"Stars and ships, what can she want?"

  No answer to his whisper from the ceiling. Gem closed his eyes. Whatever she wanted, it was no concern of his, for he would not be the one to steal it for her.

  Yet—that not-so-veiled threat, promising another meeting.

  Anxiously, he considered his condition—no kin, that might be used as hostages; no close associates of any kind, now that Edreth was gone. It was true that the Vornet might freeze his accounts, but only a small percentage of his money was banked on Henron, and cash was easily replaced. There was nothing, really, that Saxony Belaconto could use as a lever to move Gem ser Edreth.

  Except himself.

  He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. Drugs existed; pain existed; and disease. The Vornet no doubt employed experts in the application of each. Saxony Belaconto had asked; had condescended to his skill and come herself to reason with him. The next step must be force, for what she wanted she would have; he had seen that in her eyes.

  Breathing a trifle ragged because of the sudden constriction of his chest, he slid out of bed and went into the shower, clearing his mind; trying to count the moves and figure the timing of the thing. For he still had need of Shilban and his wonderful Library, which was the reason he had chosen Henron as a base in the first wise.

  The Vornet would allow him a day to reconsider what he had heard last night, he thought, rinsing soap absently from pale gold hair; and that day he would spend with Shilban, gaining the knowledge necessary to defeat the demon in El Theman's vase. Tonight, he would slip the vase free, and be waiting for Captain Skot and Dart tomorrow dawn. The ship would serve as a sanctuary even the Vornet could not breach. Mayhap he could even show Skot sufficient cause to lift early, though he didn't count on that.

  The shower cycled to cold and he gasped, suddenly and surprisingly longing for a sight of Linzer Skot's sharp-featured, daredevil face.

  "Everything by the numbers," he told himself sternly, as the shower turned itself off and the dryer began to glow. "Retreat may be wise, but you will retreat in good order, one move at a time."

  Chapter Eight

  Would he never come home?

  Corbinye stirred in the wall-niche, went through the Hemvil sequence to ease her cramped muscles and wondered for the eighth time whether she should leave her post across from Anjemalti's house and seek him UpTown.

  As seven times before, she decided to stay where she was. It was so late, a mere hour from Primus Watch, which the Grounders called First Dawn—surely he was even now coming down the outer walk, and would turn the corner in a moment.

  But the moment passed, and a handful of others, and still he did not come.

  To pass the time, she began to plan what she might say to him. It was true that he had infuriated her with his stubbornness and—she allowed herself to know it—terrified her by crying out "Damn the Ship!" as if he were merely a couthless Grounder. But there was some justice in what he did, if one only gave a little thought to how matters must look to him. Sold, made into a thief by a Grounder of the same trade, abandoned, he must think, by Ship and Crew; he enters adulthood, at last his own master—and comes Corbinye Faztherot, her head so full of the Tomorrow Log and Ship's need that she takes no time to speak from the heart, kin-to-kin, and tell him how he had been missed, and grieved over, and sought after.

  She stumbled here in her thoughts, because it was equally true that she had the barest memory of him—a fuzzy vision of a playmate half-a-head shorter than she, inexplicably clumsy in the dim halls and ductways that were the kingdom of children aboard Gardenspot, but very merry for all that, and given to laughter.

  It was him laughing that she best remembered, so the lash of his anger now was more keenly felt. She nodded to herself in the wall-niche and resolved to take care with him this time, and show grace for his hurts.

  She froze, ears catching again the slight scrape of boot heel upon walkstone.

  At last! she thought and leaned forward—and froze, trusting that their poor Grounder eyes would not see her, though her hair must shine like a beacon in the dark, even to them.

  For it was not Anjemalti, but a man and a woman—bulky, as Grounders often are, and moving with a care that screamed of stealth and the intent of deeds best not performed.

  They passed, neither glancing aside, and Corbinye ducked into deeper shadow, watching them down the court.

  Straight up to Anjemalti's door they went, as if they had a right to be there. The woman bent, probing with an instrument so light-gaudy that Corbinye winced in the distance, and strained to see through the multicolored glare. The man grunted audibly, fiddling with the darker machine he carried—and Anjemalti's door swung open to admit them.

  Corbinye hesitated a heartbeat. Then, silent as a shadow, with all the stealth of Worldwalker and Seeker, she slipped down the court and followed them inside.

  * * *

  "Look at 'em fly!" Remee hissed, dancing back as the voltmeter crackled and sparked and fused. She swept a handful of fragile electronic spiders to the floor, laughing as they scrambled for safety; stamping them to bits under her boots. Chel was systematically smashing the instruments, and Remee left the rubble of spiders and began ripping cables loose and yanking various gauges and electronic junk off the wall.

  She dropped a particularly delicate something on the floor and kicked it to bits, destruction-drunk and loving it.

