, but the complex of her kinetics over dinner had convinced him, though she’d never dropped a recognition code. He paused in shadows to cancel the camouflage, dressed in local fashion and mocked up something that would pass from a distance for a street license with a quick accessory program–he didn’t have a license for a hat, but he had one for a wrist cuff–and presented himself boldly alongside the arch, circumnavigating merrymakers as he went, restraining the urge to press his hand to his aching shoulder. The pain was nauseating.

He was drawing a breath to greet Miss Pretoria when an entirely different voice interrupted him, and a woman older and stouter than Lesa stepped into the light. “Miss Katherinessen,” she said. “I’m pleased you could get away.”

“Elder Kyoto,” he choked. “This is a surprise.”

Once Kusanagi‑Jones reached street level and slipped into the night, he moved faster. The unrippled pavement was sun‑warm under his feet, and he had little trouble winding through the scattered revelers by Gorgon‑light. The gallery lay across the square. Penthesilea’s government center was compact, and it wasn’t the center of the party. Kusanagi‑Jones only had to cope with the overflow.

He heard music from elsewhere in the city, cheers and laughter that suggested a parade or theatrical event. He triggered the full‑circle display, the fisheye appearing in the lower corner of his sight where peripheral vision would pick it up. Years of training meant he’d react to it as fast as to a flicker in the corner of his eye, and as accurately.

He passed between drunks and singers, hesitated at the report of gunfire and an echoing siren. Four shots, but they were distant and spaced like a duel, and though heads turned, nobody reacted more strongly. He crept around to the back of the gallery, to the broad doors where more trucks of repatriated art were being unloaded and the protectively wrapped bundles carted in, to be hung in accordance with the afternoon’s plan.

He skulked inside.

The lifts were running regularly. He simply stepped into an empty one, rode it down, ducked around a group of incoming laborers–mostly licensed men, and two armed women–and found himself at liberty in the gallery space.

The instructions Miss Ouagadougou had provided were quite precise. He crossed the first gallery and ascended the stair under the watchful eyes of the frieze. When he reached the far corner, he paused. This adventure would have been considerably less nerve‑wracking if there were some mechanical means of opening the passage, something that could be hacked or bypassed.

If Vincent was right, there was a machine intelligence watching him. And Kusanagi‑Jones could only hope its instructions didn’t include the casual destruction of off‑world human males poking about where they shouldn’t be.

It wasn’t as long a gamble as it seemed. He had, at best, speculation that the city might take action if it construed a major threat to its inhabitants–such as a ships’ complement of Coalition marines. But Penthesilea remained an alien artifact, and if it could be efficiently reprogrammed or trained, he had no hope of carrying out his mission. And yet, here he was, against reason and sanity, doing what he did in the hope it didn’t have protocols in place to deal with saboteurs and spies.

It was the old ambiguity that set his heart racing and dumped adrenaline into his bloodstream. Nobody sane would be here. But then, nobody sane would have taken this job in the first place. Especially when the most likely scenario, in the wake of the afternoon’s attempt on Vincent, had Miss Ouagadougou luring him to a lonely place where he could be abducted or disappeared.

He lowered the audio damping, checked the fisheye display to make sure the gallery floor was clear, and asked House, please, to open the wall.

Before he finished speaking, the frieze before him parted like drawn curtains. He stepped forward into an arched tunnel, unsurprised when the opening sealed itself behind him. An indirect glow rendered his light amplification redundant; he dialed it down, but in deference to his mistrust of Miss Ouagadougou he left the camouflage protocol intact.

The tunnel was undecorated, smooth sided, the walls velvety and dark. It tended downward, the walls corded with shielded cables. Lesser ran into greater to form a vast, inverted mechanical root system, which thickened toward a trunk as he descended. The overall effect was Gigeresque, though the textures were more reminiscent of Leighton’s velvets and silks.

He breathed easier. It was an access tunnel. Which meant, at least potentially, that Miss Ouagadougou had sent him to the right place. “Thank you,” he said, feeling slightly foolish. The city didn’t answer, but neither did the ongoing sense of observation (like a pressure between his shoulder blades) ease. He snorted softly when he realized he had expected it to, and kept walking.

Brightness spilled up the corridor as it leveled. He paused to let his eyes adapt. His wardrobe handled dazzle, but didn’t ensure fine perception.

Fifteen seconds sufficed. He blinked once more, to be sure, and stepped forward into a chamber not much larger than the suite he shared with Vincent. It was bowl shaped, the walls arching to meet overhead in a smooth, steep‑sided dome. He knew he was underground, but the depth of field in the images surrounding him was breathtaking. They were not just projected into the walls, but a full holographic display.

If it weren’t for the tug of gravity on his boots, he might have been adrift in space. New Amazonia’s primary, Kali, glowed enormous and bittersweet orange on his left hand, smeared behind watercolor veils. On his right, totally out of perspective, floated New Amazonia, a cloud‑marbled berry with insignificant ice caps, incrementally closer to its primary than Earth was to Sol, partially shielded from Kali’s greater energy output by the Gorgon’s polychrome embrace.

The fisheye showed him stars on every side. He turned toward the sun. And a peculiar thing happened. The nebula dimmed, parted along his line of sight, and left him staring at the filtered image of Kali. He knew it was filtered, because his wardrobe wasn’t blinking override warnings about staring into it, and everything around it didn’t flicker dim as the utility fog struggled to compensate. The bruise‑limned darkness of sunspots hung vivid against the glare, the ceaseless fidgeting of the corona marked abruptly by the dolphin leap of a solar arch. It seemed close enough to reach out his hand and touch, enormous, though his palm at full extension eclipsed the sphere.

Teeth rolling his lower lip, Kusanagi‑Jones returned to New Amazonia. The veils swept back from it as well, focus tightening, and as the holographic point of view swept in, he found himself retracing the rough course of the lighter that had brought him to this planet. He circled Penthesilea, and there the image hesitated. Waiting, he realized. Hovering like a butterfly on trembling wingbeats, accommodating the wind.

“House, show me the power generation system, please.”

The image swooped again. A flying creature’s preferred perspective, as internal decor mimicking wide open spaces and empty skies would be comforting to a creature with wings, where an ape’s descendent might feel cozy with limited perspectives and broken sight lines, the indication of places to hide.

The sense of falling made his fingers flex, trying to clutch a railing that wasn’t there. He mastered himself, despite the sense that there was nothing to stand on as images rushed past incomprehensibly fast. And then they paused, arrested sharply, and he found himself staring at the back of his own head, the wooly curls of a dark man in a star‑spangled room.

His fisheye–and his own eyes–showed him that the image hewatched hadn’t changed. But the room around the virtual Kusanagi‑Jones dissolved, vanished into clear air, leaving him standing at the bottom of a sphere whose every surface writhed with twisted cable. It was a strangely organic growth, fractal in the way it merged and combined, coming together in a massive, downward‑tending trunk beneath Kusanagi‑Jones’s feet.

The hologram had stripped away the chamber’s walls, showing him what lay behind them. His neck chilled. He rubbed his palms against his thighs. “Follow the cables, please.”

The perspective zoomed down– throughhim, and he blinked at the glimpse of meat and bone and wiring and a momentary cross‑section of a pulsing heart–and chased the tunneling cables down, down, to bedrock and a cavern in the depth‑warmed darkness.

He was no electrical engineer. But an encyclopedic education, RAM‑assisted parsing, and the information he’d chipped when he came out of cryo identified most of the machinery. Capacitors, transformers, batteries, a bank of quantum processors big enough to run a starship: essentially, an electrical substation the size of some Earth cities.

And no sign whatsoever of a generator. Just the power endlessly flowing from the quantum array–

Fromthe quantum array.

“Shit,” Kusanagi‑Jones said. He had an excellent memory. He could recall Elder Singapore’s slightly amused tone precisely, as she had said, But you can’t get there from here.“The power source isn’t on this planet.”

A flicker of motion in his fisheye alerted him a split second before an urbane, perfectly modulated voice answered him. He turned, binocular vision better than peripheral, the fisheye snapping down on the sudden motion and giving him a blurred preview that didn’t remotely prepare him.

The head that hung over him was a meter long from occiput to muzzle, paved about the mouth and up to the eyes on either side with beady scales that ranged in color from azure to indigo. Flatter scales plated under the jaw and down the throat, creamy ivory and sunrise‑yellow. A fluff of threadlike feathers began as a peach‑and‑cream crest between the eyes, broadened to a mane on the neck and down the spine, spread across the flanks, and downed the outside of the thighs. The forelimbs, folded tight against the animal’s ribs, raised towering spikes on either side of its shoulders–the outermost fingers of hands that were curled under to support the front half.

Support it couldn’t have needed, because the entire four‑meter‑long animal was lucently transparent. It was a projection.

“You are wrong, esthelichMichelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi‑Jones. Planetary margins are irrelevant. The cosmocline is not in this brane,” the ghost of a Dragon said, and paused before it continued.

