He slipped inside, nodded to the shaven-headed youth who tended the shop, then checked the wire racks. Tom allowed his gaze to slip unfocused over a sequence of Laksheesh epics: they looked fascinating, but fluency in the language was inconsistent with his cover.

  Instead, Tom picked up a locket which, when pressed, displayed the current ruler’s family tree (using a patrilineal line) back to the first Earl, with a sidenote about a Terran called Sean Buchanan, proto-logosopher and twenty-first-century ‘direct ancestor’.

  ‘Five minims, good sir,’ murmured the youth.

  Tom shook his head, hiding a smile. Forty generations back, assuming no interbreeding, meant a million million ‘direct ancestors’ alive at that time, which was impossible (as well as ridiculous: any one ancestor would account for a minute fraction of inherited genome). Since Terra had never supported that many inhabitants, the assumption was wrong: the entire human race is inbred. There has never been a genetic basis for aristocracy; can never be, since the ancestral genes are scattered throughout the populace.

  ‘Three minims,’ Tom offered, in keeping with his cover: a trader always negotiates.

  Glumly, the youth nodded in agreement.

  Tucking the locket inside his belt, Tom left via a second exit, and found himself in a clean, well-kept tunnel. He walked past trestles loaded with goods; behind them, the vendors stood patiently.

  Got to be here somewhere.

  Then Tom was standing beneath an archway soft with moss, between walls in which reptilian heads were graser-etched. In front of him, floating lev-steps led to a balcony where people sat. One of them was lean and composed.

  Trevalkin.

  His hair and clothes were different, but Tom recognized him immediately. Nerves tightening with the possibility of betrayal, Tom climbed the steps slowly. Silver leaning-frames rather than chairs ringed each table. Tom took a table far from Trevalkin’s, and muttered his order to the house system.

  On the wall, orange fastsnails slid, whistling their eerie mating songs. Some diners reached out to the trails of hallucinogenic slime, dipped their fingertips and sucked them.

  Tom’s daistral arrived and he drank it quickly. As he finished, Trevalkin was already rising. After counting to fifty (in Laksheesh), Tom followed.

  Puffs of sporemist rose above mossy boulders, metamorphosed from grey to apricot, then drifted off. Iridescent green patches flowed across the corridor walls.

  Below the landing on which Tom and Trevalkin stood, silver-foamed water swirled in a decorative pool. In the mossgarden beyond, a lone mother grabbed her toddler by the arm, looked fearfully up at Tom, then half-ran from the garden, was gone.

  The gardens were deserted.

  Treachery?

  Then three men appeared, walking in unnatural synchrony among the soft moss-covered boulders. At their throats, bright scarlet cravats were strangely luminous in the pale light.

  Absorbed.

  Tom had seen their kind before ...

  Trevalkin tugged at his sleeve, and they slipped out of sight.

  After walking along an empty tunnel, they reached a public thoroughfare where quiet crowds were moving. They blended in, and Trevalkin leaned close to Tom, keeping his voice low.

  ‘Memetic engineers among the colonists,’ murmured Trevalkin, ‘created a society where even lowborns could ascend to the highest ranks.’

  For a moment, Tom thought Trevalkin must have access to the old Pilots’ tales. Then he reconsidered, and muttered: ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Only that you’re the proof, Corcorigan, that one who receives all the benefits can turn out to be an ungrateful snot.’

  ‘What?’

  An argument was developing between them, but there were militiamen up ahead, so Tom quelled his anger. He and Trevalkin kept their heads bent forward, and walked on quietly.

  Suddenly, off to their left, the air seemed to waver and darken, and then black flames were burning, becoming a whirlpool of ink and shadow. Tom was frozen. The Blight’s other name had been Dark Fire, and the Anomaly must manifest itself in similar—

  Trevalkin pulled him onwards.

  The creature which moved out of the darkness was formed of metal: black iron talons and bronze flanges, and razor-edged predator wings. It seemed too heavy to fly, but it lifted into the air and sailed quickly over people’s heads, heading for an exit corridor, then passed silently out of sight.

  No-one among the passers-by even blinked. Their stares were fixed ahead as they went about their business.

  Trevalkin. What have you got us into?

  The general population was not fully Absorbed; but the people were no longer normal, either. Just walking among them was risky. Still they continued, with Trevalkin leading the way onto a wide concourse; and here the atmosphere lightened, though the environment was thronged with people.

  ‘I prefer this place,’ Tom murmured.

  Trevalkin nodded, then stepped onto a spiral ramp. It did not flow as expected - perhaps the occupying Anomaly considered such capabilities frivolous - so they walked up in the plebeian way, into a square-edged tunnel where people seemed normal. Most were headed in the same direction; Tom and Trevalkin tagged along.

  ‘You tried to provoke me deliberately, Trevalkin. Why?’

  ‘To keep your emotional focus. We can’t stay here for long without being affected.’

  As the tunnel narrowed, pedestrians were forced to walk more tightly packed together, so Tom could not ask Trevalkin to explain fully. Was there some general hypnotic malaise surrounding them, trying to infect them?

