Context (64 page)

‘Nĭ
hăo.’
Tom’s
words echoed oddly in the low, misty cavern. Behind them, their rented skimmer
was already departing from the flat dock.
‘Lĭ xiānsheng zài ma?’

Five cloned enforcers, black hair
braided pit-fighter style, stared at him with eyes like stone. But behind them,
an older Zhongguo Ren in a robe of black and gold bowed to the three strangers.

‘Master Lee,’ he said, ‘has been
expecting you.’

Overhead, a tiny holo flower with
cupped azure petals slowly revolved.

The
shaven-headed oriental man was old, and his hands looked unsteady when he
showed them the lamina trap he intended to use on Draquelle. But Tom gave Kraiv
a tiny nod: he trusted Master Lee’s ability to remove the silver-scaled dragon
which slithered endlessly across Draquelle’s slender torso, sliding between the
soft layers of her skin.

Trusted him to remove the
femtautomaton; after that, there was Draquelle’s indenture and their safety to
consider.

‘Leave the chamber,’ Master Lee
told Tom and Kraiv. And, to Draquelle: ‘Remove your tunic, please.’

‘No.’ Draquelle reached out to
hold Kraiv’s hand. ‘He stays with me.’

Tom went outside, into a
holoflame-lit foyer, and stood with silent footsoldiers to whom exquisite
politeness and passionless killing were two sides of the same professional
coin. But he did not have to wait long before they called him back inside.

‘Master Lee says ...’ Draquelle
hesitated, still fastening up her clothes.

Tom watched the old man drape
black velvet across the flat laminar trap, hiding the silver movement within.

‘The Bronlah Hong,’ said Master
Lee, ‘no longer exists. We make no claim on this person’s indenture.’

Tom wondered if he would have
made the same decision without a towering, ebon-skinned housecarl standing in
the chamber, giant morphospear slung across his broad triangular back.
Nevertheless, Tom bowed to Master Lee with punctilious correctness, and
delivered the most courteous formal thanks he knew:

‘Xièxie... Zhù dájiā wànshì
rúyì.’

The old man bowed, palm covering
fist.

‘Zhù gè wèi yílù shùnfēng.
’

It was a traditional farewell to
travellers.

Tom
walked ahead, along a gloomy, cold, square-edged tunnel whose floor curved
slightly upwards, sparsely lit by fluorofungus contained in baskets, not
allowed to grow free across the damp stone. It was not a cheerful place.

Their next destination was the
Manse Hetreece, where Kraiv would offer reparation, perhaps his life, to atone
for young Horush’s death.

But despite this, Kraiv and
Draquelle—a freedwoman once more—walked hand tightly in hand, unable to look
away from each other, skin tingling, their eyes filled with a sudden hope they
did not dare to name.

~ * ~

35

NULAPEIRON
AD 3420

The
Manse Hetreece was a great, grey-blue, square-columned building, lined with
copper, standing proud and strong atop a great cliff, in a black-shrouded
titanic cavern where winds whistled eerily among strange rock formations.

It was late evening when Tom and
his companions stood on a flat outcrop, the end of a winding causeway, on the
other side of the dark abyss. Between here and the towering Manse, a single
bridge stretched: shining gold and violet and flame-orange, shimmering above
the drop—a bridge of light instead of dull, base matter.

“The sentinels,’ said Kraiv,
nodding towards the distant watchtowers, ‘will be tracking us already.’

‘I can’t—’ Draquelle stopped,
staring at the bright, glorious, insubstantial bridge.

‘Stick with me, and you can.’

And
so they passed along the fiery bridge’s length. Hissing and sparkling, every
hue in the spectrum blazed in random patterns, and the travellers waded through
that viscous, brilliant light—up to their ankles at first, then their knees,
and finally, at the centrepoint above the now-invisible abyss, hidden by
brightness, they walked hip-deep in shining bridge-stuff- and Tom was shaking
by the time they reached the portal at the far end.

“The Bifrost Gate,’ Kraiv
announced as they walked through.

Then they were in a courtyard
tiled in shades of blue, surrounded by carls with deep-blue cloaks and helms of
shining copper, and morphospears to match Kraiv’s own.

A
phalanx of carls escorted Kraiv—trailed by Tom and Draquelle—to the Great Hall.
On the way, from dark stone corridors, Tom glimpsed gymnasia—saw female carls
practising acrobatics—and schools. At one point, they passed two women, glowing
with sweat and breathing hard as they left a training hall together,
unfastening the sparring straps which bound their fists.

The taller woman, black-haired
and athletic, caught sight of Tom, and sudden mutual attraction leaped between
them—caring nothing for appropriateness of time or place.

But then the moment was past, a
memory, and Tom was entering a huge hall already filling with boisterous
housecarls looking forward to their evening banquet.

What happens now?

Tom had no legal arguments
prepared—
Call yourself a logosopher?—
or rhetoric with which to plead for
Kraiv’s life. He knew little of the Manse’s laws inscribed in Sèr Koedex
Rechtenstein; he knew everything about a warrior’s willingness to die for
honour.

For if there were to be a trial,
it would surely involve blood, endurance, and a stoic resistance to pain.