it would kill him.
The pistol rested at Ishii's side, but his finger still touched the firing lever.
'I fear, Cha Ishii, that you will make me laugh. Of course, he might make a sensation for a time, which would be diverting enough, I suppose, but when it wore off, I would have to dispose of him. That would be tiresome.' She took a step toward him and casually rested her hand on her saber. His hand did not move. 'But I think you will find that there are other commodities that might persuade me.'
'Other commodities?' A flash of many lights on his face as the screen changed, then a sick, brilliant white. 'I do regret this hasty, slovenly solution, Lady Terese, for you would do so very well at court. But I am not a fool. The sister of a mushai, a traitor, cannot be bribed.' He raised the pistol to point straight at her heart. ' 'Please remove your belt and the weapons.'
Her hands shook. She slipped the tongue of her belt free of the buckle and took another step toward him. The harsh light had drained all color from his face. He looked as if his skin were painted on. 'The duke knows I am on this planet. I left him a message. A letter.' Her voice broke. It was her last play. 'You will be ruined.'
'Unfortunately, the message to your brother was destroyed. The duke never received any letter from you. I must assume that he believes you still on Earth. There is no reason to trace you here.' His finger-
She lashed out with her hand, the instantaneous reaction of cold fear. The buckle of the belt smashed into his hand. He cried out. The shot seared into a bulk of metal, a high, harmless crack. She whipped the belt back. The hard metal caught his fingers. His knife fell to the floor. Tess kicked it away. It skittered across the smooth surface and slid under Garii's slumped body.
The impetus of her kick brought her forward, and she plunged into Cha Ishii. Without even thinking, she knifed him in the abdomen. He screamed and fell.
Caught in his falling, she lost her balance and came down with her knees in his stomach. He made a sound, a cry. She scrambled forward, pulling out the knife, tripping on the belt, stumbling, getting up. Then she was in the passage, slipping on the smooth floor, hitting her knee hard as she went down, catching herself one-handed, pushing up. She got her balance and drew her saber, holding the belt in her other hand. Glanced back. Ishii was gasping as he struggled to get up. She ran.
Her hand, thrust in front of her, came up against sheer wall. It fell away. She tumbled out into the empty, white room. As the door slid back into place behind her, she stuck the knife into the crack. The door shut with a sharp grinding noise, not quite closed. She shoved at it. It did not move.
'Jammed. Please, God, jammed.' She ran to the other door, paused there, trying to stop breathing so loudly. A tear snaked down her cheek to dissolve, warm and salty, on her lips. The door was shut. She gave it a gentle push, and it slid open a handsbreadth. She saw nothing, heard no sound at all from the chamber beyond. She slipped into the room with her saber preceding her. The two megaliths framed the doorway like sentinels at a tomb. A scraping noise sounded behind her. She ran.
She got no farther than six steps. A figure emerged from a megalith. Like the strike of a snake, a hand gripped her right wrist, twisting it so her saber fell, a brilliant clatter on the floor, and pulled her in. An arm closed around her back. Her hands were trapped, one in back, one in front of her, her legs constrained by space. Her hair rested against a head. Head. Neck. Throat. She ducked her head, got it under the chin, and pushed up; lunged with her teeth for the throat.
It happened so fast that she only knew that both her arms were jerked painfully up behind her back. A hand locked on her chin, holding her head bowed back, fingers pressed tight on her jaw. His face held a breath away from hers.
'Try that again,' he said, his eyes two points of blackness, 'and I'll have to-' Abruptly, he jerked her chin to one side, as if he could not stand to look at her. His beard tickled her cheek.
'Oh, God,' said Tess. She would have fallen if he had not been holding her.
'By the gods.' Bakhtiian looked past her to her saber, a gleam on the ebony floor. 'I think it is time for you to tell me the truth.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
'To protect it within your silent bosom.'
He did not let go of her until they were inside the room that the priests had given him to sleep in. She was panting, dizzy from the pace he had set, the sudden halts, the fear of every blind corner. Her wrist ached where he held her. When he released her, she staggered backward. The bed frame caught her knees and she half-fell to the hard mattress. All of her breath sighed out of her. She sank back against the wall and rested her face in her open hands. Light flickered. She lifted her head. He set a candle on the little table midway along the wall.
His stare was so hard that she looked down. 'What, did he try to kill you?' he said finally, as if he had thought of doing it once or twice. 'If you will be caught spying, then you must expect to suffer the consequences.'
She stared stupidly at him. Half a meter to the right and the shot would have burned through her.
'I could not sleep,' said Ilya at last. 'I saw you meet the pilgrim called Garii and go with him. He took you into the white room, but when I looked inside, you had vanished. Then Ishii came and went inside, yet the room remained empty-to my sight, at least. And you came out, running as if demons were after you. There is blood on your hand, by the way. Where did you go?'
There was blood on her hand. She wiped her face frantically but only the barest smear came off. There was not much, after all: a pale stripe across her knuckles and a few drops darkening her sleeve.
'You have done violence in the shrine,' he said.
Her head snapped up. 'No! He tried to kill me. It was self-defense, damn you. I didn't kill him. God, he killed Garii. He would have killed me!'
'Where did all this take place?'
'There's a secret room, a secret door. Don't you have anything I can clean this off with? It stings.'
He took a step toward her. She jerked up, but he was only turning to open the door. He went out. She was suddenly seized by a paralyzing terror: what if he had gone to find Ishii? Or Mother Avdotya? A hand rattled at the door-but it was Ilya. He tossed her a damp cloth and resumed his stance against the door, regarding her with his unrelenting gaze. She scrubbed at her hand and her cheek and then sat, staring at the rag until finally she dropped it on the floor next to his bed.
'You have no farther to retreat,' said Bakhtiian, 'and I want an explanation.' The candlelight threw his shadow high up on the wall, arching over onto the ceiling, so that it seemed to lower down on her like the approach of a storm. 'You had better be honest with me, because I am-completely-out of patience with you.'
'I can't tell you.'
'You can't tell me! The penalty for violence-'
'You aren't listening to me!' She pushed up to her feet. 'He tried to-' Inside her shirt, the cylinder slipped down. She grabbed at her side.
'Tess!' he cried, starting forward. 'He hurt you-'
'No.' She stepped back, half up onto the bed.
Ilya stopped short. 'Let me see.'
'No.'
He walked forward. She backed up along the bed, standing on the mattress, until he had cornered her.
His shadow seemed to take up an entire wall. Under her hand, through her shirt, the cylinder felt hard and cold. He looked at her hand, cupped at her waist. Slowly he placed one foot up on the bed and, with a slight grimace, pushed up with the other, so that he, too, was standing on the bed. He placed a hand on either side of her, trapping her.
'What do you have?'
The implacability of his voice terrified her. 'I can't show you.'
