Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

“I’ve been here before.” She touched the bone hilt of the sword. “And had to use this before.”

Helvetian rules. No weapons except knives or swords allowed downsurface, they catch you with a gun, a lightlance, whatever, you’re fined and it’s no fleabite, they catch you again and you go to work on one of the farms or in the mines. Never heard they caught anyone three times. Result of all this is it’s a dueling society, the little daytime clerks become nighttime rogues and swaggerers living out byzantine fantasies with an edge of real danger to them. Outside the trucegrounds you’d better hire a bodyguard or be able to defend yourself. The Faceless Seven who run the place refuse responsibility for anything that happens to idiots who should know better. Colorful place.

I rather enjoy my visits here. They take me back to my first body when I was earning my living with a two-handed broadsword my daddy gave me. Actually he made it for the local lord’s braindead whelp, but when I had to hit the hills to keep my neck in one piece, he booted my backside for old time’s sake and gave me the sword to remember him by. Which is by way of explaining that the sword I take downsurface is a two-handed broadsword with a pora-ini stressed crystal edge bonded onto the lightweight byttersteel alloy. Not that I’m challenged much these days. After I acquired this body and Slancy and had been trading in this and that for a year or so, time came I had business on Helvetia. I knew how things worked there so I went to an acquaintance who was a metalsmith in his spare time (with highly irregular access to some very special alloys), and had him make most of Harska (I named her Harska after an old old sometime friend); I did the bonding myself, a little trick I picked up from the R’Moahl. And I fixed up a sheath that could hold her so I wouldn’t slice my butt off if I had to do some dodging. That was Kumari’s first trip with me and we went out celebrating after we finished business. When she’s dressed for playtime, she’s beautiful in her eerie way, she’s got no more figure than a teener boy, but what there is of her is elegant. Some local hotshot decided he was the answer to her dreams and wouldn’t back off when she informed him she wasn’t interested. So she told him in a voice that cut like Harska’s edge that he had the intelligence of a sea slug, that she wouldn’t be interested in him or any other man since she belonged to another species and was neuter besides and even if she weren’t, he smelled bad. I wasn’t going to interfere; I’d seen her in action a couple of times with the dozen or more small knives she has tucked away here and there about her body; she was willing and more than able to handle that character herself though she looked fragile as thistledown, but he wouldn’t have it that way, probably didn’t suit his self-image; he challenged me instead. I took his arm off and an ear with it in the first thirty seconds of that duel; one of his friends tried to cry foul, but there was nothing in the rules about fancy touches like that edge. It said sword and sword she was. And sword she is.

Kumari came in. She raised her brows. “Not dressed yet?”

She meant Harska. I grinned. “Just making a last go-through. Got us on a shuttle?”

“Twenty minutes on, so don’t waste time primping. The next opening is six hours from now. There’s a bubble in the lock, ready for the transfer. I’ve booked us into an ottotel trucehouse and set up a tentative appointment with O-nioni tomorrow to get the contract working and settle the escrow. Ti Vnok wants to talk to you tonight. If possible. He says a shielded room at the Treehouse and come blankshield. Which means Pels and I will be there ahead of you working the house. If you think it’s worth the trouble.”

“Let’s see what’s waiting first. We might have to do some tailcleaning.”

“Right. If Pels’ nose is as sharp as he thinks.”

Adelaar clicked her tongue, a sharp impatient sound. “What are you two talking about?”

“Pels thinks we have ticks on our tail. Followed us in after we surfaced out beyond the Limit.”

“I see.”

“Must have guessed we were heading here and messaged ahead.”

“No doubt.”

“Right. Kumari, take our client to the bubble, I’ll collect Pels and my gear and meet you, five minutes, I swear.”

“Right.” Kumari drawled the word, turning it into a sarcastic comment. “Have you ever noticed, aici Arash,” she touched Adelaar’s arm and nudged her toward the exit, “how much men talk about women dawdling and how long it takes them to get themselves together?”

The shuttle platform was a towertop that looked down on clouds when there were any and south across the great glittering city, a city that grew on the edge of an ocean and spread inland to jagged young mountains. In the trucegrounds and the business sectors, sunlight ran like water along slickery surfaces, flickered erratically off shattered diamante walls, was thrown in white hot spears from mirror to mirror, mirror mirror on the wall who’s the costliest city of all, mirror mirror everywhere and never a one to look in (go blind if you tried), the spears going here, going there, constantly altering direction as the mirrors changed orientation and the sun rode its customary arc across the sky. It was a city of light, beautiful in its imperious way, meant to intimidate the visitors stepping unaware onto the glassed-in platform; even those who’d been there before were affected by it no matter how blasй a face they wore. We touched down late in the afternoon when some of the glitter and slide was muted, not quite blinding, and still it was a breath stealing thing to stand there and look out across it to a sea bluer than blue melding into a misty blue sky.

Down on ground level the light was even more intense, shooting past you, through you, around you, dissolving wall and street alike into more light, until you began to wonder if anything was real, including yourself; it was disturbing, uncomfortable-and very practical. Among other things it kept streets and walkways clear, no matter how many visitors descended on the city. Scattered haphazardly, at all levels from roof to cellar, there were small arbors with mossy fountains and cool air rustling through the leaves of lace trees and pungent conifers, where shadows flicked across the face of the person sitting across a table from you with the intimacy of a caress. The contrast was a killer punch more subtle than a drug, and did they know it, those buyers and sellers, those agents and facilitators who were parasites on the primary business of Helvetia, those citizens and business agents who lived in the city and on the city, year round, year on year. More contracts were registered from the arbors than in all the offices, cabinets, bureaus put together.

We bought visors from a robovender in case we needed to hit the streets, dropped to the terminal and fought the swarm at the tube cars until we managed to snag a car bound for the ottotel trucehouse where Kumari had booked us in. Kumari and I kept Adelaar sandwiched between us and Pels rode rearguard, pulling after him a mob of females of every shape and size, bipeds, tripeds and even a hairy monopod; they all seemed to want to catch him up and cuddle him (the monopod too, which presented an interesting problem in logistics), they giggled when he snarled at them, a daring octoped with blushing tentacles scratched behind his ear, you wouldn’t think these were hard-driving, high-pressure businesswomen capable of metaphorically (or even actually) cutting a rival’s throat with zest and panache; it must be some pheromone he gives off; if you could package it and sell it as perfume you’d make a fortune. It was as effective as it always was, his peculiar defense, those females made a fine and fancy shield for the rest of us. Anyone who had mayhem on his (or her or ves or its) mind generally backed off from performing in front of that many interested spectators. And, give this to the Faceless Seven, we didn’t have to worry about long distance sniping.