Having seen the shrine and the surrounding development, I was prepared for it. Jesi stood outside the train station, mouth slightly open in shock, looking at the amulet sellers, the holy men swinging incense and bawling out prayers on the corners and at every lamp post and street sign, people hawking accommodation, transport, bottles of lake water and tickets to the inner sanctum at the temple, and everywhere the sick, the dying, and the bereaved, lost, tired and desperate to get away from the noisy, over-colourful crowds. Here and there I saw the dark red uniforms of the Exalteds’ guards. Seemed to me like there were more of them today, but maybe they’d just got shifted around.

  “Tacky, ain’t it,” Ajui said briefly. “I’m hungry. Where are we staying?”

  They took an incredibly overpriced taxi to the hotel half a kilometre from the station, and endured the fake piety and solicitousness of the receptionist before being taken up to a room that was a bit less grimy than the one where we’d found Ajui hiding, but about ten times more tasteless. “Well if I wasn’t dying before I came in, I sure would be now,” Ajui said, throwing himself onto the bed—something I wouldn’t have touched without wearing a full coverall, mask and gloves. “Does this dump have room service?”

  Jesi tossed him the menu. “Have whatever you like, then I’m going for a walk to scope out the site.” He made a call on his personal line to Luiz, saying they were there and getting into position. I recognised he was now in mission mode, impatient to get on. But it would be tomorrow at the earliest before he could get into position, which meant a bit of thumb twiddling. He was also avoiding looking at me. I knew why—but I didn’t know how to make it right between us.

  Watching Ajui shovel food into his mouth like it was about to be made illegal wasn’t one of my pleasures, but Jesi didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t really seem to notice, like none of it was important. Ajui keep shooting him hard looks like he was reading his mind but didn’t like what he saw.

  When he’d finally finished stuffing his face, he grabbed Jesi’s wrist. “Your shields ain’t that good, kid. You gotta concentrate. Them Exalted are more powerful than me. If they get a bead on you, then they can pick your head wherever they are. You’re getting sloppy.”

  “Sorry,” Jesi murmured. His expression became intent for a few moments. “Is that better?”

  Ajui nodded. “Yeah. Just keep working on it. You’re gonna need to be real locked down when you get close to that ceremony chamber.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said, accepting the correction, then he stood. “All right, I’m going to play tourist. Tinun, keep out of sight. You’re sick.”

  “You say the sweetest things, Jesi,” Ajui said with a grin.

  Jesi turned to Parido. “Can you...give me some privacy? With Nev?”

  “Of course. Just one thing—some of the guards are also telepathic, and others are empaths. You can’t afford to drop your shields at all. You’re not safe even here. Many of the staff in these hotels work for them too.”

  “Understood. Thank you,” he said to Parido and Ajui both. “I was getting distracted.”

  Parido shot me a narrow-eyed look. “Yes. We need to avoid that, don’t we, Langse?”

  “Already on it, Parido. Come on, Jes.”

  It was mid-afternoon and I guessed it was probably hot from the bright sun and the red faces of the people passing us. “Which way’s the laundry?” Jesi asked, keeping his voice low. I pointed in the direction and we headed that way.

  There were four likely businesses that had dealings with the guards and the Exalteds’ infrastructure. Parido had already picked out two as being vulnerable to corruption or threats, and after seeing them for himself, Jesi agreed. A fresh meat supplier looked the most promising as it had a delivery scheduled late the following afternoon, and I’d picked up on the owner grousing about his unreliable casual assistant.

  “Tinun can work on him tonight—tomorrow, we’ll visit,” Jesi said, as we stood around the corner from the butcher’s store. “If we don’t succeed in persuading him to call in sick, I’ll disable him and Tinun can convince the owner to take him on.”

  We were pinning a lot on Ajui’s powers of persuasion, and there had been a short but unpleasant argument between him and Jesi about how to handle things. The little prick thought we should just shoot a business owner and his assistant, and go in masquerading as a legit delivery. Jesi pointed out rather forcefully that, as the nominal good guy on this operation, he wasn’t going to kill any innocent civilians no matter who their customers were. “There ain’t no such thing as an innocent civilian,” Ajui had growled, tapping his temple. “Trust me on that.”