“Good morning, esthelich. Kii greets you. Kii is explorer‑caste. Kii speaks for the Consent.”

BOOK TWO

The Mortification of the Flesh

13

“YOU OPPOSE CONSENT,” KII SAID, THE SPIKED TIPS OF folded wings canting back as it settled onto its haunches, knuckles extended before it like a crouching dog’s paws. Its long neck stretched, dipping slightly at the center as it brought its head to Kusanagi‑Jones’s level. Its phantom tongue flicked out, hovered in the air, tested, considered. “You are disloyal.”

Kusanagi‑Jones had no answer. He was poised, defensively, ready to move, to attack or evade. But there was nothing here he could touch, and the creature’s capabilities were unmeasured.

It paused, though, cocking its head side to side as if to judge distance, and nictitating membranes wiped across wide golden eyes. It seemed to consider. “Perfidious,” it tried, and Kusanagi‑Jones could see that the thing wasn’t actually speaking. The voice was generated stereophonically, so it seemed to originate near Kii’s mouth–if Kii was the animal’s name, and not its species identifier or a personal pronoun or something Kusanagi‑Jones wasn’t even thinking of–but the mouth didn’t work around the words, and its breathing flared and flexed nostrils, uninterrupted. “Treasonous,” it considered, lingering over the flavor of the word, and then shook its head like a bird shaking off water. “Disloyal,” it decided gravely. “You are disloyal.”

Michelangelo found himself quite unintentionally disarmed by this haphazard pedantry, though he fought it. He straightened, breathing slowly, and let his hands fall to his sides. He kept his balance light, weight centered on the balls of his feet. He would move if he had to and try to look calm in the meantime. The preliminary indicators were that Kii was nonaggressive. It might be a sort of…user‑friendly interface bot designed for a Dragon. The alien’s equivalent of an application assistant.

“Request clarification,” Kusanagi‑Jones said.

Kii’s tongue flickered. It settled another notch, lowering itself to its transparent belly, drawing its head back, neck a sinuous curve. The tension in Kusanagi‑Jones’s gut untwisted another notch, the lizard in the back of his skull reacting to a lowering of threat level–as if the Dragon’s appearance of ease mattered at all. Any attack, if it came, need have nothing to do with a hologram; a laser concealed in a wall port would suffice.

“You are a member of a population in competition with the local population,” Kii said. “But your transmissions indicate that your allegiance to your own population is…” It paused again, head rocking and eyes upcast. Kusanagi‑Jones imagined the Dragon was searching for an unfamiliar word again. “–spurious.”

Kusanagi‑Jones licked his lips. It wasn’t technicallya question. More an observation. Maybe he could return a question of his own. “Are you House? Wait, belay that. Are you the intelligence known as House?”

“Kii is…”

Kusanagi‑Jones thought that the approximations occurred when it was searching for a word in New Amazonia’s patois that matched a concept in its own language. He waited it out.

“Kii is not‑House,” it said. “House is House. House is a construct. Kii is of the Consent.”

Not I. Kii.Maybe not a personal pronoun. But it understood them–it used youfluently enough. So there was some reason it didn’t think of itself as I. Or even we,the logical choice if it were a hive‑mind. “Kii is a virtual intelligence?”

“Kii is translated.” It stopped again, nictitating. “Transformed. Molted,” it said, and then, triumphantly, the spiked fingertips flipping up to reveal cream‑and‑ultramarine wing leather in blurred, torn‑paper patterns: “Fledged!”

Kusanagi‑Jones put his hand against his mouth. He pressed it there, and thought. “You’re a transcendent intelligence,” he said. Kii blinked great translucent eyes. “What do you want?”

What he meant was, why haven’t you killed me the way you killed the last Coalition forces to land here?But that seemed an impolitic question. I’m not trained for first contact–

But this wasn’t first contact either. First contact was handled. First contact was more than a hundred Terran years ago. It didn’t matter if the New Amazonians knew that the Dragons still inhabited their cities, after a fashion–which was something that Kusanagi‑Jones wasn’t prepared to assume–because the Dragons definitely knew rather a lot about humans.

“Your population is expansionist,” Kii said, after it had given Kusanagi‑Jones adequate time to consider the stupidity of his blurted question. “But intelligent. Kii wishes to encourage dйtente.” It showed him teeth, back‑curved spikes suitable for holding and shredding meat. “Kii is not eager to repeat, no, reiterate a massacre.”

“I am not eager to be massacred,” Kusanagi‑Jones replied. “You’ve ethics.”

“You have aesthetics,” Kii said. “But no Consent. No true Consent.” It hissed, frustrated. “You act in ways that are not species‑ordained.”

“And you do not?” It was surprisingly easy to relax with the thing. For all its alienness, it made no threatening gestures, did nothing but occasionally tilt its head and twitch the spikes of its wingtips into a more comfortable pose.

“Kii follows Consent,” it said. That ripple of the downy feathers on its neck almost looked like a skin‑shiver. “Consent is…ordained.”

It was watching him. Trying the words in turn and seeing how he reacted. Testing them on him, until something–his body language, his scent–told it he was understanding as it wished.

“I follow my leaders, too.”

Could that be the thing’s answer to a smile? After 150 years of observation, it must comprehend human body language. Especially if it was reading his responses.

But he was a Liar.

“Biochemical,” it explained after another pause.

Oh. Ah. Not a group mind, then, but something closer to a political structure…albeit one enforced by biology. Or programming, in the case of a life form that wasn’t biological anymore. “Consent?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t argue my people out of coming here. They’ll–” Kusanagi‑Jones shrugged and spread his hands out, pale palms up, dark backs inverted. They won’t leave something like you at their flank.A raw frontier world with a powerful bargaining chip, they mightnegotiate with, if the cost of occupation was deemed higher than the benefit gained. But a Transcendent alien species, with no apparent defenses, and the promise of all that energy, all that technology–

The Coalition had proven its acquisitiveness. On Ur, on New Earth–spectacular failure though thathad been–and on half a dozen other worlds. Thiswould be one bastard of an interesting brawl in Cabinet, in any case. It might be worthwhile to send combat fogs into the population centers just on the chance there might be pieces to pick up later.

“If you cannot convince your population to leave Kii’s…pets, Kii’s associates, in possession of these resources,” Kii said, “Kii will kill them. As necessary.”

Lesa had made Cathay and Asha wait in the hall as she passcoded the door to the Coalition agents’ suite and went inside. The simulacra in the bed were effective, but they wouldn’t bear up to a touch. Still, she stood over them, listening to the sound of their breathing–“Vincent’s” a regular hiss, “Michelangelo’s” touched by a faint hint of snore–and closed her eyes.

Robert had end‑run her. And the essential link to Ur and rebellion could be walking into a trap right now–or, worse or better, arranging a deal with a rival faction.

Lesa knew her mother. If Elena wasn’t in charge, Elena was unlikely to play. And if Elena didn’t play–

–Lesa’s own chances of getting Julian off‑planet to Ur, if he didn’t prove gentle, went from reasonable to infinitesimal.

Ignoring the monitors (she’d be the one who examined the recordings), she tugged the covers up slightly, as if tucking in a couple of sleeping spies, and padded back toward the door. It opened and she passed between Asha and Cathay without a word.

“Everything all right?” Asha asked, hooking lustrous dark hair behind her ear with a thumb.

“Fine,” Lesa said over her shoulder. “Sleeping the sleep of the just. Make sure they’re up at five hundred for the repatriation ceremony?” She paused and turned long enough to throw Cathay a wink. “I think they wore themselves out.”

The lift brought her down quickly. Her watch buzzed against her wrist; she touched it and tilted her head to her shoulder to block external noise. Her earpiece needed replacing. “Agnes?”

“Lesa, Robert’s not in the rooms,” Agnes said, her high‑pitched voice shivering. The words came crisp and clipped, as if she’d had them all lined up, ready to rush forward as soon as her mouth was opened. “Do you want a constable on it?”

Lesa’s mouth filled with bitter acid. “Does Mother know?”

Agnes paused. “I called you before I woke her.” Which was a violation of protocol. But Lesa would have done the same.

There were any number of possibilities, but only two seemed likely. Robert was a double. Which meant he was working for either a free male faction, like Parity or–she prayed not–Right Hand Path. Or he was working for security directorate, and she’d just bought herself a sunrise execution.

“You did the right thing,” Lesa said. As she walked out into Government Center she passed the community car she’d taken here, which was parked silently at the curb waiting for its next call. She paused, frowned at her watch, and then continued, “And send me Walter, would you?”

She leaned a hip and shoulder against the wall as she waited, closing her eyes to cadge a few moments of dozing. Less than ten minutes later the whuff of hot breath on her hand and the tickle of feathers alerted her. She stroked a palm across Walter’s skull, laying his ear fronds flat and caressing warm down and scales. He panted slightly with the run, but he’d had no trouble finding her. Penthesilea wasn’t a big city in terms of area; he was trained as a package‑runner, and he regularly went on errands with Robert or Katya. Agnes would have just told him find Lesa at work,and once he was at Government Center, he would have traced her scent.

