“The gods sometimes do smile on odd people.” The Domoraj was also devout—it was a matter of some humor among his subordinates that the Domoraj spent as much time praying to the gods as sending others to their domain.
“Don’t speak of Dame Fate’s whims.”
The Domoraj, unsure of his ground or perhaps simply shocked by the hint of blasphemy in his leader, waited in silence.
Vingi idly rubbed a forefinger over the lip of his glass. Outside his office, the two men could hear the hushing of a soft tread as a watchrobot passed along the hallway. Vingi leaned forward. “You have contacts, Domoraj. I want Gunnar killed, but I don’t want to tie up our guild’s resources with a formal bloodfeud.”
“Is that wise, Li-Gallant? The other guilds—”
“—will not find out,” the Li-Gallant finished. “Don’t spout ethics to me, Domoraj. Dame Fate smiles on those who grasp their own lives. Find me a lassari that’s competent enough to do the task. Then do a hypnofix on him so that he thinks he’s acting of his own volition and can’t be traced back to us if he should fail. That should suffice.”
The Domoraj said nothing.
Vingi leaned back and took up his drink once more. “I’m not a person given to subtle tactics,” he said. “It’s been said that my bluntness indicates a lack of my kin-father’s skill with such things. No”—he raised a hand as the Domoraj began the obligatory objection—“you needn’t say anything. I have my ears, my sources of information. I might even be tempted to acknowledge it as a partial truth. Still, I see a simple solution, one that fits Neweden. If Gunnar falls to a lassari, the guilds will withdraw their support of his guild—a man with kin that would fall to a lassari. Yah, that would indeed suffice. The guilds won’t think Gunnar’s organization strong enough, no matter who heads the guild.”
The Domoraj watched as Vingi switched his com-unit on. The tide of sea-light rushed over him noiselessly. Vingi waved an impatient hand in dismissal.
“You have a task, guild-brother. See to it, and may Dame Fate guide your choice.”
Chapter 8
A
TRIANGLE OF MILKY LIGHT slashed across the viewscreen set in m’Dame d’Embry’s desk. The light trailed across the front of the desk and across the grassed floor to a genesis at the window. There, the Neweden sun (she could never fall into the habit of referring to it in the Neweden way as the ‘sunstar’) glowered down at a new day. The glare made it difficult for her to see the screen; she moved so that her thin body blocked the distracting light. Her hand passed over a contact. The screen responded with an inner illumination of its own, caught in which were the head and shoulders of her secretary.
“Karl,” she said immediately, “I want to speak to the Hoorka-thane. When you reach him, I’ll take the call here.” She switched off his “Yes, m’Dame,” leaning back in her chair and allowing her body a moment of relaxation. She was all too aware of the fact that she seemed to need more of these interludes each standard.
Tired, getting old,
she thought.
Old.
Yet she still managed to retain her reputation as perhaps the most successful liaison for the Diplomatic Resources Team—the Diplos—
and
as the most crusty of them. She could remember all the forgotten, misplaced, and unwanted worlds she’d cajoled into some semblance of normalcy within the Alliance; picking up the shards of Huard’s empire and the age of sundering that followed the tyrant’s death. . . .
She shook her head.
Daydreaming again.
She rebuked herself inwardly. Waiting for the call from the Thane, she let her eyes wander about the office.
She allowed herself few luxuries. A holo of a d’Vellia soundsculpture always seemed to be present in her offices (the more persistent rumors among the staffers were that she had once had an affair with that temperamental sculptor), and an animo-painting by some anonymous artist went through random changes on the wall, a last remnant of a fad that had been popular many standards back. The only touch of richness was an etched ippicator bone—the ankle of the fifth leg, she would point out to curious visitors—which was a gift from the Li-Gallant Vingi. It was, perhaps, worth more than anything else in the room, a rare item that offworld collectors would pay much to acquire. Other than these, the room was unornamented. Even the viewscreen on the desk echoed the room—the lowest Diplo staffer had a holo comlink rather than a flat viewscreen. With reverse snobbery, d’Embry prided herself on her austerity.
Her reverie was broken by a sprinkling of lightning across the desk. On the viewscreen, random dots, prodded and cajoled, formed themselves into Karl’s face.
