That absence had nagged at him for weeks, until, coming away from his meeting with Tolonen, he had realized its significance. If DeVore couldn't be found inside, then maybe he wasn't inside – maybe he was outside? Karr had gone back to his office and stood there before the map of City Europe, staring at it, his eyes drawn time and again to the long, irregular space at the centre of the City – the Wilds – until he knew for a certainty that was where he'd find DeVore. There, somewhere in that tiny space.
But what had seemed small on the map was gigantic in reality. The mountains were overpowering, both in their size and number. They filled the sky from one horizon to the other, and when he turned, there they were again, marching away into the distance, until the whole world seemed but one long mountain range and the City nothing.
So, where to start? Where, in all this vastness of rock and ice, to start? How search this godsforsaken place?
He was pondering that when he saw the second craft come up over the ridge and descend, landing beside his own, in the valley far below. A moment later a figure spilled from the craft and began to make its way towards him, climbing the slope. It was Chen.
‘Gregor!' Chen greeted him. ‘I've been looking all over for you.'
‘What is it?' Karr answered, trudging down through the snow to meet him.
Chen stopped, then lifted his snow-goggles, looking up at him. ‘I've brought new orders. From the T'ang.'
Karr stared at him, then took the sealed package and tore it open.
‘What does it say?'
‘That we're to close the files on the murders. Not only that, but we're to stop our search for DeVore – temporarily, at least – and concentrate on penetrating the Ping Tiao organization. It seems they're planning something big.'
Chen watched the big man nod to himself, as if taking in this new information, then look about him and laugh.
‘What is it?' he asked, surprised by Karr's laughter.
‘Just this,' Karr answered, holding the T'ang's orders up. ‘And this,' he added, indicating the mountains all about them. ‘I was thinking... two paths, but the goal's the same. DeVore.'
‘DeVore?'
‘Yes. The T'ang wants us to investigate the Ping Tiao, and so we shall, but when we lift that stone, you can lay odds on which insect will come scuttling out from under it.'
‘DeVore,' said Chen, smiling.
Hans Ebert stood on the wooden veranda of the lodge, staring up the steep, snowcovered slope, his breath pluming in the crisp air. As he watched, the dark spot high up the slope descended slowly, coming closer, growing, until it was discernibly a human figure. It was coming on apace, in a zigzag path that would bring it to the lodge.
Ebert clapped his gloved hands together and turned to look back inside the lodge. There were three other men with him; his comrades in arms. Men he could trust.
‘He's here!' he shouted in to them. ‘Quick now! You know your orders!'
They got up from the table at once, taking their weapons from the rack near the door before going to their posts.
When the skier drew up beneath the veranda, the lodge seemed empty except for the figure leaning out over the balcony. The skier thrust his sticks into the snow, then lifted his goggles and peeled off his gloves.
‘I'm pleased to see you, Hans. I didn't know if you would come.'
Ebert straightened up then started down the steps. ‘My uncle is a persuasive man, Shih DeVore. I hadn't realized he was an old friend of yours.'
DeVore laughed, stooping to unfasten his boots. He snapped the clips and stepped off the skis. ‘He isn't. Not officially. Nor will you be. Officially.'
He met the younger man at the bottom of the steps and shook both his hands firmly, warmly, flesh to gloves.
‘I understand it now.'
‘Understand what? Come, Hans, let's go inside. The air is too keen for such talk.'
Hans let himself be led back up into the lodge. When they were sitting, drinks in hand, he continued. ‘What I meant is, I understand now how you've managed to avoid us all these years. More old friends, eh?'
‘One or two,' said DeVore cryptically, and laughed.
‘Yes,' Ebert said thoughtfully, ‘you're a regular member of the family, aren't you?' He had been studying DeVore, trying to gauge whether he was armed or not.
‘You forget how useful I once was to your father.'
‘No...' Ebert chose the next few words more carefully. ‘I simply remember how harmful you were subsequently. How dangerous. Even to meet you like this, it's...'
‘Fraught with danger?' DeVore laughed again, a hearty, sincere laughter that strangely irritated the younger man.
DeVore looked across the room. In one corner a wei chi board had been set up, seven black stones forming an H on the otherwise empty grid.
