carriages glared white in the startled headlamps of a huge street-cleaning machine. Sula blinked the dazzle from her eyes. The night air was cool on her cheeks. She could feel her heart beating high in her throat.
She heard Julien curse as they drew even. Then they were in another turn, metal wheels sliding, and Julien’s carriage loomed close as it skidded toward them. Their driver was forced into a wider turn to avoid collision, and Julien pulled ahead.
“Damn!” Casimir jumped from his seat and leaped to join the driver on the box. One pale hand dug in a pocket. “Twenty zeniths if you beat him!” he called, and slapped a coin down on the box. Twenty zeniths would buy the chariot, the pai-car, and the driver twice over.
The driver responded with a frantic hiss. The pai-car seemed to have caught the fey mood of the passengers and gave a determined cry as it accelerated.
The road narrowed as it crossed a canal, and Casimir’s coach was on the heels of Julien’s as they crossed the bridge. Sula caught a whiff of sour canal water, heard the startled exclamation of someone on the quay, and then the coach hit a bump and she was tossed in the car like a pea in a bottle. Then they were in another turn, and she was pressed to one side, the leather bending slightly under her weight.
She gave a laugh at the realization that her whole life’s adventure could end here, that she could die in a ridiculous carriage accident or find herself under arrest, that her work—Resistance,the war against the Naxids, Team 491—all could be destroyed in a reckless, demented instant…
Serve me right, she thought.
The labored breathing of the pai-car echoed between the buildings. “Twenty more!” Casimir slapped another coin on the box.
The carriage swayed alongside that of Julien. He was standing in the car, urging his driver on, but his pai-car looked dead in his harness. Then there was a sudden glare of headlights, the clatter of a vehicle collision alarm, and Julien’s driver gave an urgent tug on the reins, cutting his bird’s speed and swerving behind Casimir’s carriage to avoid a crash with a taxi taking home a singing chorus of Cree.
Sula heard Julien’s yelp of protest. Casimir laughed in triumph as the singers disappeared in their wake.
They had passed through the silent business district and into a more lively area of Grandview. Sula saw people on the street, cabs parked by the curb waiting for customers. Ahead she saw an intersection, a traffic signal flashing a command to stop.
“Keep going!” Casimir cried, and slapped down another coin. The driver gave Casimir a wild, gold-eyed stare, but obeyed.
Sula heard a rumble ahead, saw a white light. The traffic signal blazed in the darkness. Her heart leaped into her throat.
The carriage dashed into the intersection. Casimir’s laughter rang in her ears. There was a brilliant white light, a blaring collision alarm, the wail of tires. Sula threw her arms protectively over her head as the pai-car gave a wail of terror.
The padded leather edge of the chariot body bit her ribs as the carriage was slammed sideways. A side-lamp exploded into bits of flying crystal. One large silver wheel went bounding down the road ahead of the truck that had torn it away, and the carriage fell heavily onto the torn axle. Sparks arced in the night as the panicked bird tried to drag the tilted carriage from the scene.
The axle grated near Sula’s ear. She blinked into the night just in time to see Casimir lose his balance on the box and fall toward her, arms thrashing in air. She made a desperate lunge for the high side of the coach and managed to avoid being crushed as he fell heavily onto the seat.
Clinging to the high side of the coach, she turned to him. Casimir was helpless with laughter, a deep base sound that echoed the grinding of the axle on pavement. Sula allowed herself to slide down the seat onto him, wrapped him in her arms and stopped his laughter with a kiss.
The panting pai-car came to a halt. Sula heard its snarls of frustration as it turned in the traces and tried to savage the driver with its razor teeth, then heard the driver expertly divert its striking head with slaps. She could hear the truck reversing, the other pai-car padding to a halt, the sound of running footsteps as people ran to the scene.
She could hear Casimir’s heart pounding in his chest.
“I conceive that no one is injured,” said the burbling voice of a Cree.
This time it was Sula who was helpless with laughter. She and Casimir crawled from the wreckage of the carriage as the apricot-colored limousine rolled silently to a stop, the Torminel guards appearing in time to prevent a very angry Daimong truck driver from bludgeoning someone. Julien and Casimir passed around enough money to leave everyone happy, the chariot drivers in particular, and then the party piled into the limousine for the ride to the Hotel of Many Blessings.
Sula sat in Casimir’s lap and kissed him for the entire ride.
He wasn’t anything like Martinez. Maybe that was the most attractive thing about him.
She insisted on taking a shower before joining him in bed. Then she insisted that he take a shower as well.
“We could have showeredtogether, ” Casimir grumbled.
“You could use a shave too,” Sula pointed out.
He grumbled toward the shower and left her wrapped in the luxurious velvet dressing gown that he’d loaned her. Being alone was a mistake, because she had nothing to do but think, and once she began to think, she began to fear.
All night she had been playing a part—by now Gredel was no less a role than Sula—but she couldn’t play a part in bed. She wasn’t experienced enough that way. With Lamey she’d been too young, and with Martinez…well, with Martinez the experience had been too singular.
In a few minutes Casimir would encounter a young, unsophisticated bed partner, caught without the assured, arrogant persona she’d worn all night.
Sula considered putting on her clothes and leaving, and then she thought about the consequences of that. Then she remembered Casimir’s grating laugh as the wrecked pai-car chariot was dragged along the street, and his scent as her arms went around him, the pulse of adrenaline in her ears.
She dimmed the lights to almost nothing. Perhaps in the dark he wouldn’t notice the change in her.
The bathroom door opened and Casimir stood framed in the spill of yellow light. Sula’s blood surged. Before she could change her mind, she stepped toward him and pulled him to the bed. He was showered and shaved and scented with taswa-blossom soap.
His long-fingered hands began to touch her. He wasn’t anything like Martinez, Sula discovered with relief. Martinez had been patient and giving, and Casimir was impatient and greedy.
That was all right, because it gave her permission to be impatient and greedy too.
“Hey!” he said in surprise. “You’re really a blond!”
She gave a slow laugh. “That’s the least of my mysteries.”
The fear had gone. That surprised her because in the past fear had always been an element. Perhaps Martinez had liberated her from that.
Or perhaps she was unafraid because she still knew some things that Casimir didn’t. She still had some cards to play. She was still in charge, whether he knew it or not.
An hour or so later she decided to play a card or two, and told the room light to go on. Casimir gave a start and shielded his eyes. Sula crawled out of bed and looked for the package that held the clothing she’d worn at the beginning of the evening.
“Gredel, what are youdoing ?” Casimir complained.
“I have something to show you.” She put on her jacket and triggered the sleeve display. She activated the video wall and beamed the jacket’s memory to the wall. “Look at this.”
Casimir blinked uncertainly at the schematics of the Sidney Mark One. He screwed up his face. “Whatis that, anyway?”
“Tomorrow’s edition ofResistance. ”
“Tomorrow’s?What are you—” He looked at her, and as comprehension entered his eyes, his mouth opened in shock.
Sula dug in an inner pocket and removed the item she’d taken from the storage locker earlier in the evening. She opened the slim plastic case and showed Casimir her Fleet ID.
