I've heard plenty, Sagamish said, now almost calm. It is said the Fleet is going to tear down all the old temples and put statues of the Emperor in their place; that the kujen is going to accept the quill as the official currency in Parus and its dependencies; that prince Tezozуmoc has been sent to be the new planetary viceroy; that the kujen has agreed to sell six hundred thousand Jehanan of the lowest caste to Legate Petrel for blood-sacrifice on AnГЎhuac. Those are the things I've heard – or my informants have heard – in the last three days.

The Emperor is very busy, it seems. Hadeishi's voice was tinged with dismay. Next there will be secret weather satellites causing famines and droughts to inflate the demand for imported grain.

The old Mйxica woman coughed in surprise, her lips twitching into a grim smile. "That is for later," she muttered caustically. "If this world becomes unruly. Or the pochteca cartels need a few extra quills at end of quarter."

Thai-i - none of these things are fact, to my knowledge. Have you heard differently?

No, sir. The sound of aerocar fans in the background changed. Itzpalicue could tell they were shifting into vertical landing mode. Unbidden, a v-pane opened in a relatively clear section of her panel, showing a video-feed from the Legation. A late-model aerocar, splashed with angular Jehanan script in vivid green paint, was setting down on the staff landing stage. Legate Petrel has been very, very strict about keeping a low profile, adapting to native customs, treating fairlywith the princes… I don't know who is spreading this…it's not us, not the Fleet or Armystaff…

How many, Hadeishi said slowly, in a thoughtful tone, Imperial citizens have business on Jagan?

I don't know, Sagamish replied and the sound of venting fans whined down to nothing. What kind of merchant or tourist is going to spread those kinds of rumors? Be bad for business, I think…

True. The Chu-sa did not sound convinced. Let me know if anything else happens.

Hadeishi closed the connection and stood with a grimace. Even with the unobtrusive assistance of his medband, two hours of sleep was just not enough to clear his head. He yawned and wrapped his robe tighter. Like everything else on the ship, the flannel-lined silk was threadbare. Old Yejin was a deft hand with needle, thread and a fabric sealer, but all things – even high-quality cloth – gave way in time to wear. He sat on the bed, trying to marshal his thoughts, but he was too tired. The best he could do was key himself a note for Sho-i Smith to review local comm traffic in case someone was stirring up trouble on the planet.

Then he fell back into bed and was instantly asleep.

"Lachlan, what did he hear?" Itzpalicue turned her fierce dark eyes on the Йirishman.

Lachlan shook his head slowly, unkempt hair falling into his eyes. "We've…nothing scheduled on the Flower Priest agitation plot for his district. Must be either the darmanarga-moktar or locals copying what they've heard has happened elsewhere."

"Coordinated action? Or is the lid starting to come off? Did the attachй provoke something with his neighbors?"

The young Йirishman shrugged, spreading his hands. "If a local animosity cell has triggered, they're not organizing by comm. The build-out schedule for the wireless network won't even reach this suburb for another two years. So any organization will be face-to-face and we've no tap on that."

Itzpalicue nodded in understanding. These kinds of operations were always much easier on planets with pervasive comm networks. Here, hoary old rumor had legs like Painal and leapt from city to city with a speed rivaling a t-relay. "Re-route a Flower Listener into his neighborhood today. See what they can pick up. And have analysis section pull an incident map for the last two days for the whole land of the Five Rivers. This feels…"

She stopped, shaking her head. The agitation pattern running up to the outbreak of hostilities was still quite clear. All of her data sources – both from the Flower Priests, her own comm intercepts and groundside informants – pointed in the same direction. Another week of steadily rising tension would rupture equilibrium somewhere – indicators were good for the shantytown districts of eastern Parus to erupt first, followed by the noble cabal and the princedoms trying to capitalize on the wave of popular hatred. There seemed little need for the Flower Priests to try and ignite the tinder themselves. The xochiyaotinime were past masters of this kind of exercise. The right kind of wind always seemed to blow hot enough to strike sparks.

Itzpalicue squinted at the young Йirishman, who was staring bleary-eyed at one of his displays. His medical readout on her panel indicated he was running on stimulant fumes.

"Lachlan – take yourself off duty for the next ten hours. Take a sleepyhead and rest. Nothing is going to break today. But soon, very soon, we will be quite busy."

He nodded, stretching, and Itzpalicue closed the comm herself. Almost time to send my Arachosians out hunting, waiting for a break in the clouds hiding my prey.

A nagging feeling stole over her, though the old Mйxica tried to ignore the concern that her opponent – if there was indeed a subtle force acting against Imperial influence – might have stolen away from the field of heroes. She had drawn an empty net from dark waters before.

Itzpalicue pricked her upper arm, letting the stabbing pain clear her mind of such phantoms.

Moderately refreshed by four hours of sleep, Chu-sa Hadeishi swung onto the bridge of the Cornuelle, weaved his way past two engineering technicians replacing padding on the shockchairs at number two Weapons and number three Comm and settled himself into his own station. The bridge crew was currently standing half-strength to make room for the repairs. Midshipman Smith nodded to the captain and switched over primary command.

"Captain on deck!"

"Ship's status?" The v-panels making a half-circle in front of the command chair came alive, showing summaries of ship's status, local space and the greater Bharat system. Mitsuharu registered his identity code and let main comp recognize him.

"Repairs underway on all decks, kyo. Traffic control is light today – a handful of shuttles are in-atmosphere and several merchantmen are unloading, all registered and verified. Nothing's made transit in the last six hours. The threat board is clear."

Hadeishi nodded, lips pursed in consideration. He fixed Smith with a sharp look. "Time to hyper for the Cornuelle?"

Smith blinked in surprise, then his hands were active on his own panel. The Chu-sa ignored him, reading through the latest groundside status reports culled from the Legation and public press.

"Ah, kyo, baseline time to spin to hyperspace gradient and reach minimum safe distance for transit is one hour, sixteen minutes." Smith held his voice steady, but he was twitchy and rattled. "Are…are we going to need to make transit today, sir?"

Hadeishi grunted, then looked at the young officer. Smith, being in comm section, did not stand senior officer on duty watch very often. The Chu-sa considered him for a moment, face impassive, and then decided there was nothing to be gained by reprimanding the boy. Not this time.

"Unlikely, but not impossible Sho-i. Keep this in mind at all times."

"Hai, kyo!" Smith shrank into his chair. Hadeishi turned back to the departmental status reports. Repairs were indeed underway on all decks. Isoroku and Kosho are not wasting any time… Every hand not already ripping up worn-out nonskid or cutting out damaged plating was unloading cargo shuttles as fast as they arrived in the number two and number three boat bays. The Chu-sa allowed himself a tiny smile. Real food for a change. Yejin will be pleased, and the crew will swoon with delight to eat something with unfamiliar molecules.

"Smith-tzin? You're on duty for the next half-watch?"

The boy stiffened as if shot. "Yes, sir."

Hadeishi tapped a glyph to transfer a recording of the midnight comm call to the Sho-i's panel. "Review this. The situation on the planet is deteriorating, but no one at the Legation can put their finger on the cause – I wonder if someone is stirring up the locals. Do what you can to verify these reports. If you find anything unusual, strange or simply out of place, let me know immediately."

"Hai…kyo? Do you think there are, ah, separatist agitators active on Jagan?"

"Swedish or Danish terrorists, you mean?" Hadeishi smoothed his beard, considering the prospect. "If so, they're a long way from any system sympathetic to their cause. Difficult to support operations out here without a fleet…but not impossible."

Smith nodded and turned back to his panel. Hadeishi frowned, wondering if the outlawed 'Swedish Naval Research' or its Danish equivalent might have changed their operational patterns. No. There's nothing here to invite their interest…wait a moment! There is one target of opportunity for them here. Not one whom anyone would miss, but still…

"Smith-tzin, find the Imperial Prince Tezozуmoc and keep track of his locator. Just in case the long arm of the gaijin has reached out here to do him mischief."

Sweat ran freely from Senior Engineer Isoroku's bald head as he knelt on the floor of the officer's dining room, a metal saw howling in his hand. Showers of red sparks burst around him as he cut the last of the damaged panels free from the underfloor supports. The saw whined back to silence and the engineer shuffled back on his knee-pads. "Done," he coughed, and then cleared his throat of hexacarbon dust with a long swallow from his water bottle. "Take it away."

Two Marines privates – seconded to Engineering for the duration of repairs – ducked in and hefted the heavy panel. Grunting, they duck-walked out of the mess and stacked the partially melted chunk of metal on a grav-lifter in the corridor outside. Isoroku spat to clear his mouth and then thumbed the cutting blade on his saw over to a finishing surface.

Deftly, he ran the blade over the jagged edges, burring them down to a smooth bevel. The elderly Nisei abhorred sloppy work, even in locations – like the sub-floor supports – where no one would see his care and attention. This particular project was very relaxing too – a far cry from trying to clear and seal compartments shattered by battle damage, while alert horns blared in your ear and Khaid cluster bombs shook the ship like a rat in a Kochi terrier's mouth. Isoroku was fond of carpentry, particularly making cabinets and furniture. The chance to rebuild this whole suite of rooms brought a faintly pleased expression to his habitually impassive face.

"Kyo? Do you want the new flooring in now?" One of the Marines, sweat making his face shine like polished mahogany, leaned in the doorway. Most of the corridor was filled with stacks of pre-cut floor panels. Isoroku had arranged a very sweet trade, he thought, with the Development Board warehouse. All of the hexacarbon floor plating – even the sections gouged and damaged by combat – for four times the amount of highest-grade native lohaja, cut and planed to his specifications. The wood was incredibly wear resistant and took varnish to a truly beautiful gloss.

To his even greater delight, the lohaja was too hard to cut with the paltry set of woodworking tools aboard, so he'd been forced by circumstance to dig into the departmental budget to acquire – again through the sources Helsdon had found on the planet – a complete, matching set of Sandvik power tools designed to cut, finish and fit the native woods. Isoroku was itching to try them out. The tools themselves were works of art.

"Not yet. Not yet. Let me finish edging these support s…"

His personal comm chimed and the engineer sat back, turning off the saw and locking the safety cover in place. "Hai?"

This is Hadeishi. How are repairs progressing?

"Very well, sir!" Isoroku plucked a hand-comp out of his toolbox and thumbed up the current status display. "We're on schedule for repairing all the non-critical battle damage we've accrued in the past nine months. I'm in the dining room now, replacing the flooring. Crews are replacing the passageway vent filters by alternate decks. We've got one water recycler down while we flush and scrub the tanks before refilling with fresh supplies. The other will get the same treatment the day after tomorrow. Supply replenishment is underway – though you'll have to ask Sho-sa Kosho about her time-to-complete."

There was silence on the link, and Isoroku started to frown. When the captain started asking for status reports, something was going on. The engineer's forehead furrowed and he rubbed his pug-nose vigorously, trying to clear the metallic bite of ozone away.

Thai-i, I want you to scale back your repair schedule. A situation might be developing on the planet and we can't go to combat acceleration if you've got the corridors filled with unsecured construction materials.

"Kyo!" The engineer sat upright, horrified. "We reviewed the schedule just yesterday! You and the Sho-sa approved the whole list – we've already torn out everything designated first phase! We can't…we can't just put everything back."

We're still on a combat duty station, Thai-i. Adjust your schedule to pull and repair a compartment at a time. You must assume we are always a moment's notice from battle alert. The comm-band beeped cheerfully, signaling the channel had closed. Isoroku stared in horror at his wrist.

"One at a time?" Isoroku's voice rose violently and then, with a massive effort of will, he closed his mouth, swallowed a bellowing shout of disgust, and ground both palms into his eyes. "One at a time…oh, mother Ameratsu, save me from flight officers of all kinds."

His thick, muscular fingers separated and he peered at the comp pad on the deck beside him. "My beautiful, perfect schedule…" The thought of having to stand down all of the extra hands he'd been given and having his technicians concentrate on one compartment at a time, rather than addressing entire decks at a go, made him want to weep. "What a waste of able hands and hours. What a waste!"

For once, Itzpalicue was not in her darkened bedroom, surrounded by the pervasive hum of comps and the sullen glare of v-displays, when a system alert sounded. Instead, the old Mйxica was sitting on the covered veranda running along the southern side of the rented house. Elaborately carved wooden screens blocked out most of the sun's glare, leaving the porch dim and quiet. Some kind of a vine with petite white flowers climbed the roof supports and exhaled a thick, heady fragrance. Her bare feet were in sunlight, and her head was in cool shadow.

Her comm-band chimed again. She opened one eye and regarded the turquoise and silver bracelet sitting on a side table at her elbow, alongside a tumbler filled with the local equivalent of limonata. She had been trying to write a letter to one of her nieces, but the effort of putting pen to paper – the old woman did not send recorded messages – had lulled her into a drowsy nap.

"Ah, Lachlan must still be asleep," she said when the band chimed for the third time. "They will wake him if I'm not properly responsive." Sticking out her tongue at the device, she picked it up and tapped the channel open. "Yes?"

Your pardon, mi'lady, a tentative voice answered. We've registered a system trace alert. The communications officer of the Cornuelle has begun a planet-wide scan of the local comm networks, including our own and the ship-to-shore traffic control system.

"Has he noticed our cell tap?" Itzpalicue shifted in the chair, sitting up straight, her mind waking slowly from its comfortable doze. "Are our secure relays compromised?"

We don't believe so, replied the voice. He's only just started. Shall we shut him down?

"No! There's no need to draw attention. Use the relay tap on the Cornuelle to monitor his progress. If he finds any data we don't already have, shunt it to my message queue. If he impinges on our surveillance network, or seems likely to come across the time-delay interfaces on the military and diplomatic comm channels, dial back our presence and let him find the Flower Priest operation instead. The xochiyaotinime can deal with Fleet for us."

Yes, ma'am. The operator went off-line and Itzpalicue shrugged her shoulders, a little annoyed at being disturbed. "Lachlan needs to ease up on his staff, I think," she mused aloud. "They're far too timid for my taste."

A private channel glyph started to wink on Hadeishi's command display and the Chu-sa coughed, interrupting Isoroku, who was in the midst of an impassioned speech regarding the sacred and infallible nature of engineering repair schedules. "We will discuss your concerns later, Thai-i," Hadeishi said smoothly as he terminated the call. "I have an incoming call from Sho-sa Kosho."

"Hello, Susan. How is resupply going?"

Ahead of schedule, kyo. The executive officer's voice was a cool, confident breeze after Isoroku's affronted tirade. Shuttle two has just finished unloading – three months' supply of local firewater, fresh bed linens and a hundred cases of hand-milled soap. Assorted local flavors, but none of them will make you gag.

"I see you and Heicho Felix see eye-to-eye on certain critical matters, Sho-sa. When is the water supply coming aboard?"

Shuttle three is downbound now with the reinforced bladder in place. They should be back in about sixteen hours. I'm preparing to take shuttle two down as well – Helsdon's managed to find us three to four tons of miscellaneous spare parts. All Imperial issue. Not the latest revisions, but then the ship is not exactly fresh from the Jupiter Yards.

"Excellent. Be aware the situation on the ground is starting to cook. If you've space on the shuttle, take a squad of Marines. I've – ah – freed some up from Isoroku's repair projects. If anything happens, evac to orbit immediately. We need you and those crewmen back here more than the repair parts."

Understood. Felix's fireteam is already standing by with Helsdon and two of his technicians. We'll see you in about twenty hours. Kosho, out.

On the bridge of the Cornuelle, midshipman Smith leaned heavily on the armrest of his shockchair, eyes half-closed, one finger pressed to his earbug. His free hand drifted across the v-display, tweaking frequencies and absorption ranges. A constant stream of static, chattering, booming music, lilting singing voices, twenty-second advertisements and encrypted bursts of garbage noise washed over him. In comparison to the spare interstellar communications environment he usually worked in, Smith felt like he'd thrust his head into a hive of angry, polyphonous bees.

A particular warbling squeal caught his attention. "I've heard that before. Three-Jaguar, can you isolate the comm spike at six-thousand-and-fifteen?"

The second watch communications officer, a petite Tlaxcalan girl with perfectly straight ink-black hair, nodded, tapping up a new pane on her display. The frequency isolated and Smith leaned in, watching the main comp apply a score of decrypt filters in dizzying succession.

"Doesn't that look familiar? I'm sure it's an Imperial code…"

Jaguar nodded absently, her attention wholly focused on the v-display. Short, neatly manicured fingers skipped across the board, pulling slates of Fleet, Army and Diplomatic code images from archive and queuing them for decrypt comparison. After a moment, she paused and lifted her sharp chin. "I remember this," she said slowly, "it's from commtech school – an old-style encrypt used by one of the priestly orders."

"A military order? Like the Knights of the Flowering Sun?" Smith started scanning through the code archive. After a moment, he found something which looked vaguely like the pattern flowing across their panel. "Might be an upgraded version of this one…I'd tell the captain. Jag, look at this other thing…" He swapped in a completely separate v-display showing clusters of locator signals scattered all along the Parus-Sobipurй-Fehrupurй axis. "Run down these locator idents – there are Imperial signatures all over this countryside – like school let out or something…they're encrypted too and we'd better find out who they are."

The second watch tech nodded, transferring the v-display to her panel, quick mind already nibbling away at the new problem. Smith changed his earbug channel to the command push and thumbed the priority glyph for Chu-sa Hadeishi. Not for the first time, he found it amusing the main comm system was required to route a talktime request to the captain, who was seated behind and above the comm station and no more than two meters away.

"Yes, Sho-i Smith?" Hadeishi spoke quietly into his comm-thread. A particular feeling was beginning to steal over him, a sensation he associated with patrolling in hostile space. A sense of impending action, as if a steadily building weight was pressing on his mind. He had been keeping an eye on the communications station – Smith had not left his station when second watch arrived on the bridge, which meant he had gotten wrapped up in the analysis project. Hadeishi let him stay; Three-Jaguar did not appear to mind and they made a good team.

"Have you found something?" The Chu-sa was keeping track of Isoroku and his repair crews who, despite the mournful protests of the senior engineer, were making excellent progress at securing all of the repair supplies and adapting to a more conservative schedule. If only we had received some kind of munitions resupply. Fresh soap has a laudable effect on morale, but will do little for us if we have to provide ground-support for the Army.

Unfortunately, despite considerable investigation, the local industrial base simply could not provide the Cornuelle with fresh sprint and shipkiller missiles, or even capacitors and munitions for the point-defense network.

"Hai, kyo." The boy's face was keen with anticipation. "First, we've started to pick out a lot of chatter on fringe Imperial bands – all encrypted – using an old-style code formerly associated with certain Imperial religious military orders. We've had no indication there are any Templar or Tlahulli brigades operating on Jagan, so that's a little strange."

Hadeishi considered this for a moment, turning the indication over in his mind. That does not seem to fit at all. So it must be a foundation piece of the puzzle…"And?"

Jaguar leaned over, whispering in Smith's ear. Hadeishi waited patiently. As the two junior officers consulted their panel, the Chu-sa kicked off a ship-wide request for departmental status.

"Second, kyo, it looks like the 416th Arrow Knight regiment has taken to the field. Motorized elements apparently departed their cantonment south of Parus two and a half hours ago. The furthest afield are almost at Fehrupurй, but they're encountering sporadic resistance."

"What?" Hadeishi stiffened, his entire body suddenly and completely awake. "We've had no notification of an operational deployment! Get me Colonel Yacatolli right now."

Jaguar immediately began speaking into her comm-thread, the glow of a fresh v-feed from the surface shining on her cheekbones. Smith tapped a copy of his locator map to Hadeishi's station.

