on a real date, instead of dragging me around to lictor stations and crime scenes.'
'I tried a real date,' he pointed out, straightening. 'Lunch, remember? And Lars showed up. Trouble follows me.'
Inside, the station's waiting room had become crowded. Victor, Lars, and Isobel were inspecting the cards and scribbling notes. Pyke and Cassi sat backward in their chairs, watching from the sides with the lictors. Scarios, leaning over Victor's shoulder as the programmers worked, ignored Taya and Cristof as they re-entered the station. Amcathra glanced up at them.
'A successful hunt?' he asked Taya, in Demican.
'Very funny.' Taya dropped into a chair next to Cassi.
'The Forlores have a nice house,' Cassi said, her eyebrows rising. 'He doesn't look rich.'
'He doesn't live there anymore. But I think he'll be moving back soon.'
'Uh-oh. Is that bad?'
'No.' Taya smiled. 'I think it's going to be all right.'
'You know, if she's a suspect now, shouldn't somebody search Emelie's rooms?' Lars asked, looking up from his notes.
'Do any of you have keys?' Cristof patted his hair, smoothing down the locks that Taya had disarrayed outside. The three shook their heads.
'It seems you will have to go back to work now, exalted,' Amcathra said. 'I believe your kit contains the appropriate tools for this job.'
'Do you have a writ of entry?'
In a few minutes Amcathra called Scarios away to put a seal on the paperwork. As soon as the wax seal cooled, Cristof tucked it into his coat.
'I'll go with him,' Cassi volunteered, pushing the chair away and hopping to her feet. 'I can courier messages back and forth faster than he can walk.'
Cristof looked skeptical. Cassi gave him a charming smile.
'Besides,' she added, 'I'm looking forward to getting to know you better. Our conversation this afternoon was so one-sided.'
He looked to Taya for help, but she just winked. Cassi would be relentless.
The exalted scowled and walked out, jamming his hands into his pockets.
'Lieutenant, I want an icarus team sent to Cantery, and send a message to the captain of Tertius that we're going to be mustering a team down there,' Scarios said, glancing over the programmers’ shoulders. 'Tell him we'll want ten lictors, armed.'
'We are running short on nightflyers,' Amcathra warned. 'We have four at Oporphyr and four searching the mountain roads. If I send two to Cantery, we will only have one team left in the city.'
'That's enough.'
Amcathra began pulling out fresh sheets of paper.
'That's it,' Isobel announced, collecting the notes from everybody and handing them to Scarios. 'We put a star by the brothel you were asking about.'
'Good. Lieutenant, as soon as you're through.' Scarios turned and walked back to his office. When Amcathra finished sending lictors off with orders, he turned and vanished into the office after his superior officer.
'So, do you think Em really did it?' Isobel asked, at last. Both Victor and Lars shrugged.
'She has a selfish streak,' Victor said at last. 'But to accuse her of theft on this scale….'
'If she hurt Kyle, I'll wring her skinny neck,' Lars growled.
'They always got along,' Isobel said. 'I don't think she'd do anything to him.'
But her accomplices might,
Taya thought, worried. She hoped the thieves understood how valuable Kyle was to them.
'So, does anyone else have any dark secrets they want to reveal?' Lars demanded, glowering at Isobel and Victor.
'Most of my secrets aren't mine to share,' Victor said, fingering his beard. 'I've been arrested a few times for protesting. You know that.'
'Have you?' Taya asked, turning to Pyke and glaring. He raised his hands.
'I can't afford to get arrested. Programmers are given more leeway than icarii.'
'Don't you drag Pyke into anything illegal.' Taya shot Victor a stern look. 'He can't afford to lose his wings.'
Victor shrugged. 'Social criticism isn't illegal.'
'I don't see what either of you two have to criticize. You're both lucky to be living in Ondinium,' Taya said.
'True.' Victor raised his eyebrows. 'But you can love something and still want to clean up its routines, can't you? Make it safer, fairer, more generous—'
'Alister thought the same thing.'
'I don't think lasting change can come from an analytical engine.'
Taya looked at Pyke, who was avoiding her gaze. Sighing, she promised herself they'd talk about it later. She didn't want him falling in with a dangerous crowd.
'And you know everything about me,' Isobel said, looking at Lars. 'The worst thing I've ever done was climb through the provost's window, and that was your fault.'
Victor chuckled, and even Lars smiled.
'Why'd you do that?' Taya asked.
'Oh, it was silly.' Isobel's blue eyes twinkled. 'The university provost had this old difference engine everybody used to joke about — it was hardly better than an abacus. So one night I entered his office and opened up the door for these guys. We pulled out his engine's front panel, removed the mechanism, and replaced it with a cage full of white mice.'
'The next day none of his programs ran.' Lars picked up the story, grinning. The cards just dropped through the feeder slot and landed in the empty box we'd rigged up inside. So he sent over a complaint that his DE was broken and making strange squeaking noises. The dean of the school of engineering came to his office to find out what was wrong.'
'We were in class, but apparently the dean opened up the front panel, took one look at the cage, and demanded to know how long it had been since the provost had fed his mice.' Isobel giggled. 'The provost began stammering that nobody had told him anything about feeding mice and that he was sure it was his secretary's job.'
'Were you ever caught?' Taya asked, after they'd finished laughing.
'No, never. The dean kept the mice as pets.'
'We couldn't have done it without Izzy,' Lars said, nodding in her direction. 'She scaled the brick wall to the provost's office as easily as I'd climb a ladder.'
'And now that leaves you.' Victor leaned back in his chair and gazed at Lars. 'What are your dark secrets?'
'I don't have any secrets,' the big man said. Victor and Isobel traded looks. He became defensive. 'Clockwork Heart was broken, and you know it!'
Victor shrugged. 'Hey, I don't care who you sleep with.'
'Well, I do!'
'My mother told me that Demican warriors had hunt-partners,' Isobel said, not quite looking at Lars. 'Usually men with men and women with women. They had to like each other's company enough to spend weeks in the wild together under dangerous conditions. Most of the time they only shared furs when they were on the trail, but some hunt-partners lived with each other all their lives.'
'How nice for the Demicans.'
They fell silent, Lars with his arms folded over his chest, sulking. Taya wondered why he was so upset. Belonging to a caste with a reputation for moving as freely from bed to bed as it did from sector to sector had its
