She slept a great deal ignoring the pretend, dead-end cell they offered her. Instead, when she dreamt, she recalled what had happened to her so far.
She remembered the view of the great castle, the journey on the airship, the train and car journey before that, the dream in the night at the big house, the things that Pieter Velteseri had asked her about, her walk through the garden from the vault and the strange dreams she had had before she'd awoken.
And it was as though there was something beyond those dreams too, something she knew was there but knew nothing else about save that it existed. The knowledge tickled her mind when she thought back to the time — instant or aeon — in the Velteseri family vault. There was something there, she knew there was, but like a dim light just sensed with the corner of the eye which disappeared when looked at directly, she could not inspect it more closely; the very act of attempting to do so had the effect of extinguishing it completely for as long as she tried.
She reviewed all that had happened to her in the short life she could remember. She wondered if there had been a degree of choice in the fact she had awoken in the Velteseri vault; most of the clan had been away and Pieter might have been chosen as somebody likely to help. She thought she had been right to trust him, and thought that the dreams she had had during the night she had spent at the house had been genuine dreams; something that had put her here had contacted her and told her what her purpose was.
She supposed she had been kidnapped by somebody who was not really Cousin Ucubulaire. These people must have recognised her name, or found out about her in some other way, and not wanted her to do whatever it was she was supposed to do here (assuming she actually had been taken to the big castle she had seen). Perhaps travelling under the name Asura had been a mistake.
And yet as soon as she'd heard Pieter Velteseri utter the word she'd known that was her name. There had been no feeling of warning, no niggling sensation that she might be doing something dangerous; instead she had recognised her true title and claimed it.
She thought about this. She had the impression that somebody or something had gone to great trouble to get her here. How silly not to realise that her name itself might bring her into danger.
But she was here (again, assuming) and she did not feel she had anywhere else she had to go. She was where she wanted to be. So perhaps she had been meant to be found by Lunce and the lady who'd called herself Ucubulaire, or by people like them. That made a kind of sense. They had her, but they had not succeeded in finding out anything she didn't want them to know…
She decided she would wait.
She waited.
2
Gadfium felt she was an insect crawling across the floor of a dank cellar. Everywhere she looked there was garbage, showing up grey and ghostly in the not-quite totally dark space around her.
The whole first-level room was one gigantic rubbish tip filled with the debris of millennia. From pipes, ducts and chutes high on the walls and ceiling a constant rain of refuse, tailings, junk and trash pattered down. She picked her way across a heap of what looked like doll-size plastic sanitary ware, her feet sinking and sliding through the mound of miniature baths and bidets in a slough of breaking and crackling.
– Are you sure this is going to throw people off our trail?
– Positive. Bear right here. Not too far. That's it.
Gadfium walked on, avoiding a pile of rotting babil fruit husks. She heard a series of crunches and crashes somewhere to her left, where she would have been walking if her crypt self hadn't told her to bear right. She looked around the hills of rubbish.
– I'm sure we could recycle more.
– I suppose it will be re-used, eventually. Or would have been, but for the Encroachment.
A bright stream of yellow fire burst silently from a distant wall and fell slowly in a livid arc towards the raised floor of the lumber room, its colour changing as it fell from yellow to orange to red. A sizzling sound came from that direction, and then a distant roaring noise as whatever it was hit the surface.
– That's pretty.
– Furnace smelt-slag.
– Thought it might be something like that. How are your researches going? Have you discovered anything else interesting?
– Goscil was the Security agent.
– Really? I always assumed it was Rasfline. Gadfium shook her head. You just never knew. — What else? she asked.
– I still don't know who betrayed the group, but they've all been taken into custody except Clispeir.
'Clispeir? Gadfium said out loud, and stopped.
– Please don't stop here, there's a hopper full of reject cerametal vehicle parts due to land where you're standing in about a minute.
Gadfium started walking again. — You don't think it was Clispeir, do you?
– I don't know. She is due for some leave in two days; perhaps they are waiting for her to come to them. The observatory at the Plain of Sliding Stones is still cut off from normal communication so she would not have been able to find out about the others.
– If it was her, could the message we received from the fast-tower have been a Security trick, simply made up?
– Possibly, though I doubt it.
Gadfium walked on for a while across the flat bed of some long-dried tailings. Whistling noises from above and behind terminated in distant thumps which shook the dusty surface.
– Some Palace gossip, her crypt self told her. Our lot and the Chapel may be about to come to some sort of agreement.
– This is sudden.
– Apparently the Army had some supposedly war-winning scheme that didn't work. Now we have no choice but to reach terms… Ah.
– What?
– Security. They think they have the asura.
'What?' Gadfium said, and stopped again, feeling herself fill with despair.
– Keep going. They could be wrong.
– But… so soon! Is everything hopeless?
-… No. However, I may have a change of plan for us.
– What exactly is this plan, anyway? I'm grateful to you for getting me out of the Palace, but I would like to know where you're taking me, apart from into outlaw territory.
– Well, onward and upward from there, but first, I think now, deeper.
'Deeper?'
– Deeper.
The neatly folded uniform appeared to have been washed but not repaired. There were still a few rips and tears in it. On top of the pile of clothing lay a pair of Army-issue boots, a belt and some complicated webbing, a mask and forage cap. The collection was held easily in one huge white furred paw; black claws extended a little on either side, bracketing the pathetic heap of effects.
The chimeric polar bear sat at one end of the long table in the committee chamber. The Palace civil servant officially in charge of the meeting sat at the other end, on a seat in front of an empty throne. Adijine had decided to stay away when he'd discovered what had arrived earlier in the diplomatic bag. The Consistorians all seemed to have found urgent appointments elsewhere as well, though like the King most of them were probably watching the events through others' eyes, as the Chapel representatives would know.