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Chapter Seven
Valentin on Kalapriya

The ball after the banquet was intended to make the ladies of Barents and the younger people happy while keeping the Diplomat harmlessly entertained and giving the leaders of the Barents Trading Society a much-needed rest. Dwendle Stoffelsen had personally seen to it that the first five days of the Diplomat's visit were crammed from dawn to dusk with formal entertainments, speeches, and tours of everything from a bacteriomat breeding cave to the processing hall where the 'mats were prepared for shipment off-planet. It would kill him to keep up the pace he'd scheduled for the woman; before meeting her, he'd entertained some hope that it would also kill her, or at least exhaust her to the point where she'd be happy to leave Kalapriya just to escape another round of speeches and tours.

His first sight of her at the banquet had destroyed that hope. She might have looked exhausted and frail on arrival at Valentin's spaceport, but with a couple of hours to rest she had bounced back, bright and lively and looking hardly older than one of his own daughters. She had to be at least thirty; Diplomatic School training took years, not to mention learning to manage the biomechanical implants, and Diplos were not sent out alone to their first assignments. Dwendle had just forgotten how damned young thirty could be. And how resilient. He seriously doubted they could exhaust the Diplo without killing themselves in the process.

Now, of course, after the barbed hints she'd dropped over dinner, they had worse problems to worry about. He summoned Torston and Kaspar into one of the curtained alcoves that lined the hall for a whispered consultation and outlined his fears. The woman had obviously studied ways of slipping materials past the customs inspectors; all right, that was reasonable enough given that her orders were to investigate Orlando Montoyasana's allegations of prohibited technology being smuggled onto Kalapriya. But that remark about the bacteriomat monopoly—!

"It could have been an innocent observation," Torston suggested.

"Nothing a Diplo says is innocent," Kaspar said. As the only one of the three who'd actually encountered a Diplo before, he took the lead in this conversation despite being the youngest of the three and the only one who wasn't from a Founding Family. "They're trained to make provocative comments that will upset guilty people and cause them to betray themselves. And from the looks of you two, that's exactly what happened. I do hope you didn't spill soup all over yourselves when she said that."

"Certainly not!" Torston bristled. "We were eating krebsi at the time!"

Dwendle stifled a sigh and wondered, not for the first time, why he had been saddled with an officious youngster and a doddering old fool as coconspirators. He knew why, of course. These two were not only venal enough to enter enthusiastically into the Consortium he had created, they were in his power by virtue of the background sheets he held on each of them. He'd thought himself very clever to ensure that no one was invited to join the Consortium but those who had some secret weakness he could exploit.

"We betrayed nothing," he said to Kaspar, "but it's clear the woman knows too much. She knows it's a two-way trade, she was teasing us with her knowledge of our involvement, and she is far too conversant with the situation in the mountain Territories. And she's announced her intention of going wherever her inquiries lead."

"If she goes into the hills, she might get involved in the tribal wars," Torston said hopefully. "Not our fault if she dies there."

"It's hard to kill Diplos," Kaspar said gloomily, "and what's worse, it leads to investigations. What if she survives, and sees some of the weapons the Udarans are using?"

"If she gets as far as Udara," Dwendle said, "she might see a great deal worse than that."

In dismal silence, they watched the dancers. Diplomat Vissi looked like a young girl without a care in the world; she was laughing now, getting the steps of the twining promenade hopelessly mixed up as Gabrel Eskelinen tried to lead her through them. The peach-colored panels of her borrowed Kalapriyan-style dress fluttered around her ankles, revealing tantalizing glimpses of lavender underpanels and slim legs. Even that overserious prude Eskelinen was laughing.

"It's deceptive," Kaspar said. "She's probably had youth treatments. Don't imagine that's a girl you're looking at. Think of it as a snake. A highly trained snake."

"But if killing her will only lead to more investigations, how can we stop her?" Torston sounded close to tears. "All our fortunes, everything we've worked for, ruined because of this one woman poking her nose in. I told you Orlando Montoyasana shouldn't be given an upcountry pass, I told you the man was dangerous. No, no, you said, Dwendle, you said he was a known conspiracy maniac and nobody ever paid attention to him, everywhere he goes he fusses about native cultures being destroyed, even if he stumbles on something they'll write it off as more of Montoyasana's particular paranoia. That's what you said. And now look what's happened!"

"Montoyasana won't be making any more complaints. And if the death of the Diplo also brings about the end of the investigation," Kaspar said, "there'll be no more questions asked. We can end the whole thing now, tonight."

"But how?" Dwendle asked involuntarily.

"Eskelinen. You've no particular love for him, have you?"

"Another nuisance," Dwendle shrugged, "always wanting to be off up-country, mixing too much with the natives, but he's military—he can be kept under control. All we have to do is persuade his colonel that he shouldn't be given another pass to leave the regiment. I'll think up some good reason why I really need him in Valentin."

"But if he could be neutralized along with the Diplo, you'd have no objection?"

"Gods, no!" It sounded too good to be true. It probably was too good to be true.

"Then it's very simple." Kaspar sounded unbearably smug, but Dwendle could put up with that in the hope of hearing that smug voice pronounce his salvation. "Torston, you will see that their departure from the ball is delayed until most of our people have been gone for some time, so that they will be alone on the road back to House Stoffelsen. Dwendle, you need to arrange some large transfers of funds into Eskelinen's accounts, and fiddle the accounting programs so that they are back-dated over the last several months; can you do that?"

It would be easy enough to arrange, using the same backdoor accesses to the accounts that Dwendle already used to disguise the Consortium's illicit profits. "Yes, but he'll know—"

"After tonight," Kaspar said coolly, "he'll know nothing. Tomorrow morning you will be shocked to discover that Gabrel Eskelinen killed the Diplomat using a pro-tech weapon, unfortunately just before the city security forces could stop him by more conventional means. They were, of course, forced to kill him in self-defense. His possession of the weapon and the sums transferred to his bank account will demonstrate that he was the smuggler she came to investigate. We will present the evidence to Rezerval, together with Gabrel's cache of prohibited weapons—I'm sorry, but we must sacrifice the latest shipment to lend verisimilitude—explain that we are shocked and dismayed but that we acted immediately to retrieve the weapons from their native possessors, and here they are, and here's the guilty party, unfortunately dead, and here's their precious Diplo, also unfortunately dead, but she died heroically in the line of duty. That wraps it all up nicely; no need for any further investigation." He smiled sweetly at his colleagues.

"He's a soldier, she's a Diplo, how are you going to take them out?" Dwendle demanded.

