The sneezing abated and he rubbed at his streaming eyes with grimy fingers, blinking at the glowing desk lamp and the row of respectful spiders sitting along its rim.

  Slowly, careful of cramped legs and spine, he eased out of the rickety chair and stretched; checked his wrist and bit off a curse.

  Nearly six hours wasted in sleep while he was no wiser regarding the Trident than he had been when he had slipped into the Library twelve hours ago and had been relieved both to find the place standing unmolested and that someone had disposed of Shilban's body.

  "No Blue House for you, lucky old man," Gem whispered, and shook himself sharply, lest he indulge in another bout of swearing directed at Saxony Belaconto and her tribe of murderers.

  No Blue House for the scholar—and no help for Gem, who had some skill as a researcher, but none to match Shilban's genius, and who was armed with a puzzle that was like to be his downfall. And Corbinye's, as well.

  Wearily, he sat back in the chair, ignoring his stomach's growling, and pulled the crumbling volume he'd fallen asleep over into the pool of light beneath the patient spiders.

  "And in the beginning was the Father and the Sister and the Brother and each held a mighty instrument of power." The passage was faded, cracking, splotched with mildew. Gem squinted and reached up to adjust the lamp.

  "Time wore wearily on. The Brother and the Sister copulated and their union produced children, who became the Five Telios of the Bindalche.

  "More time passed, and the Father and the Brother and the Sister decided to test the might of their weapons, each against the other, to see who was the greatest of the three. The contest raged for years, as the Telios measure time, and laced the sky with lightnings, broke mountains, sundered valleys, boiled and loosed the seas.

  "The Brother fell first, his Spear of Light shattered by the Father's Sword, and in giving up its magic, destroyed the Brother, though he was a god.

  "Then the Father joined battle with the Sister—Sword against Trident—and the skies opened and rained rock down upon the wondering Telios, while strange winds blew from all directions at once, and snow fell, blinding, while the sun burned the land to dust."

  Gem frowned, rubbed at his forehead and carefully lifted the fraying page to turn it.

  "After season upon season of striving against each other, the Father at last cornered the Sister in a cul-de-sac of heaven and raised his sword to sever the Trident and prove himself most powerful.

  "But the Sister brought the Trident up and stared at the Father, remembering that the Father had slain her Brother and her Lover and, in an anger so great the seas roared and the ground buckled, she thrust hard and true and impaled the Father upon the Trident's prongs.

  "The Father screamed and flamed and died, Sword rupturing as he went. Likewise, the Sister screamed, and threw the Trident from her in loathing before she turned her thought upon herself and followed Brother and Father into unlife."

  "Nice family," Gem mumbled and knuckled his eyes before turning the page again.

  "The Trident fell among the Telios, who gathered 'round, but did not dare lay hands upon it. The great chiefs of the Bindalche came and fasted and dreamed beside it and in their dreams it was told that the Trident was the guardian and the master of the Bindalche, children of the Brother and the Sister, grandchildren of the Father; and that the deeds of the Trident are inextricably bound up in the deeds of the Bindalche and in the deeds of those the Trident chooses.

  "For, lo, the Trident does chose its own pathway, for the glory of its Children, and one shall be appointed by the Telios to walk three steps behind and mark well the Trident's choices."

  What? Gem read that bit again, trying to ignore the cramping of his belly—in fear? in hunger?

  "And the Trident shall go where the Trident shall go, according to its own need and desire and the duty of he who walks behind shall be to watch and remember rightly until such time as his memory becomes the memory of the Telios and another is called to follow the Trident's choice."

  "Bodyguard," Gem whispered, leaning back in the chair and staring, unseeing at the motionless row of spiders. "Jarge Menlin comes home with the Trident and a bodyguard—who is no bodyguard at all, but the Trident's memory." He snorted. "The Trident's operator, more likely!" He recalled the bits of technology fused to the Trident's skin—and the ugly little myth hinted that the Trident was technology of some alien sort. . ..

  "Gods of fools and children." He closed his eyes.

  After a time, he opened them again, gathered his spiders up, straightened the desk and turned out the light. On his way down the stairs, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored ceiling—rumpled, grimy, hair dusty and straggling out of the ribbon, a smear of gray book dust on his cheek, another across his forehead.

  On the verandah, he paused to order his thoughts. First, a shower, clean clothes. Breakfast. Then, a stop at the Blue House, to check on Corbinye's progress before he spoke with Saxony Belaconto.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She sat behind the desk and stared at him as he came down the room; a tallish and slender young man dressed in quiet elegance, from the glittering hand-rings to the cunning, spider-shaped brooch pinned over his heart, the very picture of civilized sophistication. Which appearance, she had learned from his cousin just recently, could be very misleading.

  "Well, Master ser Edreth."

  "No," he said coldly, stopping and fixing her in those large and remarkable eyes; "not well, lady."

  "I'm distressed to hear you say it," she drawled. "In what humble way may the Vornet assist you?"

