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CHAPTER SEVEN

_The barge nosed back up on Rakoscy Islet with the last load
of the guests who'd dispersed throughout the Gardens during the course of the party. The leaves on the shrubs and the islet's ground cover were canted to catch the late afternoon sun, giving the shore a subtly different appearance from the one Daniel and his companions had left two hours before.

Shawna and Elinor pressed close to Daniel from either side, cooing things that probably wouldn't have made sense even if he'd bothered to listen to them. The young noble he'd cut out was sitting under a bower, drinking straight from a bottle and glaring at Daniel with undisguised hatred. His nervous-looking servant was close by; a balked noble was likely to be a dangerous master.

You're welcome to them now, buddy, Daniel thought. I haven't been so tired out since I climbed Hessian Hill when I was six and then realized I had to get down again before nightfall. In a few days this afternoon would be one to remember fondly. At the moment, Daniel just wanted to be shut of the girls and to have a chance to sleep.

Adele had been sitting primly alone in a bower with the personal data unit deployed on her lap. She didn't look out of place; from her smile, she was having at least as good a time as anyone else at the party. When the barge tooted twice to announce its return, she'd shut down the data unit and walked toward the shore.

Tovera wasn't at first visible, but Daniel suddenly spotted her at the serving tables where she could see the interiors of the bowers. Hogg waited where the barge had grounded, standing stiffly with his hands crossed behind his back. He was probably very drunk. It was hard to imagine a circumstance in which Hogg, surrounded by free liquor, wouldn't become very drunk.

"Girls," Daniel said, holding a hand of each girl and then joining them to one another as he stepped away, "I have to speak privately with my servant at once. I'll never forget having met you!"

"Oh, Danny!" they said in dismayed unison. They'd have clasped him again but he managed to make his escape.

Adele reached where Hogg stood at the same time Daniel did. "Quick!" Daniel whispered. "Come up with a reason I can't ride back with those girls."

"Lieutenant Leary," Adele said without missing a beat, "I need your input immediately to make up the crew list." She tapped the purse where she'd just placed her data unit.

"Very good, Mundy," Daniel said in a similarly carrying voice. "We'll go over it on the way back."

"Looks to me like you had a pretty good time," Hogg said, flicking a shower of dust from beneath Daniel's collar. It glittered in the air, then vanished. When disturbed, the trees of Joart sprayed great silver fountains of pollen which sublimed in sunlight unless it touched receptive stamens within a few moments. Daniel's collar had shielded a portion of the gouts loosed while the trio thrashed in a glade on Joart Islet.

"Besides which," Hogg added judiciously, "you're missing both epaulettes." He patted the denuded shoulders for emphasis.

"Ah," said Daniel. He'd almost forgotten that. "Ah, yes. Shawna wanted one to, ah, remember—"

Though he'd have thought the memories would be clear enough without a trinket; heaven knew his own would be.

"—and of course when she said that, Elinor too . . . It just seemed simpler. And I figured they could be replaced?"

The last sentence, though phrased as a statement, was really a question and not much short of a prayer. Daniel knew what effort Hogg had gone to so that his master would have a 1st Class uniform, and now on first wearing Daniel had gone and damaged it.

"And so they can," said Hogg with the formality of a priest giving absolution. "I will waylay an admiral this very night and remove his epaulettes, young master."

"No, Hogg," Daniel said firmly. "I personally will visit Sadlack and buy a pair of epaulettes. I regard the task as proper punishment for having mutilated my uniform in this fashion."

Which was true in a way, but it was also a lot easier than dealing with the consequences if Hogg hadn't been joking. Hogg had a sense of humor: a bawdy, raucous one that had rubbed off on Daniel. On the other hand, there was almost nothing that Hogg might not do, especially if he was drunk. There were many things that Daniel wouldn't do; though now that he thought about it, forcibly borrowing an admiral's epaulettes probably wasn't beyond the realm of possibility.

"As you say, young master," Hogg muttered. "A Hogg would never be able to live with himself if he disobeyed his master's order."

"Daniel," Adele said to break into Hogg's maunderings—and whatever the truth of the threat to an admiral, the notion that Hogg would never disobey Daniel was not to be taken seriously, "Tovera placed an eavesdropping device at Vaughn's table. I've heard the conversations."

She tapped the data unit in her purse. Daniel controlled his reflex to glance at Tovera. Adele continued, "During the afternoon Vaughn's agreed with three people here to rent a new townhouse for the next year. That's three separate townhouses, giving each owner the same story about wanting larger quarters. He must be lying to two of them, but I can't imagine why he'd do that. He's bound to be caught in a few weeks."

"Ah!" said Daniel, because Adele's words gave him a vivid recollection of some of the things he'd recently been murmuring to Shawna and Elinor. "Only if he's here, you see."

It wasn't the same, well, quite the same, because Daniel had used words like, " . . . for all the time I'm on Cinnabar. . . ." But he knew the girls thought the phrase meant, "for the future," while Daniel knew he'd be off-planet in a week at the latest.

"I think," he amplified, "that Vaughn expects to leave Cinnabar very shortly. I don't know of any reason he should expect that . . . but it seems he's confident enough that he's making sure as many movers and shakers as possible `know' that he's planning to stay."

Guests were moving toward the boats under the gentle urging of the aides from Strymon. Many were under the weather, and a few were being supported or even carried by servants: Vaughn's hospitality had been lavish and of high alcoholic content.

"Lieutenant Leary?" Vaughn called. He stood with Tredegar beside the four-seat craft which had led the flotilla to Rakoscy Islet. "I'd appreciate it if you and your guest would ride back with me. I'd like to hear from your own lips how you captured the Princess Cecile."

Daniel hid his frown, but he darted a quick glance at Adele. She smiled thinly—her back was to their host—and said in a soft voice, "Yes, of course he's lying, but we may as well go along with it."

"Delighted, sir," Daniel said cheerfully as he strode over to the nobleman. "And I should say at the outset that Officer Mundy here had more to do with the success of the operation than any other person."

They got into the small vessel, Daniel and Adele sitting behind Vaughn and Tredegar respectively. Two well-dressed Cinnabar nobles and a woman whom Daniel recognized as a senator's widow had been standing close by. They looked vaguely put out as they moved off in search of other seating for the trip back to the entrance.

Mistress Zane had returned to the larger boat which she'd ridden on the way in. Unlike the trio, she seemed quite at ease to be separated from her host.

"I really would be delighted to hear about your exploits, Lieutenant," Vaughn said in an undertone. "And yours as well, Officer Mundy. But I have to admit to a small subterfuge—I've just short of promised three of your fellow guests that I'd rent a house from each of them, and in truth I don't intend to go through with any of the deals. If I were alone with one of them I'd have to descend to flat lies, and if I rode in a larger craft with all three together, my entire imposture would be exposed."

