Mostly, she thought, I want to remain attractive to myself. If no man ever saw me again, I’d still want to look good to me. I’d trade five, ten years of life to look like this until the end.
She shook her head at herself, a small frown on her face.
“So die young, narcissist,” she whispered to herself.
At least the Huhsz might ensure she never grew old.
She turned to dress.
The body is a code, she thought, reaching for her slip. And froze, thinking of where she had heard that phrase, and of what she was supposed to discover from Bencil Dornay this evening, and how.
In the curving corridor, by one window looking out into a gulf of darkness strung and beaded with the necklace lights of distant roads and the clustered jewels of towns and villages, opposite the wide staircase that led to the house reception floor, its lit depths already bustling with talk and music and laughter, she found Cenuij Mu sitting on a couch, dressed in a formal black robe and reading what looked like a letter.
He looked up when she approached. He inspected her, then nodded. “Very elegant,” he told her. He looked down at the letter, folded it and put it away in the black robe.
She checked her reflection in the windows, severe in court-formal black. Her dress was floor-length and long-sleeved, decorated with plain platinum jewellery worn around her high-collared neck and on her gloved hands. A black net held her hair, constellated with diamonds. “Court-prophylactic,” she said, turning to check her profile. “Prissy, constipated style,” she told him. She shook her head at her reflection. “Damn shame I look so drop-dead stunning in it.”
She expected a reply to that, but Cenuij didn’t seem to be listening. He was staring into the middle distance.
She sat beside him on the couch, the dress and collar forcing her to sit very erect, her head up. “Was that a letter from Breyguhn?” she asked him.
He nodded, still staring away round the curve of corridor. “Yes. Just delivered.”
“How is she?”
Cenuij shook his head, then shrugged. “She mentioned you,” he said.
“Ali,” Sharrow said. “Did she mention anything about this message I’m supposed to get from Dornay?”
Cenuij shrugged again. He looked tired. “Nothing directly,” he said.
“Can’t help wondering what form it’s going to take,” Sharrow admitted. The music and chattering from the floor below swelled briefly, then ebbed again before Cenuij replied.
“If it’s the sort of thing I think she’s talking about,” he said, “it could be expressed in a variety of ways. He might not simply say whatever it is he knows; it might be encoded as a drawing, some body-pose from a sign-dance, a whistled tune. It could even vary according to the circumstances he’s in when the programming takes over.”
“I’d no idea this was one of your areas of expertise, Cenuij.”
“Merely a smattering,” he said, seeming to collect himself. “Breyguhn knows more.”
“We’ll get her out,” Sharrow told him.
He looked annoyed. “Why do you two hate each other so much?” he asked.
She stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. “Partly your standard sibling rivalry,” she told him. “And the rest is…” She shook her head. “Too long a story. Brey’ll tell you in her own time, I expect.” Sharrow held one of Cenuij’s hands.
“Soon, Cenny; she’ll tell you soon. This nonsense with Dornay should put us on the track of the book; we’ll find it. She’ll be out soon.”
Cenuij looked down, and his hand moved, as though about to take the letter out again. “That’s all I want,” he whispered.
She put her arm round him.
“And you, Sharrow?” he said, twisting away from her to look her in the eye. “What do you want? What do you really want? Do you know?”
She gazed levelly at him. “To live, I suppose,” she said, with what she hoped sounded like sarcasm.
“No good; too common. What else?”
She wanted to look away from his intense, narrow gaze, but forced herself to meet it. “You really want to know?” she asked.
“Of course! I asked you, didn’t I?”
She shrugged. She pursed her lips and looked deliberately away, out into the darkness beyond the windows. “Not to be alone,” she said, looking at him and lifting her chin just a little, as if in defiance. “And not to let people down.”
He gave a harsh laugh and got up from the couch. He stood above her, straightening his robe. “Such a humorist, our little Sharrow,” he said. Then he smiled broadly and put his arm out towards her. “Shall we?”
She smiled without warmth, took his arm and they descended to the party.
There were perhaps a hundred guests. The band was entirely acoustic and by that measure extremely up-to-date; Bencil Dornay’s own kitchen staff had prepared the tables of delicacies themselves. Dornay took her round his guests, introducing them. They were business colleagues, senior staff in his trading firm, a few local dignitaries and worthies, rich friends from nearby houses and some local artists. Sharrow entertained the idea that Bencil Dornay’s guests just happened to be uniformly polite, but guessed that they had been told not to ask any embarrassing questions on the lines, of How does it feel to be hunted by the Huhsz?
“You are very brave, Lady Sharrow,” Dornay said to her. They stood by one of the food-laden tables, watching a juggling troupe perform on a small stage raised in the middle of the reception hall’s dance floor. People had left a discreet clearing round the host and his guest.
“Brave, Mister Dornay?” she said. He had dressed in pure white.
“My lady,” Dornay said, looking into her eyes. “I have requested my guests say nothing about the unfortunate cir-cumstances you find yourself in. Nor shall I, but let me say only that your composure would astonish me, had I not known the family you come from.”
She smiled. “You think old Gorko would be proud of me?”
“It was my misfortune only to meet that great man once,” Dornay said. “A bird cannot land once on a great tree and claim to know it. But I imagine that he would, yes.”
She watched the spinning wands of the jugglers as they flashed to and fro beneath the spotlights. “We believe the Passports my… pursuers require are safe, for now.”
“Thank the gods,” Dornay said. “They appear not to have been initiated but I feared a trick, and we are not so far from their scrofulous World Shrine. I have taken every precaution, of course, but… Well, perhaps I should have cancelled this evening.”
“Ah, now, Mister Dornay, I believe I forbade you…”
“Indeed,” Bencil Dornay laughed lightly. “Indeed. What was I to do? My family no longer exists to serve yours, dear lady, but I am your servant nevertheless.”
“You are too kind. As I say, I believe I am safe for now. And I’m grateful for your hospitality.”
“My house is yours, dear lady; I am yours to command.”
She looked at him then, as the jugglers drew gasps with their complicated closing routine.
“Do you mean that, Mister Dornay?” she asked him, searching his eyes.
“Oh, absolutely, dear lady,” he said, eyes shining. “I am not merely being polite; I mean these things literally. It would be my pleasure and an honour to serve you in any way I can.”
She looked away for a moment. “Well,” she said, and smiled waveringly at him. The lights came up as the jugglers finished their display to decorously wild applause. “I… I do have a favour to ask you.” She had to raise her voice a little to make herself heard.
Dornay looked delighted, but from the corner of her eye she could see guests-released from the spell of the juggling troupe-moving a little closer to her and Dornay and looking expectantly at the two of them. She let him see her gaze flick around the people. “Perhaps later,” she said, smiling.
She stood on the terrace, a drink in her hand, the darkness at her back as she leant against the shoulder-high parapet, the reception room like a giant bright screen in front of her. People were dancing inside. Clouds hid the junklight.