“You understood all of that?”

“Some of it. You speak Silfen really well.”

He gave the boy a wink. “That’s because I cheat. It’s the only way to get through life.”

“So where do we go now?”

“Same place as before,” Ozzie said; he glanced around the big clearing, unsure where they’d come in. “Down the first path we find, and without a clue.”

NINE

Legend has it that the asteroid was a lump of pure gold, the core of which remained intact and now lies buried deep beneath the castle. Whatever the actual composition was, it certainly had an above average density. When it hit Lothian’s southern continent, a couple of centuries before humans arrived, it carved out a perfectly circular crater three kilometers across. The rim wall was over one hundred meters high, with quite a steep inner face; the central peak rose to nearly four hundred meters.

The first settlers, all from Scotland, had a large Edinburgh contingent among them, nostalgic for the old town and dynamic in their approach to their new homeworld. Their bigger and better attitude was given an aggressive outlet when it came to building the new capital, Leithpool, with the crater as its nucleus. An entire river, the High Forth, was diverted for eleven kilometers along a newly built aqueduct embankment to pour over the crater’s rim wall, slowly filling the ring-shaped lake inside. They wanted a castle at the center, of course, but the new island’s easy gradient hardly matched the jutting rock crag to be found dominating the heart of old Edinburgh. A fleet of civil engineering bots got to work carving as the surrounding waters rose. Over the following years, three rock-blade pinnacles were hacked out from the solitary mound, sharp and rugged enough to fit into any Alpine range. A Bavarian-style castle was grafted onto the apex of the tallest peak, reached by a solitary road that spiraled up around the sheer rock cliffs.

Beneath the castle, and occupying the rest of the harsh mount, monolithic granite buildings sprang up, separated by broad cobbled roads and twisting alleyways. There were no parks and no trees, for there was no soil where living things could grow, only the naked rock exposed by the cutting tools of the bots. As the construction work progressed, the entire overfinanced mechanism of government moved in; from the doughty parliament building itself to the elaborate palace of the supreme court, bloated office-hive ministries to the Romanesque planetary bank. With the world’s rulers came the usual circus of subsidiaries: the expensive restaurants, hotels, clubs, the office service companies, theaters, corporate headquarters, concert halls, lobbying firms, legal partnerships, and media companies. Swarming through the somber official buildings were the army of elected representatives, their aides, researchers, interns, spouses, civil servants, and pimps. Only the top echelon actually lived on the Castle Mount; everyone else commuted from the city that grew up on the other side of the rim. Suburbs and boroughs sprawled for kilometer after kilometer down the incline of the crater’s outer walls, home to four and a half million people.

Leithpool was one of Adam Elvin’s favorite cities. Its layout was a welcome exception to the neat grids found on most worlds. Here the streets wound down the outside of the rim in random curves, intersecting and branching chaotically. Light industry and housing all had their separate zones, but they were squashed together in true jigsaw layout with admirable disregard for logic. Broad terrace parks formed pretty green swaths through the stone and composite structures. A good underground metro network and street-level trams kept the private traffic to a minimum. Elevated rail lines knitted together the main boroughs, meandering their way down to the bottom of the northeastern slope, where the CST station squatted on the outskirts.

Today, Adam was walking along the western quadrant of Prince’s Circle, the road that ran around the top of the crater rim. It was the main retail district, renown on many planets. A rampart of tall department stores and brand-flagship shops formed the outer side of the broad road, while the inner side curved down sharply to the quiet waters of the ring lake twenty meters below the pavement. When the city was built, the rim had been leveled off, with the exception of the High Forth inlet, which was roofed by a twin arch bridge; and the similar outlet gully on the opposite side that sent the water foaming down a long artificial cascade through the most exclusive residential districts.

He spent a quiet twenty minutes walking among the crowds that boiled along the shopfronts. Every building sported a white and scarlet Celtic Crown national flag. Without exception they were at half mast. Two days earlier, Lothian’s team had been knocked out of the Cup. That had knocked the new Scottish nation hard, it was as if the planet had gone into mourning. Eventually he found the café he was looking for, a door at the side of a big electrical retailer, opening onto stairs that took him up to the first floor. The large room was some kind of converted gallery, with high ceilings and huge curving windows that looked down on Prince’s Circle. He found a slightly tatty sofa in front of one window, and ordered a hot chocolate with two choc-chip and hazelnut shortcakes from the teenage waitress. The view he had out toward Castle Mount was peerless. A few hundred meters to the south, one of the monorail tracks stretched out across the calm dark water; a single silver carriage streaked along it, shuttling late office workers over to their desks.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” a voice said at his shoulder.

Adam glanced up to see Bradley Johansson standing behind him, holding a large mug of tea. As always, the tall man gave the impression of being slightly disconnected from the world around him. There was something about his thin, elegant face that made him appear far more aristocratic than any Grand Family member.

“I enjoy it,” Adam said evenly.

“Of course, it looks even better at Mardi Gras,” Bradley said, sitting down on the sofa beside Adam. “They light up the castle with huge hologram projectors for the whole week, and during the closing ceremony they let off real fireworks overhead.”

“If you ever give me the time off, I’ll come and take a look.”

“That’s what I wanted to see you about.” Bradley stopped as the waitress brought Adam’s hot chocolate, and smiled winningly at her. She sneaked a smile back at him before hurrying off to the next table.

Adam tried not to show his annoyance at the little silent exchange, it was just one more reminder of his own age. “You’re going to give me more free time?” he asked.

“Quite the opposite, old chap. That’s why I wanted to see you in person, to impress upon you how important the next few years are going to be. After all, you’re not… a lifelong Guardian. Your commitment to the cause has always been more financially oriented. I want to know if you’re prepared to continue your role when things get a lot tougher.”

“Tougher? That Myo bitch almost caught me on Velaines.”

“Oh, come come, Adam, she was never even close. You outsmarted her beautifully. And continue to do so, the components are all arriving on schedule.”

“Save the flattery for the bourgeois. I can’t be motivated that way.”

“Very well. So will you continue to provide us with your assistance, and if so how much will it cost?”

“What exactly are you wanting from me?”

“This is the time which the Starflyer has worked for. The time for good men to draw a line in the sand and say: No more. ”

“No further,” Adam muttered.

Bradley sipped his tea and smiled. “In the past, maybe. But in the here and now, I know what must be done. Little of it will be pleasant.”

“Revolution never is for those who live through it.”

“This is not revolution, Adam, this is my crusade. I am going to fling the corrupter of humanity into the depths of night beyond hell, where even the devil fears to tread. And that will be the least it deserves. I will avenge myself and all the others who have been consumed by the Starflyer’s evil.”