"What kind of resistance is the Army encountering?" Hadeishi tagged the flight paths of his shuttles into the map. Number three was already on the ground, while Susan's shuttle two was inbound to the main shuttle field at Sobipurй. Shuttle One, with a Marine drop-squad standing by, was still in boat bay one. "Local military contingents?"

"No, kyo." Smith shook his head and copied a set of thumbnails to the command station. "Kids throwing rocks and firebombs – mostly methanol and soap in glass. Some of the squad commanders have reported roads blocked or bridges under repair where satellite sweeps yesterday showed plenty of local traffic crossing."

"I see. Jaguar-tzin, do you have Yacatolli on comm for me yet?"

The Tlaxcalan ensign shook her head, pixyish features immobile with anger. "Regimental headquarters is saying he's busy and doesn't have time to talk to you right now. They say…they say they'll call us when he's free."

Hadeishi's eyes narrowed and he considered overriding the channel himself. For a moment. Then he pushed the anger aside and turned his attention back to the two junior officers. "Very well. Smith-tzin, find out where all this priestly traffic is coming from. Yacatolli's belief in the superiority of his regiment over the locals is a known quantity – this other business is more disturbing."

 

Takshila

District of the Molt

 

Humming softly to herself, Gretchen gently drifted her hand across the control surface of a Zeiss-Hanuman field camera. The lens and imaging body of the surveillance scope were mounted in a north-facing window. She was sitting cross-legged, watching the 60X image of the monastery with great interest.

On the v-display, a line of Jehanan elders was slowly climbing one of the external staircases cut into the rock of the hill. One by one they bent down and entered a T-shaped doorway near the summit. Some kind of domed building nestled in the rock, filling what the geodetic survey revealed was an old ravine. Gretchen was interested in this particular vignette because a similar number of monks made the same journey every morning. They did not return the same way. None of the penitents – if they were, in fact, performing a religious service – carried anything, as far as she could tell, and had dispensed with the usual leather harnesses and disc-shaped signs of status and rank.

A purification bath? she wondered.

She moved her hand again, and the camera scanned to one side. More cliffs pierced by tall narrow windows and occasional doors leading onto precarious walkways or steep sets of steps blurred past and she found the terrace Magdalena had labeled 'Southern Orchard' on the comprehensive three-d map their cameras, radar packs, and geomagnetic sensors were building on a base of out-of-date satellite photos. The orchard was filled with slender-trunked trees with perfectly rounded crowns. Gretchen's lips twitched into a faint smile – the ornamental arrangement of the naragga trees was the result of meticulous daily maintenance by a stooped old Jehanan and a swarm of children who carefully plucked wayward leaves from the trees and trimmed the stems with scissors.

"I'm amazed those trees are still standing. A dozen kids should have reduced the whole terrace to a desert by now."

Magdalena looked up from her comps – now laid out on a low wicker table Parker had found in the district furniture market – and twitched her ears lazily. "Perhaps the orb-trees grow quickly in this nnningurshimakkhul climate. Perhaps the kits are specially trained guardians who protect the world from being consumed by leaf demons."

"Ha!" Gretchen laughed, grinning at the Hesht. "You're in a good mood this morning."

"Hrrr… This ssshuma will be in a good mood when we find the gifting-bush and leave this nose-biting place."

Anderssen shrugged, looking at the northeastern sky through the windows. A pall of yellow-gray smoke filled the sky, drifting west from a huge district of chemical refineries. The noxious cloud choked the city whenever the wind turned. Magdalena had been particularly revolted to find the smog left a gummy residue on her fur.

"Any luck on getting the ground-penetrating radar to work?"

The Hesht shook her head and the tip of her tail lashed from side to side in annoyance. "There must be shielding beneath all the ornamental carving." She tapped a claw on one of her displays. "Each open window and door gives us a paws-breadth slice of the interior, but only for six, seven meters – then nothing. Without sensor relays placed inside the complex? No more than this."

Magdalena flexed her claws, letting them slide out of cartilage-sheaths, and tipped her chin at the three-d map. Three quarters of the surface of the hill had been mapped in painstaking detail by the array of sensors clipped to the windows or mounted on tripods. The far northern quadrant was still a mystery, though Gretchen intended to hike around to the far side in a day or so and mount their two spare cameras and radar packs on a rooftop, if she could find a suitable location.

Everything within the hill was also beyond their reach, at least while they observed from a distance. Sadly, the Company had neglected to provide them with antigrav spyeye remotes. Every indication pointed to a warren of tunnels and chambers and hidden rooms. The personage identifier system in Maggie's number three comp was counting silhouettes, facial pictures and stride lengths – when they could be captured on camera – and the count of inhabitants of the hill of the 'relentless ones' stood at four hundred so far.

Anderssen scanned her camera down to the 'Southern Entrance.' This was a broad, triumphal-style staircase vaulting up a near-vertical cliff from a warren of closely packed, shoddy-looking buildings at the foot of the hill. Age-eroded statues lined the stairs, which ended in a monumental gateway. The massive doors – probably made of the ubiquitous lohaja wood – were closed. Gretchen had yet to see them open.

She shook her head in consideration. "The south doors have to be for ceremonial occasions. There are drifts of leaves on the steps and a native avian is roosting in the crown of this topmost statue. We haven't seen any other location where there's traffic…no deliveries, no waste being taken out, nothing. So – do they leave? Are they a completely self-contained community?"

"An ark in the middle of a city?" Magdalena growled in disbelief. "What would be the purpose?"

"It's only a thought," Gretchen replied, standing up with a groan. "More likely, day-to-day business is conducted out of sight, through tunnels or even an entrance which is completely obscured by a building." She stretched, feeling her back creak in protest. "Do you suppose Parker can find me a real chair?"

"Hrrr! Shiny-backed lizards don't use human chairs! Learn to sit on comfortable floor like the Nisei do!"

"He found you a table…" Anderssen swung from side to side, trying to loosen up her stiff back. Time to get out of the house. "We've mapped enough of the rooftop walkways," she said, beginning to braid her hair into a thick ponytail, "for me to be able to reach the cliffs. When Parker gets back, I think I'll try making a circuit of the whole hill -"

The apartment door made a grinding sound and then recessed into the door-frame, allowing the pilot to stomp in with an enormous woven basket clutched to his chest. The top was packed with glass bottles filled with purified water.

"Konnichi-wa!" He called cheerfully. "Where can I put this down?"

Magdalena regarded a covered wooden bowl Parker had removed from the basket suspiciously. "This is supposed to be food?"

"Extra spicy," the pilot said, mouth already full of fried pakka dumpling. "G'head, that's yours – all raw and juicy, but with some peppers – well, I say they're peppers, dunno what the slicks call them. Meat, Miss Magdalena, real meat! And not skomsh either."

The Hesht's nostrils flared, but she removed the cover and sniffed the goopy contents with interest. The hackles rose on the back of her neck, then settled and she experimentally hooked one of the pieces of meat out with her little claw. Gelatinlike brown fluid dripped into the bowl.

Gretchen averted her eyes, hoping to keep her own lunch down. Parker grinned, a familiar-looking paper cylinder in one hand, his lighter in the other.

"That's not an Imperial-brand tabac is it? Is your medband on? Did you take an anti-anaphylactic?"

"Very funny," Parker replied, lighting the tabac and taking a tentative puff. His eyes widened, he coughed sharply, then inhaled again. "Ahhh…much more like the real thing."

"Is it real tabac?" Anderssen picked up the little cardboard box. The lettering was modern Takshilan block script, and the packet had all the usual gewgaws the city vendors used to flog their wares. In this case, a whistle was tacked to one side, enclosed in cellophane, while small paperboard cards with the toothy portraits of famous Gandarian racing lizard jockeys were on the other. For a moment, Gretchen had trouble making out the brand name of the tabac, but then realized the blocky, bold name was transliterated NГЎhuatl.

"You're smoking 'The Emperor's Teat,' " she said in a dry voice. "How does he taste?"

Parker snorted, laughing, and with tears in his eyes managed to choke out "Just like the real thing!" before going into a violent fit of coughing.

Magdalena looked up, still suspicious. "What are you hooting about, monkey?" She recoiled, suddenly aware of the cloud of tabac smoke coiling lazily in the air. "These leaves smell stronger than the last ones…"

"Great." Anderssen pinched her nose closed and picked up one of the bottles of fresh water. The pipes in the building were only capable of disgorging rust-red fluid which did, in fact, contain some H-two-Oh, but all three of their medbands flashed red when used to test the potability. Parker was of the opinion that "some water is provided with the bacteria." Gretchen was surprised the building water mains still worked as high up as the thirty-third floor. "I'm going out."

"Wait -" Parker rolled up, wiping his mouth. He looked quite pale. "Be careful. I saw something really strange while I was out getting groceries. It's hard to navigate roof-stairs with that basket, so I was walking back through the tanner's district – which is never terribly busy, unless you're delivering hides – and some buses went past."

"Real Imperial-style buses? With wheels and methanol engines?" Gretchen glanced at Magdalena. "Do you hear anything on your comm-scanner about that?"

The Hesht shook her head. Out of habit, she had set up a frequency-hopping comm wave scanner to listen for anything interesting. Unfortunately, the only comm traffic in the city was encrypted beyond the capability of Maggie's comp soft to decode. "Sometimes I hear chartered merchants chatting, if they're here sitting attendance on the kujen…"

"Anyway!" Parker raised his voice, giving both women a glare. "These weren't just Imperial-style buses; they were surplused Colonial Department of Education sixty-seaters. Repainted, of course, but it's hard to cover up the markings with only one coat of sprayon. But that wasn't the oddest thing – I mean, you know how hungry the market here is for modern transport, why not ship your retired school buses to the back of beyond? – what made me stop and stare was the buses were filled with Quarsenian jandars -"

"Which are?" Gretchen spread her hands questioningly.

"Which are tribesmen from the northern mountains," Parker replied. "Nasty-looking characters – mottled hides, felted armor, conical hats and ornamental spiked masks; they look like porcupines – these ones were armed to the teeth. They had rifles too, modern rifles – not those jezail-looking things some of the richer nobles carry."

"Why were they riding in buses? Where were they going?"

"How do I know?" Parker took another drag on his tabac, then blew a fat cloud of pinkish smoke towards the ceiling. "They were driving east towards the freight railway yards. The funny thing, though, was I saw a European on board the lead bus. He was giving the driver directions."

"A human male? There is a scheme a-paw for certain." Magdalena hooked another slimy chunk out of the bowl and popped it into her mouth. "Hrrr…these are delicious, Parker, what are they called?"

"Zizunaga, which is snake, I think. Anyway, boss, be careful if you go out. The streets were pretty empty. Something must be going on."

The well-maintained roofwalk Gretchen had been following ended in an irregular wooden platform lined with wide-mouthed ceramic pots. Each jar held a carved stone head surrounded by freshly planted flowers. The heads were recognizably Jehanan and their jaws yawned towards the sky, catching a fine mist of water spilling from the cliffs above.

A funeral offering? she wondered. Remembering ancestors, or placating their ghosts?

Gray limestone soared over her head, hung with trailing vines and thick, fingerlike succulents growing in crevices and clinging to tiny ledges in the rock. The walkway had been built up into a crevice, making a sort of elevated platform surrounded by a constant damp mist. Green-gray moss covered the wooden slats, making her footing tricky.

Gingerly, she reached out and touched the cliff face. The limestone was damp, beaded with water, and crisscrossed with sharp puckered ridges. Eight days of traveling and running around and finally I get to our destination. Hah.

Stepping carefully between the jars, Gretchen climbed up into the root of the crevice, gloved hands pressed against either wall. Trailing saprophytes brushed against her goggles. Cool water beaded on her face, a welcome relief from the usual soup of humid sweat she moved in. The narrow space ended in a still-smaller alcove – obviously worked by chisels at some time in the past – holding a lumpy-looking statuette.

A shrine? The planters and stone heads could be attendant ritual devices.

The god's features were entirely covered with moss. There were no tracks or traces of anyone coming to clean the votary, which made Anderssen grimace, realizing her boots had already left very obvious scars on the mossy stones. She turned around and carefully picked her way back to the platform. Once she was standing under the dripping vines, looking out through slowly falling sheets of mist, Gretchen was struck by the perfect quiet in the little ravine.

The usual sounds of the city – runner-cart horns, clattering machinery, the hooting voices of the natives singing, the pounding of hammers and the rasping whine of lathes – were swallowed by the mossy walls, or blocked by the mist.

"Quiet and still again," she mused, hands on her hips. One eye narrowed in thought. I keep finding these little pockets of solitude – but there's no quarrelsome gardener here. And there's no way up, or into, the hill in this place. A little disappointed, she left the shrine and headed back towards the last junction in the maze of walkways running hither and yon across the rooftops of Takshila.

Two hours later, Gretchen turned a corner, one eye on her hand-comp – which was displaying part of their map – and found herself looking at a short, arched passageway cutting through the base of a circular tower made of brick. Beyond the opening, a flight of stairs – broad and low, just as the Jehanan liked with their long, splayed feet – disappeared up into the hillside.

"Maggie? Do you have me on locator?"

Yes, hunt-sister, plain as blood on whiskers.

"Good. Mark this spot. There's a passage through a building – our map shows the walkway ending here in a dead end – and a staircase. Can you see that?"

There was a pause, and then Magdalena made a thoughtful hissing sound. No…from our angle there's only more cliffside. Must be hidden in a fold in the rock.

Anderssen tiptoed through the passageway, looked carefully up and down the staircase, then double-checked all of her equipment. "Am I still on locator?"

No. You've dropped off the display.

Gretchen nodded to herself and pulled a UV dye marker out of a jacket pocket. "The stairs below here are blocked by rubble – looks like a building collapsed and they just made a new wall out of the debris. Keep an eye on my comm signal. I'm going to head up, keeping quiet."

You should wait, Magdalena grumbled. We're far away. Let me send Parker to stand by at the entrance. Then, if a hostile clan pounces, he can come to your aid.

"I'll be fine." Anderssen peered upwards. The stairs disappeared into the side of the hill. "I'll be right back out and we'll be able to talk on comm."

Oh, I've heard many a kit say that before, just before they were snatched up by crag-wolves. The Hesht did not sound convinced at all. And if you don't return? How long should I wait before singing your death-howl and collecting the skulls of a hundred lizards for your memorial tomb?

"You will do no such thing!" Gretchen was appalled at the prospect. "If anything happens – if I'm not back in twelve hours – or you have to abandon the apartment, we'll meet at the train station, or if not there, then at the hotel in Parus. But don't worry, I will be fine."

There was a grumbling sound, but Anderssen ignored the protest, turned around to fix the location of the passageway in her memory and then started climbing, the pen tucked into her right hand.

A warbling, humming sound echoed down a hallway lined with perforated stone screens. Anderssen, who had been creeping along the left-hand side of the passage, keeping her head below the rosette-shaped openings, became completely still. She waited, expecting to see the bulky shape of a Jehanan come padding down the hallway.

Nothing appeared, though the warbling sound – rising and falling in a tuneless way – seemed to come a little closer. Gretchen moved forward to one of the supporting pillars and unclipped an eyeball from her vest. Rotating a ring-control to turn on the tiny device, she pointed the camera out through an opening.

The heads-up display on her right goggle lens flickered awake, showing her a close-up of a leaf. Frowning, Anderssen dialed back the magnification until she could see more than vascular channels and phylem. Most of her view was blocked by foliage, but something moved in her field of view and – after peering at the image for a moment – she recognized a large Jehanan foot covered with mud and leaves. As she watched, a spade scraped soil back into a hole.

Well, I doubt it can see me, she thought, stowing the camera again. Checking behind her in case a whole troop of ferocious monks with saw-toothed swords had crept up, Gretchen scuttled forward to the end of the hall. A partially illuminated passageway dropped down a concave set of steps into the terrace to her left – she caught a glimpse of the city skyline – and curved away into darkness on her right. Intermittent lights spotted the passage, falling from tiny sconces set at the junction of roof and wall. They were not candles, but some kind of bioluminescent pod held in a fluted ceramic shell.

Nervous the Jehanan digging on the terrace would notice her, Gretchen tapped her comm awake and peered at her locator band. Both devices had stopped working as soon as she'd entered the monastery. The ruined stairs had led her to a circular door much like their apartment entryway, though the triangular sections were permanently rusted into the wall recesses. Oddly, the first door had immediately led to a second, which, while in slightly better condition, was also frozen open. An empty passageway, wide enough for four Jehanan to march down abreast, had beckoned her into the heart of the massif.

After that, she had tried to keep to the left-hand wall, indicating each turn with the UV marker. With no data suggesting where the kalpataru might lie, she had concentrated on covering as much ground as possible while the mapping software in her comp measured each winding ramp, hallway, abandoned chamber and empty passageway she passed through.

Though she heard voices echoing in the distance once or twice, she had not encountered a single Jehanan. After hours of leaden silence, accompanied only by the echo of her footsteps, even the alien tonalities drifting in from the terrace were comforting.

Can't go left here, she thought, considering the glimpse of the city skyline. But if I did, I could squirt Magdalena all the mapping data in this comp…and check in. My dear sister is probably chewing her tail in worry.

The clomping sound of heavy, leathery feet made up her mind. The Jehanan outside was climbing the stairs. Gretchen flattened against the carved wall and tried to make herself perfectly still. A shadow blotted out the dim light from the doorway and then a blunt-horned Jehanan shuffled past, weighed down by a leather bag bulging with square-edged objects. Through slitted eyes, Anderssen watched the creature disappear down the hallway, and then breathed again when the long, angular shadow vanished.

Vastly relieved, she slipped down the stairs herself and out onto the terrace. The smoke-and fume-tainted Takshilan air felt brisk and clean after the motionless funk inside the hill. She glanced around the terrace and was puzzled to see quite a bit of earth had been turned near the low retaining wall facing the sprawl of the city. Odd gardener who isn't planting something… Maybe he was just weeding. Or harvesting. Or burying something to ferment. Or…

Ducking behind one of the thick blue-green bushes, she clicked her comm awake.

"Maggie? Can you hear me?" Gretchen whispered, though she was sure no one was within hundreds of meters. "I've managed to get outside."

We have you on camera, the Hesht replied, sounding relieved. Your locator just popped out of its hole. We're glad the mandire have not boiled the skin from your skull for a drinking cup.

"Good." Anderssen's goggles had darkened to shade her eyes from the sun, but she could see the apartment tower clearly. The whole western face was blazing with reflected sunlight, capturing the swollen red disc of Bharat in a long puddle of molten gold. "I'm bursting you all of the mapping data I've collected so…urk!"

A spade, smelling of earthworms and freshly turned soil, lifted her chin.

Gretchen looked up, swallowing, into the grim face of an enormous Jehanan. The creature's dark eyes seemed to spark with rage, and then the pebbled skin around the eyes tightened and the shovel shifted away from her neck.

"Hooo… You are a curious digger, aren't you? How did you get up here?"

At the same moment, Gretchen heard Magdalena say: Parker has the creature targeted with a spare rangefinder. Raise your hands if you want it blinded so you can run. The Hesht's voice sounded eager, and Anderssen could imagine the big black feline crouching in dimness under brambleberry bushes, claws flexed, waiting to pounce on an unwary truelk. She turned her head slowly, hands pressed carefully into the loamy soil.

A brilliant red dot was dancing in a handspan-wide circle on the side of the creature's head.

"Your pardon," she said slowly, amazed Parker's hands were steady enough to keep a bead on such a tiny target at such a distance. "We need not quarrel. I have trespassed, but I will leave immediately, without making any trouble."

"Oh ho, will you?" The Jehanan stepped back, squinting at her, and Anderssen realized with a cold feeling of shock that she knew the creature. "And if I think you should meet the Master of the Gardens, then what will you do?"

