\nBack then, we liked to scour the docks of Termina Celeste for starships to tag: sleek crafts with hulls like vast canvases and cabins that were mostly unattended because the space-lagged passengers were off in the city somewhere, getting drunk or on business or both.\n<\/p>\n
\nBlaise Landry was the leader of the crew, being the oldest out of the five of us. I was his lieutenant. That meant whenever Blaise was out, decommissioned–because sick or in deep trouble with his dad or whatever–I got to be in charge that day, which meant I got to choose which ship to tag.\n<\/p>\n
\nOur evening began like every other: calm and lubricated with a little beer. No hint of the chaos you may\u2019ve read about or seen on holotrope feeds. That all came later.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe were leaning over the cliffside railing in the southeast quadrant of the docks, spitting into the deep canyon beside which Termina Celeste had been built. In my holotrope lectures that week, I\u2019d learned about DNA, and I fancied each little ball of my saliva was bringing down into the River Andalosi a library of tiny blueprints of me. An artist takes whatever legacy he can get. I hocked up a good one and watched the yellow tadpole tumble through four and a half kilometers of space.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019ll do you one better, Lucas,\u201d said Hugo Gunfrey. Turning at a slight angle for modesty, he relieved himself over the edge with a sigh that shook his huge belly.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cGod that\u2019s revolting,\u201d Robin Vexler said. She guarded her eyes with a flap of her orbital-jumper jacket and scowled. \u201cYou and me, Lucas, let\u2019s push him over, how about it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSounds like a lot of work,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cGravity\u2019d do most of it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI laughed.\n<\/p>\n
\nI knew I wasn\u2019t the only one with murderous fantasies whenever we hung out by the abyss. Everybody has dark thoughts now and then. But imagining them behind Robin\u2019s waifish face and big brown eyes was difficult.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAny word on the boss?\u201d I asked Jacob.\n<\/p>\n
\nAt fourteen, Jacob Landry was younger than his brother Blaise by a year. He was also the tallest and sturdiest of our crew by far. He could\u2019ve passed for a bouncer at one of his father\u2019s mob-front nightclubs, or maybe a truancy officer.\n<\/p>\n
\nJacob shook his head as he cast through his wrist holotrope for Blaise\u2019s whereabouts, then shut it off, nixing the dance of holographic minutiae. \u201cWith a girl tonight, probably. Doesn\u2019t drop out of the Buzz otherwise.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cTraitor,\u201d said Hugo.\n<\/p>\n
\nRobin clipped on her orbital-jumper helmet. Like her jacket, it was several sizes too large and scuffed from the junkyard where she\u2019d found it. \u201cGive that here, Lucas. I wanna hit one of those buzzards.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI handed her my empty beer bottle, and she chucked it at a sentry drone floating overhead. The bottle burst with a festive crash, a tinkle of falling glass.\n<\/p>\n
\nBy the time the robot spun its floodlights around we were already gone, darting off across the cliffside promenade and laughing.\n<\/p>\n
\nBands had struck up in the neon towers of Termina Celeste\u2019s midtown, which clustered like an orthodontic night-terror below the city roof. Music of all kinds, from all places: Jovian blues and heat-death metal, quantum jazz and Horsehead pomp. One strain after another came rolling down off the cool evening air, balled up with smells of fried noodles, potatoplum sauce, koalaroo dumplings, trampagne.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIf Blaise is out, you know what that means,\u201d I said, smiling. I was the first to take out my vaulter. It was long and cold and smooth, a baton of collapsible supercarbon thick as a femur. I kept it in my knapsack with the spray cans and other things.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cMeans out with Benito, in with Blackbeard,\u201d said Jacob. His back furrowed as he unsheathed a vaulter of his own. He held it like a gladiator might a pike, with one end balanced on his trapezius muscle.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d I said. \u201cMeans I\u2019m in charge. And seeing as I\u2019m in charge, I pick that beauty as our target.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nI pointed my vaulter at the pristine white argosy that\u2019d held my eye all evening, snug and so temptingly secure in its hypersilk moorings. The name Kingfisher <\/em>was lettered on its hull in old-fashioned silver characters, and from the blue roses running through their gaps I knew the craft belonged to a Delphine merchant prince. The sort of prince, from what I\u2019d glimpsed on holotrope feeds, who needed taking down a few pegs anyway.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDelphines? They don\u2019t screw around,\u201d said Jacob. \u201cIt\u2019s like picking on the uranium mafia.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cStuff we\u2019ve been through? Tch,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis is different,\u201d said Robin, rubbing her nose through her visor. \u201cThis is crazy. You\u2019re crazy, Lucas.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAmen,\u201d said Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBunch of cowards, then,\u201d I said. \u201cGuess I\u2019ll have to do it myself.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThey tensed. Getting tagged a coward was no small thing if you ran with a high-wire crew like us. The only worse insult was snitch.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cScrew it,\u201d said Jacob.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou can\u2019t be serious,\u201d said Robin.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe\u2019s the boss, and I\u2019m no coward. Are you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThese snakes, the Delphines, you said it yourself. They catch you, it\u2019s not exactly a fine.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey have to catch you,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nHugo crossed his pudgy arms. \u201cNo way.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBut I\u2019d made my point.\n<\/p>\n \nAfter waiting for a sentry drone to pass, I ran to the edge of the cliff overlooking the docks–faster, faster–and rammed my vaulter into the girders at an angle, letting the energy in the supercarbon whisk me up and fling me over the gulf between platforms. I was rising, flying, and landed on a docked starship with a metal thud, somersaulting once to absorb the impact.\n<\/p>\n \nI twirled my vaulter. \u201cLast chance!\u201d<\/em> I called.\n<\/p>\n \nThey glanced at each other helplessly. What choice did they have?\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \nWe vaulted from starship to starship, from small dhows to great frigates and from solar cruisers to alcubierres, our boots ringing on bright smooth alloys and squeaking over solar tarps drawn taut. A cool breeze strummed the hypersilk moorings, bringing the tang of exhaust and deflector wax. The canyon floor unfurled below us, a faint orange sketch. It used to frighten me, how high it all was. One small slip or bit of false footing, one breeze a little too strong or swig of beer too many, and that was it; that was the end of it; you were less than a memory of a memory.\n<\/p>\n \nIt used to frighten me. Now it gave me a rush.\n<\/p>\n \nA maintenance drone was daddylonglegging down a strand of hypersilk onto a ship, and Robin jabbed her vaulter into the robot in passing, sending it skittering into the abyss.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou have a drone problem!\u201d I shouted.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhen they take over someday, you will too!\u201d she called back.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGuys!\u201d Hugo stopped to poke his thumb at a freighter in our midst.\n<\/p>\n \nIt was a clunker, all scrapes and scratches and stains, with a seal of recommission on its hull. But that wasn\u2019t the interesting thing about it. The interesting thing was the dragon: About ten meters long, with scalloped black wings and gaping jaws, it crawled across the hull on the coat of holospray that\u2019d birthed it, a living mural, lashing its tail and spewing bright red flames that spelled DRAKE.\n<\/p>\n \nBits of our work survived at the edges, as if to remind us of our place. I\u2019d never heard of this Drake, but I hated him already.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLet\u2019s scrub this jackass and put our tags back on,\u201d said Jacob.\n<\/p>\n \nRobin glared at him. \u201cYou know that\u2019s not how it works.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe was right. For as long as our tradition had existed, the Code of the Alley held sway: You could spray over anyone so long as your art was better than theirs. It was the only rule, but breaking it was enough to get you stomped by your own crew.\n<\/p>\n \nThe black scales of the dragon pulsed with life, their quivering reflections of the flames a feat of delicacy I\u2019d never seen before nor imagined possible, at least with so blunt a medium as holospray or crude an instrument as the human hand. Drake was better; he deserved to be there. His dragon deserved to burn our paltry scrawl down to the last daub of color.\n<\/p>\n \nBut I didn\u2019t care. I was jealous.\n<\/p>\n \nRobin nudged me with her elbow. \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to say, \u2018At least I can count on you, Robin, to respect the Code, unlike this Neanderthal Jacob over here.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMake that two Neanderthals,\u201d said Hugo. \u201cCode Schmode, that\u2019s an act of war.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAfter thinking about it, I gave Robin a guilty shrug.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSorry,\u201d I said, taking out my spray can.\n<\/p>\n \nWith twinkles of glee, Jacob and Hugo did the same.\n<\/p>\n \nRobin folded her arms disdainfully while the rest of us sprayed our tags over Drake\u2019s. It felt good, the sight of the dragon dissolving as our names took its place.\n<\/p>\n \nI thumbed the color slider up and down while I ran my forefinger over the animation pad at the top of the can, setting down layers of the sticky matrix onto the hull in broad strokes. If I wanted an effect, such as a heat ripple or an icy sheen, all I had to do was tap a rhythm on the animator pad, and the smartchip in the can would tweak the spray to match. Gazillions of tiny computers in the holospray kneaded out all the little defects in my work, compensating here and balancing there like a network of pollen-sized elves.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen I was done, I stood back to judge my tag. It began as a Klein bottle full of dark green fluid, the contours warped enough to pass for a cursive lowercase \u201cL.\u201d As a bullet burst through the bottle in slow-motion, the fluid plumed out in its wake to form the rest of my pseudonym–LUX–the letters kindling into brighter shades of green, then yellow, then orange, until the hologram rewound.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob\u2019s tag was a chrome tree held together by scraps of machinery, the name KROMAGNON appearing in the gaps between branches as they meshed periodically.\n<\/p>\n \nHugo\u2019s tag was a self-portrait with some embellishments: biceps, medieval claymore, bandit\u2019s mask. He liked his anonymity.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen we were done, all that remained of Drake\u2019s dragon was a disembodied tail, still writhing despite the jolt of scattered pixels whenever it ventured too close to our tags.\n<\/p>\n \nRobin gave me a scornful look. I offered her a chance to change her mind.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBlaise wouldn\u2019t\u2019ve done it,\u201d she told me.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe doesn\u2019t know my brother like I do,\u201d Jacob said.