Kaspar's smile brightened. "With some of those pro-tech weapons Leutnant Eskelinen has been smuggling, obviously. I'll catch them both in a tanglenet, which she won't be expecting, and bubble those pretty brains with a dazer set for maximum neuronal disruption before she has time to pull any dirty Diplo tricks or bring out any secret weapons. He will have no defences against a tanglenet, so I'll have plenty of time to put a sword through him. Then it's only to disable the tangler, put the dazer in his hand, and congratulate the security men on their prompt action. They'll be willing enough to take the credit, and the evidence will be sufficient to prove that he's the smuggler."

"If it works . . ." Dwendle said doubtfully.

"Trust me. I'll see to it personally." Kaspar sketched a parody of a military salute. "I'm off now—and you'd best leave soon too, Stoffelsen. Those accounts need to be in place before morning."

His insouciant manner was maddening. "Haar Stoffelsen to you, young man!" Dwendle snapped, "and I'll see to the accounting in . . . in my own good time."

"As you like, Haar Stoffelsen," Kaspar said patiently, "but remember that leaving the ball early will ensure that you and your good lady—and your charming daughters—are home long before any disturbances on the road tonight."

"I suppose that leaves me to entertain the Diplomat," Torston sighed with a long-suffering tone and a longing look at the pretty ankles he could glimpse under the Diplomat's layered skirt panels.

"I think Gabrel Eskelinen will do that quite adequately," Dwendle said. "Just make sure they do not leave before the last valsa is played. Make it a point of etiquette—Valentin tradition, bad luck for the guest of honor to leave before everyone else has had a chance to make their farewells." Not a bad "tradition," even if he had thought it up on the spur of the moment—and the best of it was that if old Torston started boring on about it, everybody would accept his statement that it was an old Founding Families tradition without question. Sort of thing the old bore was always coming up with anyway.

Now if he could just think of an equally good excuse to get Ivonna and the girls out of here, without arousing the Diplomat's suspicions!

As the older contingent of Society members drifted away, there was plenty of space on the dance floor for the younger ones to demonstrate the shifting patterns and changes of the paar-dansken for their distinguished visitor. "Diplomat Vissi" was so involved in remembering the complicated sequence of right hand across, turn to your left-hand neighbor, skip back to the right and thread down the arches that she scarcely noticed when her host and hostess made their farewells. Only the loud complaints of Faundaree and Saara at being dragged home so early caught her attention.

"Is it time to go?" she asked Gabrel in an undertone, between step-changes. "Should we leave too?"

"By no means, young la—I mean, Diplomat Vissi! By no means!" boomed an authoritative voice just behind her. Maris turned, startled, to find one of the old guys from the banquet table standing much too close to her—only, with an adroit move, Gabrel was somehow between them, and the old guy backed off a few paces, still talking. Something about a long-standing Valentin tradition that absolutely required the guest of honor to remain until the end of the ball; Maris didn't follow all the details and didn't much care. Paar-dansken were fun; she wasn't supposed to know the steps so she didn't have to pretend to be an expert in something she was totally ignorant of; and nobody in the gay young crowd that surrounded her had the least desire to talk about bacteriomats, or tribal treaties, or prohibited technology, or anything else she was supposed to know all about.

And Gabrel Eskelinen, who didn't know any better, was treating her like a toppie lady; a strangely intoxicating experience. This whole party was like living one of those holos she loved to watch whenever Johnivans could get them; not quite real, but much much better than any reality Maris had ever known.

Fine by her if they kept dancing till dawn. Had to be easier to handle than whatever was next on the Barents Trading Society's gods-curst schedule.

In fact it was well after moonset, if not quite dawn, when the band put aside the rapping sticks that dictated the rhythm of the paar-dansken and picked up traditional viols and flugels for the last valsa. Young officers in gold-braided uniforms and ladies in sheer dresses spangled with glittering dots took the floor, one couple after another, spinning and swooping with a grace that took Maris's breath away.

"I can't do this," she protested when Gabrel took her hand. It wasn't like the paar-dansken, a bunch of people skipping around each other and everybody laughing when you got the pattern wrong. This was something else, magic, flying to music, something you couldn't fake from having seen it on historical drama holos.

"You can't not do it," Gabrel informed her. "Valentin tradition. Guest of honor must be the last one dancing. And the last dance is always a valsa."

Maris looked up at him suspiciously as he drew her into his arms, one hand firm on her back, the other holding her own hand. "Why do I suspect you made that up just now?"

"Not all of it," Gabrel said. "The last dance is always a valsa. Anyway, it's easy. Anyone can valsa. Just listen to the beat—one-two-three, one-two-three, and here we go . . ."

"Okay," he said a moment later. "You have to hear the beat and match your steps to it. ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three . . ."

"Ouch," was the next thing he said, but Maris, biting her lip in concentration, hardly noticed.

"I think I'm getting it!" she cried in delight.

"No," Gabrel said through lips tight with pain, "that was my left ankle you got."

The room spun around them and Maris found herself going backward and forward and sideways under Gabrel's firm steering, and most of the time now her feet were landing on the floor instead of on Gabrel's toes, and . . .

"It is like flying," she sighed happily as the music came to a halt.

"I hope you don't crash-land your flitters quite that often." Gabrel lifted one foot tenderly. "I should have worn cavalry boots."

Maris grinned. "Serves you right for inventing traditions!"

He put one finger under her chin and gently tilted her head up. "Diplomat Vissi, do you know that you look more like a seventeen-year-old girl at her first dance than like a mature and experienced graduate of the Diplomatic School?"

Maris froze for a moment. Seventeen wasn't a bad estimate of her actual age, assuming she'd been nine or maybe ten when Johnivans recruited her into his gang. Was Gabrel guessing—no. He couldn't have guessed.

She pictured Calandra Vissi's papers in her mind and tried to think herself back into the person who'd earned those diplomas and commendations and had been to all those worlds the travel records showed. How would Diplomat Vissi respond?

"You flatter me, sir," she said with a polite smile. "I'm nearly thirty, far past being able to pass for a girl. But—" she laughed lightly "—this is my first dance. We don't dance on Rezerval—not like this, anyway. Perhaps that has misled you."

"Nearly thirty," Gabrel repeated, while Maris repeated the mental arithmetic that had given her Calandra Vissi's age. "Hard to credit. Is there some magic about Diplomatic School, some secret youth treatments that we provincials wouldn't know about?"