"This will seem odd," she said, shrinking back into the cliff, trying to leave Parker as clear a shot as possible, "but each time I get lost in this city, I find you. Aren't you Malakar the gardener? You were meditating by the blue shell, down in one of the neighborhoods below."

The creature's nostrils flapped open and there was a buzzing hum of sound. "Weak eyes do not deceive," the Jehanan said, cocking her head to one side. "You are the Disturber-of-Forgotten-Things – the one with such hungry thoughts. Now – hoooo – what would you be hungry for in this dilapidated old house?"

"Isn't this the oldest building on Jagan?" Gretchen kept her hands down. She could hear Magdalena breathing over the comm link, and the red dot continued its frantic little dance on the creature's scaled hide. "I wanted to see for myself."

Malakar's eyes, still nearly entirely in shadow, glinted. A long, clawed finger extended, pointing at her vest and belt. "Your little machines, they sing of this old shell? Tell its age? Even if no one living could swear such a truth?"

Gretchen nodded slowly. "Sometimes. If the object is made of the proper kind of material. Wood or metal are best. Do you have something you would like me to test?"

Malakar regarded her for a moment, seemingly puzzled. "Hoooo – when last we met, you could not properly speak without moving your foreclaws. Now you keep them to the ground. Odd and odder yet. Have you been injured?"

"No. I'm -"

Don't tell it anything! Magdalena whispered on the comm. Just let Parker flash it, and then you can get out!

Gretchen sighed, looking down at the ground and taking a breath. For all her bluster and menacing shovel, the Jehanan did not feel dangerous. Not like it couldn't just wrench my arms out of their sockets or bite my head off.

"Don't shoot unless I'm actually attacked," she whispered into her jacket collar.

"What do you say?" Malakar leaned close, eye-shields half-lidded against the glare of the sun. "There are only bizen-grass shoots there, no one can…" The native grew still. Gretchen looked up, meeting wide green irises. "Hoooo…This old one is not imagining being watched by distant eyes? My old hide is itchy, as if a xixixit hung in the trees above a quiet lawn where I lay sunning… Am I too old, my mind troubled by phantoms? Tell me, hungry soft one, tell me if I suffer night-fears while my eyes are open?"

Gretchen shook her head before realizing the creature might not grasp the cue. "My friends are watching us from the fin-towers. One of them has a weapon aimed at you. If you try to harm me, he will kill you before you can reach the tunnel."

"Hooo…" Malakar settled back on her haunches. "Quick of eye and sure of hand, this friend. A long reach across eight pan to scratch my hide."

"A machine – a weapon – firing an explosive, hide-piercing shell," Anderssen said, squatting comfortably. "Though in truth, you might lunge and strike me down as quickly as he can act."

"Then we both end, hungry-thoughts, leaving only an unexpected feeding for the yi birds who roost on the crumbling shell of this house."

"I do not wish to feed the yi birds," Gretchen said in a serious tone. "Not today."

"No one ever does," Malakar allowed, a deep trill echoing at the back of her throat. "They are often hungry and must eat of the bitter naragga. Then here we sit, trapped as HГєnd and Gukhis were above the fiery pit, each unwilling to loose claw from claw and so save themselves."

"Are you compelled to keep me here? Why not let me go?"

"Hooo… Could such an old, wrinkled hide as mine take the punishment the Master of the Garden would mete out for letting an asuchau human tread these sacred halls? Oh, my eye-shields would bleed for such an affront!"

Anderssen peered at the Jehanan, wondering if her translator were working properly. Something very much like cynical bitterness echoed in the words. I don't think this old creature cares overmuch for the 'Master of the Garden'… "Then let us make an equitable exchange – I will do something for you, and you will help me, poor lost human that I am, find my way home. As you did before, which was very gracious of you."

"As I did?" The gardener blew a mournful note with its nostrils. "Gracious? You are oiling my scales like a short-horn wishing mating privilege! Hooo… I was not cracked from the shell to be impolite. A lost hatchling is everyone's business to see home safely. But you…you and your little machines…can you truly tell the age of a thing?"

Gretchen nodded, trying to hide a relieved smile.

Don't trust it… Magdalena muttered in her ear. The khaysan drifts in the river, pretending to be an old scratching log, waiting for an unwary kit to come all thirsty to the water…

"I can try. What do you want to test? Is it far from here?"

Malakar made a rumbling sound and rose up, joints creaking, using the shovel for a cane. A long arm reached out, and slung the leather bag over one pebbly shoulder. Metal clanked against metal. The long head turned, regarding her with a lambent emerald eye. "I will show you an old thing, as old as I have ever seen, if you wish to follow."

Gretchen stood, brushing dirt from her work pants and held up the comp to the skyline. There was a warbling squeal in her earbug – the sound drowned out Magdalena cursing luridly and trying to warn her hunt-sister not to go into the cave!

"I will."

Anderssen's boots rang on polished stone, and she reached out to take hold of a railing embedded in the wall. Below her, the old Jehanan was treading carefully on terribly worn steps, testing each one with her weight before proceeding. They had spent a long time pacing down abandoned tunnels and descending broad curving rampways. Gretchen wanted to ask how deep they had come, but the gardener refused to speak, only stomping along with the leather bag over one shoulder, lost in her own thoughts.

These chambers – they seemed vast, though Gretchen hadn't attempted a sonosound reading to gauge their size – swallowed the faint radiance of a single blue light carried by the Jehanan. They followed a smudged path across an endless dusty floor. Anderssen wasn't sure, but it seemed the ground was made of a polished ceramic.

Someone has come this way before, she thought, feeling more and more oppressed in spirit as another vaulted doorway loomed out of the darkness before them. But only one set of footprints, I think, repeated over and over.

They turned at the doorway and did not pass on into the limitless darkness beyond, but followed along the wall instead. Gretchen caught sight of a row of sconces, much like the ones in the tunnels above, but these were dark. They did not hold any of the blue eggs. Malakar's steps slowed and they entered a smaller hall, this one of a size Anderssen guessed a Jehanan might find comfortable. Vague shapes loomed in the faint light, and the scuffed path wound among piles of debris – broken machinery, if her eye encompassed the splintered wooden gears and cracked wheels properly – and into a still smaller passage. This, she thought, was an actual hallway and a far cry from the cyclopean proportions of the chambers outside.

Her medband beeped quietly, the sound almost lost in the endless curve of the passage.

"Malakar…" she whispered, afraid to disturb the tomblike silence. "This air is poor. You shouldn't stay long…my band can counteract the toxins in the air, but you…"

"I have passed this way before. After a twelfth-sun passes one begins to hear voices, or see flashes of light where there are none. This is the place I wish to show you."

The old Jehanan stood before a circular door in the wall. Gretchen blinked, realizing the entire hall was lined with similar openings. All were closed. Malakar leaned heavily against the wall, claws on either side of a recessed panel.

"What is on the other side?" Gretchen unzipped the collar of her field jacket and tugged out two breathing tubes. Pressing one clip to her nose, she let the other rest against her chin. "Were these the first chambers cut into the hill?"

"No…" the Jehanan sighed, slumping before the door. "There are other levels below, but the air is so poor, even the strongest takes ill and the weak die. Torches fail, and even the gipu" – she raised the glowing blue egg – "sputter and fall dark."

Malakar brushed dust away from the panel. "When I was only a short-horn fresh from the egg, this was a busy place. Often I was brought here – the air had not turned, there were lights in the dark places, some of the elders even held conclave here, as their ancestors had done. But then the gipu began to fail and shadows spilled in from the walls. Foul air rose from below and everyone moved up and away, closer to the gardens, to the terraces."

Another mournful hooo escaped the creature's slitlike nostrils. "Now my hide grows tight and brittle, and what was once clear in mind fades." A claw tapped on the door, making a sharp tinking sound. "The last Master of the Garden to tread these hallways is long still. The new Master sees only the sky, gardens, and bright chambers with tall windows. He cares only for the favor of the kujen and filling his claws with shatamanu. There is talk among the tough-hides of closing off these tunnels, filling them in, keeping the short-horns from mischief.

"When I was fresh from the egg, this chamber was filled with gipu-light, almost as bright as day. Our voices were very sweet, when we sang…"

The creature fell silent, crouched before the door. Gretchen waited patiently, sitting at the edge of the circle of light. The oxygen tube under her tongue made a quiet hiss-hiss sound as she breathed.

"That's odd," Parker said, squinting at a portable holovee sitting on his stomach. He had been flipping through the channels, half out of his mind with boredom. The windows were dark; night had come, bringing heavy clouds, but no rain, only a tense, oppressive stillness. Inside, without the cold night wind to stir the air, the ozone-stink of the comps and surveillance equipment made the room feel stifling.

Gretchen had failed to reappear on their scanners. Magdalena was certain the woman had been taken captive and horribly murdered. Parker didn't think so, but he was beginning to wonder what they would do if she were. Go in after her, I guess. But how would we find her in there?

"Hmm?" Magdalena was in her nest, legs and arms curled across her chest, clutching her tail and staring at the ceiling. "You don't like the dancing monkeys here?"

"The shows are fine. Unintelligible, but fine." Parker clicked back to the previous channel. "The Imperial 'cast channel is showing some footage taken by one of the Jehanan stations, with a translation running over the original voice track? But they don't match up."

The Hesht rolled over, staring at him in mild interest. "So?"

"So," Parker said, sitting up. "The news 'caster said the footage was of an anti-Imperial demonstration in one of the southern cities – the port of Patala I think. But that's not what the Jehanan narration said – they said the 'demonstrators' were some kind of local religious festival – one of those slice-of-life bits – but I guess down south they set things on fire to pay homage to their gods."

"Huh. That does seem odd. You think the Imperial 'cast just got a bad translation?"

"Maybe…" Parker scowled. I should have kept one of those rifles. I didn't and now we might need it and I don't have it.

He set the holocast set aside and paced to the nearest window. Miserable, he wedged his shoulders in beside a thick bundle of cables running up to comm-scanning antennas mounted on the roof of the building. The city below was filled with faint lights – the flickering yellow glow of lanterns and candles, here and there the dull red of bonfires or forge chimneys – a far cry from the jeweled splendor of human cities. The hill of the mandire, in comparison, was entirely dark and silent.

"Mags – how long are we going to wait for her?"

"As long as it takes," the Hesht growled, lying back down and fiddling with her earbug.

Parker heard a high-pitched whining sound and craned his neck up. A low layer of clouds blanketed the city, gleaming softly in the lights from below. An aerocar, he thought, feeling a sharp stab of envy. We need an aerocar – be easy to land on the top of the hill and snatch Gretchen from the jaws of death if we had an aerocar. If we had an aerocar, there would be something for me to fly. He scratched the back of his head, suddenly tired of waiting.

"She's in trouble, kit-cat. We're going to have to go in there and get her. I'm going out."

"To do what?" Magdalena's yellow eyes fixed on him. "We are supposed to wait."

Parker picked up his jacket. "Get some things we might need later." When we have to bug out of town. I know we're going to have to leave all a'sudden, with the lanterns and whistles of the keisatsu shrilling behind us.

The Hesht made a hissing sound, but did not stop him from leaving.

"Somewhere below," Malakar said, rousing itself, claws rasping on the floor, "lie many rooms filled with pushta. Thousands of them, each filled with more words than a single Jehanan could read in a whole lifetime. Your clans must have such things, where histories, songs, stories of the old, are graven?"

"Yes." Gretchen blinked awake, her interest sharpening. An old library? "Can you read them?"

The old Jehanan shook her narrow head slowly from side to side. A long arm reached out and dug into the leather bag, removing a rectangular metallic plate. "These are pushta I stole long ago and hid in the terrace. I hoped to learn their secret, to open them up, to see the flowing words gleaming in my hands." Malakar scooted the plate across the dusty floor towards her. "They are ruined, as are the ones lost below in darkness."

Anderssen picked up the plate with careful, gloved fingers and examined each surface in turn. A double cluck of the tongue cycled her goggles through a wide range of frequencies and light sources. Nothing was incised on the outside, but she could see an interface of some kind on one end and a recess where a long, claw-tipped thumb might press a control.

"Did the pushta fail all at once," she ventured, "or one at a time, until none were left?"

The old Jehanan hunched her shoulders. "Such knowledge was lost long before I hatched from a speckled egg. There was once a book, handwritten, on pypil leaves, which described a means of turning the glowing pages, but the leaf of the pypil does not last in dampness."

"Did this fit into a machine?" Gretchen pulled a compressed air blower from the inside of her jacket and gave the stippled interface a squirt. Malakar's eyes rose at the puff of dust, and then frowned as Anderssen cleaned the rest of the plate with a swab. She looked up, wondering if the wrinkled expression on the creature's face was avarice or longing. I would be gnawing straight through the arm of such a slow creature!

"I was frightened," the gardener admitted, hanging her head. "Some things I snatched from shelves and fled. Even when I was barely horned, the air in the deep was poisonous."

Gretchen set the plate down and unwrapped a comp octopus she'd been carrying in her pocket. "Some of my kind," she said, making conversation, "are digging in the ruins at Fehrupurй. They say there was a planet-wide war six or seven hundred years ago, one which crashed a great civilization…"

"Arthava's fire," the creature rumbled. "The credulous say he challenged the will of the gods, scratching at the doors of heaven, making edicts to guide all Jehanan to a right path in the place of the old religions – and they humbled him with quenchless fire and burning rain and deadly smokes which covered the land for an age. Foolish tales told by those who do not have the wit to look beyond their food bowl! No gods were needed to bring ruin upon us…"

"The truth is known? Beyond this place, I mean?"

Malakar hooted sadly. "Some learned men know. The kujen knows. He sends his servants to dig and pry in the dead cities, searching for trinkets… They have even been here, poking and prying! The Master tells them secrets he should not! Things entrusted to us… Worst, we have forgotten, or lost, the long tale of the clans, that stretching back to the earth which gave us birth, to the first shell cracking in the hot sun. But the Fire is still hot in our minds, sharp and hard." A bitter trill issued from the back of her throat. "Each time we look to the sky and see your shining rukhbarat race overhead, parting the clouds, we remember what has been lost."

Gretchen plucked a set of leads from the octopus and began testing each stippled point on the plate. All of them were dead. No current the octo can recognize. Better let the comp try. She wiggled the octopus's main interface onto the comp, tapped up a broad-spectrum power testing routine and set everything back down.

"There are stories about the Arthavan period? When your people had aerocars and built the fin-towers and great highways? Before the Fire consumed your civilization? Were the pushta working in those times?"

"Perhaps." Malakar scratched her claws on the floor, making doodles in the dust. The passageway seemed to have grown darker and Gretchen eyed the gipu with concern. The radiant egg was getting dimmer. "We recall fragments, scraps of shell and hide – there is only one history which can be read – and that is precarious, precious, and perhaps lost forever. But I do not know if that history is from the time of Arthava, or from before, when our race came to this world for the first time."

Anderssen looked up sharply, one hand outstretched to hold her oxygen tube next to the gipu, which brightened visibly as fresh air hissed across its surface. "What remains? Another book?"

The gardener twisted, pointing at the sealed door with a foreclaw.

"There," she said, voice rumbling low, almost beneath the limit of human hearing. "A cruel jest – and a reminder to the great to tread warily in the world, for even the most glorious monument may be crushed beneath the stepping-claw of time." Malakar swiveled back, brushing scaly fingers over the plate wrapped by the softly humming octopus. "Pypil leaves erode, pushta fail, inscriptions wear away in the wind and rain, the memories of Jehanan fade… I can tear the pages of yourMйxica books with ease…but sometimes the simplest things endure."

"Malakar, what is in the room?" Gretchen shivered. "Why is the door closed?"

"There are paintings on the walls," the Jehanan said, sighing out a long hoooooo. "They show many scenes, but most striking are those of seventeen great ships descending from the sky. Golden Jehanan step forth and they are garbed like kings, like heroes. They fight terrible monsters and ferocious beasts with spears of lightning, laying low all who contest their dominion. Cities of emerald and silver rise from plain and mountain. They feast on the most savory food, they bear many young, they rule the world as gods. Oh, mighty is their aspect!"

Malakar fell silent again, claws scratching on the floor, raising tiny puffs of dust.

"But…" Gretchen wanted to pat the creature's shoulder, but had no idea if such an offering of sympathy would be properly understood. "There are no dates, no signs to tell when the murals were painted? Or even if they relate a true tale of your people?"

"Hoooo…" The old Jehanan raised her head wearily, seemingly spent. "We feel the truth in our bones, on our tongues, in the taste of the air, the bitterness of the Nem. Even the freshest hatchling knows without being told…Jagan is not our home. We are strangers here, picking for grubs in the ruins of our ancestors."

"The Nem fruit is supposed to be sweet?" Anderssen could see the signs of pain and loss in the creature's expression now. "Is it from your true-home?"

"Yesss…" Malakar's mouth yawned sadly, showing a forest of broken teeth. "The breath of life, the guardian, yielding a sap which folds back illusion from reality. There are many rituals concerning the Nem, but…there, in the room, there is a little painting of a trilobed fruit in one corner and the characters 'I like Nem, it is sweet to eat.' This old horn believes those words are true."

"Who painted the murals, Malakar? They weren't priests, were they? Not historians."

The Jehanan rubbed her long snout. "The roof is a little low and curved. We sat on the floor, listening to the shower-of-the-way. So many stories she told us, explaining all the bright pictures…"

"It's a school room, isn't it?" Gretchen kept her voice soft. "Children – hatchlings – painted the murals. But you don't know how long ago, or if they were painting something they'd seen themselves, or only read about in pushta or heard from a long-horn. That's why you wanted to know how old the paint is…"

Malakar hissed in despair, pressing her head against the floor. "How long have we been lost?" she wailed. "Where is our home – is earth gone? Did we flee? Are there sweet Nem somewhere, under a bright sun, not so cold as cruel Bharat which glares at us from the sky? Are we alone? All alone?"

Anderssen felt a chill wash over her; the translator in her earbug was running out of synch with the sobbing wail of the creature's words. She waited until the groaning voice fell silent again.

"Malakar, can we open the door? Do you remember how?"

"Huuuuuoooo…" The old Jehanan opened her eyes. "This door has stood closed for a long count of years… The last good Master bade it sealed. The painted colors were beginning to fade, to crack, like an old shell left out in the wind."

"Oh." Gretchen checked her comp, which was still humming to itself and trying to make the metallic plate wake up. "If the pigments and binding layer are breaking down, then opening the door might break the atmosphere suspension inside… The whole faГ§ade of the wall could crumble to dust." She stood upslowly, fearful of alarming the creature huddled on the floor, and stepped to the portal.

Dust and a surface layer of grime came away at her touch. Gretchen dug a sampler out of one of the pockets of her work-pants. Running the pickup over the surface cleared a hand's breadth section – and the material resembled the polished ceramic making up the floors and walls. "Probably not a metal," she muttered, watching the display on the sampler flash through an analysis sequence. "Looks solid though. Airtight."

The sampler beeped, displaying a list of compounds. Anderssen puzzled through the materials, then shook her head. "A layer-bonded ceramic – nearly as tough as steel and probably lasts longer in this environment. Unfortunately, it's holding cohesion pretty well. No noticeable surface degradation and I don't have an erosion matrix built up to gauge what wear there is."

Her eyes fell on the pushta under her octopus. "Malakar, wouldn't these books be even older than the room? I mean, if they came from…" She paused, wondering if she'd caught the translator in an error. Wouldn't be the first time! "Did you say your people came from 'earth'?"

"Yes," rumbled the Jehanan, now squatting, long arms folded over bony knees. "Another bit of shell we've not lost hold of… Our race was born on earth, long, long ago."

