Burning Bright

Cossi’s hands danced across the multileveled controls. “Nothing else is off, Na Damian. I think someone’s reset.”

“Lioe,” Damian Chrestil said, and Ransome felt the last hope die. “It’s Lioe, isn’t it? You gave her a key to your loft, and told her what was going on.”

Ransome shook his head. “I didn’t tell her anything,” he lied. “She’s a Gamer, and a Republican, at that. She doesn’t give a shit about politics.”

“You brought her to Chauvelin’s party,” Damian said, soft and deadly.

Ransome shook his head again. “Yeah, I tried to get her interested in something outside the Game—she’s good, too good to be stuck in the Game all her life—but she doesn’t care. All she wants to do is play the Game.”

There was another little silence, and then Damian Chrestil shook his head. “No. Nobody ignores politics like that.”

“Gamers do,” Ransome said, desperately.

“Not even Gamers.” Damian Chrestil beckoned to Ivie. “Get in touch with your people up at the port. Send some over to Ransome’s loft and see what they find.” He looked back at Ransome. “I suppose he has security in place, so be careful.”

“Fuck you,” Ransome said. If Lioe was at the loft, if she had the sense to find the key that would let her retrieve the data—and she must have, if she’d blocked access to the mail system—then there was still a chance. If Lioe can figure out what to do. He put that thought aside. There was still nothing he could do but wait, but things were looking fractionally better than they had.

Day 2

Storm: The Hsai Ambassador’s House,

in the Ghetto, Landing Isle Above

Old City North

Chauvelin stood at the only unshuttered window, watching the wind-driven rain sweep through his garden. The bellflower trees bent until their branches dragged along the ground, stirring the human-faced pebbles into new patterns, their flowers blown away in gusts with the wind. A few early flowers were flattened, their petals frayed to nothing against the ground. The clouds streamed in, dark overhead, darker still, almost black, to the south, so that the light was dimmed, filled with an odd, underwater quality. Ransome was not at his loft.

Chauvelin grimaced, annoyed with himself, at his inability to concentrate on anything except that useless fact, and turned away from the window to consider the double-screened workboard that lay on the wide table. Both screens displayed the transcript of the last transmission from Haas, the last that had come in before the transmitter went down for the duration of the storm, a fragmentary, garbled mess that defied the computers. He frowned again, and made himself pick up a stylus, fitting his fingers into the pressure points to change the mode. It was obvious that Haas had found at least some of what he had expected—connections between the je Tsinraan and the Chrestil-Brisch, clients of the je Tsinraan who did most of their business through C/B Cie.—but the overall sense of the message was so mangled that there was little he could do. Even the standard phrases certifying Haas’s authority and authorizing him to act in her name for the Remembrancer-Duke had come through poorly, though there, at least, they had the Forms of Protocol to fill in the gaps. At least he could use that authority, if he had to.

And maybe he could do more. Ransome was missing; the inquiries he’d put out on the nets had brought no results, and Lioe seemed—said she knew nothing. Ji-Imbaoa certainly knew, certainly held some of the keys to this situation. If the transmission could be edited properly, he could force ji-Imbaoa’s household to cooperate with him. He highlighted one section of the message, deleted the intervening words and nonsense, tilted his head to one side to study the result. The phrasing was a little stilted, but no worse than in many official documents. He finished the rest of it, editing carefully, and studied the result. The document now gave him the temporary rank necessary to resume control of the ambassadorial household, and therefore of ji-Imbaoa’s household as well, on the grounds that ji-Imbaoa’s carefully unspecified actions had cast a shadow on the reputation of his superiors. There was only one problem with using it: ji-Imbaoa would inevitably query it to the Remembrancer-Duke himself, and not enough of the original message survived for Chauvelin to be sure that his patron would back him in such a drastic action. He set the stylus aside, ran his finger over the glowing characters at the foot of the screen, tracing the stylized n’jaocharacters that symbolized Haas’s authority. He could use this authority successfully, of that he was quite certain, but possibly at the cost of his career. Is Ransome worth it?