"Rumors of our special capabilities are greatly exaggerated," Maris replied demurely. If it needed youth treatments to explain the disparity between her face and Calandra Vissi's recorded age, there would be a rumor about such treatments as soon as she could plant one with Saara.

Rumors could be quite useful.

They just might save her skin.

Gods knew what else would, given that she had no way off this world and out of this role except straight back into Johnivans' hands.

Torston Huyberts kept Maris and Gabrel by his side, making farewells to all the toppies of Barents, until they were the last to leave—that was, if you didn't count the slender dark-skinned servants quietly fluttering around the hall and cleaning up the traces of the evening's entertainment, the red puddles of spilled punch and the twists of paper that had been somebody's dance card, the garlands of waxy-white flowers now beginning to turn brown at the edges, a torn and discarded strip of lace with a dirty boot print as mute evidence of what had happened to it. While they were waiting for the carriage to be brought round, Maris looked back into the empty hall, automatically cataloging these details and wondering why the room reminded her of the corridors on Thirty where Johnivans' gang had hunted down and killed the last survivors of Ugly Benko's band. And why she felt the same way she had during that fight—tired to death, scared, and yet somehow exhilarated by the fast action and the intoxicating scent of danger in the air. Well, this evening had been a battle of sorts, only fought with words and wits rather than with dazers and tanglers.

And it was over now. What she had won, beyond another day's survival in her imposture, Maris didn't know; but at least she hadn't lost. Time to relax now; there would be more battles to fight tomorrow. Torston Huyberts's carriage had taken him away; there was only Gabrel by her side now, and she no longer thought of him as an enemy. Not somebody to be trusted with a secret that meant her survival, no, but not someone who was out to trick her and trap her either.

She took a deep breath of the warm Kalapriyan night air, soft and damp with a hint of sea salt, and tried to convince her overstrained nerves and hammering pulse that there was nothing, now, in the air but the oversweet scent of fading flowers.

"Tired?" Gabrel asked.

"Not in the least," Maris said. "Do you think we Diplomats are such fragile flowers that we fade after an evening's entertainment?"

"No. But it has been a long day for your first one on Kalapriya."

Yeah, and you'll never guess just how long and hard—I hope! Maris's thoughts went back to Tasman, to the panicked girl standing in Calandra Vissi's quarters and realizing, too late—almost too late, she corrected herself—that she had run just where Johnivans wanted her.

To kill her.

Had that really been only two watches—half a day, she corrected herself; must think in dirtside terms now—half a day ago? Seemed more like half a lifetime.

Maybe it was. After all, she was a different person now.

But the feeling of that discovery, the panic and the sense that all around her were enemies, stayed with Maris even as Gabrel Eskelinen handed her up into the carriage and they started out on the dark road back to House Stoffelsen. Well, and that made sense. These people were enemies of a sort, she argued against the prickly feeling at the back of her neck. Maybe they didn't know it, but that was only because they didn't know who she really was. They might make pretty speeches to Calandra Vissi, but they would be no friends to a nameless thief and smuggler from Tasman.

And some of them didn't seem to like Calandra Vissi all that much, either.

The feeling of danger was all around her, close and heavy like the overly warm night air and the strong sweet perfume of night-blooming flowers, and Maris couldn't shut down, couldn't keep from scanning the darkness on either side of the road as if Johnivans might spring out from the shadows.

The road itself wasn't that bright, just a line of white dust between the shadowy groves and mud-walled buildings, lit by torches spaced too far apart to show anything but the bare outlines of the way the carriage must go. Maris had learned long ago, in the disputed corridors of Tasman's lowest levels, that light and darkness themselves could be weapons; cut the lights to a partition, and incoming fighters with dark-adjusted sight could make mincemeat of those within who were temporarily blinded by the loss of light. Now she averted her eyes from each pair of flickering torches, watching instead the shadows within the angles of joined buildings, looking for what didn't belong even while some part of her laughed at her senseless fears.

What didn't belong was a glitter in darkness, a nearly invisible net of thread-fine light, and its movement was what caught her eye first; the graceful arcs of death swooping out toward the carriage. "Gabrel!" she shouted while diving out of the carriage and away from the tanglenet. She hit the dirt with a bone-jarring thump and rolled into a shadowed corner, not the one hiding the net. Dirt's softer to land on than plastisteel, and thank the gods those boxes-on-wheels-don't move at any speed, come on, up, you're not hurt . . .

The roll ended at a pile of rubble that scraped her shins and banged against her ribs with jagged edges. Piled stones, mortar, leftovers from something that had been torn down and left for scavengers to pick, who cared? Maris came up to a crouch with a nice heavy sharp-cornered rock in each hand and saw that Gabrel was half entangled in the net.

But only half. Warned by her shout, he'd moved fast enough to keep one arm and shoulder free, and he had drawn his sword. A lot of good that's going to do. The sickly pink sizzle of a dazer beam set for nerve disruption went through the tanglenet, but aimed at where she'd been sitting, not at Gabrel. Two seconds to recharge, if they're using the old models—if they've got the new ones, we're fucked. 

The dazer had to have been one of the older models, because Maris had time to sling her first rock at a shadow behind the pink flare. The dark shape yelped, went down on one knee and would have clapped a hand over its bruised shoulder if there had been time, but there wasn't because Maris was on him now with the second rock in her upraised hand, grabbing his shoulder with her free hand and hammering down at where the head had to be and hearing a sickening soft kind of crunch. The man slumped, a soft dead weight against her knees, and she stumbled backward. Her hands were sticky; she dropped the stone she still held and tried to wipe her palms on the fine floating panels of her skirts. Idiot, if there's another one you've just handed yourself to him on a platter.

But there wasn't another attacker; only the one shape dark and limp in the shadows, and Gabrel still struggling with the tanglenet. At least the beasts pulling the carriage hadn't taken fright and bolted, there was a mercy. Maris gritted her teeth and felt along the dead man's body, found a small hard square shape, pressed down on the center where a button clicked and the lines of light entrapping Gabrel faded away.

Now the turagai wanted to run; they must have been caught in the tanglenet as well. Gabrel had his hands full with sword and reins, and for a few sweating, swearing moments it looked to Maris like a toss-up who was going to control the carriage's movements, Gabrel or the thrashing, panicky beasts. Then he jerked their heads back, said a few words more quietly, and the turagai stood still, panting and rolling their great eyes but apparently under control again. For the moment.

He looped the reins over a post and jumped from the carriage, seemed to stagger for a moment, then limped toward her. "Very—commendably quick reactions, Diplomat Vissi. My superiors will find it a most amusing story."