  Then, as they passed through an archway, Tom heard two burly tradesmen talking.

  ‘I’m a bit bloody old,’ said one, ‘for going to the bloody circus.’

  ‘S’posed to be great,’ replied his friend. ‘You’ll bleedin’ love it.’ Tom looked at Trevalkin, whose mouth twitched in the suggestion of a grin.

  They came out into a thirteen-sided piazza where festive bells were chiming, passed beneath floating streamers announcing a holiday, and joined the slow-moving crowds. On raised platforms to either side, bands of mummers were performing masques and oddly solemn skits at which no-one laughed.

  Jugglers and sword-dancers drilled their routines, the clash of blades and showers of orange sparks sounding in counterpoint to the love-poets’ murmurs. People stood aside as a group of pilgrims crossed the piazza, crawling on their stomachs instead of walking. They were either very holy or insane, Tom thought, but their discipline was admirable.

  Freemen and women were wearing orange and yellow armbands around their sleeves, brightening up the drab browns and greys of tunics and robes. Trevalkin and Tom had tuned their cloaks to a lesser sheen as they walked; still, they looked like travelling traders rather than local folk.

  While Tom’s poignard remained sticky-tagged at the small of his back and out of sight, Trevalkin wore long bodkins, as he had in Realm V’Delikona, enclosed in obvious forearm sheaths. The style offered interesting possibilities in augmenting forearm strikes and facilitating cross-draw attacks from unusual angles, but Tom did not approve.

  ‘Never use a weapon to intimidate,’ Maestro da Silva had taught Tom. ‘You’ll get killed while waving it around, by someone who’s more direct than you are.’ In phi2dao, a weapon was drawn in order to kill, preferably without the enemy’s having seen it.

  Even so, Trevalkin’s blades should have been a warning to thieves. It was a surprise when a hand came snaking out of the crowd towards Trevalkin’s belt, then froze. Tom and Trevalkin both stared directly at the miscreant’s face: it was a girl, aged thirteen SY or even less. Then the girl broke away and merged back into the swirl of passers-by, surely unaware how close she had come to being skewered.

  Trevalkin’s right hand was upon his left forearm, ready to draw and throw.

  ‘No,’ said Tom.

  ‘I can hit her from here. She’s in my sight.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Too late, now. She’s gone.’

  Blade-throwing is mostly for show; only a tiny percentage of knife-fighters have ever been able to work the techniques in the messy reality of combat. Trevalkin had a certain sadistic flamboyancy, but his goals were realistic and deadly.

  So where’s he leading me now?

  Then Trevalkin was handing cred-slivers to a vendor in return for two piezo-wafer tokens. When Tom accepted his token, it shone holo tigers and dragons: mythical beasts from the distant past.

  The crowd flowed through a portal into a heptagonal auditorium with rough stone benches. Tom and Trevalkin descended to the middle tiers where they took their seats, one either side of a sloping aisle.

  At the rear of the stage lay a stone block, pushed into the shadows, bearing discolorations the colour of old rust which made Tom’s face tighten in understanding. But these were relics of other, less festive occasions.

  A child nearby asked his father for a drink, and the fresh innocence and simple demand cheered Tom a little.

  ‘Me, too,’ murmured Tom. ‘Can I have a drink?’

  ‘Only if you behave yourself,’ said Trevalkin, surprising Tom.

  Before the sweetmead vendors with their racks of squeeze-bulbs could reach the cheaper seats, cymbals clashed and streamers of light curled through the air as glowclusters dimmed. People sat upright, their voices fading to murmurs.

  The show began.

  Cartwheels. Spectacular jumping kicks. Steel whips and glass blades which moaned through the air and left gleaming tracks delineating dangerous trajectories. Monomolecular edges cut dangerously close to skin.

  Two female warriors, clad in orange like the male fighting-monks, whipped their swords so close to each other that fine wisps of dark hair floated to the stage.

  Tom watched in awe. He saw exactly the meaning of each move, knowing the limitations as well as the athletic qualities of what he was seeing. Choreographed combat fails to deal with the Chaos-laden truth of actual conflict; without seeing the monks under those conditions, he could not tell whether they were trained to adapt.

  It was the second time Tom had seen such a wu shu demonstration. On the first occasion, he had been at the Ragged School, soft and unschooled in any physical discipline, and simply awed by the spectacle without understanding what he saw. That was when he had met Zhao-ji’s uncle, and learned a little of his austere family history as part of a secret society whose history reached back through the centuries.

  ‘Chaos,’ muttered Trevalkin, at the spectacle of a seventy-SY-old monk lowering himself into splits.

  That’ll be me some day.

  It was the best Tom could hope for. At that moment he remembered the dream of his own death, the dream which had visited him only once, two Standard Years before. Tom shivered as memory swirled like cold fog: Winds beneath a lemon sky, mu-space vessels dripping fire reflected from the rising sun, before shadows press in from all sides and squeeze the universe from existence.

