by Dan Abnett
"I really don't like to talk about it," the emptor said.
"Of course not. Well, perhaps I can show you some of our ornamental settings? Horologs, rosettes, Imperial aquilas. For aquilas, we favour gold and composites, and also organic gems. The oceans here on Utochre produce the most iridescent nacre effects."
"You have a charter to produce authentic aquilas?"
"We are Imperial jewellers, of course. By appointment."
"Show on," she said.
He displayed several more complex objects to her. Some were so valuable he had to silently lock the suspension shields around the desk while she admired them.
"This is really stunning work," she murmured, turning a piece over in her hands. She held it up to the light. "What do you call this property?"
"Birefringence, or double refraction." Stine replied.
"Oh, I can't decide."
The factor smiled warmly.
"I just can't decide. I feel... incoherent."
The factor's smile froze and became cold.
"What?"
"I feel incoherent. Can you help me with that?"
The factor took the piece out of her hands and put it back on its satin tray.
"Did I say something wrong?" the emptor asked, slightly taken aback.
+Yes, I think you did. He's not happy. Make your apologies and get out.+
"We don't cater for that sort of thing here," Stine said sniffily. "You've been wasting my time. Perhaps you'd like to leave." The factor was angry with himself. It wasn't often he misread an emptor so completely.
"I'm sorry," she said, rising. "I didn't mean offence."
"Please leave." Stine spat. He took a control wand from his belt and waved it briskly. All the servitors retreated obediently back into the shadows.
+Get out.+
"I meant no offence," she repeated. "I'm sorry."
"Your kind are always sorry," said Stine. "I should report you."
"Report me to whom?" she asked.
+Get out, Patience. Now. We can't afford an incidents+
Stine turned to look at her. His face was hard, poisonous. "You come in here, into this distinguished hall, looking for access to that ungodly place! Stine and Stine does not do that sort of thing!"
"I have apologised. I have apologised sincerely, sir."
+Patience...+
"I should call the magistrates." Stine blustered. He waved the control wand he had taken from his belt again, reaching into the air for a hive-hub connection. She heard the buzz of a handshake.
"Berynth Magistratum, I have you," the speakers on the desk warbled.
"This is Stine at Stine and Stine. I have a-"
There was a click as the link disconnected.
"Hello? Hello?" Stine said.
+I've blocked his comm. Now, Patience, please walk out of there.+
Stine, of Stine and Stine, tried his wand again. When he looked around, the woman had gone.
She stormed out of the hall's reception chamber onto the iron-railed promenade. The hanging thimble lamps shone overhead with a feeble, pearly light. Instinctively, she allowed the stream of pedestrian traffic to swallow her up and carry her along. All around her were the rich and privileged of a double-dozen worlds, strolling along, some body-guarded, some carried in ornate litters, some sporting parasols or long trains.
+Sorry,+ she sent. +I fumbled that.+
+It doesn't matter.+
+It does. It took me by surprise. His reaction. He was so... angry.+
+Proud, that's all. We aimed a little too high, trying an Imperial jeweller. We can learn from this.+
She threaded through the crowd and headed down a flight of iron steps onto a lower stack. It was quieter there. She stopped and leaned on the guard rail, gazing down into the deep interstack drop and the street levels below. She got her breath.
+I'm off my game, Gideon.+
+You're not. You're fine.+
+I can tell when you don't mean it. I'm off my game.+
+Maybe you are, Patience. Would you like to talk about why?+
+I'm off my game because I can't stand this. I hate what we're being forced to do.+
+That's only reasonable. So do I.+
She sighed, let go of the guard rail, and started walking again.