"Funny sense of humor they've got, then."

"After all," Gabrel pointed out, "I am supposed to be protecting you, not the other way round. Although I see the rumors are this far true, Diplomats need little protection." He leaned casually against the wall.

God of Minor Fuckups preserve us! Do I have to deal with wounded male pride on top of everything else?

"You prob'ly weren't expecting modern weapons," Maris said.

"And you were? I could wish you would have mentioned the possibility."

"Not exactly. I just had this feelin' something wasn't right. When somebody wants to make damned sure you're the last to leave a meeting, and you've got a long dark road to go . . ." Maris shrugged. You didn't need a Diplo's implants to figure that out, just common sense; but saying so would hardly sooth Gabrel's bruised ego. "You moved right fast there, getting your sword free, for somebody as wasn't expecting an attack."

"And a lot of good it did," Gabrel said drily. "Can you bring one of those torches over here?"

He pointed down the road to where the next pair of inadequate torches flickered against the night. Naturally the attack had been staged midway between sets of torches, to give this guy the deepest shadow; it was what Maris would have done herself, part of why she'd been hyperalert just there.

"I would go myself," he said apologetically when she didn't move right away, "but I am not totally sure that my right leg will support me without the help of this excellent mud wall."

"Pins-and-needles feeling? Feels heavy when you try to move it?"

"Somewhat of an understatement, but—yes, more or less."

"Nerve disruption backwash from the dazer beam. Must've just caught you in the outer glow. It should wear off in a few hours."

"Delighted to hear it. Now, about the torch . . ."

"How come?"

"I like to know who's just tried to kill me. Don't you?"

"I don't like knowin' people who are goin' to try and kill me." I really must do something about my social life; seems like that's the only kind of people I do know. But she fetched the torch. If she'd just killed one of Johnivans' people, she wanted to know whose ghost to appease.

The torch was easy enough to detach—just a bowl on a stick, basically, dropped into the top end of a hollow pole short enough for even Maris to reach—but no fun at all to carry. She learned almost immediately that you wanted to keep the bunu bowl balanced just so, or some of the hot oil that fueled the burning wick dropped down your hand and arm.

"Not a nice sight for a lady," Gabrel said apologetically when Maris came back, "but anybody using tangler nets and dazers is more likely to be your acquaintance than—" He took the torch from her, lowered it cautiously to shed light on their assailant's ruined head, and took a sharp inward breath "—mine," he finished in a curiously flat tone.

Relief flooded Maris. It was somebody she knew, yes, but not one of her old gang; she would owe this ghost no remembrances. "I know him, too," she said. "Kaspar somebody."

"Slevinen," Gabrel said. "Kaspar Slevinen. New-come from Barents, which could explain the weapons, but why smuggle them in? And damned close with some of the Good Old Families, which I thought strange before, seeing they mostly keep themselves to themselves, but Kaspar damned near lives in Torston Huyberts's pocket . . ."

"That was the geezer who wanted to make sure we stayed till last," Maris said. She dropped to her knees, careless of the blood and dust on her borrowed finery, and picked up the slim dazer lying by Kaspar Slevinen's limp hand. She thumbed the power button experimentally. A faint pink glow shone out, then faded. "Careless," she said with regret. "He'd let the charge run down. That's why it didn't do you more damage." And we can't exactly ask him where he kept the charger, now. 

Gabrel nodded slowly. "Slevinen, Huyberts, and Stoffelsen. Always had their heads together in some corner. And tonight . . . Stoffelsen left early, so that you were sure to be coming back alone with me. Huyberts kept us there until all others had departed. Slevinen attacks us with pro-tech weaponry. And you're here to investigate Orlando Montoyasana's claim that somebody is corrupting the Indigenous Territories with prohibited technology. I do believe that someone doesn't want you to make that investigation."

"If there's anythin' to it, of course they don't want me pokin' my nose in," Maris said. "Don't take a nanotech designer to figure that much out."

"But why now? Stoffelsen was in charge of your schedule, and as your escort I've seen it; the man was planning to waste as much of your time as possible with receptions and banquets and speeches and tours. What happened tonight to make him change his mind?"

"He decided death was better than sittin' through any more speeches," Maris suggested. "Specially if it was my death 'stead o' his'n."

Gabrel looked down his nose at her. "This is hardly a time for levity."

"Well, it ain't the best time and place for discussin' who wants to kill us, either," Maris pointed out. "First we need to get him out of sight, then let's get us out of sight. Your leg workin' now?"

Gabrel took an experimental step away from the wall and nodded. "Feels half dead still, but it'll hold me up."

"Fine, then you take his head—eh, shoulders?" Maris corrected herself as she remembered the bloody ruin that was the back of Kaspar Slevinen's head. She took the torch from Gabrel, jammed the supporting stick into a crevice of the low mud wall he'd been leaning against, and picked up Slevinen's heels. Between them they got his body over the wall and let it fall heavily into the ditch on the other side.

"Get his dazer and tangler," Gabrel suggested. "We might need them."

"Dazer's no good, it's out of power." But the tangler might still prove useful.

"For evidence." Gabrel took the two small devices from Maris and tucked them into his sash.

"Now what?"

"Well, I don't think it would be healthy for you to go back to House Stoffelsen," Gabrel said. "You leave anything there you can't do without?"

"My credentials." She hadn't packed very well for a stint as Diplomat; there was nothing else in her traveling bag but Calandra's fashionable clothes, unsuitable for this climate and illegal for this level of technology. Why hadn't she taken weapons? Because she hadn't seen any. A Diplomat is a walking weapon. That was rumor speaking, and a rumor she'd have a hard time living up to. Too bad Slevinen's dazer was drained and she didn't know where to recharge it. Maybe she could get the tangler away from Gabrel.

"I'll vouch for you. Come on, we've a lot to do. We need to leave before dawn, before Huyberts and Stoffelsen find out their plan didn't work."

Maris dug her heels in, resisting the pull of Gabrel's hand. "Leave for where, exactly? Think we can get off-planet without them noticing?" Gods, she hoped that wasn't what he had in mind! Off-planet meant going back through Tasman. That wouldn't be exactly safe either, but she could hardly explain that while Gabrel thought she was the Diplo. But if that was their only way out, she'd have to tell him. Everything. Couldn't let him walk into Johnivans' hands without a clue what he was about to die for.

"Off-planet? No way. You've got a mission, remember? I propose that we pursue it." Gabrel's teeth flashed white in the darkness. "The climate of the Hills is much healthier than these coastal lowlands."