Tredegar reached past the steering column to touch the joystick on the dashboard; the trolling motor whined and the boat started to back away from the shore. Vaughn put his hand over the aide's and said, "Wait for the others to board, Cornelius. We're not in a hurry, after all."

Tredegar turned to look at Vaughn. His expression was empty, his eyes glazed in a taut face. He didn't seem to be taking in the words, but at last he glanced down at the control and lifted his hand away.

"Are you all right, Tredegar?" Daniel said sharply. "You don't look well, if you don't mind my saying."

Or if you do. The aide looked as if he'd been poisoned; that, or he was utterly terrified.

"Sun," Tredegar said. "Just a touch of sun. I'm all right now."

The blood had indeed returned to his cheeks, but as he spoke he engaged the motor again as if he'd forgotten the exchange of a few seconds earlier. Vaughn looked puzzled, but the other vessels were loaded by now so there was no further reason to delay.

The boat eased into the channel. Tredegar centered the joystick, then clicked it upward to send them toward the entrance. In the clear water beneath, fish like strands of gilded tinsel schooled in the waterweed. They reminded Daniel of lightning flashing among the clouds.

"If you'll permit a question, Mr. Vaughn," Adele said coolly, "why did you suggest you were going to rent a house if you didn't intend to do so?"

"Am I simply a pathological liar, you mean, mistress?" Vaughn translated with a laugh. "No, or at any rate I don't see it that way. But you see, if my enemies—Friderik Nunes and his friends from the Alliance of Free Stars—learn that the Republic is sending me home, they'll try to eliminate me before I leave. I'm practicing a mild deception to encourage spies here on Cinnabar to believe that I expect to remain on your planet for the foreseeable future."

"It's not safe for you to go back," Tredegar said. He kept his face straight ahead so that he didn't have to meet his superior's eyes. "You trust Zane but she'll be your death. Death, Delos!"

"Cinnabar is a wonderful planet, Lieutenant," Vaughn said, seeming to have ignored Tredegar's words. "She isn't my planet, however. I'm looking forward to returning to a home I haven't seen in fifteen years."

To the left was an islet whose trees seemed swathed in cobwebs instead of having ordinary foliage. Daniel couldn't place their origin and suddenly regretted not having made more of an exploration of the Gardens. Even though the habitats were selective and thus artificial, the vegetation and the few permitted animal species were real so far as they went.

"Why are you telling Daniel and me the truth if you're lying to others?" Adele said, pressing the point with a lack of tact that made Daniel smile. They were very different people, he and Adele, but they both had a capacity for directness that startled others. "Our social superiors, many would say."

Vaughn smiled at her. His expression was perfectly open and natural—and false. Daniel was convinced of that, though he had no more evidence to go on than he did about the state of the universe before time began.

"Well, Officer Mundy," he said. "I don't believe you're going to help my enemies, knowing that you would thereby help the Alliance. And if you'll forgive a foreigner a bit of romance—I don't care to lie to officers of the Cinnabar fleet. We on Strymon have had ample reason to respect you and the ships you crew."

You know Adele's been listening to your conversations, Daniel realized. You're telling us a story that fits what we already know, but that doesn't make it true. 

"I see," Adele said. "I wish your endeavors well, Mr. Vaughn."

Albirus Islet with its wall of amber trees was coming up on the left. Tredegar had gone rigid again, except that he kept sucking his lower lip in and out over his teeth. He kept pressing the joystick but the trolling motor's throttle was already full-open.

"Is Mistress Zane here to make arrangements for your return, then?" Adele asked. Daniel saw her fingers twitch and almost smiled: Adele desperately wanted to enter the data somewhere to make it real to her.

"Well, Thea is a friend," Vaughn said. "I don't think I should—"

There was a fresh hole in the sheets of hardened sap, a saucer-sized window from the interior of Albirus Islet that hadn't been there when the party entered. It could've been casual vandalism, but that wasn't the first explanation that went through Daniel's mind.

"Watch out!" Daniel said, pointing to the opening. The boat was coming parallel to it. "There's a—"

Only shadows showed through the amber curtain, but metal glinted on the other side of the hole. Vaughn was looking at Daniel in surprise; Adele groped in her left pocket for the pistol she'd been forced to leave behind. Tredegar, his face set and tears streaming down his cheeks, gripped the joystick as if it were his last hope of life.

There was no time for thought, only instinct. Daniel seized the aide's throat with both hands, lifted him bodily from the seat, and threw him into the crystal water.

The boat pitched wildly, but craft in the Gardens were broad-beamed with the expectation that many passengers would be clumsy and no few of them drunk besides. Daniel stepped into the pilot's seat, jerked the separate steering wheel to the left, and stamped on the foot throttle which controlled the main motor. The boat surged toward the islet, the bow lifting to a thirty-degree angle as the powerful waterjet torqued the vessel around its center of mass before accelerating it.

"Are you—" Vaughn said, grabbing Daniel around the shoulders. Adele threw herself over the Strymonian's face. She wasn't strong enough to break the grip of a well-built man, but suddenly being blindfolded made Vaughn jerk away.

The world exploded in heat and the flash of a sun going nova. What was left of the boat flew over on its back, flinging its three remaining passengers into the canal not far from Tredegar.

Air, fiercely hot and compressed by a thunderclap to the density of tons of sand, enveloped Adele. She thought she'd let go of Vaughn, but she couldn't be sure. She felt nothing—not even the pull of gravity—until she slammed into the canal.

She rose spluttering. The canal's knee-high water was clean and sweet; it must be filtered with the same care that the proprietors showed with every other aspect of the Gardens. Except that occasionally they failed to prevent assassins from bringing heavy weapons into their emasculated precincts. . . .

The weight of the motor held the boat's stern down, so the remainder of the plastic hull stuck up in the air. The dashboard had survived but the lower portion of the bow had been converted into a stench of resin matrix. Only a few tatters of fiberglass reinforcement were still attached to the undamaged mid-hull.

A gray fog hung above the wreckage, and a few wisps of ionized air were dissipating like yesterday's rainbow. A plasma bolt, then, from a weapon concealed behind the wall of amber sap. The light-speed particles liberated their energy on the first solid object they encountered. They'd destroyed the boat, but they hadn't been able to penetrate even the thin hull when Daniel lifted it with the throttle.

Daniel sloshed toward the islet, staying to the left of a direct line with the gunport. He should have looked silly, unarmed and dressed in a dripping uniform. Adele doubted that he looked silly to the gunmen, though. As the commendation for his activities on Kostroma had put it, "Faced with a superior enemy, Lt. Leary chose to attack in accordance with the finest traditions of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy."

Feeling extremely foolish, Adele also started toward the islet, keeping to the right of the opening. If she'd had her pistol she might have done some good. So far as she could tell, this was no better than suicide. Still, she was acting out of cold analysis, not passion: she knew she'd rather be killed than live to remember that she'd let her only real friend die alone.

