“Yeah, as long as my leg is all he touches. I definitely wouldn’t want to take anything more than a local anesthetic in his clinic.” She laughed, then relaxed back into the cool of the analgesics Geraint had given her to mellow out the trauma of coming down from the night’s highs.

“And what did you get, Geraint?” Serrin was eager to know why the nobleman had done all this. It had cost him a lot, and he’d used up plenty of favors and risked his own life.

“What did I get? Let’s just say the satisfaction of a job well done. Life lived. Wrongs righted.” He changed the subject. “Ladies and gentleman, I suggest we avail ourselves of something cold with a lot of bubbles in it, and then get some desperately needed sleep. We won. Lets celebrate.”

They slept well into the afternoon. When they woke again, Francesca set out for an overnight stay at Oxford, the wound bad enough to require a night’s rest at the Radcliffe. Rani said she had to take care of some business in the East End. I’m sure she does, Geraint thought, what with another bunch of her samurai killed.

“I want you back here, though. From what you say, your family’s disowned you and you don’t really have anywhere to go.” She shrugged, but he could see she was disappointed at losing the excitement of being with them. He didn’t want this to be goodbye. “Look, I don’t know if you'd be interested, but did you like Wales? You seemed to.”

She smiled a little wanly at the memory. It had been another world entirely, just like the life of this nobleman.

“We can always use security people there. You wouldn’t have to stay if you didn’t like it or if you got homesick. Try it for a couple of months perhaps? Then you’ll have some money, maybe your family will be cooled down a little. Would you like-”

Her spontaneous, crushing hug told him she would. But with the best will in the world, the embrace of an ork who had been sweating inside body armor during an unwashed thirty hours or so wasn’t entirely agreeable to him. He was somewhat glad when she backed off.

“When you’ve concluded your business, come back here. We’ll work out the details. Take care, Queen of Heaven.”

Serrin was the last to go. Geraint had expected him to stay, looking forward to a slow, lazy evening winding down, but the elf had something on his mind.

“I’m leaving England Tuesday night,” he said sadly. “First I’ve got to go back and find that druid. I want to let her know that the Transys place will be closed down now. Oh hell, I just want to see her again.”

Geraint looked at the elf. The dark rings under his eyes said Serrin was still exhausted, but the nobleman didn’t insist that he stay until morning. Maybe Serrin had found something that would give him more peace than lazing in a Chelsea penthouse.

“Sure you can find her again?”

“Why else do I specialize in detection? But don’t worry, I’ll take a mobile telecom and stay in touch. Let you know I’m all right. And I’ll be back here Tuesday morning anyway. This time we wont lose each other for so many years.”

Geraint was surprised at how frail his friend felt when they embraced in goodbye. He needed recuperation and maybe he needed it with someone who wasn’t part of these weeks of blood-soaked murder and mayhem. An escape from all that.

So, Geraint sat alone into the evening. He had no taste for champagne or food, barely any appetite for coffee. He aimlessly flicked from channel to channel on the tube, seeing the Ripper-clone story dominating the news over and over again. But he wasn’t really listening, and as night fell around him, he settled into a state of fatigued reverie.

It was just around nine when the constant, gentle urging from his Sight sent him to the Tarot. He needed two cards: one for those he had defeated and one for himself.

Ten of Swords.

Ruin. Ah yes, the end of the road for Transys Neuronet. And now one for himself. Maybe the victory of the Seven of Wands or the completion of the Ten? Judgment? Justice? But it was none of those. In utter horror he stared at the card he’d turned face-up. The telecom began to beep, nagging at his attention.

The Moon.

Illusion, false perception. The jackal-headed guardians stared in mockery at him from the image, the four-legged servants at their feet smiling in the darkness. The figures clenched their ankhs as if to say, you see nothing. These are our insights. They do not belong to you.

It had been five years since Geraint had seen the Moon in that way. Last time it had been when he’d trusted a friend who swindled him out of nearly half a million.

The urgency of the telecom’s continuing summons jarred him out of his confused self-absorption.

It was Rani, grinning from ear to ear. “Geraint, I tied up a last piece of business,” she panted somewhat breathlessly. “You know I told you about the man Pershinkin?”

He had to struggle to remember. “Yes, um, the man; yes, the man who hired your family.”

“I killed him. I didn’t tell you about it and sometimes it seems like it happened in a dream, but I did it. Before he died, though, he told me he had a meeting set up with Smith and Jones. Told me when and where. So I staked it out.”

The slightest ache began in his stomach, as if he were in an elevator starting its descent. “What happened? You killed them?”

She looked content, but also crestfallen. “Well, no. When they turned up at the place Pershinkin had said, a whole swam of street samurai suddenly appeared out of nowhere and gunned them down. They dragged the bodies into a limo and buggered off sharpish.”

“But they’re as dead as the scumbags we fought last night. Didn’t kill them myself, but they got what was coming to them. I got my own honor by killing Pershinkin. How about that? Anyway, see you tomorrow. I got friends to see and some celebrations waiting for me. Call you later on if they get really good. You could even pop round and join us! See ya!” The screen went dead on her smile.

Oh no, no, no.

It just went over and over in his mind. Smith and Jones were Transys men through and through. The corp wouldn’t have killed them because they might squeal. Not now. Everything was already busted wide open. Sending a whole gang of samurai to kill them didn’t make sense, unless, unless… He just couldn’t see it.

It was almost like automatic writing, the way he downloaded the analysis programs and began examining the stock markets. Transys had crashed out of sight. Well, of course. But there were buyers. A whole string of them, all across the world. Everyone chipping in for tiny amounts. Little piranhas taking a single mouthful each from the corpse of a dying shark.

It took a little while to engage the global program. All his adult life he’d been updating, refining, cross-indexing this beast, fitting it out with its range of probability functions and estimators. He upgraded it for the last week of dealings, not having had time to do his usual updates.

Transys wouldn’t have killed their own people unless those weren’t their own people.

And now they weren’t in any position to kill anybody. Decision-making would be completely frozen; the entire board of Transys had resigned.

Someone else killed Smith and Jones.

Someone else who was swimming into focus on his screens right now. He could see the shadows behind what he thought to be real. He could see who was behind these little fish. He could see the ancient predator lurking in the waters. He saw him at the bottom of the Moon, at the base of the card, armored and clawed.

“My God,” Geraint thought, “we’ve been horribly, terribly wrong.”

That was when they knocked on his door.

34

The Rolls Royce Phaeton purred comfortably along the M825, the great orbital highway ringing inner London. Geraint hadn’t much choice about whether to get in it or not. The unsmiling gentlemen with guns had decided it for him. Once inside, he came face to face with two smartly suited middle-aged men in the enormous rear portion of the car.