Burning Bright

The man shrugged, looked sideways as though to call up his chronometer. “She said she’d be there at fifteen-thirty—by the sixteenth hour at the latest.”

Lioe glanced sideways herself, saw the numbers flash into existence against the dark paving: almost sixteen hundred already. “Thanks a lot,” she said, and the man nodded.

“No problem.” He turned away, already looking for a better vantage point among the crowd.

Lioe watched him go, wondering just who he was. He looked vaguely familiar— maybe someone from Shadows, she thought, and looked back at the stage. The puppet seemed to be melting into the platform, dozens of indistinguishable little mechanisms churning frantically around its edges. The operator was doing the splits within the confining mechanism. The crowd murmured, sounding both awed and approving. I must have missed something, Lioe thought. I don’t understand at all. She looked again toward the Mad Monkey, wondering if Roscha was there yet, and if she could get food and/or drink. The sign looked like a bar’s, the monkey dancing in the air, very bright in the shadowed street. And even if it isn’t, it might be more fun than watching the puppets. Mechanical perfection palls after a few minutes, in my opinion. She eased her way out of the crowd, and started down the narrow street.

She had not traveled more than a dozen meters before she realized that she was being followed by a nondescript man who looked like another docker. She glanced back, wondering if she could turn back toward the square, slip between the back of the stage platform and the storefronts that defined the square, and saw a second person detach himself from the knot of people beside the curtain that screened the back of the stage, effectively cutting off her escape. She swore under her breath, wishing that she were armed—wishing that she’d carried even a pilot’s tool-knife—and with an effort kept herself from looking around wildly. They were between her and the fringes of the crowd; she could shout, but none of the people watching the puppet show could reach her before the two men did. I’ll pretend I haven’t seen them, she decided, keep walking and hope I can get to the Monkey before them—if that’s safe. The man who said he was from Roscha, he must’ve been one of them, set this up… She shoved her hand into her pocket, closed her fist over thin air so that it made what she hoped would look like a dangerous bulge, and kept walking. I’ll try the Mad Monkey, and then the cross street, and if it comes to it, I’m not carrying much cash and it’s not a good place for rape—

A third man stepped out of a doorway ahead of her, hands deep in the pockets of his jacket. Lioe stopped, took an instinctive step sideways and back, toward the edge of the canal.

“Na Lioe,” the third man said. “There’s someone who wants to see you.”

“Like hell,” Lioe answered. She drew breath to scream, and the man freed his hand from his jacket, displayed a palmgun.

“Yell and I’ll shoot.”

Lioe released her breath cautiously, glanced back toward the square. Sure enough, the two strangers—and a third, the man who had spoken to her about Roscha—were coming toward her, blocking her escape in that direction. She took another step toward the canal, turning so that she could see all of them. “What do you want?”

“There’s someone who wants to talk to you,” the leader said again. “If you come quietly, no one will get hurt.”

Lioe took another slow step backward, toward the canal edge, so that she stood barely half a meter from the bank. She could swim, that had been bullied into her in Foster Services, but the current was fast, and the far bank was not distant enough to offer an escape. “Not likely,” she said aloud, fighting for time. “Come any closer, and I’ll scream—and if you shoot me, nobody’s going to be talking to me.”

There was a little silence, and a quick exchange of glances, and then the leader raised his palmgun. “Last chance. Come quietly, or I will shoot.”