  The woman was on her before she could yell, slamming her head hard against the wall and putting a vicious elbow into her throat. The padding saved her life, but the blow was wicked enough to send her retching to her knees.

  By the time she had groped the infraglasses back onto her face, Chel was swinging his bar at the woman—two-handed, so quick Remee heard it whistle through the air as she anticipated the soggy mess it would make of the woman's head—

  Except the woman's head was no longer where it had been a heartbeat before. She dove for the floor, landed on her hands and continued the roll, space boots in a line with Chel's face.

  He ducked at the last second, bringing the bar around to block the blow—and lost it as the woman twisted and kicked, impossibly sideways, and was back on her feet, blade out, half-crouched in a way that said she knew the worst of knife-fighting.

  Chel dove, even as Remee yelled and launched herself clumsily at the woman's knees.

  Corbinye leapt, used the momentum of the leap to twist—painfully slow in this gravity, though she knew the move as well as the sound of her own heartbeat—hit the floor with both hands, rolled and came up with the jack bar in one hand and the knife in the other.

  The man hesitated; the woman licked her lips.

  Corbinye grinned, beckoned with the knife; tested the weight of the bar. "Can it be you Grounders do not wish to die?"

  "Look—" started the man, and Corbinye let the grin go, slashed air with the bar and yelled, with all the command of one born to be First.

  "You motley pair of roaches! How dare you come into my cousin's house, destroy his works—you should die for that alone! But I feel pity for you, in your stupidity." She paused, filled her lungs to capacity and spent it in a roar. "GET OUT!"

  They got out, running and stumbling as if the dark-seeing glasses they wore were insufficient against the comfortable dimness that pervaded Anjemalti's house. Corbinye tracked them by ear; slipped through the outer rooms to the door—in time to see both intruders turning the corner from the court to the thoroughfare.

  Corbinye shook her head. "So, cousin," she whispered to the lightening gloom, "you had some cause to stay away last night."

  She slipped her knife out of sight and stepped into the court, taking care to lock the door behind her. Frowning, she considered what she knew of his habits and haunts, before carefully going down the court and out into the thoroughfare, across DownTown and into UpTown, to find him.

  Chapter Nine

  Its name, according to the dusty gramarye he'd ferreted out from a low shelf of moldering bound books, was Sarialdan, and it was a demon of most puissant power, which answered to no known spell or amulet of protection.

  Shilban, finally run to ground in the topmost study, stared grumpily at the page thrust under his nose; and then pointed that same nose sharply at Gem.

  "What're ye into now?"

  Gem grinned. "I could do you a disservice and answer."

  "More like not," sniffed the scholar, and shook his frail head. "Fearstone's nothing to play with, young master. Find a safer toy."

  "But this one's found me," Gem murmured, laying the book precariously atop the littered desk and hitching a hip onto the windowsill. "Nearly cost me my life—and it did cost me the job. What if everyone starts importing this Fearstone to guard their belongings? I'll be out of business in a trice."

  "Adopt some other trade in a trice," the old man stated, pulling the gramarye onto his lap and frowning down at the crumbling page. "Doubtless as harebrained as this." He sighed.

  "No need to bother yourself. Rare person who can stand to be in the same room with the stuff. Rarer still to be able to pick it up. Small reason to believe people will leave off nice, comfortable electronic alarms and such to go with something as chancy as Fearstone." Shilban carefully turned the page.

  "The book says there is no antidote," Gem murmured, anxious not to let the old scholar lose himself too far in the volume. "But you just said that some people are more sensitive than others. That some people can hold the stone in their hands?"

  "Well, of course they can. Why shouldn't they?" said Shilban querulously.

  "Because the effects, when the stone is held, are quite devastating," Gem snapped and Shilban cackled.

  "Ah-ah, the young master doesn't like being bested! But there you are—some people are great cowards; others haven't got the sense to fear. Sarialdan isn't alive, it's just a dumb transmitter. All it does is transmit fear, boy. Just fear." He closed the book and put it haphazardly atop a stack of random volumes.

  "Just fear." Gem stared; slipped to his feet and fished a gold round out of his pocket. "Shilban."

  The old man looked up, more than half back into the book he had been studying when Gem had found him. His eyes lighted on the round incuriously.

  Gem took his hand, pressed the coin into his palm, closed the fingers tightly around it. "For you—and my thanks, Scholar, for all your aid."

  "That's all right, lad," the old man muttered, fingers still tight about the coin. "I'll be seeing you, then." He bent his head over the book again.

  "Perhaps you will," Gem said, though he was certain the other did not hear. "But I don't really think so."

  Quietly, as if his steps could have disturbed the other's study, Gem slipped through the room and ghosted down the stairs.

  * * *

  Only fear.

  He walked along the rotting streets of OldTown, wrestling with his thoughts, imposing structure.

  Sarialdan transmitted fear. To best it, he need only acknowledge those things that he feared and recall that these terrors could not themselves cause his downfall.

