Adam had known of Corduven’s proclivities. Did he think that Tom and Corduven were other than just friends?

  ‘Is there a point to this?’

  ‘After the war was over, I tried to track Libron down. He was a minor Lord-sans-Demesne, and his family had been apprised of his, er, off-duty wartime activities.’

  ‘Fate.’

  ‘Right. They found Libron hanging from a gargoyle. Ilsed his dress-uniform’s lanyard just to make the point.’

  There was an edge to Adam’s tone, which made Tom ask: ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Permission to speak freely? I hate to see the bravest warrior I know being betrayed by the person who ought to care for her the most.’

  Obviously he was referring to Elva. Tom had seen the way that Adam looked at her.

  There was nothing Tom could say.

  ‘I ...’Adam shook his head. ‘I’ve an ordnance inventory to complete. Sorry ... Tom.’

  Tom could only nod. His stomach felt sour.

  At least someone knows the meaning of loyalty.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Adam.’

  ‘Yes, I... Yes, of course.’

  Drapes of opulent vermilion furled back as Tom approached the Receiving Court. Servitors bowed deeply. Tom ignored them, walked through the small knot of freeborn supplicants waiting for an audience - they drew apart to either side - and brushed past an ambassadorial entourage.

  One of the ambassador’s bodyguards, a hulking housecarl with a black spade beard, appeared about to step in Tom’s way. Then the carl stopped, looked closely, and gave a tiny nod of respectful acknowledgement which had nothing to do with Tom’s noble-house status.

  Well met, my brother berserker.

  Elva, in her raised throne of quartz and parafur, sat very still. Then she stood up, throwing aside her white surcoat to reveal a plain grey jumpsuit without insignia, and half-ran down the steps to meet Tom.

  ‘My Lord.’

  Tom took hold of her left hand, pressed it against his chest. ‘My Lady.’

  Her grey eyes held no accusation, merely love tempered with a hint of caution.

  In the official visiting entourage, the ambassador - whose name Tom had forgotten - executed a courtly bow. ‘Perhaps Lady Strelsthorm needs a private meeting at this time.’

  At that, a majordomo clapped his hands and announced: ‘The audience will be postponed until tomorr—’

  ‘For two hours,’ said Elva.

  ‘—until Sunbloom Hour today. Thank you, my Ladies and my Lords, and good freepersons all.’

  There was one freedman near the back who began to mumble; he was quickly hushed by those who surrounded him. Among the others, solemn faces mixed with smiles as they left, staring back at the one-armed Lord who had interrupted their audience.

  In three minutes, the chamber contained only Tom and Elva, and a cage full of fluttering blindmoths whose odd fluting music formed a fitting accompaniment to the Corcorigans’ fiery hot kiss.

  The universe lurched back into its rightful position.

  Later, he said: ‘I spent some time with a strange Lady recently.’

  Cradled against him on the quartz throne, Elva tensed.

  Expecting betrayal?

  Tom swallowed, then: ‘She was all of crystal. Do you know who I’m talking about?’

  ‘Fate.’ Elva drew back. ‘You met her?’

  ‘Yes ... It was some kind of miracle. But if you want to know what we discussed, I can’t tell you. It’s like a ... dream.’

  Elva blinked, and Tom knew she was reviewing conversations stored in her perfect memory: remarks her parents might have made when Elva was young; hints her superior officers dropped when she was a Grey Shadows operative.

  ‘That’s consistent,’ Elva said after a while. ‘Some people have been known to break down after such a meeting. That’s part of the reason why it - she - is considered a myth.’

  ‘What, or who, is she really?’

  ‘Shh.’ Elva’s finger pressed against his lips. ‘Only you can determine that.’

  She slid her fingertip down his chest and reached his stomach. Something liquid and vulnerable, like a pool disturbed by deep movement, shifted in her eyes.

  ‘Isn’t it time I met the ambassador?’ murmured Tom.

  ‘He can wait.’

  Lord Khaliran was dark-skinned and very thin, and his clasped fingers were like spiders’ legs as he considered his opening remarks. Aides sat on either side of him, facing Tom and Elva across a conference table formed of diamond.

  ‘Svadini-ihm-Kaltrin Gestalt,’ he said, using the collective name for four large realms which formed a significant federation, ‘is concerned by the lack of Fire Watch reports around our borders.’

  A tactical display hovered near Elva, but she did not need to look at it: the disposition of Enemy forces was in her mind, and she would not forget.

  ‘Conversely,’ Lord Khaliran continued, ‘we have suspiciously rosy descriptions of life in Realm Tangori and Hilkin Demesne. These are reports which cannot possibly be true.’

  Tom gestured, rotating the display. Too many hotspots bloomed around the sector’s edges.

