Nearby was a fountain with a statue of a Danteri warrior wielding a sword. Si Cwan did not hesitate. He lashed out with a powerful thrust of his right foot and slammed into the base of the stone sword where it was held by the warrior. The stone cracked under the impact and shattered, and Si Cwan caught the stone sword with one deft grab. It was far weightier than any real blade, of course, but that was all to Cwan’s liking. If he swung it, anything of flesh and bone that it came into contact with would instantly be crushed by it. Water gurgled out of the broken-open hole.

“Very impressive,” commented Anubis, although he did not sound especially impressed. He was still watching Kalinda warily. “It is a pity. You could have been a most useful ally.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” replied Si Cwan. He swung the stone sword in a leisurely arc, causing the other senators to step further back. It gave Cwan a good deal of pleasure, seeing them hesitate in that way. If there was one thing he had learned long ago, it was that there was far more to dominating a situation than just having superior physical strength. Not that Cwan was ready to concede that they weresuperior to him. But they were obviously far less anxious to put self-defense capabilities to the test than he was. “I suspect that Kalinda and I would be far too much in the way of independent thinkers to fall in line with whatever it is you’re planning. Which, by the way, would be ... ?”

Anubis made a sound that Cwan suspected was supposed to be vaguely akin to a laugh. But only vaguely. True laughter was infectious. This was a sound that was infectious in the same way that plague was.

“You seek some deep, hidden ‘true plan,’ ” Anubis observed. He was not moving at all now, not flexing so much as a single muscle in his body. If he hadn’t been speaking, he would have looked like a statue carved from ebony. “My clan and I have never been anything less than forthright. We wish to provide ambrosia to bring out a golden age of mankind. My kin offered it to your captain ...” He paused, as if endeavoring to pluck a name out of the ether. “Calhoun,” he said finally, as if someone had whispered it to him as a prompt. “He was encouraged to refuse us. That was ... unwise.”

“Unwise. What are you saying?” Si Cwan’s eyes narrowed, and he gripped the makeshift sword more tightly.

Suddenly he saw movement with his peripheral vision. Without even taking his gaze from Anubis, he whipped the stone sword around under his arm and slammed it into the pit of one of the senator’s stomachs. The man had tried to come up behind him. It had not gone well for him; with one swing, Si Cwan had done the man some serious damage, and he was now on the ground with his arms wrapped around his middle. Si Cwan suspected he might have broken several of the Danteri’s ribs. He did not, however, care. His concerns were focused instead on the implicit threat he had just heard. “In what way unwise?” he continued.

“Let us say they have been dealt with,” said Anubis.

“Let us say more than that,” Si Cwan said dangerously, and started forward.

But Kalinda’s sharp “Don’t move, Cwan” froze him in midstep. He looked at her, scowling, and she met his gaze with a warning one of her own. Immediately he realized what she was trying to put across to him: that continuing this challenge was not the wisest course of action. Anubis had made no further move toward them, but he was still coiled, ready to spring. And the fact that one senator was down with some broken bones and Lodec was just recovering use of his hand didn’t render the other two less dangerous, or the entire situation less fraught with peril. Also, for all they knew, other senators or even soldiers might show up as reinforcements. Matters were being held together at that moment through only the most tenuous of circumstances, and the more they prolonged it, the worse it would go for them.

“Listen carefully,” Si Cwan told everyone standing there, keeping enough edge in his voice to sound as threatening as he possibly could. “We agreed to come to Danter for one reason and one reason only: your desire to create a new Thallonian Empire. You wanted my help for that. But since that time, another ... option,” and he inclined his head toward Anubis, “has clearly presented itself. I would have much preferred that you tell me about it, instead of what you had been doing. The skulking about, the late-night meetings from which I was excluded.”

“We ...” Lodec was trying to push through the pain he was still obviously feeling. “We thought ... you would not understand.”

“Perhaps I would not have. But I understand duplicity even less.” He looked at them for a long moment, and then said to Lodec, “You have a private field, do you not?”

“Field?” Lodec, still rubbing the rejoining place of his hand, looked blank for a moment. Then the confusion evaporated. “Oh. A landing port.”

“Correct.”

Slowly Lodec nodded. “Yes. Yes, I do.” He was speaking slowly and a bit sheepishly, as if chagrined that he had been screaming in such an out-of-control manner earlier. “It’s ... one of the perks of being the—”

“I do not care,” Cwan interrupted. “You will bring us there. You will give us the fastest shuttle off this rock. And you will allow us to leave unmolested.”

“And if they do not?” inquired Anubis. He seemed most intrigued to hear Si Cwan’s response.

“Then,” said Si Cwan unflappably, waving the stone sword in a decidedly menacing manner, “we shall see if we have a god who bleeds.”

A long silence followed, and then came another of those frightening laughs from Anubis that made the listener feel as if bugs were crawling beneath his skin and lodging in various important organs. “Lodec,” he said after a moment more. “Give him what he wants.”

“But High One!” Lodec began to protest, until a single fearsome glance from Anubis silenced him.

Anubis turned back to Si Cwan as if Lodec no longer mattered to him ... which was, very likely, the case. “Believe it or not, Thallonian,” Anubis said, “you were of interest to me. I sought to test your mettle. I am ... unimpressed.”

Si Cwan bowed mockingly. “I shall endeavor to live with the disappointment of failing to impress you.”

Paying no heed to Si Cwan, Anubis shifted his gaze to Kalinda. “She, on the other hand, has potential. Vast potential. It might be best for you to remain here, young Kalinda.”

“I go where Si Cwan goes,” she said defiantly.

He shrugged almost imperceptibly. “That is your choice, child. I think it an unfortunate one, but I will not tamper with your free will. None of my brethren will. We are gods, not monsters.”

“Despite all appearances to the contrary,” Si Cwan said sharply. “And you won’t tamper with free will? From what you’re saying, you attacked friends of ours simply because they were exercising their free will in deciding not to trust you and your ... ilk.”

Anubis’ teeth flashed. For half a heartbeat, Si Cwan thought he was going to have a fight on his hands, and he wasn’t ecstatic about the likelihood of triumphing in it. But Anubis promptly calmed himself; it happened so quickly that very likely Cwan and Anubis were the only ones aware of the flash of temper. “There is free will,” he said in a soft voice that sounded much like a growl. “And then there is lack of respect. Blasphemy, if you will. All living creatures have the gift of free will. But we need not tolerate blasphemers. Any more than you, ‘Lord’ Si Cwan, tolerated insurrection in your days as a noble of the Thallonian Empire.”

“You know nothing of me, nor of what I did or did not tolerate.”

“A pity,” said Anubis, his eyes blazing brighter, “that we will not have the opportunity to learn. Know one thing, however,” and he shifted his gaze toward Kalinda, “my scythe must be returned before your vessel will be permitted to leave. It is my property. You may not depart with it.”