  He glanced at his wrist, then back up to her face. "By allowing me to visit my cousin." He waited, and when she did nothing more than lift her eyebrows, added: "The Blue House turned me away, saying that my name had been struck from the Visitor's Roster—and that it was at your instruction."

  "Surely, Master ser Edreth, I am not such a fool as to grant you unlimited time to visit your so-lovely cousin while you have a job to do for me." She paused. "Quite a challenging job, I do believe, and one that should, in all fairness, command your entire attention. Time enough for lust and familial remembrances when the job is through."

  Impossibly, the large eyes widened; he glanced at his wrist again and bowed, slightly and ironically. "Indeed, as you point out, a very challenging job. And one that grows more challenging by the hour. I had originally thought to come here, not on behalf of my cousin, but to discover whether there was anything else that the Vornet was hiding from me?"

  She stiffened. "And what does that mean?"

  "Why, only that the Vornet left it to me to discover that the artifact it desires in fact is contained in two packages, rather than one." Another quick glance at his wrist.

  "A minor problem," she drawled, relaxing slightly, "for an artist such as yourself, sir."

  "Hardly." The eyes were sapphire cold. "I am not a kidnapper, lady."

  Deliberately, she pushed the chair back and stood, making no effort to mask her displeasure.

  "You will explain yourself and then you will be gone about your business, Master ser Edreth. I do not exist for your amusement or your convenience. I remind you a second time that you have a commission to fulfill and that time is a precious commodity."

  He shrugged, markedly uncowed by her display. "It is merely that it astounds me," he said, and the irony in his voice crackled along her nerves, so that she longed to slap his face, or to call in a bullteam and have him hurt more fully, "that the researchers of the Vornet, who must be among the best in the business of garnering information, should have missed the fact of the Trident's operator."

  "Operator." She blinked at him. "Jarge Menlin controls the Trident."

  "Not so," he corrected sharply. "The Trident currently resides with Jarge Menlin and the Bindalche tithe him because of it. But the important person—the Trident's operator—is the one your report dismisses as a mere bodyguard. Without this man, the Trident is merely an interesting pre-tech art object." He glanced at his wrist; back to her face. "I repeat: I am not a kidnapper."

  She thought, and he glanced at his wrist yet again, so that she snapped at him to have done. "You were the one who forced this interview, Master ser Edreth! Leave over looking at your watch!"

  He started; bowed. "Certainly, lady."

  She frowned. "Shall I detach one of my own to go with you and deal with the operator's persuasion?"

  He laughed, and the spider on his tunic seemed to blink its purple eyes.

  "Those you employ seem clumsy in the extreme, lady. If an equal may say it to you. I merely wish you to be apprised of the case; to inquire whether there is anything else the Vornet knows that it has not told me; and to inform you that the deadline runs a fair possibility of not being met, in light of this complication."

  She went cold; drew herself stiffly up. "The deadline is not negotiable, Master ser Edreth. Do not speak to me of complications. You refuse the Vornet's assistance. The Trident and whatever must attend it to make it whole will be here in this room no later than First Dawn, Obret eighteenth." She stared at him intently. "Understand me: If these things are not in this room by one minute after Dawn's chime, your cousin is forfeit."

  "I understand you, lady." He bowed, with a show at least of respect. "I leave you now, with permission."

  "Go," she said curtly, and watched him walk, all graceful, across the room and out the door. When the door closed, she sat down, hard; and covered her face with her hands.

  * * *

  Gem went down the hall and was let out into the dimming Second Noon by an armed guard. He went down the steps into the street, well pleased with himself and with Number Eleven, riding so bravely on his tunic.

  Mapped, analyzed and recorded by spider senses were each bug, telltale and alarm node in Saxony Belaconto's private office. Gem grinned as he turned his steps toward MidTown.

  Such information was very, very valuable.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  "What are you doing here?"

  The one who demanded it was thin and small and sharp: a sliver-knife of a woman, with an ill-natured, sallow face. The tag on her shirt read "Aide".

  Corbinye looked down on her—necessary, even from this body's diminished height—and lifted a shoulder.

  "I am walking to the observation port," she said mildly. "The nurse had said it was in this direction."

  "You're not allowed to walk the halls by yourself!" the little woman snapped. "Patients must be accompanied by a nurse or a therapist, and you must go at your assigned time. You can't just go to the sun room whenever you feel like it!" Suspicion sharpened her face further. "How did you get out of your room?"

  "The door was open," said Corbinye. And so it had been, though briefly, as the nurse, he of the happily unobservant nature, had quit the room. The halls had been quite empty, due to the lateness of the hour; and she had begun to believe in escape.

  All for naught, now; hopes broken on this grudging blade of a woman. Corbinye inclined her head, feeling the weariness etched into her bones and the beginning of deep muscle tremor, as will happen, when one has pushed oneself past sense and strength.

  "I'll go back to my room," she murmured; "and ask my nurse to bring me, tomorrow."

