"You underestimate them." Valerena sounded tired. She had argued this before. "You risk the existence of House Tregesser against a quantity you know only from fragmentary reports that survived the Enherrenraat."
"I have shielding the equal of theirs. I have Lupo. The rest is firepower. When the Guardship arrives it will be cut off from the Web and under fire so intense its screens have to overload. It'll be surrender or die. The only choice they give the rest of the universe. Then House Tregesser will have its Guardship, Hellspinners, and the secret of lifting so vast a mass onto the Web."
"That's the strategy of the Enherrenraat revenant. They thought they'd win with firepower. They're extinct. The Guardships aren't. And they're five hundred years wiser now."
"Five hundred years more senile, child. Five hundred years more frozen into old ways."
Blessed stepped in. "Why did you call me here, Grandfather?"
"You're the heir of my heir. It's time you learned why your mother and I doppelled; so we can work on this unconcerned by the jealousies of lesser Houses and the spiteful interference of the Guardships. They can't suspect us of schemes and duplicities if their spies see our Others devoting themselves to the interests of House Tregesser."
The thing in the bell roared, "A thousand years has House Tregesser prepared! In our generations the hour has come at last!"
"Yes, Grandfather. Grandfather, where did you find a krekelen? They're supposed to be extinct."
"I have my resources, boy. Valerena! I need a woman. Send me one. And this time make her one with some juice left. That last one was a crone."
Valerena flared. "She was twenty years younger than I am!"
"Ah? Then maybe I should use you while there's a dollop of juice left in you." A pendulous, maggot-colored, impossibly huge organ slithered through a sudden opening in the floor of the bell. "Come here."
"No."
"Then send me a woman who will please me. Or take her place yourself. Go away. I have no more use for you."
The skeletal gondolier began poling toward the corridor mouth.
"Noah!"
A black, winged man dropped down between the gamboling lightnings. He lighted on a tongue of metal protruding from the great machine. "Lord?"
"How was I, Noah?"
"You were madness itself."
"Were they convinced?"
"I believe so."
"Ha! And will they try to kill me, then?"
"Someday."
"How soon?"
"Not soon. They will wait till after you capture the Guardship. They will want to steal a triumph."
"And they'll want to avoid the consequences if I fail, eh?"
"Yes, Lord."
"Does Valerena know she's not the first Valerena?"
"I think not. You indulge her too much, Lord."
"I have no other heir."
"It's your funeral."
"If I become so lax as to let her reach me here, then House Tregesser deserves more alert, more aggressive leadership anyway."
"Such is the custom."
"Watch them. See their every hair fall."
"And the woman they send you?"
"Yours, if you want her."
"Grace, Lord."
Simon Tregesser's bell clouded. Outside, the show ached up toward a shattering crescendo. Lightnings and coils of darkness slithered around the bell till no eye could have pieced it out of the chaos.
The bell rose into the belly of the machine. Chaos died. Silence took mastery of the cavity. A lone winged form glided the stillness.
Simon Tregesser's prosthetic eyes stared through the bell wall at his special secret. The thing had adopted an especially repugnant arrangement, almost demonic, perhaps in response to the show outside. Tregesser smiled as much as he could with ruined lips. Valerena did not know, but this thing from Outside would give House Tregesser its Guardship.
He hoped.
Down in the shadowed heart of him he nurtured the very doubts his daughter had flung in his face.
And he did not trust this emissary from Yon, this ally whose urgings had led him to push House Tregesser's plans beyond endless preparation to considered action. Simon Tregesser did not trust anyone or anything he did not own completely, excepting Lupo Provik. Lupo was his good arm and good body and, sometimes, his brain.
An infantile display, Simon Tregesser. What do we gain by spawning machinations within machinations? There is but one goal. Let us devote ourselves with an appropriately holy fervor.
Tregesser sensed its contempt. The disgusting monster. A shot of oxygen into that methane murk would set it dancing in the fires. Someday ... the moment the Guardship surrendered. "You heard my daughter. Here, in private, between us, I second her doubts. You want me to dice with fate depending entirely upon your screens."
They are the ultimate possible within the laws of this universe. They are identical with those deployed by Guardships.
"So you say."
Our observations during the Enherrenraat incident leave no doubt.
"There's always room for doubt when you tempt the invincible. If you were that close to the action then, you were dead."
The thing did not respond.
"I suppose it's too late. I'm committed."
You are committed, Simon Tregesser. Forever.
Simon Tregesser's methane breathing ally set a thought vibrating along the Web. Every development must be registered lest it be lost.
The Tregesser creature was right. To observe the Guardship screens under pressure, it had been necessary for observers to be too close to survive. They had left their data vibrating on the Web.
This creature, too, would leave such a legacy if the time came.
What mattered was that the Guardship should come. That it should be tested and, if conquered, be rescued from the false ambition of fools and unbelievers.
The Guardships threatened to doom the truths of the Shadowed Path.
Death did not matter. Death was but a destination. The Shadowed Path led away in ten thousand directions but always ended in the same place, the maw of the Destroyer.
Always better to be the knife than its victim.
— 7 —
Third WatchMaster strode out the hatch. The stench and uproar and alien perspectives of the curving station dock hit him like blows, stunned him momentarily. Those creatures beyond the STASIS cordon... most were not even human!
His body kept moving till a portly, florid man said, "Commander Haget? I'm Schilligo Magnahs, Station Master. This is Gitto Otten, Director, Station Security and Investigation Section."
"Gentlemen." He clicked his heels. "The situation is?" He had no patience with ceremony. It wasted time.
"Static, Commander. The Traveler was brought to dock and locked in, per directive. STASIS seals were placed, quarantine was established. Not an electronic whisper has escaped. We awaited your arrival before proceeding."
"Satisfactory. WarAvocat will be pleased. Let's examine this Traveler that spits mythical aliens."
"Mythical, Commander?"
"Legendary and extinct, if you prefer. Probe showed the pod occupied by a krekelen shapechanger."
"But that's..."
"Exactly. Impossible. Yes. Soldiers are searching Cholot Varagona now. We'll have the thing soon. Then we'll see if it's genuine." Third WatchMaster continued to scan the dock, struggling with discomfort. He had not been off VII Gemina in too long. He had forgotten how mongrelized Canon space had become.
The Station Master sensed and misinterpreted his malaise. "Pardon the confusion and gawking, Commander. We see your people so seldom, curiosity tends to cause chaos dockside."
Third WatchMaster loosed a dry chuckle. "Diplomatically said, Station Master."