Hrigis was another ancient spirit within a preserved shell, the youthful elasticity of her body wrapped oddly about the ancient spirit sitting like a shriveled nutmeat inside it. Though Hrigis was brighter and sharper, more energetic than Filiannis, her green Vryhh eyes had all the warmth and welcome of polished jade; perhaps she’d used up her whole store of emotion so long ago she couldn’t even remember how feeling felt. Her voice was a rather musical soprano, practiced and precise, counterfeiting the life she lacked. “Welcome to Vrithian, Aleytys Shareem’s daughter, daughter of the line of Tennanth, kin and kind.” She took Aleytys’s hand briefly, dropped it. “Go warily, Aleytys, you have enemies here. Once Kell issues his challenge and you leave the Mesochthon, you’ll be a target. I expect he’ll show up as soon as this tedious little ceremony is completed. Do be careful. You’re more interesting and I’m sure far pleasanter to have about than he is.”

  Shareem caught hold of Aleytys’s arm and led her away. Her hand was shaking; she looked frightened. “I thought we’d have more time,” she murmured, “I should have known someone would get word to him I was bringing you.”

  “It had to come sooner or later,” Aleytys said quietly. “Better now while we’re expecting him. Besides, it gets him away from Grey and Shadith.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. At least he can’t attack you until he announces his challenge, but I thought we’d have more time to get dug in before he got here.” She pulled her hand down her face, wiping away the worry with it, the effort concealed behind the smile evident in the rigid set of her shoulders.

  Aleytys looked around. “We’re more than slightly outnumbered.”

  Shareem sniffed. “These? They’re terrific when they’re beating up on unarmed Vrithli, but show them a real fight and they’ll dive for cover.”

  “Even mice are bad when they’ve got numbers on their side.”

  “They won’t touch either of us here. Now shut up, one more to go.” She raised up on her toes. “Right, follow me.”

  Loguisse was the last of the Tetrad, the same mix of age and youth, she was smaller than the other two women, with sharp but delicate features, and (according to Shareem) a tendency to retreat into the intricacies of her own mind. She was a mathematician working in realms so esoteric no one else on Vrithian could come close to understanding what she did. Unlike the other three Tetrarchs, she continued to work in her field, even left Vrithian to attend conferences with other mathematicians. She maintained a steady contact with a web of her peers across known space, using Ibex as a transfer node for com-calls, since she could not speak directly from Vrithian without revealing its location, something she was not about to do. Of the four Tetrarchs, Loguisse was the one most fully committed to accepting her. Among other reasons, she preferred Aleytys to Kell because he was too turbulent and too unpredictable, too apt to destroy Vrithian and all the Vrya in his attempt to fill the holes in his soul. Her hand was cool and dry, her fingerbones like birdbones; they felt so fragile Aleytys was afraid of crushing them and glad when Loguisse took her hand back. “Welcome, Aleytys Atennanthan, daughter of Vrithian.” She smiled a little vaguely, then drifted away.

  “Well, that’s it, Lee. You’re now a Vryhh of Vrithian.”

  “Any reason to stay here longer? If I’m the excuse for this party, I’m certainly not its shining light.”

  “Let’s find Hyaroll and get him to let us in Synkatta’s. Forget this bunch. I didn’t expect much from them, though I did hope Aglao and Ruth and a couple others would be here.

  They sort of promised …” She looked around. “And Rodyom, rats gnaw his toes, he probably forgot what century he’s in.” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s one thing you’re going to have to live with, Lee—the best of us isn’t all that reliable when it conies to remembering engagements.”

  Aleytys chuckled. “Poor Mama—stood up by how many?”

  “Hah, respect for your elders, child.” She began scanning the crowd for the massive figure of the Tetrarch; with his size and width he should have been easy enough to locate, but there was no sign of him. Absently, Shareem said, “I didn’t want to give you a total disgust of your kind; I thought I’d pull in some of the Strays, add some flavor to the mix.” She chewed on a knuckle a moment, then started moving. “Help me find him, Lee. We’ve got to get you installed in your new property.”

  Aleytys followed her mother as she went quickly from divider to divider, circling the huge room in her search, growing more and more anxious as it became clear that Hyaroll had already left. “I didn’t expect a house given to me,” she said. “Thought I’d have to buy one. As on Wolff.”

