“Neatly done,” Ransome said. He was still smiling, but the expression was less sly, more conscious of his own failures.
Damian Chrestil ignored the irony, said, “Thank you.” He was very aware of Cella’s lifted eyebrow, and went on almost at random, “Make yourself comfortable.”
“Consider myself a guest?” Ransome asked.
“If you must.”
“Chauvelin will be grateful.” Ransome pushed himself up off the arm of the chair, moved slowly across the room to stare at the weather screen. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting back into the city.”
“I wouldn’t send my people out in this,” Damian answered with some asperity. “You’ll have to wait it out with the rest of us.”
Ransome nodded, his attention still on the screen. Cella set her drink aside very precisely, and came to stand between Damian and the other man, so close that Damian could smell the faint sweetness of her perfume.
“May we talk, Damiano?”
The very reasonableness of her tone was a warning of sorts. “Of course,” Damian said, and moved back into the corner of the room, far enough away from the screen that an ordinary speaking voice would not be overheard. He leaned against the side of one of the heavy chairs, still not quite willing to turn his back on Ransome, and Cella leaned close, her hip against his knee, one hand on the chair, just brushing against his thigh. They would look intimate from a distance, Damian knew, and wished for a fleeting instant that that was all she wanted.
“Are you going to go through with this?” Cella asked. She kept her voice down, but the anger was perfectly clear under the conversational surface.
Damian Chrestil eyed her for a moment, biting back his answering anger– all the more unreasonable because I know what you’re really saying, that I backed down, that I let Chauvelin win–and said, “It’s the best bet, Cella. Better odds than anything else.”
“Changing horses is never a good bet,” Cella answered. “The Visiting Speaker’s still got power, why not stick with him? Why the hell go with Chauvelin?” She glanced over her shoulder, a quick, betraying tilt of the head toward Ransome, still staring at the screen. “And him?”
“For God’s sake, Cella,” Damian said. “Because ji‑Imbaoa is unreliable, and because Chauvelin’s winning right now.”
“The je Tsinraan have the power at court,” Cella said. “I know that, I did the research for you. They’re going to win in the long term, not the tzu line. You should stick with them.”
“It’s a little late for that.”
“I could persuade him,” Cella said. “I could tell him it was a bluff–”
“ Sha‑mai!” Damian Chrestil pushed her away, pushed himself up off the chair in a single motion, heedless of Ransome’s frankly curious stare. “Look, Cella, I’ve told you what I’m doing, which is more than is really your business. You’re very good at the Game, but this is reality. This is what I am going to do–this is the only thing I can do, the only way I can keep even this much–and I don’t need your baroque variations to complicate it.” He took a deep breath, regained his composure with an effort. “If you want to help out, yes, by all means, keep the Visiting Speaker happy. But stay out of my politics.”
Cella looked at him, her face stiff and hard as a Carnival mask, her careful makeup bright as paint against a sudden angry pallor. “I can–keep him happy–if that’s what you want, yes.”
“I don’t really give a fuck,” Damian Chrestil answered, and turned away.
“Certainly, Na Damian,” Cella said, with the sweet subservience that never failed to infuriate him, and swept away toward the door.
Ransome watched without seeming to do so, all too aware of the tone if not all the words of the conversation. It was the losers who watched and listened like this, prisoners, servants, houta… Well, I’ve been all of those, and born canalli besides. He fixed his attention on the screen as Cella stalked past him and disappeared into the hallway. I can’t say I’m sorry she’s been taken down a peg or two.
In the screen, waves rose and beat against the wet black metal of the storm barriers, the image dimmed and distorted by the blowing rain and the drops that ran down the camera’s hooded lens. It shivered now and then, as the wind shook the shielded emplacement. The first line of barriers was almost engulfed, foam boiling against and over it; the second and third, farther up the channel, were more visible, but a steady swell still pounded against them. Ransome watched impassively, remembering what conditions would be like on the Inland Water. Even with all the barriers up, the water would be rough–the Lockwardens would have to let some of the tides through, or risk damage to the generators that powered the city and, if things got bad enough, to the barriers themselves–and the water level would be rising along the smaller canals. He had grown up on a lowlying edge of the Homestead Island District, could remember struggling with his parents to get the valuables out to higher ground without any of the neighbors finding out that they had anything worth stealing; remembered how they had piled what they couldn’t carry onto the shelves that ran below the ceilings, hoping that the roof would stay intact and the water wouldn’t rise too high. And hoping, too, that the overworked Lockwardens from the local station would remember to keep an eye on the block. He glanced at the controls, touched a key to superimpose the chronometer reading on the screen: still almost an hour to actual sunset, but the image in the screen was already as dark as early evening. The winds were high, but steady for now: all in all, he thought, not a bad time for looting. There would be a few bad boys in the Dry Cut and Homestead who would be risking it.
“Where’s that from, Warden’s East?” Damian Chrestil asked. He had come up so silently that the other hadn’t been aware of his presence until he spoke.
“I think so,” Ransome answered, and found himself glad of the distraction. He glanced sideways, saw the younger man still scowling faintly, not all the marks of ill temper smoothed away. Still pissed at Cella, he thought. And I can’t say I blame him.
Damian Chrestil slipped a hand into his pocket, obviously reaching for a remote, and a moment later the image in the screen vanished, to be replaced by a false‑color overview of the storm itself. Distinct bands of cloud curved across the city, outlined in dotted black lines beneath the flaring reds and yellows of the storm; more bands were visible to the south, but there was still no sign of the eye.
“Heading right for us,” Damian Chrestil said.
“We should be here some hours,” Ransome agreed, and had to raise his voice a little to be heard over the noise of the rain. Something thudded heavily against the shutters, and they both glanced toward the source of the sound, Damian Chrestil vividly alert for a second before he’d identified and dismissed the noise.
“Not too many trees around here, I hope,” Ransome said, with delicate malice, and Damian’s mouth twisted into a wry smile.
“Let’s take a look.” He worked the remote again, and the picture shifted–tapping into the house systems, Ransome realized. At least one camera was useless, its lens completely obscured by the blowing rain, so that it showed only wavering streaks of grey. Damian flicked through three more cameras, so quickly that Ransome barely had time to recognize the images–a rain‑distorted view of the lawn, a camera knocked out of alignment by the wind, so that it showed only the corner of the house and a patch of wind‑blown grass, more rain sweeping in heavy curtains across a stone courtyard–and stopped as abruptly as he’d begun. “Ah.”
The camera was looking away from the wind, Ransome realized, looking inland toward the Barrier Hills and the lowlying trees that grew along their wind‑scoured shoulders. The nearest trees were perhaps thirty meters away, up a gentle slope. They were bent away from the house, into the hillside, their leaves tossing wildly, thick trunks bent into a steady arc. Ransome winced, and even as he watched, one of the trees fell forward, quite slowly, a tangle of roots pulling free of the wet ground. The silent fall was disconcerting, eerie, and he looked away.