  He turned a corner, going from shade into brightness; his eyes adjusting instantaneously to keep his vision sharp.

  He feared . . . He feared?

  Death, of course: The lack of breath in the lungs; sightlessness; lack of consciousness forever—or consciousness, knowing oneself dead. Equally horrible. Equally unstoppable. Except on Henron, where the Blue House provided bodies to those who were dying. For a price.

  Gem stopped, staring sightlessly across an overgrown park-square.

  He feared the Blue House.

  To lose his life in the Blue House, while his body served another . . . He shivered in the warm sunlight—and shivered again at the next thought:

  To lose consciousness—and awaken in another body, looking out from behind a face whose expressions he did not know, to be imprisoned by a heartbeat never his own; to learn how to walk again, to run, to eat, to talk—

  His hands were cold; his breathing accelerated; forehead slightly damp. He forced a laugh and shook himself, turning resolutely down a side street. Edreth had once told him that a master thief's greatest asset and greatest enemy was the intensity of his imagination.

  Only fear.

  Something scraped behind him and he spun, fear abruptly replaced by dead calm as the sorl-knife slid into his hand and his body melted into the crouch.

  Corbinye stood two arm's-lengths away, back curled in a half-bow; palms up and out and showing empty. She was looking at a point near his boots.

  He glanced down, saw the mangled remains of his spider; saw her knife beside it, sheathed.

  He looked up and his face was cold, the knife still steady in his hand. Corbinye approved the speed with which he had adopted the fighting crouch, and the soundless smoothness with which he came both ready and armed.

  She did not so much approve that particular look on his face, as if the tiny robot was kin she had laid at his feet; as if her knife, freely offered, meant just less than nothing. She raised her head and looked at him, eye to eye.

  Eyes among the Crew were black or, more seldom, amber. Anjemalti's eyes were blue, which color lent them even more chill. Corbinye began to think that she had reasoned wrongly; that he would not even allow her—

  "Five Words," he snapped and she sighed. Mercy, then, though meager, when the Captain might grant Five, Ten or Twenty Words of formal defense from a Crewmember before passing judgment.

  Still, five words were better than none. Corbinye went to one knee, as befitted a supplicant, and raised her face to his.

  "Housebreakers," she said firmly; "dispatched."

  Almost, she thought a glimmer of humor ran through those chilly eyes; at least his knife went away and he stood up tall.

  "Elaborate."

  She shrugged and stood. "Two people—a man and a woman—came down the court to your house in the hour just before First Dawn. They used an instrument of some kind on the door, entered and began to destroy." She moved a hand toward the shattered robot. "They began in your workshop."

  "So." The eyes were much less chill, though not nearly warm. "You said—dispatched. Dead?"

  "No, Anjemalti. I did not know who they were. I do not know the Grounders' laws. I frightened them away, then locked the door and came to find you with the news."

  "Locked the door . . ." He bent and carefully scooped up the broken spider; took up her knife as an afterthought and extended it, hilt first.

  She took it with a slight bow. "My thanks."

  "My thanks to you," he said absently, most of his attention centered, it seemed, on what he held.

  She watched him for a handful of minutes.

  "You know who did this," she said, certain without knowing why.

  "Yes. . .." Still absent, as though he answered some thought of his own rather than her voice. As she watched, he shook himself, looked at her intently, and said, quite firmly, "Yes."

  "Well, then, if they're less troublesome dead, why do we not grant them the gift?" She grinned. "Little enough challenge for us two, cousin."

  He stared at her, lithe and wolfish before him, with the stark light of First Noon making a halo of her hair, her eyes great and black under arching brows. A comely and capable young woman, single-minded and deadly, as the Crew ever was.

  "Corbinye," he began, and then hesitated, because it seemed that he had only this moment seen her, only this heartbeat understood that he named a person, as solid and as alive as he himself.

  "Corbinye, you do not want to be part of this," he managed, and stopped this time because she laughed.

  "Anjemalti, I am already part of it. Did I not frighten them away and threaten them with mayhem?"

  He shook his head. "Those people were hirelings—the hands and muscle of a great and powerful lady. Of themselves, they are nothing, except that one does not make the mistake of cutting off this lady's hands."

  Corbinye tipped her head. "You are feuding with this other Captain, Anjemalti? If so, then you have need of my service—for you have no hirelings, do you, that you might send to her place in order to exact payment in kind?"

  "I'm not a captain, girl—I'm a thief! And Saxony Belaconto is a chieftain of the Vornet. An unequal contest, I assure you." He saw the puzzlement in her face and answered it. "The lady desires me to steal something for her. Urgently."

  "And she sends people to break your tools and destroy your homeplace to persuade you?" She shook her head in clear disbelief. "It's a madwoman, Anjemalti; disregard her."

  For the first time she heard him laugh, though it was a sharp and bitter thing.