Beside her, Jefferson said, “They couldn’t have done better if they’d been coached.”
Tanuojin was over at the bar, his back to the room. Paula said, “That won’t work too often, Sybil.”
“Just once,” Jefferson said.
“Where’s Mitchell Wylie?”
“He left the Planet. Apparently for security reasons.” Jefferson moved around to put her back to Tanuojin, ten feet away. “What happened?” Tanuojin was watching them. Paula kept herself from a shrug, a movement of the hand, anything that might signal him.
“The obvious. Parine tried to ambush us. Dick tripped, for once.”
“What else?”
Paula raised her eyes again, over the fat woman’s shoulder. Saba caught her glance and held his glass out. She stooped to catch David as he passed her.
“Here. Take this to Papa.” She gave him the glass in her hand.
“What else happened?” Jefferson said, when Paula straightened.
“I just told you, Sybil.”
“Why, suddenly, is Richard oracularly vague on the subject of Tanuojin?”
Relieved, Paula smiled at her. That settled her suspicions. “Ask him,” she said, and went off to make herself two more drinks.
In the morning, on the way to the entry port to leave for home, she bought an hourly. The Council had reconsidered the question of Venus 14 and withdrawn the order to send a peacekeeping force in to settle the chronic civil war in the giant dome. Paula folded the hourly and put it in her jacket pocket. At the entry port, eighteen or twenty people were marching up and down with ribbon banners, calling the Styths names. A vitriolic anti-Styth pamphlet she took from one of them had been printed by the Sunlight League, and wore their emblem in the upper right-hand corner of the cover: a radiant star.
VRIBULO
The air of the Empire’s heart-city smelled like grease. The darkness made Paula uneasy and she stayed close by Saba in the street. She kept having the feeling that someone was following them. Her ears hurt from listening behind them through the roar of the city. They went along the crowded street toward the mid-city gate, where they were to meet Tanuojin.
He was standing just outside the door, Marus and two others of his watch behind him. As usual he and Saba met with an embrace. Paula turned to look up and down the street. People in Vribulo walked faster than in other places. The free locks of the Vribulit clubbed hair swayed like tails behind them. All she saw in one direction was a mass of hurrying backs and in the other a mass of hurrying faces. Tanuojin sent his men to the Barn, and he and Saba and Paula started across the city to the Akopra.
“Isn’t your Akopra House finished yet?” Paula asked him.
“Yes.”
She was walking between them, breaking into a jog now and then to keep up. “Then why go to this Akopra, if they’re so bad?”
“They may have somebody I can use.”
She tucked her hands into the muff. It had been Illy’s but Illy had given it to her as a homecoming present. They turned into a lane between high buildings, and behind them a man shouted something. She glanced over her shoulder. A knot of men was coming after them. She grabbed Saba’s arm. He and Tanuojin stopped. Another pack of Styths was blocking the narrow way ahead of them. One of these walked forward. His shirt was spangled with bits of metal. His face looked as if it had been cut to pieces and sewn back together again.
Saba shoved her. “Get out of the way. Run.”
She backed away from them. The man with the scarred face stopped; she knew it was Ymma, and his ruined face was Tanuojin’s work.
Saba said, low, “Keep moving.” He lunged at Ymma.
The two packs of men rushed together, like two hands clapping. Paula ran to the fence along the alley, looking for a way through them. Their reek made her heart pound. She could not see Saba or Tanuojin in the fighting. Sliding along the wall, she headed for the street. An arm hooked around her neck. She was hoisted off her feet, the crooked arm strangling her. She wrenched around and slid out of the grasp but someone else caught her.
“Hold her—”
She squirmed uselessly in a pinion grip. A hand yanked her head up by the hair. Someone snarled in her ear. “Watch. This is what happens to people who defy us.” She bit her lip to keep from crying out. Ymma’s men clogged the alleyway. Five feet from her they had Saba down on his knees, with his belt around his chest pinning his arms down. He was rigid, coiled; if they had let him go he would have shot up like a spring. Tanuojin lay on the ground. Ymma and two of his men were kicking him. She whined, and the hand in her hair twisted so hard tears ran down her cheeks. She heard bone crackle; she saw Tanuojin’s eyes close. They went on trampling him long after he began to bleed. At last Ymma stood back, signaling to the other men to stop.
Saba said nothing. He raised his head and gave Ymma an instant’s glance and turned his gaze back to Tanuojin. Ymma gave a sharp order. His men surged off along the alleyway. They carried Paula with them, out to the street, tucked like barter under one arm. A hand pressed stifling over her face. She fought for breath. Abruptly they dropped her and ran off along the street.
She gained her feet again, gasping in the rancid air. All along the street, people wheeled to watch Ymma’s men run by. She went back into the alley. Saba knelt beside Tanuojin. On the ground behind him lay his broken belt. The ground was covered with blood. Tanuojin’s head lay in a great puddle of it. She squatted down and put out her hand toward him, and Saba caught her arm.
“No. Don’t touch him. Find out where Ymma goes.”
She got up and trotted back to the street. Ymma and his men were nowhere in sight. She loped up the street in the direction they had gone, looking down the side streets. The thick stream of passers-by slowed her. Ahead, near the curve, where the street turned up, she saw a dozen men all traveling together, and she quickened her step.
In the dark she could not tell from such a distance if that band was Ymma’s or not. They turned into a side street, and she ran through an alley and climbed a fence and jumped down into another trunk street, which brought her much closer to them. Now she could see the bits of metal on one man’s shirt, and she went after them at a flat run.
Above her head Upper Vribulo stretched like a roof in the darkness. On the black lake half a mile from her a boat floated upside down; its bow light gleamed on the water. Ymma and his men walked up the curve toward the lake shore and turned to follow it. She realized where they were going. She went along another street, keeping them in sight on the curved wall of the city, and followed them that way down to the rAkellaron House.
They circled around to go in through a side door, avoiding the Barn. She was tired, and she had never been inside the House. Warily she went up to the door. The building loomed over her, large even for Styths. She went in the door and saw Ymma and his men at the far end of a long dim hallway, going through another door. When they had all disappeared, she ran down the length of the hall, her feet pattering on the stone floor. That door opened on a stairway.
She was afraid to go farther. The stone walls around her chilled her to the bone. She went back outside and waited awhile, to see if anyone came out, but no one did. After about half an hour, she went around the House to the Barn.
Saba was in Tanuojin’s office, sitting on the desk drinking whiskey. He watched her come in and shut the door.
“How is he?” she said.
“He’s bad.” The big Styth set his bottle down. “He’s still bleeding. I didn’t think he could be hurt that bad any more.”
She went to the desk and took the bottle. “Ymma went to the House.” The liquor burned her throat.
“Damn him.” Saba slapped his knees. “I knew he wouldn’t dare do that without help.”