Burning Bright

Gueremei nodded, stepped back to work the door controls. The door sagged open, and at her gesture the players filed into the room, carryalls and cased Gameboards in hand. Lioe looked up from her screen to watch them file in and take their places at the players’ seats around the curved side of the table. A big bearded man came first, followed closely by a slimmer, hard-faced man with the silver disks of implant lenses gleaming in both eyes. They sat side by side, the bearded man grinning at something, and a young man in a supportchair followed them in. His thin wrists were heavy with jeweled bracelets, and there were more jewels in his ears. The silver-eyed man pushed one of the chairs away from the table, and the other eased his supportchair into the new space, murmuring thanks under his breath. A handsome, hook-nosed woman with an expensive Gameboard followed him, and then Vere, still in his steward’s uniform, as though he’d come directly from Newfields. He glanced at Lioe with a smile that hoped for recognition, and Lioe grinned back at him, grateful for something like a familiar face. The striking red-haired woman behind him raised an eyebrow at the sight, her dark blue eyes, the color of the sea seen from near orbit, flicking up and down in insolent assessment. Lioe cocked an eyebrow at her, still smiling, and was rewarded by a faint, betraying flush of color: not used to someone taking up her challenge, Lioe thought, and filed the notion for later use. A slim man, with Asian eyes and implanted hsai spurs on both wrists, followed her, bony face expressionless. Lioe’s attention was caught by the spurs— is he hsaia, jericho-human, or adopted, or does he just admire the hsai principle of kinship?—but pulled her thoughts sternly away. Politics had no place in the Game. That was only seven, and Lioe frowned. It would be hard to eliminate any of the characters—easier to be rid of two than one—and she glanced sharply at Gueremei, then back at the cast list. All the names were filled, so they were still one short.

“I’ve decided to sit in myself,” Gueremei said. “I play under Fernesa—Gameop’s privilege.”

A mixed favor, Lioe thought. Gueremei would be good—you didn’t get to be a Gameop without being at least a double-A player—but it was also a little unnerving, having her on-line for the first session. “Suit yourself,” she said aloud, and Gueremei settled herself in the remaining chair.

“All right,” Gueremei said, not loudly, but all attention shifted instantly to her. “This is Quinn Lioe, everyone, who wrote the Frederick’s Glory scenario some of you played last week. Na Lioe, let me introduce your players. Peter Savian—”

That was the bearded man, sitting so close on her right that he could extend a hand, Republican-fashion. Lioe murmured a greeting, met and matched the pressure of his grip, and saw a new amusement gleam for an instant in his dark eyes.

“—Kazio Beledin—”

The man with the implant lenses touched his forehead, a formal gesture that went badly with his crumpled, brightly dyed and patched shirt and dock-worker’s trousers.

“—Alazais Mariche—”

The hook-nosed woman nodded very seriously, her fingers playing over the controls of her expensive equipment.

“—Vere you know, and Serenn Imbertin—”

“ Dit—everyone calls me Imbertine,” the young man in the supportchair said. Lioe nodded in acknowledgment, wondering if the chair were a permanent necessity. It was hard to tell—he was thin, certainly, but not wasted—and it was none of her business, in any case.

“—Garet Huard—”

The man with the hsai spurs looked up from his Gameboard to nod a greeting. He didn’t have a hsai name—most adoptees used some hsai forms—and Lioe wondered again what the connection was.

“And Jafiera Roscha,” Gueremei finished.

Lioe nodded to the redhead, startled again by the contrast between the woman’s striking beauty and the aggression in her face.

“It’s good to meet you,” Roscha said, her voice low and unexpectedly musical.