  “Leave me with my illusions,” Jesi had said dryly. “No unnecessary killing.”

  “Hey, I never killed nobody unnecessarily in my life!”

  “Your definition of ‘necessary’ needs some work then,” I’d pointed out. “Because ‘you’re in my way’ isn’t a good enough reason.”

  “It is to me. It is if I don’t like ‘em neither.”

  Jesi had glared at Ajui until the little prick had backed down and shut up. Still wasn’t sure he wouldn’t off someone when we weren’t looking but there was only so much we could do to control him.

  The sun was getting low. Ajui was going to scope out the casual driver after supper. We still had three hours or so to kill. “What’s your plan B?” I asked.

  “Try and get into another delivery vehicle, but I don’t like the odds. Parido thought this had the best chance of success.”

  “Sixty-one percent isn’t a certainty.”

  “No.” He stopped, looked at me. “The only certainty is that we all die sooner or later. I want to talk to you, Nev. Let’s see if there’s space on that beach.”

  We had to walk a ways from the shrine. To the north end of the development was the original village of Kar-det-wei, which had existed long before the Exalted had laid their twisted plans. On the far side, which was a good two kilometres away from Jesi’s hotel, we found ourselves on a shingle beach with hardly a soul—living or dead—to disturb us. Jesi made himself comfortable, and stared out over the silver-blue lake, towards the distant mountains on the other side. It was gorgeous here, if you could ignore the high-rises behind us. “Wonder if this will keep going if the Exalted are gone?” I said.

  “I suspect it’s got a momentum now that no one can stop. People’s ability to delude themselves will triumph,” he said quietly, before looking at me. “Like us. Thinking we can make this work.”

  There. He’d said it and we couldn’t dance around it any more. “I...think it would be best if I moved on. When this is done. I mean, if I hadn’t been a Bridge, it’d have been over for us. That’s how it goes.”

  “Except I’d be dead.”

  What I’d give to be able to just...touch him. I gritted my teeth, told myself to stop wishing for the impossible. “Yeah, well that’s crap. If everyone who lost a lover killed themselves, the world would stop working. I don’t want you at that price, Jes. I won’t forgive you if you do it, I swear. I love you, but that’s the coward’s way out.”

  “You’re talking about running away because you can’t bear it, love, but you won’t allow me my escape?”

  His brown eyes, so kind, so wise—so sad—held me, and I knew he had a point I couldn’t argue against. Still tried though. “You’re a young, great-looking guy. You could meet someone else. Hell, maybe I could. It ain’t natural, trying to hang on.”

  “Maybe not, but.... I thought I’d lost you forever,” he whispered. “Then you came back and it was a miracle. Only the miracle is more like....”

  “A curse?”

  He nodded unhappily. “Yes. I can’t bear the idea of you going, but I don’t want you to suffer. I just...don’t know what to do. Yes, I’m a coward. I can’t face losing you twice. But I never want you to feel the way you did last night.”

  “That was me being stupid.”

  “You think I can’t imagine what it’s like not to be able to touch you?”

  I sighed. “No, I figure you know. Look, I’ll stay until you’re ready to let me go. I won’t stay a second longer. Is that good enough?”

  He stared back out over the water. “Just give me a couple of weeks to get used to it. I won’t make you wait too long.”

  I’d wait forever, if he wanted it, but I knew it was bad for him, having a dead lover holding him back. He shouldn’t be having to make these choices. Neither should I. “I’m gonna miss you too. I didn’t mean it...I wouldn’t look for someone else. I’d wait for you, wherever I ended up.”

  He smiled. “I’m hoping you’ll just get on with a fabulous new life, and I’ll find you when it’s time. I’ll wear a red flower in my lapel, so you know it’s me.”

  “Hold you to that, babe.”

