Imran was half-catatonic, and there was no one to talk to worth the effort, but still she tried.

“It was a set-up, Imran. They knew we were coming. They knew our exact location. Now you… you… you rakking sod… you’re going to tell me everything you know about who hired you for this job. Where you met them, what they looked like, who gave you the contact. Everything!"

A bead of sweat trickled down Imran’s forehead. He wasn’t listening. Instead he babbled a little about the families they’d have to phone, in whose sitting rooms the women would have to mourn and bewail the dead, who else would have to know. He recited a litany of cousins as uselessly as a nervous Catholic fumbling a string of rosary beads.

Rani slapped him hard, hoping to jolt him back to reality. He looked up at her with total incomprehension, then his face puckered with rage. Leaping angrily to his feet, Imran smashed her across the face with all his strength-not just a slap but a hard punch-sending her flying across the room. Then his anger evaporated just as instantly. He fell to his knees and began to cry.

Rani was horrified, but hurt also, her ears singing from the blow. Something broke between them there and then. She looked at Imran, and though it was only later that she realized it, Rani lost respect for her brother at that moment. She hugged and consoled him, but she was already thinking about what to do next. It wouldn’t be her brother asking the questions on the streets now.

Geraint decided that it would be safe to cut and run at about five o’clock. He’d ended up falling asleep right after his bath, and the alarm almost didn’t rouse him for an early train back to the hotel. It wouldn’t seem unusual for a noble to have spent the night away from the place, he figured. Some of them would have used personal helicopters to get back overnight, so he wouldn’t be specifically missed.

"Going to the ATT time-series seminar this morning?”

Geraint looked up from his coffee, all he could face this morning, at the puffed red face of the Marquis of Scunthorpe. He tried to hide his dismay.

“Um, looks interesting, yes, yes, I thought I’d go. How’s the lovely Tamsin?" It always pleased the rubicund, bloated Yorkshireman to have noble acquaintances praise his fiery and beautiful wife. You poor bastard, Geraint thought, as he always did. She only married you for the money and the title and you don’t even notice that half your male domestic servants walk around with permanent smirks on their faces.

“Jolly chipper, old feller, jolly chipper!" The Marquis parked his spreading pin-striped posterior on the armchair with a grunt, and preened his handlebar mustache. "Well, I thought I’d take a doze in the British Industrial thing. All that mathematical stuff is a bit heavy on the old gray cells. Have a natter with old Walter over lunch instead. D’you care to join us?”

Geraint couldn’t contemplate a more awful lunch prospect than being closeted with the two Yorkshiremen. Walter Crowther, head of British Industrial’s infamous Foods Division, was renowned for his enthusiasms, All the while totally losing his appetite, Geraint would have to listen to endless details of how factory animals could be stuffed full of synthetic hormones and growth enforcers. Crowther had a ghastly ambition, and talk of it was always prefaced by “Did I ever tell you…?" This was the signal for a set speech about how he was hoping to breed a rabbit the length of a telephone pole so it could be neatly chopped into Rabburger Bunny Chunks in an endless series of slices. “Length of a cricket pitch I’d settle for,” he’d then say, the cue for him to begin reviewing England’s cricket team for the last sixty years. Geraint just couldn’t face it, but catching sight of a chambermaid hefting a trolleyful of fresh linen into an elevator gave him an idea.

“Tied up, old chap. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll stand you a brandy in the Marlborough Bar after lunch. Like to hear you and old Crowther’s opinion on Sutcliffe batting at number six." The fat face opposite beamed with pleasure.

Got out of that one nicely, Geraint reflected as he reached the fifth floor. Now let’s find that chambermaid. He checked his jacket’s innermost pocket, the one with the fiberseal just below the Gieves tag. The notes rustled reassuringly within it. Don’t know why anyone ever uses credsticks, he mused. Cash certainly seems more useful with the lower classes. Grinning to himself, he turned the corner and strode along the plush pile toward the “Rooms 510-518" sign, all fake gilt on fake hardwood.

The girl was only too happy to do as he asked. She didn’t earn that much in a month.

Geraint was back in his own flat in London by six-thirty, with the entire contents of Serrin’s hotel room spread out before him. He hadn’t dared risk going out to Longstanton to look for the elf, consoling himself with the fact that the local news had included no reports of trouble at the Fuchi site.

You travel light in the world, old friend, Geraint thought, as he rifled through Serrin’s meager belongings. He didn’t open the sealed electronic book; that would have been a violation somehow, even though he feared in his heart that the elf was dead. Serrin had left behind some of his permits and licenses, though Geraint guessed they were probably duplicates for backup. The mage wouldn’t go out into the bureaucratic British world without every bit of official paper he needed. There were clothes in the suitcase, but they lacked any individuality and identity. Well, whatever the elf’s indifference to style, at least Geraint had retrieved his belongings for him. The chambermaid had his number and instructions to tell Serrin where to pick up money in Cambridge if he came back to the hotel. She was Welsh, so Geraint had figured he could trust her. Hell, he thought. I own the land her family lives on. Guess I’d better be able to trust her.

The beep of the telecom startled him. It was the autocheck, the soft chipvoice asking if he wanted messages from the preceding forty-eight hours retained or erased. He instructed it to play.

There was another summons from Manchester’s secretary, so he paused the playback and made the call, confirming his willingness to serve King and Country by sitting through the tedium of the House of Nobles committee rooms. After that he poured a Chartreuse and let the machine complete its messages. A face he hadn’t seen before appeared on the screen. She was very attractive, and he attended carefully.

“Hello. Lord Llanfrechfa. You don’t know me, but I’m Annie, a friend of Francesca’s. She needs help at the moment and I thought maybe you could. I found your name in her date book, and I think she’s told me you’re friends. Could you stop by here? Francesca’s in a little trouble. I’m not sure what to do this time. Thank you.”

There was a clear edge of distress and uncertainty in the girl’s voice-not really what Geraint needed right now. "Oh God,” he sighed, sitting back and rubbing at his face. ‘‘Serrin’s vanished, maybe dead, and now this. What the hell has Francesca gotten into now?"

He checked the time-date stamp of the call and realized that it had come in more than twenty-four hours before. When he tapped in Francesca’s telecom code, all he got was the ansafone, so perhaps she was still unable to take calls. Annie hadn’t left her number, so he’d have to make the short haul to Knightsbridge in person.

Francesca was dazed and still sedated, but he got the gist of it out of her. It was hard to tell, though, whether her incoherence was the effect of the IC having ripped through her brain or whether it was the drugs talking. She was shaken, but the damage was not as bad as he’d feared. It certainly didn’t seem irreparable.