“I know what you mean.”
Adrian continued, disconcertingly, to gaze at him. And it occurred to Tal suddenly that Adrian wanted something from him, the way he wanted something from his panthers, from his bride, from every citizen whose regard he won so effortlessly. Something whose nature was obscure to Tal, but which he was fairly confident he did not possess.
Faith? Could princes afford faith, or did they only collect it from others?
Adrian said, “I don’t think you should stay here alone. I considered inviting you to spend Blackout with Iolanthe and me—” He broke off and laughed. “If you could see the look of horror on your face. It was only a passing thought, I assure you.” He stood. “But you’ll go to your quarters, Tal. That’s an order.”
The uneasiness Tal felt deepened. “Will you have me escorted?”
Adrian’s eyes were still on his. The Protector smiled slowly. “Why on earth would I do that?” His voice was soft, and made Tal feel no better.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you’re the Security Chief. Perhaps you think I’m feeling insecure.”
Tal’s voice revealed his tiredness. “I wouldn’t presume to know what any of you are thinking.” A second later he realized his voice had revealed something else: bitterness. If he had gone with the others—
He’d be dead.
Adrian opened the door. “Don’t concern yourself about it. I have every faith in your ability to understand it all in time. Like a game of Hotem.”
He walked out, closing the door. Tal stood at the window and watched him descend the steps, watched him collect his escort and take them all away with him, every one. Leaving him here to follow orders quite of his own accord.
He made sure the entire section was locked down before he left. If there was one thing he was good at, he considered, it was keeping people out.
Keylinn played Solitaire on her bed in the temporary Transport dormitory; she turned up the joker just before the lights cut out. In the parish infirmary, Spider took his mother’s hand—she was always quite passed out by this point and never knew, but he didn’t like to think of her going into Blackout alone. Will and Bernadette were arguing at the dinner table, while Lysette and Jack kept a discreet silence, exchanging the glances of people who loved but wondered about the sanity of their chosen objects. When the hum beneath their feet increased, Will and his sister faltered—then continued arguing. Hartley was unconscious. Iolanthe looked up from a book to share something with her husband, then fell silent. In his cot in a guarded room on the Diamond, the One and his Other felt the vibration climb, familiarly, toward an exit from this reality, and both of them smiled with a single mouth.
Faith, Tal thought, in his quarters. The word had an alien, faintly sour taste.
And together, they leaped into the darkness.
RELIC OF A LOST RACE
It has been six centuries since the alien Curosa imparted the wisdom of their dying race to Adrian Sawyer, gifting him and his millions of disciples with three massive intergalactic city-ships to spread the Curosa Trutn across the starways. But over time these snips strayed from their original missionary purpose, and the two largest, City of Diamond and Cily or Opal, became embroiled in a vicious struggle for political dominance.
Now Adrian Mercati, a charismatic but inexperienced young man, has been chosen by the dying Protector of Diamond as his successor. To strengthen Adrian’s position, the Protector, shortly before his death, told his protege the suspected location of a mysterious alien artifact known only as the Sawyer Crown-possession of which could give both Adrian and the Diamond indisputable superiority over the Opal. Yet even if Adrian commits all of his resources to the search for the Crown, his chances of success are slim; And when Opal spies aboard the Diamond also gain this information, they, too, begin a desperate hunt for the Crown.
Yet what neither side can foresee is that finding the Crown could as easily prove the ruin of all three ships as their salvation….
