He looked around frantically. Smoke from concussion shells was filling the chamber, probably from Girardieau’s own people. It was settling in lazy pastel spirals, like scarves tossed from a dancer. Just when it was almost too dark to see, the room plunged into total blackness. The lights beyond the temple had obviously been turned off, or destroyed.
Pascale gasped.
His eyes slipped into infrared mode, almost without him having to think about it.
‘I can still see,’ he whispered to her. ‘As long as we stay together, you don’t have to worry about the darkness.’
Praying that the danger from the birds was gone, Sylveste rose slowly to his feet. The temple glowed in grey-green heat. The perfume woman was dead, a fist-sized hot hole in her side. Her amber jar was smashed at her feet. He guessed it had been some kind of hormonal trigger, keyed to receptors Janequin had put in the birds. He had to have been part of it. He looked — but Janequin was dead. A tiny dagger sat in his chest, trailing hot rivulets down his brocade jacket.
Sylveste grabbed Pascale and shoved her along the ground towards the exit, a vaulted archway gilded with Amarantin figurines and bas-relief graphicforms. It seemed that the perfume woman had been the only assassin actually present, if one discounted Janequin. But now her friends were entering, garbed in chameleoflage. They wore close-fitting breather masks and infrared goggles.
He pushed Pascale behind a jumble of upturned tables.
‘They’re looking for us,’ he hissed. ‘But they probably think we’re already dead.’
Girardieau’s surviving security people had fallen back and taken up defensive positions, kneeling within the fan-shaped auditorium. It was no match: the newcomers carried much heavier weapons, heavy boser-rifles. Girardieau’s militia countered with low-yield lasers and projectile weapons, but the enemy were cutting them apart with blithe, impersonal ease. At least half the audience were unconscious or dead; they had caught the brunt of the peacock venom salvo. Hardly the most surgically precise of assassination tools, those birds — but they had been allowed into the auditorium completely unchecked. Sylveste observed that two were still alive, despite what he had at first imagined. Still triggered by trace molecules of the perfume which remained aloft, their tails were flicking open and shut like the fans of nervous courtesans.
‘Did your father carry a weapon?’ Sylveste said, instantly regretting his use of the past tense. ‘I mean, since the coup.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Pascale said.
Of course not; Girardieau would never have confided such a thing to her. Quickly Sylveste felt around the man’s still body, hoping to find the padded hardness of a weapon beneath his ceremonial clothes.
Nothing.
‘We’ll have to do without,’ Sylveste said, as if the stating of this fact would somehow alleviate the problem it encapsulated. ‘They’re going to kill us if we don’t run,’ he said, finally.
‘Into the labyrinth?’
‘They’ll see us,’ Sylveste said.
‘But maybe they won’t think it’s us,’ Pascale said. ‘They might not know you can see in the dark.’ Though she was effectively blind, she managed to look him square in the face. Her mouth was open, an almost circular vacancy of expression or hope. ‘Let me say goodbye to my father first.’
She found his body in the darkness, kissed him for the last time. Sylveste looked to the exit. At that moment the soldier guarding it was hit by a shot from what remained of Girardieau’s militia. The masked figure crumpled, his body heat pooling liquidly into the floor around his body, spreading smoky white maggots of thermal energy into the stonework.
The way was clear, for the moment. Pascale found his hand and together they began to run.
EIGHT
‘I take it you’ve heard the news concerning the Captain,’ Khouri said, when the Mademoiselle coughed discreetly from behind her. Other than the Mademoiselle’s illusory presence, she was alone in her quarters, digesting what Volyova and Sajaki had told her of the mission.
The Mademoiselle’s smile was patient. ‘Rather complicates matters, doesn’t it? I’ll admit I considered the possibility that the crew might have some connection with him. It seemed logical, given their intention of travelling to Resurgam. But I never extrapolated anything this convoluted.’
‘I suppose that’s one word for it.’
‘Their relationship is…’ The ghost seemed to take a moment to choose her words, though Khouri knew it was all annoying fakery. ‘Interesting. It may limit our options in the future.’
‘Are you still sure you want him killed?’
‘Absolutely. This news merely heightens the urgency. Now there is the danger that Sajaki will try to bring Sylveste aboard.’
‘Won’t it be easier for me to kill him then?’
‘Certainly, but at that point killing him would not suffice. You would then have to find a way of destroying the ship itself. Whether or not you found a way to save yourself in the process would be your problem.’
Khouri frowned. Perhaps it was her, but very little of this made very much sense.
‘But if I guarantee that Sylveste’s dead…’
‘That would not suffice,’ said the Mademoiselle, with what Khouri sensed was a new candour. ‘Killing him is part of what you must do, but not the entirety. You must be specific in the manner of killing.’
Khouri waited to hear what the woman had to say.
‘You must allow him absolutely no warning; not even seconds. Furthermore, you must kill him in isolation.’
‘That was always part of the plan.’
‘Good — but I mean precisely what I say. If it isn’t possible to ensure solitude at any given moment, you must delay his death until it is. No compromises, Khouri.’
This was the first time they had discussed the manner of his death in any detail. Evidently the Mademoiselle had decided that Khouri was now fit to know slightly more than before, if not the whole picture.
‘What about the weapon?’
‘You may use any which suits you, provided the weapon incorporates no cybernetic components above a certain level of complexity, which I will stipulate at a later date.’ Before Khouri could object she added, ‘A beam weapon would be acceptable, provided the weapon itself was not brought into proximity with the subject at any stage. Projectile and explosive devices would also serve our purpose.’
Given the nature of the lighthugger, Khouri thought, there ought to be enough suitable weapons lying around for her use. When the time came, she should be able to appropriate something moderately lethal and allow herself time to learn its nuances before deploying it against Sylveste.
‘I can probably find something.’
‘I’m not finished. You must not approach him, nor must you kill him when he is in the proximity of cybernetic systems — again, I will stipulate my requirements nearer the time. The more isolated he is, the better. If you can manage to do it when he is alone and far from help, on Resurgam’s surface, you will have accomplished your task to my complete satisfaction.’ She paused. Evidently all this was hugely important to the Mademoiselle, and Khouri was doing her best to remember it, but so far it sounded no more logical than the incantations of a Dark Age prescription against fever. ‘But on no account must he be allowed to leave Resurgam. Understand that, because when a lighthugger arrives around Resurgam — even this lighthugger — Sylveste will try and find a way to get himself aboard. That must not be allowed to happen, under any circumstances.’
‘I get the message,’ Khouri said. ‘Kill him down below. Is that everything?’
‘Not quite.’ The ghost made a smile; a ghoulish one Khouri had never seen before. Maybe, she thought, the Mademoiselle had yet to exhaust her reservoir of expressions, keeping a few in store for moments such as this. ‘Of course I want proof of his death. This implant will record the event, but on your return to Yellowstone I also want