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Framed

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Chapter Seven
Valentin on Kalapriya

The ball after the banquet was intended to make the ladies of Barents and the younger people happy while keeping the Diplomat harmlessly entertained and giving the leaders of the Barents Trading Society a much-needed rest. Dwendle Stoffelsen had personally seen to it that the first five days of the Diplomat's visit were crammed from dawn to dusk with formal entertainments, speeches, and tours of everything from a bacteriomat breeding cave to the processing hall where the 'mats were prepared for shipment off-planet. It would kill him to keep up the pace he'd scheduled for the woman; before meeting her, he'd entertained some hope that it would also kill her, or at least exhaust her to the point where she'd be happy to leave Kalapriya just to escape another round of speeches and tours.

His first sight of her at the banquet had destroyed that hope. She might have looked exhausted and frail on arrival at Valentin's spaceport, but with a couple of hours to rest she had bounced back, bright and lively and looking hardly older than one of his own daughters. She had to be at least thirty; Diplomatic School training took years, not to mention learning to manage the biomechanical implants, and Diplos were not sent out alone to their first assignments. Dwendle had just forgotten how damned young thirty could be. And how resilient. He seriously doubted they could exhaust the Diplo without killing themselves in the process.

Now, of course, after the barbed hints she'd dropped over dinner, they had worse problems to worry about. He summoned Torston and Kaspar into one of the curtained alcoves that lined the hall for a whispered consultation and outlined his fears. The woman had obviously studied ways of slipping materials past the customs inspectors; all right, that was reasonable enough given that her orders were to investigate Orlando Montoyasana's allegations of prohibited technology being smuggled onto Kalapriya. But that remark about the bacteriomat monopoly—!

"It could have been an innocent observation," Torston suggested.

"Nothing a Diplo says is innocent," Kaspar said. As the only one of the three who'd actually encountered a Diplo before, he took the lead in this conversation despite being the youngest of the three and the only one who wasn't from a Founding Family. "They're trained to make provocative comments that will upset guilty people and cause them to betray themselves. And from the looks of you two, that's exactly what happened. I do hope you didn't spill soup all over yourselves when she said that."

"Certainly not!" Torston bristled. "We were eating krebsi at the time!"

Dwendle stifled a sigh and wondered, not for the first time, why he had been saddled with an officious youngster and a doddering old fool as coconspirators. He knew why, of course. These two were not only venal enough to enter enthusiastically into the Consortium he had created, they were in his power by virtue of the background sheets he held on each of them. He'd thought himself very clever to ensure that no one was invited to join the Consortium but those who had some secret weakness he could exploit.

"We betrayed nothing," he said to Kaspar, "but it's clear the woman knows too much. She knows it's a two-way trade, she was teasing us with her knowledge of our involvement, and she is far too conversant with the situation in the mountain Territories. And she's announced her intention of going wherever her inquiries lead."

"If she goes into the hills, she might get involved in the tribal wars," Torston said hopefully. "Not our fault if she dies there."

"It's hard to kill Diplos," Kaspar said gloomily, "and what's worse, it leads to investigations. What if she survives, and sees some of the weapons the Udarans are using?"

"If she gets as far as Udara," Dwendle said, "she might see a great deal worse than that."

In dismal silence, they watched the dancers. Diplomat Vissi looked like a young girl without a care in the world; she was laughing now, getting the steps of the twining promenade hopelessly mixed up as Gabrel Eskelinen tried to lead her through them. The peach-colored panels of her borrowed Kalapriyan-style dress fluttered around her ankles, revealing tantalizing glimpses of lavender underpanels and slim legs. Even that overserious prude Eskelinen was laughing.

"It's deceptive," Kaspar said. "She's probably had youth treatments. Don't imagine that's a girl you're looking at. Think of it as a snake. A highly trained snake."

"But if killing her will only lead to more investigations, how can we stop her?" Torston sounded close to tears. "All our fortunes, everything we've worked for, ruined because of this one woman poking her nose in. I told you Orlando Montoyasana shouldn't be given an upcountry pass, I told you the man was dangerous. No, no, you said, Dwendle, you said he was a known conspiracy maniac and nobody ever paid attention to him, everywhere he goes he fusses about native cultures being destroyed, even if he stumbles on something they'll write it off as more of Montoyasana's particular paranoia. That's what you said. And now look what's happened!"

"Montoyasana won't be making any more complaints. And if the death of the Diplo also brings about the end of the investigation," Kaspar said, "there'll be no more questions asked. We can end the whole thing now, tonight."

"But how?" Dwendle asked involuntarily.

"Eskelinen. You've no particular love for him, have you?"

"Another nuisance," Dwendle shrugged, "always wanting to be off up-country, mixing too much with the natives, but he's military—he can be kept under control. All we have to do is persuade his colonel that he shouldn't be given another pass to leave the regiment. I'll think up some good reason why I really need him in Valentin."

"But if he could be neutralized along with the Diplo, you'd have no objection?"

"Gods, no!" It sounded too good to be true. It probably was too good to be true.

"Then it's very simple." Kaspar sounded unbearably smug, but Dwendle could put up with that in the hope of hearing that smug voice pronounce his salvation. "Torston, you will see that their departure from the ball is delayed until most of our people have been gone for some time, so that they will be alone on the road back to House Stoffelsen. Dwendle, you need to arrange some large transfers of funds into Eskelinen's accounts, and fiddle the accounting programs so that they are back-dated over the last several months; can you do that?"

It would be easy enough to arrange, using the same backdoor accesses to the accounts that Dwendle already used to disguise the Consortium's illicit profits. "Yes, but he'll know—"

"After tonight," Kaspar said coolly, "he'll know nothing. Tomorrow morning you will be shocked to discover that Gabrel Eskelinen killed the Diplomat using a pro-tech weapon, unfortunately just before the city security forces could stop him by more conventional means. They were, of course, forced to kill him in self-defense. His possession of the weapon and the sums transferred to his bank account will demonstrate that he was the smuggler she came to investigate. We will present the evidence to Rezerval, together with Gabrel's cache of prohibited weapons—I'm sorry, but we must sacrifice the latest shipment to lend verisimilitude—explain that we are shocked and dismayed but that we acted immediately to retrieve the weapons from their native possessors, and here they are, and here's the guilty party, unfortunately dead, and here's their precious Diplo, also unfortunately dead, but she died heroically in the line of duty. That wraps it all up nicely; no need for any further investigation." He smiled sweetly at his colleagues.

"He's a soldier, she's a Diplo, how are you going to take them out?" Dwendle demanded.

