'But you're together again, then. You and the good doctor/
'I have renewed a friendship I should never have allowed to lapse/
'Yeah, right. Renewed/ She made a surprisingly coarse and graphic gesture.
I couldn't help but smile. 'Was there something else, or did you just come in to demonstrate the vulgar extremes of your miming ability?'
Yeah, there was something else. What do we do when we get there?'
New Gevae was a cluster of monolithic hive pyramids covering the delta of the Sanas river. We could see its twinkling lights in the distance over an hour before we arrived. The Trans-Atenate Express rattled and hissed into the main terminal at two minutes to midnight. I got out ahead of the crowds and strode across the wide concourse under the arched glass roof to the Astropathic Guild's office near the freight cargo pens.
I accessed the Aegis account and read the reply from Nayl. He agreed that it was like the trouble on Eechan, and cursed Sadia's name. He said the
I looked at the communique sadly and then glanced at the waiting adept. 'Two word reply. 'Rosethorn attends'. Send it.'
I walked into Entipaul's Lounge the next day at a minute before noon. It was a cage of aluminium tubes and spray-painted flakboard panels artfully wired up so that the ropes of lights pulsed in time to the pound music the place pumped through the caster system. The place wanted to seem tough and underhive and dangerous, but it was all for show. This was a lunchtime and after-work watering hole for mid-hive clerks and Adminis-tratum graders, a place for assignations with winsome girls from the logosticator pool, the celebrations that accompanied promotions or retirements, or rowdy birthday drinks. I'd been into real twist bars and heard genuine pound. This place was just sham, theatre.
I was shrouded in Aemos's over-robe, the hood pulled up, wearing a rebreather mask I'd borrowed from the express. I wanted to look like some tech-adept on his lunch break, or a warewright stealing off for a tryst with his girl.
The place was largely empty. A bored-looking steward polished glasses behind the narrow sweep of the bar, and two uniformed waitresses chatted in the rear doorway, holding their glass trays like riot shields. Half a dozen men sat in the booths that radiated off the bar's central hub, and a hooded figure was sitting, drinking alone, with its back to the door.
I sat at one of the hub tables. One of the waitresses approached. She smelled of obscura and her pencilled eyebrows framed wildly dilated eyes.
'Choice?'
Tunderey clear-grain, double, in a chill-sleeve.'
'Dokey-doke/ she returned as she stalked away.
The music continued to blast. She returned with a single shot glass on her suspensor tray. The glass was actually a cup of pressure-moulded ice. She tonged it onto my table and caught the coin I flipped at her.
'Keep the change/ I murmured.
'Big spender,' she mocked and paced off, wiggling a backside that had no business being wiggled.
I didn't touch the drink. Gradually, the ice melted and the oily liquid began to seep out over the table top.
The hooded figure got up and wandered over to me.
'Rosethorn?'
I looked up. That's me.'
She dropped the hooded cloak away from her shoulders. She had sharp features and long, straight black hair. Her kohl-edged eyes glinted like jade.
Not Harlon Nayl at all. Maria Tarray.
She sat down opposite me and knocked back my drink, licking the ice-water off her long fingers.
'You knew we'd get you sooner or later.'
'I guess so. Who's we?'
The other drinkers in the bar had got up and formed a circle around us, sitting at adjacent tables. Maria Tarray clicked her fingers and they all drew back coats or cloaks to reveal the handguns they carried. She clicked again and the weapons disappeared.
'So this is a trap?'
'Of course.'
The astrograms weren't from Nayl?'
'Evidently'
'You've broken Glossia?'
'How clever are we?'
I sat back. 'How did you do that?'
'Wouldn't you like to know, Mr Eisenhorn?'
I shrugged. 'Seeing as you've got me cold, yes. These men are more of your damned Vessorine, aren't they? I'm dead in my seat. I can't see the harm.'
'I imagine you've guessed already' she said. She smiled. I could feel her powerful mind trying to delve into mine.
'Jekud Vance.'
That's right, Mr Eisenhorn. Your astropath proved to be very useful. With the right persuasion. And the Janissaries excel at persuasion. Vance sent the communiques, pretending to be Nayl. He knew Glossia.'
She probed at my mind again.
You're using shielding techniques,' she said, her face darkening.
'Of course I am. You would be too if the situation was reversed. I have to say though, I'm disappointed. I was hoping mat Pontius might be here himself. This is a trap after all. Eisenhorn's last stand. He might have been civil enough to come and watch me die/
'Pontius is busy elsewhere/ she snapped, and then realised what she'd said.
Thank you for that confirmation/ I said.
'You bastard!' she snapped. You're dead! What good will it do you? This is a trap!'
'Yes, it is. A trap/
She hesitated. The janissaries had all risen, guns out, aiming at me. The bar staff were fleeing, terrified.
Maria Tarray slowly reached out and took the rebreather mask off my face.
'Etrik?' she stammered, her jade eyes wide.
Yes/ I said, three kilometres away in a locked lodging house room, sweating and straining as I channeled my will via the runestaff and animated the body of Clansire Etrik.
Таггау leapt back from the table, knocking over her chair. 'Damnation!' she shrieked. 'He's got us! He's got us! How the hell did he know?'
You could talk like Nayl and use Glossia thanks to Jekud, but Jekud didn't know what Nayl knew. We fought Sadia on Lethe Eleven, not Eechan,' I had Etrik say.
Maria Tarray drew a plasma pistol and shot Etrik through the chest. The Vessorines all around opened fire with their autoguns and las-carbines.
As my puppet was torn apart, I let go of the warp vortex that had been spinning in my mind ever since I had summoned it.
It surged out of Etrik's collapsing body and expanded, annihilating the janissaries,
