WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(56)

Gunfire crackled in the distant night. Small arms only, a spiteful sound that dissipated quickly among the streets and ornate facades. Candace was a very slim reed for a foreign fugitive to lean on, but he was the best Daniel Leary could think of right now.



"Five ninety-four!" Adele said decisively as she handed the monograph on garden gnomes to Prester. She might have grouped the volume either with gardens, 127, or statuary, 201, but she was at the end of a long day and feeling good at the amount she'd gotten done. "The first new category in the past hour, and a good time to stop and go home."

"Thank you, mistress!" Prester said in a tone of weary relief. She scurried off with the book. Her hands—the hands of all three of them; this hadn't been Adele's work alone—were black with the grime and mold that were inevitable results of a job like this.

Adele heard fireworks and shouting nearby. She sniffed and said, "I'd hoped that people would have worked off their Founder's Day high spirits by now, but this isn't the first time I overestimated human nature."

Prester was pasting a numbered scrap of paper to the end of a shelf. She looked over her shoulder. Adele gave her a quirky smile. Prester was adequately smart and had a dogged willingness that made up for her total inability to understand why anyone would want to store information. Her present labors deserved more reward than they were likely to get unless somebody helped.

"Vanness?" Adele said. The fellow brightened to be addressed directly. "There's obviously some partying going on. The streets may not be safe, so I want you to escort Prester to her lodgings."

She reached into her belt purse. "Here," she added. "I'll give you something in case you find a taxi."

Adele wasn't sure precisely what Hogg had said to the Chancellor, but that worthy had released the Electoral Librarian's first-quarter honorarium. Presumably this had involved a commission to the Chancellor, but by now Adele had enough contact with Daniel's servant to know that there were other possibilities. Hogg might have warned that a gang of Cinnabar sailors would smash up the Chancellor's residence if the honorarium weren't paid.

And while Bosun's Mate Woetjans and her crew couldn't have been more friendly and respectful to Adele herself, the threat might not have been empty. The casual violence with which the sailors cleared gawking locals from their path when they were working suggested they were ready to take the shortest way to accomplishing a task.

Adele noted dispassionately that when Prester smiled, her face was genuinely pretty. "But Ms. Mundy," Vanness protested. "You're at risk—"

Booted feet stamped through the door behind Adele. She turned in surprise. Armed guards wearing black and yellow berets spilled into the library. There were six or eight of them.

Markos's pale aide was one of the group. Instead of a beret she wore Zojira colors on ribbons around her upper arms. Her short cape was clasped at her throat, but the wings were slung back over her shoulders. She held a communicator in one hand and a center-grip submachine gun in the other.

"Zojiras!" Vanness shouted. He stepped forward, thrusting out his hands. God knew what he intended—to put his body between Adele and the gunmen, she supposed.

A Zojira fired, hitting Vanness in the chest and shoulder, though even at point-blank range half the burst blew splintered craters in shelving. Confetti exploded from a rank of genealogies. Kostroman weaponry was bulkier than its Cinnabar equivalent, and perhaps it wasn't as reliable, but there was nothing trivial about its effect.

Vanness spun backward, hit the floor, and bounced face up again. The submachine gun's bullets were too light to have any significant inertia. The victim's own spasming muscles flung him as though he'd been struck by lightning. Each projectile released its kinetic energy like a miniature bomb on the first solid object it struck.

Vanness's left side was a mass of blood and chips of exposed bone, but Adele doubted any of his vital organs were punctured. He had a very good chance to survive if they could bandage him before he bled out through the gaping surface wounds.

Vanness didn't cry out when he was hit. Prester screamed on a rising note, pressing her hands against her temples as if to hold her brain in.

"Put that gun up!" Adele said. She knelt beside Vanness, wondering what to use for a bandage. His own trousers were filthy from the hundreds of books he'd handled today.

The air was fanged with the smell of ozone and burned metal. The submachine gun's barrel generated a magnetic flux so dense that it ionized each pellet's light-metal driving skirt during the run up the bore.

The Zojira shooter pushed Adele away and put the muzzle of his gun against Vanness's forehead. Adele grabbed the barrel and jerked it aside. The sheathing of temperature-stable plastic burned her fingers. Somebody clubbed her from behind with a gun butt.