Kaspar's smile brightened. "With some of those pro-tech weapons Leutnant Eskelinen has been smuggling, obviously. I'll catch them both in a tanglenet, which she won't be expecting, and bubble those pretty brains with a dazer set for maximum neuronal disruption before she has time to pull any dirty Diplo tricks or bring out any secret weapons. He will have no defences against a tanglenet, so I'll have plenty of time to put a sword through him. Then it's only to disable the tangler, put the dazer in his hand, and congratulate the security men on their prompt action. They'll be willing enough to take the credit, and the evidence will be sufficient to prove that he's the smuggler."

"If it works . . ." Dwendle said doubtfully.

"Trust me. I'll see to it personally." Kaspar sketched a parody of a military salute. "I'm off now—and you'd best leave soon too, Stoffelsen. Those accounts need to be in place before morning."

His insouciant manner was maddening. "Haar Stoffelsen to you, young man!" Dwendle snapped, "and I'll see to the accounting in . . . in my own good time."

"As you like, Haar Stoffelsen," Kaspar said patiently, "but remember that leaving the ball early will ensure that you and your good lady—and your charming daughters—are home long before any disturbances on the road tonight."

"I suppose that leaves me to entertain the Diplomat," Torston sighed with a long-suffering tone and a longing look at the pretty ankles he could glimpse under the Diplomat's layered skirt panels.

"I think Gabrel Eskelinen will do that quite adequately," Dwendle said. "Just make sure they do not leave before the last valsa is played. Make it a point of etiquette—Valentin tradition, bad luck for the guest of honor to leave before everyone else has had a chance to make their farewells." Not a bad "tradition," even if he had thought it up on the spur of the moment—and the best of it was that if old Torston started boring on about it, everybody would accept his statement that it was an old Founding Families tradition without question. Sort of thing the old bore was always coming up with anyway.

Now if he could just think of an equally good excuse to get Ivonna and the girls out of here, without arousing the Diplomat's suspicions!

As the older contingent of Society members drifted away, there was plenty of space on the dance floor for the younger ones to demonstrate the shifting patterns and changes of the paar-dansken for their distinguished visitor. "Diplomat Vissi" was so involved in remembering the complicated sequence of right hand across, turn to your left-hand neighbor, skip back to the right and thread down the arches that she scarcely noticed when her host and hostess made their farewells. Only the loud complaints of Faundaree and Saara at being dragged home so early caught her attention.

"Is it time to go?" she asked Gabrel in an undertone, between step-changes. "Should we leave too?"

"By no means, young la—I mean, Diplomat Vissi! By no means!" boomed an authoritative voice just behind her. Maris turned, startled, to find one of the old guys from the banquet table standing much too close to her—only, with an adroit move, Gabrel was somehow between them, and the old guy backed off a few paces, still talking. Something about a long-standing Valentin tradition that absolutely required the guest of honor to remain until the end of the ball; Maris didn't follow all the details and didn't much care. Paar-dansken were fun; she wasn't supposed to know the steps so she didn't have to pretend to be an expert in something she was totally ignorant of; and nobody in the gay young crowd that surrounded her had the least desire to talk about bacteriomats, or tribal treaties, or prohibited technology, or anything else she was supposed to know all about.

And Gabrel Eskelinen, who didn't know any better, was treating her like a toppie lady; a strangely intoxicating experience. This whole party was like living one of those holos she loved to watch whenever Johnivans could get them; not quite real, but much much better than any reality Maris had ever known.

Fine by her if they kept dancing till dawn. Had to be easier to handle than whatever was next on the Barents Trading Society's gods-curst schedule.

In fact it was well after moonset, if not quite dawn, when the band put aside the rapping sticks that dictated the rhythm of the paar-dansken and picked up traditional viols and flugels for the last valsa. Young officers in gold-braided uniforms and ladies in sheer dresses spangled with glittering dots took the floor, one couple after another, spinning and swooping with a grace that took Maris's breath away.

"I can't do this," she protested when Gabrel took her hand. It wasn't like the paar-dansken, a bunch of people skipping around each other and everybody laughing when you got the pattern wrong. This was something else, magic, flying to music, something you couldn't fake from having seen it on historical drama holos.

"You can't not do it," Gabrel informed her. "Valentin tradition. Guest of honor must be the last one dancing. And the last dance is always a valsa."

Maris looked up at him suspiciously as he drew her into his arms, one hand firm on her back, the other holding her own hand. "Why do I suspect you made that up just now?"

"Not all of it," Gabrel said. "The last dance is always a valsa. Anyway, it's easy. Anyone can valsa. Just listen to the beat—one-two-three, one-two-three, and here we go . . ."

"Okay," he said a moment later. "You have to hear the beat and match your steps to it. ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three . . ."

"Ouch," was the next thing he said, but Maris, biting her lip in concentration, hardly noticed.

"I think I'm getting it!" she cried in delight.

"No," Gabrel said through lips tight with pain, "that was my left ankle you got."

The room spun around them and Maris found herself going backward and forward and sideways under Gabrel's firm steering, and most of the time now her feet were landing on the floor instead of on Gabrel's toes, and . . .

"It is like flying," she sighed happily as the music came to a halt.

"I hope you don't crash-land your flitters quite that often." Gabrel lifted one foot tenderly. "I should have worn cavalry boots."

Maris grinned. "Serves you right for inventing traditions!"

He put one finger under her chin and gently tilted her head up. "Diplomat Vissi, do you know that you look more like a seventeen-year-old girl at her first dance than like a mature and experienced graduate of the Diplomatic School?"

Maris froze for a moment. Seventeen wasn't a bad estimate of her actual age, assuming she'd been nine or maybe ten when Johnivans recruited her into his gang. Was Gabrel guessing—no. He couldn't have guessed.

She pictured Calandra Vissi's papers in her mind and tried to think herself back into the person who'd earned those diplomas and commendations and had been to all those worlds the travel records showed. How would Diplomat Vissi respond?

"You flatter me, sir," she said with a polite smile. "I'm nearly thirty, far past being able to pass for a girl. But—" she laughed lightly "—this is my first dance. We don't dance on Rezerval—not like this, anyway. Perhaps that has misled you."

"Nearly thirty," Gabrel repeated, while Maris repeated the mental arithmetic that had given her Calandra Vissi's age. "Hard to credit. Is there some magic about Diplomatic School, some secret youth treatments that we provincials wouldn't know about?"

