“No,” Zefla said. “Buying some defunct mining claim, forging docs and pretending to the throne…” She shook her head. “Pharpech’s complexities all seem to be in the distant past; there’s no confusion recent enough to exploit. Unless I can dig up something very unexpected indeed, we aren’t going to crack this one via the legal route. I’ll keep looking, though.”
“Okay,” Sharrow said. “I’ll check out the travel possibilities, but assuming that doesn’t take long, let me know if I can help you or the boys.” She reached into her satchel. “Here, I got this phone…”
“Right.” Zefla tapped the code for Sharrow’s disposable phone into her own. “How’s your hotel?”
“Comfortable. In the Artists’ Quarter.”
“What’s it like these days?”
“Full of artists.”
“No improvement, then.”
“Even more twee, if anything.”
“And the hunkies?”
“I have a horrible feeling nothing’s changed there either; the good-looking ones are gay and the interesting ones turn out to be mad.”
“Hard times,” Zefla agreed.
“Hmm.” Sharrow nodded, a pained expression on her face. “It’s been too long,” she said. “I hear words like ‘hard’ and I’m in danger of sliding off my seat.” She looked out at the gentle, filtered light of afternoon… “Doesn’t help having all these huge fucking towering columns rearing up all over the place here, either…” She sighed. “I may be forced to desperate measures; I haven’t seen one for so long I’m starting to forget what they look like.”
“Well, hey,” Zefla said, looking amused. “There’s always Miz. He’d be up for it.”
She shook her head. “I know. But…” She looked away.
“Old wounds, eh?” Zefla said, washing her sandwich down with some wine.
Sharrow gazed away with a lost expression Zefla knew from over a decade and a half earlier. “Yeah, old wounds,” she said quietly.
“Good afternoon, Madam. How may I help you?”
“Good afternoon. I’d like a FrintArms HandCannon, please.”
“A-? Oh, now; that’s an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady. I mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I say they have a right to. But I think… I might… Let’s have a look down here. I might have just the thing for you. Yes; here we are! Look at that, isn’t it neat? Now, that is a FrintArms product as well, but it’s what’s called a laser; a light-pistol some people call them. Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won’t spoil the line of a jacket and you won’t feel you’re lugging half a tonne of iron around with you. We do a range of matching accessories, including-if I may say so-a rather saucy garter holster; wish I got to do the fitting for that! Ha; just my little joke. And there’s even… here we are; this special presentation pack; gun, charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your next battery. Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free lessons at your local gun club or range. Or there’s the special presentation pack; it has all the other one’s got but with tyro charged batteries and a nightsight, too. Here; feel that-don’t worry; it’s a dummy battery -isn’t it neat? Feel how light it is? Smooth; see? No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, and beautifully balanced. And of course the beauty of a laser is, there’s no recoil. Because it’s shooting fight, you see? Beautiful gun, beautiful gun; my wife has one. Really. That’s not a line; she really has. Now, I can do you that one-with a battery and a free charge-for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special offer for one-nineteen, or this, the special presentation pack for one-forty-nine.”
“I’ll take the special.”
“Sound choice, madam, sound choice. Now, do-?”
“And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three six-five AP/wire-flechettes clips, two bi-propellant HE clips, two incendiary clips, and a Special Projectile Pack if you have one; the one with the embedding homing rounds, not the signallers. I assume the nightsight on this toy is compatible.”
“Aah… Yes, and how does madam wish to pay?”
She slapped her credit card on the counter. “Eventually.”
She walked away from the gun shop, the satchel heavy on her shoulder. She bought a newssheet and read it on the open-top deck of the tram she took back to the Artists’ Quarter.
She scanned the flimsy, thumbing through its stored pages on fast-forward and stopping to look closely at something only once.
She’d glanced at the race results from Tile.
One of the runners-up the day before had been Dance of Death.
10 Just A Concept
“Mmm. Hello?”
“Hiya, doll. Oh. ‘Doll’, that wasn’t very… Shit.”
“Get on with it, Zef.”
“Sorry. Meet me at the Crying Statue in an hour; how’s that?”
“Too damn succinct for a lawyer.”
“I’m out of practice.”
“I know the feeling. The Crying Statue, in an hour.”
“See you there, doll… Shit.”
Two women made their way from the Crying Statue in Malishu’s Tourist Quarter across the carved-open arc of Tube Bridge to the University Precincts. Above them, the mid-morning mists were lifting into the air amongst the stalk towers and stay-cables of the Entraxrln, obscuring the distant, under-ocean view of the highest membrane layers.
They walked quickly along pavements still damp from the morning smir. Sharrow, in a long dark dress and jacket and the high-heeled boots she tended to favour when going anywhere with Zefla, strode determinedly with her head up, a severe, slightly forbidding look on her face, discouraging contact. The striking, sternly poised face, dramatic auburn hair and precise, upright carriage almost disguised the fact that every second step was a slight fall, a tiny flaw in the pattern, a misplaced beat in the rhythm of her body.
Zefla strolled-long-stepped in culottes and a light coat-shirt-with an almost disjointed looseness, head moving from side to side, smiling at everyone and no-one, walking with a kind of easy familiarity as though she belonged here, knew these people, made this walk every day.
Heads turned as they crossed the bridge over the trickle-throated bed of the Ishumin rivet and entered the partially walled warren of the university; merchants at stalls lost the thread of their sales pitch, people using phones forgot what they were talking about, passengers at tram stops neglected to press the call-button for the next tram so that it rushed clanking past them; at least two men, looking back over their shoulders, bumped into other people.
Sharrow started to get uneasy as they passed through Apophyge Gate into the dark clutter of the Literature Faculty prefecture. “You sure you weren’t followed?” she asked Zefla.
Zefla looked mildly incredulous. “Of course I was followed,” she said scornfully. “But never by anybody with anything lethal in mind.” She put her arm through Sharrow’s and looked quietly smug. “Quite the opposite, I imagine.”
“I’d forgotten we could be conspicuous,” Sharrow admitted, but seemed to relax a little. She lifted her gaze from the cramped cobble-barks of Metonymy Street to the airy sweep of stay-cables describing elegant arcs above the distant grid of the Mathematics Faculty. She began to whistle.
They walked on, still arm-in-arm. Zefla looked thoughtful for a while, then smiled; a youth crossing the street in front of them with an armful of ancient books, caught unintentionally in the beam of that smile, promptly dropped the tomes. Zefla went, “Whoops,” as she stepped over the crouching student’s head, then gazed at Sharrow.
“Whistling…” Zefla said.