Eventually he became aware of a change in the silence. Behind him, a voice like pearls on skin said, “Sergeant? Are you coming back in or not?”
Chapter 41
Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.
EMILY DICKINSON
Keylinn didn’t think she liked this Miranda. There was a quality that Graykey society recognized called sabif a thing that accumulated with age and grace and wisdom. If a jeweled sword from the ancient craftswoman Tirial were laid side by side with a perfect reproduction, the original would possess sabi. The copy would not. It felt as though this Miranda had no sabi at all, as though she were entirely self-created, unmarked by anything she’d gone through.
But if they could really get the Sawyer Crown through her, an antipathy was not important.
Still—“Tell me you didn’t like her either,” she ordered Spider, as they walked from their latest meeting in Lankio Quarter back to the Visitor’s Residence.
“I didn’t like her. She made me nervous.” Although he wouldn’t have minded having a picture of her—
“And I still don’t like her jacking up the price last time. We agreed on four hundred thousand.”
“She said it was her principal who wanted the price jacked.”
“She said.”
Spider pursed his lips. “You think Tal got our message about wanting more bribe money?”
“I suppose. Unless something went wrong. Don’t worry, Spider, I phrased it very discreetly.”
Spider looked mournful. “Let’s stop at a tiko bar.”
“We have to meet Miranda again in four hours, and we may need to reach Tal.”
“That’s what I’m hoping to avoid. There’s probably a message waiting for us that’ll blister our hands to pick up. We’re two hundred thousand over budget, Keylinn, he’ll skin us and roll us in salt.”
Keylinn breathed deeply, unfazed. “Speaking of salt, isn’t that a lovely breeze? You miss that sort of thing on the Diamond, don’t you?”
“Oh, hell,” said Spider. They trudged on through the dark.
A message light was in fact blinking for them when they came through the lobby. Keylinn entered their code and was presented with a box of blue steel, about the size of two palm-widths and just as high. A note with it read, “Your request was received. Tal.”
They looked at each other. “Let’s take it outside for some privacy,” said Keylinn.
“Hell,” said Spider very softly.
They walked out to the back garden.
Spider said, “Let’s ditch it and pretend it didn’t arrive.”
“Whatever has come over you?”
He scuffed around in the pebbles uncomfortably. “We asked for a ton of money.” He regarded the box sourly. “He didn’t believe us. It’s probably a bomb.”
“Spider,” she said. She reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and removed a thin silver key.
“I mean it,” he said. “He probably thinks we wanted the money for a stake, and we’re going to disappear. The sector-gate is open, there are a lot of ships in port….” His tone was wistful.
Keylinn pushed the key into the lock and took it out. The box opened.
Spider unclenched his eyes and saw twelve neat piles of exchange notes. She was removing them methodically. He started to laugh.
He said. “I always wondered who was training who.” He picked up a pile and flipped through it. Keylinn took it out of his hands and put it with the others. “As a matter of fact,” he said, although not too seriously, “there really are a lot of ships in port.”
“What would your mother say?” she smiled.
“I know,” he said.
Tal came downhill himself a few days later and took over the closing of the deal. By then the principal at the other end had deigned to involve himself, and a man came with an aircar and flew Tal to the leisure villa of the Minister of Truth.
He returned with a malachite box and a golden crown.
“A lot of fuss over headgear,” he said to Keylinn the next morning. They stood in his room in the Residence, as she held the crown up in the light slanting from the window.
“It’s very beautiful,” she said. “And I suppose it possesses great sabi”
“Can’t you tell?”
“I’m afraid I’m not as perceptive as most, that way. It must be my problem, interfering with tarethi judgment.” By problem she meant her sense of humor. Tal wondered what she could have done seven years ago that still loomed so large in everyone’s mind. “Why, I’m holding this in my hands right now, but I don’t sense any more sabi in it than in something made last week.”
“Antiquity holds no charms for me. Why revere something for its age? If that thing had been made last week, it would look the same.”
A soft chime announced the arrival of the maid. She was a dark-haired girl who carried in fresh sheets and flowers every day, and never spoke to anybody. She went straight to work now, pouring out the water from the old vase and replacing it with new, setting out a bowl of potpourri, changing the programming selection on the room’s music, and then vanishing into the bathroom.
Tal said, “You’re due to leave for the port this afternoon. You have time to be a tourist, if you want. Take Spider, I don’t need him today.”
“He’s still asleep. I hate to wake him, he has trouble getting a full night’s rest.”
A long, low booming sound came from somewhere in the distance. There was a pause, and then another booming sound. Keylinn opened the window. To the north and west smoke was billowing skyward. Somebody in front of the Residence yelled. The maid appeared behind them, looked briefly over Keylinn’s shoulder, and then returned to her work in the bathroom. It was a clear, sunny day, and Keylinn couldn’t smell the smoke yet on the wind, just the salt from the sea. But she could smell trouble and pain. She shut the window.
They looked at each other. “Do you think this is it?” she asked.
He didn’t answer
