Burning Bright

It was evening in Chauvelin’s garden, and Damian Chrestil stood with his back to the terrace wall, looking inward toward the house. It was almost as large as a midsize palazze, the sort that cousins of Five Points families built in the districts below the Five Points cliffs. The white stone glowed in the twilight, very bright against the purpling haze of the sky; the open windows were filled with golden light, spilling a distant music into the cooling air. In the gap between the southern wing and the main house, he could just see a blue-black expanse of ocean, reflecting a rising moon in a scattering of light like foam. He looked away from that, made uneasy by the sight of open water—the sea should be viewed from the security of the barrier hills, or from an open deck, not glimpsed like this across a garden—and found the lesser moon, just rising, riding low beneath a bank of cloud. The larger moon was well up, and all but invisible, just a faint glow of pewter light behind the thickening clouds. The street brokers were saying it was thirty-to-one that the storm that was building to the south would hit the city, but no one was taking odds on strength.

The distant rumble of an orbiter, lifting from Newfields, caught his attention, drew his eyes west just in time to see the spark of light dwindle into a pinpoint no brighter than a star, and vanish in the twilight. The sky behind it was streaked with cloud and layered with the orange and reds of the sunset, the distant housetops outlined against it as though against a sheet of flame. The sound of the takeoff hung in the air, undercutting the drifting music. It was nothing special, and he looked away, back toward the crowd of people filling the terrace. One of them—a woman, tall, face thin and sculpturally beautiful, the lines of her bones drawn hard and pure under skin like old honey—had heard the orbiter too, was still staring upward as though she could pick out the light of its passage from among the scudding clouds. There was some expression behind that still face, knowledge, perhaps, that was no longer hunger, and Damian caught his breath in spite of himself, watching her watch the orbiter’s flight. Then there was a movement in the crowd beside her, and she turned away, her face breaking into movement, the stone-hard beauty shattering into a sort of vivid ugliness. Ransome smiled crookedly at her—they were of a height—and drew her away with him toward the house. As she turned, Damian saw the hat slung over her shoulder, dangling from a spangled scarf that from this distance looked as though it had been woven from the sunset sky. A short grey plume flowed like a cloud from the hat’s crown. So that’s the pilot, he thought. She’ll certainly bear watching.

“I see you’ve spotted her. That’s Lioe.”

Damian looked down and down again, smiled in spite of himself at Cella’s delicate face turned up to him. She was a tiny woman, barely tall enough to reach his shoulder; even her eight-centimeter heels did not bring her chin above his armpit. She was beautifully dressed, as always, this time in a sleeveless bodice the color of bitter chocolate that hugged breasts and hips and gave way to a swirling skirt embroidered at the hem with a band of pale copper apples. The almost-sheer fabric emphasized perfect calves and elegant ankles. Her breasts swelled distractingly above the jerkin’s square neckline.

“Have you found out anything more?” Damian asked.

Cella smiled. She had painted her lips and cheeks and nails to match the new-copper apples on her skirt, a cool metallic pink barely paler than her skin. “Not much. She’s from Callixte—born there, apparently, not just works from there. She’s a notable by anyone’s reckoning, and the people on the intersystems nets like her a lot. If she’s political, she’s a Republican, but that’s a big if. Between piloting and the Game, I can’t see that she’s had much time for politics. She did know Kichi Desjourdy when Desjourdy was on Falconsreach, but I can’t trace anything more than just knowing each other. Desjourdy’s a Gamer, after all, and a class-four arbiter.”

Damian nodded thoughtfully. Kichi Desjourdy was the new Customs-and-Intelligence representative to Burning Bright, a clever woman, and therefore dangerous. And that made any connection between her and this Lioe a dangerous one. “Do you think this—this whole thing, meeting with Ransome and all—could be some kind of setup?”

Cella shook her head. “Not with his consent, anyway. I’m quite certain they met at the club—that that was their first meeting, and that it wasn’t staged in any way.” She paused then, and her smile took on a new edge. “I did find out one thing interesting, though. She spent last night with one of yours, Damiano. A john-boat girl called Roscha.”

“Did she, now?” Damian said, softly. Trust Roscha to be more trouble. “Why didn’t I hear about it?”