WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(57)

Adele fell sideways. The Zojira fired. Vanness's head erupted in a volcano of blood and solid matter. Each of the submachine gun's discharges was as sharp as stone snapping.

Vanness's back arched and his arms flung wide. His palms were black.

Adele lay face up. Her left side was numb, though the fiery tingling in her toes and fingertips meant she would have normal feeling back soon—if she lived.

The gunman who'd killed Vanness swung his submachine gun toward Adele. Its bore was a tiny tunnel glowing from the long bursts. Another Zojira, probably the one who'd slugged her from behind, was aiming at her head from the other side. Maybe they'd let recoil raise the gun muzzles when they fired so that they killed each other as well as her. . . .

Markos's aide shouted an order as crisp as the gunshots. She spoke in a Kostroman dialect, not Universal. That angry word was the first time Adele had heard emotion in the aide's voice.

The shooter straightened and snarled back at her. The aide socketed her submachine gun in the Zojira's navel. In Universal as precise as the directions in a gazetteer she said, "Step back and only speak when I tell you to speak. I won't warn you again."

Adele saw that she wasn't alone in thinking the aide was as deadly as a spider. The gunman turned and fired his submachine gun into a window to let out his frustrations.

The projectiles' high velocity meant that they punched neat circles the size of fifty-florin coins in the glass instead of breaking it. The plasma puffing from the muzzle flickered in reflection from the undamaged panes.

"Search and see who else is here," the aide said calmly to the Zojiras she led. She raised the communicator and spoke into it.

"Nobody else is here," Adele said in a husky voice. "Just the three of us."

There were six thugs, all of them male. They prowled the short rank of stacks, holding their guns out at arm's length as though to fend off any figure leaping from among the books. Two of them opened cartons and peered at the contents.

Adele got to her feet. Her right temple throbbed, but the momentary dizziness had passed. She stretched her left arm to the side and twisted it, making sure that it moved normally again.

Prester knelt on the floor with her forehead pressed against a bookcase. She was sobbing and her hands still squeezed her temples. Blood from the ruin of Vanness's head had dribbled to her bare toes, but she didn't seem to be aware of that.

The aide lowered the communicator and smiled faintly at Adele. "I'm to escort you to the Grand Salon, mistress," she said. Two of the gunmen looked at her. She nodded to them and added, "You two come with me. You others, take the woman there to the cage in the gardens. Report to whoever's in charge for reassignment."

"She's just an assistant," Adele said softly. "She isn't even a Hajas. Just the niece of a cousin of the Chancellor."

The aide shrugged. "Not my department," she said. "Maybe nothing will happen to her."

Two of the gunmen lifted Prester by the elbows. She hung as a dead weight, her feet drawing smears of blood on the tile floor.

"Shall we go, mistress?" the aide said. She waggled the submachine gun. That wasn't a threat; the weapon simply happened to be in her hand. Adele doubted that the woman ever threatened in the usual blustering sense of the word.

Without speaking, Adele Mundy walked into the hall and turned toward the staircase. If she delayed she'd find herself stepping in the trail of tacky blood Prester left on the floor.



The arched windows of Candace's four-story townhouse were shuttered, and there were no lights on in the front rooms to glimmer through the cracks. Candace lived with a retinue of twenty servants, so even if he himself had left the city there was certain to be somebody still in the house.

Daniel stepped into the shallow door alcove and knocked with the pads of his fingertips. The slapping sound of flesh on steel was enough to be heard inside without rousing the whole street. The panel was armored to resist battering rams.

Each of the tiles covering the facade was divided diagonally, half blue and half white; figured friezes separated the floors. The pattern seemed to strobe in direct sunlight because the rods and cones of the human eye didn't register at quite the same point on the retina. Now Daniel's only reaction was to wish the background was a neutral gray that his uniform would blend with. He felt as exposed as an infant in a hog pen.

There wasn't much traffic in Kostroma City tonight. You couldn't really call the situation quiet, though, because every few minutes there were gunshots somewhere in the darkness. Occasionally a firefight spread its lingering roar, and twice Daniel heard plasma cannon in use. The beams of ions had a hissing snarl that distance quickly muffled, but stone or concrete in their path fractured loudly.