I know which one I’m hoping for.

  ‘Kian, you’re pretty good at this, aren’t you?’

  ‘I do my best.’

  At one point a neophyte skater - not Anna - slipped, tangled another person’s feet, and in seconds there was a pile of a dozen or more fallen people. Dirk’s blade caught in a gouge in the ice and he rolled - look out! - and whipped his arm up in a forearm block, stopped hurtling steel by reflex, and a skater fell over him.

  ‘Shit.’ Dirk disentangled himself, pushed over to Hilde. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I am. How’s your arm?’

  ‘Just the muscle. It’ll be bruised.’ Dirk rubbed it with his other hand. ‘Better that, than stopping a skate-blade with my skull.’

  ‘Right. Amateurs.’ Hilde looked at the fallen people getting to their knees and brushing off snow and ice-dust, laughing. Then she stared up into the bright-lit café. ‘Neither of them’s noticed.’

  ‘Your mothers?’

  ‘Right. Hey!’ Hilde whistled to Kian and Anna, who were slowly making their way across the ice, avoiding the skaters who had tripped. ‘You guys want to go for a walk?’

  ‘Where?’ Kian drew close, keeping hold of Anna.

  ‘I know a scary graveyard we can visit.’

  ‘Merde.’

  ‘What, you scared or something?’

  ‘Only of what your mother will do if she finds out.’

  ‘Yeah? Then we’ll make sure she doesn’t, right?’

  ‘I...’ Kian looked at Dirk. ‘All right.’

  They grinned in unison.

  Shadowed wings spread against black sky: the tomb’s statue might have been devil or angel; in the night, it was impossible to tell. From further inside the graveyard, Hilde’s clear laugh came echoing back. All Anna could do was shiver.

  ‘It is creepy here,’ said Kian.

  ‘I know.’ Anna placed her palm against his chest. ‘But I’m glad—’

  Then they heard Hilde again, but this time she was screaming.

  Dirk—

  Golden sparks glimmered in Kian’s eyes as he ran at unnatural speed through the darkness, avoiding obstacles, Anna forgotten as he raced to find his brother. He vaulted a headstone, skidded on a path, showering gravel...

  Blue, it shone: a tracery in the air touched here and there with blazing scarlet.

  What the hell is it?

  ‘Kian.’

  ‘You’re all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The brothers watched as the twisted maze of light hung roiling in the night air. They moved with unspoken consent to their right, and something in the apparition’s shape altered to match.

  Watching us.

  Then a circle of white light slid across a mausoleum, and the low drone of a police aircar sounded overhead. The glowing apparition winked out of existence as though it had never been.

  ‘Merde alors.’

  ‘Got that right, bro.’

  Above them, the police aircar moved on.

  They helped up Hilde from where she had fallen, and led her back to the cemetery’s boundary where Anna still waited, too petrified to flee.

  ‘Scarier than we thought,’ said Kian.

  ‘Some moron with a holo projector,’ said Dirk.

  ‘Yeah. Probably thought—’

  ‘—that was funny, right.’

  They headed back in silence to the fair.

  Frau Volk and Frau Schönherr had abandoned their demitasses of espresso and were scanning the crowd of skaters, their faces pinched in cold disapproval.

  ‘Sorry.’ Hilde came up behind her mother and squeezed her arm. ‘There was an accident, a pile-up on the rink, so we got off.’

  ‘I couldn’t see you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother.’ There was enough genuine feeling in that to surprise Frau Volk, jolting her out of interrogation mode. ‘I really am.’

  She would not look at Dirk.

  Anna, with an abandoned-puppy look in her brown eyes, moved to her own mother’s side, away from Kian.

  I did run off pretty fast. Damn it.

  ‘Can we go home now, Mutti?’ Anna asked her mother.

  They walked in a loose group back to the aircar, not in silence but making awkward Smalltalk which bounced with odd intonations and pauses; and it was obvious by the time they climbed inside the cold vehicle, breath steaming, that this was the last outing they would make together.

  From the forecourt, Kian and Dirk watched the aircar whisk straight up, hang over the convent, turn towards Zurich, and begin its acceleration. The twins stared up at the stars a moment longer, then headed for the entrance.

  ‘No-one’s seen a Zajinet since they—’

  ‘—kidnapped Mother and took her—’

  ‘—to Beta Draconis III. Right.’

  They sensed the scanfields probing them before the doors clicked open. Perhaps they would be safe inside.

  ‘But they can teleport.’

  ‘Or something like it.’

  ‘Scheiss.’

  ‘And merde.’

  They climbed the granite steps and headed for their room.

  Aliens who can teleport? The stories had never seemed real.