  "I'll take you back to your suite," the aide snarled, and Corbinye silently cursed her and the gene pool from which she'd been spawned. "What's your room number?"

  Corbinye sighed. "Fourteen eighty-six."

  The ruin of her hopes was nearly worth the opportunity to behold the expression on the little woman's face. "Fourteen?" she squeaked.

  "Indeed, yes," Corbinye said solemnly; "fourteen."

  "This is the ninth floor." Confusion blurred the sharp-featured face for an instant, and was replaced by determination. "What's your name?" she demanded.

  "Corbinye Faztherot."

  The aide thumbed a stud on her belt-comm, rapped out a request for room number verification on Corbinye Faztherot, and frowned quite blackly when a tinny voice told her, "Fourteen eighty-six."

  "Patient found wandering on Floor Nine," she snarled. "Send a chair and a team."

  "Indeed," Corbinye protested untruthfully, "I can walk back to my rooms. It's the merest step."

  "Shut up!" the aide shouted, goaded past the limits of her patience.

  Corbinye shut up and they waited, glaring silently at each other, for the arrival of the chair.

  * * *

  When they had gone, she got out of bed and went out into the antechamber in her sleeping-gown. The door would, of course, be locked. She tried it anyway, then went around the room, turning on the lamps.

  This done, she sat down before the mirror and began to unbraid her hair, slanting sidelong glances at her reflection as she did. The face of the woman in the mirror held a certain fascination, though she had long since stopped looking for clues of Corbinye Faztherot in the high cheeks and smooth skin; or in the black, black eyes.

  Tonight, a glimmer caught her half-glance, so that she looked up fully at the mirror—and saw the spider hanging there.

  No ordinary spider, such as might be found in even the most pristine of Grounder homes. This was rather a large spider—perhaps the size of her new fist—and its eyes gleamed a friendly and interested yellow.

  Corbinye drew a short breath—barely more than a dry sob against the tightness of her throat. The next went better, and she said, very softly, "Anjemalti?"

  There was no answer, save that the spider shifted a bit and slid down-mirror, trailing a line of fine black silk.

  Corbinye sighed and picked up her comb, sternly forcing trembling fingers to yield to her will and perform their function, weary or no. She glanced up again as she pulled comb through extravagant Grounder-length hair, and saw the spider cutting capers across smooth glass, describing spirals and lunges and—

  GEM SENDS GREETING the black silk spelled. AND ASKS IF YOU ARE WELL

  She stared, comb frozen; recalled herself and completed the stroke.

  CORBINYE the spider spun. COUSIN

  "I am well," she whispered, wondering how he could hear her; wondering if he could see her. "I exercise, Anjemalti; and grow strong."

  THE VORNET REVOKES MY RIGHT TO VISIT the silken letters spelled. EXERCISE GROW STRONG BE BIDDABLE I WILL COME FOR YOU

  "Saxony Belaconto says that she will kill you, cousin."

  The spider described an arc, dropped down and wrote SHE MAY TRY

  Corbinye grinned, and the woman in the mirror for a moment gleamed wolfish, before she sobered and asked the spider, "When will you come?"

  TWO DAYS the spider spun out; and then, much more slowly TRUST ME

  "I trust you," she murmured and suddenly closed her eyes, as fear and loneliness held him up before her mind's eye: young and comely and graceful, with his Grounder hair and his face that was the face of the Crew. She swallowed hard and hoped that he could not see her, and be ashamed for the weakness of her tears.

  "I trust you," she whispered again and opened her eyes.

  The spider had dropped even lower on the mirror. THIS IS NUMBER FIFTEEN WHO WILL STAY WITH YOU BE WISE GROW STRONG

  "Yes."

  COURAGE CORBINYE The silken letters conveyed not reprimand, but compassion and she felt her heart ease somewhat, that he was not, after all, ashamed of her.

  I GO NOW

  "Take good care, Anjemalti," she said softly.

  The spider spun at the end of its lifeline; then danced back along the word-webs, swallowing its own silk until the mirror was empty except for the reflection of the exotic Grounder woman, patiently combing her hair.

  Number Fifteen swung down to the vanity and picked its dainty way across the littered top. Corbinye lowered her comb to watch, and shivered as spider-claws minced across her hand, to her sleeve, and thence downward, until Number Fifteen slipped into the pocket of her gown.

  Sternly, she raised the comb and finished dressing her hair for the night. Then she rose and went methodically around the room, turning off all the lights except for one. She tried the door again and went into the bedroom to lie down.

  She closed her eyes and tried to will the body into relaxation, though tension sang through her, and longing, and a bone-deep weariness that pitched the mind past exhaustion and into hyperawareness. As she lay there struggling to impose a seemly discipline, she heard a scrabbling nearby and opened her eyes.

  There, brave in the wash of the light from the room beyond, golden eyes glowing valiantly, Number Fifteen stood upon her pillow, guarding her rest.