Shadow of the Warmaster

2

The shuttle platform was a towertop that looked down on clouds when there were any and south across the great glittering city, a city that grew on the edge of an ocean and spread inland to jagged young mountains. In the trucegrounds and the business sectors, sunlight ran like water along slickery surfaces, flickered erratically off shattered diamante walls, was thrown in white hot spears from mirror to mirror, mirror mirror on the wall who’s the costliest city of all, mirror mirror everywhere and never a one to look in (go blind if you tried), the spears going here, going there, constantly altering direction as the mirrors changed orientation and the sun rode its customary arc across the sky. It was a city of light, beautiful in its imperious way, meant to intimidate the visitors stepping unaware onto the glassed-in platform; even those who’d been there before were affected by it no matter how blasй a face they wore. We touched down late in the afternoon when some of the glitter and slide was muted, not quite blinding, and still it was a breath stealing thing to stand there and look out across it to a sea bluer than blue melding into a misty blue sky.

Down on ground level the light was even more intense, shooting past you, through you, around you, dissolving wall and street alike into more light, until you began to wonder if anything was real, including yourself; it was disturbing, uncomfortable-and very practical. Among other things it kept streets and walkways clear, no matter how many visitors descended on the city. Scattered haphazardly, at all levels from roof to cellar, there were small arbors with mossy fountains and cool air rustling through the leaves of lace trees and pungent conifers, where shadows flicked across the face of the person sitting across a table from you with the intimacy of a caress. The contrast was a killer punch more subtle than a drug, and did they know it, those buyers and sellers, those agents and facilitators who were parasites on the primary business of Helvetia, those citizens and business agents who lived in the city and on the city, year round, year on year. More contracts were registered from the arbors than in all the offices, cabinets, bureaus put together.

We bought visors from a robovender in case we needed to hit the streets, dropped to the terminal and fought the swarm at the tube cars until we managed to snag a car bound for the ottotel trucehouse where Kumari had booked us in. Kumari and I kept Adelaar sandwiched between us and Pels rode rearguard, pulling after him a mob of females of every shape and size, bipeds, tripeds and even a hairy monopod; they all seemed to want to catch him up and cuddle him (the monopod too, which presented an interesting problem in logistics), they giggled when he snarled at them, a daring octoped with blushing tentacles scratched behind his ear, you wouldn’t think these were hard-driving, high-pressure businesswomen capable of metaphorically (or even actually) cutting a rival’s throat with zest and panache; it must be some pheromone he gives off; if you could package it and sell it as perfume you’d make a fortune. It was as effective as it always was, his peculiar defense, those females made a fine and fancy shield for the rest of us. Anyone who had mayhem on his (or her or ves or its) mind generally backed off from performing in front of that many interested spectators. And, give this to the Faceless Seven, we didn’t have to worry about long distance sniping.

Pels wriggled loose, jumped into the car as the doors were sliding shut; his growl when I grinned at him was more heartfelt than usual; I think it’s time he had a vacation, probably back on Mevvyaurrang making triads with Arras and Maungs; he comes back from those visits with his not-fur shivering and his eyes glazed and not talking to anyone but his plants for a month or more. I signed a question to Kumari (we assumed everything public was on-line to the mainBrain)-had she seen any unusual interest in us? She had a smile for Pels, but shook her head. Pels grunted. One, maybe two, he signed. In the next module over on this car. I didn’t like it, but I expected it. I swung my chair round to face the back of our module in case they’d figured a way to get through it and I waited for the trip to end. We’d be on truceground when we came out, so we could hang around and see who emerged with us. Stupid planning, maybe. I exercised a few brain cells running that one round, but in a breath or two it was obvious I was counting angels and pinheads so I let it drop. Maybe Pels was wrong, but I didn’t think that was any too probable; like I said before, Aurrangers are predators and good at it and not all that long ago semi-cannibals, by which I mean one of the ways they kept the population stable was to hunt down and eat any excess Raus when they were young and tender and about to hit puberty. A few millennia of this and the descendants of those Raus who escaped the pot were very very hard to track.

Half a dozen came out of that module, more from the third, say around thirty bodies altogether, but the two we wanted weren’t hard to spot, idiots, they were so careful not to look at us. Not pros, no way. Like the two going after Adelaar back on Telffer, the ones Shadow dropped, local computer jocks trying to earn points with the head office. Making sure we went where we told the world we were going. They scuttled out of the lobby like startled mice. Wonder what they’d do if I sneaked after them and yelled boo in their bitty ears. Mmh.