\n<\/p>\n \nI told Robin, \u201cWhen you\u2019re the leader you can make your own calls.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBut she vaulted off in a huff, and that was that.\n<\/p>\n \nBy the time we reached the Kingfisher,<\/em> Hugo was there waiting for us on a nearby solar cruiser, eating a hickory-smoked ham sandwich he\u2019d dredged out of his knapsack. He offered some, but no one took him up.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSuit yourselves,\u201d he said, dropping a slice of provolone down his throat.\n<\/p>\n \nNine times out of ten, Hugo was the first to arrive anywhere. We joked that he had so much mass because he was always flouting relativity. He didn\u2019t care for that much.\n<\/p>\n \nThe argosy was whiter and smoother than any ship I\u2019d ever seen. Even the windows were shuttered behind white covers, their edges machined to an elegance that verged on fetishism. A ship made for us. <\/em>My giddiness banished all my bitter feelings toward Drake. Here was a miracle. When I encountered a miracle, I didn\u2019t pause to question its source.\n<\/p>\n \nBut I should\u2019ve.\n<\/p>\n \nAs soon as I tried to spray the white surface, the contents of my can dribbled in a rainbowy rivulet down the dolphinlike hull and into the abyss.\n<\/p>\n \nWhat the…?<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA custom repellant,\u201d explained a voice behind us.\n<\/p>\n \nWe whirled to find a lean blond man in a jetpack standing on the solar cruiser. He was middle-aged and handsome, with a Faraday rifle strapped to his back.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob, Robin, and Hugo shifted to a defensive stance, clutching their vaulters like weapons. I whispered for them to relax.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019re not here to cause trouble, we\u2019ll leave, no harm done,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nThe man smiled and flipped the rifle out of its strap. The muzzle flashed blue. The hickory-smoked ham sandwich in Hugo\u2019s hand became a cloud of grey smoke. Hugo jerked in surprise and cursed.\n<\/p>\n \nThe man said, \u201cYou\u2019d be surprised how many sandwiches have almost done me in. Hidden nerve darts, custom pathogens, stuff like that. You\u2019ll pardon my vigilance. Now if you would, please.\u201d With his rifle, he gestured toward a door in the Kingfisher <\/em>that had noiselessly opened.\n<\/p>\n \nWe weren\u2019t in a position to refuse him.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe man marched us down a corridor of interlocking black crystals that unmeshed in a wave ahead of us, forming rooms and alcoves that filled in again when we passed them. The ship\u2019s whole interior seemed to consist of these crystals save the pocket of space we made as we traveled through it, like the ripsaw coral on Tarmageddi that\u2019s said to open when tickled by the electric fields of certain jellyfish. Even the furniture–chairs, tables, cabinets–was no more than a brief union of the stuff, though the detail with which these items jumped into existence told me their designs were stored in a memory bank somewhere, like some elaborate subconscious.\n<\/p>\n \nA good security system for keeping prisoners, which I supposed we now were.\n<\/p>\n \nThe man confiscated our knapsacks and Jacob\u2019s wrist holotrope as we entered a crystal kitchen. \u201cA security measure,\u201d he said, with convincing cordiality. \u201cYou\u2019ll have it back once we\u2019re done here. Please have a seat.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n“I knew I recognized your face.\u201d Jacob pointed to an old man\u2019s bust at the edge of the room. The face belonged to Jora Hizad, the self-styled Merchant King who ruled the drone trade on Delphos. \u201cSo, which of his eighty-five sons are you? Or is it eighty-six?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe man chuckled, slicking back his blond hair. \u201cA couple of dead ringers, I know, though I like to think I\u2019ve aged better than Father. I\u2019m Hadrian Hizad. And you\u2019re Jacob Landry, Robin Vexler, Hugo Gunfrey, and Lucas Davenport, unless my feedlink deceives me.\u201d He tapped the spot on his temple behind which his feedlink implant was keyed. \u201cHandy little thing. Not that I\u2019d need it, with records like yours.\u201d His eyes flicked back and forth as he read words we couldn\u2019t see. \u201cOne of you must have powerful friends to’ve kept you out of the box this long. Powerful indeed.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf you\u2019re referring to my father, he does know how to get us out of a tight spot,\u201d said Jacob threateningly.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOf course. Landry. <\/em>How slow of me.\u201d The lilt in Hadrian\u2019s voice hinted that he had no fears whatever about the wrath of Jacob\u2019s father, Enoch Landry, one of the High Capos in the Armitage Syndicate that governed the underworld of Termina Celeste.\n<\/p>\n \nAfter all, Hadrian belonged to a deadlier dynasty: a Delphine merchant family.\n<\/p>\n \nAs if to quell our fears, he said, \u201cI didn\u2019t bring you onboard to harm you if that\u2019s what you\u2019re thinking.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy did you?\u201d asked Robin.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTo make an offer.\u201d The merchant prince stowed his Faraday rifle in a crystal niche, then grabbed five black cups from a cabinet and filled them all with a single flourish of a beer bottle. \u201cI want you to help me with something.\u201d He gave us each a cup.\n<\/p>\n \nRobin said, \u201cYou couldn\u2019t\u2019ve asked for our help without forcing us onto your freakshow of a ship first?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou mean the ship you tried to vandalize? Let\u2019s see.\u201d Hadrian sipped his beer and concentrated on the holotrope data that gushed through his feedlink. \u201cEight counts of vandalism, nineteen of truancy, three of assault, four of petty larceny, one of grotesque indecency in a public setting–\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat wasn\u2019t me,\u201d said Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201c–and those are just the ones you got caught doing. I can only imagine the rest.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s it to you?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI know wasted talent when I see it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd wasted courage, wasted youth.\u201d He rubbed his jaw. \u201cOh, I know. But it doesn\u2019t have to be that way.\u201d He tapped a console, and a small black cylinder rose from its storage port.\n<\/p>\n \nWhile his back was turned, Robin whispered to me, \u201cLet\u2019s rush him, Lucas.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBut the cylinder held me. Even without its color slider or animator pad, I could tell what it was right away.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cObserve,\u201d crooned Hadrian Hizad. He sprayed a cloud of black mist from the cylinder. The particles became a storm of shifting colors, dancing forms. Gradually the mist hardened into the likeness of a hummingbird flittering in midair. Not a hologram, but a hummingbird. Hadrian closed his eyes in concentration. A strand of yellow spooled off the bird\u2019s wing and became the head of a spectacular sunflower, which the bird probed hungrily for nectar.\n<\/p>\n \nHugo crossed his arms.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob leaned forward, dazzled.\n<\/p>\n \nBird and flower rejoined in a painterly whorl, and the colors parted into something new: a moonphoenix and an ice-white full moon. The white bird flew around the heavenly body, absorbing its pale light until it glowed like snow, then burst with a sound like windchimes into a thousand gems that made music as they fell.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian opened his eyes, and the forms dissolved back into mist and returned to the canister.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCan Drake do that?\u201d he asked, with a spark of mischief in his grey-blue eyes.\n<\/p>\n \nAmazed, I said, \u201cYou know?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe merchant prince tapped his feedlink again like a charm. \u201cI have four other canisters just like this one, and they\u2019re yours….\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf we help you,\u201d I finished for him. \u201cDoing what<\/em>?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLucas!\u201d cried Robin.\n<\/p>\n \nBut Hadrian had me and he knew it. \u201cThere\u2019s this fellow–a professional competitor, you might say–who\u2019s been hoarding his trade secrets for longer than anyone should.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThen tell the damn Trade Commission,\u201d said Robin, \u201cnot us.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf only it were that simple.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian tapped the console. All the furniture in the room disappeared into the walls in an engulfment of crystals, and a hologram of some asteroids replaced it, turning like a ring of filthy glaciers against a brown-and-green nebula. He tapped again, widened a pair of fingertips across the display screen. An asteroid swelled until its pocked badlands loomed huge and desolate, save for a scattering of tiny red sparkles. These in turn grew until I was looking at a field of red obelisks, widely spaced and identical among so much lonely acreage of light and shadow.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe Archipelago of Souls,\u201d I said, for I\u2019d seen a holofeed documentary of the place as a child. Only the richest people in the galaxy could afford a crypt on one of the asteroids of the Archipelago, and only a thousand or so of the two million obelisks that studded those asteroids were the crypts themselves; the rest were decoys containing the most extensive maintenance and defense system that mankind in its magnificent vanity had ever made.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhich one belongs to your rival?\u201d asked Jacob.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf I knew,\u201d said Hadrian, \u201cI would\u2019ve had his brain drilled out and scanned ages ago. All I know for sure is he\u2019s entombed in this section of the Archipelago. Hence why I\u2019ve brought you all here. Your skills are just the sort I need. With your vaulters you can scour this low-gravity necropolis with ease.\u201d Another few taps of the console overlaid an animation of a man vaulting from one asteroid to another. \u201cAnd with your flair for artistry…well….\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe man landed on the rim of a crater. A drone scuttled out of the shadows to lase him, and he sprayed himself a mirror shield with one of Hadrian\u2019s black canisters, deflecting the beam into the robot\u2019s energy socket. A second drone swooped down from an outcrop to belch plumes of melting gas at him. His shield morphed into an armor-piercing harpoon gun, which he unloaded into the drone\u2019s hornetlike belly. The drone crashed and skidded, a broken heap.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou get the idea.\u201d Hadrian tapped the console once more, and the hologram blinked out. \u201cIf you can find the crypt, the cans of conjuring spray are yours. I\u2019ll even throw in a set of new vaulters, state-of-the-art. What do you say?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nRobin told him, \u201cWe don\u2019t work for hire, Butterlocks. Ours is a strictly nonprofit outfit,\u201d signaling with a sly saccade for me to agree with her.\n<\/p>\n \nBut I couldn\u2019t. This was the chance I was waiting for. The chance to surpass Drake, to surpass everyone.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob beat me to it: \u201cI\u2019m in.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAre you crazy?\u201d Hugo spluttered. \u201cHe kidnapped us, he vaporized my lunch, and now you wanna be his space bitch?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian beamed. \u201cGood choice, Mr. Landry.