“I would not be surprised. On this corrupt world, with these corrupt people, it could not be anything less. But that’s just an additional reason to face our trials properly refreshed.”
There was something familiar about their shared tone, something that made me turn.
They were cuddled together on a nearby love seat, Skye resting her head on Oscin’s shoulder and playing, idly, with the fingers of his right hand. She peered at me from beneath half-closed lids, a special look of hers she’d always used to communicate her boldest invitations. Oscin faced me head-on, his smile so slight that only a curlicue wrinkle at the edge of his lips distinguished it from the one he wore at his moments of greatest concentration.
Their shared mind meant that they both found me amusing in the same, exact way, but the subtle differences between her smile and his seemed to express complementary attitudes that arrived at the same place by coincidence alone. It was a pose, but one they must have practiced with great care.
“The main problem with focus,” they said together, “is losing your peripheral vision.”
I felt foolish. “For Juje’s sake, love, somebody just tried to kill me!”
Their fingertips traced each other like old friends searching for changes in familiar faces. “True. And it was a catastrophically incompetent attempt, wasn’t it?”
“So?”
“So why not celebrate?”
“Because there’s another assassin out there!”
They tsked. “That deduction, brilliant as I found it, remains unproved. It’s entirely based on the premise that the actions of sentients dedicated to mad and murderous causes can be trusted to make some kind of consistent internal sense: an idea easily debunked by any look at the history of mad and murderous causes. Tonight, in these spectacular accommodations, I don’t even see a reason to let it ruin our mood. The operative phrase in this place should be, We’ve hit the big time.”
They patted the couch cushions in unison.
As always, when the Porrinyards surprised me by seizing the initiative, my cheeks burned. “Now?”
“Your path is a difficult one, Andrea. You’ll never have a perfect moment, unless you stop from time to time to make one. I see no hypocrisy in suggesting a little wine, a little music, and some time putting that big bed in our suite to some fine recreational use. After all, our next venue might not be even remotely as nice.”
I remembered my first glimpse of them. They’d been as beautiful as anybody I’d ever seen. Sometimes, faced with pressing problems, I forget. Sometimes they take the time to remind me.
Oscin’s smile became broad and challenging, while Skye’s became more sly, implying secrets that she and I could find some way to hide from him. This was a transparent fraud, as Skye could no sooner keep secrets from Oscin than I could decide, on a whim, to keep secrets from the right half of my brain. But the pretense had its intended effect. The two of them—dammit, the one of them—had mastered all the skills they needed on me.
“There’s a shower in there,” Skye said. “Big enough for three.”
“Water,” said Oscin. “Not sonics.”
Skye: “I noticed a handy menu of expensive topical euphorics.”
Oscin: “Some I’ve tried and some I’ve always wanted to try.”
“Together,” suggested Skye, “and in combination.”
Oscin said: “We have plenty of time.”
And then the two of them, together, rising as one: “Why not?”
There was no point in further resistance.
“God damn it,” I said, and went to them, lowering my head against the cleft formed by the place where their shoulders met.
I think I came within a heartbeat of calm, before I felt the sudden tension in their postures. “Andrea,” they said.
I took a step back and glanced at their faces. Both wore looks equal parts astonishment, alarm, and anger. Oscin was staring over the top of my head at something behind me; Skye had seized my forearm with a grip that prevented me from turning around right away. I gave her a questioning look. She nodded, then gave my arm an extra squeeze, just strong enough to approach but not cross the threshold of pain.
This could only be a warning to be careful how I reacted when I turned around and saw what they saw.
I nodded to let her know that I understood.
She loosened her grip on my arm.
I turned around and did not overreact at all.
“Son of a bitch.”
3
THE KHAAJIIR
The Bocaian licked the edges of his lipless mouth.
“Andrea Cort. I hope I may take that as an expression of surprise, and not as an appraisal of my character.”
Bocaians don’t suffer the same problems with worn-out skin elasticity that causes wrinkles in untreated humans of advanced years, and therefore don’t need regular rejuvenation to remain smooth-faced until their advanced dotage. But I had an experienced eye and had no trouble spotting the signs betraying this one’s extreme antiquity, from the paler cast to his skin, to the bent posture that betrayed the traditional complaints of any upright spine suffering from too many years spent arguing with gravity. He rested much of his weight on a staff, taller than himself, that seemed to have been carved from a glassy transparent wood I had seen many times in my childhood; it had been polished to a high sheen, and reflected the overhead lights in a manner that made it look almost as bejeweled as the garish furnishings around us. He wore a loose-fitting hooded tunic with a ruffled ankle-length hem, and a gold medallion bearing a shiny embossed symbol of some kind. There was no ROM disk affixed to the center of his high, hairless forehead: a rarity for the few Bocaians who travel, given that the absence testified to unassisted fluency in Mercantile and the other common languages.
Damned if he didn’t seem to be smiling. Bocaian evolution hadn’t produced that expression as a way to communicate warmth or amusement, but they knew what it meant to human beings, and could simulate the look when they wanted to. He could just as easily be showing teeth for the other traditional reason. I certainly didn’t like the looks of that staff. Deadly as a Claw of God could be, I wasn’t any more enthused about the prospect of going down to an old-fashioned blow to the skull.
A pair of well-dressed human beings, in their late teens or early twenties, stood behind him.
From the young man’s resemblance to the famous Hans Bettelhine, I assumed him to be one of the Bettelhine “youngsters” Arturo Mendez had mentioned. He had a chiseled jaw and an aristocratic nose and a physique so slight it bordered on the unhealthy. I wondered if he’d been ill, or if this was some local affectation I didn’t know about, akin to the one that had once required the royalty of Ancient China on old Earth to grow their toenails and fingernails to a length designed to render them utterly dependent on their servants for everything from feeding themselves to basic hygiene. His attempt at a reassuring smile held back just enough to establish he’d known enough suffering to take a few degrees of warmth off any happiness he’d ever know. You expect to see looks like that on the faces of the poor. When on the rich, it usually evidenced a past that included failed attempts at self-destruction.
The young woman was a different story. She resembled the princess of so many fairy tales, her skin porcelain, her shoulder-length hair a shade of gold that rendered the mere metal a gaudy pretender. She wore a loose ankle-length silver gown, just translucent enough to accentuate the difference between its comfy shapelessness and the shape of the curves underneath. She didn’t look like she’d ever suffered at all, though her concerned glance at the young man I assumed to be her brother suggested that she had been touched, in some way, by whatever had happened to him. There was a story here, one that might reward a closer look.