Windcheater banked, riding out of the thermal and away from the island. Hadn’t there been something about Batians on that weapons site? The sail resisted the impulse to go back to the place as he had more than enough to chew on concerning humankind. As he flew on, he auged through to any easily accessible information about his own kind, and was surprised to find how much and how little was known.

Polity experts knew that sails fed from the surface of the sea, taking rhinoworms, glisters, prill from the back of leeches — and sometimes leeches themselves. The speculation that they took to the ships for an easier food supply and a less hazardous existence was, of course, entirely wrong. Strange how the humans tried to classify the behaviour of any other species as relating only to ‘animal’ traits. Windcheater was completely certain that he and his kin had taken to the ships out of curiosity. It was much more difficult working as a ship sail for just a few steaks than snatching a whole worm from the sea and devouring it on the wing. Silly, arrogant humans.

The information section concerning sail mating was of huge interest to Windcheater. He had known for a long time that humans were divided into two sexes, and how all that operated — he had often been aboard a ship during one of the frequent Hooper meets, though why it was necessary to consume prodigious quantities of sea-cane rum and boiled hammer whelks before the sexual act, he had never been able to fathom. What he had not been aware of was that his own kind had four sexes. Anyway, during the mating season, he had never really had much chance to think about the mechanisms that drove him to such exhausting madness. Three males required to fertilize one female egg, and that egg then encysted and stuck, in its cocoon, on the side of the Big Flint. Hence, what a human far in the past had described as ‘that rock-top orgy’.

Windcheater flew on, heading for the horizon of Spatterjay, and all the new horizons he was now discovering. He was but a speck by the time the Batians beached their dinghy in a spray of sand and opened fire en masse on the rhinoworm that reared out of the sea behind them.

The worm dropped, flaming, back into the sea, writhed there for a moment as if still intent on coming on to the beach after them, and then grew still. Shib let out a shuddering breath, then quickly wiped at the sweat that was stinging his eyes.

‘Great idea using an inflatable dinghy to get out here. Real classic, that one,’ he snarled.

‘Shut up, Shib,’ said Svan, as she watched the leeches surfacing to take apart the laser-cooked rhinoworm. ‘You know what would happen if we used AG here. The Warden would be up our asses with a thermite grenade about two seconds later.’

‘Yeah, but—’

Svan made a chopping motion with her hand. ‘Enough. You either handle it or you don’t.’

Shib shut up. He knew Svan wasn’t suggesting he could pay back the deposit and go home. Employment contracts with first-rankers like her either ended with a large payout or in a rather terminal manner. He nodded when she gestured towards the boat, then slung his carbine from his shoulder and headed over to the vessel. Upon reaching it, he immediately clicked on the little rotary pump. Joining him, Dime hauled out their packs and tossed them on to the pebbled beach. Shib detached and collapsed the telescopic outboard, and then he and Dime stood back as the dinghy quickly collapsed and shrivelled. The rolled-up dinghy was no wider than a man’s wrist, and with its motor locked beside it, formed a pack that could be tucked under an arm. Dime carried this to the head of the beach and slid it under a spread of sheetlike leaves growing there. Soon all four of them had loaded up their packs and were heading along the beach.

‘Why here?’ Tors asked after a moment.

‘A location easy to find — and our client has business here,’ Svan replied.

Half listening to the conversation, Shib kept his eyes on the dingle. A hideous bird-thing observed him from the branches of a tree with a hugely globular trunk. He had thought the creature dead and decaying until it had moved to follow their progress with its glistening eye-pits. He suppressed his immediate inclination to burn it from its branch. No doubt Svan would take that as one push too many.

‘Do you have any further information on this client?’ Tors asked.

‘Same one as has had the bounty up on Sable Keech for the last three centuries. No way of tracing the transaction without collecting, and no one has managed that yet.’

‘I don’t get how he’s lasted so long,’ said Dime, with an apologetic glance to Shib.

‘Organization, speed, luck and, thus far, seven centuries of experience. Anyway, Keech doesn’t often put himself in a position where he can be hit. Normally he operates on Polity worlds well within AI surveillance, and spends most of his time searching through Polity databases. Not easy to get him there. When he does come somewhere like this, he’s normally well covered. It’s surprising that he’s here alone. Maybe he’s getting careless,’ said Svan.

‘Or maybe he’s just had enough,’ said Tors.

Svan shrugged and gestured to a path cutting into the dingle opposite a jetty. ‘This looks like it,’ she said.

As they turned into the path, Shib could feel the hairs prickling on the back of his neck. He had been in some hostile places before, some where he’d had to go suited and armoured, and some where nothing less than a fully motorized exoskeleton would do, but here he felt things were wrong right from the start. This was a casually brutal place. In the Hooper town, he’d caught the tail-end of some sort of fight, and even he had been surprised at how easily Hoopers bore hideous injury. Then there had been the rush to head for where Keech had headed, then of course Nolan… He peered round at the surrounding dingle and gripped his carbine tighter. From the dingle floor, spined frog-things regarded him with glinting blue eyes, and the foliage above bore oozing fruit of a long and slimy variety. Was there anywhere here where you could let your guard down?

‘This is the place. We secure it and wait for her here,’ Svan said.

‘Her?’ asked Shib, nicking his gaze forward. Ahead of them a tower sprouted from the ground, and around it the churned earth was clear of vegetation, as if the tower itself had sucked all goodness from it. Shib wondered where the resident ogre was.

Svan did not elaborate. Instead she turned to them.

‘Dime, take out the autogun, and any dishes on the roof. Tors, I want you to blow the door. You cover him, Shib, and hit any autos around the door.’

‘How many people here?’ Shib asked.

‘Just one old woman. We’re to hold her and wait. Our client should be along soon. Right, we go now.’

Dime dropped a targeting visor down over his eyes, raised his carbine, and fired four short pulses in rapid succession. As he fired, Shib and Tors ran for the door. On the roof of Olian Tay’s residence, the satellite dishes on the pylon flared and sagged. The autogun, which had swung their way at the last moment, disappeared with a flat crack and flare, out of which black fragments dropped to the denuded ground. Tors hit the door and slapped a small disk against the locking mechanism, while Shib covered him. They both swung themselves either side of the entrance as the small mine blew and sent the buckled door crashing inside the building. Then they were in.

Svan walked across the clearing, carefully scanning her surroundings. She watched as Dime ran around behind the structure, and she listened as sharp cracking sounds and low detonations issued from inside. The only noise she sensed came from Shib and Tors. This place was deserted. Either Olian Tay had struck lucky, or someone had warned her. As Svan entered the building, Dime moved in behind her. Tors stood in the central living room, doors broken open all around, while Shib was coming down a spiral staircase to one side. She glanced at them and they both shook their heads.