“Fire thing, it was coming after us. I saw you, and then it disappeared. We managed to get to our car and get away. The others weren’t so lucky.”

The girl was sitting forward on the edge of the armchair. Her gaze was fixed directly on the elf and her shoulders were hunched forward, the power of her ork muscles very apparent.

Of course. Geraint realized. Strength; here she is. He addressed himself to the mage.

“Serrin, do you remember that I said someone else was going to he a part of this?”

The elf struggled to remember. So much had happened to him since Geraint had foretold the struggle to come. But then, as if a storm-gray cloud had lifted from him, he perked up, and smiled. Yes, he remembered.

Rani, though, looked confused, not understanding Geraint’s inference.

“Rani, I don’t know how much of what I’m going to tell you now will make sense. We’re still trying to sort it all ourselves. But it seems to me an amazing coincidence that Serrin’s magic saved your skin last week and then you rescued us last night. I suppose in some sense that makes us quits.”

She smiled sadly. That was what Smeng had said, and she had lost him. She didn’t want to lose the excitement of being with these people, such different people in this different world.

“But I still feel we owe you an explanation,” Geraint went on, as far as we’ve actually got one. You’ve told us enough about yourself. Now it’s our turn.”

As the conversation unfolded, they began to realize that two different strands of events had been affecting their lives.

On the one hand, there were the murders, the living Ripper in the here and now of London, 2054. Geraint thought this affected only the three of them, so he kept his explanations short, deliberately eliminating any details of the brutal, gory scenes he and Francesca had witnessed. When he got to the fourth name, though, Rani’s expression changed. Before, she’d been simply attentive. At the mention of Catherine Eddowes, she grew upset and then angry.

“I knew her, a little. She used to come into Beigel’s Bake in the mornings, always had coffee and two cheese bagels. When I was little my dad used to tell me not to go near her because she was a bad woman. Because of what he said I was afraid of her, but when I got old enough to go down to the markets with my brother sometimes she used to buy me coffee and a treat. She didn’t change after I, urn, after I changed, you know? She was kind to me. Plenty of people weren’t.” Rani shifted uncomfortably in her chair, reliving some painful memories of late childhood.

“I saw her only a few weeks ago. She’d been knocked about, had a bad black eye and a bruise covering half her forearm. She looked miserable, and for the first time I could see she was getting old. Now some bastard’s cut her up.” She held her head in her hands for a few moments, then sat upright and reasserted her presence and strength. “I want to help find out who’s doing this. I live in the East End. I know the patch and the people. I could help you.”

“You probably can, Rani,” Geraint replied. I hope so. But in the meantime, we still have to figure out what we’re going to do next.”

Then they talked of the other business, less straightforward, difficult to comprehend. In some way, they had all been drawn into set-ups of one kind or another. Serrin couldn’t figure out what had been going on with his employment, Francesca had blundered into something vicious in the Matrix, and Rani had been part of the most obvious set-up job of all. They had chased their tails thinking about this one before, and they still couldn’t work out what, if anything, had been behind each of their misfortunes. But when Rani began talking about the man Pershinkin for the second time, the crucial detail she had omitted first time around gave them something extra.

“So the fat man with the jewel in the tooth and his thin accomplice disappeared into the limo and-”

“What? Say that again.” Serrin couldn’t believe what he had just heard her say. He grabbed the table for support and leaned forward toward her.

Rani was not sure what she was supposed to reiterate. Two of them, the fat one and the thin one, they got-”

“No, no!” he snapped impatiently. “What did you say about the fat guy?’

“Well, urn, he was losing his hair… and he had a jewel in his tooth. Sorry, that’s all I was told.”

“I don’t suppose you got to hear which one?”

“Which what?”

It was becoming a comedy of errors, Serrin shouting, Rani confused, Geraint and Francesca totally bewildered. Finally, though, they heard her say that the fat man had a jewel fixed in a front tooth.

Serrin sat back with an expression as black as thunder. “Frag me with a baseball bat. That’s fragging Smith!”

Geraint looked pained. “Please, Serrin, you’re not in Seattle now, and there are ladies present. Watch your language”

The elf wasn’t bothered about his language. Now he was suspicious as hell. “Smith. Smith and Jones, right. You know, the men who hired me? Smith was a fat guy, balding, chiphead, and he had a small ruby set in his right front tooth. Couldn’t miss the damn thing.”

Excited, Rani confirmed him. “Yes! Yes! Smeng, the ork who told me about them. He said these men were users-the fat man shook a lot, he said.”

Serrin was nodding. “Didn’t he, though? Well, my friends, this is getting interesting.”

“So the same people hired Rani for a fake decoy run and-” Francesca said, trying to get a handle on the situation.

“More than that. Geraint, do you remember, I told you that security was actually looking right at them when they popped up? I bet you a thousand sterling to a brass button that Smith and Jones tipped off Fuchi. Maybe they were Fuchi.”

“No, no, wait.” Francesca stopped him from getting carried away. “How about this? Smith and Jones, we think, hired Rani and her family for a sucker run. They also hired you, but they didn’t hire you to hit this guy-what’s his name, Kuranita?”

Serrin nodded, his excitement diminished. “Yes, that’s a real problem. They didn’t actually hire us to do that.” The connection seemed to he failing. Francesca re#established it.

“No, but they did change your instructions. They specifically told you to attend the Cambridge seminar in the Crescent Hotel. Maybe they knew you would see Kuranita, or at least hoped you would. Then they hoped you’d try to make a hit on him. Rani and her people were a decoy for you. They hoped you’d get a shot.”

Serrin and Geraint looked across at each other.

“I think she’s got something,’ the Weishman said with a frown, trying not to contemplate what it meant.

“But they would only expect me to do that if they knew my past pretty well. I didn’t exactly broadcast what I found out about him,” Serrin replied thoughtfully.

“Still, someone might have noticed your inquiries. A really good corp. for one. Then you’d become an unpaid hitman.”

They pondered that for a while, until Geraint hit upon some objections to this explanation. “Two difficulties, although one isn’t insoluble. First, they couldn’t have been certain that Serrin would definitely see Kuranita.”

“They’d have had contingencies for that, surely. They’d have fed him the information somehow,” Francesca said.

“Yes, I know. Which is why I say this problem isn’t insoluble.” Geraint paused for a moment to give what he was about to say an extra emphasis.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t make sense. We’re suggesting that an unknown corp spends a fair bit to track down a fullish past history on Serrin, then lays a trap based on his maybe seeing Kuranita, and then maybe taking a shot at him, with a hired decoy to make sure the shot gets fired from an unexpected place. Right?”

“That sounds like it,” Serrin agreed.