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m in, too,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cVery good, Mr. Davenport. Born artists, both of you. Willing to do what great art requires. Alas, the same cannot be said for your friends here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWith that, Robin and Hugo\u2019s chairs swallowed them in a crystal mesh and whisked them down into the ground.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian raised a hand to fend our horror. \u201cI assure you this ship has passed every safety inspection since its christening. They will be deposited with absolute delicacy, minus a small tax in the form of their spray cans, of course.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf you hurt them…\u201d I warned.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe will kill you,\u201d said Jacob.\n<\/p>\n \nThe merchant prince forgave this impertinence with a shrug. \u201cOnly a fool would hurt friends of Enoch Landry\u2019s son, and I\u2019m no fool.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nHadrian ushered us into a lower level of the ship, where the matrix of black crystals gave way to a corridor of old-fashioned steel and flexicarbon. Panels of harsh light brought out specks of drone grease in the corrugated floor, streaks of tracked grime.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian explained how the shabbiness of this part of the ship came down to it being the original fuselage. An heirloom more valuable than all the fancy graftings-on, if we could believe it. \u201cArt and antique collecting, the only two things where bad is sometimes better,\u201d he aphorized.\n<\/p>\n \nWe waited in the cramped, musty lounge of the fuselage for ten minutes or so before a pair of lank young men with the telltale blond hair and grey-blue eyes of Delphine nobility strolled to us from a rickety stairwell.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian introduced the men as Nerva and Trajan, not that the distinction mattered much. They were identical down to their dour expressions and dutiful strides.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYour sons?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOf a sort,\u201d Hadrian said. \u201cThey\u2019ll be teaching each of you how to use the conjuring spray.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m sure we could figure it out for ourselves,\u201d said Jacob. \u201cHow much harder could it be than regular holospray?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian answered with a laugh.\n<\/p>\n \nNeither Nerva nor Trajan spoke, but I could imagine the threads of clairvoyance between all three Delphines by dint of the feedlinks in their skulls.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOut of curiosity,\u201d I asked, \u201chow many people have attempted this mission before?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat does it matter?\u201d asked Jacob. \u201cYou\u2019re not scared, I hope. The stuff we\u2019ve been through,<\/em> and all.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe merchant prince smiled and patted my shoulder as he left us to the twins. \u201cYou have the good fortune to be the first, Mr. Davenport. So take heart. It\u2019s not every day a hoodlum gets to prove himself.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nNerva\u2019s room was small, comfortless, and lined with strange equipment, including a rack of vaulters sporting every conceivable design: faux-wooden, optic yellow, ventricle red, diamantine. One was even textured in black scales like a headless water moccasin.\n<\/p>\n \nTrajan had taken Jacob to a separate room, so I was alone with the Delphine.\n<\/p>\n \nQuickly Nerva sealed the rack of vaulters behind a panel labeled SPARES, then motioned for me to lie on an operating bed. Over the bed hung a stalactite of precision tools connected to a gantry.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \nHe answered in what seemed to me a raspier version of Hadrian\u2019s voice. \u201cUnless we\u2019re mistaken, and His Fruitfulness is rarely mistaken, you do not have a feedlink, Mr. Davenport.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat wasn\u2019t part of the agreement.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFret not. The operation takes no more than a minute. Afterwards,\u201d he said, clicking open a box of black canisters, \u201cthe spray will slave to you as soon as you touch it, no manual required.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI refused to get on the operating bed. \u201cHolospray doesn\u2019t take a feedlink to use. Don\u2019t see why this stuff should.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva sniffed in annoyance. The first sign of emotion I\u2019d seen from him. \u201cThis stuff is orders of magnitude more complicated. In any case, the surgery is safe and entirely aboveboard.\u201d He pointed to a Certificate of Elective Neurosurgery on the wall that bore a wax seal from some academy on Delphos. \u201cI\u2019ll even reverse the procedure myself once the mission is complete, should you change your mind about the conjuring spray. But why would you? A little extra hardware in one\u2019s head is a small price to pay–wouldn\u2019t you agree?–for becoming the greatest artist in Termina Celeste.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAgain I thought of Drake, of the joy I\u2019d feel in surpassing him. The fierceness of my jealousy surprised me more than the madness of my bravery.\n<\/p>\n \nWith reluctance, I laid down on the operating bed, then told Nerva to hurry up before I changed my mind.\n<\/p>\n \n \nBefore the Trade Recession, when my father could still find work as a designer of holoaquariums, he\u2019d often wax euphoric over dinner on how effortless each rendering of the day\u2019s fish or sea fern, sand castle or sunken wreck, had come to him, how life had seemed to flow out of his stylus like an effortless dream, to the awe of many a foyer kibitzer or waiting room secretary. Naturals can\u2019t resist bragging, and my father was no exception.\n<\/p>\n \nNow I understood why.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva was stunned into silence by how quickly I was mastering the fundamentals of the conjuring spray. While he\u2019d felt compelled to demonstrate with a canister of his own at first, now he was content to gape, like one of my father\u2019s oglers, while I played out each of his lessons with my spray-cloud.\n<\/p>\n \nI\u2019d expected to hear the chatter of tiny computers in each particle through my feedlink. Instead I sensed them as an undefined mass, warm with possibility. I knew what I wanted, and the mass shifted. The mist before me swirled from black to green, from vapor to fluid.\n<\/p>\n \nI willed a Klein bottle around the fluid to contain it.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva blinked in surprise. \u201cFluids are hard enough,\u201d he said, \u201cbut encasing them in glass so seamlessly–and with that geometry. Even Ariadne didn\u2019t learn this fast. How?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI laughed. \u201cThis stuff is good at recognizing talent, seems to me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI grabbed the Klein bottle from its perch in midair. The green liquid sloshed softly, leaving layered sine waves of residue on the glass.\n<\/p>\n \nWith a hard swing, I smashed the bottle on the side of the operating bed. The fluid splattered all over the room, drenching us both and pooling on the floor like the product of a mutant spleen.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cImpressive,\u201d I said, as the fluid and glass shards dissolved at my beck into the can, leaving every surface as dry as before. \u201cNot even holospray\u2019s that realistic. Who\u2019s Ariadne?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo one of importance.\u201d Irritably, Nerva searched his white uniform for stains. \u201cHow was I to know that stuff wasn\u2019t dangerous?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou weren\u2019t, unless you can read my feedlink,\u201d I said. \u201cSince you didn\u2019t try to stop me, I assume you can.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhatever slander you\u2019ve heard about us Delphines, you\u2019d do well to forget. We have standards. Though I confess even those may not help you, Mr. Davenport, if you take liberties with this spray without my permission again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSatisfied he couldn\u2019t read my feedlink, after flitting through a few homicidal fantasies and spotting no tells, I shrugged and said, \u201cFunny, I thought you might\u2019ve been Hadrian\u2019s clone or something, but you\u2019ve got a rod up your ass longer than any in there,\u201d nodding to the cache of vaulters labeled SPARES.\n<\/p>\n \nRaising his canister, Nerva sprayed forth a long klinger vine, then snatched my can with its purple tendrils.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt was a joke,<\/em>\u201d I protested.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBest get your laughing done now then, as there\u2019ll be scant opportunity on the Archipelago.\u201d A wisp of menace had crept into his tone.\n<\/p>\n \nSomething had cut him.\n<\/p>\n \nI felt a faint throb in my head–not from the feedlink surgery, it seemed to me, but from some vague connections struggling to form.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I said, \u201cI meant no disrespect,\u201d letting my shoulders drop with my voice.\n<\/p>\n \nAfter some hesitation, Nerva held out my can. \u201cSeeing as we don\u2019t have much time, I trust you won\u2019t waste any more of it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBut I didn\u2019t take the can just yet. \u201cHow much time is that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA few hours at most. Once His Fruitfulness is finished with his business here–”\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI need a few minutes, I think. To meditate.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe squinted. \u201cBeg your pardon?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cEverything\u2019s just hit me,\u201d I said. \u201cAll the stuff I\u2019m about to do. I need to cleanse my thoughts. In peace. If that\u2019s okay.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva studied me in silence, then said, \u201cTwo minutes, Bodhisattva, not a second more,\u201d and left the room.\n<\/p>\n \nI grabbed a sharp piece of conjuring spray I\u2019d hidden below the operating bed (a remnant of the bottle I\u2019d smashed; you can never be too prepared) and pried open the vaulter stash panel. I pulled out the vaulter with black scales. I had never seen one like it. It had to be custom-made. I turned it over in my hands. Black scales.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nMy head throbbed harder as the connections snapped into place.\n<\/p>\n \nI returned the vaulter, shut the panel, and hid the shard back under the operating bed. Then I sat on the floor with my eyes closed until Nerva came back.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cEnlightened?\u201d he asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYeah,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n \nAfter another three hours of practice, Nerva procured a Delphine meringue from a compartment, which he called my \u201cdinner,\u201d along with a bottle of unbranded alcohol, which he called my \u201cdigestif.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTaken together, they\u2019ve been known to enhance courage,\u201d said Nerva, \u201cnot that you\u2019ll need it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThough light as a wiffle ball, the meringue had a payload of sugar packed into its chewy core, and it was shot through with an orange-lemon flavor. One of those foods meant to give energy more than satiation per se, like what longhaulers used to eat in deep space to save on storage.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow\u2019m I doing?\u201d I asked through a mouthful.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTruly?\u201d Nerva admired the grindylow I\u2019d made and consigned to brood in a corner, her gilled face smushed between her scaly knees as if looking out of a pillory. \u201cI\u2019ve seen them come and go, supposed wunderkinds, when we were trialing the spray on Delphos. They\u2019ve all disappointed. But you,\u201d he said, shaking his head and smiling faintly, \u201cyou could be the real thing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nEven as I searched his face for dishonesty, I felt a flush of pride.