“Good khir,” she said, and gave him her other hand, the one she’d stroked through the Coalition agents’ bedding. He whuffed again and went down on his haunches, not sitting but crouching. He lifted his head, ear‑fronds and crest fluffing, and waited, his eyes glowing dimly with gathered light.

“Find it, please,” Lesa said. Walter nosed her hand again. “No cookie,” she said, shaking her head. She had nothing to bribe him with. “Find.”

He whuffed one last time, disappointed, and bounced up into an ambling trot, nose to the ground. She waited while he cast back and forth, darting one way and then the other, feathery whiskers sweeping the square. They framed the end of his mouth like a Van Dyke, above and below the labial pits, and served a dual purpose–as sensitive instruments of touch and for stirring up, gathering, and concentrating aromas.

Then, not far from the doorway she’d exited, he made two short, sharp dashes at right angles to each other and glanced over his shoulder with quivering ear‑fronds for a decision.

They hadn’t gone the same way.

Lesa raised her hand and pointed at random. Walter took off like a spring‑loaded chase dummy, and Lesa bounded after, running until her knees ached and her lungs burned.

The scent was fresh.

Elder Kyoto closed her fingers around Vincent’s biceps and drew him under the archway. “Any problem getting away?”

She kept her voice low, down in her throat like a lover’s, and Vincent answered the same way. “None. Given who passed your note, I expected Miss Pretoria–”

“What a pity to confound your expectations,” she replied. “You have a message from your mother, I understand?”

“I am empowered by the government‑in‑anticipation of Ur to seek alliances, if that’s what you mean.” He checked his fisheye: slightly more subtle than glancing over his shoulder. “We’re unmonitored here?”

“Jammed,” she said, and held up her wrist. The device strapped to it looked like an ordinary watch. She smiled. “I apologize for my boorish behavior at the reception, by the way.”

“Quite all right.” He draped himself around her shoulder, leaning down as if to murmur in her ear. “Elder Singapore isn’t sympathetic, I take it?”

“Elder Singapore is convinced that the Coalition can be bargained with.” She snuggled under the curve of his arm, her shoulders stiff behind a mask of insincere affection.

“Yes,” Vincent said. “So was my grandmother. Is it worth trying to convince her?”

It was so easy now, now that it was happening. The tension of waiting and secrets and subtleties released, and he was here, working, calculating. “On a male’s word?” Kyoto shrugged. “There isn’t. Singapore was Separatist before her conversion to mainstream politics, and her closest associates–Montevideo, Saide Austin–are still deeply involved in antimale politics.” Kyoto grimaced. “Pretoria house might be sympathetic–actually, we used sleight of hand to talk to you first–”

“We?”

“Parity.”

“Excuse me?”

She tossed her hair back roughly. “That’s our name. Parity. What you might call a radical underground movement. We’re pro men’s right’s, anti‑Trials, in favor of population control. Opposed to Coalition appeasement–”

“And illegal.”

“How ever did you guess?” She might have become someone else since the night before, the cold mask replaced by passionate urgency.

“You’re a Liar,” he answered. “I would have known–”

“I’m not. And you don’t know everything. I’m on your side.”

“My mother’s side.”

“The rebel prince,” she mocked. She folded her arms across her chest. “Do you actually carewhat your mother stands for, or did you just grow up twisted in her shadow? Katherine Lexasdaughter is a famously charismatic leader, of course. But what do youbelieve in, Vincent Katherinessen?”

His lips drew tight across his teeth while he considered it. “You think it’s wise to overthrow the entire planetary social system as a prelude to an armed revolt, Elder Kyoto?”

“Armed revolt first,” she answered. “ Thenrevolution. We have a hundred thousand combat‑trained stud males on this planet. We have half a million armed, educated, fiercely independent women. I don’t want to see them come to blows with each other. I want to give them an enemy in common.”

He watched her, still, and she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. Maybe not a Liar, then. Not a trained one, anyway. Just very controlled, very good. “I was supposedto contact Lesa Pretoria, wasn’t I?” he asked. “You intercepted the codes.”

“We needed you first. It’s not just about the Coalition–”

“It’s about the Coalition first.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What about personal dignity? Personal freedom?”

“Never mind the Coalition.” His hands wanted to curl into fists. Tendons pressed the inside of his bracer. “Never mind New Amazonia. Do you think there’s any of that under the Governors?”

“I think,” she said, “the Governors come first. And then the internal reforms.”

He bit his lip, leaning forward, voice low and focused, taut with wrath. “Elena Pretoriacan bring me the New Amazonian government, once Singapore is out of the way. Can you? My mother willsupply the Captains’ council. We can guarantee New Earth. That’s three. It’s not enough, but it’s what we’ve got, and once things are started, a few more may take their chances. You were right when you said my mother is famously charismatic. But this is a civil warwe’re discussing, Antonia, and one Old Earth will fight like hell to win, because every planet it loses means one less place for the population to expand to. Will your half a million armed women fight for you, fight against Coalition technology, if they think you’re going to take away theirspot at the top of the pecking order?”

“They’ll fight to keep New Amazonia free. We can explain the rest afterward,” Kyoto said. Determination squared her. She unfolded her hands and let them drop against her thighs, the right one hovering close to her holster. “And, if you wouldn’t mind putting the rest of the lecture on hold for a minute, Miss Katherinessen, we have company.”

Vincent had caught the motion in his fisheye, and was already putting his back to the wall. Someone walked toward them, a tripled shadow cast by multiple light sources splayed on the pavement before her. The unfastened safety snap bounced against her holster and her hair caught blond and crimson and fuchsia highlights off the domed street lights lining the walls of the half‑empty square. A big animal–a khir–stood beside her, the angular silhouette also casting three long shadows that interlocked with the woman’s.

“You shouldn’t raise your voice so, Miss Katherinessen,” Lesa said, pausing, her thumb resting on the butt of her weapon. “It’s unseemly to shout.”

He slid his arm off Elder Kyoto’s shoulder and stepped back with a sigh. Kyoto glanced at him and he shrugged. He didn’t say it, but he didn’t think you’d have to be a superperceiver to read the I told you soin the twist of his mouth. “Miss Pretoria,” he said. “Welcome to the party. Is Robert coming?”

Lesa let her hand drift away from her holster as she came forward, but didn’t fix the snap. Kyoto hadn’t unbonded her honor; it wouldn’t slow her down much, if she opened fire–but probably enough. Considering how people treated Lesa when she had a weapon in her hand.

“I don’t know,” Lesa said. She stepped under the arch, into the shadows, and Walter trotted beside her, fluffed up and cheerful. “You’d have to ask his true mistress.” She tilted her head, frowning at Kyoto under the fall of her hair, and lowered her voice. “In between plotting treason in the streets. Where’s Kusanagi‑Jones, Vincent?”

“Keeping busy with a little industrial espionage. You leave Angelo to me. That’s not negotiable.”

Kyoto glared for a moment before she nodded. “All right,” she said. “Vincent. You are authorized to deal for your mother.”

“Full authority,” he said. “New Earth, too.”

Kyoto nodded and turned to Lesa. “Then we’ll join forces. One good Coalition deserves another.”

“Mother won’t like it.”

“I’ll handle your mother.” And now Kyoto’s hand dropped to her gun butt. Vincent stiffened, ready to grab her wrist and trust to his wardrobe to save him, but all she did was stroke a thumb across the snap, assuring herself that it was closed.

Lesa snorted, but she echoed the gesture, causing a click. “I’d like to see that. Who else do you have in Pretoria house?”

“Nobody,” Kyoto said. Vincent believed her; he glanced at Lesa to see what shethought. He was still half convinced that Kyoto was a Liar. Or the next best thing.

Lesa was nibbling her lower lip, leaning forward aggressively as if completely oblivious that she was facing down her superior officer. “Then where’s Robert tonight?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Robert left the Blue Rooms somehow. He’s gone.”

Vincent had rarely seen somebody’s mouth actually drop open. Kyoto’s did, and stayed down for seconds while she thought it over. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I have no idea.”

“Shit,” Lesa said. She thumbed her watch and turned slightly away, as people did for politeness when taking remote calls. Her eyes unfocused slightly. “Agnes? Yes. Sweetie, I’m sorry…we have a fairly serious problem.”

“When you’re done with that,” Vincent said, “I’ll need a distraction while I sneak back into my room.”

Kusanagi‑Jones returned to the guest suite half an hour before dawn, walking camouflaged through the door when the security guards knocked to awaken Vincent. He slipped into the bed as Vincent was shaking the covers in an ostensible attempt to awaken him, reabsorbed the mannequin, and sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Morning already?”

“You don’t look very rested,” Vincent said. He walked toward the shower as Kusanagi‑Jones rolled out of bed.

