Carnival

She might have made it if she could have gotten a running start. As it was, she kicked off hard, stretched, tucked, rolled, and almost cleared the wall. She made it over the top, but the sloped sides were too wide. Thorns tore her shins and forearms, lacerated her shoulders, pierced the hands she raised to shield her eyes and throat. Brittle canes shattered under her weight, and momentum sprawled her clear, lungs emptied, diaphragm aching from the impact.

She gasped and shoved herself up, shaking off bits of twig and barb, driving thorns into her palms and knees as she scrambled to her feet, piercing her unshod soles as she staggered forward through the rubbish. She was leaving a trail of blood and bits a girl could follow, but there was nothing to be done for it now.

Tears and sweat stinging her lacerated face, she ran.

20

ELENA HANDLED KATYA’S ARREST HERSELF. SHE SUMMONED Agnes—a Pretoria cousin who had the same stocky build and epicanthic folds as Lesa—and requested Vincent wait for their return. He was left alone on the sun porch that served as Pretoria house’s center of operations, but deemed it unwise to wander about the house with Elena in the mood he’d put her in. So instead he paced the length of the veranda, reviewing documents on his watch that he already knew by heart.

He’d accomplished everything he’d come here to do—the real reasons, not the surface justifications. He’d met his mother’s opposite number, deemed her honest, established a secure line of communication, exchanged the necessary codes.

Now all he had to do was wrap up two kidnappings, a sabotage operation, a first-contact situation, a duel to the death, convince Michelangelo he didn’t want to play kamikaze, and figure out exactly how he was going to get rid of the Governors andprotect Ur and New Amazonia from the imperial ambitions of the Coalition. Oh, yes, and at least give his ostensible task—that of reaching some sort of dйtente with whoever was in charge of the New Amazonian government by the end of the week—enough of a lick and a promise that he could justify declaring the mission accomplished and heading home. Or, potentially, blow it so badly that he and Angelo were both discharged in disgrace, which would save him the additional delicate operation of prying Michelangelo loose from the OECC.

Because Michelangelo wascoming home with him.

Just as soon as Vincent reclaimed him.

Piece of cake.

He closed the documents and stood in the darkness, running fingertips along the slick leaves and soft petals garlanding the lattice. A flicker of movement in his fisheye alerted him to company, and he turned his head, but it wasn’t Elena or any of her servants. Instead, a child stood framed in the doorway, pressed close to one of the posts as if he thought he could meld into them. A boy child, nine or ten Old Earth years, six or seven New Amazonian.

Lesa’s son, the one she so desperately wanted to be gentle.

“Hello,” Vincent said.

“Hello,” the boy answered. He came forward a few more steps, from the lighted hallway to the darkness of the porch. “Are you really a diplomat?”

Vincent smiled. The boy—Julian—was hesitant and calm, but the lilt in his voice said he was curious. And Lesa thought he was a genius, and wasted on New Amazonia.

She might even be right.

In any case, if Vincent was likely to wind up smuggling the kid home in his suitcase, he might as well get to know him. “I am, among other things. Your mother’s very proud of you.”

The child sidled along the wall sideways, back to the house but meeting Vincent’s eyes defiantly. “She says if I want to be a mathematician I have to be like you.”

“Like me?”

Julian nodded, his hands linking behind him, shoulders squeezing back as he crowded against the wall. “Gentle. Otherwise I’ll be sent to foster and train soon, and then I’ll go to the Trials and be chosen by another house.”

“And you won’t have time for mathematics then?” As Vincent understood it, not everybody was as…permissive…with their stud males as Pretoria house. His heart skipped painfully while he waited for the answer. Poor kid.

“Mother says,” Julian said, tilting his head back as he recalled her words, “that women don’t like males who seem too smart. They find them threatening.”

What an elegant little parrot she’s created,Vincent thought, and wanted to bury his face in his hands.

“So she says I can only play with computers and numbers when I grow up if I’m gentle,” Julian continued, still childlike enough to take his silence for rapt attention. “Like you. So I must be gentle…”

“Because you love numbers so much.”

Julian nodded. “But it’s not bad, being like you, right?”