Palace Read Free Page B

female, of what line, what off-world Standing? Kata hoped that he was about to find out. Riva had hidden behind third parties and coded packets from the beginning. Kata had taken other jobs from him, over the years: an assassination here, a smuggling job there. Always the work had harmed the human presence in the Pinch. Always Riva, through his underlings, had spoken of the grand day when the Ty Onar Lep would once again be the masters and all other races, their slaves. It was an old dream, this empire of domination, and one that most of the Ty Onar had repudiated, over the long years when they’d been trapped in the Pinch. These days even the warlords of Ri talked of cooperation and the pooling of resources. But a few, a grand faithful few, remembered the old ways. Riva led them, and Kata served them in any way he could. Soon, any moment, he would meet the Lep who inspired them all.
    But Riva was still hiding. On the wall to Kata’s right a spot of light appeared, then burst, spread, and reformed into a hologrammatic projection, a revenant as they were called. Riva himself or herself, as the case might be, sat somewhere else, somewhere far away, even, controlling the rev through the Map, seeing and hearing through sensors on the walls. The hologram was a good one, a beautifully detailed grandmother Lep, clutching her knotted silk. Hie scalings down her arms matched those of the Line of Tal, the markings that Kata had dyed away. Riva must be a cybermaster, Kata realized. Only a skilled master of the Map could create such fluid and detailed hologram. But - Leps were barred from the Cyberguild on Palace. An interesting riddle? No, a useful clue.
    ‘Well, you’re punctual, I see.’ The revenant’s voice, speaking Gen, was female.
    ‘Ki-ovi-ta y-ya-lo ni -’ When will you let me see your ‘Gen, my friend! Speak Gen!’
    ‘T-ka Gen, li-dua iyik’t Lepir.’ Gen stinks, in the mouth of the Hero of the Lep race. The revenant laughed and ran her fingers over her silk, but she said nothing. After a moment, Kata surrendered.
    ‘Oh, whatever you want,’ he said in Gen. ‘You didn’t bring me here to talk, anyway. There’s someone you want dead?’
    ‘Most certainly, my friend, but you’ll be more than just a hired killer. I have many other tasks for you here on Palace, and the language of the Leps won’t be much help to you. Best that you get used to speaking Gen from now on.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So, be patient, Vi-Kata. You’ll understand everything soon enough. For now, I have a simple enough errand for you. Two Humans in the Pleasure Sect must die.’
    ‘The Pleasure Sect?’ Kata clacked his snout in the Lep equivalent of a sneer. ‘That’s just a brothel and playground. The citizens there are prisoners. What danger could anyone there represent?’
    ‘That isn’t your concern, my friend. These deaths are both small matters, yes, but-’
    ‘On this world they take deaths seriously,’ Kata interrupted. ‘We’d better have good reasons for causing them.’
    ‘True. You’d best be very careful. Don’t arrange anything spectacular, shall we say?
    Caution first, even if you need to take a little extra time. After all, we’re building a revolution. We need patience.’
    ‘A revolution?’
    Grandmother Riva opened her fanged mouth in a hideous grimace. It took him a moment to realize that the revenant was meant to be smiling - but it was a human smile.
    ‘We tried outright war, didn’t we? And it failed. You’ve heard the War Council on the homeworld, snivelling about peace, snivelling about pacts and treaties! We can’t count on them for help. If we are to better our lot here on Palace, we must hatch our own eggs.’
    Kata said nothing, but he found himself staring at her parody of a human smile and wondering many things.

PART ONE
    Vida should have been studying. She was coming to the end of her schooling with that big last round of exams to face, but history was something she hated, especially bloody and