“M’Dame, I have the Thane.”
“I’m ready to speak with him, then.” She leaned back in her chair, “and bring me a pot of tea when I’ve finished, please. Thank you, Karl.”
“Yah, m’Dame.” The screen dimmed and motes of bluish-white danced a hesitant ballet before giving way to the image of the Hoorka-thane. His lips moved, the last sparks of interference flitting across his scarred cheeks.
“M’Dame d’Embry.” The Thane nodded. Beyond him, d’Embry could see stone walls and an apprentice Hoorka working on some indiscernible task, hunched over a bench. The complaining whine of a drill rasped the speaker.
“I’ll be brief, Thane. Quite simply, there have been allegations passing through Sterka—rumors—that concern me. Most of them revolve around you and your organization’s relationships with the, ahh, political aspirants, shall we say, of the Neweden Assembly.”
As she spoke, she watched the face in the screen. The deep-set eyes narrowed, the lips set themselves in a thin line, a new ridge formed in the forehead as if he were holding back . . . anger? Irritation? Well, he could indulge in temper if he wished. “The Li-Gallant,” she continued, “has asked me to withdraw my consideration of letting your guild operate offworld. He’s also mentioned bringing the Hoorka forward in the Assembly.”
D’Embry’s hand reached out and found the smooth surface of the ippicator bone, the thin valleys of the carved lines. “Between the two of us, Thane, I don’t think you need to concern yourself greatly with that latter threat. As I understand your people’s odd social structure, he can’t afford to invoke the wrath of Gunnar’s guild in a bloodfeud. He’d lose face—or worse—unless conditions were ripe for such actions. But he
is
insistent, and he
is
the head of local government. I have told the Li-Gallant”—with the proper amount of emphasis on the word “told”—“that I will hold a brief, very informal meeting here at the Center in two local days.”
Through this, the Thane had looked increasingly impatient, though he did not interrupt. He glanced frequently to one side of the screen, as if his interest lay elsewhere. “Is that an invitation for me to attend, m’Dame?”
For once, d’Embry found a disadvantage in simplicity. There were overtones in his resonant voice that were lost in the reproduction of the viewer, nuances that she wanted to read. Was he simply being offhandedly sarcastic or humorously flippant? No, not the last. The Thane didn’t seem to be a man with humor: a dry, worn-out husk of a man. Had he ever laughed? she wondered.
“I hope you’ll be there, Thane. The Li-Gallant and Potok will also attend. I frankly consider the entire business a waste of my time and I don’t have a great deal of that commodity to squander, if you’ll pardon my bluntness. But I
am
the Alliance Regent for Neweden”—she paused—“and the Li-Gallant did insist. I have neither the inclination nor the staff to undertake an investigation of the whole situation, and my people don’t have enough feel for your guild-kinship structure to judge you fairly. Therefore I need the interested parties to outline their stands.”
“Hoorka has no stance.”
No, definitely no humor to him at all. He is, instead, quite comically serious.
“Even neutrality is a stance, Thane. And as I understand the guilds, only lassari can have true neutrality. A person with kin must be loyal to his kin. That is a stance.”
The shoulders in the viewscreen rose in a minor shrug. “Is that all you wished to say, m’Dame?” In the voice of a hurried man, with the implication of a task waiting.
“You’ll be here?”
“I will, if it serves Hoorka.”
“Then that is all I need to say, Thane. Good day, sirrah.”
The contact was broken, and before she could gather her thoughts to fit them into her impression of the Thane, the door dilated and Karl brought in a tray.
“Your tea, m’Dame?”
Its bittersweet aroma filled the room.
• • •
Night.
Violet scarves of clouds wrapped two spheres, one large and saffron and caught in the dark fingers of trees; the other smaller and cold, becalmed at zenith: Sleipnir and Gulltopp. Double shadows—one purple-tinged—clawed at the earth. It was quiet and watchfully peaceful, the landscape.
