“Resume your seats,” Lian said.

Slowly, cowed, they did so. Moth still had her weapon in hand.

“Now,” said Lian, “the matter of a vote.”

Someone was sick. The stench of burning was in the hall. Raen clenched her arms about her and shivered.

“Raen a Sul hant Meth-maren,” Lian said.

“Sir.”

“You may go. I think that it would be advisable to leave Cerdin and seek some House in obscurity. You have outlived all your enemies. Count that fortune enough for a lifetime. I don’t think it wise that you shelter with another House on Cerdin; you could too easily become a cause, and the Family has seen enough of that.”

“Sir,” she began to protest.

“There’s no reason to detain you for proceedings. The vote is only a formality. Kethiuy, is gone; that is a fact over which Council has no control. You broke the Pact and involved majat. The ones principally involved are dead; their influence is ended. Your own judgement in what you’ve done was that of a child, and under compulsion. You refuse guardianship; I daresay you are competent to survive without it. So I charge you this, Raen a Sul: avoid insist hereafter. You are given all the privileges of majority, and if you cross Council’s notice again, it will be under those conditions. You are free to go, with that understanding. I suggest Meron. Council liaison there wall be sympathetic. I have an old estate there that you can use. You won’t be without friends or advice.”

“I don’t need it.”

It was out of bitterness she said it. She saw Lian’s mouth go to a taut line, and reckoned that she should not have refused; but it was not in her nature to bend. She looked on Moth, looked on Eldest, and turned, walked, with difficulty, to the door and her freedom.

She did not stop, nor look back, nor shed the tears that urged at her. They dried quickly. She knew the passages from the Old Hall at Alpha to the beta City. She carried nothing, but the clothes she had been given and the identity on her hand.

Leave Cerdin: she would, for there was nothing on Cerdin she wanted.

x

The betas of the City were shocked, alarmed that a Kontrin appeared alone among them, with bodyguards. Perhaps they had some apprehension of trouble, having heard of the decimation of Kontrin Houses, and of blue-hive, and therefore feared to involve themselves in her affairs; but they had no means to refuge.

She bought medical care, and drugs for the pain; she slept a time in a public lodging, and recovered herself. She bought clothing and weapons, and engaged a shuttle up to station, where she hired a ship with the credit of the Family—the most extravagant she could find. She was moody and the beta crew avoided her.

That was the first journey.

It brought her to Meron. She did not take Eldest’s offer, but bought a house and lived there on the endless credit which the chitin-pattern of her right hand signified. There were Halds onworld: her interest pricked at that… Pol and Morn; she stirred to care again. Plotting their assassinations and guarding against her own occupied her time…until Pol and Morn turned up boldly on her doorstep, and Pol swept her a mocking curtsy.

Pol Hald. She had passed her sixteenth birthday; he was unchanged, whatever age he really was. He stared her up and down and she looked at him, and at Morn, who stood at his shoulder; and she realised with a chill that her gun was on safety in its belt-clip; she could not possibly be quick enough.

“Your operation is entirely too elaborate,” Pol said, grinning at her. “But well-thought, little Meth-maren. I applaud your zeal…and your precocious cleverness. Please call them off.”

She fairly shook with rage, but fear chilled her mind to clarity. Of a sudden she saw the reaction to take with this man, and grinned. “I shall,” she said. “Thank you for the courtesy, Pol Hald.”

“What self-possession you have, Meth-maren.”

“Shall I leave Meron?”

“Stay,” he said, and laughed, with a flourish of his chitined hand. “You have what Ruil never had: a sense of balance. I know neither of us would be safe under those terms. There’d be a new plot by suppertime.”

She regarded them through slit lids. “Then you leave Meron.”

He laughed outright, brushed past her, into her home. Morn followed.

She thumbed the safety of her gun and stared at them, watching their hands. Pol folded his arms and nodded a gesture to his cousin. “Go on,” he said, “Morn. You’ve no interests here.”

Morn surveyed her up and down, his gaunt face untouched by any emotion. Without a word he strode to the door and closed it behind him.

And Pol settled in the nearest chair and folded his arms, extended his long legs before him. His death’s-head face quirked into an engaging smile.

He ate the dinner she served him; they sat across the table from one another: he made a proposal which she declined, and laughed rather regretfully when she did so. Pol’s humour was infamous, and infectious; and he hazarded his life on it now. She refrained from poisoning him; he refrained from using whatever weapons he surely carried on his person. They laughed at each other, and she bade him good night.

He and she turned up at the same social events thereafter, in the busy winter season of Kontrin society on Meron. They smiled at each other with the warmth of old friends, amused at the comment that caused. But they never met in private.

And eventually there was an attempt on her life.

It happened on Meron, a year after Pol and Morn had taken themselves elsewhere, in separate directions, Morn to Cerdin and Pol to Andra. It happened in the night, on an. other Kontrin’s estate, a Delt, Col a Helim, who was her current, but not exclusive interest. She was twenty-one. Col died. She did not. None came back from that attempt, but they were azi who had done it, and their past was wiped, their tattoos burned away. She swore off Delts, suspecting something local and involving a rival, and moved and engaged a small estate on Silak.

Word reached her there that Lian had died…assassination, and no one knew now how long he would have lived, so the longest human life in the Reach reached no natural conclusion and Kontrin everywhere had been frustrated. The attempted coup was a failure, and the assassins all died miserably, the penalty of failure and the revenge of Kontrin who had considered Lian’s long life a talisman of luck, an example of their own immortality.

Moth held Eldest’s place, first in Council. The Council thus remained much as it had been, and Raen took no interest in its affairs…took no interest in the present for anything political. There was no more Kethiuy, although the nightmares lingered. She was mildly amused in one respect, for she reckoned at last that the attempt on her had been connected to Lian’s impending fall; but that had faded, the conspirators (Thel and some lesser Houses) decimated, and matters were settled again. The Family knew where she was at all times, and if she had been of continuing importance to any cause, someone would have attempted to enlist her or to assassinate her in the fear that she belonged to some other cause. Neither happened. The remnant of the House of Thon on Cerdin established itself as the new liaison with the hives. Raen settled again on Meron and, when she heard how Thon had usurped the post with the hives, she pursued vices in considerable variety and nuance and gained a name in Meron society. She was twenty-four.

She had her privileges: those never failed; and she had no lack of anything money could buy. She amused herself, sometimes within Kontrin society and sometimes in moody withdrawal from all contact. She looked on betas and azi with the disdain of her birth, which was natural, and her tedious lifespan, which was (since Lian’s assassination) indefinite, and her power, which was among betas as fearsome as it was negligible where she would have desired to apply it.