  “Har’s head of Tennanth-line, Lee. Never mind what Kell told you. Synkatta’s dome came to him when Kata climbed onto his funeral pyre and lit the match. Hyaroll shut it down. Wasn’t anyone around he liked well enough to bestow it on. Damn his thick head, he’s left us floating.”

  “Well, well, it’s mud-face. So you squirmed your way here.”

  Aleytys turned slowly, trying to control the surge of fear and anger that shook her when she heard that deep fluid voice, a voice she’d heard only the one time waking, a thousand times since in nightmare.

  He was still thin, but it was a healthy leanness, not the papery skin over chalk bones she’d seen on Sunguralingu. When she cured him of the disease that was eating his life. His smile became a grimace as she took her time examining him, that assessing gaze reminding him too vividly what he’d been and what she’d done. She felt the fever in him, the need to wipe away the memory of his weakness, but she wasn’t ready to deal with his rage. Or her own. Not yet.

  “As you see,” she said temperately. She heard Shareem’s breath catch, felt her mother’s fingers closing warm on her shoulder; she covered the hand with her own, grateful for the silent support.

  “Mud,” he said, snapped his mouth shut. A moment’s tense silence. “Look at that, all of you.” His voice was hoarse, slipping out of his control; again he clamped his mouth shut. Another silence. Soft scuffle of feet as the Vrya came closer. “Look at what you want to call Vryhh. Wash it till the sun’s a cinder, you won’t get it white.” Another exploding silence. “I will not, I will not have that slime call itself Vryhh. I will not.” Silence. “To the death, Mud.” Silence. “I declare war between us. I declare that you and any who try to help you, Mud, will die at the hands of me and mine.”

  Aleytys sucked in a breath, let it out. “To the death, cousin,” she said quietly, flatly.

  His face went taut, his head back; she thought he was going to explode and attack her, but he swung around and strode away, vanishing into the nearest exit.

  For several breaths after he left, there was total silence, then a murmur of comment growing louder and more excited as the room began to clear.

  Aleytys felt chilled to the bone, anger gone ash inside her; she was suddenly tired to death of all this, the sheer stupidity of it like stones crushing her. “Looks like the party’s over.”

  “I knew it would be bad, but he’s …”

  “He is that.”

  Shareem opened her mouth, closed it, looked helplessly around.

  Aleytys moved her shoulders, shook her arms, straightened her back. “What comes next? What do I do?”

  “The ship, I suppose.” Shareem took a few steps toward an exit, hesitated, came back. “My dome’s in Guldafel, but … there’s almost nothing, no defenses … couldn’t stop a hungry mouse … I’m almost never there. I thought … I don’t know … I thought Hyaroll might take us in. But that’s … he’s not here. I’m sorry, Lee.”

  “He gave me Synkatta’s dome. Why not go there?”

  “We can’t get in until he unpeels it for us. That maggot-head, what good does it do to give you the place if he doesn’t …”

  “I’ll put you up until you can get old Stone Ear’s attention.” Loguisse. She’d come up behind them shadow-silent. “He’ll talk to me most times even when he shuts out everyone else. I wouldn’t mind guests for a few days, and Kell knows better than to worm about in my domain. Besides”—eyes alight with silent laugher—“my androids will love having someone to do for. They complain I need so little that half their circuits are rotting from disuse.” She strolled away, leaving them to follow if they wanted.

  Shareem brightened and started after her. “Thank whatever gods there are, Lee, we’ll make it through the next two three days.” She was almost dancing, her spirits soaring out of the mucky swamp they’d been plodding through for the past several minutes. Aleytys followed, smiling, unable to resist her mother’s pleasure. They stepped into the tunnel a pace or two behind Loguisse.

  “I’ve forgotten too much, Lee, tried to forget it, I suppose. I’ll do better after this, I promise.”

  “Forget that too. We should talk soon. I need to know how this war works. What about the lander?”

  “Best to leave it right here. He’s probably got in and trapped it already.”

  “But you said …”

  “Huh? Oh. The Mesochthon truce ground is just the hall floor.”

  “Aschla’s hells.” Aleytys caught hold of Shareem’s arm and threw her back down the tube, ran ahead, flung a startled Loguisse after Shareem. “Harskari,” she cried, “help me.”

