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reactionary think-tank, the Circulus Fidelis. The cost’—grimly—‘was
too high.’
     
    ‘You could have found a way.’
     
    The chamber seemed to spin.
     
    ‘What are you talking about?’
     
    ‘To use the facility, and infiltrate
A’Dekal’s group.’
     
    “This was earlier ...Before you
recruited me into LudusVitae.’
     
    ‘Before you killed General d’Ovraison’s
brother?’
     
    ‘What?’ Sudden rage, his words bouncing
back from the glassine walls. Logically, she had always known about the Oracle;
yet her raw words now—answering back, in this place, after what she had done—flayed
like a deadly insult. ‘You dare?’
     
    All his anger and frustration
expanded, ballooned, and blood-rush pounded in his ears.
     
    ‘... dare to help you, Tom, with
no strings att—’
     
    ‘Silence.’
     
    And Elva was rigid then, locked
into her attention stance; her contained fury seemed to swell and coruscate
around her. Her jaw muscles flexed with tension.
     
    But perhaps it was not just Elva
who had gone too far.
     
    ‘By the fourteenth article,’ she
said stiffly, ‘of the Artifex Conjunctonis, I formally request
allegiance-transfer—‘
     
    ‘No.’
     
    ‘—to General d’Ovraison, who has
already indicated his willingness to recruit me into the new Academy. Failing
that -’
     
    ‘Don’t push me, Elva.’
     
    ‘—to Darinia Demesne’s interim
governing—’
     
    ‘Request denied.’ Tom reined in
his anger.
     
    His words seemed to hang in the
charged air between them.
     
    Then she gave a small formal bow
in salute. ‘Yes, my Lord.’
     
    Elva turned on her heel, and
marched towards her chamber, as though her sweat-soaked training clothes were
full military uniform.
     
    Damn you, Elva. Why did you have
to force the issue?
     
    For some words, once spoken, can
never be retracted.
     
    And behind it all lay an old, old
knowledge: that he was Elva’s liege Lord, a position he had seen abused too
many times to count.
     

     
    Frost-sparkle.
Evaporation.
     
    There was a message-chime, which
Tom accepted. Now, in the archway, where the doorshimmer had stood, waited
Nirilya and the red-haired medic, Xyenquil.
     
    A wave of tension washed through
the chamber.
     
    ‘Come in.’
     
    Tom perched on a lev-stool, and
directed the visitors to a couch. Nirilya gathered her black robe and sat; then
Xyenquil, fidgeting with his tunic’s silver clasp, took his place beside her.
     
    Elva entered, stood at the
chamber’s rear with her arms folded, leaning against the glassine wall.
     
    Xyenquil cleared his throat. ‘Nirilya’s
reported some fever-like symptoms in yourself, sir. And, ah, we’ve completed
our post-op analyses.’
     
    By the wall, Elva unfolded her
arms, re-crossed them.
     
    Holding out an infocrystal,
Xyenquil gestured to the chamber’s systems, and a holo grew into being:
     
    Splayed shapes, like alien
creatures torn inside out: bright beaded lines forming streamers, spirals,
twisted glowing knots.
     
    Xyenquil rotated the image—a
shining jagged landscape—then froze it.
     
    ‘These are the result of
Calabi-Yau transformations, my Lord.’
     
    The holo showed atom-sized
femtocytes, ripped apart in ways beyond imagining.
     
    ‘Is this’—Tom looked up at
Xyenquil—‘some kind of logosophical metaphor?’
     
    ‘At first I thought . . .’
Xyenquil swallowed. ‘No. They really have been twisted through the
hyperdimensions. I’m sure of it.’
     
    It was as if something had
reached inside Tom’s body, torn open the hidden dimensions of spacetime, and
destroyed the femtocytes in the process.
     
    ‘And I know nothing,’ added
Xyenquil, ‘in myth or reality, capable of that.’
     

     
    Elva
stepped forward. Where she had been leaning against the slow-morphing wall, a
shallow Elva-shaped depression marked the surface.
     
    ‘Just what’—her tone was flat,
professional—‘is the significance of this?’
     
    Xyenquil shrugged helplessly.