Carnival

He grunted. “Miss Ouagadougou wasn’t working for the Right Hand,” he said. “She’s Coalition.”

“Yes,” Lesa said. “Antonia just led a raid on another encampment and found more Coalition tech. It might save us an insurrection if we can find enough of them.”

Vincent said, “And Katya?”

“She’ll go to prison.” Lesa said it so calmly that Vincent looked at her twice. The tension lines around her eyes told another story. “But she’s young. And it won’t be forever.”

Vincent had no answer. He leaned on Michelangelo and didn’t try to come up with one.

Lesa cleared her throat. “And I also heard from Claude.”

“And?”

“She wants to set the duel for the sixth of Carnival.”

Vincent glanced doubtfully at Angelo, but Angelo’s gaze was on the children in the yard. “Three days. Will you be able to walk by then?”

That homeopathic smile didn’t flicker. She picked up another piece of sushi and contemplated it before she said, “I don’t need to walk to shoot somebody, Vincent.”

“And are you as fast today as you were the other afternoon?”

She didn’t answer, and he thought about her silence while she chewed. Angelo shifted on the bench, leaning closer while Vincent pretended not to notice. Fu

“We need to find that lab. Then there won’t be a duel.”

Too late, he remembered she didn’t have the context, and was opening his mouth to explain when she silenced him with a wave. “Mother told me.”

“I thought she would.”

“And I told Antonia,” she continued. Vincent opened his mouth, and she silenced him with one raised finger and a chipped stone glare. “If I don’t live through the duel, she needs to know what Claude is capable of.”

Vincent didn’t answer, but he swallowed and nodded. All right.

Lesa turned to Angelo. “Are you going to get the infection taken care of? Canyou get it taken care of?” She spoke to Michelangelo rather than Vincent, but Michelangelo didn’t look at her.

“We can,” Vincent said. “And will. Which reminds me. There’s somebody we want you to meet.”

“Where?”

“Inside.”

“Hand me my crutches.”

Michelangelo was still at his shoulder when they came into the house, following the stubborn staccato of Lesa’s crutches. She managed them well, stumping forward grimly–though she winced when her weight hit her hands. Thick batting padded the handles; it obviously wasn’t enough.

She paused before the lift rather than heading for the stairs. Just as well, because Vincent didn’t fancy carrying her up them, and Michelangelo’s feet were in no shape for chivalry.

Stubborn or not, Lesa was swaying by the time she stopped, and Vincent steadied her with a hand on her shoulder as he commanded the lift. The venom had left her weak, febrile, and probably aching. Inside the lift, she propped herself on him without seeming to, and he smiled as he tilted toward her. He hadn’t slept in days, and though he still had chemistry it was wearing thin. If Michelangelo was too proud to lean, Vincent wasn’t.

The lift brought them to the third floor, and Lesa paused before the doors to her bedroom. “Excuse the mess,” she said, and gestured them inside.

Michelangelo went first, covering Vincent, and for once Vincent reveled in it rather than chafing. But there was no one inside except a sleepy khir in a basket, who lifted his ear‑feathers at them but seemed otherwise disinclined to stir. Vincent recognized Walter by his bandages and almost thought the khir gri

He turned to assist Lesa in managing her crutches through the door, but she didn’t need him. She clumped to her bed and flopped down, letting the crutches slide to the carpetplant alongside. She closed her eyes, face sallow with pain, and didn’t seem to notice when Angelo bent down, picked up the crutches, and silently braced them upright against the wall between her bed and her nightstand.

“All right,” she said. “This is as private as I can manage on short notice.”

Vincent nodded and raised his eyes to the wall. “Kii, would you introduce yourself to Miss Pretoria?”

The swirling effect in the wall panels was just as before, though Vincent noticed that Lesa had turned off the jungle scenes in this room, leaving blank taupe walls. First eyes and then a tall lithe body coalesced from swirling pixels, and Kii lay at ease, its wings folded comfortably along its sides so it could recline on its elbows. It settled its plumed head between its shoulders like a somnolent bird and blinked at them.

“Greetings, Lesa Pretoria,” it said. “Greetings, Vincent Katherinessen and Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi‑Jones. Kii anticipates your questions.”

At the sound of the mellow, neutral voice, Lesa lurched upright on the bed, hands braced to either side. “Dragon,” she said, and shook her head, many‑colored hair flying around her.

She looked to Michelangelo, not Vincent. “Simulation?”

“Transcended,” Vincent answered, when Michelangelo didn’t. “Kii, Michelangelo would like to accept your offer of medical treatment.”

Kii’s head settled more solidly between ridged shoulder blades. “Michelangelo, is that so?”

Michelangelo kept his eyes straight ahead, though Vincent was waiting for the glance. “Yes, Kii.”

“It is done,” Kii said. “You will find a document for your life support device available in the datastream. It should enable your implants to locate and eradicate the infection.”

“Kii,” Vincent said, “can you tell me where to find the lab where that virus was tailored?”

“It is not within Kii’s range of access,” Kii said. It angled its head and stretched its neck, as if regarding Lesa more closely than before. “The khir like you, when you come. The Consent is that you may stay, to please the khir. We are fond of the khir. And Kii is grown fond of you.”

Lesa sat very still, the bedclothes knotted in her hands. She licked her lips, pulse visible at her throat, and Vincent found himself in sympathy with her nervousness. The Dragon’s regard had a tendency to make him feel like a snack, as well.

“That’s you‑humans, not you‑Lesa?” Michelangelo, surprising Vincent.

“The khir approve of Lesa Pretoria,” Kii said, the long neck swaying slightly, plumage ruffled by an unseen breeze.

In his basket, Walter flopped on his side and hissed, showing his belly to the air. Lesa turned her head and looked at him, leaning forward on the bed without lowering her feet to the floor. Not trying to stare the Dragon in the eye seemed to ease her. Vincent remembered some Old Earth legend about snakes and hypnosis, or maybe turning people into stone.

“The khir really aren’t smart enough to…talk…are they?” she said. Walter lifted his head, neck craning around like a hand puppet, and blinked back at her with triangular‑pupiled eyes.

It was that look that did it. He’d been telling himself, over and over, that his gift shouldn’t apply to Dragons or to khir. That their kinesthetics, their everythingwas different from that of humans, and deceptive.

But that intellectual knowledge hadn’t stopped him from reading them, and reading them correctly–Dragon and khir.

Because the khir had been living with New Amazonians for 150 years, and the khir–nonverbal, with a predator’s extended jaw structure and limited facial expressions–were quite perfectly capable of communicating through kinesthetics, the rise and fall of their peculiarly expressive plumage that ruffled independent of any wind.

Just as the Dragons must have, when they were meat.

“Actually,” Vincent said, “I think the khir tell the Dragons rather a lot, don’t they?”

“The khir are invaluable,” Kii said. “They are the protectors of the old world. We make them safe de