‘I see you've thought of everything,' he said, smiling again. ‘Do you want to play while we talk?'
Ebert hesitated, then gave a nod. DeVore seemed somehow too bright, too at ease, for his liking.
The two men went to the table in the corner.
‘Where shall I sit? Here?'
Ebert smiled. ‘If you like.' It was exactly where he wanted DeVore. At that point he was covered by all three of the marksmen concealed overhead. If he tried anything...
DeVore sat, perfectly at ease, lifting the lid from the pot, then placed the first of his stones in tsu, the north. Ebert sat, facing him, studying him a moment, then lifted the lid from his pot and took one of the black stones between his fingers. He had prepared his men beforehand. If he played in one particular place – in the middle of the board, on the edge of shang, the south, on the intersection beside his own central stone – then they were to open fire, killing DeVore. Otherwise they were to fire only if Ebert's life was endangered.
Ebert reached across, playing at the top of shang, two places out from his own corner stone, two lines down from the edge.
‘Well?' he said, looking at DeVore across the board. ‘You're not here to ask after my health. What do you wng eVorseto pant?'
DeVore was studying the board as if he could see the game to come – the patterns of black stones and white, their shape and interaction. ‘Me? I don't want anything. At least, nothing from you, Hans. That's not why I'm here.' He set down a white stone, close by Ebert's last, then looked up, smiling again. ‘I'm here because there's something you might want.'
Ebert stared at him, astonished, then laughed. ‘What could I possibly want from you?' He slapped a stone down almost carelessly, three spaces out from the first.
DeVore studied the move, then shook his head. He took a stone from his pot and set it down midway between the corner and the centre, as if to divide some future formation of Ebert's stones.
‘You have everything you need, then, Hans?'
Ebert narrowed his eyes, then slapped down another stone irritably. It was two spaces out from the centre, between DeVore's and his own, so that the five stones now formed a broken diagonal line from the corner to the centre, two black, one white, then two more black.
DeVore smiled broadly. ‘That's an interesting shape, don't you think? But it's weak, like the Seven. Black might outnumber white, but white isn't surrounded.'
Ebert sat back. ‘Meaning what?'
DeVore set down another stone, pushing out towards ch'u, the west. A triangle of three white stones now sat to the right of a triangle of black stones. Ebert stared at the position a moment, then looked up into DeVore's face again.
DeVore was watching him closely, his eyes suddenly sharp, alert, the smile gone from his lips.
‘Meaning that you serve a master you despise. Accordingly, you play badly. Winning or losing has no meaning for you. No interest.'
Ebert touched his upper teeth with his tongue, then took another stone and placed it, eight down, six out in shang. It was a necessary move; a strengthening move. It prevented DeVore from breaking his line while expanding the territory he now surrounded. The game was going well for him.
‘You read my mind, then, Shih DeVore? You know how I think?'
‘I know that you're a man of considerable talent, Hans. And I know that you're bored. I can see it in the things you do, the decisions you make. I can see how you hold the greater part of yourself back constantly. Am I wrong, then? Is what I see really the best you can do?'
DeVore set down another stone. Unexpectedly it cut across the shape Ebert had just made, pushing into the territory he had mapped out. It seemed an absurd move, a weak move, but Ebert knew that DeVore was a master at this game. He would not make such a move without good reason.
‘It seems you want me to cut you. But if I do, it means you infiltrate this area here.' He sketched it out.
‘And if you don't?'
‘Well, it's obvious. You cut me. You separate my groups.'
DeVore smiled. ‘So. A dilemma. What to choose?'
Ebert looked up again, meeting his eyes. He knew that DeVore was saying something to him through the game. But what? Was DeVore asking him to make a choice? The Seven or himself? Was he asking him to come out in the open and declare himself?
He set down his stone, cutting DeVore, keeping his own lines open.
‘You say the Seven are weak, but you, are you any stronger?'
‘At present, no. Look at me, I'm like these five white stones here on the board. I'm cut and scattered and outnumbered. But I'm a good p> such knind, theplayer and the odds are better than when I started. Then they were seven to one. Now...' he placed his sixth stone, six down, four out in shang, threatening the corner ‘... it's only two to one. And every move improves my chances. I'll win. Eventually.'