“What a lovely place to spend a storm.”

Damian Chrestil shrugged, smiling slightly. “It’s stood worse.”

“It wasn’t the house I was worried about.”

Damian shrugged again, and his smile widened. “The odds look good to me.”

And you’re such a judge of that. The comment was too double‑edged, too easily turned against himself, and Ransome kept silent, though he guessed that the other had read the thought in his eyes. He turned away from the screen, went over to the drinks cart, and poured himself another glass of the sweet amber wine. “Do you want anything?”

Damian Chrestil looked momentarily surprised, but then flipped the screen back to one of the city channels, and came to join him. “Yes, thanks, you can pour me a glass of that.”

Ransome filled another of the long‑stemmed glasses, handed it to Damian Chrestil, and they stood for a moment in an almost companionable silence. Something else fell against the shutters, a lighter thump and then a skittering, as though whatever it was had been dragged across the rough surfaces. Damian Chrestil glanced quickly toward the noise, and looked away again. He was a handsome man, Ransome thought, attractive in the same fine‑boned, long‑nosed way that his sister Bettisa had been, with the same quick response to the unexpected. And it was good to see a man who knew better than to follow an unflattering fashion. And sex is the last weapon of the weak. Not that that’s stopped me before. He looked back at Damian Chrestil, allowed himself a quick and calculated smile, and was not surprised when the other’s smile in return held a certain interest. But I’m bored, and he is–less than fastidious, at least by reputation. Not very flattering, I suppose. But it’s better than doing nothing.

Day 2

Storm: Ransome’s Loft, Old Coast Road,

Newfields, Above Junction Pool

Lioe lay on Ransome’s neatly made bed, one arm thrown over her eyes to block the light from the main room. The walls trembled now and then in the gusts of wind; she could feel the vibration through the mattress, through the heavy wood of the bed frame. The shutter that protected the single narrow window had jammed before it quite closed off the view, and she had left it there rather than risk damaging the mechanism. The glass had seemed heavy enough, and on this side of the building, overlooking the cliff edge, there had seemed little chance that anything would blow through it. Now, feeling the building shake, she was not so sure, and looked sideways under the crook of her elbow, at the hand‑span gap between the shutter and the bottom of the frame. She could see only the sky and the rain, the slate‑colored clouds periodically dimmed by sheets of water blown almost horizontally past the window. She had never seen anything like this before, could not believe how tired she felt, tired of the tension, the dull fear at the pit of her stomach. Storms on Callixte were just as dangerous, maybe more so; but they swept in out of the plains with a few minutes’ warning, and were over almost as quickly. There was none of the anticipation–days of anticipation–that preceded Burning Bright’s storms, and certainly nothing she’d ever been through had prepared her for the steady, numbing fear. And the worst of it was that she had nothing to do–there was nothing she could do to face the storm, and nothing in the Game seemed worthwhile compared to its massive force. Once she had pulled the copies of the jeu a clefoff the nets, there was nothing to distract her.

A noise from the street brought her bolt upright, heart pounding, an enormous ripping sound and then a crash. Roscha’s voice came indistinctly from the main room. “What the hell–?”

Lioe went to join her, found the other woman standing by the main door, her head cocked to one side. The working space was opened, and the air around Ransome’s chair was filled with Game images. “What was it, do you know?”

“Outside,” Roscha answered. She worked the locks. “Only one way to find out.”

Lioe nodded. Roscha slid back the last bolt, and eased back the heavy door. The wind caught them both by surprise, a gust of cold, wet air snapping past them into the room.

“I didn’t hear a window,” Lioe began.

“ Sha‑mai,” Roscha said. “The stairway’s gone.”

“The stairway?” Lioe repeated, foolishly, and Roscha edged back into the loft.

“See for yourself.”

Lioe leaned past her, blinking a little as the full force of the wind hit her. The short hall looked different, wrong somehow, and then she realized that the stairs were indeed gone, ripped away from the side of the building, the door hanging crooked by a single hinge. Even as she watched, another gust of wind set the door swinging, and the groan of the hinge pulling still farther out of the wall was loud even over the noise of the storm.

“The wind must’ve caught it just right,” Roscha said.

“Is there anything we should do?” Lioe asked. She looked up and down the hall as she spoke, wondering if any of the other tenants were around, glanced back to see Roscha shrug.

“I don’t know what. I don’t see any sheet‑board, or anything like that, and I can’t see that a little rain’s going to hurt this floor. There’s probably a maintenance staff around somewhere, anyway.”

“Probably,” Lioe agreed. She was certainly right about the damage: the battered tiles had been peeling away from the floor long before the storm started. She stepped back into the loft, and Roscha pushed the door closed again. She had to work against the weight of the wind, and Lioe leaned against it too, to help the bolts go home.

The Game shapes were still dancing in the air around Ransome’s chair. Lioe glanced idly at them, frowned, and looked more closely. Damian Chrestil’s face seemed to leap out at her from among the busy images. “What’s all this?” she asked, and turned to see Roscha looking at her with a mix of defiance and embarrassment. There was a little pause before the other woman spoke.

“I was trying to remake your scenario, the one you threw together. It was too good to waste–too good to waste on blackmail.”

Lioe ignored the deliberately provocative word. “I made a deal,” she said. “You could get all three of us killed, you, me, and Ransome.”

Roscha looked away. “I wasn’t going to run it as it stood, I was going to make a lot of changes. Enough to make a difference, I think–I know.” She faced Lioe again, scowling now. “You can’t stop me.”

Lioe looked at her for a long moment, weighing her options. No, I probably could stop you. I’ve got the influence on the Game nets, and I’m probably better on the nets than you are–and Ransome will help me–but that only works for a while. I’d have to watch you like a hawk, and I don’t have the time or the inclination to do that. “Maybe not,” she said aloud, “but the scenario shouldn’t run, regardless of my deal. It doesn’t belong in this Game.”

Roscha’s frown deepened, her expression faintly interested as well as suspicious. “Why not?”

“Because this Game is over.”

Roscha opened her mouth to protest, and Lioe lifted an eyebrow at her, daring her to continue. The other woman said nothing, and Lioe felt a thrill of excitement at the small victory, a small, sweet pleasure at a good beginning. Was this what Chauvelin felt, this sure power? She swept on, not wanting to lose her moment.

“Yes, this Game is ending. The scenario I’ve been running is the start of it, a bigger scenario that’s going to tie everything together, all the bits and pieces, and bring this Game to a solid conclusion, all the lines resolved in a single grand structure. And no one, ever, is going to be able to play with it again without knowing that it’s ended.” She had not realized, until then, how important that had become to her, to write one thing, create one scenario, that could never be changed–that no one would want to change. She went on more slowly, speaking now as much to herself as to Roscha, and heard both certainty and seduction in her tone. “It’s gotten stale, it’s too predictable right now. We’ve all felt it. So it’s time to start over, begin a new Game. And that’s where this scenario–” she nodded to the dancing images, to the faces of Chauvelin and Damian Chrestil hanging in the air beside the working chair–“it and lots of others like it–that’s where they come in. We can remake the Game so that it’s something real, not just a distant reflection of reality, but something that changes, comments on, reshapes what’s really going on. That’s the Game your scenario belongs in, don’t you see? Someplace where it will matter.”