  Even though he couldn’t feel it and neither could I, I put my hand over his, sitting on the beach together like we were just regular lovers. We could have had so many years of this...I couldn’t help be angry at losing that time with him. But who was I mad at? The arseholes who killed me? The powers that be who organised this whole spirit thing, who even Parido didn’t know about? Or just me for not dodging that bullet like I should have? Being angry was pointless. It just was the way it was.

  We sat for an hour or so until the sun started to set, and then he got up and stretched. “Either Tinun will have sent me bankrupt exploring room service, or he’ll be eating the chairs. We have to get back.” I nodded, started to walk back along the shore. “Nev?”

  “What, babe?”

  “I don’t care what happens in this life or the next. I’ll always, always be yours.”

  I smiled, even though my eyes were getting scratchy. “Me too, Jes. I don’t need any red flowers to find you. I’d know you with my eyes closed. I’d know you dead or alive.”

  And I would find him. Fuck that forty-three percent.

  Chapter 11 — Transitional Arrangements

  It was depressingly easy to turn a normal law-abiding citizen into a crook by the application of large amounts of cash and a little gentle coercion, but on the other hand, it was just as well because, without that corruptibility, we’d have been screwed. Ajui went over to the driver’s house the night before and laid in some nice mental suggestions, him and Parido poking into his secrets, learning about his debts and his greed and his dislike of his job. The next morning, early, when Jesi and Ajui turned up with an obscene amount of money and told him it could all be his if he made a call to his boss to say he had a family emergency down south but his cousin had offered to cover, it was all too easy to convince him. Ajui soothed away any fears that he might be assisting a criminal activity, and then all Jesi and Ajui had to do was turn up at the butcher’s store.

  Jesi hid around the corner while Ajui marched in. I couldn’t say I’d hire him to clean my toilet, looking like he was. He had a bandanna over his shaved head, a week’s worth of blond stubble, and he wore a shirt with no sleeves which showed off one of his more unattractive tattoos.

  “Who the hell are you?” the butcher said, looking harassed.

  “Mordo’s cousin,” Ajui said, giving him a smile. Maybe that was a mistake, because his smiles tended to make him look even less trustworthy. “He told me you knew I was coming.”

  “Bloody Mordo. Look, have you done this kind of work before?” He looked over Ajui’s skinny runt body. “It’s not exactly easy.”

  “Yeah, done it lots of times. Been working up in Marcenek for a grocer there. Used to do his deliveries. I got a license and everything,” he said virtuously, holding out his fake ID.

  The butcher examined it suspiciously. “All right. You’ll need to wear a coat. We’re going to some respectable places. And don’t touch anything.”

  “Of course not,” Ajui said, as if the idea would never occur to him. “People don’t like that.”

  The man grunted and found Ajui a coat to wear. I popped out to Jesi. “He’s in.”

  “Good. Keep an eye on it for me.”

  All morning I watched as Ajui and the butcher drove to various customers—hotels, restaurants, and a couple of small stores. Jesi hid out in the storeroom until mid-afternoon. Ajui and the butcher returned for their last order—the shrine. There was a lot of meat to be loaded, and as the last carcass was lifted in, Ajui said casually, “Is that the front? I thought I heard the door.”

  “Damn, the sign said ‘closed’,” the butcher grumbled, and went off to investigate the imaginary visitor.

  “Move, Jes,” I said, and he slipped out. Ajui hustled him into the back of the van and Jesi hid himself among the sides of dead animals. It was one time I was glad I couldn’t smell anything in this state. Ajui closed the door, which made it completely dark. A couple of minutes later, I heard the engine starting up and the van began to move.

  “Your shields better be perfect.” I think I was more nervous than he was.

  “Tinun’s been battering me for the last two hours. They’re as strong as he—or anything—can make them.”

  Which was all we could do. The butcher’s store wasn’t far from the shrine, and in no time at all, Jesi got the signal from Ajui. “You better get outside, Nev. Looks like we’re there.”

  “Right. Back soon.”

  I was his eyes and ears, though once we were under the shrine building, and inside, it was probably too late to do anything if it went arse up. But the van was waved in without any problem, the guard on duty barely looking at Ajui, whether because he was just lousy at his job or Ajui was persuading him to be careless, I didn’t know. All that mattered was our second hurdle had been crossed.

