Palace (25 page)

‘My enemies moved much faster than I thought they could. I never even considered this. Don’t berate yourself, my friend.’

‘How can I not? I swear to you, she will die. She can’t live her whole life shut up in Government House. Once she leaves, my knife will be her destiny.’

‘What? Do you really think you could kill her in public and then escape?’

‘No, not and escape. But the honour of my house -’

‘Stop! Listen to me! Think! If you kill the girl, then make some spectacular public death, won’t there be an investigation? Look at her there on the screen. Isn’t she beautiful by human standards? Beautiful, young, suddenly rich? My archives tell me that humans adore these things. Kill her now and the whole city will be howling for vengeance.’

‘True, but-’

‘There is no other side to this question. Do you hear me, Kata? You must not risk a public death for the girl. If the Protectors ever learned of me, our plans would fail. Do you understand that? Your shame is nothing, nothing at all, compared to what we can accomplish for the Lep race.’

Kata considered for a long moment. Riva had said nothing against a private, untraceable death for the girl.

‘Do you understand me?’ Riva snapped.

‘I understand you, yes. And of course I’ll follow your orders.’

‘Good. Together we shall light a fire that will warm our people’s hearts.’

Kata raised his crest, but he found himself wondering about her peculiar, stilted language had she learned her Gen from cheap drama shows? The image of the newsfeed screen suddenly went blank, then brightened again. Riva sat in a green websling, her coils of knotted silk wound round her - an onscreen holo, not a revenant.

‘You have other game to hunt. I have information about Arno.’

‘Excellent.’ Kata’s crest raised. ‘I know where he’s hiding.’

‘Good. I have information that tonight he’s making his run for the Spaceport. He’s booked passage under a false name on a cargo ship to Souk leaving early in the fives. I suggest you see to it that his berth stays empty.’

* * *

After an exact hour of questions, Dukayn flung back the door of the interview room. He said nothing, merely stood just to one side of the door with his arms crossed over his chest, but the gridjockeys, human and Lep both, all got up and began filing out.

‘He has them well-trained,’ Wan muttered.

‘I’m glad. Aren’t you?’ Vida said. ‘You must be as tired of questions as I am.’

Wan looked at her for a moment, then rose, stretching his arms over his head. When Vida got up to join him, he turned his back on her.

‘Wan?’ she said. ‘They didn’t give me any choice about this, you know. It wasn’t my idea any more than it was yours. We’re kind of in this together, aren’t we?’

He glanced at her, then walked off down the by now empty room. Although Vida hurried after, at the door a pair of young men were waiting for him. One, tall and pale-haired, wore the Fleet uniform crossed with a factor’s brown sash. He carried a portable scribing tablet. The other, short and dark, began talking to Wan in Helane, the language of Kephalon. The three of them huddled, leaving Vida hovering on the outside. Dukayn touched her arm lightly.

‘Se Vida?’ he murmured. ‘Come with me. We’ll find you a suitable escort.’

‘Thank you. I suppose I should meet my husband’s factor?’

‘Not right now. He’s drunk. Of course, Leni’s usually drunk. We’ll have to arrange a breakfast meeting.’

Vida managed a smile and let him lead her into a reception hall all changed and gone magical. The burnished silverwood walls glowed with a thousand colours that fell in almost palpable shafts from the vaulted ceiling hundreds of feet above. When Vida looked up, she saw that a tech crew had transformed it into a vast display of vidscreens, showing landscape holos from the worlds of the Pinch.

A satellite flash of Centre at night made the sect look like a black lake filled with burning eyes of many colours, the Lake of Fallen Stars, Vida thought, with a shudder, the final hell of those who failed to be reborn into the night beside God. Another screen showed time lapse vids of Palace’s cloud of orbital satellites, each trailing on the film a long tendril of light so that the planet seemed webbed round by them. Grey-blue Souk with its delicate stalk-cities and vast archipelagoes spun in the middle of yet another panel. Icy Tableau reflected light as bright as a small sun while verdant Belie revolved with a stately elegance, its surface features a mystery under a swirl of emerald atmosphere. They were all human worlds, Vida noticed. She wondered why they didn’t show Indang, the Garang Japat homeworld, or the Lep systems, or the Hirrel Nomadia.

