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  Claire pointed at herself. "Me?"

  "Who else?"

  She caught up with him. "Where are we going?"

  "To my Sangori appointment. I may need another point of view."

  She hid a grin and followed him into the elevator.

  Chapter Four

  Claire strode down the hallway, her heels clicking lightly on the transparent floor, her tablet in her hand. She wore a pale green dress that set off her hair and her new tan. The day was winding down, and the week with it.

  The hallway brought her to thirty-three twelve, a wide room nicknamed the Wheel. The Wheel consisted of a round common area from which a dozen office rooms branched in a circle. From above it looked like a flower with a circular middle and elongated petals.

  People emerged from the offices at her approach. Hands held out pseudopapers and data strips. She was a link to Ven and everyone wanted to get their bit in before the Friday rolled to a close.

  "Earnings projections for the next twin-week!"

  "What do you want me to do about Vinogradov case?" Marto asked.

  "He will look at it this afternoon," she replied.

  "What about Hawk Corp.?" Liana asked.

  "Monday." Claire smiled.

  "Here's the Bodia summary."

  When she made it to the lift, her hands were full. No matter how well Venturo treated his employees and how ethical he was in keeping his mind to himself, the non-psychers never could get read of a nagging suspicion that he might be scanning their thoughts. She'd been on the receiving end of these suspicions before: people who went out of their way to avoid her, never discourteous but always cautious. It made her isolated. Psychers stuck together, because the rest of the world was rarely welcoming.

  Claire turned and watched the sun shine through the solar panels, as the elevator moved upward. In the month she had spent as Venturo's assistant, she managed to become an indispensable link between him and the support staff. They saw her as safe, a buffer between them and Venturo's lethal brain. It was at once so much more than she thought she would achieve and so much less than she was capable off.

  The doors whispered open, and she exited the elevator, heading for Venturo's office. It was Friday. The weekend was just around the corner.

  Having two days off after the lifetime of weekend consisting of half-days on Sunday seemed like a decadent luxury. The first three weekends she slept, tried take-out from the neighboring restaurants, and watched broadcasts, soaking up information about the Province of Dahlia like a sponge. She'd finally decided she had enough understanding of the customs and planned to venture to the Terraces this weekend.

  She saw him through the translucent door at the end of the hallway: he stood by his desk, his wide back to her, talking to a digital screen, the line of his shoulders tense. Something unpleasant.

  Things with Venturo had become progressively complicated. She no longer stared in stunned silence when she saw him, but as they worked together, the facets of his personality became apparent. Venturo had a fierce intellect and relentless drive to succeed, knitted together by a kind of arrogance evolved from understanding your own power.

  Venturo had definite ideas about how things had to be and he held himself to these strict standards. In the month she acted as his personal aide, she had seen him furious over a stupid mistake an employee made, yet when the same employee meekly came to the slaughter, Venturo treated him with tact and flawless politeness. On two occasions, Ven ran around the building, trying to hide from his aunt and an invitation to some family function, until Lienne lost her patience and turned her mind into a glowing beacon of light, mind-scanning the place for him, but in their interactions he would be respectful to her without fail.

  It was this control that drew her in. The more she learned about him, the more she was drawn to him. That and the small, seemingly insignificant things he did for her. He opened the door for her. She had discovered that the drink machine in the Wheel dispensed tea in thirty different flavors, and after a hard day of work, when Ven would make his evening pilgrimage to get himself a coffee, he would bring her a cup of hot tea. He sought her opinion, and he would ask her seemingly random things. Did she have a chance to go the Botanical Gardens? Has she been to the Terraces?

  He must've been something else on the bionet. She would never know. He would never see her on the bionet either.

  Lucky for her, her ability to control her emotions was never in question. She was never less than professional in their interactions.

  The office door slid open. Claire stepped inside.

  Venturo turned. She read fury in his eyes. His mind churned and broiled. "We're about to lose the Sangori account."

  What? "To whom?" she asked.

  "De Solis Security."