"Rumors of our special capabilities are greatly exaggerated," Maris replied demurely. If it needed youth treatments to explain the disparity between her face and Calandra Vissi's recorded age, there would be a rumor about such treatments as soon as she could plant one with Saara.

Rumors could be quite useful.

They just might save her skin.

Gods knew what else would, given that she had no way off this world and out of this role except straight back into Johnivans' hands.

Torston Huyberts kept Maris and Gabrel by his side, making farewells to all the toppies of Barents, until they were the last to leave—that was, if you didn't count the slender dark-skinned servants quietly fluttering around the hall and cleaning up the traces of the evening's entertainment, the red puddles of spilled punch and the twists of paper that had been somebody's dance card, the garlands of waxy-white flowers now beginning to turn brown at the edges, a torn and discarded strip of lace with a dirty boot print as mute evidence of what had happened to it. While they were waiting for the carriage to be brought round, Maris looked back into the empty hall, automatically cataloging these details and wondering why the room reminded her of the corridors on Thirty where Johnivans' gang had hunted down and killed the last survivors of Ugly Benko's band. And why she felt the same way she had during that fight—tired to death, scared, and yet somehow exhilarated by the fast action and the intoxicating scent of danger in the air. Well, this evening had been a battle of sorts, only fought with words and wits rather than with dazers and tanglers.

And it was over now. What she had won, beyond another day's survival in her imposture, Maris didn't know; but at least she hadn't lost. Time to relax now; there would be more battles to fight tomorrow. Torston Huyberts's carriage had taken him away; there was only Gabrel by her side now, and she no longer thought of him as an enemy. Not somebody to be trusted with a secret that meant her survival, no, but not someone who was out to trick her and trap her either.

She took a deep breath of the warm Kalapriyan night air, soft and damp with a hint of sea salt, and tried to convince her overstrained nerves and hammering pulse that there was nothing, now, in the air but the oversweet scent of fading flowers.

"Tired?" Gabrel asked.

"Not in the least," Maris said. "Do you think we Diplomats are such fragile flowers that we fade after an evening's entertainment?"

"No. But it has been a long day for your first one on Kalapriya."

Yeah, and you'll never guess just how long and hard—I hope! Maris's thoughts went back to Tasman, to the panicked girl standing in Calandra Vissi's quarters and realizing, too late—almost too late, she corrected herself—that she had run just where Johnivans wanted her.

To kill her.

Had that really been only two watches—half a day, she corrected herself; must think in dirtside terms now—half a day ago? Seemed more like half a lifetime.

Maybe it was. After all, she was a different person now.

But the feeling of that discovery, the panic and the sense that all around her were enemies, stayed with Maris even as Gabrel Eskelinen handed her up into the carriage and they started out on the dark road back to House Stoffelsen. Well, and that made sense. These people were enemies of a sort, she argued against the prickly feeling at the back of her neck. Maybe they didn't know it, but that was only because they didn't know who she really was. They might make pretty speeches to Calandra Vissi, but they would be no friends to a nameless thief and smuggler from Tasman.

And some of them didn't seem to like Calandra Vissi all that much, either.

The feeling of danger was all around her, close and heavy like the overly warm night air and the strong sweet perfume of night-blooming flowers, and Maris couldn't shut down, couldn't keep from scanning the darkness on either side of the road as if Johnivans might spring out from the shadows.

The road itself wasn't that bright, just a line of white dust between the shadowy groves and mud-walled buildings, lit by torches spaced too far apart to show anything but the bare outlines of the way the carriage must go. Maris had learned long ago, in the disputed corridors of Tasman's lowest levels, that light and darkness themselves could be weapons; cut the lights to a partition, and incoming fighters with dark-adjusted sight could make mincemeat of those within who were temporarily blinded by the loss of light. Now she averted her eyes from each pair of flickering torches, watching instead the shadows within the angles of joined buildings, looking for what didn't belong even while some part of her laughed at her senseless fears.

What didn't belong was a glitter in darkness, a nearly invisible net of thread-fine light, and its movement was what caught her eye first; the graceful arcs of death swooping out toward the carriage. "Gabrel!" she shouted while diving out of the carriage and away from the tanglenet. She hit the dirt with a bone-jarring thump and rolled into a shadowed corner, not the one hiding the net. Dirt's softer to land on than plastisteel, and thank the gods those boxes-on-wheels-don't move at any speed, come on, up, you're not hurt . . .

The roll ended at a pile of rubble that scraped her shins and banged against her ribs with jagged edges. Piled stones, mortar, leftovers from something that had been torn down and left for scavengers to pick, who cared? Maris came up to a crouch with a nice heavy sharp-cornered rock in each hand and saw that Gabrel was half entangled in the net.

But only half. Warned by her shout, he'd moved fast enough to keep one arm and shoulder free, and he had drawn his sword. A lot of good that's going to do. The sickly pink sizzle of a dazer beam set for nerve disruption went through the tanglenet, but aimed at where she'd been sitting, not at Gabrel. Two seconds to recharge, if they're using the old models—if they've got the new ones, we're fucked. 

The dazer had to have been one of the older models, because Maris had time to sling her first rock at a shadow behind the pink flare. The dark shape yelped, went down on one knee and would have clapped a hand over its bruised shoulder if there had been time, but there wasn't because Maris was on him now with the second rock in her upraised hand, grabbing his shoulder with her free hand and hammering down at where the head had to be and hearing a sickening soft kind of crunch. The man slumped, a soft dead weight against her knees, and she stumbled backward. Her hands were sticky; she dropped the stone she still held and tried to wipe her palms on the fine floating panels of her skirts. Idiot, if there's another one you've just handed yourself to him on a platter.

But there wasn't another attacker; only the one shape dark and limp in the shadows, and Gabrel still struggling with the tanglenet. At least the beasts pulling the carriage hadn't taken fright and bolted, there was a mercy. Maris gritted her teeth and felt along the dead man's body, found a small hard square shape, pressed down on the center where a button clicked and the lines of light entrapping Gabrel faded away.

Now the turagai wanted to run; they must have been caught in the tanglenet as well. Gabrel had his hands full with sword and reins, and for a few sweating, swearing moments it looked to Maris like a toss-up who was going to control the carriage's movements, Gabrel or the thrashing, panicky beasts. Then he jerked their heads back, said a few words more quietly, and the turagai stood still, panting and rolling their great eyes but apparently under control again. For the moment.

He looped the reins over a post and jumped from the carriage, seemed to stagger for a moment, then limped toward her. "Very—commendably quick reactions, Diplomat Vissi. My superiors will find it a most amusing story."

