“Get me a drink,” Cenuij told her.
“Later. Come and meet my ghastly relations.”
“You mean there’s worse than you?” Cenuij said, horrified.
They arrived at the booth; she introduced Geis and Breyguhn.
The two men exchanged formal greetings, then Cenuij turned to Breyguhn.
“Ms Dascen,” he said carefully. He took Breyguhn’s hand and kissed it. Cenuij knew that technically Brey wasn’t a full Dascen at all; Sharrow guessed that addressing her as such was done more to annoy her than to flatter Breyguhn.
“Why, Mister Mu,” Breyguhn said, smiling at Cenuij and then glancing at Sharrow.
Cenuij breathed deeply and seemed to collect himself. “Your sister has told me so much about you,” he said. Sharrow found herself gritting her teeth to stop herself saying anything. “I, of course, believed every word,” he went on, “and have always wanted to meet you.” Cenuij smiled. He was still holding Breyguhn’s hand. “I would consider it an honour if you would grant me the next dance.” He gestured grandly in the very general direction of the ballroom.
Breyguhn laughed and stood. “Delighted.” She smiled at Sharrow as she and Cenuij made their way back through the shouting, laughing crowd.
Sharrow watched them go, eyes narrowed.
TEXTBEGIN UNSOURCED HOMING MESSAGE MIYKENNS/GOLTER ANON/TKEEP. COMMERCIAL MAXENCRYPT.
Ref.: COntracT #0083347100232 (TKEEP).
Please be advised Contract only partially fulfilled. Item now in our possession but only casing and already-known dedication still extant. Rest of text printed on paper which has rotted to dust over past twelve centuries. Nature of time lock on case and chemical composition of paper dust indicates this may have been intentional. Detailed examination of case and remaining contents reveals no other storage medium save (naked-eye visible) message engraved in rear of case, quote THINGS WILL CHANGE. unquote. Case believed to be late Terhama’a (Golterian) Limited, comprising precious and semi-precious stones and gold on steel, plus four diamond leaf engravings frontis. Total estimated value conservatively 10MnT. Please advise. Reply CME to one-shot homing dest. #MS94473.3449.1 [1] TEXTEND
TEXTBEGIN HOMING MESSAGE GOLTER/MIYKENNS TKEEP/ANON. COMMERCIAL MAXENCRYPT.
Ref.: OSHD #MS94473.3449.1[0]
Extant remains acceptable under Contract clause 37.1. Kindly deliver via Vessel ‘Victory’, Mine Seven Sub-Surface Crawler Base, Equatorial Region, NG, soonest.
TEXTEND
TEXTBEGIN UNSOURCED HOMING MESSAGE MIYKENNS/GOLTER ANON/HOUSE (S. JALISTRE) COMMERCIAL MAXENCRYPT.
Ref.: COntracT #0083347100232 (TKEEP).
Seigneur, please see attached message from agency. Confirm property to be delivered to Nachtel’s Ghost.
Reply CME to one-shot homing dest. #MS97821.7702.1[1]
TEXTEND
TEXTBEGIN HOMING MESSAGE GOLTER/MIYKENNS HOUSE/ANON. COMMERCIAL MAXENCRYPT.
Ref.: OSHD #MS97821.7702.1[0] Destination confirmed. Please deliver to our agents on NG as advised.
TEXTEND
She walked back from the hire-bureau through the morning rush-hour of bicycles, trams and cars. The streets were busy. Unlike Malishu, SkyView didn’t actually ban private transport, though it did discourage it.
The city was perched on a plateau that stuck half a kilometre above the surrounding sea of undulating Entraxrln canopy like a vast wart on pale skin. It was a chill, raw place even though it was only a couple of thousand kilometres from the equator, and less than two thousand metres above sea level. Denied the Entraxrln’s relatively balmy auto-climate, SkyView relied entirely on Thrial for its warmth, and the sun was noticeably smaller in the sky than it was seen from the surface of Golter.
The hire-bureau was near the main funicular station where they’d first arrived in the city three days earlier, rising from the purple gloom of the Entraxrln evening to the wide glory of a Miykenns sunset in brilliant cerise. Now, commuters who had just made the same trip swept her along with them through the cool, crisp, cloudless morning.
She had sent her first message early last night and received its reply after supper. She’d asked for the confirmation from the Sea House within minutes, but hadn’t waited for a reply; there was a three hour round-trip signal delay and it was then very early morning on Golter. She doubted the Seigneur was an early riser.
She read the two replies again, waiting on a traffic island while cars whirred and trams clanked past. She raised her face to the sunlight, seeking the weak warmth with a kind of hunger after the weeks in Pharpech’s perpetual gloom. The light shone down the canyon of city street, reflecting off high glass-fronted buildings on either side, pouring onto the river of traffic and the crowds of people. NG, soonest, she read once more, and then stuffed the pieces of flimsy into a pocket.
“Why there?” she said to herself. Her breath smoked in front of her face. She pulled on her gloves and fastened her jacket as the traffic stopped and she crossed the road in the midst of the crowd.
She watched a big seaplane roar overhead; it banked above the city as it started its approach. The plateau lake must still be ice-free. She watched the aircraft disappear behind the buildings with an expression on her face somewhere between wistfulness and bitterness.
Nachtel’s Ghost. They wanted her to deliver the book to Nachtel’s Ghost; outwards to the limits of the system, not inwards, not towards Golter, where the Sea House was. She walked back to the hotel, stopping and looking in shops and displays, making sure she wasn’t being followed. Her reflection, seen in one window, had a pinched, pale look about it. She inspected her face and saw again the message in the dust that was all that was left of the Universal Principles: THINGS WILL CHANGE.
She drew her jacket tighter still, recalling the chill granite surface of her grandfather’s tomb when it had still been at Tzant, and the freezing cold of the Ghost; the remembered fall in the remembered fall. She shivered.
16 The Ghost
Physically brave, she thought as the hired ship shuddered its way into the thin, cold, evaporating atmosphere of Nachtel’s Ghost. Physically brave.
She had left the others in SkyView. They would wait there until she had finished in Nachtel’s Ghost and decide where to rendezvous later. They’d had news from Golter; all Miz’s assets had been frozen while the Log-jam attempted to have a warrant issued for his arrest in connection with an unspecified offence within its jurisdiction. Miz had lawyers working on the case, and anyway had emergency funds he could access, but not until he was actually present on Golter. Sharrow had used up most of the rest of the contract expenses allowance chartering a private spacecraft to take her from SkyView to Nachtel’s Ghost; comm net gossip and news reports both had it that the Huhsz were waiting at Embarkation Island, and she’d been travelling as Ysul Demri long enough for there to be an even chance they knew her pseudonym.
She had not been back to the Ghost since the crash-landing that had both saved her and almost killed her. The crippled ex-excise clipper had fallen like a meteorite through the wasted air of the small planet-moon, slowing and slewing as it spun and wobbled and disintegrated on its long arcing plunge towards the planet’s snow-covered surface. She couldn’t remember anything after she’d shouted to Miz about wanting any crater she made being named after her. Miz hadn’t heard her, anyway.
The crash report later concluded she’d probably run out of gyro-manoeuvring power ten kilometres up, while the craft was still travelling at over a kilometre a second. It had started to tumble and tear itself to pieces immediately afterwards and only luck had saved her after that. The central section of the ship-containing the combat pressure hull, life-support systems and central plasma power plant-had stayed relatively intact, reduced to a jagged, roughly spherical shape that had continued to slow as it somersaulted and shed further small pieces of wreckage like burning shrapnel through the air.