Far up, under the highest dome of the ceiling, a bank of holo-grammatic clouds appeared, swirling like a summer storm. Distant thunder murmured through the hall and the sound of a high wind, while flashes of sheet lightning strobed over the guests, gathered far below. It seemed to rain - silvery holograms flickered and splashed so convincingly that Vida couldn’t stop herself from touching her hair to see if it were wet. Laughing and calling out, most of the guests were doing the same. The thunder died away, the rain stopped, and slowly the clouds cleared from the dome to reveal an image of the sun, shining at the apex. A flood of hologram butterflies exploded throughout the room and fluttered in the brightening light. Among them fell pale green and gold bubble-flares, bursting with scent. The applause boomed out as loud as the artificial thunder.

‘Ah, there’s Nikolaides and the interpreter,’ Dukayn said abruptly. ‘Good.’

Vida suddenly realized that the factor had paid not the least bit of attention to the show. Dukayn raised one hand and made an imperious sort of wave. Out in the crowd, shadowed now in a hundred shifting lights, someone in a white uniform waved back and began making a slow way toward them. Vida recognized Samante’s red dress, then Samante, as they came closer.

‘Se Vida?’ Dukayn said. ‘The Peronida asked me to watch out for you. If anyone gives you the slightest trouble, anyone, you summon me. My number on the commgrid is 0000. Easy to remember.’

‘Yes, it is. Thank you so much.’ Vida turned her best smile on him and received the barest twitch of one in return - but from Dukayn, that was a triumph. ‘By the Peronida, do you mean Wan or Karlo?’

‘Karlo, of course. Wan - well, huh. Ah, here they are. Nikolaides, your brother seems to have been called away on business. His factor showed up looking for him, anyway.’

‘Business.’ Pero rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. ‘But you’d like me to tour my charming sister around?’

‘Just that.’ Dukayn turned serious. ‘She’s to have a good time.’

‘Yes sir!’ Pero snapped off a perfect salute. ‘Interpreter Dinisa, will you join us on this grave mission?’

‘Gladly, Captain, if Se Vida allows?’

‘Of course,’ Vida said. ‘Samante, I’m so hungry. Is there anything to eat?’

‘I think we might say so,’ Samante said. ‘There’s a buffet. Over there.’

When Vida looked to the far wall, she saw a crowd of sapients gathered around something that she assumed must be this buffet. Reaching it took them some while. It seemed that everyone wanted to meet her, all the people that two days before would have recognized her existence with a wrinkle of their noses, if they had recognized it at all. Vida smiled and bowed and waved and exchanged ‘se’ with people in expensive clothes, but all the while she was aware of her memory, clicking like a pix’s hand, filing names with faces, faces with scraps of information. Ah, you come from Hort Sect; oh, I met your husband just a moment ago, from the university, right? Some she recognized as clients, regulars at The Close, a master from the Biotech Guild, a journeyman from Archives. She’d even brought them drinks for the tips. Now they bowed over her hand and announced, maybe a little too loudly, how pleased they were to finally get to meet her. She was glad when Pero caught her arm to lead her onward.

‘Slow work, getting anywhere in here,’ Pero grumbled. ‘Ah, look, there’s a lane opening up.’

‘Not that way,’ Samante hissed. ‘Look who’s standing right there.’

‘Oops. You’re right. This way, lawsister.’

‘What?’ Vida snapped.

Pero and Samante were looking toward two tall men, both bald, both wearing the charcoal grey robes, sashed in red, of the Industrial Guild - brothers, obviously, from the similarity of their wide, dark eyes and long noses. Next to them stood a girl who’d inherited their eyes and height - she would have towered over Vida - but not, fortunately, the nose. Muscled and lithe, she stood like an athlete, one hand on the hip of her severe black dress. In the other she held the biggest glass of swamp wine that Vida had ever seen. The only decoration she wore was her own hair, a hip-length fall of it, honey-blonde and gleaming.

‘Lis and Reel le-Yonestilla,’ Pero whispered. ‘The girl’s Anja.’

‘Vida doesn’t know.’ Samante leaned close, murmuring. ‘She and Wan were supposed to marry. Karlo voided the contract this morning.’

‘Damo told me it was quite a scene,’ Pero said, grinning. ‘I’m surprised they showed up.’

‘Politics is politics,’ Samante said. ‘Now let’s get out of here.’

Vida followed, letting Pero bring up the rear.

‘Samante?’ she said. ‘Is that why Wan hates me? He wanted to marry someone else, someone he really loved.’

‘I don’t think Wan is capable of loving anyone, but he wanted Anja.’

