He woke in his own bed the next morning, to sunlight and the steady shrilling of an alarm. He swore, wondering for a bleary instant why Cella let it sound, then reached across the empty bed for the remote. The time was flashing on the far wall, the red numbers almost drowned by the bright sunlight: almost the ninth hour. He had slept through at least two earlier wake‑ups. No wonder Cella hadn’t waited. He sat up, wincing–he wasn’t hung over, but he functioned badly on fewer than six hours’ sleep–and touched the remote again. His fingers slid clumsily over the rounded surface. It was a pretty thing, shaped like a wide‑web node with a single broad leaf wrapped around it, carved from a brown stone so dark that it looked almost black except in direct sunlight, but this morning the carving distracted him. He found the proper control points at last, launched the program that displayed his schedule on the far wall below the chronometer’s numbers. The ninth hour was given over to the weekly breakfast meeting with his siblings.

He swore again, checked the time–less than a quarter hour, barely enough time to shower and shave and dress, much less find a wake‑up pill–and forced himself out of bed. Neither the shower nor the pill Cella had kindly left for him helped much, but he managed to dress with reasonable care, and made his way to join the others. He was not the last to arrive, and Chrestillio–Altagracian Chrestil‑Brisch, the family pensionary and titular head of the family by virtue of being firstborn–nodded at him from his place at the head of the long table. Bettisa Chrestil‑Brisch, known as Bettis Chrestil, the family’s representative to the Five Points Bank, did not look up from the workboard where the night’s downloaded trade figures were playing.

“Good morning,” Damian Chrestil said, keeping his voice suitably subdued, and crossed to the sideboard to pour himself a cup of coffee from the intricate silver brewer. The coffee was cut half‑and‑half with milk from the Homestead Island farms–even the Chrestil‑Brisch couldn’t afford to import coffee in bulk–and he added a toffee‑colored crystal the size of his little fingernail from the sugar bowl. Sugar was expensive, too–most of the sugarwort crop went to the distilleries–but there was no point in being stingy this morning. He collected breakfast as well, a wedge of soft, mild cheese, a few thin, chewy slabs of docker’s bread, and a spoonful of sour preserved fruit. There was fish sausage as well, and a bowl filled with half a dozen hard‑boiled eggs, their shells painted with swirls of dye, but he ignored them both, and seated himself opposite Bettis Chrestil. The sunlight, mercifully, was behind him; it streamed into the room, casting shadows across the polished and inlaid tabletop and onto the olive‑and‑gold paneling. The carnival scenes that filled the central medallion of each panel looked bleached in the strong light.

“Has anyone seen the weather?” Damian asked.

Bettis looked up from her board. “About what you’d expect, this time of year. There’s a depression to the southeast, but there’s no saying if it’ll strengthen, or come this way.”

Chrestillio said, “The street bookmakers are saying it’s at forty‑to‑one to hit at all, at any strength, but I hear that’s dropping.”

And the street bookies would know, Damian thought. They know as much and more than the weathermen, but then, they have more to lose. The canalli bet on the weather with the same passion that he himself played politics.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” a new voice said, and Damian looked up to see the last of his siblings standing in the doorway. She came fully into the room, a broad‑shouldered, broad‑hipped woman in the grey‑green coveralls that anyone wore to visit the distillery, and a whiff of the mash came with her, a sour odor almost thick enough to taste. Damian winced, and Calligenia Chrestil‑Brisch finished stripping out of the heavy coveralls and dropped them in the hallway outside the door. She closed the door behind her, leaving the clothes for a household cleaner, said, “I got caught up in some stuff at the plant.”

“Problems?” Chrestillio said, and Calligan Brisch shook her head.

“Not really. We were doing preliminary slow‑down for Storm, and there was a minor hassle with one of the big vats. About what you’d expect, this time of year.”

Chrestillio nodded, satisfied, and Damian took a cautious sip of his coffee, trying to drown the last of the smell.

“Did you get that shipment in, Damiano?” Calligan went on, and turned to the sideboard. She filled a plate–a little of everything, cheese, sausage, bread, a couple of the eggs, a healthy spoonful of the preserved fruits–and came to take the final place at the table. Looking at her, at all of them, Damian was struck again by the resemblances between them. Not that they precisely looked alike, beyond a general similarity of coloring–Chrestillio and Calligan Brisch had both gotten their mother’s build, big, broad‑shouldered people, while he and Bettis Chrestil took more after their slimmer, fine‑boned father–but there was a certain something, the shape of the long nose and the quirk of the wide mouth, that marked them unmistakably as siblings. He shook himself out of the reverie, and made himself answer her question.

“Yes. There was some minor spoilage in one of the batches of red‑carpet–TMN again.”

“I think we ought to cut ties with them,” Calligan Brisch said, and reached for a saltcellar. Bettis Chrestil slid one across to her, still not taking her eyes from the workboard.

“We probably should,” Damian agreed. “Unless they give us a real break on the next few batches.” And anyway, he added silently, they’ve served their purpose. I’ve got enough information on their codes to fake a shipment from them, and that will help the lachesi get through.

“What I’d like to know,” Chrestillio said, “is why the Republicans have been sniffing around our warehouses again.”

“Not here, surely,” Bettis said.

“No,” Chrestillio said.

“On Demeter, right?” Damian said, with all the innocence he could muster. “I think it was TMN they were after–another reason to drop them, I guess.”

“You heard about it, then?” Chrestillio asked.

“I got your message yesterday,” Damian said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you, but I did have time to look into the matter, and from what our factor tells me, they were looking for something in the TMN shipment that came through yesterday.” Was it only yesterday? It feels as if it were years ago. He shook the thought away. Republican Customs‑and‑Intelligence had certainly been tipped off to the lachesi that had traveled with the red‑carpet; the only real question was, by whom, and the factor would deal with that. But C‑and‑I had no proof; it would be safe enough to begin the next stage of the transfer. In fact, the sooner the better.

“As you say,” Bettis murmured, “another good reason to sever ties with TMN. I’ve never understood why you dealt with them in the first place, Damiano. They’ve got a reputation for shady dealing, buying smuggled goods and the like.”

That was why I started dealing with them. Damian curbed his tongue, said mildly, “They were cheap, and they’re brokers for a growers’ union that–until last year, anyway–was reliable, gave us a quality product. I agree, I think they’ve outlived their usefulness.”

Chrestillio said, “I’m still concerned that C‑and‑I was down on one of our houses, Damiano.”

“It wasn’t us they were after, but I agree,” Damian said. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Chrestillio shook his head. “Not good enough. Are you running shadow cargoes, Damiano?”

Damian hesitated, not sure how he wanted to answer this– of course I am, but I’m not sure you want to hear that–and Chrestillio went on, “We do a lot of business with the Republic. I don’t want to screw up our good relations there.”