It occurred to Adele to wonder what had happened to her purse with the personal data unit, dropped when she tried to get Vaughn out of the way. She hadn't the least notion of what Daniel was doing, but she knew him well enough to support him regardless.

The boat's hull had reflected some of the bolt's energy back toward the weapon, eating away a fan of hardened sap and fracturing the smooth amber wall for ten feet in either direction. A man wearing a poncho of light-scattering cloth ran past the enlarged opening, holding a handgun. Why didn't I insist on keeping my— 

A bow wave washed Adele to the side as the barge carrying the servants surged between her and Daniel. She had to splash forward clumsily to keep from being pushed onto her face.

The craft had a small cockpit in the rear. The aide who'd been at the controls floundered in the water thirty feet back while Hogg drove the vessel at a slant toward the islet. Several of the servants had jumped overboard; all but one of the remainder had ducked behind the gunwales.

The exception, Tovera, stood in the bow. Her left arm was locked at an angle before her; across the crooked elbow rested her right hand holding a pistol.

The ship slid onto the islet, pushing over the amber trees and shattering the hardened sap. The louder crash was the vessel's lower hull breaking on the concrete retaining wall. Three men wearing camouflage capes were running across ground covered with flowers like a carpet of tiny flags. The assassins' primary weapon, a bipod-mounted plasma cannon, rested on the ground behind them. They couldn't fire it again till the white-hot barrel had cooled from the previous discharge, and they showed no signs of planning to use the pistols each waved in his hand.

Tovera shot—with a very compact submachine gun, not a pistol, and how had she gotten it through the detection screen at the entrance? Despite the light-scattering garments and the fact that the boat was breaking up beneath her, Tovera's first burst sent the most distant assassin onto his face with his arms flapping.

Tovera stepped to the islet just before the impact. The posts supporting the vessel's canopy flexed till they cracked, slamming her in the middle of the back with the whole structure, frame and fabric together. She fell under a pile of debris.

The remaining assassins reached a skiff nestled onto the shore across the islet; on that side, the branches of the amber trees hadn't been pleached together to form a continuous wall. One of the men settled behind the controls while the other turned, aiming toward the pursuit just as Daniel and Adele squelched onto the islet.

Tovera's weapon crackled from the tangled wreckage. Its electromotive coils accelerated pellets up the short barrel at several times the speed of sound. The gunman fell backward, dropping his pistol. The driver slumped on his face, half out of the skiff as it rose on the balanced static charges induced in the ground and its own hull. The pilot's weight dragged the little craft into a slow circle like a horse guided by a lunge line.

Daniel ran toward the fallen assassins. Adele instead waded back into the water. The rest of the flotilla clogged the channel, some vessels halting on reversed thrust while others chose to ground on the fern-covered islet to the right.

Delos Vaughn hunched below the retaining wall where undamaged sap still provided a curtain from sight. Tredegar stood in the middle of the canal, his eyes wild and his mouth open though speechless.

There's my purse. Despite the violence, the water remained clear except for swirls of weed and air bubbles. The channel was concrete colored to give it the appearance of mud.

Adele raised the purse and took the data unit from it. Pray whatever Gods there were that its seals are as good as they're supposed to be. 

Tredegar came to his senses from watching Adele's organized action. He sloshed toward the nearest of the undamaged boats, the ten-seater which had brought Daniel and Adele into the Gardens. Shawna and Elinor stood in the bow, watching events with perfect aplomb while everyone else on the craft lay flat on the deck.

"Hogg, don't let Tredegar get away!" Adele cried. It wasn't an order. She didn't have authority to order Daniel's servant to do anything, as Hogg would be the first to tell her if provoked.

He wasn't the man to ignore a warning, though. Hogg turned in the cockpit and judged his distance as the aide splashed past him. Ten feet of weighted line shimmered from Hogg's hand and wrapped around Tredegar's arm and throat. The aide fell backward into the water.

Adele stamped ashore again, clumsy from the weight of water trapped in her pant legs. The suit Tovera picked for her had gathered cuffs, a matter that Adele hadn't paused to consider when she put the garment on. Clothes were something she wore as a social or environmental necessity, not out of any intrinsic interest they had for her.

If she had to do it again, she'd specify drain holes at wrist and ankles. Though how the damned fabric could let water in so easily and then hold it there like a set of fluid leg irons was beyond her.

An alarm had been given—many alarms, judging from the number of sirens she could hear at varying distances. Ignoring them, ignoring also the shouts and bustle of people around her, Adele walked over to the nearest of the dead men.

There were three holes in the back of his neck, so close together that she could have covered them with her thumb. Tovera was already there, going through the man's pockets. Daniel had switched off the skiff's power, bringing it down to the ground again. He was searching the other two assassins.

Adele took the pistol from the dead man's hand and thrust it through her waist sash. Tovera looked at her. "He doesn't have any identification, but he's carrying a thousand florins."

"They're probably just local thugs," Adele said. She took one of the peacock-hued hundred-florin coins Tovera had fanned on the ground beside the man's purse. "Anyway, I don't need identification if the money's there."

Adele had brought up her personal data unit as she spoke. Her wands flickered, entering the coin's serial number into the records of the Central Bank of the Republic.

The database was supposed to be restricted, of course. Because Adele was using the Ministry of Defense computer for access, she was probably getting the information faster than one of the bank directors could have done after entering a series of codes and passwords. Even so, a search so enormous took some time.

She looked at the submachine gun in Tovera's hand. The barrel was only four inches long and the few pounds the weapon weighed weren't enough to stabilize it when fired full automatic—Adele would have thought, barring the evidence of the corpse before her.

"How did you get that through the screening at the gate?" she demanded.

Tovera's expression became guarded. "My case projects the image of a data unit and other ordinary office equipment," she said. "There are ways to defeat it, but none that these civilians would have available."

Carefully, her eyes never leaving Adele's, she added, "I'm sorry, mistress. I should have carried your weapon through the screen with me."

Adele thought about the mindset that was always prepared in case of an assassination attempt at an innocent party. She could learn to live that way, she supposed, but it seemed to her that the alternative to life was preferable if such paranoia were necessary.

She smiled. "Not at all, Tovera," she said. "I think I'm better off delegating those concerns to you."

A number of the party guests were standing around the plasma cannon, discussing it in amazed tones. The bolt had shrivelled a broadening wedge of vegetation from beneath the muzzle to the edge of the islet. The iridium barrel was no longer glowing, but any of the spectators who decided to touch the metal were going to cook their flesh to the bones.

Adele smiled grimly. Not so very long ago she wouldn't have had any more experience of a plasma cannon than did any other Academic Collections staff member. Being caught in the Kostroma rebellion had certainly broadened her horizons.

Adele's display shifted into the answer she'd expected. She looked up, hoping to catch Daniel's eye. He held two pistols by the barrel in his left hand and was talking to a young man in the beige uniform of the Militia, the national police. Despite the flashing lights and the downdraft, Adele hadn't noticed the Militia aircar landing beside the assassins' skiff.

