“Tell us,” Michael said.

“I don’t know,” Serrin replied. “I’ve tried some digging but there’s so much bulldrek about this kind of thing that without expert advice I couldn’t begin to sort out the wheat from the chaff. I mean, we’ve both been through the How do you know ‘God isn’t a woman’ drek and that kind of thing enough times.”

Kristen looked pointedly at him.

“Sorry, lover. It’s just that the people who make that argument are ninety-nine point nine per cent screaming flakes,” Serrin said impatiently. ‘You spend a couple of days reading nothing but and you’ll agree, trust me.

“There has to be something more than our decker merely adopting Leonardo’s persona and having a Leonardo fixation. Otherwise, the Priory and the NOJ wouldn’t be involved.”

“I’ll buy that,” Michael said.

Serrin shrugged. “We can’t know that. But I wonder. The official line on the Priory is that they serve to protect the bloodline of Christ, right? The old myth that Christ wasn’t crucified but came to Europe, maybe with Joseph of Arimathea, had children and some still survive? The Gnostic gospels have stuff on this and there are almost as many files suggesting conspiracies along those lines hogging the Matrix as there are on Trekker drek. But even by the standards of flake theories, it’s weak. I’m not buying into it as the Big Reason behind all of this. But they’re protecting something. I just wondered if-”

“If this is a descendant of Leonardo?” Michael said doubtfully.

“That possibility has occurred to me,” Serrin admitted “But it doesn’t feel right either. I still think there has to be some link to the real Leonardo. This isn’t just a flake doing impersonations”

“Whoever pulled that stunt with the gun Blondie had was no flake, that’s for bloody sure,” Streak said. “I have no idea what took that guy out, but trust me, I’d give up all the dosh I’ve got stashed to be able to buy one, If someone can invent something like that, we’re not dealing with an idiot.”

“Not to mention the minor matter of crashing the entire fragging Matrix,” Michael reminded them.

Serrin smiled weakly. “We almost forgot about that for a moment, didn’t we?”

“What we desperately need to do,” he went on, “is somehow get one step ahead. So far, we’ve been following leads and there always seems to be someone waiting for us around the corner. We have to find some way, just one thing, for moving ahead of the game. And this is a game, albeit a game with seriously high stakes.”

Serrin hesitated. The pause told Geraint there was something he wasn’t revealing.

“Come on, Serrin, what is it? It’s Hessler, isn’t it? He told you something you don’t want to tell us. I guess I understand why, but-”

“No, it isn’t Hessler. It’s Merlin,” Serrin said, gently and sadly. The change in his voice was obvious. They all fell silent and looked at him.

“Merlin is a better ‘human being’ than most people are, I think,” he said. “Well, elf, human, what the frag. He’s a spirit of people, I think. I don’t know much about his history, he hasn’t told me about it. But he genuinely likes people and he’s troubled. He knows who we’re after, and can’t tell because he’d be destroyed once people figured it out that we got it from him”

“Then Hessler must know,” Michael pointed out.

“Yes, I think he must,” Serrin agreed. “He’s obviously a member of some powerful hermetic order. His cormmand of metamagic is something else, I can tell you. He can snap his fingers and do things I’d need a week of preparation to even risk attempting. He’s impressive. And he’s especially impressive because he doesn’t make a show out of it, and he doesn’t do things in ways other than are absolutely necessary. I’ll never be anywhere near that good.” He shook his head, but not sadly. “He’s simply in another league. Whatever that is. I think there’s some kind of game afoot among them. And our target is part of that game.”

“So what’s the point of the game?”

“Our target wants the money,” Serrin said. “I do know that. He genuinely wants the money, though I don’t know what for.”

“You could buy a fair-sized country with it,” Geraint observed. “So he could want almost anything. With that much, you could do almost anything, let’s face it.”

“Look at it from the other side,” Michael said. “What could you want to do that needs that much money?”

“Settle Mars?” Streak said, shrugging his shoulders. “Frag it, you’re talking that kind of scale.”

“What would you want to do if you were Leonardo?” Kristen asked. They turned and looked at her. “Sorry, was I being stupid?” she said meekly.

“On the contrary,” Michael said. “Serrin, can I borrow your wife for a while? Would you mind, Kristen? You have more common sense than I do and I think I have a lot of data you ought to be looking through.

“If this is deeper than just a Leonardo-fixation, then we should test the idea out. What would Leonardo have done next? What did he leave as an unfulfilled ambition? At least if we work on this theory we could do something. Something that could be a signal to that someone, out here, who’s playing this deadly game. And we might just get a response.”

“You’ll have to continue this discussion without me,” Geraint told them. “I have to go and bathe and change. Luncheon awaits.”

“We won’t expect you back too soon,” Michael said sweetly.

“Frag off,” Geraint said tartly.

“Actually. Geraint,” Michael said as seriously as he could muster, “if the drek hits the fan and you go broke, the Countess has a lot of property holdings. She’s a very rich window indeed. And a marriage to a de Medici too. It would be so utterly, utterly romantic.” He gave a horribly twee grin and then his face broke into a playful smirk.

“Welsh-Italian children. Imagine the tantrums they could throw!”

Geraint decided, on balance, not to throw the marble ashtray at him, but it was close for a time. He stalked out of the room.

“Kristen, my dear, you just made more sense in one line than we’ve managed in several days,” Michael said with relish. “Now let’s see what we can do on the basis of it.”

“There’s just one final thing,” Serrin said hesitantly. “About the bloodline angle. And the androgyne.”

“Mmmm?”

“I wondered, just wondered, if it might not be a woman, you know. Putting her face on Shroudman. Doing what her great-great-as-many-greats-as-you-can-count great-grandfather did when he painted Mona Lisa. Wouldn’t it fit?”

Most chains of reasoning break down somewhere. Serrin’s just had. But as Geraint toweled himself dry after his shower and mentally checked the list of purchases he wanted to make on the way, and as the others discussed their options, it was a woman, somewhere, who looked down on all this and smiled.

But she was smiling upon someone else, and he was in another city.

21

She’d changed little. There were a few, just a very few white and gray hairs scattered among the thatch of black, but her blue eyes were as liquid bright and ocean deep as ever they had been. Geraint hadn’t thought that eyes so dark blue could be found outside of Tir Na nOg, but he’d been mistaken. And he’d looked into them long enough to be sure, those many years ago.

“It’s been a long time, Geraint,” Cecilia said in her soft voice.

“I needed the time,” he said simply.

Geraint took her hand and led her down the marbled corridor, into the conservatory garden. He knew every inch of the house, and it hadn’t changed much in all this time. Some of the trees had grown more than he might have expected; the freak olive, with its cinnamon-edged leaves, had flourished and stood double his height now. He sat down with her at the bronze-topped iron table and presented her with his gift.

She opened the packaging, pushing back the layers of silky, pearl-colored tissue paper, and took out the dress. It was the simple, classic, small black dress that has always flattered the woman slim and small enough to wear it well. She was about to compliment him on it when her hand found the jewel box underneath it. Her eyes darted a glance at him, then dipped again as she flipped it open and took out the pearls inside. She smiled at him.