+How are the others getting on?+
+Much like you. They're not getting anywhere. Although they're not quite as combative as you.+
+I said I was sorry, Gideon. What happened back there? The last few places I tried just got a bit cagey when the subject came up, but that... he was so venomous. As if I was a criminal.+
+As I said, I think we aimed too high. Stine and Stine is about as illustrious a hall as there is on Utochre. The man felt insulted. His hall was insulted. The inference hurt him. Put it behind you.+
+I think you should switch me out for Kara. Kara would do this better.+
+Put it behind you.+
She had walked to the far end of the stack level, into the gloomy architectural cleft where the armoured curve of the roof dome met the stack ends. There was a small and dingy dining house there, built into the eaves of the giant outer roof. It clearly catered for under staff and the utility personnel who worked menial jobs in the halls. The staff frowned and whispered at the sight of her fine, expensive clothes. She ignored them and sat down at a vacant table. Around her, household staffers, gig drivers and stack-gutters hunched over and murmured to one another.
"Mamzel?" asked a maid in an apron, coming over. "There is a good place a level up where you might be more comfortable."
"I'm comfortable here, thanks," said Kys. "A caffeine. Black, sweet, and an amasec, if you have it. Cooking will do."
"Yes, mamzel."
Waiting for her order to arrive, she rose again and approached the heavy shield plate that formed the norm wall of the dining house. She touched the control stud, and the shield slid up. She looked out on the world outside through the thick glass. The blackened, fat bellied slopes of Berynth hive shelving away below, the ice beyond, under a broiling sky. The savage gales beat at the glass and bombarded it with ice crystals. +We are criminals now, aren't we?+
+Patience...+
+Oh, stop it. We are. I know it. Rogue.+
+It's the only way we have left.+
+I hate it, Gideon, and I hate the idea that he's still out there. I hadn't realised before, but when you told me he was dead, it felt like a weight lifting off me.+
+I'm sorry. It felt that way to me too, if that's any consolation.+ Kys put her hand against the glass and stared out at the nocturnal blizzard.
+However... Patience, we need to retain control. We can't afford to be seen, and I think you were about to pin that Stine fellow to his chair by his scrotum+
She smiled. +At the very least. I am so sorry. I'm finding this hard. So... how are the others doing?+
+Maud and Carl have covered five halls between them. Nothing. Harlon has managed to secure us an underboat. Now Carl is off buying rings down in the brash quarters.+
+Doesn't he have enough rings?+
+I don't know. I don't pay attention to such things. Can one have enough rings?+
+Not if you're Carl, apparently.+
The maid returned with the order. Kys went back to her table, drank the amasec in one and sipped her caffeine. It was too hot, and the amasec had been rough. Cooking, definitely. She dropped a generous number of coins on the table and stood up. +What's next?+
+Can you handle another?+
+Yes. Of course.+
+Only when you're ready. Exit and head up a stack. Then along to your right. Corlos and Saquettar, Lapidary.+
Patience sighed. +How do I look?+
+Beautiful.+
+Then let's go.+
+Wait. Wait, Patience. Sit back down. Drink your caffeine. I believe Carl has found something.+
"What's your name?" Thonius asked.
"I am Lenec Yanvil, sir," the man replied. He was small and potbellied, with nimble hands. He smelled of pitch and polishin
g amalgams.
"Well, Lenec Yanvil, if I was to, say, purchase that gorgeous lapis signet I wavered over, would you confide in me?"
"I'd be delighted to," said Yanvil.
Thonius produced some more large denomination coins and counted them out onto the stall's stained baize cover. Yanvil picked up the signet ring, and carefully wrapped it in a small piece of felt.
"It's all about reward, you see," he said quietly. "Palms greasing palms. The halls have an arrangement with the House. They have had for centuries. Some will admit it, quietly, others deny it, but they all benefit."
"How so?"
"Every single hall in Berynth pays a retainer to the House in return for coherent information about new seams, stone beds and metal deposits. The jewellery business here is what Berynth is famous for, but it's just a by-product of Berynth's heavy industry. The first halls to set up here in the old days made their profits from the spoil of the intensive ore mining, but no one these days is going to sustain a business on accidental finds. Neither do the halls have the financial resources to maintain comprehensive mining operations of their own. So they pay to know where to look, and then hire out the mining complexes to do spot excavations. Everyone profits."
"It sounds very companionable."