  ‘In one sense,’ he said, ‘the reports are probably correct. It was one of the signs, when I was in the Aurineate Grand’aume during the occupation. Normal crime dropped to zero. It was the lack of disruption, the inability to raise a dissenting voice ... There was just something in the air that told you immediately something wasn’t right.’

  Tom’s deputy had been Tyentro, hot-headed and aggressive, but a good man to have beside one in a crisis. Tom wished Tyentro had survived.

  ‘I fear, Lord Corcorigan, we will be requiring advice on setting up resistance groups very shortly. Any assistance you can give on optimal communication channels and operative training, that sort of thing ... would be very welcome.’

  Tom noted the yellowish tinge to Lord Khaliran’s eyes, the sagging skin beneath.

  ‘How long,’ he asked gently, ‘did it take you to travel here?’

  ‘Two days. I could not be sure of Fialangin Fault: it’s an easy place to ambush. We took a roundabout route.’

  Tom understood the trembling weariness which lurked behind Lord Khaliran’s every gesture. ‘You think your own realm might already have fallen.’

  ‘Or been infiltrated. How does it start? My daughters ... No matter. A whole sector is at stake. More than that.’

  ‘They matter,’ said Elva. ‘Everybody matters.’

  ‘As for how it starts’ - Tom stared into his own dark memories - ‘no-one knows how the Anomaly works. Does a mental influence reach through spacetime, Absorbing victims? Or does the Anomaly first manifest itself, transporting some of its component entities into place?’

  Tom’s stomach rambled, and something sour moved inside him.

  ‘Excuse me.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll be back in just a minute.’

  ‘My Lord.’

  Elva was already opening up a network diagram showing resistance cells and how they might communicate. ‘You’ll notice in this holo that the internode coupling varies according to—’

  Tom stepped through the nearest membrane door, and froze.

  There’s something odd here.

  Guards came to attention.

  ‘Relax,’ Tom said. ‘Um, can you show me where the ablutions chamber is?’

  ‘My Lord.’ One of the guards gestured and the opposite wall liquefied. ‘The nobles’ facilities are down the corridor, but... just through there, is where we go. If you’re, er, in a hurry—’

  Ah. A door there. Right there. That’s right. I remember ...

  ‘This is fine,’ said Tom. ‘Thanks, my friend.’

  Five minutes later, Tom was cleansing his face and hand with wood-scented smartgel. As he scraped it off, it crept back into its pewter container, leaving him feeling fresh. A mirrorfield shimmered into existence, allowing him to check that his tunic was in order, his half-cape hanging straight.

  Then Tom noticed that there was another way out of this place, a door directly opposite the way he came in, and he knew that he should step through it.

  Elva can handle things.

  Maybe it was a subconscious desire to see more of the realm his true love had made her own. Perhaps Tom could not bear, for the moment, to return and see Lord Khaliran’s strained fatigue as he worried about his daughters’ Fate. There had been too many families split up by—

  A hand outstretched on a flagstone, cold and unmoving.

  Then Tom shook his head and the image was gone.

  They‘re dead. Khaliran’s daughters are dead.

  Tom could not know that. How could he? Yet... he was certain, as he walked through the membrane, that the young women had fought back, choosing to die rather than to be Absorbed.

  What am I doing here?

  In front of Tom, an iron grille set in a circular opening swung back, revealing steps formed of alternating green and blue minerals. They led down to a piazza paved with chequered quartz and lucite blocks, where a small group of fit-looking men and women had congregated at the centre. They drew Tom’s attention: all dressed similarly (though not identically) in dark, sober, functional clothes.

  Other people were moving around, rushing on business, buying minrasta cakes from a floating vend-stall - this place must lie beyond the Palace proper - but the dark-clothed group was different.

  Elva’s people?

  There was a conspiratorial closeness to the way they stood, but not overtly so. Something was bothering Tom ...

  A tingling spread across his neck, rose up between his shoulder blades.

  Down in the piazza the group was breaking up, splitting away in ones and twos into the crowd, making their way to exit corridors, while the lean young man who was the leader turned and—

  Sweet Fate no.

  —revealed, in one easy athletic movement, the abbreviated left sleeve which depended from his left shoulder.

  Then he was striding fast towards the widest exit.

  Who are you?

  Was gone.

  By the time Tom recovered enough mental equilibrium to move, there was no point in trying to follow the one-armed man. Besides, it was irrational. The pure coincidence of someone whose Fate had been hard and similar to Tom’s own ... was no reason for pursuit or confrontation.

  And yet, and yet...

  He was their leader.

  It looked so very much like a clandestine cell. Not of the Absorbed. Maybe not even an intelligence organization. It just felt like—

  Tom shook his head.

  I don’t know what it felt like.

  As he retraced his steps, with the iron grille swinging shut behind him, weird thoughts and odd emotions twisted inside Tom’s mind. What had impelled him to visit this place, at just the right moment to catch that unsettling glimpse of someone so like himself? And why did it seem so familiar, when he had never been in this realm before?