  Tom brought his attention back to the moment. A full-scale battle, carefully arranged, was taking place on stage, but Trevalkin was rising from his seat. He began to climb up towards the auditorium’s rear, and after a moment, Tom followed.

  At the rear, a short corridor led to the men’s toilet chambers. Trevalkin was standing in the main chamber’s centre, alone. ‘The contact’s not here.’ Stress tightened his voice. ‘I think we should—’

  Grasers spat through the air outside. The electric sound froze Tom, as beams lanced through the auditorium. It was a second before someone screamed.

  ‘Chaos!’

  A wave of coldness pulsed through the air. Tom did not need to look out into the auditorium to know what was happening. Great metallic winged shapes were forming amid rotating black flames as the audience faced the sudden realization that their quotidian lives had ended, not just for the duration of an hour’s entertainment but for ever.

  Then a panel at the chamber’s rear liquefied and both Tom and Trevalkin spun, crouching, blades at the ready. The man who poked his head inside was orange-clad and shaven-headed, a Zhongguo Ren monk who said: ‘Hurry, please,’ and ducked back out of sight.

  Without hesitation, Trevalkin tucked down and rolled through the permeable membrane. Tom gave him half a second before following.

  They were on their knees in a half-lit duct while the panel vitrified in place, leaving no sign of their passage. Already, the monk was crawling quickly but silently ahead of them, leaving Trevalkin and Tom to do likewise or stay and die.

  They stopped at an intersection of crawlspaces, and Trevalkin hunched over on one side, tapping his finger-ring until an intricate schematic holo hung in the gloomy air.

  ‘The red points’ - Trevalkin made a gesture, and the indicated highlights flared brighter - ‘are my support team. Where are yours?’

  ‘We agreed,’ said Tom, ‘to come alone.’

  ‘And...?’

  ‘Here. I’ve a team here.’ Tom’s fingertips flickered as he amended the holo. ‘The backup is here.’

  ‘My people will make contact. What’s the parole and countersign?’

  Tom stared at him for a long moment, then decided this was a time for trust, and told Trevalkin the greeting/response code.

  And if I’ve just betrayed them, you die first, Trevalkin.

  Trevalkin merely nodded and turned to the monk: ‘I fear the Amber Tigers may be impossible to reach now. If you journey with me, I can put in a good word with the Strontium Dragons.’

  Even in the cramped space, there was an uncanny serenity in the monk’s bow.

  ‘My thanks, sir,’ the monk said. ‘The Strontium Dragons are an honourable society. However’ - glancing into the shadows - ‘when I’m sure that you are safe, I must return to help my brothers.’

  ‘No-one’s safe,’ said Trevalkin, as a pale shape approached along the shaft, slowing rapidly. ‘But here’s our transport.’

  It was a cylindrical maint-drone whose natural habitat was the crawlspaces and access shafts of this stratum. The carapace cracked open.

  Tom’s teeth rattled together and he clung on with eyes squeezed almost shut, tense-chested and taking minimal breaths as he bounced inside the drone. They swung through another crazy turning, and Trevalkin let out an insane laugh as they accelerated into a long dry duct.

  Buffeted by stone topography and the drone’s unheeding speed, Tom’s thoughts were with the nameless monk whose uncompromising honour had not allowed him to abandon his brothers.

  Fate be with you, my friend.

  The drone was slowing.

  I hope you take down many of your enemies before the end.

  Then they were scraping to a halt, blood-rush in Tom’s ears, and he realized he was half-deafened from the Chaotic ride. He rubbed his face, hard.

  The shaft wall was softening, glowing.

  ‘It’s not a trap,’ said Trevalkin.

  ‘What choice do I have, either way?’

  Tom rolled sideways, through the softening membrane and into chill pure air, and fell to hand and knees on a polished quartz floor. Behind him, Trevalkin crawled through the membranous panel, his face caked with sooty grime and heavy sweat.

  ‘Why are you looking at me, Corcorigan? Wait till you find a mirrorfield.’

  ‘Right.’ Tom wiped at his face and his hand came away black. He looked up. ‘And who are they?’

  A group of nondescript men and women was approaching. Only their lean, relaxed bodies and watchful eyes gave them away as more than civilians.

  ‘My people.’ Trevalkin nodded to a bearded man. ‘He’ll look after you.’ And, to the team: ‘This is Lord Corcorigan. His safety is your top priority.’

  ‘Sir. This way, please.’

  One by one, they stepped through a solid-looking arras, a tapestry depicting the Founding Lords’ first Convocation, and found themselves in a darkened, dank tunnel which smelled like rotting rags. Pale-blue handheld beacons shimmered, grew brighter.

  ‘It might be better if we ran.’

  ~ * ~

  24

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  It was a raw cavern with long, pale vehicles whose like Tom had never seen, hanging by tendrils among bulky stalactites; but it was the people who drew his attention. His own teams, headed by Doria Megsin and Grax Tegoral, were standing in a loose arc, their expressions tense, facing more of Trevalkin’s people. Their hands hovered near sticky-tagged weapons.