\n<\/p>\n \nMaybe his words weren\u2019t cajolery, a means of snaring my allegiance by way of my ego, but a genuine assessment of my skills, which somehow Hadrian\u2019s spray channeled better than every other.\n<\/p>\n \nOr maybe I was a chump heading to my doom.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWell,\u201d I said, \u201cwith my Chosen One status, you\u2019d think I\u2019d be able to swing a visit with Jacob by now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIn time. Trajan tells me he\u2019s learning slower than you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJust a short one. Just to give him a few tips, you know, and maybe show off a little.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI sent a brief feedlink signal: Like some fairytale fate, the grindylow dissolved into a cloud of green mist and funneled back into my can.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShort or not,\u201d said Nerva, \u201cit wouldn\u2019t take long for you to tell him what you found in there,\u201d gesturing with his elbow to the vaulter stash. \u201cOh please. I\u2019m not that obtuse. Meditate? You?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI wiped the meringue crumbs off my lips. With all the calm I could muster, I asked, \u201cWhat happened to Drake?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva made a drinking gesture. \u201cSome happy juice first.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat happened, Nerva?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva sighed. \u201cHis Fruitfulness did advise me to keep quiet, but I was planning to tell you out of respect when I saw what you could do. Just you. No offense to your friend.\u201d He cast around for the words. \u201cOthers have attempted the mission, sure. Drake was one. Ariadne, another. All had promise. But not like you. Nothing like you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMy voice cracked a little. \u201cTell me they survived, at least.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva winced. \u201c\u2018Survive\u2019 is a complicated word. Bodies can last quite a while in vacuum.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nFor the first time in my life I felt what must have been vertigo and sat down on the operating bed before it could lay me low. \u201cSo that\u2019s it. This is a suicide mission.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, no, no!\u201d Nerva clamped his hands on my shoulders. \u201cYou\u2019ll succeed! I\u2019ll stake my life on it. Their destiny is not yours. Listen.\u201d He spoke with conviction. \u201cThe spray doesn\u2019t–doesn\u2019t resist you. With a bit more training, the Archipelago of Souls will be no obstacle.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd Jacob,\u201d I said acidly, \u201chow do you suppose he\u2019ll fare?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva gave me the type of shrug that always comes before a lie. \u201cWith you by his side I imagine quite well.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI did the next thing without thinking.\n<\/p>\n \nI raised my can and shot a plume of mist at Nerva, aiming to trap his spraying hand in a cast of hypersilk.\n<\/p>\n \nBut the mist didn\u2019t congeal. And I could no longer sense it through my feedlink.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva flashed a small black button strapped to his wrist. \u201cI understand your emotions might be high right now, so just this once I\u2019m going to forget that.\u201d He cracked his hand across my face, a cherry bomb of hot, bright pain.\n<\/p>\n \nMy lip fattened, and my cheek burned. I wanted to strike him back, but he held his can like a weapon at the ready. What could I do?\n<\/p>\n \nHe pushed his wrist button, and my feedlink came online again. Under his hard gaze, I returned the mist to my canister.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAll of it, please,\u201d he said. I returned the shard hidden under the operating bed as well. \u201cThank you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe muffled slam of a hatch reverberated through the ship, followed by the violin-pluck sounds of hypersilk moorings detaching.\n<\/p>\n \nWe were taking off.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNow, before we resume,\u201d said Nerva, pointing to the digestif, \u201cI\u2019m afraid I must insist.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe drink felt like a ball of fire in my throat, a mid-grade nuclear reaction in my stomach. But in my brain, the stuff pushed up against experience and left my wits mostly intact. All those swigs over the years with Jacob, Hugo, and Robin had paid off.\n<\/p>\n \nBut there was use in pretending to be drunk. With theatrical precision, I swayed slightly, then shook my head as if to refocus on my spray-cloud, which Nerva had ordered me to make into a school of spritefish.\n<\/p>\n \nThough the windowless room gave no sense of the ship\u2019s location, the steady drop in g-force told me we were already circumnavigating Celeste\u2019s upper atmosphere. We\u2019d be hitching to the planet\u2019s Nullspace sling in ten minutes–or fewer, if the ship was faster than those I\u2019d taken on vacations to Parnassus in the pre-Recession days.\n<\/p>\n \nOnce the sling had trebucheted the Kingfisher into Nullspace, it would be too late to turn back.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cConcentrate, Mr. Davenport. The wooziness from the drink will wear off, but a similar sensation may afflict you in the Archipelago\u2019s gravity field. You\u2019ll have to stay focused no matter how your guts behave.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAsk Hadrian to take us back. I don\u2019t want to go through with this.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou and Jacob made an agreement.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI can\u2019t….\u201d I trailed off, letting the school of spritefish dissolve as I slumped onto the operating bed. \u201cI can\u2019t do it, Nerva.\u201d I made my voice brittle, my breathing heavy, as though about to be sick.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf you wish to malinger,\u201d said Nerva, \u201cyou\u2019ll have to pick a different culprit than the digestif. We know you lot aren\u2019t teetotalers, for heaven\u2019s sake.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019ve been watching us,\u201d I said, unable to give up my act.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDon\u2019t let it get to your head. His Fruitfulness watches everyone. Knows everything.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNot everything,\u201d I said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know you told me about Drake, about the rest of them.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNor will he,\u201d said Nerva confidently.\n<\/p>\n \nMy feedlink.<\/em> If Nerva had put in a switch to disable it, what\u2019s to say he hadn\u2019t put in other things? A switch to torture or kill me, perhaps. My greed had gotten in the way of my judgment; I should\u2019ve never agreed to Hadrian\u2019s terms, let alone to the surgery. Hugo and Robin had had the right of it.\n<\/p>\n \nThen I realized: If Hadrian had no qualms about ushering young artists to their deaths, surely it was no great twist of his conscience to kill the ones who refused to go with him. Which meant….<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nI doubled over as warm vomit rose to my lips. I didn\u2019t try to hold it back.\n<\/p>\n \nTaking advantage of Nerva\u2019s distraction, I willed a fine thread of conjuring spray into the last third of my digestif.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRobin and Hugo,\u201d I muttered, wiping my mouth. \u201cAre they…?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe Delphines have standards, remember?\u201d Nerva snipped. \u201cThey\u2019re fine, both your friends.\u201d He turned the vomit on the floor into a stiff blue gelatin with some sanitation spray, then peeled it off in one motion and tossed it down a garbage flue.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow do you know?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBecause I saw them off myself.\u201d Nerva pursed his lips as though he\u2019d said too much.\n<\/p>\n \nIn the bottle, the spray and alcohol were mixing at my command. Brewing into something else.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHadrian sent them to you?\u201d I asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJust for a talking-to. \u2018Don\u2019t say this to anyone, don\u2019t say that.\u2019 The usual protocol. And,\u201d Nerva conceded, \u201cto get a couple of implants, naturally. To make sure they don\u2019t forget.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMore vomit threatened to rise, but I held it back. \u201cYou\u2019d better be lying.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva pinched his nose and sighed. \u201cIf it helps, I didn\u2019t code the implants to His Fruitfulness\u2019s precise specifications–which were, of course,\u201d he added, waving a hand, \u201cto kill them if they speak his name. A precautionary measure, you see.\u201d He gave a shrug without meeting my glare. \u201cIn my mercy, I instead coded the implants to give them a seizure should they decide to inform on him. It seemed a fair compromise. Not that they\u2019ll need much discouraging, your friends. Snitches carry quite a stigma in your patch of the swamp, do they not?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThen you set them free,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFree as nightlarks,\u201d he assured me.\n<\/p>\n \nSo that was that. I couldn\u2019t kill Nerva if I wanted Robin and Hugo\u2019s implants removed.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva gestured to the digestif. \u201cBetter finish. Nullspace in five.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI picked up the bottle, pausing as the cool glass touched my lips.\n<\/p>\n \nOne more try.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJacob\u2019s father,\u201d I said. \u201cEnoch. He\u2019s generous to those who help his kin. I imagine he\u2019d reward you handsomely–”\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou think if that were an option, I wouldn\u2019t have suggested it? I am bound to His Fruitfulness in ways you don\u2019t understand.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cA slave, then,\u201d I said, tightening my grip on the bottle.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAll creatures are slaves, if only to their nature. Even artists, Mr. Davenport. Even you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI disagree.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI smashed the bottle against Nerva\u2019s wrist button, freeing a starburst of foamy yellow acid.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva gasped.\n<\/p>\n \nBefore he could raise his can, I sprayed a cast of hypersilk around it, then a cord of the stuff around his neck, which I tethered to the wall.\n<\/p>\n \nA pipe broke on the feedlink side of my skull, and pain gushed out in a thick slurry, filling every groove and pocket of my head.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva\u2019s wrist button spat and crackled as the acid burned through it.\n<\/p>\n \nI loosened Nerva\u2019s neck-cord so he could talk.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHOW DO I STOP IT?\u201d I howled.\n<\/p>\n \nHe just seethed and thrashed while his forearm melted.\n<\/p>\n \nI sprayed myself an axe to chop off his wrist device, but it slid off his arm on its own, landing in a puddle of acid. I brought the axe down on the button, a sound as harsh as the pain in my head, and hacked at it again and again until it gave a last chirrup of sparks and died, ending my agony.\n<\/p>\n \nI hurried to the door and pulled on the latch. Locked.\n<\/p>\n \nI molded the axe into a Faraday rifle to blow a hole through the steel, but the weapon had no charge, and I couldn\u2019t give it one no matter how hard I focused.