  The amber eyes come open and alert.

  A weight about her head. The diadem begins chiming.

  The air thickens about her.

  A few steps ahead the floor cracks open; pieces of the tube start to fly up and out, then they slow, freeze in place.

  She struggles against the intractable weight of the air, kneels and pushes the pieces of the floor aside; they resist her briefly, but her strength is augmented in this state. She reaches into the hole, gets her hands around the bomb, a black egg with narrow jagged cracks in the heavy casing, the heat inside glowing a murky red. The bomb is small, about the size of her two fists, but its mass almost defeats her. With Harskari urging her to a cautious haste, she manages to pry the bomb loose and stagger to her feet, cradling it against her stomach.

  She lurches along an endless white tunnel until, with a relief that almost undoes her, she sees daylight ahead and the green of grass. Kell or his minions had pried the tube loose from the airlock when they introduced the bomb. Wondering how she is going to dispose of it, she staggers into the sunlight, Harskari warning her she is running out of time and strength. She keeps moving. Past the landing saucer. Across the grass. She bumps into something that feels like the skin on old gelatin, pops through it, realizes that the skin must be the force dome. She slows, stops, remembering that the dome is very close to the cliff edge. She blinks the blurring sweat out of her eyes and finds that the third step on would have been a very long one indeed.

  Throw it,* Harskari says. I can hold the stasis a few minutes longer.

  Arms shaking, she takes another step and heaves the bomb over the cliff edge, wheels and races for the dome, pops through it a breath before Harskari lets go. The explosion finishes itself partway down the cliff but is shunted away from her and the others by the force dome.

  Feeling like a watery pudding, she crashed to her knees and gasped in mouthfuls of shivering air.

  Shareem came running to her, Loguisse following more sedately.

  Aleytys looked up, smiled wearily at her mother. “I wish you’d mentioned a bit earlier that the neutral ground stopped at the hall’s edge.”

  “What a thing …” Shareem pulled Aleytys onto her feet. “You look whipped.” She steadied Aleytys, pulled her daughter’s arm around her shoulders and started walking with her toward Loguisse’s flier. “What did you do?”

  “Time for that later.” Loguisse’s cool, calm voice. She moved past them, stepped onto the landing saucer. “You live up to your reputation. Hunter.” She touched the lock. Over her shoulder, she said, “Wait there a minute.”

  Aleytys clasped her hands behind her head, swayed back and forth, stretching her muscles, feeling a treacherous euphoria flooding her. She’d just been a hairline away from death. Cloud shadows swam in lyrical silence across the shining white face of the cube, but nothing else moved, there wasn’t a stray sound. “I’d have thought there’d be more fuss, Reem. A bomb just exploded, but no one seems to have noticed that.”

  “Oh, they did. They went the other way fast.”

  “That’s how it’s going to be?”

  “Till this is over.”

  “Mmm. Why pick this tube?”

  “Chance, maybe; or they mined all the tubes and only touched off the one you went into. Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not.”

  Loguisse reappeared in the lock. “Come in now.”

  Water from horizon to horizon, bright glittering blue, small tight bumpy wrinkles packed close like pleats in a fan.

  Three black midges come leaping at them from three directions. Loguisse does nothing. They sizzle and phutt out before they come near the flier. Other fliers dip in and out of clouds, so far away they are guesses on the viewscreen; they don’t try to get closer. More missiles. Loguisse sits quietly before the console, a bored look on her still face; the flier handles whatever is thrown at it; nothing comes close enough to shake the air about them.

  As soon at the flier moved over the land, Loguisse woke from her dream; a slight smile on her face, she bent over the console, reading the flood of data, responding with a swift dance of her fingers over the sensor panel. Apparently she guarded her domain as rightly as her dome. The flier lifted, dropped, turned in a complex saraband across the dry harsh land of Yashouk.

  Loguisse’s dome was in the high uplands of Yashouk, in bleak but austerely beautiful canyonlands. Wind-sculpted stone and narrow tortuous canyons with water glinting silver at the bottom of a few. The dome spread over the whole of a broad mesa whose precipitous walls were being gradually eaten away by wind and water and time. Loguisse had lived there most of her ten thousand years; in another ten thousand she might have to move if she didn’t do something to stop that infinitesimal erosion.

