looking back. Dressed in different shades of dark grey.
“Can I help you?” he said, putting the still-open hide bag down at his feet where he sat, and dipping one hand into it, feeling around. He made a waving, distracting gesture with his other hand. “For example, with your manners? We tend to knock first, here.”
“Mr. Joiler Veppers, my name is Prebeign-Frultesa Yime Leutze Nsokyi dam Volsh,” the figure said in an oddly accented voice that might have been female but that definitely didn’t appear to be entirely in synch with its lip-movements. “I am a citizen of the Culture. I am here to apprehend you on suspicion of murder. Will you come with me?”
“How can I put this?” he said, raising and firing the alien-tech gun in the same movement. The gun made a loud snapping noise, light flared in the dim study and the alien disappeared in a silvery shimmer. The doors immediately behind where it had been standing burst open against their hinges, swinging broken and hanging into the corridor beyond in a flurry of black dust, a semi-circular hole punched in each, circumferenced with glowing yellow-white sparks. Veppers looked at the gun — a present from the Jhlupian Xingre, long ago — then at the still-swinging, smoking doors, and finally at the patch of rug where the figure had been standing. “Hmm,” he said.
He shrugged, stood, stuffed the gun into his waistband, snapped the hide bag shut and waved some of the noxious fumes away from his face as he exited through the wrecked doors, which were starting to burn.
“Jasken.”
He heard the female voice pronounce his name behind him, and knew it was her. He placed the paintings carefully on the floor of the flier and turned. Nolyen had stopped in the doorway of the flier. He was staring over the top of the paintings he held at the young woman standing by the door to the flight deck. Perhaps he was intimidated by the scroll-work of faint, tattooed lines covering her face.
“Miss,” Jasken said, nodding to her.
“It is me, Jasken.”
“I know,” he said. He turned his head deliberately, nodding to Nolyen. “Leave those, Nolyen; never mind anything else. Just leave; get well away from the house.”
Nolyen set the paintings down. He hesitated.
“Get away, Nolyen,” Jasken said.
“Sir,” the young man said, then turned and left.
Lededje watched him go, then turned back to Jasken.
“You let him kill me, Hib.”
Jasken sighed. “No, I tried to stop him. But, in the end, all right; I could have done more. And I suppose I could have killed him after he killed you. So I’m as bad as he is. Hate me if you like. I don’t claim to be a particularly good person, Led. And there is such a thing as duty.”
“I know. I thought you might feel some towards me.”
“My first is towards him, whether either of us likes it or not.”
“Because he pays your wages and all I did was let you fuck me?”
“No; because I pledged myself to his service. I never said anything to you that contradicted that.”
“No, you didn’t, did you?” She gave a wan smile. “I suppose I should have spotted that. How very correct of you, even while you were… despoiling his property. All those little whispered words of tenderness, about how much I meant, what we might hope for in the future. Were you always reviewing them as you said them? Running them past some lawyer bit in your brain, looking for inconsistencies?”
“Something like that,” Jasken told her, meeting her gaze. He shook his head. “We never had a future, Led. Not the sort you wanted to imagine. More quick couplings while his back was turned, hidden from everyone, until one of us got bored, or he found out. You belonged to him for ever, didn’t you ever under-stand that? We were never going to be able to run away together.” He looked down, then back up into her eyes again. “Or are you going to tell me you loved me? Because I always thought you took me as a lover just to get back at him and have me on-side for the next time you tried to escape.”
“Didn’t fucking work, did it?” she said bitterly. “You helped him hunt me down.”
“I had no choice. You didn’t have to run. As—”
“Really? That’s not how it felt to me.”
“As soon as you did, I had to do what my duty to him demanded.”
“So, none of it meant anything.” She was crying a little now, but quickly wiped both cheeks with the back of her wrists, tears smeared across the tattoo lines. “More fool me. Because I didn’t come back just to kill Veppers. I needed to ask how…” She stopped, swallowed. “Did it mean nothing to you?”
Jasken sighed. “Of course it meant something. A sweetness. Moments I’ll never forget. It just couldn’t mean what you wanted it to mean.”
She laughed, without hope or humour. “Then I am a fool, am I not?” she said, shaking her head. “I really did think you might love me.”
He gave the smallest of smiles. “Oh, I loved you with all my heart, from the very first.”
She glared at him.
He stared at her, eyes bright. “It’s just that love is not enough, Led. Not always. Not these days; maybe not ever. And never around people like Joiler Veppers.”
She looked down at the floor of the flier, brought her arms up and hugged herself. Jasken glanced at the time display on the flier’s bulkhead.
“Could be as little as a quarter of an hour till the second wave arrives,” he said. His tone was concerned, even kind. “You seemed to get here pretty fast. Can you get away again just as quickly?”
She nodded. She sniffed back her tears, wiped her cheeks and eyes again. “Do one thing for me,” she said.
“What?” he asked.
“Go.”
“Go? I can’t just—”
“Now. Just leave. Take the flier and go. Save the servants and staff; all you can find. But leave him here, with me.”
She looked into his eyes. Jasken hesitated, his jaw working. She shook her head. “He’s finished, Hib,” she said. “The NR — the Nauptre — they know. They can intercept whatever passes between him and the GFCF; they know about his agreement, about how he tricked them. The Culture know everything too. The Hells are gone, so he can’t use those to save himself now. He won’t be allowed to get away with all he’s done. Even if the Enablement can turn a blind eye to something on this scale, he’s got the NR and the Culture to answer to.” She smiled a small, half-despairing smile. “He finally found people more powerful than he is to fall foul of.” She shook her head again. “But the point is: you can’t save him. All you can save now is yourself.” She nodded towards the open door of the flier. “And anybody else you can find out there.”
Jasken looked out through one of the high-level ports in the flier, at the skies above the dully lit mansion. A wall of smoke like the end of the world was lit from beneath by flames.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll try to find him.” Now it was her turn to hesitate. “I will kill him, if I can. Not pretending otherwise.”
“He won’t be an easy man to kill.”
“I know.” She shrugged. “Perhaps I won’t have to. A condition of me getting this chance was that one of the Culture people went to confront him, give him the chance to turn himself in.”
Jasken gave a small, snorting laugh. “Think that’ll work?”
“No.” She tried to smile; failed.
Jasken looked into her eyes for a little while. Then he reached behind his back and brought out a small gun, holding it by the barrel as he passed it to her. “Try the Number Three Strongroom.”
She took the gun. “Thank you.” Their hands hadn’t touched as the weapon passed from him to her. She looked at the gun. “Will it still work?” she asked. “The ship was going to disable all the electronic weapons.”
“Most are already fried,” Jasken told her. “But that one’ll work. Just metal and chemicals. Ten shots. Safety catch is on the side facing you; move that little lever till you can see the red dot.” He watched her take the safety