Yanvil shrugged. "The halls are very proprietorial about who gets access to the House. They vet. It's an exclusive service. But then, Throne knows, you have to be pretty exclusive to come all this way to go jewellery shopping."
"How do they vet?"
"You need to find an agent. They're very exclusive too. They don't advertise. A client hooks up with an agent, the agent takes them to an appropriate hall and makes an introduction. Then the client has to make a purchase, something pricey. Horologs are good, I hear. The purchase price is the hall's fee. The client then gives the item to the agent as a gift. Later, the agent sells the item back to the hall for a cut of the fee. The item goes back in the hall's display, and the hall's made a tidy profit."
"Very neat."
"Palms are greased, backs are mutually scratched. Everyone smiles."
"So, to find an agent...?"
TWO
"Incoherent? Well, that's a different thing altogether."
"Oh? How so?" asked Carl Thonius sweetly.
Down in the brash quarters, in the low hive, things were more basic. The stack-depths were cluttered with dirty stalls and tented stands of soiled canvas, selling knock-off and bad-cut gems, trinkets, keepsakes, totems and charms. The air was smoggy from the oil drum fires and stank of liquor and refuse. Bagpipes keened and drums beat. There were fire dancers, shucksters, lhofers, and the constant, shabby bustle of the hab classes and the migrant workers, washing aimlessly back and forth in the low hive like rank water in a bilge.
The stall holder glanced around to see if anyone was listening. He had one sunken eye, from years of using a stubby jeweller's loupe.
"Seeing as how you've bought so many rings from me, my friend, let me tell you. Coherence comes at a price. You have to be introduced, for a start."
"You do?"
"Have yourself an introduction. The halls expect that."
"Can you provide such a service?"
The stall holder laughed a phlegmy laugh. "Mercy, no!" He gestured around at his modest stall. "I'm brash, born and bred. I don't move in those kind of circles."
"But you know the system?"
He nodded.
"Well, I might know something."
"Palms are greased and backs are mutually scratched, eh?" said Thonius. "That gold thumb ring there..."
"So Stine knew all about it?" asked Patience.
"According to my source, they all do," said Carl. "They just don't like to talk about it."
"That little shit. He made me feel this big, and-"
"Because you weren't introduced," said Carl quietly. He was sitting on a couch in the bay window of the chamber, admiring the new rings on his hand. The winter night ticked and rattled at the window panes behind him.
"I've half a mind to go back there and shove a kineblade up his arse." Kys growled.
"Half a mind is all you'll need for that," said Ballack, overhearing her as he walked in from the adjoining room. "We have to be careful."
Kys turned slowly and glared at the interrogator. In the two months he'd been with them, he'd shown an unfailing ability to wind her up.
She felt sorry for him, of course. Ballack had been through an ordeal, and he'd lost the hand, after all. He'd also shown creditable initiative bringing the whole matter to Ravenor. Still, he was, as Kara might say, a smug little ninker when all was said and done, and far too pretty for his own good, with that long white hair and those ion-drive blue eyes.
For once, he seemed to notice her displeasure. "Sorry, Kys," he said. "That was rude of me. It's just... sometimes I'm very aware that I'm risking my entire career doing this. No offence, sir."
"None taken." Ravenor replied, his voice issuing as an electronic monotone from his chair. "We're all risking our careers."
No one spoke for a moment. The fire crackled in the grate and warmed the room, part of a rented suite in Berynth high-hive. The floor was a checkerboard of brown and cream wooden tiles, the walls panelled in dark umwood. The fireplace was an extraordinary frame porcelain inlaid with silver and nacrous shell. The logs spat and coughed. Kys, Ballack and Thonius reflected quietly on their situation, each in their own way. Patience wondered what depth of worry knotted in Ravenor's mind.
+I realised why Stine's reaction upset me so+ she sent.
+Go on.+
+It wasn't that he made me feel like a criminal. It was that I am a criminal and he forced me to realise what that means. Everything I've ever done in your service, Gideon, I've done in the knowledge that I'm serving the Emperor's ultimate will, but there's no legitimacy anymore."+
+There will be. I will make the Ordos understand why I've had to take this course. We will have our sanction.+
+But there isn't any right now.+
The chair swung around from the fireplace and faced the three of them. They all looked up respectfully.
