Shadowplay

CELL 1

The room was huge with massive beams in a complicated criss-crossing web of polished wood and broad tapestries on the walls that absorbed the sound from the bright throng circulating slowly about conversation knots like antibodies in an arterial flow. And in the middle of all that brightness and glitter, the small drab form of the Singer. And the larger but still drab form of the Ciocan, the two cats beside him, restless and ill-tempered enough to back off all but the most determined. Kikun was nowhere in sight.

Only one moon of the three was up, Sisipin almost full and not quite at zenith yet. The night was bright with him, the few puffs of cloud shimmering llike mother-of-pears. Beside the Great Hall there was a terrace blasted out of the mountain; it was littered with ground vehicles and the sleek closed flits of the visiting elite. There were no guards; no one in Atehana would dare trespass or pilfer up here.

Kikun was a shadow and sometimes less than a shadow, even to the snooping EYE; there were times even the EYE lost him. He wove among the flits, putting a hand on one, then another and another and so on until he chose the one that pleased him; he tried a hatch, opened it with no difficulty and slid inside. He was out again almost immediately, running downhill to the center of the town.

He turned into a small deserted public garden where he'd cached their gear late that afternoon, all but the harpcase. He gathered it up, started trotting back to the terrace and the chosen flit.

Pukanuk Pousli paced restlessly back and forth along the width of the Bridge. He was bored with inaction; the ground agents became more redundant as each day passed, he had little part in the acquisition and the editing of these scenes and less interest in them. He stopped before the central cells and scowled at Kikun laboring up the mountain under his load of luggage. "How long you goin to let 'em run… sir?" The last word lagged perceptibly behind the rest.

Ginbiryol Seyirshi pretended to ignore this minor sniping. He could have plotted the growth of the Lute's insolence point by point, almost used it as a calendar to mark the stages of an operation. Once the endgame began, Puk usually came to heel like any hunting dog at the prospect of action, but there was a serious question in Ginbiryol's mind whether the pattern would repeat this time. And a fear stirring in him that Luck had turned on him, that the Three he had assembled were something more than they seemed; Asteplikota and that woman had said it, Avatars seldom knew what they were. His mind told him that was nonsense, but a coldness spread through him every time he looked at Cell 1 and its neighbors. Having dealt with that fear by once again refusing to acknowledge its validity, he sat watching the eddies of the party and Kikun's maneuvers and chewing over what he should do. Shadith. She was a focus of this… this unpredictability, this growing sense of disaster just ahead. He loathed having to abort large sections of a schema and losing much of the nuance he'd been cultivating, but-this aspect of his plan had been going sour from the moment that girl showed up. He was approaching the point where the danger she represented would outweigh her usefulness; in fact, that moment might be now. He lay back in the chair, closed his eyes. He was not accustomed to so much vacillation; ordinarily he saw the right path like a red thread through the weave of events and acted on it without doubt or waffling. Now… it was like fighting through a polluted fog, nothing to tell him where to go or what lay ahead of him.

"Let them take the flit. Yes, let them," he said, his placidity as false as the Avatars. False. Yes. He was sure of that suddenly, they were not gods in disguise come to call him to account; his real trouble was that it had been too long since the last Praisesong, he needed the catharsis more than he'd realized. And it would give him the chance to milk some of the piss out of Puk. He smiled and stroked the silky head of the simi as his course of action came clear in his head. "They have done what we brought them for. Rumor will take care of the rest. Too bad though, I would have liked to see them burn. Puk, take the lander. As soon as they are over deep water, you can have your fun with them-as long as you remove all evidence of what happened to them. A little mystery will stir up the animals nicely; we can use the disappearance to indict the Wapaskwen Nistam and increase the intensity of the hatred and rage in the rebels and the lesser castes. Go now. You need to be ready when they move. We will let you know the moment the flit lifts off."

Ginbiryol sat where he was for several minutes after Pukanunk Pousli left, then he grunted and straightened up. "Ajeri tiszt, get onto Makwahkik and let him know there might-stress might-be an attack on the Kasta late this night or sometime tomorrow night."

Ajeri Kilavez frowned at him. "You think they're really going to get past Puk? He's hot for them, specially that girl. He's got a thing for her, you know that, Ginny. You know what he's like on a blood trail."

"It might be enlightening, Ajeri tiszt, to rerun the recording of their progress across that swamp. There is a synergy about that grouping that I find… interesting. And it seems to be growing more powerful and more directed as the days pass. That is why I have altered my schema. You know how much I dislike altering my schemata, Ajeri tiszt."

"Yeh, I know. Right. Anything else you want me to tell the Makh Hen, or just what you said."

"Keep it simple, Ajeri tiszt. He is a subtle man in his way, a greedy man, he will try to milk all he can from you."

"I hear. Simple it is."