degrees. Mischa followed the central way, which opened into a long dining room. Its curtains and carpets were embroidered with metallic thread; small caged lights on the walls cast striped shadows and caught the myriad prisms of the branching chandeliers. Cushions surrounded a low, gleaming wooden table.
The tapestries soaked up sound, a disorienting effect to someone used to the echoes of caves. Mischa walked cautiously to the opposite end of the long room, up the five stairs to a platform, and through the heavy curtains of another doorway. Beyond it, precious stones joined the metallic thread in the embroidery. Mischa passed thirty meters of opulent mythological scenes worked in silver, gold, and spun jewels. The figures seemed to move at the periphery of her vision, beckoning, teasing, tantalizing. She walked quickly on.
The hallway ended abruptly in an apparent dead end. She looked around, up, into a vertical tunnel. Her feet rose from the floor. She spun, reaching for anything solid, lost her balance, and fell, but never hit the ground. She writhed in the air, searching for a point of stability, but there were no handholds. Steady pressure pushed her upward for what seemed a very long time as she struggled. Light grew brighter and the shaft widened. The pressure lessened and she felt she was going to fall, but she hung in the air. The shaft had brought her through a hole to a small, round room. Gold cords dangled near her, hanging horizontally, wavering like curious snakes. Using one of them, Mischa pulled herself to the floor's edge.
She crouched by the tube, shaken, feeling foolish: she might have been trapped. A few moments of equilibrium calmed her and she proceeded.
The room opened into a larger chamber with a fountain in its center and many corridors leading outward. Behind the brittle play of water, silence lay like a desert at noon. The most ornate hallway was carpeted and curtained in embroidered purple velvet. Mischa followed it uneasily, feeling that the tapestries and jewels and rugs were wasted in disguising a cave revealed by its faint, dank odor.
Shining cords held drapes from the entrances of huge rooms. Furniture hung from the ceiling, projected from the walls, or seemed to grow from the floors. In one room, water poured over the seven tiers of a fountain, changing color like the spectrum, red at the top to violet at the bottom. To Mischa, the effort of building such a construct seemed great compared to the result.
Hearing voices from a room ahead, Mischa stopped. When she was sure no one was approaching, she crept slowly toward the voices, her hand on her knife. Beyond an open set of curtains, violent motion tangled the shiny sheets of a high bed. A fur blanket slid to the floor unnoticed, further revealing the satin-obscured outlines of two people coupling. Mischa watched for a moment; she had never considered that the beings in Stone Palace might engage in such ordinary human pursuits. The clothing strewn around the room should not have seemed so incongruous, yet it jarred against the ornate perfection of everything else Mischa had seen.
She wondered if one of the people might be Blaisse, but the jeweled bits were the clothing of a slave and the rest was a guard's uniform, so she continued. She saw no one else, and felt no one else; the whole immense ostentatious place seemed deserted.
'You!'
Mischa spun, shocked by the lack of warning despite her watchfulness. Behind her, Blaisse's steward glared, but without feeling: the tall slave woman still projected no anger, nothing at all.
Mischa turned and bolted deeper into the Palace, possibly closer to her goal, certainly farther from escape.
She fled around a blind curve. She could see a dead end just ahead. Desperate, she slipped between a last pair of closed curtains, and stopped.
'What the hell—'
The guard facing Mischa put aside her book and stood up. 'Now where did you come from?' Mischa half- turned. The slave woman swept the curtains aside, barring her path. Relief softened the steward's haughty face.
'How did she get in?'
The steward stepped into the room. 'I do not know.'
This room was subdued rather than gaudy, and as Mischa looked for some escape, she realized that the shelves lining it held books, more than she had ever seen or believed existed anywhere in Center.
'This is as far as she gets,' the guard said.
The steward reached for Mischa, who ducked the long silver-painted fingernails and lunged into an opening between two cases of books. The guard grabbed at her and tried to hold her, but Mischa hit her wrist with the edge of her hand. The guard grunted with pain and let go. Mischa fled through a corridor and up a flight of stairs.
Sweet steam thickened around her and tile was slippery under her feet. Skidding, she caught herself on the edge of a deep blue pool. She dodged around it just ahead of the guard.
'Stop!'
Mischa ignored the command; the voice was that of the steward, who was not armed. She ran on, and the carpeting resumed, thick and soft.
'What is this?'
The voice held power. Mischa stopped short, looking up at Blaisse. Behind her, the steward and the guard froze.
The Lord wore a long, patterned silk robe. His damp hair fell in tendrils around his face; his gray eyes were hard and as powerful as his voice. They contrasted sharply with his face, which was round and pudgy, pale but pink-cheeked. Behind him stood another slave, a young girl with silver-blue hair and a strange blue cast to her skin, wearing a narrow loincloth and low halter of silver mesh and sapphires.
'Well?'
Startled out of silence, the slave woman spoke quickly. 'The girl is a thief—'
'Put that down!' Blaisse cried.
The steward flinched, paled, and stared at the laser lance in her hand as though she had never seen it. The guard took it back and reholstered it, left-handed; she held her right hand pressed against her side.
'I. I beg forgiveness, Lord. I did not think.' The slave's haughtiness was gone.
'Just explain,' Blaisse said, sardonically, calmly, his rage forgotten. The instant mood change had been genuine, and more than upsetting to Mischa.
'I'm not a thief,' she said. In spirit, for the moment, it was true: she had not come here to steal. 'I want to work on your ships.'
The slave woman looked insulted and the guard snickered. Blaisse began to laugh. 'Perhaps you'd like me to give you my spare? Do you think you can fly it in the storms?'
'Stupid kid,' the guard said with sarcasm. She suddenly turned very pale, and slid her hand under her belt.
'Are you on duty?' Blaisse asked.
'Yes,' the guard said sullenly.
'I couldn't have gotten past her and the others if I weren't good enough to join,' Mischa said.
The guard frowned slightly. 'She can fight,' she admitted.
'I never hire Center people,' Blaisse said.
'How do you know? Nobody ever asked you before.'
'How do you think you know that?'
'They didn't, did they?'
'It doesn't matter. I won't hire anyone from Center.'
'That's stupid.'
Blaisse glared at her like a resentful child, straightened up, and spoke very softly. 'Do you know who you're addressing?'
'Yes.'
Blaisse drew his dark eyebrows together and watched Mischa in silence. She could feel the extension of a tentacle of curiosity from him; she allowed herself to hope. Behind her, the young guard felt surprise above her pain and the slave woman revealed nothing.
'What is the meaning of this?'
The curiosity snapped back; the guard's pain dissolved in dislike and contempt.
The Lady Clarissa, standing framed in the doorway as though aware of the frame, using it, glared at them from the opposite end of the room. She had the high forehead and cheekbones, deep widow's peak, and wide,