‘Well, they can always have an affair or something. I won’t mind.’

Samante stopped and swung round, one eyebrow raised. Vida merely looked back, puzzled.

‘Well, I won’t,’ Vida went on. ‘Why would I? Don’t believe the publicity. It’s not like I love him.’

‘I think you’re going to do well at this.’ Pero joined them. ‘But Anja would mind. No second place for a girl like her.’

‘Well, that’s too bad.’

As they snaked their way through the crowd, Vida noticed that mostly humans gathered in the reception hall, though here and there stood groups of Hirrel, dressed in ceremonial long skirts and the odd little vests, open at the sides, that showed off the fluttering of the gills inside their pale red slits. Off in the curve of a wall stood a few Lep, too, clustered together, richly dressed in slashed kilts of purple brocade, their scales oiled to a high sheen.

‘See that scaly guy over there?’ Pero said abruptly. ‘The one with the triple honour sashes and then the blue and black spiral pattern in his scales? That’s Sar Wik Benar, Chief Minister of Finance and head of Lep Sect.’

‘Pero!’ Samante broke in. ‘It’s properly referred to as Finance Sect.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Pero smiled, his wide slash of mouth drawn even wider. ‘Face facts, Sammi!

My father and Roha have built a fence round those people. Call it what you want, it’s still a pen.’

When Samante made a face at him, he laughed, reaching one hand toward her, drawing it back, and as if her hand were tied to his by an invisible string, she reached out toward him, then stopped, glancing round. Lovers, Vida thought.

After another determined guest or two, including Samante’s law-uncle, Wilso from Power Sect, had been met and smiled upon, they reached the buffet. On the wall behind the tables hung vidscreens, displaying the backs of the saccule servers and the food itself: a long spread of fruit, vegetables, salads, confections, platters of cheese, bowls of mushrooms, pitchers of sauces, heaps of little cakes, baskets of breads, and in the centre of the table, an entire side, front and back haunches both, of some huge animal - real meat, a fortune’s worth. Vida stood gawking until a saccule, cross-sashed in Fleet white and blue over a silver shift, hurried up to her, honking and gesturing.

‘Se Vida will please have a seat,’ Pero said. ‘You will be waited upon as the luminary you are. How about including your poor weary lawbrother in this invite?’

Laughing, Vida began to point, honking back at the saccule, who exuded a flower-scented smile. Bowing and whistling, it escorted the three of them to a round table among the isolation tori, then scurried off to fill their orders. Vida glanced at Samante and forgot the trivial remark she’d been about to make.

‘What’s so wrong?’ Vida said.

‘Se Vida, you shouldn’t be making noises at saccules. It’s undignified.’

‘What? I wasn’t just making noises. That’s how you talk to them. You should know that. You’re the interpreter.’

‘Saccules have no proper language, merely a system of call and response codes.’

‘Well, then, I called and it responded, if that’s the way you want it. Look! It’s bringing us everything we asked for, isn’t it?’

Their original waiter came trotting over, laden with plates, followed by another sashed saccule carrying drinks on a tray.

‘They understand better if you speak a little of their language,’ Vida went on. ‘See?’

Samante opened her mouth and shut it again, suddenly troubled. Honking in a drifting scent of flowers, the two saccules spread out the feast, bowed, then trotted off. Samante raised a hand and waved it randomly in front of her face, as if she were clearing off the scent, while Pero watched her, one eyebrow raised.

‘Oh, do let’s eat,’ Samante said suddenly. ‘I’m hungry, too.’

Vida had taken no more than three bites when she was interrupted yet again. She heard someone calling out, then laughter, then a kind of hooting and shouting back and forth, and looked up to see a handful of guests chasing each other around the polished floor. One of the men had grabbed a tray of drinks from a saccule waiter; he held it balanced precariously over his head on one hand as he fended off a pair of young women. Not one of them wore formal clothes, though some were cleaner than others. Blue trousers, white shirts, here and there a stained work tunic or smock - clothes didn’t much matter to someone so heavily tattooed, Vida supposed. Hands and faces, arms and what she could see of their chests - every inch of skin sported long curves and blue lines. ‘Interstellar people?’ Vida said.

‘Oh yes,’ Samante said. ‘Oh God! They’re coming our way!’

Laughing and hooting, the fellow with the tray came dancing up with a ragged line rushing after him.

‘Watch that thing!’ Samante snapped. ‘Don’t you dare spill-’