Burning Bright

“Let’s take a look.” He worked the remote again, and the picture shifted—tapping into the house systems, Ransome realized. At least one camera was useless, its lens completely obscured by the blowing rain, so that it showed only wavering streaks of grey. Damian flicked through three more cameras, so quickly that Ransome barely had time to recognize the images—a rain-distorted view of the lawn, a camera knocked out of alignment by the wind, so that it showed only the corner of the house and a patch of wind-blown grass, more rain sweeping in heavy curtains across a stone courtyard—and stopped as abruptly as he’d begun. “Ah.”

The camera was looking away from the wind, Ransome realized, looking inland toward the Barrier Hills and the lowlying trees that grew along their wind-scoured shoulders. The nearest trees were perhaps thirty meters away, up a gentle slope. They were bent away from the house, into the hillside, their leaves tossing wildly, thick trunks bent into a steady arc. Ransome winced, and even as he watched, one of the trees fell forward, quite slowly, a tangle of roots pulling free of the wet ground. The silent fall was disconcerting, eerie, and he looked away.

“What a lovely place to spend a storm.”

Damian Chrestil shrugged, smiling slightly. “It’s stood worse.”

“It wasn’t the house I was worried about.”

Damian shrugged again, and his smile widened. “The odds look good to me.”

And you’re such a judge of that. The comment was too double-edged, too easily turned against himself, and Ransome kept silent, though he guessed that the other had read the thought in his eyes. He turned away from the screen, went over to the drinks cart, and poured himself another glass of the sweet amber wine. “Do you want anything?”

Damian Chrestil looked momentarily surprised, but then flipped the screen back to one of the city channels, and came to join him. “Yes, thanks, you can pour me a glass of that.”

Ransome filled another of the long-stemmed glasses, handed it to Damian Chrestil, and they stood for a moment in an almost companionable silence. Something else fell against the shutters, a lighter thump and then a skittering, as though whatever it was had been dragged across the rough surfaces. Damian Chrestil glanced quickly toward the noise, and looked away again. He was a handsome man, Ransome thought, attractive in the same fine-boned, long-nosed way that his sister Bettisa had been, with the same quick response to the unexpected. And it was good to see a man who knew better than to follow an unflattering fashion. And sex is the last weapon of the weak. Not that that’s stopped me before. He looked back at Damian Chrestil, allowed himself a quick and calculated smile, and was not surprised when the other’s smile in return held a certain interest. But I’m bored, and he is—less than fastidious, at least by reputation. Not very flattering, I suppose. But it’s better than doing nothing.

Day 2

Storm: Ransome’s Loft, Old Coast Road,

Newfields, Above Junction Pool

Lioe lay on Ransome’s neatly made bed, one arm thrown over her eyes to block the light from the main room. The walls trembled now and then in the gusts of wind; she could feel the vibration through the mattress, through the heavy wood of the bed frame. The shutter that protected the single narrow window had jammed before it quite closed off the view, and she had left it there rather than risk damaging the mechanism. The glass had seemed heavy enough, and on this side of the building, overlooking the cliff edge, there had seemed little chance that anything would blow through it. Now, feeling the building shake, she was not so sure, and looked sideways under the crook of her elbow, at the hand-span gap between the shutter and the bottom of the frame. She could see only the sky and the rain, the slate-colored clouds periodically dimmed by sheets of water blown almost horizontally past the window. She had never seen anything like this before, could not believe how tired she felt, tired of the tension, the dull fear at the pit of her stomach. Storms on Callixte were just as dangerous, maybe more so; but they swept in out of the plains with a few minutes’ warning, and were over almost as quickly. There was none of the anticipation—days of anticipation—that preceded Burning Bright’s storms, and certainly nothing she’d ever been through had prepared her for the steady, numbing fear. And the worst of it was that she had nothing to do—there was nothing she could do to face the storm, and nothing in the Game seemed worthwhile compared to its massive force. Once she had pulled the copies of the jeu a clefoff the nets, there was nothing to distract her.