But Anderssen had plucked out her earbug, and the hooting, warbling voice had pronounced a word she knew. Her heart sank, knowing at least part of the answer to the creature's agonized questions.

The Jehanan word for 'earth' was 'Mokuil,' not AnГЎhuac, not Terra. A dead world, if Hummingbird spoke true, Gretchen remembered, filled with pity. Desolate and shattered, a vigorous race which had woken the Valkar and so been destroyed millennia ago. Leaving only corpses among which humanitymight hide, avoiding notice ourselves…

There was a soft beep from the floor.

She knelt and checked her comp. The first set of scans were complete. The pushta was inert, showing no response to external power. Cold and dead, broken by the weight of thousands of years of neglect. Organic analysis found traces of a bacterium particular to Jagan, one which ate and corroded metal, on the stippled contact points.

How sad, Gretchen thought, cradling the plate in her hands. Malakar was watching her, eyes hooded, shoulders hunched against the sides of her long head. The world ate away everything they wanted to save, leaving nothing but dust and empty, lightless halls. Even their great conquest turned bitter…Were they refugees from the destruction of their homeworld? Had they seen the Valkar rip aside the sky, seen their cities burn? How long did they flee through the dark, seeking a new home?

She looked up. "There is only one thing we know for sure. The child who painted that picture had tasted Nem untainted by the biosphere of Jagan. He or she must have come from race-home, from Mokuil itself. You've looked upon – touched – the work of the first of your kind to stand under the red sun of Bharat."

The creature lowered her head, clasping scaled arms over eye-ridges. A trembling, desolate hooting sound reverberated from the walls and fled down the empty hallway.

The Gemmilsky House

Gandaris, "Peerless Foundation of the Vaults of Heaven"

 

Two aerocars lifted from the rear garden of the mansion, their repeller effect rippling the conical trees and making their trapezoidal leaves rattle musically. Both vehicles bore nondescript colors and flew no warning lights, though the house and grounds were still wrapped in night's cloak. Standing in the watchman's alcove of a more traditional Jehanan building across the street, a figure in a long leather coat watched the 'cars rise silently and then speed away across the hills. The peaks behind the city – a long arm of snow-covered mountains reaching down from the massif of Capisene – were painted pink and silver with the first brush of dawn.

Rubbing cold hands together, the figure watched the mansion gate for a quarter-hour before stirring as the wooden portals opened. A Jehanan bundled in thick furs and enormous padded boots emerged, long snout puffing white vapor in the chill air. The house cook shuffled across to a locked wooden box beside the street and produced a key.

While the cook was taking out the day's delivery of eggs, freshly cut zizunaga fillets and imported Bandopene molk-cheese, the man in the long coat walked quickly across the street and ducked through the gate. With a furious expression, he strode up the curving carriage drive and let himself in the front door with his own key.

A three-toned chime sounded in the entryway as Gemmilsky unsealed his coat, stripped off his gloves and hung a drover's hat on its accustomed hook in the coat closet. Brushing back short-cropped sandy hair, the nobleman paced down the main hall and almost immediately encountered both old Nuskere Pol – who was majordomo of the current residence, just as he had served the venerable Gandarian mansion torn down to accommodate the whim of a mad asuchau out-lander with far too much money for his own good – and Corporal Clark. Despite the early hour, both the human and the Jehanan were completely turned out for a day's business.

"Viscount," Clark said, surprise hidden behind a neatly trimmed dark beard. Nuskere Pol bowed, long hands clasped together in front of his fur-lined brocade robe.

"If there is business to discuss, we can speak by comm -" Clark fell silent. Gemmilsky had such a look of restrained fury on his sharp face that the adjutant realized any attempt to speak reasonably was doomed to failure.

"I have come for my personal effects," Johann said. "Nuskere, if you could wake the servants and have them pack my things, I will be speaking to the cook."

Clark frowned. "Sir – I assure you, nothing of yours has been touched."

"Almost truth," Nuskere interjected in a whispery voice, snout wrinkled in distaste. "The young kujen drained every last egg of voodku in the house."

"That will be paid for!" The corporal twitched slightly, trying not to glare at the majordomo. "Mi'lord, I was careful to pack away all of your clothes and other personal effects and -"

Gemmilsky's eyes narrowed. "Very thoughtful," he said coldly. "Some of my men will be arriving outside in short order. Bring all of my carefully packed belongings downstairs and see them properly stowed. A bill has already been submitted for the rest to the Legation in Parus."

Clark nodded, hoping the man wouldn't lose his temper and have to be restrained. Gemmilsky turned to the old Jehanan and produced a sheaf of documents from his coat pocket.

"Nuskere Pol, I am pained to inform you that I will no longer require your services or those of the staff." Johann pressed the heavy documents into the majordomo's claw. Clark could see they were affixed with wax stamps and different kinds of seals and some were bound in metallic thread. "Here are papers of release from your service to the household and severance pay. Generous, I hope. There are also letters of recommendation, for I trust you will find a worthy household to serve in future."

The corporal stiffened a little at the man's tone and was about to speak sharply with him when the front door banged open and the cook burst in, bags of eggs clutched to his heavy coat. The Jehanan was hissing and warbling at a tremendous rate, far faster than Clark's translator could keep up. Old Nuskere stiffened in alarm, but Gemmilsky – his face softening for the first time – replied to the agitated cook in a calm tone, managing a very respectable version of the same wavering hoots and trills.

Catching a bit of the conversation, Clark stepped to the open door and looked out warily. The front gates had been thrown wide and a procession of enormous hairy behemoths was striding up the drive. Each hrak – an untranslatable word the corporal's translator supplied from context – bore a creaking howdah of wooden slats and leather fittings. The lead hrak slowed to a halt, guided by a tiny, short-faced type of Jehanan the corporal had never seen before, and then knelt with a snuffling groan.

"Wouldn't expect to see mammoths here, would you?" Gemmilsky said, coming to stand at Clark's shoulder. "They're not the real thing, of course, just an unusual Jehanan analogue. True mammals, too. Quite rare on this world. A biologist I consulted in Parus thinks they might actually be native. Now, you had carefully packed baggage to bring down, didn't you?"

The corporal nodded, tore his eyes from the hrak settling onto the lawn, and hurried back down the hall. Old Nuskere was wringing his hands, watching the near-legendary hrak and their drivers with wide eyes, when Johann turned from the door himself.

"Master? Are you…are you going to the Cold Lands? Truly?"

Gemmilsky nodded, a faint sparkle in his eyes. "I am. Too many Imperials here for my taste. I hear many wild tales of the lands beyond Capsia. I would like to see the cities in the ice for myself, if they truly exist."

The Jehanan shuddered and pushed the door closed with both hands. "Horrible fates await those who pass the White Teeth, master. Horrible…you should stay here – I am sure the brown-faced men will leave soon. This is your home!"

Johann looked around the hallway with a pensive, sad expression. "It was, for a little while. Now, I want you all out of here before the sun is high. No one is to stay! Let these Mйxica and their minging lapdogs feed themselves." He paused, a grin starting to twist his lips. "Tell cook to give all the food and drink in the house to the poor. My gift to the city. And I give you and the other servants all the bed linens, towels, everything but the furniture and the manse itself."

Nuskere stared at him for a moment, then began to trill helplessly in laughter, sides shaking, hiding his snout in stiff old hands.

Tezozуmac waved cheerily at a Gandarian nobleman moving quietly through the scrub higher on the slope and looked down quizzically at Colmuir. The master sergeant was down on one knee, the long-barreled rifle at the ready.

"What was the name of that one?" The prince pointed over his shoulder. "The one with the particularly long snout and the green and black felting on his jacket?"

"Lord Pardane Fes," the Skawtsman whispered, tensely scanning the plane trees rising above the high grass. "Cousin of the kujen I believe and an avid hunter… Mi'lord, you really should lower your profile. The xixixit – -"

"What exactly is this fearsome creature?" Tezozуmac interrupted. He was feeling rather good – the aerocar ride had cleared his head a little, the day was pleasantly cool, and there had been a fine selection of beverages laid on by the kujen. While the natives had not made their way into the hills by air, they still managed to put on a very respectable luncheon in a pavilion under spreading trees. "Dawd tried to show me a picture, but I was busy throwing up at the time."

Colmuir did not look up, keeping his attention focused on the upper branches of the nearest copse. The Ghuhore district lay in the rain shadow of jagged mountains on the southern side of the Kophen. The vegetation ran to grassy hillsides spotted with clusters of dry-leaf trees and thickets of a spiny bramble. Steep ravines filled with thick brush split the slopes. The tu grass varied in height from two to four meters, which made visibility difficult for men on foot and excellent hunting territory for the triply-winged, uncannily silent xixixit.

"A native wasp, mi'lord, of uncommon size and ferocity. Hangs in the trees like a three-meter-long bat. Carries a bifurcated stinger – the poison dissolves the innards of the victim – very grisly, you understand."

Tezozуmac frowned, checking his teeth for bits of grilled meat. He had found the roast zizunaga fillets very savory. "Are they colored like a wasp? I'd think yellow and black would stand out in this country…Or are they sort of a mixed brown and green with tan legs?"

"Sir, I don't rightly – what did you say?"

The prince pointed, Colmuir snapped his head around and an enormous, mottled insect burst up from the high grass between Tezozуmac and Lord Pardane Fes and his loaders. The master sergeant hurled himself between his charge and the xixixit, swinging the rifle around. Shoved off balance, the prince fell backwards into the grass, broke through a screen of immature tu stalks and tumbled down the hillside.

The wasp, crystalline wings blurring into near-invisibility, darted to the right. Colmuir's rifle bellowed, spitting a long tongue of flame and sending the crack! of a gunshot echoing across the hillside. Lord Pardane's servants bolted, the noble Jehanan flung himself flat on the ground and the slender tree above him burst into flames as the self-fusing high-explosive bullet smashed into the trunk and blew apart.

Colmuir cursed, jacked back the ejector lever on the side of the rifle and groped for a fresh round. The Jehanan lord bounced back up, shrilling lurid insults at the clumsy human and caught sight of the xixixit blurring downslope, weaving between the isolated trees with fluid grace. Burning branches falling around him, Pardane Fes braced his rifle, took aim and squeezed the trigger.

The master sergeant felt the air over his head snap with the passage of a bullet, and rolled up himself, shouting in alarm. "Mi'lord! Mi'lord Prince, where are you?"

Downslope, the Jehanan bullet narrowly missed the fleeing xixixit and blew apart in a stand of red-barked brush. Flames licked up from the wounded trunk, caught among dry leaves and began to smoke furiously. The insect dodged into the unexpected cover and daintily wiped its feeding mandibles clean of fresh blood. Having only whetted its appetite, the xixixit then noticed a bipedal figure stumbling through the brush at the bottom of the slope and took flight, pleased at the prospect of a second meal so soon in the day.

Pardane's servants, meanwhile, followed their lord headlong down the slope. The long legs of a Jehanan were well suited for bounding between the tufts of high grass, but one of the loaders stumbled almost immediately and when he'd picked himself up, stared in horror at the eviscerated carcass of a young molk, entrails scattered by the xixixit's cutting mandibles. The servant had only an instant to wonder why a calf had wandered this far up from the valley before the hooting bellow of his master summoned him to the chase.

Tezozуmoc, half-blinded by dirt and clouds of tu pollen, crashed through a wall of thorny brush and stumbled into a stream. An algae-slick rock immediately turned under his foot, pitching him into the water with a splash. For a moment, he lay stunned in the current, shivering as snowmelt rushed over him, and then the prince heaved himself up and crawled onto a muddy bank.

Exhausted and in shock, Tezozуmoc rolled onto his back in a drift of fallen leaves and tried to clear his eyes. The first thing he saw was the blurring, jerky flight of the xixixit as it darted through the stand of trees hanging over the stream. Bluish plates of fresh chitin gleamed under older sections of brown scale. The long, pendant legs and cutting mandibles tucked against the bipartite body gleamed jewel-green.

The prince groped for something to use as a weapon. In the incongruous silence, the sound of an aerocar turbine idling was jarringly loud. Tezozуmoc tipped his head back and caught sight of a woman – a human woman – in a silk blouse, field trousers and a sensible sun-hat.

The xixixit blurred forward, glossy black stingers flaring down for the paralyzing strike.

There was a deafening crack-crack-crack directly over the prince's head. The smell of propellant and atomized metal choked Tezozуmoc and he flinched into a tight ball, hands over his ears. Three armor-piercing rounds smashed into the thorax and head of the xixixit as it lunged across the stream. The fluoropolymer-coated bullets tore through the armored chitin and splintered into dozens of razor-sharp sub-munitions, which tore through the soft inner organ sac.

A hand seized the prince, dragging him to his feet, and Tezozуmoc opened his eyes in time to see the xixixit blow apart in a cloud of shattered chitin, lubricating fluid and gossamer wing fragments.

"Christ on the Stone," he gasped, "that was an excellent shot!"

"Thank you," a rich alto voice purred in his ear. The prince turned in time for the unexpected woman to wrap his fingers around a still-smoking Webley AfriqaExpress hunting pistol and then swoon gracefully into his arms.

"Ooof!" Tezozуmoc staggered, taken by surprise, and managed to hug the woman to his side before he dropped her. The hot barrel of the Webley burned his arm, but – juggling both unexpected objects for a moment – he managed to seize the pistol grip. He looked down at himself in dismay. He was soaked and coated with mud. "Ah…curst wilderness! Another good shirt ruined! I hate hunting -"

"Mi'lord!" Colmuir crashed out of the thicket on the far side of the stream, rifle at the ready. The master sergeant stumbled to a halt, gaping at the scene in front of him. Pardane Fes was only a step behind and the Jehanan let loose a hiss of astonishment. The crowd of servants behind him spilled out onto the bank and then everyone looked up, shielding their faces from blowing grit and dust as an Imperial aerocar settled between the trees. Dawd hung over the side, one foot on the bottom step of the boarding ladder, the Whipsaw tracking across the chuckling stream.

"You killed it?" Colmuir stared in amazement at the shattered remnants of the xixixit scattered in front of the prince and the woman. The master sergeant blinked, recognizing her. "Madame Petrel?"

Behind the Resident's wife, still in the arms of her Imperial savior, the pale faces of two young ladies peered over the side of an aerocar, then squealed in relief to see the horrendous monster stricken down. Colmuir stepped back, eyes narrowed in suspicion, and let the Jehanan hunters – nearly everyone had now arrived, drawn by the gunshots – stampede past to examine the insect carcass. Tezozуmoc was staring around him, bemused to suddenly find a striking woman in his arms and two young girls clapping in delight and thanking him for such "quick thinking."

Pardane Fes rose from the shattered xixixit, shaking his long scaled head in appreciation. "Not sporting," the Jehanan boomed, "to use such a keen blade, but a well-placed shot withal – straight between the thorax plates. Well placed, well placed."

Clinging tightly to the prince's rather narrow chest, Mrs. Petrel's brilliant blue eyes fluttered open and she looked around, apparently so overcome she'd forgotten where she was. "Oh – what was that horrific beast?" There was a hesitant pause, then, in a ghoulishly fascinated tone: "Was anyone killed?"

Eight hundred kilometers away to the south, Itzpalicue grunted and her wrinkled old face screwed up into a disapproving grimace. "Cut that last," she growled to Lachlan and his editing team, who were hunched over a double-wide set of v-displays in the operations center. "She always overdoes these things… Cull the rest, make it look presentable for a handheld cam and squirt it to the t-relay on the Tepoztecatl. They'll want to forward it on to the core worlds as quickly as possible."

Lachlan nodded, watching approvingly as the two girls from Editing winnowed out everything which would have made the prince less presentable – such as the look of stark fear on his face when the xixixit burst out of the trees – and recast the crystal-clear video from the spyeyes into a fuzzier, lower-def format. A body-filter was already processing the prince's torso, adding muscle and definition.

"We'll have a final edit in about twenty minutes," the Йirishman reported after a moment. "Anything else we need to track from these spyeyes today? I'd like to route them back to Gandaris to recharge."

Itzpalicue shook her head. The old woman leaned on her cane, keen eyes roving across the workstations crowded into the low-ceilinged room. Everyone appeared entirely focused on their work, which pleased her greatly, and a particular, familiar tension was building in the air.

"Soon," she said, clicking her teeth together in consideration. "I can feel the index peaking. We'll have our war soon…" Coming to a decision, she rapped the top of Lachlan's console with her knuckles. "I'm going out to see to my Arachosians. They are getting impatient."

Shaking his head in dismay, Corporal Clark stepped through the ruins of the kitchen and pushed the door of the ice locker closed with a dull thump. Every edible scrap of food was gone. Nearly all of the utensils, pots, pans and other cook-ware had been hauled away. Some eating tines wrapped in a damask napkin lay forgotten on the floor. The rest of the house was in a similar state.

Chasing off the last of the scavengers – once word had circulated around the neighborhood about the viscount's departure, every short-horn in the district had descended on the 'asuchau house' to get their share – had taken the whole afternoon. The genteel ambience Gemmilsky had worked so hard to establish had been destroyed, leaving only an echoing, empty house filled with scattered litter and forgotten trinkets.

"Well, this will take some fixing," the adjutant said, squaring his shoulders and tapping his comm awake. "Hello? Is this the Gandaris consulate? Yes, this is Corporal Clark. I'm acting factotum for the Prince Imperial while he's in the city…Yes, that one. Yes. Listen now, there's been a bit of a problem with the servants at the Gemmilsky house." Clark paused, listening to the consul babble in his ear. The corporal's face grew still, then turned grim.

"You say the Resident's wife is coming with him? She's not injured? Good. But her vacation party has been invited to stay with the prince?" Clark's dark eyebrows drew close over brown eyes. "And where would her luggage be? At the palace? No? Ah, the train station. I see. Well, sir, if you wish to remain employed by the Imperial Diplomatic Corps, I suggest you tell me how to acquire thirty properly trained household staff and hot dinner and drinks for thirty in…" Clark raised his wrist, glanced at his chrono, then peered out the window at the sun. "Three-quarters of an hour. As, sir, there are no staff here. They have all fled to the four winds."

There was a pause. Clark waited, trying not to tap his boot on the floor. Eventually the consul spoke again and a begrudging smile lit the corporal's dour face.

"Does the kujen have an Imperial-addressed comm? He does? Excellent – what's the number there? Good. Now, can you send a man to get her Ladyship's baggage? I will be very busy here, very busy."

Parus

The District of the Claw-Sharpeners

 

Just west of a mustard-yellow mercantile arcade, where rug merchants laid out their wares in smoke-stained alcoves, an old royal residence with two slender towers sat hidden inside a block of residential flats. Inside the palace, in a large domed chamber holding a dry pool, the leaders of four of the darmanarga moktar cells in the capital considered a table covered with maps and diagrams.

The topmost map described the environs of the Imperial Legation, housed within the dhrada-mandura – the Rusted Citadel – and the streets surrounding the human enclave. The chart was covered with annotations describing the security arrangements, guards and other items of interest in the Legation. Despite the reflecting pool having gone dry the room was pleasantly hot and humid.

"We will have to commit nearly every brigade in the city to overwhelm this position," declared the smallest, most nervous of the conspirators. "With the weapons they control, the asuchau could hold the dhrada against us with a claw of warriors! We should wait until more lance commanders commit to our cause."