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cToo late,\u201d Nerva hissed. \u201cWe\u2019ll be in Null\u2019 in three minutes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWant to do an over-under on that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI changed the rifle to a hydraulic bolt cutter, fitted the vise around the latch, and squeezed the handles with a sound like a gunshot. The broken-off metal went clanging and whizzing.\n<\/p>\n \nI shoved open the door, peered outside to make sure the hall was clear. Faint footsteps echoed from the bridge, the dull chimes of diagnostics, other sounds. In the other direction hung the iron-maiden silence of the crystal mesh.\n<\/p>\n \nSince neither Hadrian nor Trajan had shown up, this much was clear: Either Nerva feared I would kill him too much to signal for help, or he was terrified of the disgrace he\u2019d reap for my escape. His reticence worked to my advantage, in any case.\n<\/p>\n \nI sprayed myself a backpack and stuffed the other cans of conjuring spray inside it. Then, with some delicate manipulations of the hypersilk, I edged the last canister out of Nerva\u2019s trapped hand so I could stow it too.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou think this is the first time someone\u2019s double-crossed us?\u201d Nerva asked.\n<\/p>\n \nI advised him to be quiet and hold still while I sprayed his arm a coat of replacement flesh. Then I sculpted his neck-tether into a lithe yellow variolus squid, whose syringe of neurotoxic bone sat against his brainstem should he find himself in need of being pithed.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNow,\u201d I said, grabbing Drake\u2019s vaulter, \u201cif you\u2019d be so kind as to help me get off this ship.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nJacob wasn\u2019t amused by my entrance.\n<\/p>\n \nHe\u2019d been in the middle of a lesson with Trajan when I\u2019d barged into the room and knocked out the Delphine with a blowgun.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHave you lost your mind?\u201d Jacob asked, pulling the feathered dart out of Trajan\u2019s shoulder and watching it dissolve, along with the blowgun, back into my can. The Delphine lay slack-jawed on the floor.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCouldn\u2019t risk Trajan sending a feedlink signal,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nI told Jacob what I\u2019d learned, showed him Drake\u2019s vaulter. He glanced at Nerva, whose head was stiff as stone in the variolus squid\u2019s thrall.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re sure about this?\u201d he asked.\n<\/p>\n \nThis room held a cache of vaulters as well, so I pried it open. \u201cLook for yourself.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nJacob ran his fingers down the rods in quiet disbelief. \u201cAll these artists–gone?<\/em> I don\u2019t believe it.\u201d But the tremor in his voice told me he did. He selected a vaulter with a chrome veneer and unsheathed it. \u201cDrake\u2019s mural. We should have never….\u201d He shook his head in horror. \u201cIf they\u2019re really dead, Lucas, who\u2019s left?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe are,\u201d I told him.\n<\/p>\n \n \nOur boots echoed through the fuselage as we hurried to the bridge. Nerva lagged behind us, grunting whenever Jacob smacked him with the chrome vaulter he\u2019d taken from the cache.\n<\/p>\n \nI ordered Nerva to unlock the bridge door.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen he hesitated, I made the squid tap its poison bone against his nape.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva swore in some Delphine patois and punched a number on the keypad. The latch clicked. I forced the squid to ball up behind Nerva\u2019s head, then sprayed Jacob and myself a couple of light, round shields. Since the spray couldn\u2019t make energy weapons, apparently, I also fashioned us each an arqueblaster and loaded them with armor-piercing bullets.\n<\/p>\n \nWe hid in the shadows of the antechamber while Nerva made his way onto the bridge, moving carefully, as I\u2019d commanded, to keep the squid out of Hadrian\u2019s view.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDone already?\u201d crooned the merchant prince from his padded throne at the controls.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes,\u201d mumbled Nerva.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHad a feeling the spray would take to that one. You can always tell a natural by that flame in their eye.\u201d The throne, which slid on a railgrid in the floor, squeaked and rumbled as Hadrian kicked his way like a child in an office chair from one task to another. \u201cAs for Jacob, well, let\u2019s hope his vaulting\u2019s as good as they say.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nJacob cocked his arqueblaster with a scowl, but I made a sign to calm him.\n<\/p>\n \nAlthough the floor and walls of the bridge were made of the same rickety steel as the rest of the fuselage, the ceiling had been scrapped to make way for a bristling firmament of the black crystals. Which complicated things.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis is rather embarrassing, Your Fruitfulness,\u201d said Nerva, clearing his throat, \u201cbut after a brief review of our balance sheet, it seems we forgot to make good on one of our enticements.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhich?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe surveillance commissioner. We should head back to Termina Celeste, settle the issue at once.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian snorted. \u201cI\u2019ll pay that hairless gerbil when it suits me, not a moment sooner.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe has records of our activity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe will behave. Patience is the daughter of fear. And anyway, you know as well as I that the obelisk is more important than such trifles.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian\u2019s refusal left one option.\n<\/p>\n \nI sprayed the rest of my can at the roof of black crystals, my head aching from the inrush of data to my feedlink. I took another can out of my backpack and emptied it too. A cumulonimbus of black mist spread beneath the crystals, hardening into the densest material I could will. Jacob watched me with envy and amazement. I cocked my arqueblaster and gave him a nod.\n<\/p>\n \nWe stormed the bridge with our shields raised, our weapons aimed at Hadrian.\n<\/p>\n \nThe merchant prince raised an eyebrow.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTake us back to Termina Celeste,\u201d said Jacob, \u201cor we\u2019ll off you and do it ourselves.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe rotten apple doesn\u2019t fall far,\u201d Hadrian mused. He told Nerva to turn around, which Nerva did, and whistled. \u201cVery lifelike,\u201d he said, throwing me a look of betrayal. \u201cThough not something I\u2019d expected of you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis is a suicide mission,\u201d I said. \u201cWe won\u2019t ask again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian considered the arqueblasters, shrugged, and flicked a few switches. The takeoff monitors suspended throughout the room showed a curved red horizon–the eastern rim of Celeste, gessoed in clouds–halting its slow roll beneath the stratosphere as the ship began to yaw back around. A destination readout switched from ARCHIPELAGO OF SOULS to TERMINA CELESTE.\n<\/p>\n \nI was so focused on Hadrian I didn\u2019t notice Nerva until too late.\n<\/p>\n \nA dagger-length horn had emerged from his nape, impaling the variolus squid. Nerva looked as surprised as anyone when the creature plopped to the ground.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob turned to fire, but Nerva dove behind a food cart. The bullet blasted a cloche off a casserole. Rolling the cart alongside him for a shield, Nerva scurried into the shadows at the edge of the room.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian chuckled. He\u2019d used the distraction to fetch a canister from a hiding-place somewhere, and a pane of mist was already congealing in front of him; Jacob\u2019s bullets bounced off it like rubber. Hadrian whirled his hand as if pardoning insults, and the pane became a folding screen around his body, blue and shimmery as water.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYour friend\u2019s overstayed his welcome,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut I\u2019m still optimistic about you. Won\u2019t you reconsider?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat depends on your terms.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian called my bluff with a tsk and flung the screen at us with a thrust of his palm. The panes slammed us off our feet and sent us sprawling.\n<\/p>\n \nA thunderclap rocked the canopy I\u2019d formed beneath the ceiling.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian glanced up in puzzlement, frowned. \u201cClever. But won\u2019t hold for long.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMore thunder. My canopy shuddered as Hadrian\u2019s crystals tried to pierce through; desperate, I freed a layer of it as a shower of spikes, but Hadrian whipped a fresh shield above him to deflect these.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob hauled me to my feet, his nose dripping blood.\n<\/p>\n \nI conjured up a beach hydra to defend us. Splayed on four gigantic starfish legs–sleek and brindled, with a mat of stubby tentacles under each–the creature lifted a pair of leonine heads and gnashed at Hadrian with demonic teeth.\n<\/p>\n \nThe merchant prince laughed and sprayed himself a butcher hawk in answer.\n<\/p>\n \nThe hawk spread its razor-lined wings and launched at one of the hydra\u2019s jugulars, but the hydra jerked away at the last second, seized the hawk in its jaws, and brought it thrashing to the ground. They wrestled: a tangle of blood and flesh and green spittle.\n<\/p>\n \nBOOM! BOOM! The crystals hammered on the canopy harder than ever. Cracks were forming across the dense substance, and I couldn\u2019t seal them and focus on the hydra at the same time.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob tried to conjure a Volta grenade–but the sphere had no light at its core.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCan\u2019t make energy weapons,\u201d I said, unsheathing Drake\u2019s vaulter.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob cursed. He transformed the grenade into a spiked ball-and-chain and swung it around his head–once, twice, three times–and lobbed into one of the butcher hawk\u2019s wings. The spikes hooked deep into the veiny webbing and pinned the hawk down, allowing the hydra to tear out its jugular.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian\u2019s laughter faded. He fashioned the hawk\u2019s carcass into something else while I vaulted to the other side of the room. I shot at him with my arqueblaster. His shield rippled and sang. He swiveled to face me, but I vaulted again, firing as I went. The shield was iridescing, weakening.\n<\/p>\n \nMy eyes filled with water as I leapt. My throat tightened; I lost my balance and fell.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob took up firing at Hadrian\u2019s shield. Hadrian pushed another pane into him, a sound like a mallet against a piece of meat.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNO!\u201d I cried.\n<\/p>\n \nI tried to lift myself, but my body felt impossibly heavy.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva came toward me, clad in a gas mask and clutching a potted purple flower in one hand, a can of conjuring spray in the other. The flower was a Lucretian lullaby, the strongest allergen known.\n<\/p>\n \nA patch of my canopy burst open at last. A long spar of crystal rushed down through the gap and skewered my beach hydra.\n<\/p>\n \nI could hardly speak or move. When Nerva reached me, he ripped off my backpack of canisters, wrenched the vaulter out of my grasp, kicked aside my arqueblaster and shield. Then he siphoned the Lucretian lullaby back into his can, the gas mask too. \u201cI\u2019ve got him, Your Fruitfulness.