  DSS. The Guardian's biggest rival.

  Claire reviewed the facts. Bionet safety consisted of two phases: the establishment and the maintenance. The establishment meant installation of static security mechanisms and structuring the bionet in the way that would lead an intruder into these defenses The maintenance consisted of responding to active threats. Of the two, the establishment phase was the most costly and the most labor-intensive. Because of the danger involved, the maintenance brought in a larger amount of money but required fewer man-hours.

  Venturo had given Sangori a very good deal on the establishment to entice them into employing Guardian, Inc. He had been planning to recoup his costs on the maintenance fees.

  The contract had been signed. They'd been working on the establishment phase for the past three weeks and it was completed this morning. Giving it up would mean DSS would reap all of the benefits of their groundwork.

  A clause in the contract gave Sangori legal means to terminate it after the establishment. The clause was standard, but in every meeting Venturo and Savien had, the head of Sangori family had asserted his intention to continue with the maintenance phase. He broke his word.

  The anger in Ven's mind told her they had no legal recourse.

  "How much do we stand to lose?" she asked.

  "Two million credits," he said. "It's not the money."

  "I don't understand," she said.

  "Savien Sangori doesn't have the expertise to engineer this scheme on his own. He knows money; he doesn't understand bionet. This took a psycher, someone who had looked at the amount of work involved and quoted him exact numbers prior to him ever walking into my building. DDS had conspired with him. They must've offered him monthly maintenance at a lower price if he managed to get the establishment out of me. They set us up."

  Now she understood. "It's about pride then."

  He faced her. "Yes. More, it's about business. I've been double-crossed. Suckered like a fool. I provide security. Would you want a gullible fool to protect your data?"

  "A psycher's gullibility has no bearing on the destructive potential of his mind." She almost bit the last word. She shouldn't have said this.

  Ven looked at her, his mind focusing on hers. If he looked too closely, she would be outed.

  "Forgive me," Claire said. "I've been trying to read some research in my spare time. I may have misunderstood."

  He considered it for a long second and let it go.

  "You understand perfectly," he said. "But not many other people do."

  He pulled his doublet off the back of his chair.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To have a conversation with Savien Sangori. I'm going to attempt to explain the facts of life to him."

  "Those facts being?" she asked.

  "I make a dangerous enemy," he said, "and Sangori is an old provincial family. They had never before betrayed the integrity of their family name to make a credit. I'm curious why they decided to start now."

  "What if he refuses to talk to you?"

  "I'm not planning on giving him a chance to decline."

  Alarm dashed through her. She set her pseudopapers in the chair and plucked her tablet out from the bottom of the stack.

  "W
hat are you doing?" he asked.

  "I'm coming with you."

  "Why?"

  "Because you shouldn't go alone."

  He peered at her incredulous. "And you're planning to come as my bodyguard?"

  "I am."

  It would take her at least three minutes to break through the shell over her mind, bringing her to combat readiness. It would be an eternity in a psycher fight, where death was instant. Still, she couldn't let him go alone and she didn't need to listen to his mind to realize he wouldn't take anyone he considered capable of delivering damage to watch his back. Venturo Escana, arrogant beast that he was, would consider backup beneath him.

  "Just out of purely academic curiosity, how exactly are you planning to defend me?" Ven asked. "You have no weapons, no combat enhancements, and your mind is inert. Are you planning on beating Sangori's assassins off with that tablet or were you thinking of a more theoretical approach? Should I look forward to you giving me a detailed analysis of a knife sticking out of my back? If I happen to die, will you deliver a slide point presentation describing my valor at my funeral?"

  "Are you finished?"

  "Possibly."

  "Very well." She raised her chin. "I'm ready when you are."

  "You do realize that this is foolish?"

  She simply looked at him, loading her gaze with as much scorn and sarcasm as she could manage.

  As they were walking down the hallway, Ven leaned to her. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome. I hope you don't get us killed."

  "They wouldn't dare touch you," he said. "You're a noncombatant."

