"Fool," he muttered to himself as he leaned on the doorjamb to the stairwell. As Sacrus's representative on Spyre's grand council, he'd had a legitimate claim to all of Sacrus's remaining assets after the destruction of Spyre. He could have fought Inshiri for them--should have taken it down to a contest of loyalties and cunning then, when she was vulnerable. He had all of Sacrus's foreign operations in his hand, since he'd been able to act days before any of the surviving members of the ruling families thought to try it themselves.
But with the reins of true power in his hands at last, Jacoby Sarto had lost his nerve. Now he looked at the blood-soaked bandages wrapped around his left hand and said, "You've got no one to blame but yourself, Jacoby."
Unused to wielding power for his own sake, he'd found he had no idea what to do with the resources he'd acquired. He would never admit it to anyone else, but he'd been terrified to be saddled with the responsibility it all came with.
Inshiri Ferance hadn't had to threaten him. At the first opportunity he'd turned the foreign services back over to her, and he'd flown away from his chance at real power with haste and a terribly unmanning relief.
Inshiri knew he'd blinked, and though she'd allowed him back into her inner circle, she treated him with contempt. The guarantee she'd taken from him tonight was minor for her, but calculated to make him aware, every day for the rest of his life, that he was and would always remain a servant.
He put his good hand on the railing and stared down the stairwell, which seemed to be tipping slowly over--whether due to this wheel's rotation, or the delirium of pain he was in, he couldn't have said.
"Sane people put their docks up top," he said, then laughed at himself. He was talking to no one! Anyway, it was true; at the axis of a wheel there was no gravity and you could moor or unmoor at leisure. The engineers at Kaleidogig were stupid barbarians, though, and they liked to live dangerously. He slowly descended the steps, leaning on the wall to guarantee that he knew up from down.
When he entered the Kaleidogig docking galleries he shook his head in fury: how was he going to make it across this jumble of half-built jet bikes, stolen taxis, and decommissioned military catamarans, all of them swinging off hooks like fresh-caught game? The floor under them was a minefield of big hatches that could be thrown open by the pull of a lever--and might fall out from under you if you stepped on them. Even as he leaned there trying to pick out a safe route, the lamps in the long, upward-curving room flickered as one of the hatches banged down and a puff of wind rushed through the place. A courier who sat astride his bike above this hatch reached up, casually unclipped the chain suspending him, and he and the bike fell through the opening and into the hundred-mile-per-hour headwind made by the town wheel's spin.
A dockhand approached, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. "Yer all right, sar?"
"Fine. I'm fine." He hid his left hand behind himself, and wiped away the sweat on his forehead with his palm. "I'm expecting someone," he added curtly.
"If yer say so. Just don't go near the cats." The hand nodded at the bigger military craft, which hung nodding behind a yellow rope.
Jacoby pulled himself into a more dignified posture and forced himself to walk steadily over to the entrance hatches. These looked similar to the exits, but he knew that below, on the outside of the town's hull, each was partially sheltered by a ramp-shaped windbreak. There were lookouts down there waiting to open the hatches for incoming craft. That must be cold and lonely shift work, he thought, and he felt a momentary kinship with the men down there.
A hatch thirty feet away fell open without warning, and a small tornado of air blasted Jacoby, making him stagger. Like a strange jack-in-the-box, an airman on a bike popped up out of the hatch. He was standing up in his stirrups, holding up a hook, and at the top of his bounce into the hangar, he clanged the hook over one of the overhead rods. Then he sat down heavily as the bike swung, engine roaring, in the vortex of air that was howling through the hatch below him.
He cut the engine as the doors to the hatch laboriously inched shut. When the last crack had been sealed, leaving only the ominous whistle that all the closed hatches made, he pulled off his leather flyer's helmet and dismounted the bike.
Jacoby recognized him. They met just in front of the bike, whose round maw showed a still-spinning maze of teeth. "Sarto," said the man with a barely respectful duck of the head.
Jacoby took a shuddering breath and said, "Were you seen? Did anyone question you?"
"Naw, it's black air out there, I took the last fifty miles at a hundred 'n fifty miles an hour. Have to be crazy to follow me." He grinned, obviously still exhilarated at his daredevil stunt.
"Good, but you'll have to leave the same way." Jacoby couldn't help but glance around to see if there was anyone but the dockhand working here. If he were Inshiri, he'd put a watch on Jacoby Sarto--and maybe she was about to do that very thing. He had to put his plan in motion before it became impossible for him to contact his own men without her noticing.
He fumbled one-handed in his jacket, then held out a thick envelope. "Here's the orders. Are the ships ready? Fueled and armed?"
His man nodded as he took the package and shoved it into his jacket. He clearly hadn't noticed Jacoby's distress; good. "What's the target?" he asked with a grin. "I might go myself, if it's somewhere nice."
"It's not." Jacoby looked him in the eye. "It's Hell, actually."
"Oh, you've been there?"
"I have. Now on your way before somebody comes." He turned away as the airman hopped back into his saddle; but he was careful to watch and make sure that the jet roared to life, and that the courier rose and unclipped his line and fell into the night.
It was all in the hands of fate now, but he felt a little better at having finally done something decisive.
On the way back upstairs he became dizzy and nearly fell down. He sat in a broad windowsill and leaned his head against the rippled glass. A mile away, the giant can shape of Inshiri's observatory spun slowly in the black air. The structure was turned now so that Jacoby could see down its length. At its core glowed a tiny, human-shaped spark of crimson.
He smiled in angry satisfaction. Inshiri thought she was punishing him by giving him the Fracas operation. It was menial, after all; but she didn't know everything that was going on, nor did she suspect he might have a minor, but effective, fleet of his own.
Once it did what he'd just commanded it to do, he'd have one very big playing piece in his hands. With Fracas, he already had another; and if the bait he'd hung out worked (and he thought he knew the psychology of the person it was aimed at well enough) he would soon have the third.
There was only one more piece in play that mattered, and he didn't yet know how he would get possession of that.
He glared at the tiny figure playing goddess at the focus of her telescope. She thought the little sacrifice he'd given her tonight would make him a falcon on her glove. She was in for a surprise.
But not just yet. He levered himself back to his feet and grimly plodded up the last steps to his floor. In a few moments he could collapse on his room's tattered little bed, and tomorrow he'd send one of his men to locate a good source of painkillers.
Inshiri knew the game board, but he knew which pieces owned the game. With luck, in a few days he would have them all, and then Inshiri would become his pawn.
14
LEAL WAS LOOKING out one of the yacht's portholes when the ship began braking heavily. She braced her hands on the bulkhead in front of her, as fore suddenly became down.
Her reverie was broken. Leal wasn't even sure what she'd been daydreaming about, but she knew her shattered ambitions had been in there somewhere. Her dream of being a university professor, of achieving tenure and spending her twilight years surrounded by ancient books ... it was all so far from here and now as to constitute a separate life. Once this was all over, could she return to those daydreams? It seemed so unlikely.