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis is the last time I mistake talent for usefulness,\u201d said Hadrian. \u201cNow scrap him.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva sprayed himself an arqueblaster and pressed it to my head.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou let me escape,\u201d<\/em> I whispered. \u201cYou think your master will forget that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat\u2019s no concern of yours,\u201d said Nerva.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDON\u2019T!\u201d screamed a voice from the entrance.\n<\/p>\n \nA pair of molten golems, one fat and one slim, tromped onto the bridge with a dazed Trajan between them, leaving a trail of brown sludge in their wake that stank of compost and drone grease and a hundred other foul things. The slim one had a Faraday rifle aimed at Trajan\u2019s bruised head, while the fat one kept a rifle trained on Hadrian.\n<\/p>\n \nI blinked. It was Robin and Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLet them go, Hadrian,\u201d Robin continued, tossing aside her visor, \u201cand I won\u2019t turn your servant\u2019s head to smithereens.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBy now the butcher hawk\u2019s carcass had assumed its new form: a flock of flying basilisks, seven strong, their leathern wings twitching to be freed and yellow venom dripping from their fangs.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTell me, Nerva,\u201d said Hadrian, a quaver of anger threatening his calm, \u201cwhen you rewired these urchins, did you happen to forget that itty-bitty algorithm that kills them if they speak my name?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva\u2019s arqueblaster trembled against my skull. \u201cYour Fruitfulness…forgive me, I did not think….\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt would matter? Your brother\u2019s opinion may differ.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nTrajan flashed a look of rage at Nerva, then winced from the heat of Robin\u2019s Faraday rifle.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDo it,\u201d Hadrian ordered Nerva. \u201cI can always make another.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva\u2019s grip on the weapon tightened. Any second it would puke hot metal into my brain, put me away forever.\n<\/p>\n \nBut Nerva hesitated. \u201cTrajan,\u201d he muttered. \u201cBrother.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDo it,\u201d<\/em> snapped Hadrian.\n<\/p>\n \nJust then, Hugo caught sight of Jacob\u2019s body, sprawled and bloody at the edge of the room.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cJacob–he\u2019s not moving,\u201d said Hugo. \u201cWHAT DID YOU DO?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHugo unloaded his rifle on Hadrian.\n<\/p>\n \nThe lightning-storm of blue muzzle flashes made Hadrian\u2019s shield scream, and shatter.\n<\/p>\n \nThe basilisks swarmed Hugo and Robin, a volley of wings and teeth and tails.\n<\/p>\n \nIn that instant, Trajan tackled Robin and pinned her to the ground–but before he could grab her Faraday rifle, the muzzle flashed blue, and his head became a cloud of grey smoke.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva howled as Trajan\u2019s headless body slumped into a loose, grotesque sprawl.\n<\/p>\n \nRobin twisted away from the corpse and unleashed three bolts at Nerva, but the swarm of flying basilisks took them all.\n<\/p>\n \nNow was my chance. I let the canopy collapse to the ground as a thick, dark fog.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva fired at me as I rolled out from under him, his bullets clanging off steel. I snatched up my arqueblaster and shot him twice through the heart.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva dropped with a thud. I ripped my vaulter and backpack off him.\n<\/p>\n \nFlashes from Faraday rifles cut through the gloom. A basilisk incandesced as a brief blue skeleton; the others were shadows within shadows, writhing through the air and snapping at the shapes of Robin and Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \nI ran to Jacob as the now-freed crystals lanced down. One stabbed the floor an arm\u2019s length ahead of me with a shriek of metal.\n<\/p>\n \nHugo got to Jacob first and hauled him up; I slung my arm beneath Jacob\u2019s other shoulder.\n<\/p>\n \nHugo\u2019s stench made me choke as we dragged Jacob off the bridge together.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s a long story,\u201d Hugo mumbled. \u201cThe hell\u2019s she up to?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nRobin was whistling in the darkness somewhere.\n<\/p>\n \nAn explosion ripped across the controls, and Hadrian roared with anger.\n<\/p>\n \nMore crystals lanced down frantically as Robin darted out of the fog.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019d better find jetpacks,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat did you do?\u201d<\/em> I asked, scared to hear the answer.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo time, let\u2019s go.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nSince the main door of the ship was cut off from the fuselage by a forest of black crystal, we had no choice but to use the airlock. I wasn\u2019t about to risk a trip through the waste port as Robin and Hugo had done–not with a homicidal Delphine on our tail.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019ll asphyxiate, we\u2019re still too high up,\u201d Hugo said, blasting open the jetpack compartment.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNot for long,\u201d said Robin.\n<\/p>\n \nAs if on cue, the floor tilted.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob slipped out of our grasp and went sliding into the wall, and Hugo skidded off balance and barreled into him, hard. Jacob lurched back to consciousness with a cry of pain, and Robin and I pulled him out from under Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDamn oaf,\u201d Jacob groaned.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShow some gratitude,\u201d said Robin. \u201cHugo saved you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nJacob touched his broken nose. \u201cFeels like a work in progress to me. How the hell\u2019d you get back here?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou don\u2019t want to know,\u201d said Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \nTo my horror, only two jetpacks remained in the compartment. I told Robin and Hugo to strap them on.\n<\/p>\n \nBefore Robin could protest, I said, \u201cI\u2019m still the leader, remember? If you two hadn\u2019t snuck back onboard, Jacob and I\u2019d be dead by now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nJacob snorted but didn\u2019t bother to argue. We all knew it was true.\n<\/p>\n \nThere wasn\u2019t enough spray left in the canisters to conjure more jetpacks, but there was enough for two parachutes, so I made these instead.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGod help us,\u201d said Hugo as he pulled the airlock lever.\n<\/p>\n \nThe airlock door gave an asthmatic wheeze. One moment I was looking at Robin\u2019s anxious brown eyes; the next, a streak of orange cloud against a cruel blue sky, the air suddenly sharp as a riptide of ice water. The sun on the horizon throbbed into view as my head spun perpendicular with the canyon.\n<\/p>\n \nThe canyon.\n<\/p>\n \nWe\u2019d jumped right above the River Andalosi.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nIn my teary periphery, the Kingfisher<\/em> was plunging toward the docks of Termina Celeste.\n<\/p>\n \nI pulled the cord on my parachute, and it wrenched me upright with a hard snap and unfurling. For a moment I thought I\u2019d pulled too soon. No one else was in sight.\n<\/p>\n \nThen Robin torpedoed out of the cloud-glare, banking sharply toward me on the flames of her jetpack.\n<\/p>\n \nA dark shape moving across a cloud–I\u2019d taken it at first for her shadow–peeled off toward her with a pair of wings spread wide and swooped into her, ripping her into a tangled downward spiral. I thought I\u2019d imagined it, they were gone so fast; but they emerged from the haze a moment later as a filament of jetpack exhaust in the distance, threading down into the shadows of the docks and out of sight.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLucas!\u201d<\/em> Hugo jetpacked out of the clouds to link an arm with mine; he had Jacob attached to the other. The wind was trying to drown out his shouts. \u201cDid you see that?\u201d<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nI would\u2019ve answered, but the flood of noise and light from the docks overwhelmed us all.\n<\/p>\n \nThe Kingfisher<\/em> had exploded on impact.\n<\/p>\n \n \nAll the music in Termina Celeste had been buried under sirens and shouts by the time Hugo landed us on the outskirts of the docks; the smells of exhaust and deflector wax, under the reek of burning fuel. In the distance, sentry drone floodlights wreathed the inferno that had been Hadrian\u2019s craft.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy her?\u201d<\/em> Hugo screwed his eyes shut while I washed the brown gunk off him with my conjuring spray. \u201cWhy couldn\u2019t they\u2019ve nabbed you instead? Picking that ship was your idea, Lucas.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOne you went along with,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOnly \u2018cause I\u2019m out of my mind.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nJacob gazed at the flames of the Kingfisher.<\/em> \u201cThink Hadrian did it on purpose?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI shook my head. \u201cIt was Robin. That whistling must\u2019ve been her luring Hadrian to break the controls with his crystals.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGod, she\u2019s even crazier than you,\u201d Hugo said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re just finding this out?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \nHugo scoured the docks for Robin with his jetpack, while Jacob and I traveled with our vaulters.\n<\/p>\n \nI told them to be cautious. The fire had diverted the sentry drones\u2019 patrols, so we were open to an ambush from whatever creature had taken Robin.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob\u2019s leaps lacked their usual grace. He landed hard on an old sublunary dhow crusted in red dirt and seized the rudder for balance, wincing at a pain in his ribs. \u201cMy brother\u2019ll regret missing all this.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe claim was so absurd I would\u2019ve laughed in other circumstances, but there was no denying the truth of it. Blaise would envy us all if we survived intact.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe thing that took Robin, did you see what it looked like?\u201d Jacob asked.\n<\/p>\n \nI cocked the arqueblaster I\u2019d conjured a few minutes ago, then put a finger to my lips. Footsteps, slow and shuffling, echoed from the shadows of a solar cruiser in our midst. I raised my weapon.\n<\/p>\n \nThe footsteps stopped, and Hugo\u2019s round head lifted into a patch of light.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThink I saw \u2018em go this way,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n \nI sighed in relief.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere\u2019s your jetpack?\u201d Jacob asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHad to ditch it,\u201d said Hugo. \u201cRan outta fuel.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nJacob and I followed Hugo on foot to keep quiet.\n<\/p>\n \nEvening had become night, and the disc luminaires beneath the city roof had switched on, sickly orange above the smoke of the wreckage.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI could go for one of your sandwiches,\u201d Jacob whispered to Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNow\u2019s not the time,\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat was that one you had earlier? Tuna on rye?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHell if I remember,\u201d said Hugo. \u201cRight down here. Pick up the pace, huh?