  They stepped into the elevator.

  "Can you kill outside of bionet?" she asked.

  "If the Sangori are smart, you will never have to find out," he said.

  *** *** ***

  Ven marched into the lobby of Sangori Investments. Claire followed him, a step behind. Inside, white columns rose up, five stories tall and lit from the inside with a warm yellow light. An ornate lacy relief of vines and flowers sheathed the columns, blocking the illumination, so the spaces between leaves and flowers glowed with white. Delicate golden chairs sat in groups by ornate tables, so airy they might have been spun by spiders. People occupying the chairs chatted in quiet voices.

  In the back of the lobby, a reception area waited, flanked by shorter columns that supported white statues of men on some sort of mounts. Bright green silk draped the reception counter, spilling from it in pleated waves.

  She had never seen so much opulence in her entire life.

  Ven strode to the reception area across the polished floor inlaid with a green and gold mosaic. A man with a practiced smile greeted him.

  "Venturo Escana to see Savien Sangori," Ven said. "I'll show myself up."

  Heads turned. Suddenly they were the focus of attention.

  She felt the sharp points of psycher minds approaching from the left, where a gilded elevator slowly descended along the wall. Ven had felt them too, and moved to stand in front of her.

  The elevator doors opened and Castilla de Solis walked out onto the floor. Her mind blazed like a luminescent supernova. In the split second, Claire assessed it. Castilla had power. The question was, did she have the skill to go along with it?

  Behind her two men stepped out, one tall, older, with a square jaw, a walking brick. His mind glowed, not as bright as Castilla's, but strong enough. The man on his left was a leaner, faster, younger version of him, his blue-black hair falling in a long waterfall down his shoulders. His mind rivaled Castilla's but there was an odd brittle edge to it.

  "Venturo," Castilla's eyes opened wide in mock surprise.

  "Did you enjoy yourself?" Scorn dripped from Venturo's voice.

  The lean psycher's gaze met Claire's. The irises of his eyes were so light, they nearly glowed.

  "Yes. Yes, I did."

  "Was it worth starting a war?"

  "Are we at war, Venturo?" Castilla raised her eyebrows.

  "We are now."

  "Then I'll start with your pretty little drone."

  The lean psycher's mind caught Claire's in a fiery hot grip. Her body locked, her spine bending under unnatural angle. Her throat constricted, cutting the oxygen flow to a mere trickle, letting in just enough air to retain consciousness. She began to dismantle the shell from within.

  The lean psycher's eyes widened, puzzled.

  "She isn't screaming." Castilla blinked, feigning surprise. "Do you restrain your drone often, Ven? Perhaps she likes it?"

  Venturo moved. The force of his mind shot out like a blow of an enormous club. The older man went flying across the lobby, his heavy body knocking the golden chairs into the air. Venturo spun, too fast, and then Castilla was locked in the cage of his arms, her back to his chest, his hand holding a red monomolecule blade a millimeter away from her jugular.

  "Attacking a civilian is a new low for you," he said, his voice calm, almost conversational. "Shall I tell your parents about it?"

  She trembled, rage shivering in the curl of her upper lip. "Kill him!"

  The older man slowly picked himself up off the floor. His nose, mouth, and eyes bled. The lean psycher stared at Ven.

  "Kill him!"

  "They can't, dear," Ven told her, his lips a few centimeters from her ear. "You can't fight me with your mind. We've tried that, remember? If your cousins attack me, they'll have to spend time breaking through my outer shield. My blade will end your life in half a second. And then I'll kill both of them, and if I don't, your father will."

  Castilla growled, a purely animal sound suffused with helpless fury.

  "So sweet and refined," Ven said. "As always, a true blossom of the Provinces."

  "Fuck you!"

  "Perhaps later, if I decide to go slumming." Ven nodded at the lean psycher. "Pelori, let her go. Now."

  The hold on Claire's mind vanished. Her heels touched the ground. "Thank you," she said to Ven. "Shall I alert the authorities?"

