Dragon and Judge

"Good work," Frost said, taking her arm and pulling her out of the closet and away from the vault. "You can take the rest of the day off."

"Thanks," Alison said dryly. As if she had any other pressing matters on her hands anyway. "Unless you'd like me to start on the other safe?"

"Tomorrow," Frost said, stepping into the vault. "Dumbarton, take her back to her room."

Neither Frost nor any of his men bothered her any more that day. Alison and Taneem spent the time working on Taneem's safe-cracking lessons, breaking only for dinner and a hot bath before bedtime.

And now that Taneem had actually seen the inside of a safe, she seemed to catch onto the theory even more quickly than she had before. In two days, when they reached Brum-a-dum, she should be ready.

At least, Alison hoped so.

The next day went pretty much the same as the previous one. After breakfast Frost collected Alison from her stateroom, and with Dumbarton and Mrishpaw in tow took her to another part of the ship. Her second project turned out to be a small safe inside a desk in a very luxurious office.

Like the vault, the safe was keypad-operated. Also like the vault, it again took her the entire morning to run her tests and scans. The safe's smaller size meant that Taneem didn't have as much room for her over-the-wall trick, but she was able to see enough to confirm that this time there were no booby traps. After lunch and the computer analysis, Alison opened the safe, and was dismissed again back to her room.

But unlike the previous day, this success came with an extra bonus. Frost himself delivered Alison her dinner tray . . . and with the food he brought her the shoulder bag full of papers she'd taken from Virgil Morgan's lockbox.

Privately, Alison had expected him to go back on his promise once he'd gotten his half of the deal. Perhaps he'd found enough of interest in the two safes that he felt Alison had earned herself a small reward.

Now she just had to make sure her work paid off.

The bag itself was the obvious target. But because it was so obvious, it would be the first thing Neverlin's people would check.

Fortunately for Alison, she had something a little more subtle.

It took her nearly half an hour, working slowly and carefully, to slide one of the needles from her sewing repair kit into concealment inside the edge of one of the larger pictures from Morgan's collection. The transmitter's range was fairly limited, but as long as she was within a few hundred yards she should be able to pick up the signal just fine.

Back on Rho Scorvi, Frost had bragged about having exotic technology that wasn't even on the market yet. Apparently, it hadn't occurred to him that two could play that game.

Just after noon the next day, ship's time, they reached Brum-a-dum.

The trip in was like the trip out from Semaline, only in reverse. The Advocatus Diaboli's pilot found a nice, out-of-the-way orbit to park the ship in, someplace far outside the normal traffic patterns. Then Frost, Alison, and the rest of the inbound group climbed aboard a shuttle and headed in.

Once in atmosphere, they were routed to a regional-sized entrypoint that, if Alison was deciphering the Brummgan script correctly, was named Ponocce Spaceport.

They breezed through customs without even a token inspection. Outside, a half-dozen cars were waiting, each equipped with a Brummgan driver and armed guard wearing close-fitting helmets and armored tunics done up in red, black, and white.

Frost led Alison to the first car, the rest of his mercenaries sorted themselves out into the others, and they were off.

"Can't say I'm very impressed by this friend of yours," Alison commented as the driver wove them in and out of the traffic. "Doesn't he even have a landing pad big enough for that shuttle?"

"He's got room for thirty of them," Frost assured her. "But there was a little problem with the defense transponder system a while back."

Alison nodded to herself. Jack, undoubtedly, and his little sneak escape a couple of months ago. "Not a big problem, I hope."

"Not really," Frost said. "But the simplest solution was to just shut down the transponders. That way, if anything tries to go over the wall—well, let's just say nothing will make it more than halfway over the wall."

Ahead and off to the right, between the other buildings, Alison could see glimpses of something tall and white. "Let me guess," she said. "Laser antiaircraft defenses?"

"And flame-jet antipersonnel ones," Frost said. "Don't worry your little head. We've got things covered."

Alison hid a grimace. So when it was time for her and Taneem to make their break, they were apparently not going to be going over the wall.