“Somebody’s snoring kept me up,” he said between push‑ups.

“Your own?” Vincent replied.

Kusanagi‑Jones’s eyes were gritty with exhaustion. He wasn’t young enough to shrug off a sleepless night anymore, if he ever had been; he couldn’t remember. He quit at twenty‑five push‑ups and knelt, ducking his head over his wrist as he adjusted his chemistry. A rush of energy swept the cobwebs away, leaving him taut and jittering but awake.

He climbed to his feet and went to join Vincent in the shower. Vincent stepped aside, letting Kusanagi‑Jones have the spray. He lifted his face into the patter of water, fighting the uneasy urge to flinch. He didn’t like it drumming on cheeks and eyelids. “Did you find it?” Vincent asked.

Kusanagi‑Jones stepped out of the water and looked at him before answering the same way. “Found something. I know where the generator is, anyway, though it’s going to be a bigger problem than I want to contemplate getting to it. Disruptingthe power supply, I might manage. At some risk. The point of transmission is guarded. The rest…it’s going to take awhile to explain.” He paused for a breath, and to shake the water off his lashes. “Why are you limping?”

Vincent was lathering himself. His hands were over his face, but Kusanagi‑Jones saw him hesitate. “Am I?”

“Favoring your knee.”

“I must have hit it wrong last night,” Vincent answered, turning into the water to rinse. “It’s sore.”

“Sure picked the right day,” Kusanagi‑Jones answered, as Vincent stepped past him, reaching for a towel. “We’re going to be on our feet every minute.”

14

IT WASN’T QUITE AS BAD AS THAT. THERE WERE CHAIRS AT the breakfast table. Which was fortunate, for by then occasional sharper stabs punctuated the ache in Vincent’s knee. It was manageable, however, with the assistance of the same chemistry that mitigated his sunburn.

Elder Kyoto caught him wincing as they took their seats. “Third day is the worst,” she said.

“Oh, good,” he answered. “Something to look forward to.” Across the table, Michelangelo reached out to press a fingertip to Vincent’s wrist. The heat made him jerk his hand back.

“Remember this,” Angelo said, finishing it with a glower. The sting of the touch wasn’t what made Vincent’s eyes burn.

He looked down hastily, examining what was on offer this morning. Apparently, somebody had alerted the chef to the dietary restrictions of the Coalition agents, because the breakfast options included a kashalike grain, cooked into porridge and served with some sort of legume milk and a sweetener reminiscent of molasses in its sulfury richness.

There were new people at this meal, husbands and wives of dignitaries who hadn’t attended the supper two days previous. Vincent filed all the introductions under mnemonics. The one on his immediate left, however, he suspected he’d have no difficulty recalling: Saide Austin, the artist.

She was an imposing woman. Almost two meters tall and not slight of build, with short, tight‑coiled hair shot through with gray threads like smoke and wide cheeks framing a broad, fleshy nose. Her skin was textured brown, darker around her eyes and paler in the creases between her brows, and her half‑smile reinforced the lines. Heavy silver rings circled several of her fingers, flashing like the mirrors embroidered on her robe.

Her hand was warm where she shook Vincent’s, and she gave him a little pat on the forearm before she let him go. Over her shoulder, he saw Michelangelo frown. Their eye contact was brief, but definite, and the flickering glance that followed ended on Claude Singapore.

So Austin was the one pushing Singapore’s buttons.

“I very much admired your sculpture,” Vincent said.

“Jinga Mbande?”The smile broadened, showing stout white teeth. “Thank you. How do you think your government will feel about touring artists, when negotiations are concluded?”

“I’m sure they’d welcome them,” Vincent said. He slid his spoon into the porridge and cut a bite‑sized portion against the edge of the bowl. “I’m surprised you’d be willing to send New Amazonian art to Old Earth, though, after–”

“The Six Weeks War?” She spooned honey into her tea. He looked away. “Isn’t the Coalition bent on showing goodwill?”

“Your countrywomen aren’t all so sanguine,” he answered.

She shrugged and drank. “What did you expect? I’m not sanguine either. But I’m prepared.”

Vincent nodded, reaching for his own tea. Yes. This was the person the Coalition meant him to deal with, the one who could bargain without running home to check with her mother. And according to Kyoto–if he could trust her–one he had no real chance of bargaining with. A separatist, somebody who’d as soon see New Amazonia live up to its name to the extent of eradicating men entirely.

So why was she wasting his time?

Across the table, Michelangelo was drinking coffee, apparently engrossed in conversation with Miss Ouagadougou, but he was listening. Vincent suppressed that twinge again, half guilt and half anticipation. “I’ve heard a rumor,” he said, “that your voice is one of the respected ones urging dйtente. We’re grateful.”

She sipped her tea, set it down–aligning the cup and saucer carefully with the cream pitcher–and lifted a forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth. Vincent waited while she chewed and swallowed. “How would the Coalition react if New Amazonia opened itself to limited immigration?” she asked, as if idly. “There must be women on Old Earth who would come–”

It was possible she was trying to see if he would startle, or how he would react. It was possible the offer–with all its attendant benefits and problems–was genuine. He could see half a dozen ways it could be politically or idealistically motivated. In any case, he’d been expecting some sort of dramatic maneuver, and he managed to neither bite his tongue nor drop his spoon. “I think they’d be very interested,” he said. “It might help relieve population pressures a great deal.”

“Of course, it would be unlikely that the government would allow them to import Old Earth technology.” She touched his sleeve, rubbing the fog between finger and thumb. “They’d be homesteading. Any men would live under New Amazonian law.”

“Of course.” He put the spoon down and leaned back, turning to face her. Suddenly, he wasn’t all that hungry. “This wouldn’t substitute for negotiations regarding the exchange of technology for the remaining unrepatriated art, though.”

“Why not?” She finished her tea, the resinous scent of her perfume wafting from her clothes as she moved. “We’d be giving the Colonial Coalition something it desperately needs–”

“Because,” Vincent said, “you benefit as much as we do. You’re having genetic issues, of course.”

Her fingers rippled on the table. She watched them beat three times, then let go a held breath and nodded. “Not yet.”

“But soon.”

“We do not permit genetic manipulation.”

“Indeed,” Vincent said. “In a closed population, that’s likely to cause problems. Especially if the radiation exposure your colonists suffered in transit was anything like what we contended with on Ur.”

“You’re a clever bastard, Vincent Katherinessen,” she said, and lifted her fork again.

He matched the gesture. “It’s what I do.”

As the breakfast reception ended, Lesa made her way around the table to collect Katherinessen, leaving Kusanagi‑Jones looking slightly trapped under Elder Montevideo’s care.

She waited while Katherinessen courteously ended his conversation with Elder Austin and turned before she offered her hand. He shook it lightly and followed as she led toward the door. “Robert?” he asked quietly.

“No sign. We reported him as a runaway. Anything else was too much risk.” She’d been proud of how level her voice was, but it didn’t spare her Vincent’s glance of sympathy.

“Are we ready for the ceremony, then?”

“Claude and Elder Austin will be on their way down shortly. But I thought you and Miss Kusanagi‑Jones would appreciate a trip to the washroom beforehand,” she said. “House has the stage set up, and there’s quite a crowd.”

“You’d expect everybody would be too hung over.”

As easily as he read her suppressed grief, she picked up the tension under his flip reply. “Penthesileans pride themselves on never being too hung over for a party,” she answered. She lowered her voice and leaned in, as if making an off‑color comment in his ear. “Any problem with your partner?”

“Not at all,” he answered, turning to wink. “I’m afraid he didn’t get any rest, though.”

“Miss Katherinessen, you’re a very bad man.”

“I know,” he answered. “Isn’t it grand?”

Lesa caught Kusanagi‑Jones’s attention and he fell into step as they slipped through the crowd milling by the door. Two security agents–Shafaqat and someone new–joined them as they entered the hall, and waited with Lesa during a brief pause outside a lavatory. When the males rejoined her, they both looked ineffably fresher. Lesa resisted a brief pang of jealousy. The wardrobes were indeed nice technology, but who would want to pay the price?

The sun barely crested the rooftops as they reached the square. Three more security agents joined them as they stepped outside, and Lesa noticed that not only did Vincent know how to move with them–close as a shadow, his body always partially obscured by theirs–but that Kusanagi‑Jones fell into the pattern as flawlessly as a stone into a ring, covering both Katherinessen and Lesa herself. The crowd parted to let them pass, and to Lesa’s trained eye, Vincent’s unease at the situation lay open. He concealed it from everyone else, smiling and waving graciously, shaking whatever hand was offered, while Kusanagi‑Jones exhibited a grim stoicism that probably masked painful worry.

Lesa guessed that on Old Earth, an emissary would never be suffered to come in such close contact with crowds. If the mind of the mob were to decide it wanted Vincent Katherinessen dead, he would be, though the cost in New Amazonian life might be stunning. But the New Amazonian system was based on personal contact, kinship and friendship systems, alliances and bargains hammered out during drawn‑out suppers.