"I've said it before, but for the record, let me repeat... when we're done, I will bring us to Myzard. To Rorken, if necessary. I will make account, and I will take the reprimand."
"I wonder who they'll send after us?" Carl mused, admiring his rings again. He looked up at Ravenor. "I mean, they're bound to send someone, right?"
Ballack sat down on a tub chair. "Lilith. Myzard will send Lilith and a team. Lilith Abfequarn is good. She already has a black notation rating. We can only hope she doesn't have the first clue where to start looking. That means, we can't make a scene." He looked pointedly at Kys.
"Fair point. It's been made already. No one needs to tell me again." Patience replied. "So, Carl? Where do we find this agent?"
Thonius was about to reply when the apartment's outer hatch slid open. Patience saw how quickly - how nervously - Ballack rose and placed his good hand on the grip of his pistol.
It was Maud Plyton. A version of Maud Plyton, at least. She looked strange, buttoned into a long gown of Parsiji lace and deep green silk. The material strained and bulged voluptuously. Her cropped hair and heavy make-up created the unfortunate suggestion of a man in drag. "Nice to see you too," she sneered at Ballack, seeing his hand on his gun.
"Not had a good day, Maud?" asked Kys.
Maud flopped down heavily on the nearest couch and yanked off her high, feminine shoes. She'd borrowed them from Kara and they didn't fit well. Her feet were sore. "Bastard things!" she declared as she tossed them over the back of the couch. "I'm sorry to say," she said, "I got nothing."
"It's all right, Maud." Ravenor replied, "we have a lead now."
"Oh, good." Plyton replied, getting up. In one, ungainly upward drag, she wrenched her expensive dress off over her head. The dress was another lend from Kara, tight and too short for Maud Playton's frame. She wriggled the dress off her arms, and headed out of the room in her sup
port hose and whalebone corsetry. There was a considerable sense of pneumatic tension.
"Thank Throne that's off! It was throttling me. I don't do posh."
"You do it very well," said Ravenor.
Plyton grunted dismissively from the next room and called out, "I do undercover all right, but that was not a bit of me. I haven't had that many unfamiliar hands in my chest area since I was last assigned to vice."
"Well, fancy," said Carl.
Plyton stuck her head back around the door, and then lifted one arm and sniffed her armpit. "And I stink. That's not high-class, is it?"
"I can't begin to tell you," Carl said.
"Is there a drink going?" Maud asked.
"I'll get you one," said Ballack.
"Help me unlace this bastard corsetry someone. I beg you. Preferably you, Patience, seeing as it's yours."
Smiling, Kys walked across the room and followed Plyton into the adjoining chamber. Plyton leaned forward and Kys started to untie the laces. It was a struggle.
"Emperor help me, I can't breathe. How do you wear this stuff, Kys?"
"Well," said Patience smoothly.
"Here's that drink," said Ballack, appearing in the doorway with a glass. He hovered.
"Here. In my hand!" Plyton said. "I can't reach it when you're standing over there."
"I was just... mindful of your..."
"I'm sure I haven't got anything you haven't seen before," Plyton said.
"No, just a little more of it."
"Oh, you wish!" mocked Plyton, taking the drink and sipping. "Yum, lovely."
"If anyone gets to go back to Stine and Stine." Kys called out, tugging at the corset laces, "it's going to be me."
"I was hoping to participate myself," said Ballack. He had returned to the fireside in the neighbouring room, and was trying to secure his long white hair into a pony tail. It was a hard feat to accomplish with just one hand. Evisorex had severed his left hand cleanly, and his wrist stump was sealed in a black leather nub packed with micro healing systems. It would be another month at least before it was ready for an augmetic graft. "I really would like to serve, sir," he said. "I want to be useful."
"The pair of you, then," said Ravenor. "If that's all right with you, Carl?"