  Tonight, neither of them expected to sleep.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  17

  NULAPEIRON AD 3423

  Gleaming black morphglass dragons towed the floating coffin. Chains formed of blinding white diamond emerged from the dragons’ shoulder blades and led back to the golden bier, draped with the dark-blue d’Ovraison livery. Behind, legions of the Seventh Army in full dress uniform, polished graser rifles held high, marched to the funeral cadence beaten out by military drums.

  For two hours the procession moved along the Via Imperata, while the silent populace watched from ground level and nobles in their floating platforms bowed their heads. As the obsidian dragons drew close to the great bronze doors of the Aedes Sanctuaria, a two-hundred-strong choir of priestesses sang the plaintive lament of Requiem to A Hero, and in the crowd below Tom’s platform a woman broke down and sobbed.

  Glassbirds swooped through the air, making no sound.

  Elva stood beside Tom, and her presence was immensely comforting, though they exchanged no words and did not even touch hands. This was a formal occasion, and they would honour Corduven’s memory by obeying the protocols of his class.

  For you, my friend.

  Tom shivered as the coffin slid past their position. The sharp scent of incense drifted into his nostrils, but it could not mask the acidic stench as the tall bronze doors swung open at the broadway’s terminus, revealing the swirling green luminescence of the Altissimus Vortex Mortis which would consign Corduven, coffin and all, into chemical oblivion.

  For the rest of the ceremony Tom could only watch numbly, scarcely hearing the eulogies as the coffin unhooked itself from the black dragons and floated above the Vortex, awaiting the temple’s command.

  Finally, as the long ceremony drew to a close, the descent began.

  Corduven!

  Downwards the coffin slid, into the swirling acid whose piercing green glow was meant to be an affirmation of life, a memory of the homeworld, while all the time filling Tom’s heart with a sick dread in devastating reinforcement of the basic fact of life: that everything must end.

  So it went; and Corduven was gone.

  Tom lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  Lady V’Delikona sat on a wide platinum lev-platform with some thirty High Lords and Ladies, some of the most influential nobles of this sector or any other. Tom stared at them for a moment, then made a small control gesture which caused his and Elva’s platform to drift back, over the crowd’s heads and past a ten-metre-thick stone pillar until they were above a clear area. They settled down upon the flagstones.

  ‘We don’t belong here,’ Tom said in a low voice.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Elva asked, but immediately added: ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Let’s go back to—’

  Tom’s voice trailed off.

  ‘What is it?’ said Elva.

  At the back of the gathered commoners, standing beside a stocky artisan whose attention was upon the nobles overhead, a small barefooted girl was working on a handheld holopad. Tom raised a hand, signalling Elva to wait, then crept closer until he could read the glowing yellow-dominated stanzas.

  Shadow forms a caravan

  With darkness leading one dead man

  Through sombre crowds beyond belief

  Whose souls bear witness to their grief.

  Tom shook his head. The second stanza, in progress, was more ambitious in its overlaid hues, attempting a counterpoint between grief and irony which was not entirely successful.

  Fear the dragons, bravest heart,

  Scorn the banners at the start

  For he has met his end, you see

  The same that waits for you and me.

  The girl looked perhaps eleven Standard Years old. Lacking nourishment for growth, she might have been as old as thirteen, but no more.

  And who exactly does she remind me of?

  Tom touched the artisan upon his shoulder.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ Tom roughened his tones, softening the edges of the patrician accent which he adopted in formal surroundings. ‘Is this your daughter?’

  ‘Um—’ Wide-eyed, not fooled by the accent, the man gulped. ‘Yes, sir. But what... ? She is my daughter, my Lord, and we intend to be getting home right now.’

  Tom wondered what tales of noble high-handedness had popped into the man’s mind, and just why he thought a strange Lord would enquire about his daughter.

  ‘That’s how it should be.’ Tom looked down at the girl. ‘And what’s your name?’

  She looked up at her father, who nodded his permission.

  ‘Sadia, an it please you, sir.’

  ‘And you write poetry. Well ... So did I, and at your age, too.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes. Is that all you do?’

  ‘Well…’

  She opened up a logosophical model describing a children’s game called Hunt The Narl, with fully coded strategy advisers and conflict/ cooperation equilibria for multiple players, drawn in bright primary colours. Tom smiled wide with pleasure.

  Fifteen minutes later, he rejoined Elva, who was patiently waiting at their grounded lev-platform. She was staring at the artisan, from whose eyes tears streamed without shame, while his blocky hand clutched the young girl’s shoulder.

  ‘Chaos, Tom. I don’t even want to ask.’

  ‘I just spent the last of our credit.’

  ‘You bloody fool.’

  ‘I know, but... It was the right thing to do.’