Delos Vaughn walked up on shore, surrounded by servants and several aides. One of the latter had taken off her taffeta cape and was toweling Vaughn's legs with it. Adele watched her for a moment, blinked, and went back to the display feeling queasy. The Mundys hadn't encouraged that sort of abasement from their retainers; though when she let herself remember, there had been times . . .

She shook herself. She didn't want to think about the night her father won the race for Treasurer of the Republic and a dozen women, wives and daughters of his retainers, had buffed the gilded body of his aircar with their long hair. That was what they did for him in public. For herself, she didn't want anybody to offer her honors that she would never grant to another living person.

"You there!" Vaughn said. "What in heaven are you doing with Cornelius? Let him go at once!"

Everybody turned at the shout. Hogg was holding Tredegar upright, trussed by the neck and—behind his back—his wrists. An aide stepped forward.

"No, Tovera!" Adele shouted.

Hogg's hands were occupied with a prisoner who was conscious but noosed too tightly to be able to stand without help. He kicked the aide squarely in the crotch, doubling her up with a scream that a man in a similar situation couldn't have bettered.

It could have been worse. Tovera had turned also. Adele wasn't absolutely sure that her shout would've been enough to keep the pale woman from killing Vaughn's aide with the same wasplike skill that had eliminated the three assassins.

"But this is Cornelius Tredegar," Vaughn said, no longer speaking with an implicit threat in his voice. "He's one of my oldest associates. He came into exile with me, for God's sake!"

"He knew about the ambush," Daniel said, walking over and drawing the policeman with him. The fellow's partner was still in the aircar, calling for additional help. Another Militia aircar had landed, but its personnel were fending off the crush of velvet-clad Gardens employees gabbling about the damage to the settings. "If he didn't plan it, then he was helping whoever did."

"Tredegar was the paymaster," Adele said, drawing everyone's eyes from Daniel to her. They were quite a pair, dripping wet and muddy besides. "He withdrew six thousand florins from his account at the Divan branch of Stevenage Trust ten days ago. He must have paid the assassins the second half of the money just this morning, because they're still carrying it."

"Mistress?" the policeman said, glancing at the coins beside the dead man's purse. "How do you know that?"

An enclosed twelve-place aircar with Militia markings wallowed to a landing at the edge of the islet, smashing another section of the amber wall. Daniel winced though he didn't say anything. Almost half the carefully formed circuit of trees had been snapped off or uprooted.

Adele visualized a similar battle—quite small, as battles go—taking place within the precincts of the Academic Collections on Blythe. Her lips tightened. She knew how Daniel felt.

"Large coins are all registered with the central bank," Adele said. "Every time they pass through a bank, the transaction is recorded. The most recent movement of these—"

Well, at least the one she'd checked; this wasn't the time to be overprecise.

"—was to Tredegar here in a withdrawal he made personally."

Policemen wearing body armor and carrying carbines spilled out of the van in a hectoring wave, pushing through the guests in evident disregard for military uniforms and indicia of wealth. "What's going on here?" said the officer in charge, bellowing at the patrolman standing between Adele and Daniel.

The officer noticed Tredegar. Though his face was hidden behind the visor, there was no doubt of the angry exasperation in his voice as he snapped, "What's this? What the hell is this?"

"Sir, he's a prisoner," the regular patrolman said, standing up to a faceless bully who was doubtless also his superior in rank. "He appears to be behind the attack that—"

"Cut him loose!" the officer said. "Secure him with legal restraints." One of his subordinates drew a knife whose blade extended as the hilt came free of the clip.

There was a flicker in the air. The knife hand jerked upward, bound to the policeman's shoulder by a loop of the same weighted cord as had caught and held Tredegar. The line had two ends, after all.

Hogg grinned with absolutely no humor at all. "What the—" the officer repeated, his tone an amalgam of anger and amazement.

Daniel stepped close to Hogg, his back to the Militia officer. "Hogg," he said, "release the prisoner immediately into the custody of the civil authorities! You know how Speaker Leary will complain if he has to use his influence again to get his son's servant out of jail!"

Daniel would never have used his father's name that way for anything less serious than this incident was rapidly becoming. If the officer had acted as he might have tried in the full arrogance of his power—

Adele was again struck by the way Tovera vanished into the background under any circumstances. You would have thought that at least one member of the riot squad would have noticed the pale blonde holding a submachine gun down beside her thigh.

—then anything might have happened.

"Sure, Master Leary," Hogg said, releasing Tredegar and giving him a gentle push in the direction of the policeman who'd planned to cut him loose. "What's twenty piastres worth of fishing line and a couple pebbles?"

"I don't mind you cutting the cord," Daniel said to the officer in an innocently helpful tone, "but do be aware that it's sea fishing line which we use in the ocean off Bantry. It's boron monocrystal, and the tug of your man's knife blade on a thin strand would very likely have strangled the prisoner if Hogg hadn't stopped him."

Daniel's instinct made him step between Hogg and the chance of lethal danger. That's not how Tovera would have saved her colleague. And it's not what Adele would have done either, if she'd still had her pistol.

Three riot policemen began unwrapping Tredegar and their fellow. After a moment, they all flipped up their visors.

"I still can't believe . . ." Vaughn said, though the way his voice trailed off indicated that actually he was indeed beginning to believe. "Cornelius, you wouldn't betray me?"

"He wasn't planning to have you killed, Delos," Mistress Zane said scornfully. "You're his golden goose—so long as you ignore your heritage and stay here on Cinnabar! The little wretch planned to kill me and blame it on your niece and Nunes."

Almost everybody was looking at Zane. Adele saw Hogg grin broadly as he glanced at the prisoner he'd just surrendered. Tredegar's right wrist was now attached to a policeman's harness by a flexible restraint. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket with his left hand and put it to his mouth.

It's probably the best result. 

"Casdessus, get this one into the van," said the officer, raising his own shield. His face was surprisingly delicate; much of his apparent bulk must have been the armor. "We'll hold here till the investigative squad arrives, then—"

Tredegar's cheeks flushed bright red. Blood spurted from his nose and ears; his limbs went slack and he fell, all but the arm still tethered to the policeman's harness. The Militia officer jumped back, but blood still splashed his trouser legs and his right boot.

"I figured he'd do that, so I kept him tied up," Hogg said to the officer in a conversational voice. "It's a real education to watch a city professional like you work, Captain."

More sirens were approaching. Adele sat on the ground and brought up her data unit again. She didn't want to waste more time here, and Daniel almost certainly had things he should be doing instead of discussing with a series of officious bureaucrats a matter that was already closed. The message she was sending to Admiral Anston's office might bring a quick end to the irritation.

And if it didn't, the copy to a site Mistress Sand used for confidential dispatches certainly would.

