House of Reeds

'Mi'lord!' Colmuir crashed out of the thicket on the far side of the stream, rifle at the ready. The master sergeant stumbled to a halt, gaping at the scene in front of him. Pardane Fes was only a step behind and the Jehanan let loose a hiss of astonishment. The crowd of servants behind him spilled out onto the bank and then everyone looked up, shielding their faces from blowing grit and dust as an Imperial aerocar settled between the trees. Dawd hung over the side, one foot on the bottom step of the boarding ladder, the Whipsaw tracking across the chuckling stream.

'You killed it?' Colmuir stared in amazement at the shattered remnants of the xixixit scattered in front of the prince and the woman. The master sergeant blinked, recognizing her. 'Madame Petrel?'

Behind the Resident's wife, still in the arms of her Imperial savior, the pale faces of two young ladies peered over the side of an aerocar, then squealed in relief to see the horrendous monster stricken down. Colmuir stepped back, eyes narrowed in suspicion, and let the Jehanan hunters – nearly everyone had now arrived, drawn by the gunshots – stampede past to examine the insect carcass. Tezozуmoc was staring around him, bemused to suddenly find a striking woman in his arms and two young girls clapping in delight and thanking him for such 'quick thinking.'

Pardane Fes rose from the shattered xixixit, shaking his long scaled head in appreciation. 'Not sporting,' the Jehanan boomed, 'to use such a keen blade, but a well-placed shot withal – straight between the thorax plates. Well placed, well placed.'

Clinging tightly to the prince's rather narrow chest, Mrs. Petrel's brilliant blue eyes fluttered open and she looked around, apparently so overcome she'd forgotten where she was. 'Oh – what was that horrific beast?' There was a hesitant pause, then, in a ghoulishly fascinated tone: 'Was anyone killed?'

Eight hundred kilometers away to the south, Itzpalicue grunted and her wrinkled old face screwed up into a disapproving grimace. 'Cut that last,' she growled to Lachlan and his editing team, who were hunched over a double-wide set of v-displays in the operations center. 'She always overdoes these things… Cull the rest, make it look presentable for a handheld cam and squirt it to the t-relay on the Tepoztecatl. They'll want to forward it on to the core worlds as quickly as possible.'

Lachlan nodded, watching approvingly as the two girls from Editing winnowed out everything which would have made the prince less presentable – such as the look of stark fear on his face when the xixixit burst out of the trees – and recast the crystal-clear video from the spyeyes into a fuzzier, lower-def format. A body-filter was already processing the prince's torso, adding muscle and definition.

'We'll have a final edit in about twenty minutes,' the Йirishman reported after a moment. 'Anything else we need to track from these spyeyes today? I'd like to route them back to Gandaris to recharge.'

Itzpalicue shook her head. The old woman leaned on her cane, keen eyes roving across the workstations crowded into the low-ceilinged room. Everyone appeared entirely focused on their work, which pleased her greatly, and a particular, familiar tension was building in the air.

'Soon,' she said, clicking her teeth together in consideration. 'I can feel the index peaking. We'll have our war soon…' Coming to a decision, she rapped the top of Lachlan's console with her knuckles. 'I'm going out to see to my Arachosians. They are getting impatient.'

Shaking his head in dismay, Corporal Clark stepped through the ruins of the kitchen and pushed the door of the ice locker closed with a dull thump. Every edible scrap of food was gone. Nearly all of the utensils, pots, pans and other cook-ware had been hauled away. Some eating tines wrapped in a damask napkin lay forgotten on the floor. The rest of the house was in a similar state.

Chasing off the last of the scavengers – once word had circulated around the neighborhood about the viscount's departure, every short-horn in the district had descended on the 'asuchau house' to get their share – had taken the whole afternoon. The genteel ambience Gemmilsky had worked so hard to establish had been destroyed, leaving only an echoing, empty house filled with scattered litter and forgotten trinkets.

