The changes taking place within the Moat had turned the water turbulent, even at the jetty. She hitched the boat to a mooring point and then took the elevator up the side of the wall, preferring to sprint the distance along the top rather than face the climb. By the time she reached the cut the doors were three-quarters of the way to closure and, to Naqi’s immense relief, the machinery had yet to falter.
She approached the tower. She had expected to see more people out on the top of the Moat, even if she knew that Sivaraksa would still be in his control centre. But no one was around. This was just beginning to register as a distinct wrongness when Sivaraksa emerged into daylight, stumbling from the door at the foot of the tower.
For an instant she was on the point of calling his name. Then she realised that he was stumbling because he had been injured — his fingers were scarlet with blood — and that he was trying to get away from someone or something.
Naqi dropped to the ground behind a stack of construction slabs. Through gaps between the slabs she observed Sivaraksa. He was swatting at something, like a man being chased by a persistent wasp. Something tiny and silver harried him. More than one thing, in fact: a small swarm of them, streaming out the open door. Sivaraksa fell to his knees with a moan, brushing ineffectually at his tormentors. His face was turning red, smeared with his own blood. He slumped on one side.
Naqi remained frozen with fear.
A person stepped from the open door.
The figure was garbed in shades of fire. It was Amesha Crane. For an absurd moment Naqi assumed that the woman was about to spring to Sivaraksa’s assistance. It was something about her demeanour. Naqi found it hard to believe that someone so apparently serene could commit such a violent act.
But Crane did not step closer to Sivaraksa. She merely extended her arms before her, with her fingers outspread. She sustained the oddly theatrical gesture, the muscles in her neck standing proud and rigid.
The silver things departed Sivaraksa.
They swarmed through the air, slowing as they neared Crane. Then, with a startling degree of orchestrated obedience, they slid onto her fingers, locked themselves around her wrists, clasped onto the lobes of her ears.
Her jewellery had attacked Sivaraksa.
Crane glanced at the man one last time, spun on her heels and then retreated back into the tower.
Naqi waited until she was certain the woman was not coming back, then started to emerge from behind the pile of slabs. But Sivaraksa saw her. He said nothing, but his agonised eyes widened enough for Naqi to get the warning. She remained where she was, her heart hammering.
Nothing happened for another minute.
Then something moved above, changing the play of light across the surface of the Moat. The Voice of Evening’s shuttle was detaching from the tower, a flicker of white machinery beneath the manta curve of its hull.
The shuttle loitered above the cut, as if observing the final moment of closure. Naqi heard the huge doors grind shut. Then the shuttle banked and headed into the circular sea, no more than two hundred metres above the waves. Some distance out it halted and executed a sharp right-angled turn. Then it resumed its flight, moving concentrically around the inner wall.
Sivaraksa closed his eyes. She thought he might have died, but then he opened them again and made the tiniest of nods. Naqi left her place of hiding. She crossed the open ground to Sivaraksa in a low, crablike stoop.
She knelt down by him, cradling his head in one hand and holding his own hand with the other. ‘Jotah… What happened? ’
He managed to answer her. ‘They turned on us. The nineteen other delegates. As soon as—’ He paused, summoning strength. ‘As soon as Weir made his move.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Join the club,’ he said, managing a smile.
‘I need to get you inside,’ she said.
‘Won’t help. Everyone else is dead. Or will be by now. They murdered us all.’
‘No.’
‘Kept me alive until the end. Wanted me to give the orders.’ He coughed. Blood spattered her hand.
‘I can still get you—’
‘Naqi. Save yourself. Get help.’
She realised that he was about to die.
‘The shuttle?’
‘Looking for Weir. I think.’
‘They want Weir back?’
‘No. Heard them talking. They want Weir dead. They have to be sure.’
Naqi frowned. She understood none of this, or at least her understanding was only now beginning to crystallise. She had labelled Weir as the villain because he had harmed her beloved Pattern Jugglers. But Crane and her entourage had murdered people, dozens, if what Sivaraksa said was correct. They appeared to want Weir dead as well. So what did that make Weir, now?
‘Jotah… I have to find Weir. I have to find out why he did this.’ She looked back towards the centre of the Moat. The shuttle was continuing its search. ‘Did your security people get a trace on him again?’
Sivaraksa was near the end. She thought he was never going to answer her. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘Yes, they found him again.’
‘And? Any idea where he is? I might still be able to reach him before the shuttle does.’
‘Wrong place.’
She leaned closer. ‘Jotah?’
‘Wrong place. Amesha’s looking in the wrong place. Weir got through the cut. He’s in the open ocean.’
‘I’m going after him. Perhaps I can stop him…’
‘Try,’ Sivaraksa said. ‘But I’m not sure what difference it will make. I have a feeling, Naqi. A very bad feeling. Things are ending. It was good, wasn’t it? While it lasted?’
‘I haven’t given up just yet,’ Naqi said.
He found one last nugget of strength. ‘I knew you wouldn’t. Right to trust you. One thing, Naqi. One thing that might make a difference… if it comes to the worst, that is—’
‘Jotah?’
‘Tak Thonburi told me this… the most top secret, known only to the Snowflake Council. Arviat, Naqi—’
For a moment she thought she had misheard him, or that he was sliding into delirium. ‘Arviat? The city that sinned against the sea?’
‘It was real,’ Sivaraksa said.
There were a number of lifeboats and emergency service craft stored at the top of near-vertical slipways, a hundred metres above the external sea. She took a small but fast emergency craft with a sealed cockpit, her stomach knotting as the vessel commenced its slide towards the ocean. The boat submerged before resurfacing, boosted up to speed and then deployed ceramic hydrofoils to minimise the contact between the hull and the water. Naqi had no precise heading to follow, but she believed Weir would have followed a reasonably straight line away from the cut, aiming to get as far away from the Moat as possible before the other delegates realised their mistake. It would require only a small deviation from that course to take him to the nearest external node, which was as likely a destination as any.
When she was twenty kilometres from the Moat, Naqi allowed herself a moment to look back. The structure was a thin white line etched on the horizon, the towers and the now-sealed cut faintly visible as interruptions in the line’s smoothness. Quills of dark smoke climbed from a dozen spots along the length of the structure. It was too far for Naqi to be certain that she saw flames licking from the towers, but she considered it likely.
The closest external node appeared over the horizon fifteen minutes later. It was nowhere as impressive as the one that had taken Mina, but it was still a larger, more complex structure than any of the nodes that had formed within the Moat — a major urban megalopolis, perhaps, rather than a moderately sized city. Against the skyline Naqi saw spires and rotundas and coronets of green, bridged by a tracery of elevated tendrils. Sprites were rapidly moving silhouettes. There was motion, but it was largely confined to the flying creatures. The node was not yet