  It would make a small difference to Tom and Elva - it was a tenday’s rent for a guest apartment up to noble-house standards - but the change it would make in Sadia’s life was radical. For formality’s sake, Tom had put safeguards in the account he had set up, to legally ensure the funds were used only for the girl’s education ... but in fact he trusted Glekin, her father, straight away.

  In three days’ time, when the official mourning was over, Sadia would be presenting herself at the local Akademia Antinomios as a day-pupil. What happened after that would be up to her. If she performed well, she could earn cred-points in much the same way that Tom had earned merits as a Palace servitor; those points could fund more education. It was an opportunity, no more than that.

  Elva kissed his cheek.

  ‘Bloody fool,’ she said again.

  ‘You knew that all along.’

  ‘I suppose I did.’

  They slipped out along a quiet colonnade, and left the crowds behind.

  There had been mourners they recognized, among the lesser nobility: Falvonn and Kirindahl, old friends of Avernon’s (Tom had never seen them looking solemn before); Colonel Milran, formerly of Darinia Demesne, standing beside Sylvana’s cousin, the dark-haired Lady Brekana.

  Neither Tom nor Elva was in the mood to talk.

  They passed along the floor of a vast cavern, where massed lines of arachnargoi shone with carapaces of every hue. Blue-grey and polished brown speckled with black were most common; but there were resplendent royal-blue arachnargoi and iridescent scarlet vehicles among them. Here and there, a blinding white arachnargos, larger than the rest, stood motionless on tendrils like marble.

  High above on the ceiling, smaller arachnabugs hung upside down: shining yellow one-person sports bugs, alongside hard obsidian military models with side-mounted graser cannons.

  There were thousands of them in this one cavern alone.

  No more than you deserve, Corduven.

  Not a thousandth of the recognition that Corduven deserved.

  That night, Tom and Elva looked through the list of positions posted for the coming Convocation. It would be held quickly, on Shyed’mday, before the gathered nobles and their retinues dispersed to their own realms.

  Flensed Pilot, screaming silently ...

  The thing was, there was more than their domestic life to worry about. If Tom was right, the world was at risk; but judging by Surtalvan’s and Trevalkin’s reactions, no-one was ready to hear his story.

  Hopelessly, Tom checked through the procedure for proposing a motion before the Convocation. There were so many preliminary stages to pass through, Tom did not even think his evidence (such as it was) would go to a general vote.

  He started making notes.

  It was on the evening of the fifth day after Corduven’s funeral that the full depth of Tom’s failure became clear. Sadia would have just finished her second day at school.

  Without bitterness, Tom thought: I hope she succeeds better than I have.

  From where Tom sat on a silver seat at the very highest level of a cup-shaped auditorium designed to seat thousands, it seemed that all his efforts had come to nothing. He was at the Convocation, but the advertised positions in the public list had gone to other nobles. Tom had also put up a general posting indicating his willingness to work in any demesne: perhaps someone would grant him a private position.

  I’m no politician. Never was.

  None of Tom’s proposals even passed initial screening. He had tried to put forward several motions, from fully arming a strike force against a renewed threat of Anomalous incursion, to merely slowing down the demobilization process - sending soldiers back to their families in phases over the next two years. None of his proposals made it as far as the holodisplays of most attendees.

  Meanwhile, every resolution regarding increased taxation of freemen and strengthening astymonia arsenals had been passed with minimal opposition. Those who agreed with the thinking of the Circulus Fidus were getting their way.

  Why am I here?

  Nearly three thousand Lords and Ladies, from minor Lords-sans-Demesne to the Archduke Xildran whose realm was greater than most sectors, sat in the tiered concentric circles and voted on the final issues.

  Then they reviewed the private noble appointments which were being granted: some deputized to subsidiary committees, others discussed and decided upon here in full session. Two hundred and thirty-seven names were upon the list of candidates—

  Elva. What am I going to tell her?

  —but Tom’s was not one of them.

  I’ve failed.

  As far as the Convocation was concerned, Tom Corcorigan did not exist.

  Tom left early, while the tall curved corridors surrounding the congress hall were still empty, or nearly so. Up ahead, by an arced sweeping buttress, Jay A’Khelikov and Renata were engaged in a conversation which was just finishing. Renata was withdrawing; seeing Tom, she gave a small smile and a nod, then touched Jay’s sleeve once more, nodded, and walked away.

  ‘Jay, my friend. How are you?’

  It was inane; but there was nothing else to say. They clasped forearms.

  ‘Numb. Stumbling through the motions.’ Jay looked away, seeing his own thoughts. ‘Cord and I... We were just beginning to hope for some more permanent arrangement, you know. Sort out our lives so we could live close to each—’