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Framed

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CHAPTER SEVEN

_The barge nosed back up on Rakoscy Islet with the last load
of the guests who'd dispersed throughout the Gardens during the course of the party. The leaves on the shrubs and the islet's ground cover were canted to catch the late afternoon sun, giving the shore a subtly different appearance from the one Daniel and his companions had left two hours before.

Shawna and Elinor pressed close to Daniel from either side, cooing things that probably wouldn't have made sense even if he'd bothered to listen to them. The young noble he'd cut out was sitting under a bower, drinking straight from a bottle and glaring at Daniel with undisguised hatred. His nervous-looking servant was close by; a balked noble was likely to be a dangerous master.

You're welcome to them now, buddy, Daniel thought. I haven't been so tired out since I climbed Hessian Hill when I was six and then realized I had to get down again before nightfall. In a few days this afternoon would be one to remember fondly. At the moment, Daniel just wanted to be shut of the girls and to have a chance to sleep.

Adele had been sitting primly alone in a bower with the personal data unit deployed on her lap. She didn't look out of place; from her smile, she was having at least as good a time as anyone else at the party. When the barge tooted twice to announce its return, she'd shut down the data unit and walked toward the shore.

Tovera wasn't at first visible, but Daniel suddenly spotted her at the serving tables where she could see the interiors of the bowers. Hogg waited where the barge had grounded, standing stiffly with his hands crossed behind his back. He was probably very drunk. It was hard to imagine a circumstance in which Hogg, surrounded by free liquor, wouldn't become very drunk.

"Girls," Daniel said, holding a hand of each girl and then joining them to one another as he stepped away, "I have to speak privately with my servant at once. I'll never forget having met you!"

"Oh, Danny!" they said in dismayed unison. They'd have clasped him again but he managed to make his escape.

Adele reached where Hogg stood at the same time Daniel did. "Quick!" Daniel whispered. "Come up with a reason I can't ride back with those girls."

"Lieutenant Leary," Adele said without missing a beat, "I need your input immediately to make up the crew list." She tapped the purse where she'd just placed her data unit.

"Very good, Mundy," Daniel said in a similarly carrying voice. "We'll go over it on the way back."

"Looks to me like you had a pretty good time," Hogg said, flicking a shower of dust from beneath Daniel's collar. It glittered in the air, then vanished. When disturbed, the trees of Joart sprayed great silver fountains of pollen which sublimed in sunlight unless it touched receptive stamens within a few moments. Daniel's collar had shielded a portion of the gouts loosed while the trio thrashed in a glade on Joart Islet.

"Besides which," Hogg added judiciously, "you're missing both epaulettes." He patted the denuded shoulders for emphasis.

"Ah," said Daniel. He'd almost forgotten that. "Ah, yes. Shawna wanted one to, ah, remember—"

Though he'd have thought the memories would be clear enough without a trinket; heaven knew his own would be.

"—and of course when she said that, Elinor too . . . It just seemed simpler. And I figured they could be replaced?"

The last sentence, though phrased as a statement, was really a question and not much short of a prayer. Daniel knew what effort Hogg had gone to so that his master would have a 1st Class uniform, and now on first wearing Daniel had gone and damaged it.

"And so they can," said Hogg with the formality of a priest giving absolution. "I will waylay an admiral this very night and remove his epaulettes, young master."

"No, Hogg," Daniel said firmly. "I personally will visit Sadlack and buy a pair of epaulettes. I regard the task as proper punishment for having mutilated my uniform in this fashion."

Which was true in a way, but it was also a lot easier than dealing with the consequences if Hogg hadn't been joking. Hogg had a sense of humor: a bawdy, raucous one that had rubbed off on Daniel. On the other hand, there was almost nothing that Hogg might not do, especially if he was drunk. There were many things that Daniel wouldn't do; though now that he thought about it, forcibly borrowing an admiral's epaulettes probably wasn't beyond the realm of possibility.

"As you say, young master," Hogg muttered. "A Hogg would never be able to live with himself if he disobeyed his master's order."

"Daniel," Adele said to break into Hogg's maunderings—and whatever the truth of the threat to an admiral, the notion that Hogg would never disobey Daniel was not to be taken seriously, "Tovera placed an eavesdropping device at Vaughn's table. I've heard the conversations."

She tapped the data unit in her purse. Daniel controlled his reflex to glance at Tovera. Adele continued, "During the afternoon Vaughn's agreed with three people here to rent a new townhouse for the next year. That's three separate townhouses, giving each owner the same story about wanting larger quarters. He must be lying to two of them, but I can't imagine why he'd do that. He's bound to be caught in a few weeks."

"Ah!" said Daniel, because Adele's words gave him a vivid recollection of some of the things he'd recently been murmuring to Shawna and Elinor. "Only if he's here, you see."

It wasn't the same, well, quite the same, because Daniel had used words like, " . . . for all the time I'm on Cinnabar. . . ." But he knew the girls thought the phrase meant, "for the future," while Daniel knew he'd be off-planet in a week at the latest.

"I think," he amplified, "that Vaughn expects to leave Cinnabar very shortly. I don't know of any reason he should expect that . . . but it seems he's confident enough that he's making sure as many movers and shakers as possible `know' that he's planning to stay."

Guests were moving toward the boats under the gentle urging of the aides from Strymon. Many were under the weather, and a few were being supported or even carried by servants: Vaughn's hospitality had been lavish and of high alcoholic content.

"Lieutenant Leary?" Vaughn called. He stood with Tredegar beside the four-seat craft which had led the flotilla to Rakoscy Islet. "I'd appreciate it if you and your guest would ride back with me. I'd like to hear from your own lips how you captured the Princess Cecile."

Daniel hid his frown, but he darted a quick glance at Adele. She smiled thinly—her back was to their host—and said in a soft voice, "Yes, of course he's lying, but we may as well go along with it."

"Delighted, sir," Daniel said cheerfully as he strode over to the nobleman. "And I should say at the outset that Officer Mundy here had more to do with the success of the operation than any other person."

They got into the small vessel, Daniel and Adele sitting behind Vaughn and Tredegar respectively. Two well-dressed Cinnabar nobles and a woman whom Daniel recognized as a senator's widow had been standing close by. They looked vaguely put out as they moved off in search of other seating for the trip back to the entrance.

Mistress Zane had returned to the larger boat which she'd ridden on the way in. Unlike the trio, she seemed quite at ease to be separated from her host.

"I really would be delighted to hear about your exploits, Lieutenant," Vaughn said in an undertone. "And yours as well, Officer Mundy. But I have to admit to a small subterfuge—I've just short of promised three of your fellow guests that I'd rent a house from each of them, and in truth I don't intend to go through with any of the deals. If I were alone with one of them I'd have to descend to flat lies, and if I rode in a larger craft with all three together, my entire imposture would be exposed."