The largest of the moktar flared his nostrils dismissively. When he frowned, a deep scar puckered beneath his left eye-shield. "They are expecting an attack by warriors bearing swords, spears and the occasional rifle. The 'artifacts' we've put back into service will be a complete surprise – much less the number of rifles and heavy machine guns our agents have purchased on the black market. A swift, coordinated assault on these points…" General Humara's claw tapped the map, indicating the main gates of the Legation, as well as two service entrances on the far side ofthe compound. "…will allow our troops entry and trap them inside. Then it will be a matter of -"

"A matter of counting your corpses," an unexpected – human – voice said, rising over the sound of brisk footsteps on the expanse of mosaic floor. All four of the conspirators turned in alarm, horrified to find a tall, lean-looking Imperial with short blond hair emerging from the dim recesses of the vestibule. Despite civilian attire – short jacket over a cotton mantle, pleated trousers tucked into leather boots – the entire line of his body shouted military. "The Imperial soldiers assigned to the Legation are equipped with combat armor and modern weapons. A single gunso with a Macana 8mm could slaughter two to three hundred of your soldiers with ease. Even the surplused rifles you've purchased from passing merchants will have a hard time penetrating their hard shells."

The man's brash pronouncement froze three of the conspirators, but not the general. Humara trilled a soft laugh and rose to his full height – easily a head over the human – and looked down a scarred old snout. "Humans selling us guns to kill other humans is pleasant," he boomed, "and convenient. But we are not without powerful weapons, even in our diminished state. Not all of the glory of old Jehan has yet failed."

Timonen inclined his head in acknowledgement of the point. Then he raised pale, watery blue eyes to meet the gaze of the old kurbardar and lifted one hand. "Can you still reach to the stars, as your forebears once did? Do you still rule the skies?"

Humara hissed angrily in reply. "No, not as we did. We have been gnawing the same scale. There are Imperial starships in orbit, and those we cannot reach. Thus our desire to seize the Legation and the humans within immediately, so as to shield ourselves from orbital bombardment -"

The Finn produced a trill of laughter. "The Empire will not hesitate to spill innocent blood. The Imperial commanders you face will obliterate any massed forces you expose – such as concentrating all your brigades in the city against the dhrada – along with their 'shields.' "

"How then," the kurbardar growled, "do we defeat this enemy? How do we win?"

"Another question, first," hissed the nervous one. The Jehanan hopped from foot to foot, claws clicking together. "Who are you, asuchau? We have not seen your face before – your coloration is different, your speech pattern unfamiliar! How did you find and enter this place?"

"I am a courier," the blond man replied, producing a packet. "My name is unnecessary. I was given certain signs and procedures to follow and directed here. I have unexpected – but welcome – news for your cause."

The nervous Jehanan snatched the proffered packet and began going through the identity card and other letters inside. "What news?"

"First, I think you should not wait." The cold-eyed human nodded to the old kurbardar. "Each day only increases the chances one of your, ah, less-committed fellows will change his mind, or tell someone, or be betrayed by a subordinate. Then all of your heads – and mine, most like – will be on a drying rack with hooks through our eye sockets. I understand there is a citywide festival in the next day or so?"

"The gathering of the Nem," Humara rumbled wistfully. "The streets will be filled with street festivals and processions of the hatchlings bearing the sacred flowers… The entire city will turn out in hatching-day best, the air will be fragrant with perfume and the smell of a thousand savory dishes." He paused, leathery lips rippling back from rows of ivory-colored teeth in growing anger. "You suggest we should attack the Imperials on one of the most holy days in our year? A day when conflict has always been forbidden?"

The other three hissed in alarm and began to eye the human with great distaste.

"Do you want to free yourselves from the yoke settling so gently around your necks? Do you want to win?"

The Jehanan officers said nothing, but there was a half-audible hissing. The kurbardar leaned forward, glowering at the human. "If we dishonor ourselves for an instant's advantage, a heavier weight than the Empire will be upon our kshetrin, an indelible stain -"

"But if that single moment of advantage is necessary to free your people," Timonen said, removing another, heavier packet from inside his jacket, "and you do not grasp the horn – sharp as it is – then the weight of slavery will be upon you until the sun fails. In truth, time is shorter than you expect."

He slid his thumb along the sealstrip on the packet and removed a three-d photo of a wizened old NГЎhuatl woman. "This is an Imperial agent, a servant of the Smoking Mirror. She is upon Jagan – in Parus right now – and she is hunting for you."

All four Jehanan stiffened, and while the most nervous one darted a glance at the doorways, the kurbardar picked up the photograph between two chipped claw-tips. He examined the woman's face carefully. "This asuchau has been seen by these eyes – at the feast of welcome for the Imperial hatchling. Where is she now?"

The human shrugged. "I have only lately arrived. Now you know the face of your enemy. You must strike before she can find you and drag your entire cabal before the kujen in chains." He removed a set of smaller envelopes, each heavy with clinking metal.

"I – my people – have been preparing for the moment of your liberation for some time. You have already received your shipments of KГ¤rrhГ¶k missiles, kyllГ¤? You have tested them?"

The kurbardar nodded. "Some failed, as your accomplice warned, but they have been destroyed and the remains hidden. The rest have been distributed to the brigades. But even with the reactivated artifacts, they will not suffice to remove the threat beyond the sky… Without that, any rising is doomed to failure. A secondFire will sweep away what we have built, leaving only savages to toil in the wreckage for the Empire."

A satisfied glint flashed in the human's watery eyes. His lips twitched into a cold smile. "Do not concern yourself with the Imperial warship. When the festival day comes, you will see a brilliant sign in the heavens and that particular obstacle will be removed."

"How?" The nervous Jehanan looked up in horror from the photograph of Itzpalicue. "What do you mean removed? What if we are not ready to rise up by Nemnahan?"

The blond man shrugged. "Then opportunity will pass you by."

"So, you force us to action – whether we are ready or not." The kurbardar's claw clasped a heavy, curved kalang blade held in his ornamental harness. He showed his teeth again. "We do not seek a new master to replace the old!"

Unimpressed by the threat, the human spread the smaller envelopes out on the table. "I – we – have been sent to give you an opportunity. If an accident befalls the light cruiser on watch-station, then, well…you can express your sincere condolences to the Resident. It is well known the ship is already damaged and in poor repair – its destruction due to an accident will not be surprising. There is nothing to implicate your little conspiracy.

"But you will have missed your chance. Years of preparation will be wasted. None of your confederates will find the will to act again." He shook one of the envelopes, making the package rattle.

"There are twelve of these envelopes – each contains an address to a location in or around Parus and a key. In each house, you will find several hundred boxes of ammunition for your small arms and machine guns. These rounds have been specially modified to defeat Imperial combat armor. A little gift from those who also hate the Empire."

"So we rise up…" The nervous little Jehanan's split tongue flicked along well-polished teeth. "And we are successful – what prevents the Empire from invading us with irresistible force? They have far more than one light cruiser to claw!"

"They do." The human nodded. Despite the continued hostility of the conspirators and the muggy atmosphere in the abandoned building, he remained genial and composed. "But the Emperor has hundreds of colonies to consider, and many, many more problems than a brief incident on one obscure – no offense, my friends – world on the periphery of his domain. Even the death of prince Tezozуmoc will not inspire him to action – the boy has been sent here to spare embarrassment at home.

"But your true allies" – the blond man's lips stretched into a wide smile – "are the factions among the appropriations board of the Colonial Service. If you are successful, then those who favor consolidation will gain influence and the 'expansionists' will lose ground."

"A fantasy!" The nervous Jehanan slammed the photograph down on the table. "Bickering among bureaucrats may delay an Imperial reaction, but it will not stop it. If we destroy the Legation, slaughter their citizens and defeat their warriors, the Empire will have to respond or lose face. Then the sky will bleed fire and we will be cast back into the savagery we've only just crawled up from!"

The other three conspirators stared wide-eyed at the little one. They had never seen him so agitated.

Humara sheathed his knife. "Where is our path then?" he asked in a slow gravelly voice, gesturing at the human. "We must do something. Even the public Imperial records show what happens to worlds like ours…slow suffocation, economic enslavement, the inevitable reduction of each kujen to a puppet good only for imposing ever higher taxes. Here, at least, we will show our mettle and challenge them. Perhaps gain a space of years to build our own orbital infrastructure, our own warships… With a little help, with access to offworld trade, we could rebuild the old yards at Sobipurй."

"A wild dream…" The nervous one scratched the line of cream-colored scales along his jaw. He glared openly at the human courier. "And again, we rely on this creature and his unseen masters to supply us with the technology and resources we need."

"An equitable trade could be arranged," the human said. "We are seeking allies, not slaves."

"Allies…" the little Jehanan hissed in disgust. "A cheap way to bleed the Empire!"

The kurbardar waved the stack of envelopes in kujen Bhrigu's face. "If you do not wish to seize the claw of opportunity, then retire to your estates! Find a more righteous path, if you can. We will do what must be done. This way we have at least a chance of victory."

The other two, who had remained silent, hooted in agreement. The human said nothing, watching the nervous prince with a placid expression.

"Yes, a chance…for the yi birds to peck your eye-sockets clean and dig their talons into your rotting entrails!" Bhrigu hopped from one foot to the other, then reached out his claw. "Very well. Give me our share. We will be ready on Nem-day."

"You will?" The kurbardar and the other two stared at the nervous one in surprise. "But -"

"He knows," Timonen interjected smoothly, retrieving the stack of envelopes and sorting them swiftly into four equal piles, "that if you do not stand together, you will each be buried separately." The blond head bowed to the little Jehanan. "Your friend here understands how to gamble."

Bhrigu flashed his teeth again, but took careful custody of the proffered keys.

"Now," the Finn said, affecting to wipe sweat from his forehead, "some small issues to consider when you attack the Imperial installations…"

All four Jehanan bent over the table and maps, eyes and ears attentive.

Within the House of Reeds

Takshila

 

Gretchen sucked absently on her breathing tube, cheek pressed to the floor of the passageway. Dust tickled her nose and one eye was closed as she squinted into the viewer of her microscope. The lens-end of the tiny Ericsson 'scope was nosed into an almost imperceptible crack between the base of the doorway and the floor.

"No…" Anderssen turned a tiny dial with her fingers. The image expanded, swelling until she could see the pitted surface of the ceramic composite. "This seal is airtight. I think the door sets into a groove in the floor. To get an atmosphere probe inside we'll have to drill a hole."

"Hoooo…" Malakar shook her head slowly from side to side. The Jehanan was showing signs of oxygen deprivation. The long-fingered hands twitched intermittently. "Door is thick, very strong, like all these old walls."

"Yes, I'd imagine so." Gretchen rose slowly, running the 'scope along the edge of the door with long-practiced ease. The entire seal was tight, showing a remarkably well-turned edge to the door-frame and the portal itself. Disappointed, she folded up the 'scope and tucked it away. "Your ancestors built well. This" – she patted the door gently – "is as well machined as any human factory could make."

The old Jehanan made a leaky hissing sound. Anderssen reached down and picked up the gipu. The egg was weak and faint. Darkness lapped around them, reducing the shape of the gardener to pale bluish glints on scale and a tiny gleam in each eye-socket.

"We have to leave," Gretchen said, holding the ovoid to her breathing tube. "I don't have enough emergency oxygen for both of us to stay. We have to get up to a level where there's still some air circulation."

Malakar nodded weakly, hunching over and placing her hands – fingers splayed out – on the floor. Anderssen crouched, hooking an arm under the creature's shoulder, and heaved up. The Jehanan was surprisingly heavy.

"Here, breathe for a moment." Anderssen tugged the air tube further out of her jacket collar and slid the tip between blackened, diamond-shaped teeth. Malakar stirred, wheezing softly, and then was able to stand up.

"My thanks," she rumbled, still leaning heavily on the human.

Together, they shuffled down the passage, the wan light of the gipu shining before them. For a few moments, reflected light gleamed on the door, and then there was only stifling darkness.

By the time they had climbed the long stairs, Gretchen could taste the air freshening. Malakar's strength returned as well, and the gardener could make the last steps – the most worn, Anderssen thought, from the brittle concavity of the stone – under her own power. They passed through a vaulted doorway and Gretchen paused, running her hand across the door-frame. A deep, rectangular groove filled with cobwebs and dust ran down the center of the out thrust stone.

"Malakar – are all of the doorways like this one?"

The Jehanan turned, hooded eyes considering the opening. "In the lower levels. They are no longer cut so, above. There is no purpose – only old, traditional decoration."

"This…this isn't just decoration," Gretchen said softly, wiping away the grime. In the light of the gipu, something gleamed in the recess. Bending slightly closer, Anderssen jammed her hand into the opening and felt a cold, smooth surface under her fingers. Turning her palm over, she brushed grit from her fingertips into the cup of her hand. She whistled softly, seeing dark brown flakes against her pale skin. "This is rust."

"Hur hur!" The Jehanan trilled in amusement. "There is no – what are you about?"

Gretchen stepped around the side of the door and switched the frequency on her goggles. A UV wand clicked on in her hand and the human began running the light up and down the wall. Three steps along, she stopped and began knocking on the surface with her fist.

"There is nothing of use here," Malakar said, sounding irritated. "All of these passages are the lungs of a dead tomb. I should not have brought you here… You've told me nothing I didn't grasp before! Everything we were is lost, drowned in shadow. Hrrr…"

The knocking sound changed tone, ringing hollowly, and Anderssen tucked away the wand and brought out a wooden-handled chisel. Scraping the edge across the hollow section, she sketched a quick rectangle. A blow with the haft cracked the fragile surface, and then she picked away the rest with the tip.

The Jehanan stared in surprise as Gretchen, face intent, cleared away old paint and plaster from a recessed panel holding six indentations.

"This is just like the locking panel on the door down below," she declared, glancing sideways at Malakar, eyes shining gipu-blue. "All of the doors in the lower tunnels are like this. Mechanical locks – electrical locks – and pressure-tight portals. When they open, they slide up magnetic tracks into the ceiling… Every flooris perfectly even. Every wall curves so smoothly. No chisel and hammer ever touched these surfaces! The lower levels are filling with bad air because the air circulation system broke down thousands of years ago. Then the recyclers failed and no one knew how to fix them… The native bacteria ate away everything metallicit could find…"

Gretchen stood away from the wall, head tilted a little to one side. She stared at the Jehanan intently. "Do you understand what I'm saying, Malakar? Do you know where we are?" She paused, nodding to herself. "You do know. You remember, when all else have forgotten. Are you the only one who does?"

"Hoooo…" The Jehanan shuffled back warily. The head ducked down a little and turned, fixing the human with one gleaming eye. "Many things have been forgotten, some for the best! Your thoughts, this old one thinks, are too quick by far for your own good. A wonder your tribe has not cast you out! Abandoned you in the Cold Lands to starve and die…"

"You wanted answers," Gretchen said, alarmed by the creature's tone. "I've given you some. Now you'll give in return – trading like for like – this place, the 'hill of the mandire,' your 'house of reeds' – did it come from Mokuil? Are we standing in the bowels of one of the great ships which crossed the void? Was a Nem painted on that wall by the light of a green star?"

"Hrrrr!" Malakar lunged, catching Gretchen by surprise with long arms, throwing her to the ground. Enormous strength pinned the human down, crushing the breath from her lungs. Anderssen struggled, trying to break free. "What do you speak of?" Malakar bellowed. "How can an asuchau human know the sacred light, the star of our fathers, burns harivarpan – green as the first grass?"

"Ayyy!" Gretchen cried out in pain, feeling claws dig into her arm. "Mokuil has a hot green sun," she bit out, wrenching fruitlessly against the gardener's strength. Anger boiled up, casting discretion aside. "But your race-home is dead. A blasted wasteland tenanted by ghosts. A dead shell where nothing grows – no Nem, no hatchlings, no short-horns, nothing – only wind keening through endless ruins."

"Hurrrr…" Malakar slumped despondently and Anderssen pushed the creature away. The Jehanan swayed, clawed fingers scratching at the floor. "No, no, you are lying. A sly asuchau human, making stories, shadows dancing on a wall – deceiving me. You cannot have seen the lost world. You cannot!"

Gretchen felt her arm, and clucked worriedly when her fingers came away damp with blood.

"Say you did not see…" The gardener's voice trailed away into a dismal fluting.

"Ahh…that hurts." Anderssen pulled one arm out ofher jacket and winced to see three deep gashes shining red against her pale skin. Her medband had dispensed a coagulant, but Gretchen snaked out a bandage and slapped the self-disinfecting pad onto the injury. "I have not seen Mokuil with my own eyes. A vision on a distant world let me look with a Jehanan's eyes, walk with their steps. In that moment, I felt the warmth of that hot, young star on my shoulders." One arm done, she turned and bandaged the shallow gash on the other as well.

"Do you exist solely to torment?" the Jehanan groaned, huddling against the floor. "You question and pry and sneak, you offer to separate shell from sac, truth from legend – and everything you say is a needle-sharp claw digging into my heart. Hooo… I did not believe in demons ere now! I scoffed – I raised my voice against the short-sighted Masters – argued – connived – stole to keep the old tales alive…"

Gretchen shrugged her jacket back on and began picking up her fallen tools.

"I should have listened to them!" Malakar wailed, inching away. "They knew better than this old one! They knew…" The whistling voice faded into unintelligible hooting and fluting.

Rising, Anderssen walked quietly over to the gardener's side, then knelt, putting both arms around her shoulders. "Come, rise up. Do you have a room of your own? A place to sleep? You need to rest, to eat."

"No…I have no khus." The old Jehanan tried to rise, failed, and then – with Gretchen's help – managed to come to her knees. "I will not work at the tasks they set me – so they let me lie by the fire in the common hall with the other vagrants. I am" – a deep hur-hur boomed in the broad chest – "not to be trusted with the minds of the hatchlings or short-horns. Too many tales do I tell, of kingdoms lost and days gone by." Claws folded over the Jehanan's snout. "Ahhh… Our losthome, our paradise, a tomb…all gone…gone…"

Anderssen heaved the gardener up to her feet. "You will be in worse trouble if I'm found here. Can you show me the way back to the terrace? I can get out from there."

A clawed hand folded around Gretchen's wrist and the Jehanan's deep-set eyes fixed upon her. "Why did you come here, human? What were you looking for when I found you?"

Anderssen's lips twitched into a wry smile. "What was I looking for? I was looking for a scrap of legendary shell. A memory out of the past. One of your stories. Something so old it would be new to human eyes. Even older than the Jehanan or the Haraphan. As old as Jagan itself."

"Hoooo…" Malakar whistled, nostrils flaring. "You are seeking the heart of the Garden! The false idol, the holy of holies which the blind worship, crawling before a dead god. You are looking for the kalpataru."

Anderssen nodded, one hand sliding inside her jacket and taking hold of the chisel. "I am."

"Worthless," the Jehanan said, puffing air dismissively. "Old accounts say the tree once gave every desire, revealed all secrets, elevated the mind as the gods might…but I know no Master of the Garden has been graced with its power for three hundred generations! This I know, though my old hide would be laid bare with barbed whips to say such a thing aloud."

"Have you seen it?" Gretchen said eagerly, before she could restrain herself. "Is it far away?"

"Hoooo! Your eyes are very bright, human! Your voice is quick, your little claws scratching at the wrapper of a sweet – very much like a short-horn, you are, very much."

"Your pardon," Anderssen said, bowing in apology. "Just show me the way to the terrace."

"Hurrr… A curiosity to confound the foolish…" The Jehanan paused, long snout lifting in thought, eyes glittering in the gipu-light. "Your machines…You wish to pry and snoop and listen and measure the tree-of-deceit, don't you? Yes, you do, all those hungry thoughts picking and chipping and breaking open shells to see what savory treats lie inside." A delicate trill escaped the creature's throat.

