Carnival

The guard at the gap in the zareba barely gave them a glance. They emerged into a camouflaged clearing that extended a few meters beyond the stockade, and crossed it quickly, Kusanagi‑Jones blinking gratefully when they entered the shade of the trees. He slid a hand under the borrowed shirt and retrieved the datacart, wincing at the beep when it activated.

Amateurs.

Something took flight overhead, invisible among the branches.

“What are you doing?” Robert asked.

“She’s east?”

“So Medeline said.” Robert stepped into the lead, using his own long knife to lift vegetation out of the way rather than slashing at it. Of that, at least, Kusanagi‑Jones approved.

The map was easy to use. Lesa’s estimated position was marked by a yellow dot, that of Kusanagi‑Jones and Robert by a pulsing green glow. All he had to do was make the second match the first.

He’d done harder things in Academy.

Robert never knew what hit him. Michelangelo stepped left, the chain from the door doubled in his right hand, the lock swinging freely. It struck Robert at the base of the skull, on a rising arc that snapped his head forward and sent him crashing forward into the brush. His knife went flying.

Michelangelo had to search to find it, after he straddled Robert and broke his neck.

It was a pity, because Michelangelo had sort of liked him. But he’d already proved he would switch sides over a woman he’d betrayed at least once, and unlike Vincent, Michelangelo didn’t believe in redemption.

And you couldn’t trust a Liar.

Lesa would have taken the night before over the day that followed. At least nants weren’t much for climbing, and few of them bothered to scale the inside of her trousers past where they bunched at the knee. After a while, the scathing agony of each individual bite, like a heated needle slipped into her skin, dulled into consistent pain as her flesh puffed up, honeycombed with lymph.

And when she could manage not to flinch reflexively at every bite, she didn’t wind up imbedding the thorns farther into her skin. Thrashing wouldn’t help her anyway. The wire‑plant’s barbs were backcurved like fishhooks, and every twist impaled her more. But if she could get her hands around the vines…

They were strong enough to take Stefan’s weight. If Lesa could manage a grip on them while she still had the strength, she could lift herself off the barbs. They hurt,but they weren’t long enough to threaten her unless they tore her throat or eyes, or punctured her i

It meant freeing one arm, however, while her entire weight rested on the wire‑plant wrapping her other arm and her torso, and every movement earned her anguish.

The thorns didn’t come out any sweeter than they’d gone in. She closed her eyes in concentration and lifted, edged, bending her wrist in an arc that encouraged the burred vine to drag down the back of her hand. She couldn’t just yank herself off the thorns without impaling herself on others; she had to coax it.

It was like giving birth, one centimeter, two centimeters. A slide and a moan and a fraction closer to freedom.

Flecks of sun dotted her face through the fluttering leaves of the strangler oak, and her tongue swelled in her mouth by the time she got the last serrated coil to scrape down her arm and drop away. She swayed with reaction and gasped painfully, the vines crossing her torso tightening.

Lifting her head, blinking sweat from her lashes, she studied the vines on her right side, looking for a place with fewer thorns. The motion made her light‑headed, the jungle a green whirl around her as she tilted her head back. But it would go faster now. She had a hand free, through careful work and resolute refusal to panic, and there was a spot about a half‑meter to the right and slightly over her head where the thorns might be thin enough that she’d only shred her hand grabbing onto the vine, rather than crippling it.

It beat dying here.

She reached out and took hold, gritting her teeth against the pain as she forced herself to close her hand.

Some of the thorns broke, while others cut deep, but she held on. Held on, and tensed the shoulder, and flexed the biceps, and pulled. She felt the tendons in her forearm take the strain, the searing heat flash up her neck, blinding white static, and a concomitant lessening of pain as her weight came off the thorns.

This might just work.

When Vincent had asked to talk to Katya, he hadn’t expected Elena to consent. They both knew talkwas a euphemism. But she showed him into the room and left him there, and almost two days later, there he still sat, across a low table from Katya, his bare heels resting on the strictly decorative rungs of a stool that was an outgrowth of House rather than a piece of individual furniture. He was already growing accustomed to single‑purpose objects, wasteful as they were. The little cultural differences could seem absolutely homey, compared to the big ones.

Katya stared sullenly, her hands folded in her lap as if to hide the manacles linking her wrists. She wouldn’t shift her gaze from his chin, which was meant to be disconcerting.

Vincent wouldn’t permit it to succeed.

She was good. Very practiced, very serene, offering open, neutral body language nearly as controlled as Michelangelo’s despite exhaustion that had her swaying in her chair. Many years of practice in lying to her mother had given her that edge.

But Vincent wasn’t Lesa, and he didn’t have a mother’s blindness, her self‑deception.

Katya Pretoria had no power over him.

They had been sitting here, with brief intermissions, for sixty‑one hours, most of two New Amazonian days. Katya had been sitting longer than Vincent, because Agnes took over when Vincent left the room, and Katya…didn’t leave the room.

Agnes, Katya would plead with. Vincent didn’t envy the older woman that.

Vincent could have taken longer breaks, but he contented himself with catnaps barely longer than microsleeps, because they were in this together. She needed never to realize he had been gone long enough to rest…and when she broke, he needed to be there. He needed to be making a difference, doing something, anything. Even if it was wrong.

And besides, he had something neither Katya nor Agnes had. He had chemistry, and his superperceiver’s skills.

He hadn’t seen Elena Pretoria since the interrogation started, and he didn’t blame her. He didn’t have a granddaughter, but if he did, he didn’t think he’d care to watch her browbeaten, cajoled, misled, manipulated, and entrapped by the likes of Vincent Katherinessen.

Especially if his child’s life hung in the balance.

He could only hope that wherever she was, Elena was putting as much effort into locating Saide Austin’s illegal genetic engineering lab as Vincent was into prying any potentially useful information out of Katya. And having better success.

He thought she might be weakening, though. The pauses were growing longer, the disco

She would break. All he needed was time. And to put away the sinking, invalid knowledge that Michelangelo could already be dead. Thatwas unbearable, the idea that something could have happened, and Vincent would not know. He wanted to believe there was some co

Even breaking her wasn’t without risks. After a certain point, she’d tell him anything just to get him to leave her alone. If she lied, he was counting on his ability to catch it. Almost as much as he was counting on her actually possessing the information he needed, which might be a little more problematic. But he’d deal with that crisis when he got there.