S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

He closed his eyes and sought inward. The DNA template simply gave you the adult form of the organism at maturity, with optimum development; modifying it to mimic somatic changes caused by an individual's life history was considerably more difficult. Even a little clumsiness could kill the pseudobody, which meant you had to start over…and subjectively experience death, as well, even if only for an instant, and a chance of the Final Death if you were really careless. The others stared as the hair grew shorter and the face a little thinner.

"There," he said, and opened his eyes. "I could pass for you. But now I have a better option, with your news, senorita."

He smiled grimly and changed once more. This was the easiest of all; the body was a Shadowspawn one, and related to him as closely as possible except for a clone or identical twin. Cheba did give a little jump backwards, as Adrienne Breze grinned at her. Then she closed her eyes for an instant, lips moving.

"Is this correct, Cheba? Our lives may depend on it!"

She moistened her lips and forced herself to concentrate. "The…the hair is shorter. It fell out when she was sick and had to grow back. And…just a little thinner."

Another careful look as he changed. "Yes, yes, that is right."

"Good." He looked at Guha. "I'll need some of your street clothes; they'll be the right size. Jeans and a T-shirt and a jacket, yes. A Glock and a wrought knife, too. And my Ferrari is something she might have picked up."

Ellen brought him the clothes, and he dressed quickly. The way the body moved was odd, in a way less natural than a beast's, but it wasn't the first time he'd transformed so.

"How do I look?" he said.

Ellen studied him critically. "Tuck the shirt in. And you need some lipstick, just a touch…Here, I'll do it."

"Now?" he said, when her light, deft hands were done.

His voice sounded a little odd to him as a soprano as well.

"Gorgeous, lover!" she said, and gave him a long kiss.

He grinned again as it finished. "I fear you are shocking our recruits," he said.

Ellen cocked a brow at Salvador. "Hey, don't knock it. All the advantages of polyamory and monogamy rolled into one!" Fiercely, to Adrian: "We're going to pull this off."

Adrian nodded. To Cheba: "It is credible that she would bring you in the front door?"

"Yes. Sometimes she takes me places, dates, she calls it. To humiliate me, I think. I don't let it, I just learn how to act in fancy places or wear the clothes. Someday I will have these things of my own."

"She is not a nice person. Let that return to bite her."

"Yes!"

The brooding presence of the casa grande grew as the sports car rumbled through the streets of Rancho Sangre. The scent of time, of Power, of generations of blood and terror and unclean death.

"You drive like her," Cheba said, startling him a little. "Very fast, stupidly fast. But very well."

Adrian shrugged. "We are related." A wry smile. "We are mirror images, in a way. Similar, but…reversed. Each seeks to destroy the other, because each of us sees what we might have been."

The great wrought-iron gates with their gilded designs of tridents and blackened bronze suns opened automatically. The Gurkha mercenaries snapped to attention, presenting their assault rifles. Adrian nodded at their noncom and followed the winding brick-paved road, with stars showing in flickers through the live oaks arching overhead. Scents of cypress and cut grass and oleander came to them, and wind fluttered their long hair beneath the head scarves.

A servant in a braided white jacket and black trousers hurried out to open the car door.

"Leave it here," Adrian said, with a lordly nod. "Come, my sweet little nibblesome bizcocho," he went on, and walked in with an arm around Cheba's waist, feeling the stiff disdain in her body language.

She was supposed to be acting as she would with Adrienne, which he suspected wasn't easy.

Tall doors and the great entry hall went by. He fought down his excitement and his dread, struggling for focus; that was always just a touch harder when he wore a female form, but he was considerably more aware of detail, more able to track multiple lines of thought and action at the same time.

"Assistant household manager," Cheba whispered in his ear as they reached the top of the stairs and the beginning of the corridor that led to the private wing. "Thomas Kenworth. He is the one who really runs the house, while Theresa does the bigger things."

A middle-aged man, cadaverous, with very cold blue eyes. Adrian could sense his blank surprise, and beneath it a very thin thread of suspicion. Not yet conscious, manifesting only as a feeling of unease, and anyone who wasn't uneasy around Adrienne wouldn't last long. And this one had some sensitivity; not trained, but he felt as if he were a little over twenty on the Alberman, nearly as strong as Harvey. Adrian's night-walking manifestation was very strong; there were times when he forgot he was not embodied in this state himself. But there were ways to detect it, if you knew how.

" Dona," the man said, bowing. "This is unexpected!"

"Predictability is so boring," Adrian said. "Of course, it wouldn't do for you to go off on tangents, Thomas, but that's another matter, eh?"

A flash of fear. "How may I serve you?"

"I decided that my nights would be too lonely without athletic little Cheba here, so I ducked back to fetch her. And the children; they should be present at the historic moment. Send someone to pack their things, immediately."

"But, Dona -"

A touch of ice, and a painful tug at the man's mind. "Is there a problem with immediately, Thomas? I'll go through to the nursery, and I would appreciate it if I didn't have to wait. You know how waiting upsets me."

The man hastened off, pulling his phone from his belt as he did.

Adrian suppressed an impulse to blow out a sigh of relief and wipe his brow. He didn't hurry either, instead strolling along and remembering to sway slightly.

"That was as she would do it," Cheba murmured. "But she did not threaten so very often. Sometimes she would just kill instead. Mostly she would smile, and order, and they all obeyed very quickly."

Adrian nodded jerkily. I must remember that my Adrienne is my vision. Not untrue, but not all the truth of another being.

They turned down the long corridor…and Adrian flung himself backwards, his arms outstretched. Cheba turned to him, her face puzzled as his gaze went to the tile surround that outlined the arch, and down to the floor. The way was closed by two doors of gilded bronze fretwork, but that was not the problem; they were light and not locked.

"What is the problem?" she said. "The children's quarters are beyond here."

Adrian hissed as the hint of pain ran along his nerves. One step farther…His stomach lurched a little as he read the twisting paths grouped around the portal. He had felt something like this at Ellen's apartment, over a year ago, when his sister had left a trap for him. A probability cascade, an avalanche of might-bes, each more disastrous and deadly than the last. He relaxed the focus of his eyes, his hands moving in small, precise gestures, murmuring Mhabrogast beneath his breath, Seeing.

But that had been an improvisation. This was something that had taken days or weeks, great skill, and several lives. It was so complex that it was almost sentient, alive in its own way, a thing like an eternal scream, ready to lock you in its arms and spiral down the slope of entropy on a journey that would never end.

"What?" Cheba said again, sharply.

"You said that you could feel the Wreakings sometimes?" She nodded quickly, her dark eyes going wide. "Well, they are here. Very strong, and some of them new. Like rats in the walls of the world, indeed, and aimed at me-or at my kind, at least. If I had walked beneath that arch with the Power active and hostile intent, neither of us would have left here alive."