Tredegar reached past the steering column to touch the joystick on the dashboard; the trolling motor whined and the boat started to back away from the shore. Vaughn put his hand over the aide's and said, "Wait for the others to board, Cornelius. We're not in a hurry, after all."

Tredegar turned to look at Vaughn. His expression was empty, his eyes glazed in a taut face. He didn't seem to be taking in the words, but at last he glanced down at the control and lifted his hand away.

"Are you all right, Tredegar?" Daniel said sharply. "You don't look well, if you don't mind my saying."

Or if you do. The aide looked as if he'd been poisoned; that, or he was utterly terrified.

"Sun," Tredegar said. "Just a touch of sun. I'm all right now."

The blood had indeed returned to his cheeks, but as he spoke he engaged the motor again as if he'd forgotten the exchange of a few seconds earlier. Vaughn looked puzzled, but the other vessels were loaded by now so there was no further reason to delay.

The boat eased into the channel. Tredegar centered the joystick, then clicked it upward to send them toward the entrance. In the clear water beneath, fish like strands of gilded tinsel schooled in the waterweed. They reminded Daniel of lightning flashing among the clouds.

"If you'll permit a question, Mr. Vaughn," Adele said coolly, "why did you suggest you were going to rent a house if you didn't intend to do so?"

"Am I simply a pathological liar, you mean, mistress?" Vaughn translated with a laugh. "No, or at any rate I don't see it that way. But you see, if my enemies—Friderik Nunes and his friends from the Alliance of Free Stars—learn that the Republic is sending me home, they'll try to eliminate me before I leave. I'm practicing a mild deception to encourage spies here on Cinnabar to believe that I expect to remain on your planet for the foreseeable future."

"It's not safe for you to go back," Tredegar said. He kept his face straight ahead so that he didn't have to meet his superior's eyes. "You trust Zane but she'll be your death. Death, Delos!"

"Cinnabar is a wonderful planet, Lieutenant," Vaughn said, seeming to have ignored Tredegar's words. "She isn't my planet, however. I'm looking forward to returning to a home I haven't seen in fifteen years."

To the left was an islet whose trees seemed swathed in cobwebs instead of having ordinary foliage. Daniel couldn't place their origin and suddenly regretted not having made more of an exploration of the Gardens. Even though the habitats were selective and thus artificial, the vegetation and the few permitted animal species were real so far as they went.

"Why are you telling Daniel and me the truth if you're lying to others?" Adele said, pressing the point with a lack of tact that made Daniel smile. They were very different people, he and Adele, but they both had a capacity for directness that startled others. "Our social superiors, many would say."

Vaughn smiled at her. His expression was perfectly open and natural—and false. Daniel was convinced of that, though he had no more evidence to go on than he did about the state of the universe before time began.

"Well, Officer Mundy," he said. "I don't believe you're going to help my enemies, knowing that you would thereby help the Alliance. And if you'll forgive a foreigner a bit of romance—I don't care to lie to officers of the Cinnabar fleet. We on Strymon have had ample reason to respect you and the ships you crew."

You know Adele's been listening to your conversations, Daniel realized. You're telling us a story that fits what we already know, but that doesn't make it true. 

"I see," Adele said. "I wish your endeavors well, Mr. Vaughn."

Albirus Islet with its wall of amber trees was coming up on the left. Tredegar had gone rigid again, except that he kept sucking his lower lip in and out over his teeth. He kept pressing the joystick but the trolling motor's throttle was already full-open.

"Is Mistress Zane here to make arrangements for your return, then?" Adele asked. Daniel saw her fingers twitch and almost smiled: Adele desperately wanted to enter the data somewhere to make it real to her.

"Well, Thea is a friend," Vaughn said. "I don't think I should—"

There was a fresh hole in the sheets of hardened sap, a saucer-sized window from the interior of Albirus Islet that hadn't been there when the party entered. It could've been casual vandalism, but that wasn't the first explanation that went through Daniel's mind.

"Watch out!" Daniel said, pointing to the opening. The boat was coming parallel to it. "There's a—"

Only shadows showed through the amber curtain, but metal glinted on the other side of the hole. Vaughn was looking at Daniel in surprise; Adele groped in her left pocket for the pistol she'd been forced to leave behind. Tredegar, his face set and tears streaming down his cheeks, gripped the joystick as if it were his last hope of life.

There was no time for thought, only instinct. Daniel seized the aide's throat with both hands, lifted him bodily from the seat, and threw him into the crystal water.

The boat pitched wildly, but craft in the Gardens were broad-beamed with the expectation that many passengers would be clumsy and no few of them drunk besides. Daniel stepped into the pilot's seat, jerked the separate steering wheel to the left, and stamped on the foot throttle which controlled the main motor. The boat surged toward the islet, the bow lifting to a thirty-degree angle as the powerful waterjet torqued the vessel around its center of mass before accelerating it.

"Are you—" Vaughn said, grabbing Daniel around the shoulders. Adele threw herself over the Strymonian's face. She wasn't strong enough to break the grip of a well-built man, but suddenly being blindfolded made Vaughn jerk away.

The world exploded in heat and the flash of a sun going nova. What was left of the boat flew over on its back, flinging its three remaining passengers into the canal not far from Tredegar.

Air, fiercely hot and compressed by a thunderclap to the density of tons of sand, enveloped Adele. She thought she'd let go of Vaughn, but she couldn't be sure. She felt nothing—not even the pull of gravity—until she slammed into the canal.

She rose spluttering. The canal's knee-high water was clean and sweet; it must be filtered with the same care that the proprietors showed with every other aspect of the Gardens. Except that occasionally they failed to prevent assassins from bringing heavy weapons into their emasculated precincts. . . .

The weight of the motor held the boat's stern down, so the remainder of the plastic hull stuck up in the air. The dashboard had survived but the lower portion of the bow had been converted into a stench of resin matrix. Only a few tatters of fiberglass reinforcement were still attached to the undamaged mid-hull.

A gray fog hung above the wreckage, and a few wisps of ionized air were dissipating like yesterday's rainbow. A plasma bolt, then, from a weapon concealed behind the wall of amber sap. The light-speed particles liberated their energy on the first solid object they encountered. They'd destroyed the boat, but they hadn't been able to penetrate even the thin hull when Daniel lifted it with the throttle.

Daniel sloshed toward the islet, staying to the left of a direct line with the gunport. He should have looked silly, unarmed and dressed in a dripping uniform. Adele doubted that he looked silly to the gunmen, though. As the commendation for his activities on Kostroma had put it, "Faced with a superior enemy, Lt. Leary chose to attack in accordance with the finest traditions of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy."

Feeling extremely foolish, Adele also started toward the islet, keeping to the right of the opening. If she'd had her pistol she might have done some good. So far as she could tell, this was no better than suicide. Still, she was acting out of cold analysis, not passion: she knew she'd rather be killed than live to remember that she'd let her only real friend die alone.