The populace wouldn’t tolerate any deal they felt was made in secrecy. And if Pretoria house was going to succeed, especially with the added complication of something as unpopular as Parity in the soup, Lesa needed the people comfortable with, even fond of, Katherinessen. He’d have to take the risk, even in the wake of the attempted abduction.

They climbed the stairs to the stage and took their seats. House had provided several rows of chairs for the occasion, along with a canopy to offer shade and some protection from the inevitable afternoon squall, if proceedings lasted that long.

Except for Shafaqat, security fell away as they climbed. The rest of the detail lingered near the foot of the stage or mingled with the crowd. And Lesa, drawing a deep breath, looked down at her hands and composed herself as Claude Singapore and Maiju Montevideo, Saide Austin, Antonia Kyoto, Nkechi Ouagadougou, and four pairs of artists and dignitaries chosen to represent other settlements passed through the crowd in their own ring of security, pausing to exchange small talk and shake hands with those who came forward. “When they come up,” Lesa said, in case her charges didn’t know, “you’ll rise and shake hands with them.”

“Of course,” Kusanagi‑Jones said, the left‑hand corner of his mouth twisting up. “What else’d we do?”

“You could always break somebody’s neck,” Lesa answered. “Do you take recommendations?”

Kusanagi‑Jones turned to check before he was certain she was smiling at him. It was a small, tight smile, such that he wondered at the subtext, but a secondary peek at Vincent yielded no further information.

He sighed and ran his fingertips across his wrist, activating the sensors in his watch. “Not more chemistry,” Vincent said.

“Just dialing my wardrobe down,” he said. “Hate to zap the minister of produce.”

“Do they have a minister of produce?” Vincent asked, between unmoving lips. Their eyes caught, and Vincent smiled, just with the corner of his eyes.

Michelangelo looked down quickly, disguising the sudden, tight pain in his chest. There had to be a way. There hadto be a way. There was a way out of everything.

It was just a matter of finding it, and then having the guts to grab it and the strength to hang on. And standing ready to pay the cost. Kusanagi‑Jones’s choice was a little too clear cut. He could be loyal, desert Free Earth, and keep Vincent–maybe. If they could pull this off. If he could bring home the brane technology–far more critical to their reception on Earth than any alliance with New Amazonia–it might be enough to buy him Vincent. All it meant was abandoning the ideal of freedom from the Governors that he’d been working toward for thirty years.

He even saw an angle that might work. All he had to do was convince Kii to give it to him as the price of keeping the Coalition out of New Amazonia. Destroying the Consent wouldn’t work. He didn’t think the virtual space they inhabited was housed in the Kali system. Or even in the local universe.

If it were him, and he had the technology to manipulate branes, to build himself a pocket universe of his desire, he’d build one where the cosmological rules encouraged a stable existence, or maybe lock it to an event horizon. What was the point of Transcending to virtual immortality if it just meant you still had to die when entropy collected its inevitable toll?

After long consideration of the night’s odd conversation, Kusanagi‑Jones even thought he understood the theory. The technology was another issue, of course–but based on what Kii had said, that suggestive word cosmocline,and a technology apparently based on manipulation of quantum probability and superstrings, Kusanagi‑Jones could make an educated layman’s guess at what was going on.

The mysterious energy might be generated betweenuniverses, in a manner analogous to a thermocline. Some quality–the cosmological constant, gravity, something even more basic–varied along the cosmocline, to use Kii’s word. And that variation produced a gradient, which produced potential energy, which could be converted into usefulenergy. They could stick the far end of a wormhole into the general vicinity of a star, even, he supposed, though he wouldn’t vouch for the integrity of the star afterward.

This was a species that could grab hold of a superstring and open up a wormhole to another universe as if tugging aside a drape. Kii’s promise to obliterate the Coalition stem and branch if it threatened Kii’s pets was not idle posturing.

It was just Kusanagi‑Jones’s fortune that the Dragon was ethical and preferred to avoid atrocity. When convenient. And that he was constrained by the programmed equivalent of a neurochemical tether; he was physically (if that was the right word for a Transcended intelligence) incapable of acting against his species’ interests.

Leaving Kusangi‑Jones the choice of siding with Vincent, and leaving most of his species under the threat of Assessment and the Cabinet’s less‑than‑generous governance–or of lying to Vincent, and protecting New Amazonia from the Coalition and the Coalition from the Dragons, and losing Vincent for good.

He could always tellVincent. But the questions would inevitably lead to New Earth, and the death of the Skidbladnir.

Not that it mattered. The choice wasn’t a choice. It was just torture, and part of the pain was knowing how it would end.

“I need an Advocate,” Kusanagi‑Jones muttered, as Saide Austin paused at the bottom of the steps to shake three more hands and then, adjusting her heavy rings, her robes swaying around her sandal‑corded ankles, ascended majestically.

“After lunch,” Vincent answered, with a curious glance.

Kusanagi‑Jones nodded. The stage had the same curious resilience as the pavement; it felt almost buoyant under his boots as he retraced his steps and reached out to assist Elder Austin up the last stair.

Her hands matched her girth and her shoulders, wide fingered and strong. Her rings pinched him as he hauled her up, and when he pulled back his hand there was a line of blood in the crease of his finger.

She stepped closer, concerned, when he raised the hand to examine. “Did I hurt you?”

“Nothing serious,” he said. His docs were already sealing the wound and a reflexive check for contaminants showed nothing; his watch lights blinked green and serene under the skin. One thing about intelligence work in the diplomatic corps: they paid for the best. “It won’t bother me long.” And as she smiled, chagrined, and turned aside to take Vincent’s hand, he reached out to greet Elder Kyoto.

This time he waited until she reached the top of the stair.

Like the hoary joke about the flat‑Earther arguing with the geologist, it was speeches, speeches, speeches all the way down. Vincent had spent three months on Kaiwo Maru,which Michelangelo slept away in cryo, studying the sparse information they had on New Amazonia–fragments sourced from long‑term agents on the ground, like Michelangelo’s contact, Miss Ougadougou–and reinforcing chipped and hypnagogic language lessons with live study, for which there was no effective replacement. New Amazonia’s patois was as unique as Ur’s. And Vincent didn’t have the easy, playful facility with languages that Angelo went to such lengths to conceal.

But it had given him an opportunity to work on his own speech. On a Coalition world, he’d have been confident that most people would hear nothing but a few carefully selected sound bites, if the adaptive algorithms in their watches let that much get through the filters. An infotainment system that could determine when the user was bored or not paying attention–and later, efficiently filter out similarly boring content–was handy. But sometimes limiting.

New Amazonia was different. As on Ur, politics was the subject of a good deal of social and personal focus, and the repatriation ceremony would hold the planet’s eyes.

Vincent waited and listened while Claude Singapore welcomed him and Michelangelo and their precious cargo to Penthesilea. Her own speech had been surprisingly short and to the point, and when she turned to introduce him, he paused a moment to admire her grasp of rhetoric before rising and stepping out of the shade of the canopy.

He barely resisted the urge to adjust his chemistry as he stepped up to the lectern, Michelangelo at his side as faithful and silent as any politician’s wife. Sunlight pushed his shoulders down. Like the rest of the speakers, he wasn’t wearing a hat, and the heat seeping through his wardrobe scorched and prickled burned shoulders. He touched the pad on the lectern and said “active” to key the public address system to his voice. He lifted his eyebrows at Michelangelo; all he needed to do. Angelo knew. Vincent’s focus would be on reading and working the crowd from here on in, shaping their energy and giving it back to them, flavored with what he wanted them to think. Judgment, safety, discretion–those had just become Michelangelo’s job.

Vincent took a breath, squared his shoulders, and drew the crowd’s energy around him like a veil.

Audiences were like perfume. Every one a little bit different, but with practice, you could identify the notes. He read this group as expectant, curious, unfriendly. Neither Vincent Katherinessen nor the Coalition was welcome here.

Giving Vincent a mere cable bridge to balance. Because he didn’t care to rehabilitate the Coalition in their eyes. But Vincentneeded to retain their respect.

And he wasn’t about to address the citizens.

“People of New Amazonia,” he began, raising his voice and pitching it so the audio motes would recognize it and amplify it across the crowd. “I stand before you today in hope–”

It was as far as he got. Michelangelo shouted “Shooter!”and Vincent, as he was conditioned to do, went limp.

The next sensation should have been a blow, the impact of Angelo’s body taking him down, covering him.

But it didn’t happen quite that way.

Certain things happened when Michelangelo saw the gun come up, and all of them happened fast enough that if later asked, he would have been unable to provide their sequence. He registered the weapon before it was sighted in, shouted a warning, pointed, and dove for Claude Singapore. A split‑second judgment, based on the realization that the weapon was tending toward her, that Vincent’s wardrobe would afford him protection, and that Vincent had partial cover behind the lectern.

