“Did you arrange this?” Taj asked as he bounced up and snapped off another shot.

On the other side of the dining room a man screamed, clutched his gut, and pitched onto his face. Jay might like Taj, but he was going to be really pissed if the old guy turned out to be a crack shot. Then he comforted himself, there were so many tracers, both laser and bullet, that there was no telling who’d shot the poor dumb bastard.

“Naturally,” Zabb replied, and he fired. Zabb was a crack shot. Of course, thought Jay.

There was no sign of Meadows.

Then, rising on a pillar of flame like a Hebrew phoenix, came an amazing figure, short, wiry, with bright red hair and a sharp, sardonic face. The skintight orange jumpsuit bordered with flames and cut down to the navel was a shout of bad taste – except on Takis.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash opened both hands with an unfolding lotus gesture, and gouts of flame washed from his palms, down the length of the head table. The effect of this apparition on the Takisians was profound. The gun and laser fire stuttered to a halt, there were a few seconds of silence, then whispers ran like playing children around the large room.

“Burning Sky,” breathed Taj, and Jay thought it was an appropriate exclamation.

“Ancestors, how many are there?” Zabb said.

J. J. Flash, twiddling his feet like a faggy ballet dancer, descended to where Tisianne lay huddled in the center of her guards. The heat of his passage was like a sunburn across Jay’s back. Flame dripped off his fingertips, and sparks danced in his red hair.

Hovering over Tisianne, he lifted one hand and bestowed a kiss on the soft skin on the inside of her wrist. “Hey, princess, heard there was a damsel in distress. What dragons would you like slain?”

“You could start by killing the people who are shooting at us,” gritted Tach as she snatched her hand back.

“Sounds like a plan,” and Flash was gone, propelled by a gout of fire that left a singe on the rose marble floor.

The appearance of this fire elemental in their midst had taken the fight out of all but the most dedicated Kou’nars. The rest of the Takisians seemed to have decided that if Tisianne and his cadre had this kind of fire power, they would probably like to be on Tisianne’s side.

A few shots were directed at the flying ace. The bullets affected him not at all, and the lick of laser fire he positively enjoyed, giggling as if it tickled. One bright Kou’nar thought to pick up a pitcher of water and fling the liquid toward the ace. It was a good idea – badly executed. Flash encased him in a suit of fire, reducing his attacker to a cinder.

Taj glanced over at Zabb. “Are you responsible for him?”

Zabb hesitated, grinned. But whatever he said, it was too fast and too complicated for Jay’s rudimentary Takisian. He became aware of Tisianne yelling.

“Jay, tell them to stop congratulating each other about how brilliantly the experiment succeeded and get control!”

Jay yelled back. “Come up here and tell ’em yourself.”

“I can’t. They won’t let me.”

That got his attention. Sure enough Tis was being forcibly but gently restrained by a pair of guards. She looked mad enough to bite nails, and Jay thought that if she really were a woman, he’d hate to be the man who married her.

Nobody seemed to be shooting anymore, so Jay risked a brief sortie into the erect position. “Hey!” he shouted in English. Zabb’s head whipped around. “Her princess-ship wants you to shut the fuck up and take the fuck control of the bad guys.”

The council had reconvened. There was a much larger crowd this time, partly because the rulership of their House was to be decided, but mostly because Takisians were actually a lot like humans. The ones who’d missed the momentous dinner party were pissed and wanted to get at least a taste of the excitement. And who could tell… maybe the fire creature would appear again. Maybe there would be more bloodshed.

Jay circulated through the room while they waited for the seven old broads to show. From the snippets of conversations he could hear and understand, the citizens of the House Ilkazam were positively misty-eyed over the success of their pet virus and regretted that the experiment had not been carried to fruition. Jay had seen the same expression in the eyes of retired Vietnam generals – if only we’d been allowed to really fight. For the Takisians the argument was – if only we’d known how successful the field test had been. We’d have used the virus. We’d rule Takis now.

With a ninety percent fatality rate, Jay wished they had used the damn wild card. He wasn’t feeling too terribly generous toward Takisians in general, and Ilkazam in particular right now.

His perambulations brought him back to where Tisianne and Meadows sat in hunched misery. Their hands were tightly clasped as if the support would somehow help, but they were both drowning, and they knew it. Jay didn’t feel a lot of sympathy.

“He played it so well. The cadets and swords may suspect that he was behind Onyze’s death, but they can’t prove it. Mark” – she reached up and pushed back a straggling tendril of dirty blond-gray hair – “you should never have let him manipulate you so.”

“They were going to kill you, Doc. You and the baby. What was I supposed to do?”

“Let Zabb do his own dirty work -”

“Or you,” interrupted Jay. “You’re pretty good at doing the expedient thing too.”

He hadn’t meant to say it, but the memory of that pitiful, shrunken creature being callously put to sleep rose up and gagged him. Folding his arms across his chest, he started to sit down.

With a sweep of a foot Mark kicked the chair out from under him. Jay landed painfully on his tailbone and found himself staring up and up at the immensely tall ace. There was a light in Meadows’s mild blue eyes which Ackroyd had never seen.

“Don’t be so fucking self-righteous. So you haven’t killed… yet. Maybe you just haven’t faced the time when… like, someone special is in terrible danger, and you’ve gotta… well, you’ve just gotta do… things.” Meadows’ voice trailed away into silence, and Jay was acutely aware that his eyes behind their distorting lenses were awash with tears.

Tisianne’s voice was dead level, but anger hummed along the edges of each word. “If it will make you any happier, Mr. Ackroyd, I can assure you that I am suffering.” She contemplated some internal vision, and it was not a happy one. After several moments she gave herself a shake and resumed. “You can despise me, Mr. Ackroyd, I’m not paying you for your friendship or your approval. I’m paying you – both of you – to protect me, and for you to succeed in that task, you must work together. So at least call truce.”

“Let’s see if I can boil down the flowery Takisian bullshit into plain English. So I can be bitched off at you, but I have to be nice to Meadows?”

“Yes.”

“That I can handle,” Jay concluded as the crowd settled, and the council resumed their chairs.

Responding to a telepathic call, Tisianne left her place in the audience and walked front and center. After a few minutes twenty-three stern-faced men joined her, Taj among them. Despite the portentous expressions it was tough to take any of it seriously. They were all so tiny, and so improbably dressed. Jay kept expecting them to burst into song like the Mayor of Munchkin Land welcoming Dorothy. It actually wasn’t a half-bad analogy, the detective mused, Tachyon as Dorothy.

“Meadows is definitely the scarecrow,” Jay muttered. “I’ll be the tin woodsman. Too bad the cowardly lion didn’t have the stones to board the ship.”

Trips speared him with an elbow, and Jay realized Taj had begun speaking.

“Shaklan is dead. A direct-line heir has returned. I have served as caretaker to the honor and power of this House, but a grave crisis faces us. The time for caretakers is past. I relinquish my office to Tisianne brant Ts’ara.”