It occurred to Adele to wonder what had happened to her purse with the personal data unit, dropped when she tried to get Vaughn out of the way. She hadn't the least notion of what Daniel was doing, but she knew him well enough to support him regardless.

The boat's hull had reflected some of the bolt's energy back toward the weapon, eating away a fan of hardened sap and fracturing the smooth amber wall for ten feet in either direction. A man wearing a poncho of light-scattering cloth ran past the enlarged opening, holding a handgun. Why didn't I insist on keeping my— 

A bow wave washed Adele to the side as the barge carrying the servants surged between her and Daniel. She had to splash forward clumsily to keep from being pushed onto her face.

The craft had a small cockpit in the rear. The aide who'd been at the controls floundered in the water thirty feet back while Hogg drove the vessel at a slant toward the islet. Several of the servants had jumped overboard; all but one of the remainder had ducked behind the gunwales.

The exception, Tovera, stood in the bow. Her left arm was locked at an angle before her; across the crooked elbow rested her right hand holding a pistol.

The ship slid onto the islet, pushing over the amber trees and shattering the hardened sap. The louder crash was the vessel's lower hull breaking on the concrete retaining wall. Three men wearing camouflage capes were running across ground covered with flowers like a carpet of tiny flags. The assassins' primary weapon, a bipod-mounted plasma cannon, rested on the ground behind them. They couldn't fire it again till the white-hot barrel had cooled from the previous discharge, and they showed no signs of planning to use the pistols each waved in his hand.

Tovera shot—with a very compact submachine gun, not a pistol, and how had she gotten it through the detection screen at the entrance? Despite the light-scattering garments and the fact that the boat was breaking up beneath her, Tovera's first burst sent the most distant assassin onto his face with his arms flapping.

Tovera stepped to the islet just before the impact. The posts supporting the vessel's canopy flexed till they cracked, slamming her in the middle of the back with the whole structure, frame and fabric together. She fell under a pile of debris.

The remaining assassins reached a skiff nestled onto the shore across the islet; on that side, the branches of the amber trees hadn't been pleached together to form a continuous wall. One of the men settled behind the controls while the other turned, aiming toward the pursuit just as Daniel and Adele squelched onto the islet.

Tovera's weapon crackled from the tangled wreckage. Its electromotive coils accelerated pellets up the short barrel at several times the speed of sound. The gunman fell backward, dropping his pistol. The driver slumped on his face, half out of the skiff as it rose on the balanced static charges induced in the ground and its own hull. The pilot's weight dragged the little craft into a slow circle like a horse guided by a lunge line.

Daniel ran toward the fallen assassins. Adele instead waded back into the water. The rest of the flotilla clogged the channel, some vessels halting on reversed thrust while others chose to ground on the fern-covered islet to the right.

Delos Vaughn hunched below the retaining wall where undamaged sap still provided a curtain from sight. Tredegar stood in the middle of the canal, his eyes wild and his mouth open though speechless.

There's my purse. Despite the violence, the water remained clear except for swirls of weed and air bubbles. The channel was concrete colored to give it the appearance of mud.

Adele raised the purse and took the data unit from it. Pray whatever Gods there were that its seals are as good as they're supposed to be. 

Tredegar came to his senses from watching Adele's organized action. He sloshed toward the nearest of the undamaged boats, the ten-seater which had brought Daniel and Adele into the Gardens. Shawna and Elinor stood in the bow, watching events with perfect aplomb while everyone else on the craft lay flat on the deck.

"Hogg, don't let Tredegar get away!" Adele cried. It wasn't an order. She didn't have authority to order Daniel's servant to do anything, as Hogg would be the first to tell her if provoked.

He wasn't the man to ignore a warning, though. Hogg turned in the cockpit and judged his distance as the aide splashed past him. Ten feet of weighted line shimmered from Hogg's hand and wrapped around Tredegar's arm and throat. The aide fell backward into the water.

Adele stamped ashore again, clumsy from the weight of water trapped in her pant legs. The suit Tovera picked for her had gathered cuffs, a matter that Adele hadn't paused to consider when she put the garment on. Clothes were something she wore as a social or environmental necessity, not out of any intrinsic interest they had for her.

If she had to do it again, she'd specify drain holes at wrist and ankles. Though how the damned fabric could let water in so easily and then hold it there like a set of fluid leg irons was beyond her.

An alarm had been given—many alarms, judging from the number of sirens she could hear at varying distances. Ignoring them, ignoring also the shouts and bustle of people around her, Adele walked over to the nearest of the dead men.

There were three holes in the back of his neck, so close together that she could have covered them with her thumb. Tovera was already there, going through the man's pockets. Daniel had switched off the skiff's power, bringing it down to the ground again. He was searching the other two assassins.

Adele took the pistol from the dead man's hand and thrust it through her waist sash. Tovera looked at her. "He doesn't have any identification, but he's carrying a thousand florins."

"They're probably just local thugs," Adele said. She took one of the peacock-hued hundred-florin coins Tovera had fanned on the ground beside the man's purse. "Anyway, I don't need identification if the money's there."

Adele had brought up her personal data unit as she spoke. Her wands flickered, entering the coin's serial number into the records of the Central Bank of the Republic.

The database was supposed to be restricted, of course. Because Adele was using the Ministry of Defense computer for access, she was probably getting the information faster than one of the bank directors could have done after entering a series of codes and passwords. Even so, a search so enormous took some time.

She looked at the submachine gun in Tovera's hand. The barrel was only four inches long and the few pounds the weapon weighed weren't enough to stabilize it when fired full automatic—Adele would have thought, barring the evidence of the corpse before her.

"How did you get that through the screening at the gate?" she demanded.

Tovera's expression became guarded. "My case projects the image of a data unit and other ordinary office equipment," she said. "There are ways to defeat it, but none that these civilians would have available."

Carefully, her eyes never leaving Adele's, she added, "I'm sorry, mistress. I should have carried your weapon through the screen with me."

Adele thought about the mindset that was always prepared in case of an assassination attempt at an innocent party. She could learn to live that way, she supposed, but it seemed to her that the alternative to life was preferable if such paranoia were necessary.

She smiled. "Not at all, Tovera," she said. "I think I'm better off delegating those concerns to you."

A number of the party guests were standing around the plasma cannon, discussing it in amazed tones. The bolt had shrivelled a broadening wedge of vegetation from beneath the muzzle to the edge of the islet. The iridium barrel was no longer glowing, but any of the spectators who decided to touch the metal were going to cook their flesh to the bones.

Adele smiled grimly. Not so very long ago she wouldn't have had any more experience of a plasma cannon than did any other Academic Collections staff member. Being caught in the Kostroma rebellion had certainly broadened her horizons.

Adele's display shifted into the answer she'd expected. She looked up, hoping to catch Daniel's eye. He held two pistols by the barrel in his left hand and was talking to a young man in the beige uniform of the Militia, the national police. Despite the flashing lights and the downdraft, Adele hadn't noticed the Militia aircar landing beside the assassins' skiff.

