Forge of Heaven

“Well, if there’s Movement, we know who they are, don’t we?”

“Ardath, for God’s sake…”

“Your government slinks came looking for me, for me,brother. They wouldn’t say why. They didn’t say someone had done thatto you.”

“This.” He lifted a hand to the burn on his forehead. Flash of dark. Something moving. He didn’t want to see that. “This—no. Not them.” She started to turn away from him and he caught her hand, too hard. “Ardath, what I want you to do—what I want you to do is get word to Brazis. Tell Brazis. He’ll send someone. He’ll take care of Algol.”

“And I just drop my brother down another rabbit hole, where maybe he won’t come out the same, or come out, ever. No thanks.”

“I’m already not the same.”

“You listen to me,brother. I know where our problems are. I know who’d be crazy enough to have done that to you.”

“You don’t know! This.” He touched the welt on his forehead. “This—I was in a place. I was in a dark place. And it happened there. Ardath, I don’t give a damn about Algol. Help me get a message out. Let Brazis handle it.”

“No.” She wasn’t believing him. “Not to take you away where you may not come out. Not to come tramping through the Street, breaking up everything. You’ll see, brother. You’ll see what we can do about fools.”

“Ardath, no.”

“Movement? Entirely déclassé.”

“No,” he said, and got up onto his feet, or tried to. And the buzzes accelerated, like a tap trying to come into focus. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. “Brazissss.”Click. Click. “Kekellen.”Hiss. Crackle.

Brazis.

Kekellen.

A dark gold mask, a purse-mouthed face in the dim light, with the smell of ammonia. Oblong lenses glinted silver, hiding the eyes. Cleaner-bots, all around him, the station’s fearsome secret.

And he was aware of something else of a sudden. Of a wild presence…a dangerous presence in his head.

Hiss. “Braziss.”

“What is this?”Angrily. The Ila’s voice. “Who is this?”

Spike. Procyon felt it coming, convulsed, tangled with the chair and fell back into it, his head near exploding.

“Procyon!” he heard his sister say. “Procyon! Hold on!”

“SIR. SIR!” Ernst broke protocols, broke through the door, pale-faced. “Eberly, at the hospital. The ambassador’s having a seizure.”

Reaux sat at his desk, stu

“They say, sir, they say he could die.”

“SIR.” Dia

“Who am I talking to?”

“Ha

“Do it,” he said.

Their intruder had hit the system.

Stop the Ila from her provocations? Impossible.

Ian take preemptive action against another of their small fraternity? Never yet.

Marak. Never forget Marak, or Hati, or Memnanan—you rule the heavens, they’d say. We rule the earth. Don’t read us lessons. Don’tgive us orders. Don’tbring us your troubles.

Brazis raked his fingers through his hair, wondering if he dared leave the office and go out himself—wondering if he should rely on Magdallen or if he suspected Magdallen of a consummate double cross, maybe even beingthe problem he was hunting.

Magdallen had been ill in the office in the prior incident, as powerfully affected as the rest of them when the Ila came blasting through the system.

Dammit.

“Dia

Dia

“Relay to Langford. Shut the taps down. Shut it all down, common and private. Turn all the relays off. Now, before we have more dead!”

“Contact with the planet, sir—”

“Shut it all down! Now!”

The relays had neverbeen shut down from the station, not for two seconds, in all Concord’s several existences.

But it would protect the taps they had left.

It meant that Ian and Luz were on their own, except the local planetary net.

If they, in reaction, shut thatdown, then everybody was on his own.

“BROTHER,” PROCYON HEARD, felt the table under his face, felt the close physical press around him, a hand holding his against the surface. He tightened his fingers, gripped that hand, got a breath.

“I’m all right.” Deeper breath.

“Get those damned things out of here.” Ardath’s voice. With fear. That wasn’t accustomed.

“How?” someone asked.

Procyon lifted head and shoulders, freed his hand and propped himself on his elbows. Ardath was there, with Isis and Spider and a couple of others whose names he didn’t know. He wiped his face, hearing a nightmare click-click-click, and looked down, beside the table.

Two bots, two little lumps of metal and plastics, with winking lights, sat right at his feet.

“Braziss,”whispered the new voice in his head.

“Yeah,” he said to it, just him and it, alone, in an i

“Procyon?” Ardath leaned into his frame of vision, attracted his attention with a touch on his hand. She was sitting in the chair across the table. “You stay here.”

“You’re not leaving.”

“I’m not waiting for you to die. Or be swept up into some government hospital. I’m not having it.”

“You don’t remotely know what you’re getting into.” Brazisss,the i

“And youknow?”

And what good was he? What good was he, with whatever had gone wrong with him?

Marak,the i

That was something.

“I think this thing is real,” he said to her. “I think this mark is real. There’s a war going on. And I’m in the middle of it.”

“You stay here. We’ll fix Algol, we’ll settle with him, and then we’ll talk to Brazis, if he wants you back. We’ll negotiate.”

Brazis wouldn’t give a damn for his personal wants.

Marak might. Marakwould want his own information. Somewhere between Brazis, the Ila, and Marak, there would be hell to pay.

But if the mark was real, if that dark place was real, there was something else. Something with its hand on him. Its voice buzzing in his head.

Something with an interest in him. Keepaway. Keepaway. Set aside. Claimed.

Maybe he was still dizzy. Maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly. But there wassomething going on in the understructure of the Trend, the shadowy places that fed the Trend with illicits and legitimates alike. The Ila, Gide, Marak, and now him, him,become an intruder in his own circles—it was Ardath’s whole fragile world about to come under scrutiny because of him. And she wouldbe involved. She was in that elite class that rested, like a thin, fragile skin, on the questionable things that, all of a sudden, would be the object of conflict and furor around, of all people who had never intended it, her brother.

But if the Trend could purge itself, if he could keep her and him from being killed, there there was a chance Marak himself, given information, could find him. Could negotiate with the ondat,who regarded Marak, Brazis said, as the only honest human, the only one. He had his little robots, his link with that dark place. They blinked and buzzed beside him. They found him, where he went. He had that straight, now.

Where he was, very powerful entities had ears and eyes.