Gretchen watched the Jehanan with growing unease. There was a malicious tone creeping into the gardener's voice. "What happened to you?" she said after a moment. "You believed in the Masters ofthe Garden once, but now…now you think I'll prove the kalpataru is false. Will that give you back what you lost? You didn't seem pleased about the school-room…"

"I will never tend the Garden again," Malakar said, head dipping mournfully. "None of the others would allow such a thing. The short-horns and hatchlings are not interested in my dusty old stories. But this new Master…his snout is crooked and filled with lies! He says…he says the tree is still alive – but that only he can hear, that only he is blessed."

A frenetic energy welled up in the old Jehanan's frame.

"I think he lies," Malakar snorted, "but you can tell me the truth of the matter, can't you?"

Swallowing, her throat unaccountably dry, Gretchen nodded.

"Yes," she said. "If you take me to the device, I can see what can be seen."

The Cornuelle

In Orbit Over Jagan

 

Two message-waiting glyphs – one from Engineering and one from Sho-i Smith – winked to life on Chu-sa Hadeishi's command display. As the communications officer had been ordered off the bridge, Hadeishi pointedly ignored the call from Engineering and thumbed open a comm pane to the junior officer's quarters.

The v-pane unfolded, revealing Smith – still in uniform, sweat-stained collar undone – sitting in the cramped workspace created by folding a JOQ rack into the bulkhead. Hadeishi could see Three-Jaguar lying on the bunk overhead, eyes half-lidded as she listened to a signal feed on a set of old-style headphones. A command-class comp was jammed in with her – a feat only possible because the Tlaxcalan woman was petite enough to fit sideways into a Fleet sleeping rack – and the display was alive with analysis diagrams and data flow patterns.

"Yes, Smith-tzin?" The Chu-sa kept his voice level, though he was irritated with the boy. Junior officers are supposed to sleep whenever they can, Hadeishi thought very piously, not stay up working late.

"Kyo, we've managed to trace most of this off-band encrypted traffic through the local comm networks. There is a locus and it's in orbit."

"Coordinates?" Hadeishi raised an eyebrow in interest. "A ship or a satellite?"

Smith punched the descriptors directly to the threatwell on the bridge of the Cornuelle. One of the heavy merchant ship icons shown on orbital path flared amber and acquired a targeting outline. The Chu-sa considered the shipping registry data on his sidepane.

"The Tepoztecatl…Six months outbound from Old Mars. Interesting…registration is up to date, port taxes paid, customs seals intact. Logs show daily shuttle traffic to the surface – expensive." Hadeishi brought up the secondary comm traffic data the two junior officers had collected and his face stiffened into impassive, glacial surprise. "This is an enormous volume of traffic… What arethey doing?"

"Video feeds, kyo." Smith glanced up. Jaguar nodded in agreement, eyes now open and following the conversation. She'd pulled the headphone away from one ear. "We haven't been able to crack their encryption, but the volume of data is so large they can only be passing realtime video from some kind of surveillance array on the planet back to the ship."

"Video? You mean they're processing intercepts from a fleet of spyeyes?"

Smith and Jaguar nodded. "There are hundreds of active comm channels in the traffic volume, and we think each one is a discrete camera. And, kyo, look at the source distribution…"

A map of the northern part of continent four unfolded on Hadeishi's command display. An orbital track designator appeared, showing the location of the Tepoztecatl, while clouds of brilliant points emerged on the map, clustering heavily in the large cities, but also liberally dusting the countryside.

"This covers every locale of size from Patala to Gandaris," the Chu-sa said in a thoughtful voice. He paused. "This level of coverage must be enormously expensive to deploy and maintain." Hadeishi glanced at the two officers. "Could we deploy this kind of network?"

Jaguar shook her head. Smith shrugged. "We've got spyeyes for the Marine combat teams and some extras for shuttle security and surveillance, plus spares, which gives us twenty. This network on the planet has – at last count from the data-stream – almost a thousand in operation."

"Then they're not documentary filmmakers," the Chu-sa said in a dry voice. He was beginning to get a tickling feeling on his neck. This sounds familiar, but where… "What else do we know about this freighter? Have they had any conversations with traffic control?"

"Minimal contact with traffic control," Smith answered. "All their transponder codes are squared away and they haven't moved orbit other than station-keeping burns. They seem to have four different shuttles aboard – or so Hayes-tzin guesses from their drive-flare signatures." Jaguar reached over Smith's shoulder and tapped up something on his panel. The Sho-i nodded, watching the feed come up. "Here, kyo – we shot some video of them as well – just to make sure we were tracking the data-stream properly."

A hand-sized v-pane appeared on Hadeishi's display, showing the long cylindrical shape of the Tepoztecatl with an edge of Jagan in-frame. The view panned, showing that nearly a quarter of the surface was covered with antennas and comm relay receptors. The Chu-sa grunted, not terribly surprised. "Looks like a Nightingale-class emissions collection frigate…" Then he squinted in interest at the display. Hadeishi tapped the 'magnify' glyph twice and then slid his finger back along the time-in-spool indicator. From a distance, the freighter seemed stationary, but the close-up revealed the cargo and habitat pods behind the screen of communications equipment were spinning.

"They've got spin up throughout the whole ship," the Chu-sa said, mostly to himself. "Why would they need gravity in all those cargo areas…" His eyes flicked back to the side-panel with ship registry information. "Manifest shows a crew of sixteen, but radiated heat load is high…"

Hadeishi's expression suddenly changed, a keen light coming into his eyes and the corners of his thin lips tightening. "Comp," he said to the command interface in his comm-thread. "Dictionary lookup, source, Tepoztecatl."

Tepoztecatl is one of the Four Hundred Rabbits, ship's main comp replied in a grandmotherly voice. The Four Hundred are the gods of the pulque , of drunkenness, of fertility. They are the consorts of Mayahuel, the goddess of the maguey, who is a mask-avatar of Xochiquetzal – Precious Flower – the goddess of spring.

"Precious Flower?" Hadeishi frowned, still trying to capture a half-remembered anecdote overheard in a Fleet transit bar. Then the furrow in his brow cleared and he snarled, making both Smith and Jaguar flinch in alarm. "She is the historical patron of the xochiyaotinime!"

"The xochi-who?" Smith asked, confused. At the same moment Jaguar blurted: "The priests of the Flowery War? But they're just military archivists…"

"No, they certainly are not!" Hadeishi's hand jerked towards the 'battle-stations' glyph at the top of his command panel, then he mastered himself. Haste will only lead to disaster, he thought, reminding himself of the repairs underway on nearly every deck. We are not in any condition to rush to combat alert. The freighter is a fellow Imperial vessel, mis-flagged as it may be, and deserving of some courtesy – not a hostile target!

"They're not?" Jaguar's voice brought his attention back to the two junior officers. "Don't they put on the historical pageants and mock battles at TeotihuacГЎn for Emperor's Day? The ones with everyone dressed in the old costumes and armor made of feathers?"

"They do," Hadeishi allowed, his burst of emotion suppressed. His voice chilled noticeably. "Though they serve the Empire in other ways as well." And if they are here, on Jagan, in pursuit of a flowery war with the natives…then I may lose my command for gross incompetence. We are not ready for battle. The tight feeling in his neck increased. "You two, take a knock me out timed for six hours. I need you back on the bridge, rested and refreshed, as quickly as possible."

Without waiting for a reply, Hadeishi brushed away the open channel and punched up Thai-i Huйmac's comm. The fresh v-pane flickered and then revealed the copper-skinned Marine officer in the number two armory, high cheekbones sheened with sweat, and a towel around his neck.

"Huйmac h -"

"Disposition of your men," Hadeishi snapped before the lieutenant could say anything more.

"Ready squad in boat bay one, kyo, with the combat shuttle." The Marine's response was instantaneous. "Squad two is groundside with Sho-sa Kosho at the Sobipurй maintenance yards. Squad three is dispersed on-leave groundside."

The Chu-sa drummed his fingers on the side of his command panel. This is what quicksand feels like, he realized. A third of the crew are off-ship, my exec is twelve hours away, and my only reserve troops need to stay in reserve.

"Thai-i, I need two of your men in z-g combat armor and a launch prepped for a foray in orbit," he said, forcing himself to calm down. "Comm everyone groundside and order them back to the ship with all speed. If they aren't near a shuttle, they should immediately proceed to the Sobipurй spaceport or the Legation cantonment in Parus. We are not at combat stations, but a situation is developing groundside and I think we'll need all hands aboard within the day."

"Hai, kyo!" Huйmac's response was professionally brisk, but Hadeishi could see a hundred questions poised to spring to the man's lips. The Chu-sa nodded and thumbed the channel closed. He turned in his command chair, fixing the duty officer with a cold stare.

"Hayes-tzin, shift our orbit to pass over Sobipurй. Squirt the shuttles on the ground with our new vector. I want those crews back aboard as quickly as possible, so let's keep them from wasting too much time in transit."

The weapons officer nodded and began tapping course corrections into the ship's helm.

Hadeishi, in turn, thumbed the still-winking comm request from Isoroku alive.

"Engin -"

"We are no more than four hours from battle stations," Hadeishi interrupted. "Prepare all compartments for combat acceleration. Shut down all repair activities, stow your materials and prep your teams to assist Medical in handling wounded. Do you understand?"

Isoroku nodded, eyes wide, and Hadeishi closed the channel. Sourly, he looked around the bridge, where everyone was suddenly very busy. The murmur of voices on comm was noticeably sharper. His mood improved by the sight, the Chu-sa tapped open an all-department-heads channel.

"This is the Chu-sa. Be aware hostilities are imminent on the surface of Jagan. Prepare to go to combat acceleration and conditions in no more than four, repeat four, hours. We will be providing orbital fire-support for the Army against native military elements." And whatever other surprises the Flowery Priests have devised for their 'training exercise'!

Hadeishi hid an involuntary grin – the sharp, crystalline feeling of incipient combat was stealing over him – and all the tedium of handling repairs and resupply banished instantly. He tapped up groundside comm to Sho-sa Kosho, then waited for the channel to clear through the usual routing static.

Waves of heat rippled across the tarmac at Sobipurй, hiding the sprawling shantytown beyond the edge of the spaceport behind a wall of shimmering haze. Susan Kosho turned away from the window of the repair depot quartermaster's office and pressed a hand over her earbug, trying to hear Hadeishi clearly. A faint sheen of sweat made her forehead glisten. Outside, a shuttle was warming up for takeoff and the roar of its engines was making the building tremble and obliterating any chance of conversation.

…ship on ready-alert. You need to get everyone back into orbit. If you can't make lift from Sobipurй, relocate to the Legation in Parus and we'll extract you from there.

"Kyo? What's going on? What's the situation?"

The shuttle engines throttled back, and the office – a dingy room with walls covered with tacked-up posters and damp manifests – swelled with the chatter of conversation, the chiming of comms and the ozone-stink of comp equipment running hot in dreadful humidity. Kosho peered out the window, wondering where Helsdon and his scavengers had gotten to. The captain's voice on her comm had the particularly sharp quality she associated with their ship plunging into combat.

We're dropping orbit, the Chu-sa's voice continued, each word crisp, to reduce your lift time back to the ship and to provide fire-support for the regiment. Hayes will handle outbound traffic control through the bombardment path. Make sure you -

"Chu-sa?" Kosho tapped her earbug in irritation. Some kind of interference had flooded the channel. There was a warbling squeal for a moment, and then Hadeishi's voice popped back, perfectly clear.

– can you hear me?

"Hai, kyo. The channel went out for a moment." Susan palmed her comp out and thumbed up the local locator grid, hoping everyone was in range. "Should I evac just ship's crew, or everyone at Sobipurй?"

Just our crew, Hadeishi said, after a brief pause. We need the shuttles back in orbit so we can provide medevac for the 416th. I've learned the -

The comm dropped out again, just for a fraction of a second, but Kosho caught the missing beat in her captain's voice rhythm. Puzzled, she cleared away the locator grid and thumbed up a diagnostic on her shipsuit comm.

– natives are preparing to rise against the Imperial presence. So I want all of you safe in orbit as quickly as possible.

"Understood…" Susan stared at her comp, where the diagnostic display was showing an unaccountable lag in the transmit/receive time between her and the ship. The Sho-sa turned to the corporal who had been trying to help her round up sixty tons of raw protein for the shipboard recyclers. "O'Reilly-tzin, can you bring up the orbital traffic control plot on your comp?"

"Of course, ma'am." The quartermaster's aide pushed a pair of antique spectacles back on his nose and pudgy fingers danced across his comp display. "Here…"

Susan craned her neck to check the position plot on the display, found it matched the one on her handheld, and her nostrils flared in puzzlement. The ship has not moved a million kilometers away from me in the last minute and a half. What could be throwing this kind of delay in the comm channel? Is the network relay failing?

"Captain," she said slowly, paging through the rest of the diagnostics provided by her comp. An obscure screen holding network routing information caught her eye. "I've an entire squad down here, as well as Helsdon and his technicians. Should we reinforce the landing field perimeter? What do you want me to do if the comm net goes dark?"

If you lose comm, Hadeishi said, then collect everyone groundside. Third squad is on leave in Parus. We don't want to leave them hanging – not like at Forochel. I trust your judgment.

Susan nodded and squared her shoulders. The Forochel exercise posited a failure of inter-unit comm due to a precedence dispute among Fleet commanders of equal rank. All subordinate commanders were expected to maintain their heading and unit cohesion while a unity of authority was re-established. The Sho-sa felt herself become very calm. "Understood. Kosho, out."

Then she jammed her thumb down on the all-units channel. "Kosho to all Cornuelle personnel groundside, we've been recalled to the ship with all haste. Return to the shuttle immediately and prepare for lift. Repeat, return to the shuttle immediately."

A babble of voices filled her comm as the Marines and technicians checked in. Only Helsdon was more than ten minutes from their shuttle. Kosho frowned, realizing the master machinist's mate must be overseeing loading of the replacement power supplies Isoroku had bartered for. She tapped up Felix, who was standing by at the shuttle itself.

"Heicho, go get Helsdon and his techs – they're at the Imperial Development Board warehouse – if they've got everything on the lifter, bring it with you, but if not, leave the supplies in place and get those technicians back to the shuttle in one piece."

Hai, kyo ! The corporal signed off. In the ensuing pause, Susan realized the quartermaster's office had fallen silent. She turned, one eyebrow raised, and found all of the clerks staring at her with wide eyes.

"Yes?" The Sho-sa groaned inwardly. All of the personnel in the room were Fleet – but not crewmen from the Cornuelle. Sobipurй was a Fleet installation, but not attached to a specific ship, being staffed by crew seconded from battle group 88's general staff pool. "Where is your commanding officer?"

"In Parus," O'Reilly squeaked, pale round face sheened with sweat, "arguing with the staff liaison of the 416th about acquiring more surface transport for resupplying the squads operating in the field… Are we going to be attacked?"

"I have no idea," Kosho said bluntly, counting heads. "Who is responsible for perimeter security for the landing field? Do you have an evacuation shuttle assigned? Someplace secure to go?"

O'Reilly swallowed, one finger picking nervously at his collar. "D-Company was handling fence patrols and keeping the slicks from picking through the rubbish tip, but they were reassigned to secure the highway and rail-line north to Parus."

Susan stared coolly at the corporal. "And now?"

"Now…the kujen of Fehrupurй sent a brigade of lancers. They're encamped over at the east end of landing strip two…near the customs shed. I heard they were only temporary, until a company from 2nd brigade arrived to take over, but they won't be here until next week…"

Kosho nodded, hiding her horror at the prospect of the entire Fleet landing field having no security at all if the wrong princeling had secured the assignment.

"And your shuttle?"

"Hangar two," O'Reilly replied, his voice rather faint.

She started to tap open a comm channel to Felix, then paused, staring intently at the comp in her hand. Something is delaying our comm, she thought, reading through the routing details. This looks like the entire military net is being relayed through a location far out in space. She keyed a series of commands into her suit comm, then squirted a reset code to every Fleet comm within range.

Sixteen devices in the quartermaster's office beeped simultaneously, startling the already edgy clerks, and then reset.

"We're in local point-to-point mode," Kosho announced briskly, "in case the nearest relay is damaged by enemy action. You men, pack up this office, pull your comps, flashbox any hardcopy and get to your shuttle as fast as possible. O'Reilly-tzin, you're in charge. Our shuttle is in hangar number six. Comm me when you're ready to lift – we'll go in sequence and relocate to the ship."

"Yes, ma'am!" the corporal said, weak-kneed with relief he wouldn't be abandoned.

Susan spun on her heel and banged out the door, taking the steps down to the searingly hot concrete two at a time. She started running towards the looming row of hangars, her armor activated, safety off of her pistol, a locator grid now showing in eye-view on her combat visor. Her temperature regulators immediately began complaining.

"Felix." Kosho cleared a channel to the Heicho. "Forget the repair supplies – we've no cover out here; an unknown force is handling fence security – just grab Helsdon and get back to the shuttle. Do not assume any native troops you encounter are friendly."

The Sho-sa heard Felix acknowledge, then swerved to use a warehouse for cover as she approached a road cutting across the base. She could hear a distant rumbling to the north. Clouds were busy gathering for the afternoon thunderstorms, but had not yet built up enough to deluge the landing field with a torrent of greasy, warm rain.

Hadeishi slid into the passenger's side of the captain's launch and let the shockchair fold around him, mating on-board environmental to his z-suit and hooking his comm into the launch relay. The forward window showed twin boat bay doors recessing, revealing a widening slice of abyssal darkness. A ring of landing guide lights flared to brilliance and the chatter of the bay traffic officer and Sho-i Asale negotiating undock and departure filled his earbug.

"Captain's launch is away," Asale said briskly, and the ship's boat puffed free of its cradle and swept through the bay doors with steady grace. "Outbound to make intercept with traffic control orbit ninety-six, freighter Tepoztecatl." The pilot turned slightly, inclining her head towards the Chu-sa. "Time to match velo and orbit is four hours, kyo."

Hadeishi's eyes narrowed, displeased. "I'm in a hurry, Sho-i. Don't hold back on my account."

The pilot's dark brown eyes widened in delight. "Orbital traffic control regulations say I should -"

"The faster you get us there, Sho-i, the happier I will be." Hadeishi tapped his shockwebbing. "Everyone's in-harness."

"Yes, sir!" Asale toggled off the thrust regulators and checked her distance from the nearly invisible shape of the Cornuelle. "Fitz, Deckard, you strapped in back there?"

"Hai…" Marine gunso Fitzsimmons answered with a grumble. "I just had lunch…"

The cocoa-skinned pilot shook her head in amusement, then twisted her control yoke all the way forward. The pair of Ventris Aerosystems thrusters at the heart of the launch flared sun-bright and Hadeishi felt a kyojin's heavy, heavy hand crush his chest. The launch leapt forward, spaceframe groaning, and there was a muttered curse from the passenger compartment.

"Forty-five minutes to intercept," the pilot reported cheerfully, letting her boat cut loose. Hadeishi could see the planet begin to swell ahead. The Tepoztecatl was in a lower orbit than the Fleet warship on overwatch. Scattered satellites and a lone merchantman sparked on the navigational plot. Most of the face of Jagan was wreathed in cloud. A huge storm system was gathering in the southern ocean.

The Chu-sa listened to Hayes with one ear, keeping track of the Cornuelle's maneuvering burn. After he was satisfied nothing had gone wrong aboard and the cruiser was on the proper heading, he cleared his display of the Navplot and tapped up a communications relay interface.

Now, he thought, steeling himself, we will see if a little truth can be sifted from all this deception.

His earbug went silent and Hadeishi keyed the traffic control channel to the merchantman alive. "Cornuelle to the registered Imperial freighter Tepoztecatl, come in please. This is a priority call to…" He glanced at the registry information. "…Captain Chimalpahin."

The channel popped alive with gratifying speed and the face of an irritated-looking, elderly NГЎhuatl with very long black-and-gray hair appeared in a fresh v-pane.