  The flier hovered over the dome while she did a final glissade over the sensors, then it dropped slowly, merged with the dome, dropped further into a hole uncovered as a pool slid to one side, dropped down and down the stone shaft, falling into thick darkness, down and down until it feathered to a halt in a vast cavern deep inside the mesa. Light bloomed about them as it settled onto an oval platform some meters above the stone floor.

  Loguisse spoke a single word. “Krasis.” Without bothering with explanation or instruction, she swung her chair around, stood and walked toward the lock, which opened smoothly as she approached, stayed open behind her. She stepped onto nothing with a calm assurance that was immediately justified as a white ceramic disk materialized under her feet and began lowering her to the floor of the cavern. Rather impressed, Aleytys smiled and relaxed. Kell hadn’t a hope of getting in here. A step ahead of Shareem she went to stand in the lock, watching what was happening below.

  As Loguisse drifted downward, a tall golden metal man came with feline grace from a side tunnel and stood waiting. Another of the fantastic androids of Vrithian. It was delighted to have its mistress back, she could feel that—but how could a thing of circuits and crystals feel so intensely about anything, how could it feel at all?

  Loguisse stepped off the disk and sent it back to the lock with a flutter of her fingers. “Kell,” she said. “You know his tricks. Keep him out.” The android walked away, vanishing into the darkness from which it had come.

  Shareem brushed past Aleytys and stepped onto the disk, letting it take her down. Aleytys gazed after the android, puzzled by the relationship between Loguisse and her constructs. She certainly didn’t fuss about ceremony. Robots, androids—not so complex and, well, beautiful as these—existed otherwhere than Vrithian, but most folk who built or owned them demanded servant manners from servants shaped like men. She rather liked the absence of that mindset in Loguisse, but it made her uneasy, made the Tetrarch more enigmatic. She stepped onto the disk Shareem had sent back for her and floated down. It begins, she thought. I’m learning the possibilities wired into me. She stepped off the disk, started to speak, then decided she had nothing she wanted to say. Loguisse looked around, nodded, then started walking up the tunnel the android had taken.

  “Rest as long as you need.” Loguisse tapped a sensor by the door. “If you want anything, this will call your attendant. ‘‘ She smiled vaguely and left.

  Aleytys poked about the small bare room. Perfect order, pleasant enough, but it looked as if it had been wrapped in plastic for a long time and someone had only just broken the seal. She nodded. This only confirmed what she’d felt about Loguisse. The Tetrarch preferred her androids to people; they went quietly about their tasks and left her undisturbed. She didn’t want visitors. Aleytys and Shareem were unwelcome as fleas infesting her extended body no matter what she said; they’d better find a way to leave soon if they wanted to keep her friendly. Aleytys yawned. The long day had left her exhausted. She stripped and showered, then climbed into the narrow bed and dropped into a heavy sleep.

  Glass strips tinkling in the wind, chimes sliding into her sleep.

  She began to wake.

  Soft female voice replacing the chimes: Aleytys, Aleytys, join us for dinner. Aleytys, Aleytys, you’ve slept long enough. Aleytys, Aleytys, let Korray bring you to us. Touch the caller when you want her.

  Aleytys turned over, murmuring drowsily, rubbed at her eyes. The voice shut off. Muttering a little, she got out of bed. While she slept, someone—presumably Korray—had brought a selection of long dresses to the room and hung them on the air at the foot of the bed. She ran her hands through her tangled hair and stared at them. One was blue-green, the color close to matching her eyes, a soft clinging silk, cut to skim the curves of her body, one side slit to the thigh for ease of movement, a scoop neck, long loose sleeves. She wrinkled her nose at it. The second was so dark a green it was almost black; it glowed with the sheen of fine wool. A looser fit; the skirt flared to flow like water about her as she walked. The third was white, a stola made of a supple silky material she didn’t recognize, heavy enough to hang in graceful folds from the round gold brooches that held back to front at the shoulders. Nice to have a choice. She looked about for the comfortably familiar shipsuit, but whoever had brought the dresses had gone off with it, presumably to give it a good cleaning. Lovely service, but I want the suit back. I damn well couldn’t do much fighting or running in any of those.