Shafaqat Delhi was half a step behind him, and she landed atop Vincent, who had recovered from his surprise enough to dive with her to the floor of the stage and land facedown, arms around his head. Michelangelo lost sight of him then; he felt the shock and smelled the snapof ozone as something struck his wardrobe and he struck Elder Singapore.

A second gunshot cracked, louder and longer–two fired at once?–and Michelangelo’s skin jumped away from transmitted pressure as his wardrobe caught that one, too. Shouting echoed around the square: more gunfire, now. Not surprising, when most of the crowd was armed, but it seemed fairly restrained, and no more bullets were arching over the stage.

And the prime minister was shoving at his chest and cursing him as his wardrobe snapped painful sparks at her. “Stay down,” he hissed. He slapped the cutoff on his watch so it wouldn’t electrocute her, and caught her hand as she was reaching for her weapon. “Let security handle it.”

By the time he dared to lift his head and let her lift hers, they had. Elder Singapore shoved him away violently and sat. “You’ll hear about that,” she snapped.

He permitted it only because they were behind a screen of security agents, and–to be honest–he wanted to get to Vincent, who was making much less fuss about an equally rough takedown.

Two bullets hung beside Kusanagi‑Jones, trapped in the aura of his wardrobe like hovering bees. He dialed a glove and plucked them out of the fog.

Shafaqat already had a transparent baggie ready, and she took the bullets–pristine, despite having been stopped by the antishock features of the wardrobe fog–and made them vanish without so much as catching Kusanagi‑Jones’s eye. He could get to like that woman.

“Vincent.” He crouched as Vincent pushed to his knees.

“Unharmed,” Vincent answered, despite the evidence of a scratch across his cheek and a bloody nose. “Good work.”

Kusanagi‑Jones smiled in spite of himself, standing. People in the square were shouting, shoving. Something shattered against the stage, and Vincent ducked reflexively. “All I did was yell. Local security swarmed the shooters. Let’s get you off the stage, Vincent. They’re not pleased about the security–”

“Hell, no,” Vincent answered, wincing again–this time, Kusanagi‑Jones thought, from the pain of moving in his own stiff, burned skin. His hand, fever‑warm, slid into Kusanagi‑Jones’s, and he levered himself up. “I have a speech to give.”

Kusanagi‑Jones, watching Vincent shove ineffectually at his braids and mop blood onto his hand as something else was hurled and broke, bit his own lip hard to stop his eyes from stinging.

Because now he knew what he was going to do.

15

IT WAS FORTUNATE THAT VINCENT HAD PRACTICED HIS speech until it was as automatic to his recall as his system number, because later, he couldn’t remember having recited a word of it. He knew he extemporized the introduction, and if it hadn’t been recorded he never would have known what he said. He must have made quite an impression with the blood caking his face and the split lip, clinging to the edges of the lectern like a drunk in an effort to keep the weight off his knee. His wardrobe provided a brace, but that hadn’t helped absorb the impact when he went down.

At first, the crowd had been restive, muttering, rustling like a colony of insects with passed whispers. More security agents arrived while Vincent was speaking, filtering through the audience, but they didn’t reassure him as much as Michelangelo’s silent warmth at his elbow. Or the way the crowd calmed as he spoke, subsiding like whitecaps after a passing storm.

When he stepped back from the lectern, he had silence. A long moment of it, respectful, considering. And then first snapping, scattered as the first kernels of corn popping, and then stamping feet and shouts–some approval, some approbation, he thought, but nothing else shattered on the stage.

He waved and nodded. Lesa was on his right side, also waving, and her left hand threaded through his arm as she tugged him back. Michelangelo was right there, too, covering Vincent with his body, as Saide Austin stepped forward.

“Like to see her match that,” Angelo murmured.

“I did okay?”

Angelo touched him carelessly. “Real good.”

“Good,” Vincent said, aware that he sounded petulant, and not caring. He was seeing stars now–literally, sparkles in front of his eyes–as the adrenaline wore off. “My nose hurts.”

“And your back?” Lesa asked.

“My back,” he said, with tight dignity, “hurts more.”

Vincent looked gray, the blood draining from his face as he sat stiffly upright on the chair, his leg stretched out before him to ease the knee. Kusanagi‑Jones slipped his hand across the gap between chairs and took Vincent’s, squeezing, hiding the action with their bodies. Vincent sighed and softened a little, his shoulders falling away from his neck, though he had the sense not to lean back. Shafaqat handed Vincent a wet towel while Elder Austin was still talking. He took it right‑handed, and didn’t release Kusanagi‑Jones’s hand with his left while he dabbed at the crusted blood on his lip. “At least my nose isn’t broken.”

Kusanagi‑Jones widened his eyes and spoke in an undertone. “It’s supposed to look like that?”

“The Christ, don’t make me laugh.” He winced, and then flinched, as if the act of wincing hurt.

Vincent handed the bloody cloth back to Shafaqat and glanced at his watch, and Kusanagi‑Jones knew he was thinking about upping his chemistry and dismissing the idea. He was still idly checking readouts when Austin’s speech came to an end, a study in deceptive inattention, but when he glanced up, his eyes were sparkling. They stood when everybody else did, herded by security agents, and filed down the steps and through the crowd again. Kusanagi‑Jones covered Vincent as much as possible, varying distance and pace within the crowd, and for the first time was actively angry that all of the New Amazonian security was female and that Vincent was taller than any of them and all the New Amazonian dignitaries. And, of course, taller than Kusanagi‑Jones. There was nothing to block a head shot, if there was another shooter somewhere in the crowd.

Which meant relying on the agents assigned to crowd coverage and Vincent’s wardrobe to get them through safely. And Kusanagi‑Jones thought that just possibly, he would rather have severed his own fingers with a pair of tin snips than made that endless, light‑drenched walk. Though the crowd was calm, respectful, their attention oppressed Kusanagi‑Jones like the weight of meters of water, cramping his breathing.

He managed a free breath when they stepped out of the square and into the cool shade of the gallery lobby. A brief bottleneck ensued as politicians pulled off shoes and hung them on the racks, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Only the dignitaries, security, chosen observers, and a small herd of media would travel past this point.

When he looked up, Kusanagi‑Jones found himself on the periphery of a glance exchanged between Elder Kyoto and Vincent that Kusanagi‑Jones would have needed all of Vincent’s skill to interpret. Lesa caught it, too, and by her frown she understood it far better than Kusanagi‑Jones–but she said nothing.

Now that he had a plan, the wait was nauseating. He knew how Vincent, having formulated his strategy, would be behaving in Kusanagi‑Jones’s shoes. He would already have assessed the possible ways in which the subject might react, and he’d have a contingency for each. He’d have alternates mapped and a decision tree in place to deal with them, with counterplans in the event of failure or unexpected consequences.

Kusanagi‑Jones had only one idea, and it involved doing something he hadn’t willingly done in his adult life. And he was basing it not on facts, probabilities, and meticulously calculated options, but on three entirely illogical factors.

The first of these was Kii. Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t know what to do about the Dragon’s ultimatum. He was as torn as Hamlet; Kusanagi‑Jones did not, in all impartiality, consider himself capable of making the demanded choice. He wasn’t a decision maker. He would do anything possible to avoid being placed in that position of responsibility.

It was a strength in some ways. One of the things that made him an accomplished Advocate was his ability to argue both sides of a predicament to exhaustion. But he’d been able to rely first on Vincent to make the tough calls, and then, after Vincent, on the fact that he was limited by scandal to unimportant missions to prevent it from becoming a weakness. It was Vincent’s job to decide, and Kusanagi‑Jones’s job to back Vincent up.

Except when he was betraying him over politics, but that, while ironic, was orthogonal to the argument.

The second factor was Vincent himself. Kusanagi‑Jones couldn’t face stepping away from him again. He’d done it once, ignorant of the cost, as the price of something he had thought more important than either of them. He stillthought it was more important. But he wasn’t sure he would live through it twice.

And yes, it would mean his life if Vincent reported him. He had no illusions. Except, perhaps, for the illusion that Vincent wouldn’t do it. Vincent’s loyalty to the job had always been unimpeachable…but Kusanagi‑Jones was about to gamble that his loyalty to the partnership would outweigh it.

In the final analysis–to dignify his gut belief with an entirely unjustified word–he didn’t believe Vincent would kill him. Which led to the third factor. Which was what Vincent had said to him in bed, regarding Skidbladnir,that had flexed Kusanagi‑Jones’s shoulders and neck in a shivering paroxysm. But it was possible–just–that Vincent had done it on purpose, had chosen his moment and found a way of letting Kusanagi‑Jones know he suspected, without allowing it to become an accusation or an admission of retroactive complicity. More, it was possible that Vincent was letting him know that Vincent was about something equally dodgy himself, and wanted his help. It was a daydream. Denial. Fantasy that didn’t want to deal with the reality of how compromised he truly was. But like pearls seeded in oysters, great treasons from small irritations grow.