This is Chimalpahin.

"Hadeishi of the Cornuelle here, I am inbound to match your orbit. We have some matters to discuss face-to-face."

The man's expression twisted into intense annoyance. Captain…this is not a good time for a social visit. In a day or two, I would be happy to meet you on the Cornuelle and we can discuss whatever you wish.

"I am on my way now," Hadeishi said. "You will allow me aboard your ship and you will explain to me exactly what you and your fellow priests are doing here."

We are about the Emperor's business, Chimalpahin said in a patient tone, as I'm sure you guess. So – shouldn't you be with your command? There will be work for you soon.

"Yes, I expect there will be 'work' for us within the day, or at most the week." The Chu-sa's tone cooled. "And Imperial starmen and soldiers will die because you've arranged a 'live training exercise' for them – without informing Yacatolli, the Resident or myself of your presence or your purpose."

The corners of Chimalpahin's small mouth twitched in amusement. Go back to your ship, Hadeishi. Yours is an honorable role, do not dishonor the Fleet by taking our business personally. Just do your duty.

"My duty," the Chu-sa bit out, "is to secure the common peace, police mercantile traffic and enforce the will of the Emperor. At present, I have every reason to believe you and your companions are actively seeking to destabilize the situation on Jagan and place every single Imperial citizen on the planet in danger – citizens I am oath-bound to protect."

Asale reached over and tapped Hadeishi's display. A time-to-intercept counter was ticking relentlessly, showing ten minutes to deceleration. At the same time, the freighter captain's nose crinkled up in a mocking sneer.

Are you intending to arrest us? Impound our ship? Clap us in chains?

"In approximately fifty minutes," Hadeishi said, fighting to remain calm, "you will be showing me your identification, Imperial writ and other authorities proving you are, in fact, executing the Emperor's Will in this matter. If I am satisfied -"

Satisfied? Chimalpahin interrupted, face blushing coppery red. We are not beholden to Fleet! Our authority far exceeds yours, particularly in these matters! The Admiralty will severely reprimand you for interfering, Hadeishi, and your career -

"If I am not satisfied, Captain," the Chu-sa snapped, "then my Marines will storm and seize your vessel and you will be put in shock restraints until this matter is sorted out! As for your authority, I have yet to see any proof you are more than saboteurs, agitators and insurrectionists." He paused, trying to remain impassive. "Fleet reaction protocol to revolt is quite clear. How am I to know – despite your noble face – you are not a pack of HKV operatives, or a Danish volkscommando conspiring with native elements?"

The comm channel suddenly cut out, much to Hadeishi's surprise, and then popped back in. Chimalpahin seemed taken aback, staring off the edge of his v-pickup. The Chu-sa – feeling unaccountably wary – glanced at the comm channel status information and was perplexed to see no warnings indicating a lost relay or network problem.

"What was that?" Hadeishi growled. "Are you showing a secure comm connection on your end?"

Yes… The freighter captain stared at his panel in alarm. Then he looked up, his expression ashen. Return to your ship immediately, Captain. We can meet socially on another day.

The channel went dead.

"Five minutes to deceleration. Forty minutes to intercept," Asale said quietly, watching her commander's stonelike face with concern. "Should I turn around?"

"No…" Hadeishi switched comm to the bridge channel on the Cornuelle. "Hayes-tzin, are we suffering some kind of comm interference? I just lost channel with the Tepoztecatl in mid-sentence."

No, sir. Everything here shows green. Should we run a system check?

The Chu-sa tapped one knuckle thoughtfully against the faceplate of his helmet. "Something odd is happening with comm. If Isoroku has a moment, have him check the relays and master nodes for interference, degraded comp function, anything at all."

Hayes signed off and Hadeishi nodded to the pilot. "Proceed."

I'm going to need something solid out of this priest, he thought, fighting imminent melancholy. The faces of Kosho and Hayes and Isoroku and even midshipman Smith were clear in his mind's eye. To save their careers. Otherwise, every indication will point to incompetence on my part and complicity on theirs. And they will be dragged down with me.

Hadeishi felt certain Fleet Command had been apprised of his slow return to Imperial space. A black mark has been set beside my name, against the Cornuelle 's record, an admonitory note for every officer serving with me. And with no patrons to offset my…refusal…to obey orders, my old ship becomes expendable. An honorable sacrifice to cover some political game played out by the xochiyaotinime. Her brave heart spared the wrecking yard…

He started to feel very bitter and forced himself to think of something else, something beyond the faceless hand which placed his ship and crew in danger of disgrace. The first words which popped into his consciousness were very old, a fragment he'd seen on a moss-covered tombstone in the old temple grounds at Joriku, on the western side of Shinedo city, overlooking the Chumash Sound.

A noteless tune fills the void:

spring sun, snow whiteness, bright clouds…

clear wind.

He grunted, feeling entirely helpless, trapped in a tight, confining suit in a tiny bubble of air, light and power speeding through limitless darkness towards an uncertain welcome. A death poem. But whose? Mine?

Heicho Felix grunted, feeling the strain in her upper back, and heaved a packing crate onto the back of the groundtruck her squad had commandeered. Helsdon and one of his technicians grabbed hold on the other side and shoved the heavy package against the sidewall.

"That's the next to last," a man in an Imperial Development Board jumper yelled, scrambling up onto the truck. Felix turned, jammed ink-black hair back behind her ears, and saw two of her troopers struggling to carry the last crate out of the warehouse.

"Leave it," she snarled, listening to a steadily increasing level of panicky chatter on the all-hands channel serving the Imperial installations around the periphery of the landing field. "We've got to get to the shuttle. Let's go!"

Ignoring her, both men staggered up, then tipped the crate onto the rear lip of the truck bed. Cursing, Felix joined in, pushing for all she was worth. The vehicle groaned, settling on its springs, and then complained bitterly as all three troopers swarmed aboard. Helsdon ignored them, concentrating on throwing tiedowns around the cargo and punching the liftgate control. The Heicho clicked over to the squad channel.

"Drive," she barked, swinging her Macana around to point out the back of the truck. The corporal in the forward cabin fired up the big engine, threw the vehicle into gear and they jounced out of the cargo yard behind the warehouses in a cloud of fresh dust. Felix swayed, caught herself, then braced one armored foot against the metal-reinforced crate squatting between her and the machinist's mate.

"What is all this stuff?" she asked, dark brown eyes wary, as the truck turned out onto the ring-road surrounding the number two landing strip. The driver jammed on the accelerator and they raced down the unsurfaced road. Felix could feel a pregnant heaviness gathering in the air. A thunderstorm was about to burst over their heads, turning the roads and fields around the strip into gooey, hip-deep mud.

Helsdon grimaced, eyes tight, holding a bandanna to his mouth and nose. None of the technicians were in armor and they'd left their z-suit helmets back on the shuttle. "Power supplies," he shouted, trying to best the roar of the methanol engine in the old-style truck. "They were supposed to go into the communications satellites the Board is putting up."

They hit a buried culvert under the road and everything bounced up, then slammed back down again. Felix clung grimly to a stanchion, hoping she wouldn't be pitched out. "How'd you get them?" she wondered aloud, watching the packing crate shimmy and bounce from side to side, straining the tiedowns. "Aren't they expensive?"

"Part of our trade." Helsdon shrugged, face coated with a fine layer of yellow dust. He sneezed, wiped his nose and left a muddy smear. "These are Fleet-grade packs, but they're not the right kind to fit the latest round of satellites. So Isoroku traded all our scrap -"

The man in the Development Board jumper leaned over, shaking his head. "These aren't Fleet grade," he shouted, then clutched wildly at a hanging strap as the truck swerved off the main road and into a parking lot behind shuttle hangar six. There was a squeal of brakes, Felix felt the tires slipping on loose gravel, and then the whole vehicle lurched to an abrupt halt. A veil of road dust drifted past, settling on everything.

"Everyone out!" Felix bawled, jumping down and stepping out, scanning the immediate area. Her Macana was off-safety and she'd made sure a fresh clip of armor-piercing was loaded up. The latest intel on the Jehanan troops deployed on the perimeter said they were lancers in heavy ceramic and cloth armor, armed with a wide variety of hand-weapons and native muskets. Against targets in so much ablative armor, she thought penetration would knock them down faster than trying to flay them alive with splintering sub-munitions. Technicians piled out of the truck, surrounded by a screen of Marines with weapons at the ready.

The Board technician jumped down and Felix seized him by the collar. "What do you mean, those aren't Fleet-grade power supplies? That's what the packing display says. That is what we paid for!"

The civilian went pale, fingers clutching at her armor-clad wrist. "Urk! I repacked those crates myself…Go easy, ma'am! They're the original power supplies from the satellites. They've got the same interface -"

"Helsdon!" Felix pointed at the crates being lifted down from the truck. "Break open one of those once we're inside. I think you've been stiffed by this insect…"

"Not me! Not me!" The technician was now an alarming shade of parchment. "The lead engineer on the project had us switch them out – he wanted to extend the time-to-repair for the commercial comm relays! They can drain a pack pretty quickly. But…but these will work fine in your equipment. I swear!"

"That," Felix said, shoving the man in front of her and prodding him towards the hangar with the muzzle of her rifle, "is not the point. You don't cheat the Fleet, and if you do…"

A long, drawn-out crackle of thunder drowned out the rest of her threat. Everyone looked uneasily at the sky, which was now dark with huge, humped clouds. The Fleet crewmen seized hold of the rest of the crates and began moving them inside with commendable speed.

Scowling at the buildings across the road, rifle to her shoulder, Felix waited just inside the hangar doorway until everyone else had gotten under cover. Nothing was moving save stray winds eddying debris across the tarmac and the ring-road, blowing clouds of dust and litter into swirling tchindi. The Heicho could hear Sho-sa Kosho's distinctive voice echoing inside, ordering everyone onto the shuttles and the crates aboard.

Uneasy, Felix threw the locking bar and sprinted for the shuttle. Kosho was waiting on the loading ramp, silhouetted against the bright lights of the shuttle hold and the yellow-orange glow of the sun gilding the runway and the other station buildings.

"Come on, Felix, the captain wants us upstairs right away."

The Heicho double-timed up the ramp, automatically checking to make sure her men and the engineers were strapped in, the cargo was secured and everything was shipshape. The ramp whined up, and then clanged shut. Koshoran through the environmental seal checklist at light-speed and then tapped open her comm.

"Kosho to pilot, we're clear to lift. Is the other shuttle ready to take off?"

Hai, kyo. They are on rollout now.

Felix found a seat and wedged herself in. Kosho was sitting opposite, somehow already secured and looking unruffled in her matte black Fleet z-suit. The shuttle began to tremble and the Heicho felt the landing wheels rolling across broken concrete through the seat of her armor. She thumbed up a v-pane on the inside of her visor, catching the feed from the pilot's station. Clouds were still building over the field and the northern horizon was black with rain.

"Kyo – did Helsdon tell you about the power packs?"

Kosho nodded, lifting her chin to indicate the row of crates secured to the pal-lets running down the middle of the hold. "Isoroku got stiffed, I see. What was supposed to be in these packs?"

"Military-grade field power cells," Helsdon said. The machinist's mate had his comp out and the inventory tag on the side of the nearest cargo pack was blinking in response. "Sunda Aerospace Yards PPCAM-17's – that's a long-term, antimatter powered cell – should keep those satellites with juice for…" The engineer paused, and Felix turned, catching a raised eyebrow through the glassite of his facemask. "…about three thousand years at the draw on file for the commsats the Board is putting up."

"What?" Kosho turned her attention on the Board technician, who looked like he'd swallowed a whole puffer fish. "What does the Development Board think it's doing? Those satellites will wear out from micrometeoroid abrasion long before these cells decay!"

The shuttle trembled again, rolling out onto the landing strip tarmac.

Hold on, came the pilot's voice. The other shuttle is boosting off the field now. We'll be at high-grav accel in -

Felix flinched, her face suddenly awash in brilliant light. The pilot shouted in alarm.

The evacuation shuttle carrying the clerks from the Supply office disintegrated in a blossom of blue-white flame. For an instant, both engines continued to flare, propelling the shattered vehicle out over the shantytown surrounding the landing field. Then the shuttle drive blew apart in a secondary explosion. A corona of explosive gas and smoke belled out in a black cloud, and then burning debris was raining down among the rows of huts. The main mass of the shuttle, wreathed in flame, corkscrewed into the ground. Another concussive blast followed, flinging shattered rooftops and wooden tiles up in a billowing cloud of dust and smoke.

Missile launch plume at eight o'clock! the pilot shouted. That was a high-v interceptor shot!

Felix twitched back to look at the Sho-sa, and Kosho's voice was crystalline in her earbug: "Battle comp says it was a KГ¤rrhГ¶k ATGM – they've got a sprint range of six kilometers – full acceleration, Chu-i, and keep us on the deck! If they only have one launcher there's a minute-and-a-half reload time between shots. Get us out of range!"

Felix jammed her head back against the supports and the Fleet shuttle engines lit off at maximum power. The back blast flooded the hangar behind them, tearing off the doors, and sending flames roaring from the windows. The entire building buckled, crumpling like a paper bag tossed into a fireplace. The shuttle roared across the tarmac, crossways to the flight line, canted over at an angle – wingtip barely missing the rooftop of a maintenance shed – and blew across the perimeter fence with a shriek of ruptured air.

A rippling crack-crack-crack slammed into flimsy buildings, shattering windows and deafening thousands of amazed Jehanans crowding into the narrow lanes to see what had made the violent noise in the sky. Howling wind lashed them seconds later and the multitude flattened as the gleaming black shape of the shuttle raced past overhead, heading northeast.

Clinging grimly to her shockwebbing, Kosho cleared the ground-to-ship channel. "Hayes! We've been attacked at the Sobipurй field by a ground-launched surface-to-air missile. Do you have us on tracking scope? Hayes? Hayes, are you there?"

The comm channel was howling with static, frequency indicators blazing red and hopping madly as the comp in her suit searched desperately for a clear channel.

"Hayes?! Kosho to the Cornuelle, is anyone there?"

The Gemmilsky House

Gandaris, "Abode of the Heaven-Sundering Kings"

 

Prince Tezozуmoc stretched out his arms and beckoned with his head for Sergeant Dawd to produce the next garment. Trying not to roll his eyes, the Skawtsman draped a greenish-tan velvet shirt over the young man's arms and chest.

"Hmmm…no…makes me look too sallow." The prince plucked the silk out of the sergeant's hand and tossed the shirt into a heap of equally unsuitable garments. "Is there anything red in there? A nice crimson or scarlet one – they always make me look striking."

"You've already gone through the red ones, mi'lord." Dawd pursed his lips. "We're down to duller tones."

"Curst wardrobe! Where is that adjutant! He's lost all my good shirts…" Tezozуmoc kicked a wardrobe bag aside and began rooting through his boxes of shoes. "Did I give one of my shirts to Mrs. Petrel – that's it, I did! Hers was ruined…" The prince squinted over his shoulder at Dawd. "Oh, Lord of Light, I spilled wine on her blouse didn't I?"

"You were laughing, mi'lord," Dawd said, keeping a straight face. "And the glass tipped."

Tezozуmoc blushed. "I shouldn't be allowed to touch alcohol. I gave her the red shirt as a replacement? Did I apologize?"

Dawd nodded. "I believe you did, mi'lord."

The prince made a growling sound, hands on his hips. "Can't we beg off this festival? Say I've cut off my head by mistake, or lost a leg in a car accident?"

"No mi'lord, we cannot." Dawd said patiently. "Mrs. Petrel and her ladies have already gone off to breakfast. Corporal Clark will be coming back for us momentarily with the aerocar. So you do, in fact, have to get dressed, be presentable and prepared to hobnob with the kujen and his relatives."

Tezozуmoc pouted sourly. "What is a Nem anyway? One of their gods?"

"The Nem, mi'lord, is a flowering bush – sometimes growing into a tree – which grows in the bottomlands along local rivers. Their blossoms herald the end of the rainy season. I also understand they are considered sacred, due to a bitter, psychotropically-active sap -"

Tezozуmoc, perking up at the prospect of something novel, was taken aback by the fixed, focusless way the Skawtsman stared at the door to the prince's dressing chamber and he turned, wondering what had drawn Dawd's attention.

Gemmilsky had not stinted with furnishings or ornamentation in his house. The master bedroom possessed magnificent doors of dark red ruhel wood inlaid with pearl and jade. At the moment, both were closed, though the prince expected one of his servants to arrive at any moment with a fresh bottle of vodka. "Sergeant? Is something -"

Dawd moved, one forearm slamming the prince back, sweeping Tezozуmoc behind him. In the same motion, a flat Webley Bulldog sprang into his hand.

The doors burst open, crashing into the marble-covered walls on either side, porcelain doorknobs shattering, and three Jehanan in Gandarian livery rushed in. The lead native twisted from the waist, broad shoulders powering a lohaja-wood machete straight at the Skawtsman's head. Dawd ducked inside the blow, jammed the pistol into the charging creature's gaping mouth and pulled the trigger twice. The blast was muffled by the Jehanan's snout, but the shock-pellets blew out the back of his cranial cavity, spraying a cloud of broken bone and blood and bits of scale through the door. The jaws, abruptly severed from central control, spasmed shut and Dawd grunted, feeling needle-sharp teeth shear through the cuff of his jacket and shatter on the combatskin beneath.

Tezozуmoc screamed in fear, bounced off the bed, and flung himself towards the bathroom. One of the Jehanan assassins hurled a short-bladed spear overhand, missed the prince by a scale, and the ceramic blade punched straight through the light wood of the door as it slammed shut.

Dawd wrenched his caught arm sideways, dragging the still-twitching corpse of the Jehanan into the path of the next assailant, who stabbed under the falling body with a spear. The Skawtsman skipped back, barely avoiding taking a blow to the inside of his thigh, twisted his hand inside the mouth and fired three times in quick succession. Highex pellets shredded the rest of the skull and stitched across the spearman's chest with a rippling series of explosions. Chunks of scale and ligament spattered across the dresser and a heavy antique mirror, and drenched the window drapes. The Jehanan flew backwards into a shattered wardrobe and then crumpled slowly to the floor.

With the left jaw and skull torn away, Dawd wrenched his arm free. He started to spin to face the last Jehanan, but a machete slammed into his shoulder as he moved. The stroke drove the Skawtsman to the floor though the combatskin stiffened, absorbing the impact and spreading the blow across his entire upper body. His boots and outstretched hand lost traction in the spilled intestines of the second assassin and he fell backwards.

The last assassin sprang over the corpse, a whistling shriek on leathery lips. The Skawtsman twisted up, pistol centering on the leaping creature's chest, finger squeezing the Bulldog's trigger – and the magazine whined emptily. A pair of enormous, clawed feet crashed down on carpet as Dawd rolled to the side and was up in one seamless motion.

The Jehanan spun, slashing with the machete, and his turning jaw was met by a combatskin-enhanced sidekick. Metal-cleated combat boot smashed into the creature's eye, splitting the fine scales, and the Jehanan staggered back, one long-fingered hand raised to shield his wound. With a fraction of a second to find balance, Dawd ducked a windmilling machete, turned slightly in and slammed forward with both forearms crossed and braced. The combatskin stiffened automatically, augmenting the Skawtsman's musculature, and the blow caught the Jehanan square in the chest. The creature flew back, smashing through a window in a cloud of shattering glass, wooden framing and broken plaster.

Squealing, the Jehanan assassin cartwheeled through an ivy-wound lattice and hit the tiled patio with a sodden crunch. Dawd tossed the empty Bulldog aside and snatched up his pair of Nambu automatics from the side table. Thumbing off both safeties, he jammed one into the holster of the gunrig, threw the leather and metal mesh harness around his shoulders with one hand and darted across the room to the bathroom door.

