“Agreed.” Roscha still looked grim, but the tight set of her mouth eased a little.

Damian nodded, and slid the draft across the desktop toward her. Roscha took it, pocketed it without looking at the faint printing. “Right, then,” Damian said, and the woman turned away, accepting that dismissal. Even before the door had closed behind her, Damian reached for the shadowscreen, raising the priority of his inquiry about the MIS complainant. A member of the Merchant Investors, even a low‑ranking one, who was also a computer jockey and who was around his warehouses often enough for Roscha to recognize him by sight, was a man who would bear watching. It just might explain how local Customs had come to question a shipment of his last month. On the whole, he thought, it was worth paying Roscha’s fine–he might not even bother taking all of it out of her check.

He sighed then, and turned his attention back to the waiting messages. As he’d expected, his eldest sibling, Altagracian, the Chrestil‑Brisch Pensionary, was at the top of the list. Damian scanned the curt message– call at once–but dumped it into a holding file without answering. Chrestillio always overreacted; he could wait a little longer.

The secretary chimed again, and said, “There is an incoming message under your private and urgent code. Do you wish to accept?”

Damian frowned, but none of his siblings had that set of numbers. “Yes. Put it on the main board.”

The central panel of the unimpressive triptych on the far wall– I should commission something better, he thought, not for the first time–slid apart to reveal the main screen, and a moment later the connect codes streamed across the black glass. The Visiting Speaker Kuguee ji‑Imbaoa looked out at him, heavy body framed by the curtains of an enormous bed.

Ambassador Chauvelin does well for himself, Damian thought, and hid a grin. He said aloud, “Good morning, Na Speaker. I trust everything’s well with you.”

“Na Damian.” The Visiting Speaker was making an effort to be polite, unusual for him. Damian Chrestil waited warily.

“You had some concerns about one of the ambassador’s agents,” ji‑Imbaoa said abruptly, and Damian glanced involuntarily at the security telltales embedded in the desktop.

“Na Speaker, our conversation was rather more secure–”

“I have taken precautions,” ji‑Imbaoa interrupted. “My end of this transmission is safe.”

The hissing accent made the words even more of a rebuke, and Damian frowned, looking again at the security readout. “So is mine, but it’s not a chance I like taking.”

“You had been concerned about this agent, this Ransome,” ji‑Imbaoa went on, and Damian resigned himself.

“Yes. I was and am.” And I’ve been trying my damnedest to get him back into the Game and off the main nets. The bastard spends too much time on the nets, he’s bound to see what I’ve done to move the lachesi–

“I have told Chauvelin that you want Ransome back in the Game,” ji‑Imbaoa went on, “and that I believe Ransome should do what you want–so that we can find out what you are up to, of course.”

“Christ.” Damian controlled himself with an effort, said only, “Don’t you think that’s a little obvious, Na Speaker?” And what if he actually does find out?

“I rely on your bait to be good enough.” Ji‑Imbaoa inspected his fingerclaws, a smug and satisfied gesture.

“As I relied on you to get him off the nets,” Damian snapped. “Na Speaker, if you want this cargo that you’ve invested so heavily in to get where it’s supposed to be going, Illario Ransome has to be distracted.”

“I do not understand why he is so important.” Ji‑Imbaoa sat down abruptly on the bed, flicked claws in impatient dismissal.

Because he’s the best netwalker I’ve ever seen. And he plays politics. Damian said aloud, keeping a tight rein on his temper, “Illario Ransome is brilliant on the nets. He is also an imagist, he taps all the nets, all of them, he goes trawling for images for his story eggs, and he remembers everything. He’s the only person who would be at the right place at the right time to spot the paper trail, and the only one who has enough outside information to put the pieces together. Does that make it clear?”

There was a little silence, and then ji‑Imbaoa looked away. “Still, you should have what you want. He should be distracted, investigating your Game.”

“I hope so.” Damian paused, considering. It might work, at that, might give him the time he needed to–adjust–the customs nets to accept his new cargo. If Ransome did as he was told, of course, and if Cella’s scenarios were enough to catch his eye… But Storm was coming, too, and the first few days of Carnival were celebrated on the nets, as well as on the streets. The two things together might be enough to let him get away with it. “Have you gotten the destination codes?”

“I am still waiting,” ji‑Imbaoa said. “I will pass them on to you as soon as I have them, you need not worry.”

I always worry, Damian thought, but said, “All right. The sooner the better, though, Na Speaker, because without them I can’t get this cargo into HsaioiAn.” He paused, seeing annoyance in the sudden clenching of ji‑Imbaoa’s hands, made himself add, “Thanks for dealing with Ransome, though.”

Ji‑Imbaoa’s hands relaxed. “We are in this together, Na Chrestil. Now, I have had an active night, and wish to sleep.”

“Sleep well, then,” Damian answered, and cut the connection. He leaned back in his chair, ran his hand across the shadowscreen to close down the link. The triptych slid slowly back into place over the now‑empty screen, and he stared at it for a moment. I wonder what it would cost me to commission Ransome to do a piece to replace it? he wondered, and grinned at the thought. It might keep him busy for a while, and he’d be furious: it’s an insultingly minor job. Hell, it might be worth asking just to see the look on his face. He fiddled with the shadowscreen, filing the thought for later consideration, and touched another icon to bring up the rest of his mail. The secretary, programmed to be helpful, appended a to‑do list as well. Damian considered it for a moment, and succumbed to temptation. Rosaurin wanted him to approve the next week’s shipping plot, and that was much more fun than the painstaking records‑melding that needed to be done. He pushed himself away from his desk and out the door before he could change his mind.

Day 30

High Spring: Ransome’s Loft,

Old Coast Road, Newfields,

Above Junction Pool

Ransome half sat, half lay in the chair that conformed itself to his thin body, barely aware of the shifting cushions that held him exactly where he wanted to be. Images filled the air around him, ghostly yet substantial‑seeming, all but blocking out the cityscape spread out below the loft windows. The windows dimmed again, cutting out the sunlight–they had been dimming steadily since sunrise, following the house programming–but Ransome did not notice, lost in the flickering narrowcasts that held and surrounded him. The implants set into the bones at the outer edges of his eye sockets caught and amplified the conflicting signals; his wire gloves, thin and flexible and warm as blood, let him sculpt the space around him, defining each unreal volume according to his whim. The offerings of half a dozen different narrownets danced in the air around him: Gamers to his left, four different sessions played out in as many different venues, three old, pretaped, the fourth a late‑night session that had dragged on into the morning. Faces and streets and shadows, culled illegally from the Lockwardens’ security systems, wove in and through the other images, overlaying them with a bizarre patchwork of morning light and shade. The matching audio murmured on a dozen channels from the speakers at the base of the room’s walls, backing the images with the solidity of sound. His attention was fixed on a single image, floating overhead, at the apex of the cone of light and noise: flickering market glyphs from the port computers spun in delicate linkage, legitimate public numbers and private taps combined into a single database, strings of numbers combined into a dazzling three‑dimensional shape that had a weird organic beauty all its own.