He couldn’t mount a better option. Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi‑Jones, Liar, was going to have to tell someone the truth. And now that he’d decided, the wait was killing him.

As they broke into groups for the lifts, Kusanagi‑Jones caught Vincent’s eye and gave him the subtlest of smiles, nothing more than a crinkle of the corners of his eyes. Vincent returned it, careful of his bruises, and Kusanagi‑Jones swallowed a forlorn sigh.

It was going to be a long, long day.

He repeated those words like a silent mantra all through Elder Singapore’s and Elder Austin’s second round of speeches, these taking place against the unpolished back of the black granite panel that blocked the view of the rest of the display from casual eyes, and continued it as Vincent stepped up to the focal point. He didn’t need his mind engaged to run security. After fifty years, his reflexes and trained awareness did a better job of it if he kept his consciousness out of the way.

His thoughts still chased an endless, anxiety‑producing spiral when Vincent joined Elder Austin and Miss Ouagadougou to lead the group around to the polished, graven side of the wall. Kusanagi‑Jones insinuated himself at Vincent’s side, and so he was one of the first around the corner to observe–

–an empty space in the middle of the gallery floor.

Phoenix Abased,all four and a half metric tons of her, was gone.

What followed was more or less predictable. Elder Kyoto took charge of the scene, and Vincent found Lesa hustling himself and Michelangelo to a car, passing through a crowd of insistent media with very little pause for politeness. For a moment, Vincent thought one of them might reach for her weapon, but Lesa fixed the woman with a calm, humorless stare that seemed to persuade her of the better part of valor, and then slid into the backseat opposite Vincent and Angelo.

The door sealed and Lesa slumped. “Miss Katherinessen. You certainly know how to keep a party interesting.”

“Surely you don’t think I–” Vincent fell silent at the wave of her hand. A few minutes passed, silence interrupted only by the blaring of the groundcar’s horn as it edged through streets jammed with Carnival revelers.

“You haven’t the means,” she said. “It had to be somebody with override priority on House.”

“Override?…”

Her eyebrow rose. He fell silent. Sticky leather trapped the heat of his burned skin against his body, and he shifted uncomfortably. Angelo’s regard pressed the side of his face like a hand. Angelo, of course, had been in that gallery until nearly dawn. But he hadn’t said he’d seen anybody, in particular near Phoenix Abased,and Vincent hoped he wasn’t thinking that Vincent was likely to hold him accountable for the theft.

“Override priority?” he asked again.

Lesa looked up from the cuticle she was worrying with her opposite nail. “House has three modes. It automatically adapts to any regular use to which it’s put. This is how most of the architecture develops. It will also do small things–forming a fresher in an unused space or rearranging the furniture–for anybody who spends a fair amount of time in a particular spot, and provide other favors such as directions or a drinking fountain”–she tilted her head at Vincent–“for anyone, anywhere.”

“And stealing a three‑meter statue from a public venue?”

“There’s the problem,” she said. “We didn’t build House. We just adapted it, learned how to program it.”

“And adapted to it. You’re saying there’s no security feed from the gallery?”

“I’m saying that anybody who could take that statue out could tell House not to remember. We’ll check the records–”

“Of course.” He managed it without a glance at Angelo. He’d been cloaked when he entered. The chances he could be detected were slim. “Please do. That means it’s somebody with clout.”

“Somebody in Parliament, if it wasn’t a ranking gallery administrator,” Lesa corrected after a reluctant pause. “We don’t let just anybody engage in urban renewal.”

“This isn’t the way back to the residence unless we’re going the long way,” Kusanagi‑Jones said a little while later.

“No,” Lesa said. “I’m bringing you to Pretoria house. I know who has access to the priorities there.”

“And security?”

They’d left the agents behind. Lesa seemed to understand the nuances of his question. “Shafaqat and Cathay are running a decoy operation,” she said. “Asha will follow us. Pretoria house has its own security, of course–”

“Of course,” Vincent interrupted, ever so dry. “And there’s no evidence that itcould be compromised.”

“Not by a male,” Lesa said.

Kusanagi‑Jones raised an eyebrow at Vincent, who rolled his eyes. “Angelo is probably finding your remark somewhat cryptic.”

“One of our household males has taken advantage of the recent confusion to run away,” Lesa said. “We are trying to recover him before it becomes public knowledge and we have to make an example of him when we catch him. Thank you very much for airing our dirty laundry, Miss Katherinessen.”

“Anything you can tell me, Angelo can hear,” Vincent said, which earned him another arch look from the Penthesilean. There was a subtext there that Kusanagi‑Jones wasn’t catching, and for a moment, he understood what it must be like for others, on the outside of his rapport with Vincent.

“The male,” Kusanagi‑Jones hazarded, his hands folded between his knees. “Robert, was it?”

Lesa, looking out the window, nodded.

Kusanagi‑Jones frowned. “Your secret is safe with me.”

He half expected to be installed in the harem, or whatever they called it, but he and Vincent were given a small, comfortable room with a balcony that opened onto Pretoria house’s inner court and left alone to compose or, Kusanagi‑Jones thought, incriminate themselves.

A young male servant who was familiar from the previous night’s dinner brought them warm sandwiches of scrambled, spiced vegetable protein and mixed greens, the bread made from some unfamiliar grain, and bottles–not bubbles–of a carbonated drink with a pleasing bitter aftertaste reminiscent of chocolate. They sat cross‑legged on the bed, the tray balanced on the covers between them, and picked at the food.

Neither one of them was hungry, but they were both determined to eat, which made the meal an extended comedy of dragging silences and lengthy chewing, interrupted by occasional distant cracks of thunder and the sound of music and shouting drifting from nearby streets. Nothing as minor as the attempted assassination of a head of state would put a cramp in Carnival.

Kusanagi‑Jones finished first and waited while Vincent picked bits out of his sandwich and poured drink into his glass one mouthful at a time. He waited poorly, bending his fingernails against the edge of the tray and wishing Vincent would break the silence with a conversational offer.

But Vincent seemed preoccupied, withdrawn. “All right?” Kusanagi‑Jones said finally, and then bit the inside of his cheek in frustration.

“Yes,” Vincent said, prodding his nose delicately with the tip of his finger. “Sore, exhausted, and full of released toxins, but I’ve been worse. Something’s preying on you.”

And if he was presenting strongly enough that Vincent could tell, Kusanagi‑Jones was doing even worse than he’d thought.

“Need to talk,” he said. And then, unable to bear the close intimacy of the two of them leaning together over their food, he swung his legs off the low New Amazonian bed and levered himself to his feet. The carpetplant dimpled under his soles. He strolled to the archway leading to the balcony and paused inside the air curtain, currents stirring the fine hairs on his arms.

The first fat drops of a tropical downpour splashed the green‑blue translucence of the balcony as the ceiling inside paled to simulate the storming sky. As the light outside dimmed, that within seemed to brighten in comparison, so when Kusanagi‑Jones glanced over his shoulder he was caught by the luster of rust‑colored highlights on Vincent’s hair.

He looked down, folded his arms to hide the way his hands were shaking–again–and stepped through the air curtain and out into the rain as if stepping through a spun glass drapery.

His wardrobe shunted it away, creating a shimmering outline centimeters from his skin. He pulled his folded arms apart and ran fingertips over his watch, opening the utility fog.

The water was warm. Blood‑warm, warmer than his skin, corpulent drops hitting hard enough to sting. He closed his eyes and tilted his face back, letting the rain wash him. It passed through his wardrobe without dampening the simulated cloth or affecting the hang of the outfit, soaking him, sluicing down his chest and thighs, saturating his hair.

He heard Vincent’s footsteps and saw his shadow cross the fisheye before Vincent spoke. “Do you suppose it’s safe?”

“Safer than the sunlight.”

“There could be pollution. Parasites.”

“Could be,” Kusanagi‑Jones said. Even when he dropped his chin to speak, water splashed into his mouth. It tasted strange, not neutral but crackling with ozone, faintly salty, sweet. From below, Kusanagi‑Jones heard voices, a woman’s and those of children, and the slap of bare footsteps running on wet pavement. He turned his right hand up to let the rain wash across the sealed nick on his palm. “Don’t seem too worried.”

Water pattered on Vincent’s hair and shoulders as he came outside. He paused at Kusanagi‑Jones’s shoulder, and Kusanagi‑Jones leaned back slightly, so their wardrobes meshed. The coded channel was carried on a single‑photon beam–an unimpeachable transmission. But it didn’t hurt to shorten the hop. “Vincent–”

Vincent’s hand on his shoulder almost made him jump out of his wardrobe. “If you’re about to tell me that you’re seizing command of the mission, Angelo, I don’t blame you. But I will put up a fight. Can’t we come to an accommodation?”

Kusanagi‑Jones stopped hard, with his jaw hanging open. He put one hand out, found the balustrade, and used it to pivot himself where he stood. “Beg pardon?”