  "There is no need. We're finished here." Ven let go of Castilla and the woman shoved away from him.

  "You'll regret this," she snarled.

  "I had to touch you - I'm regretting it already."

  Castilla spun and walked out of the lobby. The older man followed. The lean psycher lingered, looking her over, and walked away.

  "Are you alright?" Ven asked, his mind probing hers gently, searching for damage.

  "I'm fine." She forced calm to flow through her outer thoughts. "Shall we go up?"

  "No. I've changed my mind." He leaned closer. "We won't get to Sangori now. He had too much time to prepare." Aloud he said, "Will you join me for dinner instead?"

  "Of course."

  "Excellent."

  They walked out. The moment they boarded Venturo's sleek silver aerial, the force of his mind flowed over hers, like a shield. "Will you let me scan your mind for injuries?"

  "I would rather not."

  "Why?"

  "We're not that close," she told him. "I like to keep my thoughts private. I ask you to respect this boundary."

  "Very well." Ven punched the code into the aerial's console, pulling his mind back. "Where would you like to eat?"

  Claire considered it. She could tell him to take her home. In all likelihood, he simply wanted to observe her to see if her mind unraveled. But he was right here, next to her, and he was offering her an evening of his undivided attention. It wasn't in her power to turn it down.

  I'm so pathetic.

  If she was going to do this, she would make the best of it.

  "Somewhere private," she said. "I think I've had enough excitement for today."

  The aerial's engine hummed as they rose into the air. "I know just the place," he said.

  *** *** ***

  Claire had no idea that the top floors of the Guardian Building housed a garden. In this part of the structure the outer exoskeleton of plasti-steel beams sloped, forming the upper curve of the flower bud, and the space between the diagrid and the inner core of the
building was only about twenty-five meters. Those twenty-five meters were occupied by a tiled deck. Ornamental shrubs and flowers formed green barriers, slicing the deck into small private sections. Ven brought her to the larger of these sections.

  Three comfortable wicker chairs with burgundy-red cushions waited in the center of the deck, each with its own side table, arranged around a large metal brazier. Past the chairs, the solar panels of the sloping diagrid had turned transparent, reacting to encroaching darkness. The sky spread before her, vast, endless, tinted with purple and blue, the stars distant points of light. Little white flowers bloomed in the flower beds, filling the air with a refined perfume reminiscent of peaches.

  Venturo took an ornate bin behind one of the chairs, dumped a small heap of uniform black stones out of it into the brazier and added wood chips.

  "What's this?"

  "Charcoal."

  "Fossil fuels? Really?" How quaint.

  "It's a provincial tradition." He drenched the coals in some fluid and lit it with a flick of a spark stick. The coals ignited. A wave of heat washed over Claire. She smelled smoke. It wasn't an unpleasant scent.

  To their right, the glass doors opened and a smiling man came forward, followed by an computerized trolley.

  "Ah. Here comes our food. Thank you, Ertez."

  "You're welcome. Enjoy."

  The man departed. The top of the trolley opened like a flower, revealing half a dozen larger dishes, each supporting long skewers threaded with vegetables and meat.

  "Pick one."

  She puzzled over the choices and chose a skewer at random. "This one."

  Ven lowered the skewer into the openings cut in the rim of the brazier, picked out his own skewer, and placed it next to hers. Flames licked the meat.

  "Do you feel lightheaded at all?" he asked casually, plucking a bottle painted with icy lace of frost from the trolley. "Any strange vision problems, like tiny glowing threads flying about?"

  He was trying to check if she suffered any mind lesions. Claire smiled. "I'm fine."

  Ven opened the bottle and poured shimmering pink liquid into two glasses. "I'm sorry. I should have never put you into that position."

  Ven would have never attacked a civilian. In his mind, that sort of action was filed under It's Just Not Done. His mind-shields were down - probably so he could scan her mind at the first sign of trouble - and his emotions leaked out. He was intensely worried about her well-being.