A distraction in the scene: a figure moved. It shushed aside scattered leaves of the nearly-spent autumn. A light-shunter moved patterns of elusive dark across his/her clothing and moonlight stuttered across shapes at its waist as it moved through knee-level grasses toward the house on the knoll. With the laughter of dry leaves, the wind flung clouds to the horizon and freed the moons. In the instant before the light-shunter reacted to the increased light and fuzzed the figure’s outlines again, it could be seen more clearly.
She was a tall, almost emaciated woman. Her startled eyes looked upward at the sky’s betrayal.
Near the interface of meadow grass and stately lawn, she paused. She looked up toward the house and the trees gathered at the crest of the hill, all dark against the moonlit sky. There were no signs of life or vigilance.
Good. This might be easier, then.
The windows of the house were polarized black, or the rooms beyond them were dark: she could not tell which. Either way, no one could easily see her. She went to her knees in the tall grass, checking the equipment hung on her belt. No signs of life, but already a detector was flashing its awareness of a warning field just ahead. She fumbled at a loop and unhooked a cylinder of black metal rimmed with switches. She flipped one, then another, watching a red light on the detector with intense eyes. It pulsed red, then an amber that burned and slowly died. She smiled into darkness, patted the cylinder, and replaced it at her side. She rose again to her feet.
The transition to lawn was more heard than seen—the light-shunter fogged her perception of the scene—as the tidal soughing of weeds gave way to the soft padding of low grass. She could feel her pants, wet from mid-thigh to ankle, clinging to her legs with cold dampness. But treated fabrics that resisted moisture also tended to be noisier when moving. A small thing, but it would be small things that kept her alive tonight.
She began to curve diagonally up the hill toward the side of the house, remembering the whispered advice given to her the night before in a Port bar near the Center. Her contact had taken her over toward the bio-pilot’s alcove, away from the general commotion of the place. He had detailed the grounds and obstacles she might expect to meet; the entrances to the home and how they might be guarded. The information, if correct, was invaluable. If wrong . . . it meant little. She hated Gunnar, who had once refused her membership in his guild. She hated all he stood for, and if her contact knew of someone that would pay her to do this, all the better. The payment had been generous, at least the half she’d managed to get in advance. Last night had been more than pleasant. The euphoria still clung to her, diaphanous.
They’d gone together to his rooms, and she’d slept for a while. Yes, and she’d woken with a fierce passion against Gunnar. It remained, a backdrop, to the more gentle passions she felt that night.
She was aware of trouble before she could physically sense it. A momentary prickling shivered along her back. She crouched, rolled, and sought cover without thinking . . . but there was no cover on that hillside.
She heard, suddenly, the electric crackling of a sting, and her right side tingled with the near-miss—she’d been seen. She felt the beginning of panic. A scream rose in her throat, and she forced it down.
Her contact had told her—in his harsh, sibilant whisper—that Gunnar’s house was not well-guarded, that she would have no trouble once past the shield. She’d been skeptical, even then, but the money he had shown her and the things the money had bought . . .
She rolled again, the opposite way, as she freed a hand laser from its holster and fired toward the house. She knew she had next to no chance of hitting someone, but hoped it would confuse the person with the sting long enough for her to run to the meadow grass and the small protection it would bring. Gunnar. She hated him and his guild all the more, and she felt keen frustration at being thwarted. The wash of emotion blunted the first onrushing of panic. She began to think again. She raked laser fire across the darkened front of the house, smelling the acrid fumes of burning paint.
There had been, first, the Stretcher: an innocuous-looking pill that had elongated her time sense. It had taken a week to yawn, a hour to raise glass to lips . . .
The sting barked again, and again it struck very near her. She abandoned stealth and ran.
. . . and the girl who’d been so co-operative once her palm had been crossed with silver. Her hands had been slick and smooth like malleable porcelain, her breasts small and girlish . . .
She switched direction at random, with little hope. The moons were bright, the light-shunter was poor camouflage, there was no place to hide and Dame Fate and Hag Death pursued her, their twin breaths hot on her neck.
. . . offworld foods she’d always wanted to taste simply because their names had been so exotic: cockatrice, day-diggers. And because she was lassari, there had been no money for such luxuries. . . .
The next shot found her. The grass was surprisingly soft as she fell. It caressed her. The shunter, broken, bathed her with bands of sparkling brilliance.
. . . and . . . and . . .