"Mi'lord, time to go!"

There was a muffled whimpering sound inside. Dawd slammed the lock-side of the doorframe with his armored shoulder – the entire cedarwood panel shattered – and turned in, both automatics now centered on the broken doorway to the hall.

"Mi'lord – are you hurt? Were you hit?"

"Eeee…" Tezozуmoc was curled up in the bathtub, still in his nightshirt, arms tight around his head. "I hate this place!"

"Don't care for it much myself," Dawd coughed, throat tight with adrenaline. He holstered one automatic and reached down with his free hand. "Get up, sir, we've got to find Colmuir."

The young man blinked, looked up, and turned very pale. Despite the blood dripping from Dawd's forearm, he reached out and seized hold. The Skawtsman dragged the prince to his feet, and then – keeping Tezozуmoc close to hand – scuttled across the room, avoiding the scattered bodies.

Tiny fires were burning in the ruins of the wardrobe and a string of deep craters, coiling with smoke, pocked the wall in the hallway opposite the door.

"Master Sergeant?" Tapping his comm-thread awake, Dawd flipped up the longeye mounted on his automatic and snaked the muzzle around the doorframe in each direction. "You still alive?"

I'm coming, Colmuir replied. Don't shoot my fool head off. I'm on the west stairs.

Seconds later, the master sergeant appeared, sliding along the inner wall, and ducked into the room as well. Dawd was frowning, finger pressed to his earbug, the comm display on his skinsuit flashing with amber and red lights. Colmuir spat out a dead tabac, looked the prince up and down and said: "Regimental net went wild a moment ago, heard someone shouting about being under attack – then everything flooded with ECM. Now it's all static and garbage."

The master sergeant shook his head, produced another tabac from his vest and snap-lit the paper with a fingernail. Smoke wreathing his head, he knelt, lifted up the whole bed with a strained grunt – sending mountains of clothing and quilts cascading onto the floor – and dragged out a Fleet duffel bag.

Dawd was still by the door, watching the hallway through his longeye. "Regimental net is back up," he reported, listening intently, "but some kind of jammer is playing havoc with the Army gear down in the flatlands. All the comm channels keep popping in and out. I don't know if they'll be able to get comm clear until whatever is pitching all this noise gets hit."

"That's not good," Colmuir said. He unzipped the bag and pulled out Dawd's Whipsaw along with two heavy ammunition coils. A broken-down Macana 8mm with the shoulder-stock removed followed, as well as a Fleet skinsuit pack and three combat visors. He beckoned politely to Tezozуmoc: "Mi'lord prince, you put this on now. Quickly, lad. It's not a combatskin, but it'll have to do."

Swallowing nervously, hands trembling, the prince shed his shirt and pajama pants and unzipped the skinsuit pack. An amber colored gel spilled out on the floor, studded with two rows of black rings. Tezozуmoc stepped carefully into the middle of the gel, reached down and slid his fingers into the rings. Colmuir – watching to make sure the suit got a clean seal – assembled the Macana with brisk, endlessly practiced efficiency. The prince pulled his hands up – the gel raced up his legs, covering his torso and chest, and then his neck and the back of his head – and swung his shoulders back, letting the skinsuit congeal to his body. He flexed both hands, then held them down by his thighs. Gel shifted, solidified and oozed down to cover his fingers.

"Good," Colmuir said, patting the prince's shoulder. The skinsuit was slowly turning Fleet black. "You want a gun?"

Tezozуmoc stared at the proffered Nambu, then shook his head. He was still very pale, but seemed to have regained some of his composure. "I might hit one of you. I can carry the bag, if that will help."

The master sergeant nodded and helped him swing the heavy back duffel over both shoulders. "Dawd – what have you got for us?"

The sergeant shook his head. "I can hear vehicles on the street from our remotes – running feet – slicks – and lots of them. There are at least a dozen hostiles downstairs too – more spears and machetes."

"We can take the lot, if we're quick, but…" Colmuir said, sidling to one window and looking out into the gardens. He hissed in disgust. "Ah, that tears it – they've got themselves a bloody tank."

"A what?" Dawd and the prince stared in disbelief at the master sergeant.

"A tank! Can y' not hear me?" Colmuir pointed out the window.

Dawd stiffened, hearing the rumble of multi-ton treads on cobblestones through the remote spyeyes watching the garden wall. A number of Jehanan in fleece-lined jackets and leggings, carrying what looked very much like KV-45B rifles, were messing with the front gate, which was closed. He looked at the prince, down at his pistol, over at the door, then started paging rapidly through building schematics and street maps on his comp.

"Do…do you have something that will stop a tank?" Tezozуmoc's voice was rather faint.

"Nooo…we do not. Not a real one." Colmuir backed away from the window, slinging the Macana behind his shoulder. "Come on lads, time to run for it."

Takshila

Within The House of Reeds

 

Following close behind the gardener, Gretchen climbed a flight of narrow steps sandwiched between dusty stone walls covered with fluid carvings of shallow interlocking circles. She felt a little strange, as though the close, warm air was pressing heavily on her skull. Malakar reached the top of the staircase and peered out into a very narrow passageway marked by tilted walls and a curving floor.

"We are close," the Jehanan whispered, turning her head from side to side as she listened. "The level of the fane is arranged just in this way." Malakar patted a leathery palm on the nearest wall as she padded forward. "Quietly now, just beyond this stone are other, larger halls still in use."

Gretchen found her footing poor on the dusty floor. The surface of the passageway lifted in the middle and sloped away on either side, which made her wonder if they were moving down an old drainage tunnel of some type. She reached out to touch the Jehanan's shoulder, to ask exactly that question, when a muffled thud-thud-thud sound reached her ear.

Malakar stopped, skin wrinkling around her mouth. "Hooo… What an odd noise to hear."

Anderssen felt a steady vibration start up through the soles of her boots. "That feels like heavy machinery turning on. It's not very far away either."

The gardener did not reply, moving forward again. After a few moments, the curve in the passage became particularly noticeable and Gretchen was forced to lean a little sideways.

We're in some kind of a dome, she realized, looking up and finding the ceiling had receded into tapering dimness, like the shell of a cathedral.

"Here…" Malakar stopped and suddenly Anderssen could see a faint gleam of light on the Jehanan's scales. The gardener turned, mischief sparkling in her deep-set eyes. "Looking upon the mystery of the kalpataru is forbidden to the acolytes," she said very softly, "so every short-horn in orders must find a way to creep in and touch the thing itself. Once the fane of the divine tree was seamless and whole, but over time the walls have been damaged and repaired…"

Crouching down, the Jehanan reached between two riblike carvings on the walls and took hold of a wooden beam. The lohaja groaned a little as Malakar pulled, but then there was a scraping sound – which seemed very loud to Gretchen – and blazing light flooded into their dim little passageway as the patched surface came away.

"Ho!" Malakar snorted in alarm, half-blinded. Anderssen leaned in, her goggles automatically darkening to block the lurid, blue-white glow. "Never have the gipu been so bright!"

"That's not gipu-light," Gretchen said, eyes narrowed. "Those are industrial floodlights."

With the section of wall removed, Anderssen knelt and stared into the fane of the kalpataru in growing dismay. The opening seemed to be a meter or two above the floor of a circular, domed chamber dominated by a raised platform holding what could only be the tree-of-giving-what-you-desire itself.

In the glare of a row of Imperial-style floodlights hanging from wooden scaffolding, the kalpataru was a four-meter-high arc of perfect darkness rising out of a glassy gray marble floor. The surface of the object struck Gretchen as being impossibly smooth, even mirrored, but nothing reflected in the inky depths – not the pure white walls of the huge room, not the figures of uniformed Jehanan soldiers scurrying about its base, not the scaffolding, not even the hulking presence of three Honda EB62B fuel cell generators at the center of a network of heavy cables spilling across the floor. The generators wouldn't have been out of place at any dig Gretchen had ever worked on, but here the bulky red-and-silver chassis seemed almost alien. The kalpataru itself stood alone, apparently untouched by the bustling activity.

Gretchen felt a warm leathery snout push under her arm and squeezed aside, letting Malakar stare into the domed vault as well. The gardener made a strangled, horrified sound.

"Hhhh! Those are unlettered kujenai soldiers! They profane the holy of holies!"

"Yes," Gretchen whispered, eyeing a huge rough-edged opening in the wall behind the scaffolding. "They've dispensed with the old doorway… Looks likethey cut right through the marble with cutting gel and jackhammers."

"Heathen barbarians!" Malakar stiffened in fury, grinding Anderssen against the side of the passage. "Hoooo – if only this old walnut were young again! I would smite them mightily for such an affront!"

A pair of technicians approached the gleaming black shape and Gretchen tensed. The two Jehanan were dragging a thick power cable fitted with an induction clamp.

"They shouldn't do that -" Anderssen groped in her field jacket, dragging out the big survey comp and flicking the device on. "They're going to supply power to the artifact – fools!"

The comp cycled up; a suite of video, magnetic and hi-band sensors waking to life. Almost immediately it reported the air in the chamber was charged with steadily rising heat and electromagnetic radiation from all the equipment, bodies and the lights. Only the glassy arc was inert, radiating nothing, yielding nothing to the passive scan. The two Jehanan technicians reached the base of the kalpataru and bustled about, aligning the clamp and checking readouts on the cable.

"We've got to stop them," Gretchen said in a tight voice. "Do you have a -"

Across the floor of the vault, the senior technician jammed the cable-plate to the gleaming dark metal at the base of the tree. Anderssen's vision sharpened in a peculiar way, as though she suddenly rushed close to the device and realized the glossy surface was composed of millions of tightly packed threads, each distinct, yet adjoining one another with micron-level precision.

An overwhelming sense of vast age struck her as an almost physical blow.

There was a soft flash – a muted, yellow-white light flooded the chamber – and Gretchen's eyes blinked wide. Everything in her perception slid to a gelatinous stop. The fronds of the ancient tree twisted, uncurled, revealing millions of tiny sparkling green cilia. A sound beyond hearing issued forth from the heart of the tree, bending the air, filling every cavity and crevice in the fane, in the network of curving corridors twisting around the vault like the chambers of a nautilus, singing down every tunnel and passageway, spilling into every room and hall, washing across countless unwary Jehanan priests and acolytes going about their business.

Gretchen beheld the air unfolding, molecules twisting, unraveling, shedding photons in a brilliant cascade. Shimmering waves of solid light belled up from her equipment, from the cables, haloing the unknowing technicians, swirled around the comp in her hand. A single golden tone – a deep, encompassing note – sustained, held captured in the shape of the curving fronds, in the arc of the tree.

The heart of the black arc split, revealing a green void filled with boiling, half-seen movement. Countless cilia unfurled from the top of the arc into a winged, sharply edged star. An even more brilliant glow began to emanate from the cluster. Anderssen felt herself recoil from a sensation of emptiness, a moment of annihilation, an unfolding which would leave her exposed, her self – her mind – her thoughts – her core – inverted and extended into…

Something sighed and the fuel-cell generator popped loudly. Smoke hissed from its metal housing. The technicians looked up, puzzled, and the vault was filled with their hissing and hooting.

Gretchen jerked back, dizzy, and fell into Malakar's arms. Everything was spinning. Her fingers were numb. The comp clattered to the ground. A strange, half-familiar sensation fled as she tried to grasp what had happened. For a moment – just the time between two breaths – she thought she was surrounded by Jehanan in ragged, carbon-scored metallic armor. They seemed grimly pleased, as though they'd won through to a desperate victory. The wooden scaffolding was absent, replaced by huge green-tinted floods hanging from cranes. Power saws roared, cutting away the sides of an enormous obsidian box. The sides toppled, crashing to a rough limestone floor. The outline of the fane was already present as a vault of stone ribs, but unfinished, lacking the smooth marble facing. Inside the box a shape was revealed, heavily padded with shockfoam. A Jehanan technician stepped forward, spraying dissolver from a pressurized canister. The pinkish-white encasement sluiced away to spill across the rough floor. A black curved shape was revealed, fronds folded back to make a twisted, ropy arc…

The floodlights shone hot in her eyes. Anderssen blinked away tears and tried to sit up. Her limbs were trembling as if she'd run clear to the postal station at Dumfries and back again without stopping.

Malakar dragged her back into the darkness, but not fast enough to keep one of the Jehanan soldiers milling around in the vault from catching sight of movement out of the corner of his eye. Curious, the soldier moved along the wall, long feet slapping on marble, and then saw the opening. He crouched down, drawing a modern-looking pistol, and crawled inside.

Behind him, a spirited discussion began between the durbar commanding the detachment of soldiers and the lead technician. After a few moments of hooting and hissing, the dead generator was pushed aside by four brawny Jehanan corporals and the second one rolled forward.

The durbar, disgusted at the fragility of the Imperial equipment, snarled at his underlings. Time pressed and he kept checking his chrono. Somewhere outside, the kujen of Takshila was counting on them to invoke the power of the dusty old machine. "Clean up all this mess – there are work tools and cables and cutting equipment everywhere!"

The kalpataru remained quiescent, pressing into the marble floor with the weight of ages.

Parker clattered down the last flight of steps and out into the courtyard at the center of the apartment building. He was draped in a long rain poncho, a broadbrimmed, waxed field hat on his head and an umbrella tucked under his arm. The thirty-third floor weather service reported rain and more rain in the offing. The pilot turned right, strode along a dim, sour-smelling arcade and pushed open a door made of interleaved wooden slats.

Then his pace slowed and he looked back curiously at the empty arcade. Rain was drumming on ancient, cracked concrete in the courtyard.

There's always a whole crowd of grandmas down here, the pilot thought. Selling ornaments and scale-polishing cream and claw-sharpeners. Where'd they go?

Cautious, he moved quietly down the hallway to the front lobby. Everything was very quiet, which made Parker nervous. Like the courtyard, the lobby was empty. Even the little green felted tables where the diviners consulted their oracular bones had been packed up and taken away. Parker licked his lips, wished he had a tabac, and eyed the street outside.

A single runner-cart rolled past, a wiry Jehanan bent between the wooden poles, powerful legs loping along the glassy surface of the boulevard. The pilot blinked, noticed the shops across the street were all closed and shuttered, and then frowned at a reflection in the front windows of the akh-noodle cafeteria on the corner.

That is a lot of riding lizards, he realized, and a lot of big Jehanan with guns and spears. What are they…

"Oh, bleeding hell!" Parker bolted back down the passage, through the wooden door and then up the stairs as fast as he could go. After three flights of steps he was wheezing and feeling faint. "Come on, David," he cursed at himself, poking at his medband. "Only thirty-two more to go… Oh, Xochipilli, Lord of Flowers, why did I ever taste your bitter smoke?"

Pale in the face, he hauled himself up another flight, slewed around the turn and then gasped up another. Finally, he remembered to tap on his comm. "Thirty more…only thirty…huuuugh! Magdalena! Can hear you hear me?"

Gretchen's head cracked against the stone floor, sending a bolt of pain through her skull. Malakar dragged her along the passage, heedless of the human's flailing limbs.

"Malakar," she managed to croak out. "Stop!"

The gardener turned, her face livid with scars, dull crimson battle-armor still scorched with particle-beam impacts, one eye a glassy white where shrapnel had torn into the socket. The kujen 's guardsmen clustered around her, armor and weapons equally worn. Most of them were barely adult, though not one soldier remained young.

"We must go back," Anderssen said, using the wall to help her up. Icy fear rolled along her arms and back. "They are trying to wake up the kalpataru. I have to stop them. It must be destroyed."

"Are you mad?" White-Eye bellowed, her voice booming with anguish. Claws clenched the hilts of her force-blade. "We've not heard from homeworld in sixteen years – with that device we can reopen the communications network, send for reinforcements, send for our families! My scientists are sure they can restore the linkage and bring up the planetary net in only hours."

Malakar's face interleaved for an instant with the crippled Queen. Gretchen swayed, clutching at the wall. "No, no, we mustn't do that!" Her voice boomed strangely and Anderssen felt a wrenching sensation, as if other voices were forcing themselves through her mouth. "The Jeweled-Kings attacked us and seized the device because it's horribly dangerous -"

"No more of these child's superstitions," the scarred Jehanan screamed, blade flaring sun-bright in her hand. Gretchen flinched back and Malakar lunged forward, stabbing with the length of shattered lohaja taken from the wall cavity.

"We've paid dearly to reclaim the kalpa' and by HГєnd's name, I'll invoke its power mysel -"

Anderssen hurled herself away from the blow – saw the jagged end of the board smash into the face of a Jehanan soldier bulking in the corridor – and everything popped back into reference. The soldier squealed, snout bleeding, and knocked the board aside. Gretchen surged up, throwing the point of her shoulder into the thick, armored chest. The Jehanan slammed into the wall.

"Quick, Malakar!" Gretchen shouted, struggling to hold the massive soldier pinned. He hissed like a steam boiler in her ear and flexed forward, flinging Anderssen into the wall. The gardener swung wildly with the board, but the soldier ducked and slashed at her head with his claws.

Gretchen snatched a cutting tool from her vest, thumbed the little device to high-beam and jammed the hissing plasma-jet into his neck. The Jehanan squealed, scales flaring red-orange. Flame spilled away from the tool, blinding him. Anderssen threw her weight behind the cutter – scales popped with a snap! And there was a gout of scalding steam as the plasma-torch sheared through the scaly integument and erupted into his chest cavity.

Malakar hooted in horror, scuttling back, but Gretchen kicked the body away, her face grim.

"Come on," she said, thumbing off the tool, "we've got to stop them. Find his gun."

Parker stumbled through the door into the apartment, gasping for breath, sweat streaming from every pore. He collapsed to his knees on a sleeping mat. "Oh god, Mags, they're right behind me!"

"I heard you," Magdalena said, briskly rotating the wheel controlling the door. The six triangular sections rasped closed and she threw the locking bolt with a clang. The Hesht turned, ears back flat, and sniffed Parker's sweaty head. "Pfawgh! Stewing in your own waste! Can you even stand?"

The pilot groaned, forcing his fatigue-exhausted legs up. He was trembling from head to toe. "I don't…feel so good."

Maggie snarled in disgust, showing all her teeth, forced herself up and slapped self-adhering black packets on either side of the door. "Get into harness, sog-tail. Now!"

The pilot staggered to a pair of open windows and slumped against the wooden frame. Most of their equipment had been gathered up and stuffed into Maggie's duffel, but a black fleximesh harness lay out and Parker managed get one arm into the proper opening by the time the Hesht reached his side.

Magdalena seized his other arm and forced the harness on, glossy black paw sealing the clasps and jerking the mesh to a proper fit. Parker bleated, feeling doubly abused, but was having trouble standing without assistance. "Now, Maggie, you're not thinking we have to -"

"There is no other way off this floor and out of the building," the Hesht growled, slinging the duffel across her stomach. The sound of Jehanan voices hooting and booming echoed dimly through the door. A sharp rapping sound penetrated. "Clip to my back," she said, snapping two dark green monofilament spools to the front of her harness. "Now, kitling, no time to laze on the rocks!"

Startled, Parker put his chest to the Hesht's back, hooked harness to harness and wrapped his arms under her shoulders. "All aboard," he muttered.

Magdalena squared her hips, planted her feet and lifted with a strained hiss. A little dizzy, Parker clenched his legs back to get them out of the way. Awkwardly, the Hesht turned around and backed into the window, paws gripping the frame on either side. Monofil line hissed from the spools on her harness. Parker caught a glimpse of a line of anchors driven into the floor of the room.

"Will that – ayyyyy! Oh sweet Jesus!" Parker squeezed his eyes shut as Maggie tipped backwards.