'Well, this will take some fixing,' the adjutant said, squaring his shoulders and tapping his comm awake. 'Hello? Is this the Gandaris consulate? Yes, this is Corporal Clark. I'm acting factotum for the Prince Imperial while he's in the city…Yes, that one. Yes. Listen now, there's been a bit of a problem with the servants at the Gemmilsky house.' Clark paused, listening to the consul babble in his ear. The corporal's face grew still, then turned grim.

'You say the Resident's wife is coming with him? She's not injured? Good. But her vacation party has been invited to stay with the prince?' Clark's dark eyebrows drew close over brown eyes. 'And where would her luggage be? At the palace? No? Ah, the train station. I see. Well, sir, if you wish to remain employed by the Imperial Diplomatic Corps, I suggest you tell me how to acquire thirty properly trained household staff and hot dinner and drinks for thirty in…' Clark raised his wrist, glanced at his chrono, then peered out the window at the sun. 'Three- quarters of an hour. As, sir, there are no staff here. They have all fled to the four winds.'

There was a pause. Clark waited, trying not to tap his boot on the floor. Eventually the consul spoke again and a begrudging smile lit the corporal's dour face.

'Does the kujen have an Imperial-addressed comm? He does? Excellent – what's the number there? Good. Now, can you send a man to get her Ladyship's baggage? I will be very busy here, very busy.'

Parus

The District of the Claw-Sharpeners

Just west of a mustard-yellow mercantile arcade, where rug merchants laid out their wares in smoke-stained alcoves, an old royal residence with two slender towers sat hidden inside a block of residential flats. Inside the palace, in a large domed chamber holding a dry pool, the leaders of four of the darmanarga moktar cells in the capital considered a table covered with maps and diagrams.

The topmost map described the environs of the Imperial Legation, housed within the dhrada- mandura – the Rusted Citadel – and the streets surrounding the human enclave. The chart was covered with annotations describing the security arrangements, guards and other items of interest in the Legation. Despite the reflecting pool having gone dry the room was pleasantly hot and humid.

'We will have to commit nearly every brigade in the city to overwhelm this position,' declared the smallest, most nervous of the conspirators. 'With the weapons they control, the asuchau could hold the dhrada against us with a claw of warriors! We should wait until more lance commanders commit to our cause.'

The largest of the moktar flared his nostrils dismissively. When he frowned, a deep scar puckered beneath his left eye-shield. 'They are expecting an attack by warriors bearing swords, spears and the occasional rifle. The 'artifacts' we've put back into service will be a complete surprise – much less the number of rifles and heavy machine guns our agents have purchased on the black market. A swift, coordinated assault on these points…' General Humara's claw tapped the map, indicating the main gates of the Legation, as well as two service entrances on the far side ofthe compound. '…will allow our troops entry and trap them inside. Then it will be a matter of -'

'A matter of counting your corpses,' an unexpected – human – voice said, rising over the sound of brisk footsteps on the expanse of mosaic floor. All four of the conspirators turned in alarm, horrified to find a tall, lean- looking Imperial with short blond hair emerging from the dim recesses of the vestibule. Despite civilian attire – short jacket over a cotton mantle, pleated trousers tucked into leather boots – the entire line of his body shouted military. 'The Imperial soldiers assigned to the Legation are equipped with combat armor and modern weapons. A single gunso with a Macana 8mm could slaughter two to three hundred of your soldiers with ease. Even the surplused rifles you've purchased from passing merchants will have a hard time penetrating their hard shells.'

The man's brash pronouncement froze three of the conspirators, but not the general. Humara trilled a soft laugh and rose to his full height – easily a head over the human – and looked down a scarred old snout. 'Humans selling us guns to kill other humans is pleasant,' he boomed, 'and convenient. But we are not without powerful weapons, even in our diminished state. Not all of the glory of old Jehan has yet failed.'

Timonen inclined his head in acknowledgement of the point. Then he raised pale, watery blue eyes to meet the