light caught it. The wall patterns had been hand-painted by craftsmen. Exquisite, antiquarian anatomical sketches lined the walls in simple gilt frames. The house smelled of warm stone, the cold afterscents of a fine evening meal, smoke.
'Hello?' a voice filtered down from the stairs above me.
I went up a flight, onto a landing where shutters had been opened to let the daylight stream in.
Tm sorry to intrude/ I said.
'Gregor? Gregor Eisenhorn?' Doctor Berschilde of Ravello took a step towards me, registering sleepy astonishment.
She was still a very fine figure of a woman.
I think she was about to hug me, or plant a kiss on my cheek, but she halted and her face darkened.
'This isn't social, is it?' she said.
I went back to the speeder and flew it round to the private walled courtyard behind her residence where it was screened from view. The doctor's old manservant, Phabes, had opened the ground floor sundoors, and stood ready with a gurney for Medea. Eleena, Aemos and I followed them inside. I left the pilot, still in his will-induced fugue state, tied up in the flier.
Crezia Berschilde had put on a surgical apron by then, and met us in the ground floor hall. She said little as she examined Medea and checked her vitals.
'Take her through/ she told her man, then looked at me. 'Anybody else injured?'
'No/ I said. 'How is Medea?'
'Dying/ she said. All humour had gone from her voice. She was angry and I didn't blame her. 'I'll do what I can/
Tm grateful, Crezia. I'm sorry I've troubled you with this/
'She ought to go to the town infirmary!' she snapped.
'Can we avoid that?'
'Can we make this unofficial, you mean? Damn you, Eisenhorn. I don't need this!'
'I know you don't/
She pursed her lips. 'I'll do what I can/ she repeated. 'Go through into the drawing room. I'll have Phabes bring some refreshment/
She turned on her heel and disappeared into the house after Medea.
'So/ said Aemos quietly, 'who is this again?'
* * *
Doctor Crezia Berschilde was one of the finest anatomists on the planet. Her treatises and monographs were widely published throughout the Helican sub-sector. After years of practice in Dorsay and, for a period, off-world on Messina, she had taken up the post of Professor of Anatomy here at Ravello.
And, a long time ago, I had nearly married her.
One hundred and forty-five years earlier, in 241 to be exact, I had lost my left hand during a firefight on Sameter. The details of the case are unimportant, and besides, they are recorded elsewhere. I was fitted with a prosthetic, but I hated it and never used it. After two years, during a stay on Messina, I had surgeons equip me with a fully functioning graft.
Crezia had been the chief surgeon during that procedure. Becoming involved with a woman who has just sewn a vat-grown clone hand onto your wrist is hardly a way to meet a wife, I realise.
But she was quick-witted, learned, vivacious and not put off by my calling. For years we were involved, on and off, first on Messina, then at a distance, and then on Gudrun once she had moved back to Ravello to take up her doctorate and I had based myself at Spaeton House.
I had been very fond of her. I still was. It is difficult to know if I should use a word stronger than 'fond'. We never did to each other, but there are times I would have done.
I had not seen her for the best part of twenty-five years. That had been my doing.
We sat in the drawing room for over an hour. Phabes had opened the windows and the day's brilliance blasted in, turning the tulle window nets into hanging oblongs of radiant white. I could smell the clean, fresh chill of mountains.
The drawing room was furnished with fine old pieces of furniture, and filled with rare books, surgical curios and display cases full of immaculately restored antique medical apparatus. Aemos was quickly lost in close study of the items on display, murmuring to himself. Eleena sat quietly on a tub chair and composed herself. I was fairly sure she was inwardly reciting the mind-soothing exercises of the Distaff. Every few minutes she would absently brush a few strands of brown hair off her slender face.
The doctor's man returned with a silver serving cart. Yeast bread, fruit, oily butter and piping hot black caffeine.
'Do you need anything stronger?' he asked.
'No, thank you/
He pointed to a weighted silk rope by the door. 'Ring if there's anything you need/
I poured caffeine for us all, and Aemos helped himself to a hunk of bread and a ripe ploin.
Eleena tonged half a dozen lumps of amber sugar crystal into her little cup. 'Who did it?' she asked at length.
'Eleena?'
'Who… who raided us, sir?'
'The simple answer? I have no idea. I'm working on possibilities. It may take us a while to find out, and first we have to be secure.'
'Are we safe here?'
'Yes, for the time being.'
They were mercenaries/ said Aemos, dabbing crumbs from his wrinkled lips. That is beyond question/
'I thought as much/
The pilot you captured. You saw the tattoos on his torso/
'I did. But I couldn't read them/
Aemos sipped his hot, sweet drink. 'Base Futu, the language of the Ves-sorine janissaries/
'Really? Are you sure?'
'Reasonably so/ he said. The man has a repatriation bond written on his skin/
I considered this news. Vessor was a feral world on the rimward borders of the Antimar sub-sector that bred a small but hardy population famous for its vicious fighters. Attempts had been made to form a Guard regiment there, but the Vessorine were hard to control. It wasn't that they lacked discipline, but they found loyalty to Terra too cerebral a concept. They were bonded into dan families, understanding simply the material wealth of land, property, homestead and weapons. As mercenaries, therefore, they excelled. They would fight, peerlessly, savagely and to the death, in the Emperor's name, provided that name was stamped on high denomination coinage.
No wonder the attack on Spaeton House had been so direct and efficient. In hindsight it was remarkable any of us had got out alive. I was glad I hadn't known who they were at the time. If I'd been told I was facing Vessorine janissaries, I might have frozen up… instead of charging them head on to rescue Medea.
I took off the cloak Aemos had lent me, and also my leather coat, and rolled up
