Dangerous Gifts Read Online Free Page A

others trying to look grown-up and sneak drinks off the server’s trays.
    I’d been paid for my time, but the gentleman who had hired me to accompany him had gone off into a side room with some other people of serious and moneyed aspect. It’s always a little delicate in these situations; one must remain available to one’s client, without looking abandoned. For the moment I contented myself with watching the floorshow.
    A lean, pale creature in full Perindi Empire court dress, high embroidered collar standing halfway up his face, glided across the room as though on wheels, the motion of his feet invisible under the stiff brocade of his gown. A pair of carefully matched and extremely handsome human bodyservants strode after him. They wore loose silk trousers and nothing else but jewellery, oiled torsos gleaming in the lamplight, bearing his writing implements, paper, and personal spice-box. Servers in the Roundhouse Tower’s gold-trimmed grey satin livery moved among the crowds with trays; the drinks brimming in small glasses, the food piled high on small platters. Three silver-skinned beings with smooth domed heads, wearing what looked like armour in shades of blue and green, hovered over a spread of delicacies, pointing them out to each other and making a low hooting noise.
    I thought for a moment I saw Enthemmerlee over the shoulder of one of the silver-skins; a slight female with pale hair and humanlike, faintly green-tinged features. Why, she hasn’t changed much at all, I thought; but when I looked closer it wasn’t Enthemmerlee. This woman was not unlike Enthemmerlee as I’d last seen her, but older; dressed in an odd garment like a tube of cloth hanging from some kind of internal ruff below the neck. Definitely Gudain. Whoever she was, she was smiling and seemed to be enjoying herself despite the Gudain reputation for xenophobia. Perhaps she was stunned into enjoyment by the sheer expense of her surroundings.
    A very small child with a mop of bright silver hair, dancing solemnly by herself, stamping her feet carefully in time to the music.
    A tiny glimmering Fey, in a vast gauzy puff of a dress that made her resemble a glittering beetle in the heart of a chrysanthemum, her slender arms waving like feelers, chattering up at someone I couldn’t see.
    The crowd parted, revealing her companion; shoulders broad and flat in his bright red uniform and long greying hair pulled back behind his head, bending low in order to hear her. Hargur, doing the polite. I hadn’t even known he was going to be here. She gestured to the small girl, who stopped her dancing long enough to trot over to them and raise her arms imperiously at the Chief. He bowed gravely, took her hands, and danced a measure with her, bent almost double.
    “Ah, now, that’s better,” said a voice beside me. “A lovely woman should always smile.”
    My new friend was a tall, solid fella in understated but expensive tailoring. He had sleekly cut grey hair, a full-lipped mouth and blue, assessing eyes. “Now, I wonder what made you smile, and whether I can make it happen again?”
    “I’m at a party in the Roundhouse Tower, drinking very expensive wine, and watching the powerful at play. Why wouldn’t I be smiling?” I said.
    He held out his hand. I put mine in it. He had soft, well-kept hands; when he bent and kissed my fingers, his mouth felt, somehow, slightly too warm. “Thasado Heimarl.”
    “Babylon Steel.”
    “Ah, indeed? I am privileged,” he said.
    “You have me at a disadvantage, Mr Heimarl.”
    “I have nothing like your reputation, Madam Steel. I am merely a trader, you know.”
    “Oh? And what do you trade in?”
    “This and that. There’s no reason at all why you should have heard of me,” he said, with a self-deprecating shrug.
    “But without trade, no country survives, Mr Heimarl.”
    “I am sure Scalentine would manage adequately without my meagre services,” he said. “I’m only attending this very glittering