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe came to a long concrete service platform between rows of ships. Old-fashioned mooring hooks from pre-hypersilk days rusted beside dry coolant pumps and out-of-service holofeed booths. At both ends of the platform, switchbacking metal stairs led up to a labyrinth of catwalks.\n<\/p>\n \nAs we hurried to the closest stairs, a meaty crack rang out.\n<\/p>\n \nHugo shrieked and collapsed, clutching a large, bloody wound on his head.\n<\/p>\n \nI spun my arqueblaster on Jacob, who was holding his vaulter above him like a bludgeon. \u201cHickory-smoked ham,\u201d he said. \u201cYou think Hugo would forget that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHugo writhed on the ground, whimpering. Something buzzed and crackled in his wound. The implant?\n<\/p>\n \nTo my horror, Hugo\u2019s belly began to shrink, and his limbs grew longer, skinnier. His face melted into–\n<\/p>\n \nNerva\u2019s.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI had a feeling it was him that grabbed Robin,\u201d said Jacob. \u201cThat horn that came out of his neck, killed the squid, did you see it? He\u2019s some kind of shapeshifter.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian\u2019s laughter rang high and cold from somewhere above us. \u201cYou surprise me, Jacob. I took Lucas for the cleverer one.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva\u2019s flesh dissolved from his body as a black mist until only a flexicarbon skeleton remained. No.<\/em> A drone<\/em> that resembled a skeleton, save for the blue wires that ran through its joints and vertebrae like nerves.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva climbed to his feet. His breastplate still had two bullet holes from my arqueblaster, and the side of his head with the feedlink now had a dent from Jacob\u2019s vaulter. The arm I\u2019d burned with acid was deeply scarred.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva roved a pair of fluorescent pupils from Jacob to me in confusion. \u201cWhere am I?\u201d he asked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAn old model,\u201d Hadrian said. \u201cWe Delphines do love our heirlooms.\u201d He descended from an alcubierre in a jetpack and landed on the service platform, his blond hair sooty, his white uniform torn and burnt. \u201cAlas, unlike ships, a drone\u2019s mind sinks without spectacle.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere am I?\u201d Nerva clutched his head. \u201cYou overrode me again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTwice today you hesitated to fulfill my orders,\u201d said Hadrian. \u201cNow look what\u2019s happened.\u201d He gestured to the inferno. \u201cI couldn\u2019t risk a third time.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva choked in anguish. \u201cTrajan…Trajan….\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDead, yes,\u201d said Hadrian, \u201cthanks to you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian flicked his hand, and the mist returned to Nerva as a new kind of flesh, jet-black and barbed on the inside like an iron maiden. Nerva screamed and thrashed as the stuff took root. I couldn\u2019t help feeling pity for him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere are they?\u201d I said.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian summoned a cloud of locusts from the darkness, so dense it might have been a piece of the night itself. The humming swarm dropped Robin and Hugo onto the platform, scratched and bloody and bruised.\n<\/p>\n \nI resisted the temptation to shoot Hadrian right there. I knew his swarm could become a shield at any moment, or worse.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m impressed.\u201d Hadrian sounded sincere. \u201cHalf the people in this universe have tried to ruin or kill me, and you four came closer than most. A pack of truants and vandals. A good thing my ship was insured, or I might be very mad at you.\u201d He reached out his hand. \u201cNow if you would kindly return my property.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI hefted the backpack of cans higher up my shoulder. \u201cHow do we know you\u2019ll let us go?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBecause I\u2019m a gentleman,\u201d Hadrian said.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob gave me a cautious look. After a moment, he put his can in my backpack. \u201cYou\u2019re the leader, Lucas. You choose.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHugo nodded in agreement. Robin watched me intently.\n<\/p>\n \nIf I were a liar I\u2019d tell you I only cared about them. Not about the power I\u2019d have to give up, the artistic possibilities I would lose forever.\n<\/p>\n \nBut I\u2019m not a liar, so I\u2019ll leave it at that.\n<\/p>\n \nNervously, I took off the backpack and gave it to Hadrian. His gaze flitted to my arqueblaster. I stowed the weapon in the backpack as well. Then he touched each can inside to slave them to his feedlink, leaving us with nothing but the vaulters.\n<\/p>\n \nI expected the cloud of locusts to devour us at any second. But it just hummed overhead, a patient malevolence, while Nerva convulsed on the ground in his cocoon of torture barbs.\n<\/p>\n \nA sentry drone\u2019s floodlights flickered between the rows of ships, basking us in whiteness for an instant.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian\u2019s jaw knotted. The drone was heading our way. He siphoned Nerva\u2019s cocoon back into his can, leaving his servant a bare machine again.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou want your real flesh,\u201d Hadrian said, tossing him a can from the backpack, \u201cshow me you deserve it, and fast.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe locusts formed a ring around us, blocking our escape.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLucas….\u201d Robin grabbed my arm.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDon\u2019t do it, Nerva,\u201d I said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be his slave.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva rubbed the dent in his head, grimacing.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe Davenport\u2019s right,\u201d Hadrian told him. \u201cMaybe that\u2019s all you are. A slave. A real son of mine wouldn\u2019t hesitate.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAs Hadrian moved to take back Nerva\u2019s can, the robot yanked him into an elbow lock and rammed a torture barb into his chest.\n<\/p>\n \nHadrian screamed.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva stabbed him again, exchanging the barb for Hadrian\u2019s can, and kicked him off the service platform. The merchant prince fumbled with his jetpack controls as he fell, smearing them with arterial blood, then rode a burst of fuel in a desperate zigzag before sputtering into a long, silent plunge.\n<\/p>\n \nSeizing our chance, we darted through the locust swarm toward the closest catwalk.\n<\/p>\n \nI halted halfway up the steps. Our implants.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCome with us,\u201d I said. \u201cJacob\u2019s father\u2019ll find a place for you. He can fix your feedlink.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo time,\u201d snapped Jacob.\n<\/p>\n \nThe sentry drone\u2019s floodlights washed over the service platform, so bright they turned the fixtures into ice sculptures and Nerva into a ghost.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva was giving himself a new coat of flesh with Hadrian\u2019s canister. \u201cCan he bring back Trajan?\u201d he asked. \u201cCan he revive my brother?\u201d This flesh had the rough brown ribbing of tree bark and patches of yellow-green down like moss–the flesh of a dryad from a Delphine fable, down to the purple klinger vines entwining his arms. \u201cI didn\u2019t think so.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMy instincts were ahead of me: The second Nerva whipped a vine toward Robin, I had my vaulter up to smack it away, the impact running through me like a tuning fork.\n<\/p>\n \nI didn\u2019t need to tell the others to run.\n<\/p>\n \nNow in thrall to Nerva, the cloud of locusts engulfed the sentry drone.\n<\/p>\n \nThe catwalk shuddered as we bolted for the city.\n<\/p>\n \nTwo of Nerva\u2019s klinger vines ripped the latticed floor out from under us, and we spilled hard onto the roof of a frigate.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob grunted in pain.\n<\/p>\n \nHugo grabbed his vaulter. \u201cGet on my back!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva came vaulting toward us on the vines unspooling from his arms.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGive me Robin!\u201d he called. \u201cGive me my brother\u2019s murderer, Lucas!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nJacob clasped Hugo\u2019s back, and Robin hopped onto mine.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019ll lure him to the hypersilk jetty,\u201d I whispered.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy?\u201d asked Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \nIn as few breaths as possible, I sketched my plan.\n<\/p>\n \nJust as Nerva landed on the frigate, Hugo and I vaulted to another ship, using every drop of energy in the supercarbon to make the jump. We barely crossed the gap; piggybacking cut our reach in half.\n<\/p>\n \nAs I\u2019d guessed they would, shards of the Kingfisher\u2019s black crystal began to appear everywhere as we approached the inferno, glittering like demonic hail on service platforms and in the crevices of ships.\n<\/p>\n \nHugo and Jacob veered right while Robin and I went left.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva followed Robin and me, naturally, his half-dozen vines groping through the hazy air. But we were nimble in landing and leaping, ducking behind rudders, skidding down wing-stems. Robin jumped off my back when we had to run and jumped on again when I vaulted, digging her fingers into my ribs for dear life.\n<\/p>\n \nWe had to stop Nerva without killing him; all of us still had his implants.\n<\/p>\n \nEndless, tyrannical flames bellied thick and bright as molten gold up the jagged guts of the Kingfisher,<\/em> and I felt their heat on my cheeks, my hands.\n<\/p>\n \nThe shards of crystal we passed were getting longer, some still smoldering from the blast. Many were as long as spears.\n<\/p>\n \nAlmost there….<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nSwift as a bolas, a vine whipped around my legs, and I fell splat on the roof of a dhow. Robin leapt off my back, snatched up my vaulter, and made a breakneck dash in time to miss the vines corkscrewing up my legs, waist, chest.\n<\/p>\n \nShe knew what to do.\n<\/p>\n \nAlighting on the dhow, Nerva whipped around, glowering, but Robin had already disappeared into the smoke. A thin shower of sparks gushed from Nerva\u2019s feedlink, and he rubbed his head. My vine-trap tightened as if in sympathy. \u201cWhere is she?\u201d<\/em> he hissed.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re not thinking clearly,\u201d I said. Jacob\u2019s blow had loosened something in Nerva\u2019s personality. \u201cYou\u2019re free now. Don\u2019t you see that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNerva pinned my head between dryad fingers as sharp as stakes. \u201cNo one is free, Mr. Davenport. Not even you. All creatures are slaves, if only–if only to their nature.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nRobin called through the smoke: \u201cDon\u2019t hurt him, Nerva! He didn\u2019t kill your brother!\u201d<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nStill holding me in his vine-trap, Nerva followed Robin\u2019s voice to the steel jetty at the end of the dhow and dropped onto it.\n<\/p>\n \nNarrow as a footpath, the jetty held bollards of hypersilk, which several maintenance drones were harvesting, their arachnoid legs teasing miles of the stuff into their round, steel bellies.\n<\/p>\n \nRobin was crouched at the end of the jetty. She\u2019d traded my vaulter for a long spar of black crystal and held it at a defensive slant.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva charged at her, slamming each drone in his path into the abyss.\n<\/p>\n \nIn his rage, he failed to notice another spar buried in a ship\u2019s hull–and the strand of hypersilk, invisible but for a few glints, extending from it to the eave of an adjacent solar cruiser.