"Funny sense of humor they've got, then."

"After all," Gabrel pointed out, "I am supposed to be protecting you, not the other way round. Although I see the rumors are this far true, Diplomats need little protection." He leaned casually against the wall.

God of Minor Fuckups preserve us! Do I have to deal with wounded male pride on top of everything else?

"You prob'ly weren't expecting modern weapons," Maris said.

"And you were? I could wish you would have mentioned the possibility."

"Not exactly. I just had this feelin' something wasn't right. When somebody wants to make damned sure you're the last to leave a meeting, and you've got a long dark road to go . . ." Maris shrugged. You didn't need a Diplo's implants to figure that out, just common sense; but saying so would hardly sooth Gabrel's bruised ego. "You moved right fast there, getting your sword free, for somebody as wasn't expecting an attack."

"And a lot of good it did," Gabrel said drily. "Can you bring one of those torches over here?"

He pointed down the road to where the next pair of inadequate torches flickered against the night. Naturally the attack had been staged midway between sets of torches, to give this guy the deepest shadow; it was what Maris would have done herself, part of why she'd been hyperalert just there.

"I would go myself," he said apologetically when she didn't move right away, "but I am not totally sure that my right leg will support me without the help of this excellent mud wall."

"Pins-and-needles feeling? Feels heavy when you try to move it?"

"Somewhat of an understatement, but—yes, more or less."

"Nerve disruption backwash from the dazer beam. Must've just caught you in the outer glow. It should wear off in a few hours."

"Delighted to hear it. Now, about the torch . . ."

"How come?"

"I like to know who's just tried to kill me. Don't you?"

"I don't like knowin' people who are goin' to try and kill me." I really must do something about my social life; seems like that's the only kind of people I do know. But she fetched the torch. If she'd just killed one of Johnivans' people, she wanted to know whose ghost to appease.

The torch was easy enough to detach—just a bowl on a stick, basically, dropped into the top end of a hollow pole short enough for even Maris to reach—but no fun at all to carry. She learned almost immediately that you wanted to keep the bunu bowl balanced just so, or some of the hot oil that fueled the burning wick dropped down your hand and arm.

"Not a nice sight for a lady," Gabrel said apologetically when Maris came back, "but anybody using tangler nets and dazers is more likely to be your acquaintance than—" He took the torch from her, lowered it cautiously to shed light on their assailant's ruined head, and took a sharp inward breath "—mine," he finished in a curiously flat tone.

Relief flooded Maris. It was somebody she knew, yes, but not one of her old gang; she would owe this ghost no remembrances. "I know him, too," she said. "Kaspar somebody."

"Slevinen," Gabrel said. "Kaspar Slevinen. New-come from Barents, which could explain the weapons, but why smuggle them in? And damned close with some of the Good Old Families, which I thought strange before, seeing they mostly keep themselves to themselves, but Kaspar damned near lives in Torston Huyberts's pocket . . ."

"That was the geezer who wanted to make sure we stayed till last," Maris said. She dropped to her knees, careless of the blood and dust on her borrowed finery, and picked up the slim dazer lying by Kaspar Slevinen's limp hand. She thumbed the power button experimentally. A faint pink glow shone out, then faded. "Careless," she said with regret. "He'd let the charge run down. That's why it didn't do you more damage." And we can't exactly ask him where he kept the charger, now. 

Gabrel nodded slowly. "Slevinen, Huyberts, and Stoffelsen. Always had their heads together in some corner. And tonight . . . Stoffelsen left early, so that you were sure to be coming back alone with me. Huyberts kept us there until all others had departed. Slevinen attacks us with pro-tech weaponry. And you're here to investigate Orlando Montoyasana's claim that somebody is corrupting the Indigenous Territories with prohibited technology. I do believe that someone doesn't want you to make that investigation."

"If there's anythin' to it, of course they don't want me pokin' my nose in," Maris said. "Don't take a nanotech designer to figure that much out."

"But why now? Stoffelsen was in charge of your schedule, and as your escort I've seen it; the man was planning to waste as much of your time as possible with receptions and banquets and speeches and tours. What happened tonight to make him change his mind?"

"He decided death was better than sittin' through any more speeches," Maris suggested. "Specially if it was my death 'stead o' his'n."

Gabrel looked down his nose at her. "This is hardly a time for levity."

"Well, it ain't the best time and place for discussin' who wants to kill us, either," Maris pointed out. "First we need to get him out of sight, then let's get us out of sight. Your leg workin' now?"

Gabrel took an experimental step away from the wall and nodded. "Feels half dead still, but it'll hold me up."

"Fine, then you take his head—eh, shoulders?" Maris corrected herself as she remembered the bloody ruin that was the back of Kaspar Slevinen's head. She took the torch from Gabrel, jammed the supporting stick into a crevice of the low mud wall he'd been leaning against, and picked up Slevinen's heels. Between them they got his body over the wall and let it fall heavily into the ditch on the other side.

"Get his dazer and tangler," Gabrel suggested. "We might need them."

"Dazer's no good, it's out of power." But the tangler might still prove useful.

"For evidence." Gabrel took the two small devices from Maris and tucked them into his sash.

"Now what?"

"Well, I don't think it would be healthy for you to go back to House Stoffelsen," Gabrel said. "You leave anything there you can't do without?"

"My credentials." She hadn't packed very well for a stint as Diplomat; there was nothing else in her traveling bag but Calandra's fashionable clothes, unsuitable for this climate and illegal for this level of technology. Why hadn't she taken weapons? Because she hadn't seen any. A Diplomat is a walking weapon. That was rumor speaking, and a rumor she'd have a hard time living up to. Too bad Slevinen's dazer was drained and she didn't know where to recharge it. Maybe she could get the tangler away from Gabrel.

"I'll vouch for you. Come on, we've a lot to do. We need to leave before dawn, before Huyberts and Stoffelsen find out their plan didn't work."

Maris dug her heels in, resisting the pull of Gabrel's hand. "Leave for where, exactly? Think we can get off-planet without them noticing?" Gods, she hoped that wasn't what he had in mind! Off-planet meant going back through Tasman. That wouldn't be exactly safe either, but she could hardly explain that while Gabrel thought she was the Diplo. But if that was their only way out, she'd have to tell him. Everything. Couldn't let him walk into Johnivans' hands without a clue what he was about to die for.

"Off-planet? No way. You've got a mission, remember? I propose that we pursue it." Gabrel's teeth flashed white in the darkness. "The climate of the Hills is much healthier than these coastal lowlands."

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