To see Vincent staring at him, similarly gape‑mouthed and blinking rapidly against the rain that dripped from his lashes. “I thought–” He stepped away, let his hand fall, and tilted his head back. “The Christ. I thought you’d made me.”

“As a double,” Kusanagi‑Jones said, understanding, but needing the confirmation.

Vincent snorted, shaking his head, water scattering from short, randomly pointed braids. He rocked back and slumped against the wall beside the doorway. “Well, now you know. It’s a good thing Idon’t claim to be a Liar.”

“Who?”

“You know I can’t tell you that–”

“Vincent. I won’t hand you over. Or your connections.”

“I still can’t tell you.”

“What organization?”

The smile was tight, Vincent’s hands curled into fists beside his thighs. He didn’t look down. Kusanagi‑Jones hadn’t thought he would. “One that doesn’t have a name.”

Kusanagi‑Jones shouldn’t have been riding a rush of relief and joy; emotion made you stupid. But it welled up anyway. He reached out and took Vincent’s arm, the dry wardrobe sliding over wet skin beneath. “Know what I’m thinking?”

“Do I ever? It’s part of your charm–”

Michelangelo took a breath and let the words go with it when he let it out. “I threw the mission on New Earth.”

“The Skidbladnirsuffered a core excursion,” Vincent said. “You couldn’t have had…” And then his voice trailed off. He tugged away from Kusanagi‑Jones’s hand, but not hard, and Kusanagi‑Jones held on to him. “Angelo.”

“I’m Free Earth,” he said. “Have been for decades. I killed Skidbladnir,Vincent, and everybody on her.”

“To keep New Earth out of the Coalition.”

“To give them a fighting chance.”

Vincent licked his lips and looked down, jaw working. Kusanagi‑Jones imagined he was toting up the dead–the ship’s crew, marines, civilians. He started to pull his hand back and Vincent caught it, squeezed, held. “Do you mean to do it again?”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“If I have to.”

“Good,” Vincent said. “Me, too. We need a plan.”

If there was any tap on the door to the hall, neither one of them heard it over the sound of the rain, but Kusanagi‑Jones could hardly have missed it irising open. He pressed Vincent’s arm before stepping around him, turning him. Then he walked under the dripping door frame before pausing to shake the water off his hair. A shower of droplets bent the leaves of the carpetplant until his wardrobe took care of the rest, wicking moisture away so his clothes seemed to steam. “Come in,” he said to the young woman who waited outside in simple off‑white clothing with a Pretoria household badge embroidered on the breast.

She carried a slip of some sort in her hand, and was on the hesitant cusp of offering it to Vincent, who came through the door a moment after Kusanagi‑Jones and held out his hand, when she glanced at Kusanagi‑Jones for permission. Odd,he thought, and nodded, but not before he said “Wardrobe,” to Vincent.

He didn’t want him actually touchingthat thing.

The faint sparkle around Vincent’s fingertips when they touched the slip said Vincent had anticipated him. “Thank you,” Vincent said to the young woman. She nodded and stepped back, the door spiraling shut before her. Vincent glanced down, the slip dimpling lightly between fingers that didn’t quite contact its surface. “It’s for you.”

“Who from?”

“It doesn’t say.” Vincent generated a thin blade and slid it into the slip, along a seam Kusanagi‑Jones couldn’t see. A slight tearing sound followed, and then he tapped and inverted it, sliding out a second, matching slip. Vincent turned it in his hand and frowned at the black, ornate lettering.

“Another party invitation?” Kusanagi‑Jones asked, letting his mouth twist around the words.

“No,” Vincent said, raising a thin sheet of old‑fashioned card stock, wood pulp unless Kusanagi‑Jones missed his guess. “You seem to have been challenged to a duel.”

16

KATHERINESSEN APPEARED AT LESA’S DOOR IN THE COMPANY of Agnes, who had been working in a study near the on‑loan bedroom, and wordlessly presented her with a challenge card inscribed in Claude Singapore’s writing. Once she read it, he told her, minimally, that Kusanagi‑Jones wasn’t any more loyal to the Coalition than he was, and that it was his considered opinion that they should bring him in.

She sent Agnes back upstairs to fetch Kusanagi‑Jones while Katherinessen appropriated the cushions by her work surface. Kusanagi‑Jones appeared and stationed himself against the wall on the opposite side of the room, arms and ankles folded, still enough to go forgotten. Except for the slip of paper that Katherinessen had laid on her desk for examination, but would not permit her to touch.

Legally speaking, Kusanagi‑Jones couldn’tfight. Gentle or not, foreign or not, he was a male, and men didn’t duel. As she had expected, Katherinessen waited until she finished explaining and asked, “Then what’s the point in issuing a challenge?”

“He cost her face,” Lesa said. “Bad enough she’s in a delicate political situation for pandering to the Coalition–”

“Cost her face?” Katherinessen leaned forward, disbelieving. “He saved her life.”

“That iscosting her face.” Lesa pressed palms flat on either side of the indicted card, and wrinkled her nose at it. “You laid hands on her, which is illegal and a personal affront. If you were a stud male, it would go to Tribunal. Because you’re a gentle male, if an arraignment found no intent to harm, she could still challenge, and the women in your household would have the option of meeting it.”

“She can’t take him to trial,” Katherinessen said. “He has diplomatic immunity.”

Kusanagi‑Jones broke his silence without looking up. “Which is why she went straight to the challenge.”

“Precisely.” Lesa stood, turning her back on that cream‑colored card, and traced a hand along House’s interior curves as she walked away from the desk. “Do you want a drink?”

“Please,” Kusanagi‑Jones said with fervor.

Lesa turned, surprised, and pointed at Katherinessen. He nodded and held up two fingers.

Ice rattled into glasses. She dropped it from higher than necessary, for the satisfying thump. “It isn’t personal.”

Katherinessen frowned at his thumbnails while Lesa filled the glasses and waited, curling her toes into the carpetplant, waiting to see what he would logic out. He looked up and stood to take two glasses from her and pass one to Kusanagi‑Jones. “We…I…walked out of that assassination attempt with a PR advantage. She needs to nullify that.”

“Theft had to be a blow,” Kusanagi‑Jones added.

“Yes.” Lesa tested her drink. Too much ice. “And she can’t be seen to be beholden to the Coalition. And now it seems that you are willing to go to some risk to protect her.”

“She needs to shift the apparent relationship back to a more adversarial footing, or lose support. But why a challenge, when Angelo hasn’t got–”

“A woman to fight for him?” Kusanagi‑Jones said, rattling the ice in his glass. “You can say it.”

Lesa snorted. She came around the desk, easing the formality of the situation, and perched one hip on it, though the position made her holster pinch. “If he were Penthesilean, and no one in his house would stand up for him, Claude could take him in service.”

“Good way to get rid of unwanted houseguests.”

Katherinessen frowned over his shoulder. “But he’s not.”

“No. So if he can’t field a champion, he loses face as a…debtor who doesn’t meet his obligations. Claude looks tough on the Coalition and the two of you are sent home in disgrace, your viability as negotiators devastated. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d half‑bet she set up the assassination herself; it couldn’t better suit her needs. How long would it take the Coalition to scrape up another team?”

“Of ‘gentle’ males? How long do you think? So it’s a stalling tactic.”

“Precisely.” Lesa slammed the rest of her drink back and dropped the glass on the edge of the desk.

“But if she wants the rest of the art repatriated–”

“Look.” Lesa wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “She’ll leap on the opportunity to keep Coalition agents off New Amazonian soil; she never wanted you here in the first place, whatever face she gave the Coalition. So she splits the difference, if I know Claude. She stalls and bribes and cajoles and commits diplomacy by packet bot rather than facing an immediate threat. And moreover, making you look uncivilized reflects on public opinion regarding the Coalition.”

“Charming. We’re deadbeats. We’re going to be very popular with the Coalition Cabinet when we get home.”

“If you can’t, as I said, field a champion.”

“Well, I can’t fight for him–” Katherinessen blinked. He sipped his drink thoughtfully and stared at the glass after he lowered it from his mouth. “You can’t be serious.”

“You could ask.”

The stretch of that silence gratified. “You’d shoot Claude Singapore for me,” Kusanagi‑Jones said after several ticks.

She grinned. “I’d shoot Claude Singapore on general principles. Actually, it’s perfect. We use her attempt to discredit you to discredit or kill her. Much more efficient than a vote of no confidence.”

Katherinessen rubbed his fingers together, unconvinced. “And if she kills you?”

She wondered if he knew just how unlikely that was. From the worried press of his lips, she didn’t think so. “Deal with my mother and Elder Kyoto, then. And get Julian off‑planet.”

“Your son.”

“He deserves better than I can get him here. He’s a very smart boy.” She paused, looked down, and swept her hand across the surface of her desk. “Take him to Ur. That’s my price.”