Context (97 page)

‘Who is?’

‘Officers.’ He grimaced. ‘At
table seven.’

‘What else?’ Tom checked the
holopad: still no contact. ‘Any hint of this man’s identity?’

‘Not a man. Someone called Lihru.’

The ground seemed to shift
beneath Tom’s feet.

Coincidence?

Could it be some cruel joke of
arbitrary Destiny that the woman he and Jay had betrayed, had sent into a
compromised network and almost certain capture, had been transferred from
distant Revandi into the realm where Tom was undercover? And on this particular
day.

She could certainly identify him.

And maybe, by now, that would
give her a fierce joy, a satisfaction that her tortured pain might be shared by
those who had wished it upon her.

‘Wait a minute…’

In the kitchen, a disturbance.

‘Quick! They’re here ...’

They
came along the dark tunnel: Velsivith limping, Tyentro with his tunic
dark-stained and torn.

‘We gave them the slip, my—’

At that moment the spit of graser
fire sounded from the corridor outside, and Tyentro’s face paled. Everyone in
the kitchen froze in place.

We’re blown to Chaos.

It was a prime tenet: not to keep
a rendezvous with local control unless the locale was clear. Tyentro had broken
a basic rule, but that was not his main concern.

‘Rilka,
’ he whispered.

It was obvious that she was dead
or captured. And that Tyentro had feelings for her which Tom had not known
about.

Perdition...

She was not supposed to be part
of Stilvan’s cover team, and a bitter curse rose to Tom’s lips. But he stilled
it: if they survived, guilt would be Tyentro’s punishment.

‘Quick.’ One of the waiters
gestured towards the access panel. ‘Inside.’

There were three ways out: to the
corridor, where graser fire spat and hissed once more; to the narrow
maint-shaft which looked like a trap to Tom; and the membrane which led back
out into the dining area.

‘No,’ he said. ‘This way.’

And, with a bitter smile:

‘Is anybody hungry?’

Velsivith
and Tyentro sat down with Tom at his table. They had no choice: the
exit-membrane was flanked now by armed troops. Their dress uniform—of scarlet
and silver, with white capes and gauntlets, polished sabres at their hips,
absurdly plumed helms—failed to conceal the functional grasers or their steady
predators’ gazes as they scanned the diners.

The whole place is a trap.

Down below, on the broadway
beneath the balcony, a gentle gavotte was playing, and commonfolk were dancing
its steps with none of the intricate irony-laden choreography of Lords and
Ladies, but with a more robust enjoyment. One pretty girl glanced upwards—copper
curls beneath a scarlet scarf—then whirled away, caught in the dance.

Am I going to die here?

‘There’s a substance,’ murmured
Velsivith, ‘on which the Seer’s power depended. It was part of—’

But one soldier’s gaze had lingered
on Tyentro a half-second too long, and now his lips were moving silently.
Communicating with an officer.

The trap slammed shut.

‘We’ve had it.’ Velsivith had
seen it too. He rose from the table in one smooth movement, a graser pistol in
each hand. ‘Tom, get away!’

And fired.

Chaos!

There was a tiny moment when it
was possible to see what was happening: Velsivith’s aim swept across the
officers’ table, ravening beam cutting through torsos and necks, while his
other hand fired towards the soldiers near the door.

Then Tom was ducking as webs of
graser fire cracked and spat, burning the air.

Yells and screams accompanied his
elbow-and-knees crawl across the floor.

“Here
...’ Tyentro tossed a crystal in
Tom’s direction, then pulled his tunic open to withdraw ... something.

Blue glow.

A strange peacefulness in the
midst of chaos and death. It shone, sapphire then electric-blue, and Tyentro’s
face was demonic in the shadows it cast.

Sapphire blue ...

The sphere was small, palm-sized,
and Tyentro rolled it across the floor to Tom. He grabbed it. The small globe
was neither warm nor cold, yet its touch both burned and numbed Tom’s hand.

A sudden vision racked him—of
once-bloody
gobbets in their containers, inert upon filter pads, while electric fluid
slowly dripped through to the collectors—
and he shook his head to clear it.

‘The Seer’s body?’ Tom mouthed
the question, but Tyentro understood.

He nodded, thin-lipped. Whatever
he had hoped to find in the mausoleum, that had not been it.

Extracted from the Seer’s corpse?

Time was moving slowly. The
music, from below the balcony, was only now beginning to die away as the
revellers realized that something was happening.

Slowly...

Then Tyentro rose, spinning, and
his graser was out, beam cutting a wide swathe, and soldiers fell before
lancing light impaled Tyentro and he dropped, inert, splayed across the
tabletop.

Dead.

Tom clutched the glowing sphere
and held it to his chest, wondering if it was worth the cost of blood.

When
it seemed that all graser fire had ceased, the diners—most of them frozen in
place, hunched forward on their chairs—slowly, shakily, returned to movement.
They stood, staggered, trying not to look at Tyentro’s or Velsivith’s ripped
bodies whose glistening intestines had spilled forth, or the dead soldiers’
blasted remains, or the wounded man who softly mewled, clutching his torso, his
leg graser-torn, blackened, twisted half off.

In the confusion, Tom pulled his
cloak around himself, concealing the small glowing sphere. He began to make his
way among the panicking, sobbing diners, towards the exit.

‘That one.’

Officer’s voice.

For a moment Tom thought he might
make it, but then three of the soldiers in dress uniform—helm-plumes gone awry,
sabres missing and tunics torn, but grasers in their hands—blocked the exit and
one of them looked straight at Tom, hand rising—

‘Yes, him.’

They’ve got me.

Peripheral vision, as Tom spun
behind a knot of stumbling civilians, showed him more soldiers coming from the
kitchens, and he knew that every exit was blocked.

It glowed, eerie and wondrous,
blue and strange.

Tom judged the throw carefully:
as it arced high, the soldiers’ gazes tracked its trajectory while Tom was
already moving fast. There was a table in his way but one of the chairs was
empty and he used it as a springboard
-jump—
then two sprinting paces
across the tabletop—
careful—
and a leap over a rotund man’s shoulder, and
then the acceleration.

Graser fire.

Emerald beam splitting the air.

Balustrade, and Tom’s palm hit
just right, and then he was over.

The
Academy called it situational gymnastics, and they learned to do it without
rehearsal. The sheer drop would have broken his legs—ultimately fatal, in this
place—but Tom used the balcony’s external carvings, its baroque stone swelling
fruit and heraldic symbols, as the pivot points for a series of swings and
vaults, and then the final drop and roll.

Suicide. The soldiers are
everywhere.

The crowd was a swirling mass of
confused revellers, and most people would not have seen him as he hit the
flagstones, rolling. He was almost to his feet when sapphire-blue shone at his
vision’s edge and he threw himself forwards to make the catch.