Burning Bright

“Damn.” Lioe looked around, saw nothing that looked as though it could cover the enormous window. Her hat was still sitting on the folded bed, and she realized that she had left it behind that morning as well. “Can you take care of it, please?”

“Sure,” Roscha said, sounding slightly surprised, and crossed to the window. She ran her hand along the left-hand side of the frame until she found an all-but-invisible panel. She popped that open, studied the controls for a moment, then turned a dial. There was a shriek from outside the window, unoiled metal reluctant to move, and then the shutters began to lower themselves into place, creaking and groaning along their track.

Lioe reached for the room remote, touched keys to bring up the lights, and then turned her attention back to the messages. The first message in the queue was flashing on the screen: more n’jao characters, she thought, but these looked different from the first ones she’d seen. Frowning now, she split the screen, recalled the last message. Sure enough, the characters were different, forming an entirely different pattern. She knew only a few n’jaoglyphs, mostly trade-related—like most Republicans, her dealings with the hsai were generally done through a jericho-human broker, and none of these were familiar.

“Do you know any n’jao?” she asked, and Roscha came to look over her shoulder at the screen.

“A little. I can’t read that, though.”

Lioe glanced back at her, saw the delicate eyebrows draw down into a thoughtful frown.

“Wait a minute, though.” Roscha reached out to touch one tripart character in the first message. “I think that’s the ambassador’s name-sign. And I think these are repeats—message repeats.” She indicated another set of symbols.

“Chauvelin?” Lioe asked.

“I saw it on a crate once, when we handled some diplomatic shipping out,” Roscha answered. “I’m sure that’s what it is.”

“I’m not surprised,” Lioe muttered. She touched more keys, searching for a main directory, and wished she had had more time to learn Ransome’s idiosyncratic systems.

“Why not?” Roscha asked. “Look, what’s going on?”

“I wish I knew,” Lioe answered. She took a deep breath, made herself look away from the screens crowded with useless information. “What I think is happening—what Ransome said was happening—is that Damian Chrestil and the hsaia Visiting Speaker are probably smuggling something, mainly to get Damian Chrestil some political advantage in HsaioiAn, which he could use here.”

Roscha nodded. “That makes sense. He wants to be governor.”

“Chauvelin and the Visiting Speaker are enemies,” Lioe continued, “members of rival factions—and the Visiting Speaker doesn’t much like Ransome, either—so there’s a hsai dimension to this, too.”

“ Sha-mai.” Roscha shook her head. “It’s a mess, but it does make sense.”

“I’m glad it makes sense to someone,” Lioe said. She fiddled with the shadowscreen again, found the main directory at last, and ran through it hastily, searching for translation programs. There was only one, and it was really only for transliteration. Ransome certainly speaks tradetalk, and probably a couple of modes of hsai, she thought, but copied the two screens to its working memory anyway. The prompt blinked for a few seconds, and spat strings of letters. She recognized Chauvelin’s name, and, in the second message, a string of numbers that looked like routing codes. She studied those numbers, cocking her head to one side. They were certainly routing codes; in fact, they looked like the kind of codes that gave access to commercial data storage. I wonder what Ransome keeps in that kind of safe space, she thought, and copied the codes to a separate working board.

“I think,” Roscha said slowly, “I think that means that Chauvelin’s been looking for him.” She pointed to the first message, her fingertip hovering just above the screen. “And it looks like it’s been repeated—what’s the time check, anyway?”

Lioe touched keys. “That message has been repeated every quarter hour for four hours. The last one arrived about forty minutes ago.” Does that mean he got the message and is with Chauvelin? she wondered. Or did Chauvelin just give up?

“Do you think he got the message?” Roscha said.

Lioe shook her head. “There’s only one way to find out.” Roscha looked at her, and she smiled wryly. “Call Chauvelin and ask.”

“Yeah, but do you think he’d answer?”