  The staff areas under the shrine were bloody huge. They serviced over three hundred guards, and who knew how many other employees, and there were dorms, a huge canteen and stores rooms for food, equipment and uniforms. The canteen’s cold rooms were as big as our apartment, but Jesi wasn’t planning on spending any time in them. When it was clear, he slipped out of the van as Ajui was unloading it, and hid among some unused kitchen machinery in a back storeroom. Jesi and Ajui couldn’t use telepathy—not in here—so until Ajui met up with Luiz, and I passed on Jesi’s messages, there would be no contact between the two of them. Or between Ajui and Parido. The two of them had said their goodbyes. They hadn’t got mushy about it at all—but if my enemies were listening to me talking to Jesi maybe for the last time, I’d be pretty damn unsentimental too.

  It was going to be a damn boring fifteen hours for Jesi. We could talk but we had to keep it quiet, which made it hard to really have a proper conversation. “I wish my special little talent had been telepathy,” I said.

  “Well, if it had been, we still wouldn’t be talking,” he whispered, grinning at my stupidity. “Tinun says telepathy sucks anyway. He’s still taking the Moxi, you know. Even with two tablets, he said last night was like sitting in a room full of jackhammers. Sick, upset people are really loud.”

  “I don’t like it here either. It’s an unhappy place.”

  “Based on a lie, of course it would be. Tell me more about this Firna person.”

  And so we killed the hours with brief bursts of whispered conversation, me heading out every so often to make sure Jesi was still safe. Parido dropped in to say Ajui was safely on the train, and that Luiz had arrived in Marcenek. “They’ve just brought the Bridges their meal. My guess is that they’ll move them after supper, and then lock everything down.”

  “The guards still eating?”

  “About halfway through. The kitchen staff are being hurried, and the meal is a cold one, minimal clear up. I think they’re going to move all non-essential staff out before the lockdown.”

  “Then I guess I better be ready,” Jesi said. “And not before time.”

  “Tell me that again when you’ve swapped a dry, warm store room for a cold, damp, dark tunnel,” I said.

  “Don’t,” he groaned. “My joints are already bitching.”

  It was almost an hour later before he had his chance. The kitchen staff had mostly been sent away, lights were going off in the canteen. He used the lower illumination to scuttle through the stores area, down a short corridor, and through two sets of doors leading to the service tunnel, which was only just big enough to take a man on his hands and knees, and was, as I’d warned, both bloody cold from a constant flow of frigid air, and wet because on the other side of the wall was the lake. There was a deafening hum of machinery—pumps and ventilation. Jesi crawled along the kilometre to the far end of the tunnel—took him nearly an hour with rests, and by the end of it, he was exhausted and in need of a break.

  “The tunnel is now sealed,” Parido reported.

  Jesi nodded, too out of breath to speak. “Eat,” I urged him. “Have some water.”

  “Maybe later,” he croaked. “Don’t fancy sitting in a puddle of my own piss. Don’t really fancy sitting in a puddle at all,” he said, screwing his face up. But he had little option—at least he’d brought a small waterproof sheet for just this purpose, but it didn’t seem to be helping that much. The walls were sweating, and the water collected in a long drain at the bottom of the tunnel. There was just nowhere to stay dry.

  It was now half eight. The ceremony was going to take place at five-thirty. Jesi was going to leave it until the last moment to break in so the Exalted had no chance to bring any backup plan on line. Parido said there was an eighteen percent chance that there was something we didn’t know about, including a couple of spare Bridges. These guys were belt and braces all the way. Every single aspect of their plan had triple, even quadruple fail-safes built in. They’d just forgotten the one thing that so many organisations did—to make sure their lowest rank and file employees actually did their job properly. It wasn’t the first time Jesi and me had easily broken into a building because the rent-a-thug security were bored out of their minds.

  Now we had the opposite problem to the store room—we could hardly talk loudly enough, and shouting over the top of the deafening hum gave Jesi a headache. “Earplugs,” he bellowed.