  It doesn‘t matter.

  Elva looked up and smiled as Tom entered the conference chamber; and everything was perfect.

  ~ * ~

  31

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  They made love and slept and made love again, and in the morning, Tom and Elva went shopping; but there was more to the walkabout than procuring a few goods. Elva, as Liege Lady of this realm, could have ordered her servitors to acquire anything she wanted; strictly, no-one could force her to pay within her own borders.

  As they passed through airy arcades and trading halls on the Secundum Stratum directly below the Palace, Elva exchanged greetings with merchants and ordinary freedfolk, all the while gauging the mood of her populace. It was something Tom should have done, back in his brief period of rule in Corcorigan Demesne. Yet he had always felt uncomfortable with old manipulative techniques which reinforced the status quo.

  Some revolutionary I am.

  Tom had wanted individuals to be free, not treated as chattels. Now they were to be Absorbed into a vast entity which would consider them to be no more than microscopic cells among the trillions which formed its distributed self.

  ‘I’m going to visit the armoury.’ Elva touched his arm. ‘Why don’t you head down to the Tertium Stratum? Ginvol and Arkin can accompany you.’

  Elva made a subtle head movement, and two Halberdiers in civilian clothes came out of the crowd and stood before her.

  ‘Downstratum?’ said Tom.

  ‘There’s a place called Voort’s Warren. I don’t know how many dramacrystals they have in stock, but it’s a vast number. Thousands.’

  ‘Ah.’ Tom smiled.

  There’s no time for frivolity.

  Yet this was what made people human: the small, civilized things.

  And there’s no danger imminent.

  Tom was growing to trust his instincts, and in any case he knew that Elva needed time to think about how they were going to conjoin their forces, and where they were going to live. He nodded to the two Halberdiers. ‘Show me the way—’

  Yes. This is right.

  ‘—and I’ll try not to stay browsing too long.’

  Elva smiled. ‘You’ll bore them rigid, but that’s all right.’

  The Halberdier called Ginvol gave a discreet bow. ‘The floor hatch is this way, my—’

  Tom was already headed in the right direction, as if he were intimately familiar with this realm, though this was his first time here. He found his way among the trading hall’s pillars and aisles with a certainty whose origin he could not have named.

  Two hours of browsing musty racks in low-ceilinged chambers lit by mutated crimson fluorofungus: that was Tom’s idea of a good time. As he paid for the small sack of crystals - the store’s owner raising his eyebrows at the breadth of Tom’s interests - one of the Halberdiers sighed, then reddened as Tom looked at him.

  ‘Beg your pardon, sir. I didn’t mean—’

  ‘No problem. Why don’t we go somewhere where we can sit and have some daistral?’

  ‘Er...’

  The other Halberdier spoke up: ‘There’s a good place nearby. Mad Molly’s Meeting Mall, though I don’t know who Molly is, or was. Probably died decades back.’

  Tom looked at the storekeeper, who shrugged. ‘I don’t know who Mad Molly was either,’ said the man, ‘but it is a good place to eat.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Tom. ‘That’s decided.’

  There was a bustling energy in Mad Molly’s Meeting Mall which Tom enjoyed. Occasionally, faint scents of ganja escaped from membrane-sealed booths at the rear, but airplants quickly swallowed the vapours, cleansing the

  Tom sat with Ginvol and Arkin at one corner of the noisy, twenty-sided chamber, while servitrices moved among the tables, taking orders and delivering food. There were no tabletop terminals or house drones here: this was the personal touch.

  When the food came, Tom poked at his Mad Molly’s Mycoprotein Pie with his blue tine-spoon. Hot pastry crumbled, smelling heavenly.

  ‘Good,’ he said, noticing that the other two were already tucking in.

  Among the clientele were rough-clad runners - couriers whose area of coverage was within the demesne, but covered many strata - who had their own dress code and slang, from the few sentences Tom managed to overhear.

  But he was hungry, and it was the pie and vegblock which held most of his attention until one of the runners called out a greeting - ‘Hello, young Jissie!’ - and Tom’s mouth turned dry as the tine-spoon slipped from his fingers and clattered against his plate, spilling lumps of pie, though he hardly noticed it.

  ‘Hey, Jissie,’ said a second runner. ‘How’s it going?’

  The girl led a group of dark-clad young toughs, streetwise teenagers who looked older than their years. Jissie grinned back at the runners, raised her forefinger in a victory salute. The boys accompanying her walked with a swagger which would have amused Tom under other circumstances.

  No...

  Silver chains hanging in catenary curves across the youngsters’ tunics were not just decoration: they were steel whips sticky-tagged in place, ready to be ripped off and used as weaponry. Still, Tom hoped they were more for show than actual use.

  But that was not the realization that drew steel talons down Tom’s back.