Trickster

it will die.'

A cold chill slid over Kendi's body at her words. He had been so busy over the last six months that this hadn't occurred to him. The Children of Irfan was an organization that existed only because of the Dream and the communication it provided. If no Silent could enter the Dream, the Children would disappear, swallowed by history.

The breeze from the top of the Varsis Building continued to wash over Kendi. He felt bold and alive, filled with optimism despite his problems. He would find his two family members on Drim, and perhaps they would know something about the others. Then together they could keep looking. Kendi was also looking forward to introducing them to Ben and telling them about- ' Father? '

Kendi tapped his earpiece. 'I'm here, Lucia. What's going on?'

' Ben's found something on the newsnets that you'll want to see. Can you come down to the suite? '

'Is it something you can upload to my implant?' Kendi asked, already heading for the elevator doors at the other end of the observation deck.

Pause. ' Not really.'

Kendi's stomach tensed as he entered the lift and told it he wanted the eighteenth floor, one of eight floors that made up a hotel within the Varsis Building. The lift obediently dropped. Was the news good or bad? Had to be bad. Otherwise Lucia would have told him something about it.

The Varsis Hotel hallways were plushly carpeted and thickly wallpapered, hushing every sound. A holographic waterfall rushed over stones at an intersection, filling the air with the sound of gushing water. It even smelled of moss. The hotel was on the expensive side, but Kendi saw no reason not to get comfortable digs. Ara would have told everyone to live on the ship, but Kendi found it annoying to go through the spaceport every time he wanted to do something in the city, and had decided the Children could pay for a hotel. He was glad to have insisted on a huge purse of hard-currency freemarks from the exchequer. Without Silent to handle the transactions in the post-Despair galaxy, very little interplanetary banking was taking place, and the population of a fair number of planets, including Drim, was in the middle of a 'don't trust the banks' frame of mind. There was also a very real dread that some currencies would collapse. Many financial institutions had closed their doors, fearing bank runs. As a result, physical money had quickly become the norm again. Kendi liked that. It used to be that the decent hotels and restaurants looked askance at anyone offering hard cash instead of electronic transfer, meaning undercover Children either had to set up electronic accounts under false names-risky-or patronize the sort of places that didn't care how you paid as long as you paid-distasteful. Nowadays, Kendi could pay hard freemarks to the fanciest place in town and be just another cautious socialite.

Kendi passed the waterfall and thumbed open the double door to the suite he had rented. The place was bright and airy, with a large outer sitting room, two well-appointed bathrooms, and four bedrooms. Enormous windows looked out over the cityscape. Although the suite sported its own holographic generator which allowed guests to add artwork or chunks of outdoor scenes, no one had been able to agree on a decoration scheme and Kendi had finally shut the system off entirely. As a result, the place was rather plain, done in simple greens and browns.

Ben had appropriated part of the sitting room as a work area, and he had hooked up his own computer to the hotel's network. The man himself was hunched over the keyboard, clothes rumpled, red hair tousled. In other words, looking perfectly normal. Lucia stood behind Ben's chair, one hand on the Irfan figurine around her neck. The holographic display above the desk showed text and pictures.

'What's going on?' Kendi demanded without preamble.

Ben hesitated. Lucia looked perfectly calm, but Kendi felt his whole insides screw up with tension. Bad news, that's what it was all right. Otherwise they'd come right out and say it.

'Well?' He strode to the desk. 'Just tell me. Or do I have to read it for myself?'

'It's bad,' Ben said finally.

'I'll go see what Gretchen is up to,' Lucia murmured, and quietly withdrew into the room the two of them shared. Kendi's legs went weak.

'Ben, what is it?' Kendi asked. 'I can't handle suspense. Just say it. Did you find them? Are they… are they dead?'

'I don't know,' Ben replied. He reached up and took Kendi's hand. 'Ken, I found a series of news stories. A firm called DrimCom-the Com is short for Communication — encountered a… loss. It used to own twenty-odd Silent slaves, but only two of them came through the Despair with their Silence intact. One's a man, the other's a woman.'

'My family?' Kendi asked.

'Yeah. I have their holos. Want to see?'

Kendi leaned forward despite his fear. 'You know the answer to that.'

Ben tapped a key and the text vanished. The head of a woman in her mid-twenties appeared. She was beautiful, with large brown eyes, skin darker than Kendi's, and sharply-defined features that included a firm chin. Kendi touched his own chin when he saw her. 'Martina,' he breathed.

Another hologram appeared beside the first, one of a man in his thirties. The resemblance to Kendi was unmistakable, except for the striking blue eyes. Sejal had similar eyes, and Kendi had once suspected Sejal- wrongly-of being Utang's son. Kendi's throat thickened. The last time he had seen his brother and sister they had been fifteen and ten, respectively. Now they were adults.

'I managed to break into their medical records, including their DNA scans,' Ben said. 'I ran a comparison. All three of you have the same mitochondrial DNA, which means you're siblings. It's definitely them.'

Kendi's heart was racing and he tightened his grip on Ben's hand. 'You said there's bad news.'

'Yeah.' Ben ran his free hand through his hair. 'Ken, they've both disappeared.'

For a moment Kendi could only focus on the fact that Ben was calling him Ken, a nickname he didn't allow anyone else to use and one Ben used only rarely. Then he said, 'Disappeared?'

'Kidnapped. Someone broke into the slave quarters and snatched them both away. No clues, according to the news reports. They're gone.'

Kendi's knees turned to water and the room darkened. Eventually he became aware that he was sitting on the floor with his head between his knees. Ben knelt next to him, an arm around his shoulder. Kendi felt like he was spinning.

'Just breathe,' Ben said. 'Slow and steady. You'll be okay.'

'What is wrong?' came Harenn's voice. 'Is he injured?'

'He almost fainted,' Ben told her. 'The news was a shock.'

Kendi looked up and the room swayed. Harenn's unveiled face- All life, it still looks strange to see her, he thought incongruously-was looking down with concern. She was rather pretty, with rounded cheeks and care lines around her mouth. Although she had stopped wearing the veil, she continued to cover her hair with a translucent scarf.

'When?' Kendi asked hoarsely.

'When what?' Ben asked.

'When did it happen? When were they kidnapped?'

'Two days ago. The day before we got to Drim.'

Harenn looked abruptly stricken. She backed away, her skin gone pale. 'Oh god.'

Kendi closed his eyes.

'What's the matter?' Ben demanded. 'Harenn, don't you faint, too. What the hell is wrong?'

'Two days ago,' Harenn whispered. 'They vanished two days ago. If we had first come to Drim instead of going to Klimkinnar to get Bedj-ka, we might have arrived before… ' She trailed off.

'Oh,' Ben said.

Kendi opened his eyes. 'Harenn, don't you feel guilty. I need you to be yourself right now. It was my-' he swallowed '-my decision to go to Klimkinnar, not yours. It's my fault.'

'Hey!' Ben grabbed Kendi's hand again. 'It's not your fault, Ken. You had no way of knowing. The people who kidnapped your brother and sister-it's their fault. The people who enslaved them in the first place-it's their fault. Not yours, not Harenn's. Mom would pitch a fit if she knew you were thinking that way.'

Mom. Mother Ara. All life, she would have known what to do. Kendi felt like he was floundering, drowning in a frothy sea. What was the next step? What should he do? He had no idea. And then for a moment it felt like Ara was