\n<\/p>\n \nI braced myself.\n<\/p>\n \nRobin tossed me her spar as Nerva\u2019s neck met the hypersilk garrote.\n<\/p>\n \nTWAAANG.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nFor an instant Nerva was perfectly horizontal.\n<\/p>\n \nThe collision sent me flying out of his vine-trap.\n<\/p>\n \nI stabbed a ship\u2019s wing at my apex with the spar, then kicked off the hull at an angle. I landed halfway onto the jetty with a heavy thud. Breathless, I almost lost my purchase, but Robin grabbed me with both arms, giving me the leverage to claw back onto the platform.\n<\/p>\n \nAs Nerva climbed back to his feet, oaring the air for balance, Jacob leapt off the solar cruiser, ripping off a solar tarp draped hastily across its hull, and four holospray tags winked to life from under the fabric: my Klein bottle, Jacob\u2019s chrome tree, Hugo\u2019s sword-wielding alter ego, Robin\u2019s tutued sun bear. I couldn\u2019t believe the tags were still there. They were glitchy and faded, among the first we\u2019d ever made. But they were enough to distract Nerva for a moment.\n<\/p>\n \nWhich was all Hugo needed.\n<\/p>\n \nHe skewered Nerva from behind with a crystal spar, punching through bark and flexicarbon with an earsplitting crack.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva collapsed to his knees, his guts crackling. His vines wilted into slithery heaps. He shuddered in what sounded like agony, and the can tumbled out of his hand and rolled to the edge of the platform. I caught it.\n<\/p>\n \nThen I siphoned up Nerva\u2019s dryad flesh as the others shambled over, reeking of sweat.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGood thinking with the tags,\u201d I told Jacob. \u201cWhen Nerva\u2019s throat didn\u2019t stick to the hypersilk, I thought we were dead.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s a miracle,\u201d said Jacob, shaking his head. \u201cSomeone actually saved our work. After all these years.\u201d He laughed, giddy with adrenaline.\n<\/p>\n \nThe rest of us laughed too. It was all we could do not to hug each other.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI just realized what that reminds me of,\u201d said Robin, pointing to the scaly black vaulter Jacob had taken off her hands.\n<\/p>\n \nBefore I could speak, Nerva lunged at me and clamped a flexicarbon hand around my throat, pressing the spar in his chest against my own.\n<\/p>\n \nMy heart kicked like an animal about to be put down.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe can,\u201d<\/em> said Nerva, his voice crackly, distorted. \u201cGive it to me.\u201d<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nI held the conjuring spray over the River Andalosi. I knew the moment I handed him the spray we\u2019d be finished.\n<\/p>\n \nSo I said, calmly, \u201cSince you can fly, Nerva, I\u2019m sure you can swim as well,\u201d and tossed the can into the river.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva watched the black cylinder recede to a dot and then to nothing at all. He gaped at me–so baffled, it seemed, by my sacrifice that he forgot to drive the crystal through my heart.\n<\/p>\n \nThat was good luck. For the second time that night, and with a presence of mind for which I\u2019ll always be grateful, Jacob demonstrated his philosophy for dealing with robots: He smashed Nerva\u2019s feedlink with his vaulter, a sound like a sledgehammer against a circuit breaker.\n<\/p>\n \nAnd this time Nerva didn\u2019t get up.\n<\/p>\n \n \nWe didn\u2019t stop running, except to catch our breath or curse our injuries, until we got to Enoch Landry\u2019s safehouse in the Armitage territory of Termina Celeste.\n<\/p>\n \nA roomy fortress of duraconcrete and camera-infested bamboo, not to mention half a dozen soldiers loyal to Jacob\u2019s father, the High Capo\u2019s home made a perfect refuge from the drones and gendarmes prowling the city.\n<\/p>\n \nBlaise Landry, our leader, opened the towering front door. His black hair was disheveled, his eyes were wild, and he wore a plush blue bathrobe.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGuys,\u201d he said, \u201chave you seen the…?\u201d His mouth twitched as he took in our wounds. \u201cNo.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYeah,\u201d said Jacob, panting. \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nChuckling, I shouldered past Blaise into the safehouse, lay down on the cold concrete floor, and passed out.\n<\/p>\n \n \nOne billion spacemarks.\n<\/p>\n \nThat\u2019s how much damage the Kingfisher\u2019s<\/em> crash was projected to cost when all was said and done, according to the holotrope feeds that were piped through our recuperation room a few days later. The Kingfisher<\/em> alone accounted for about half that figure, while the other ships that\u2019d been destroyed–seven in all–represented roughly a quarter. The other two hundred and fifty million spacemarks would come from hospital bills, heightened surveillance, the city government\u2019s investigation, countless other things. But at least holotrope ratings were up; that had to be worth something.\n<\/p>\n \nAll of us were terrified someone would find evidence of our role in the crash. Maybe a sentry drone had caught a snippet of footage of us entering the Kingfisher,<\/em> or maybe an occupant of one of the ships in the docks had seen us facing down Hadrian. Enoch could protect us from the city government, perhaps, but could he fend off Hadrian\u2019s father Jora Hizad, the Merchant King? The Delphines had probably commenced an investigation of their own by now, and none of us could be sure all traces of our presence in Hadrian\u2019s argosy had been devoured by the flames.\n<\/p>\n \nBut what worried me most were the implants. How could we be confident they didn\u2019t have trackers?\n<\/p>\n \nWe couldn\u2019t. Which was why we\u2019d taken Nerva with us to the safehouse–the part of him that mattered, anyway.\n<\/p>\n \nNerva\u2019s severed flexicarbon head felt cool and heavy in my hands as I sat at the edge of the bed in the recuperation room. Enoch had given it back to us after we\u2019d let him download Nerva\u2019s mind for retooling into a simple neurosurgical drone. We considered it our gift in exchange for his protection, and he was pleased to have such quality software in his repertoire. Since Nerva\u2019s architecture appeared to be of custom make, Enoch had fried the drone\u2019s hardware once the download was complete to ensure he had the only version. We didn\u2019t mind. Enoch Landry could do what he liked, as far as we were concerned.\n<\/p>\n \n \n\u201cWhy d\u2019you think Nerva didn\u2019t kill you when he had the chance?\u201d asked Blaise. He was scarfing down a bowl of savory-smelling koalaroo dumplings in front of a holotrope feed at the table.\n<\/p>\n \nSince the night we\u2019d arrived, all Blaise had done was wring details about the events involving the Kingfisher<\/em> out of us, as if to create a mental simulation of them he might insert himself into.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe told me he respected my skills with the spray,\u201d I said. \u201cBut I think it was something else.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d asked Hugo. He and Jacob were playing a game of bridge on Jacob\u2019s bed, and Robin was watching them with one of Blaise\u2019s blue teacup elephants in her lap; the animal was diligently trying to wrap its trunk around her thumb.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe pitied me,\u201d I said, \u201cjust like I pitied him.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe was crazy, no point trying to make sense of it,\u201d said Jacob, waving a dismissive hand. \u201cButterlocks probably programmed him that way.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOr made him that way over the years with his abuse,\u201d said Robin.\n<\/p>\n \nI sighed, setting down Nerva\u2019s ghoulish head on a pile of bedsheets. \u201cYou guys deserve an apology. A ship that looks that tempting, I should\u2019ve guessed it was a trap. You tried to talk me out of it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYeah, I wouldn\u2019t have fallen for any of it,\u201d mumbled Blaise through a mouthful of dumplings.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShut up, Blaise,\u201d said Robin. \u201cYes you would\u2019ve.\u201d She shrugged. \u201cWe accept your apology, Lucas.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGrudgingly,\u201d said Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhen my nose is healed, maybe,\u201d said Jacob. \u201cAnd my ribs. And–yeah, whatever, I accept. Just so long as you help me find that spray.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s at the bottom of the river,\u201d snorted Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI guessed that much.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOnce we get our implants removed,\u201d I told Jacob, \u201cwe won\u2019t be able to use the stuff, even if we found it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSo we don\u2019t get \u2018em removed just yet,\u201d said Jacob.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey might have trackers.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe,\u201d said Blaise. \u201cBut maybe not. The Delphines haven\u2019t come knockin\u2019 yet.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nRobin cocked her head at Jacob while the teacup elephant nuzzled her hand. \u201cYou are kidding, right? After all the damage that stuff has caused? Besides, the waters of the Andalosi have probably destroyed it by now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWell, we don\u2019t know that,\u201d I admitted. \u201cBut it\u2019s best left where it is, either way.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nPart of me hoped the conjuring spray was ruined for good, given how dangerous it was. The other part, though….\n<\/p>\n \nNerva\u2019s skeletal face might have been whispering to me.\n<\/p>\n \nAll creatures are slaves, if only to their nature. Even artists, Mr. Davenport. Even you.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n \nHow hard could it be to find the can?\n<\/p>\n \nWith one of Enoch\u2019s gadgets, not very. Blaise or Jacob would have to finagle a submersible drone or something off him carefully, as he\u2019d want to keep the spray for himself if he knew about it. But that was doable.\n<\/p>\n \nAs I considered this, a thin, stoic man in grey scrubs slipped into the room.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m pleased to tell you everything is ready,\u201d the man said softly, without a hint of Nerva\u2019s accent or tone. Enoch\u2019s engineer had done a remarkable job of building a neurosurgical drone with no detectable personality. \u201cWhoever wishes to get their implant removed first, please come with me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe looked at each other.\n<\/p>\n \nMore accurately, everyone looked at me.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLeaders first,\u201d said Hugo.\n<\/p>\n \nRobin waved for me to follow the drone, while Blaise raised an eyebrow expectantly.\n<\/p>\n \nJacob just smiled. He didn\u2019t need to say another word. I could tell by the devilish glint in his eyes that he knew he\u2019d convinced me.\n<\/p>\n Jordan Chase-Young is an American living in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife and cactus. A copywriter by trade, he loves reading, writing, drawing, hiking, and goofing around on Twitter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back then, we liked to scour the docks of Termina Celeste for starships to tag: sleek crafts with hulls like vast canvases and cabins that were mostly unattended because the space-lagged passengers were off in the city somewhere, getting drunk or on business or both. Blaise Landry was the leader of the crew, being the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107294,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20081],"tags":[20082],"class_list":["post-137973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-37-autumn-2020","tag-the-colored-lens-37-autumn-2020","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137974,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137973\/revisions\/137974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n