Delos Vaughn walked up on shore, surrounded by servants and several aides. One of the latter had taken off her taffeta cape and was toweling Vaughn's legs with it. Adele watched her for a moment, blinked, and went back to the display feeling queasy. The Mundys hadn't encouraged that sort of abasement from their retainers; though when she let herself remember, there had been times . . .

She shook herself. She didn't want to think about the night her father won the race for Treasurer of the Republic and a dozen women, wives and daughters of his retainers, had buffed the gilded body of his aircar with their long hair. That was what they did for him in public. For herself, she didn't want anybody to offer her honors that she would never grant to another living person.

"You there!" Vaughn said. "What in heaven are you doing with Cornelius? Let him go at once!"

Everybody turned at the shout. Hogg was holding Tredegar upright, trussed by the neck and—behind his back—his wrists. An aide stepped forward.

"No, Tovera!" Adele shouted.

Hogg's hands were occupied with a prisoner who was conscious but noosed too tightly to be able to stand without help. He kicked the aide squarely in the crotch, doubling her up with a scream that a man in a similar situation couldn't have bettered.

It could have been worse. Tovera had turned also. Adele wasn't absolutely sure that her shout would've been enough to keep the pale woman from killing Vaughn's aide with the same wasplike skill that had eliminated the three assassins.

"But this is Cornelius Tredegar," Vaughn said, no longer speaking with an implicit threat in his voice. "He's one of my oldest associates. He came into exile with me, for God's sake!"

"He knew about the ambush," Daniel said, walking over and drawing the policeman with him. The fellow's partner was still in the aircar, calling for additional help. Another Militia aircar had landed, but its personnel were fending off the crush of velvet-clad Gardens employees gabbling about the damage to the settings. "If he didn't plan it, then he was helping whoever did."

"Tredegar was the paymaster," Adele said, drawing everyone's eyes from Daniel to her. They were quite a pair, dripping wet and muddy besides. "He withdrew six thousand florins from his account at the Divan branch of Stevenage Trust ten days ago. He must have paid the assassins the second half of the money just this morning, because they're still carrying it."

"Mistress?" the policeman said, glancing at the coins beside the dead man's purse. "How do you know that?"

An enclosed twelve-place aircar with Militia markings wallowed to a landing at the edge of the islet, smashing another section of the amber wall. Daniel winced though he didn't say anything. Almost half the carefully formed circuit of trees had been snapped off or uprooted.

Adele visualized a similar battle—quite small, as battles go—taking place within the precincts of the Academic Collections on Blythe. Her lips tightened. She knew how Daniel felt.

"Large coins are all registered with the central bank," Adele said. "Every time they pass through a bank, the transaction is recorded. The most recent movement of these—"

Well, at least the one she'd checked; this wasn't the time to be overprecise.

"—was to Tredegar here in a withdrawal he made personally."

Policemen wearing body armor and carrying carbines spilled out of the van in a hectoring wave, pushing through the guests in evident disregard for military uniforms and indicia of wealth. "What's going on here?" said the officer in charge, bellowing at the patrolman standing between Adele and Daniel.

The officer noticed Tredegar. Though his face was hidden behind the visor, there was no doubt of the angry exasperation in his voice as he snapped, "What's this? What the hell is this?"

"Sir, he's a prisoner," the regular patrolman said, standing up to a faceless bully who was doubtless also his superior in rank. "He appears to be behind the attack that—"

"Cut him loose!" the officer said. "Secure him with legal restraints." One of his subordinates drew a knife whose blade extended as the hilt came free of the clip.

There was a flicker in the air. The knife hand jerked upward, bound to the policeman's shoulder by a loop of the same weighted cord as had caught and held Tredegar. The line had two ends, after all.

Hogg grinned with absolutely no humor at all. "What the—" the officer repeated, his tone an amalgam of anger and amazement.

Daniel stepped close to Hogg, his back to the Militia officer. "Hogg," he said, "release the prisoner immediately into the custody of the civil authorities! You know how Speaker Leary will complain if he has to use his influence again to get his son's servant out of jail!"

Daniel would never have used his father's name that way for anything less serious than this incident was rapidly becoming. If the officer had acted as he might have tried in the full arrogance of his power—

Adele was again struck by the way Tovera vanished into the background under any circumstances. You would have thought that at least one member of the riot squad would have noticed the pale blonde holding a submachine gun down beside her thigh.

—then anything might have happened.

"Sure, Master Leary," Hogg said, releasing Tredegar and giving him a gentle push in the direction of the policeman who'd planned to cut him loose. "What's twenty piastres worth of fishing line and a couple pebbles?"

"I don't mind you cutting the cord," Daniel said to the officer in an innocently helpful tone, "but do be aware that it's sea fishing line which we use in the ocean off Bantry. It's boron monocrystal, and the tug of your man's knife blade on a thin strand would very likely have strangled the prisoner if Hogg hadn't stopped him."

Daniel's instinct made him step between Hogg and the chance of lethal danger. That's not how Tovera would have saved her colleague. And it's not what Adele would have done either, if she'd still had her pistol.

Three riot policemen began unwrapping Tredegar and their fellow. After a moment, they all flipped up their visors.

"I still can't believe . . ." Vaughn said, though the way his voice trailed off indicated that actually he was indeed beginning to believe. "Cornelius, you wouldn't betray me?"

"He wasn't planning to have you killed, Delos," Mistress Zane said scornfully. "You're his golden goose—so long as you ignore your heritage and stay here on Cinnabar! The little wretch planned to kill me and blame it on your niece and Nunes."

Almost everybody was looking at Zane. Adele saw Hogg grin broadly as he glanced at the prisoner he'd just surrendered. Tredegar's right wrist was now attached to a policeman's harness by a flexible restraint. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket with his left hand and put it to his mouth.

It's probably the best result. 

"Casdessus, get this one into the van," said the officer, raising his own shield. His face was surprisingly delicate; much of his apparent bulk must have been the armor. "We'll hold here till the investigative squad arrives, then—"

Tredegar's cheeks flushed bright red. Blood spurted from his nose and ears; his limbs went slack and he fell, all but the arm still tethered to the policeman's harness. The Militia officer jumped back, but blood still splashed his trouser legs and his right boot.

"I figured he'd do that, so I kept him tied up," Hogg said to the officer in a conversational voice. "It's a real education to watch a city professional like you work, Captain."

More sirens were approaching. Adele sat on the ground and brought up her data unit again. She didn't want to waste more time here, and Daniel almost certainly had things he should be doing instead of discussing with a series of officious bureaucrats a matter that was already closed. The message she was sending to Admiral Anston's office might bring a quick end to the irritation.

And if it didn't, the copy to a site Mistress Sand used for confidential dispatches certainly would.

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