Carnival

“Bugger it,” Kusanagi-Jones said out loud. “So do I.” He waved at Kii. “Do we know it’s fatal?”

“Kii estimates a 93 percent mortality rate.”

“Cure him,” Vincent said.

And again, Kusanagi-Jones stepped away from his partner and said, “Wait.”

17

LESA DID NOT WANT TO TALK TO HER MOTHER. SHE MOST particularly had no desire at all to tell Elena the truth about Robert, and she was still working out her spin when the door to her office irised open again, admitting Katya. Her hair was bound back in a smooth, straight tail, and—an out-of-character note—her honor was strapped over garish festival trousers.

“I’m going out,” Katya announced, a conclusion Lesa had already drawn. “Do you want anything?”

“No. Thank you. Home for supper or out all night?”

Katya looked down. “It depends if I find a good party.”

The relationship between Lesa and her middle child had always resembled an arms race. Katya had been determined to become unreadable since she was a small child and she was often successful. But Lesa could almost always tell when she was hiding something, if not what she was hiding.

Lesa laid her stylus across the finished response to Claude she had been staring at, and folded her hands over it. Please let it be something innocent. A secret lover, a questionable hobby. Anything Katya thought Lesa should disapprove of.

Anything, but knowing where Robert was and concealing it from the rest of the household.

“All right,” Lesa said. “Try to stay out of fights.”

“Mom.”Katya paused before making good her escape. “Oh, and Grandma wants to see you. She’s up in the solar.”

“Wonderful.” Lesa levered herself from her chair, leaving the stylus laid across the desk but slipping the card into an envelope. “That’s what I was waiting for. Thank you, Katya.”

“No problem.” Katya grinned before slipping out the door.

Lesa followed, but turned right instead of left. She worried at her thumbnail with her teeth as she strode down the short, fluted corridor and climbed the stairwell past the second floor, where Vincent and Michelangelo were temporarily housed. Sweat trickled down her neck by the time she reached the third story and stopped in her own room.

It was full of evening light. Walter dozed in his basket, warmed by a filtered ray of sun, and for three or four ticks she contemplated activating the beacon in his collar and sending him after Katya. But that would hardly be subtle; it wasn’t as if he could be told to hidefrom her.

Lesa would have to track Katya herself, after she spoke to Elena. That would give Katya enough of a head start. In the meantime, Lesa combed her hair, changed her shirt, and went to talk to her mother.

Elena’s solar was at the top of Pretoria house, and Lesa took the lift. That climb was above and beyond the call of casual exercise in the service of keeping fit.

The room was pleasantly open, airy and fresh, with the windows on the sunset side dimmed by shades currently and the other directions presenting views of the city, sea, and jungle. Elena stood at the easternmost side, staring over the bay and its scatter of pleasure craft and one or two shipping vessels cutting white lines across glass blue.

“How much trouble are we in?” Elena asked before Lesa could announce her presence.

Lesa crossed the threshold, stepping from the smooth warmth of House’s imitation of terra-cotta tile to cool, resilient carpetplant. “It’s less bad than it could be. Antonia Kyoto has injected herself into the situation.”

“What?” Elena’s voice shivered; through the careful modulation, Lesa read the blackness of her mood.

“She’s Parity. Robert was doubling for her.”

Elena laid her hands on the window ledge and tightened her fingers until the tendons on her wrists stood out. “Of course he was. I’ll have him flogged for that.”

“It gets worse.”

Elena turned away from the window. “By all means, draw out the suspense.”

“He didn’t run away to Antonia.”

“Then where, pray tell?”

Lesa held her hands up, open and empty.

She heard Elena take two slow breaths before she spoke again. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

“There’s good news,” Lesa added hastily. “I’ve talked with Katherinessen, and it seems I was wrong about Kusanagi-Jones. He’s sympathetic, and brings Free Earth assets to the table.”

The latest indrawn breath hissed out again in a sigh. Elena closed her eyes briefly and nodded. “That is good news. And the deal with Katherine Lexasdaughter?”

“Proceeds. She stands ready to present a united front with us. Vincent—Miss Katherinessen—came very well prepared. Kusanagi-Jones less so, in that he’ll have to carry word of our plans to his contacts on Old Earth personally.”

“Of course, out of twenty named worlds, the defiance of three won’t make much difference in terms of military might.”