"And if we don't agree, you're going to threaten us with that toy?" Patten said, nodding toward my cutting bar. "I ought to feed it to you!"
"No threat," I said. I picked up the bar and waited a moment. If Lightbody and Baer heard the blade whine, they'd burst in on us.
The Oriflamme fired two more attitude jets. I triggered the bar and shaved the corner off the desk. I laid the weapon down again.
"This is so that you won't make the mistake of attacking me," I said. "If you did, I'd-"
Another part of my mind started to fog my conscious intelligence. My voice was husky and very soft.
"— cut you into so many pieces that they'd have to fill your coffins by weight." I swallowed. "And I don't want that, I want a friendly conversation, that's all."
The part of me that hid behind the red fog, the part that had been in control at the Molt temple and was almost in control just a moment before-that part very much wanted another chance to kill.
The women had straightened as I spoke. Their faces were expressionless, and the earlier bluster was gone.
"What do you want?" Vantine repeated quietly.
"We'll be lifting for Quincy soon," I said. I was all right again, though my hands still trembled. "We're hoping to meet Our Lady of Montreal there." I smiled. "If not there, then we'll catch her farther on. It depends on how long she lays over on Fleur de Lys. But before we leave Trehinga, I'd like to find the treasure stored here."
The women looked at one another cautiously, then back to me. Patten massaged her right thigh through her dirty trousers.
"There's no chips, no artifacts here," Vantine said. She was more afraid of keeping silent than of speaking. "Trehinga wasn't settled before the Collapse. There's nothing but wheat."
"I can't imagine that a man like Secretary Duquesne doesn't have a private hoard," I said. "I don't know what sort of favors he's trading to the ships' captains who land here, but there'll be something. He'll be building up a store so that when he retires to Earth he has something better than a Federation pension to support him. Chips are the most likely, but maybe pre-Collapse artifacts smuggled from other planets, sure."
"We don't," Vantine said very carefully, "know anything about that." She watched me the way a rabbit watches a snake.
Attitude jets-the last pair of the morning, unless Piet saw a need to retest-fired. The sound wasn't so loud that I couldn't have talked over it, but the three-second pause was useful.
"I'd pay you each a hundred Mapleleafs if you showed me where the cache was," I said. I held up a pair of twelve-sided coins bearing President Pleyal's face toward the women.
The paymaster's safe on the opposite side of the Commandatura contained a fair amount of currency. As Piet had promised, we weren't robbing the businessfolk of Trehinga, but the Federation government was another matter.
The women stared at me. Patten began to laugh. "Are you crazy?" she said. She regained her composure. "Do you think we're crazy? We lead you to Duquesne's personal stash, and then you go off and leave us here? Do you have any idea what he'd do to us then?"
I shrugged. "I've got a notion, yeah," I said. "Open the door, would you please?"
Vantine obeyed. Her companion's laughter was half bravado, but Vantine was clearly terrified. She'd sensed. . not, I think, what was about to happen, but that something was about to happen.
Lightbody raised his shotgun's muzzles when he saw everything was calm. "Baer," I said, "go out and gather as many of our off-duty people as you can in five minutes. Into the garden. And tell the locals to come, too. There'll be some entertainment."
"What are you doing, sir?" Lightbody said as Baer ran down the corridor shouting.
"For the moment," I said, "you and I wait here with the ladies. Then we'll go out to the garden too."
I put my hand on the cutting bar. I was shaking so badly that the blade rattled on the desk and I had to put it down. Patten was silent, and Vantine was as gray as if someone was nailing her wrists to a cross.
There were easily a hundred people in the garden when we came out-me in front, the prisoners behind, and last of all Lightbody with the shotgun. I'd had him tie Patten's right wrist to Vantine's left while we waited. They couldn't escape, but it was important that they not be seen to try. "Hey, Mister Moore!" Kiley called from the crowd. "Do they take their clothes off now?"
I waved with a grin; but the joke made me think of Jeude, and the grin congealed.
The Molt gardener stood on one leg, rasping the other one nervously against his carapace as he watched people brush his precious roses. Because of the thorns, the bushes weren't likely to be trampled; but sure, some sailor might clear more room with his cutting bar.
Funny to think of a Molt worrying about Terran roses on one of the Back Worlds. In those terms, most of life seemed pretty silly, though. I suppose that's where religion comes in, for those who can believe in a god.
I waved my bar ahead of me to make a path. A lot of those present were locals, as I'd hoped, but they kept to the edges of the courtyard. The central walkway and an arc facing the back of the Commandatura were filled with Venerians. More spectators streamed in through the wickets beside the building and the larger gate onto Water Street.
Baer had done a good job, though I wasn't quite sure how he'd managed it so quickly. I'd wanted a big enough gathering that word would spread at once throughout the community, but this was ideal.
Alicia's jalousies were lowered; she would be watching from behind them. I'd told her she should at all costs stay hidden this morning.
"What are we doing?" Vantine asked over the chatter of the crowd.
"Keep moving, whore!" Lightbody snapped. I suspected he prodded Vantine with the gun as he spoke.
"None of that!" I ordered. "The ladies are helping us."
As I turned my head to speak, I saw that Piet and Stephen had come out the back of the Commandatura. They were following us.
The storage shed was padlocked. I sheared the hasp off in twinkling sparks. A bit remained hanging from the staple. I flicked it away with the tip of the cutting bar: the steel would be just below red heat from friction.
Stephen reached past and slid the door open. He grinned in a way that was becoming familiar, but he didn't ask any questions.
The shed's floor was wooden and raised a few centimeters from the ground. Tools optimized for Molt hands, crates, a coil of fencing, and other impedimenta were stacked around the walls, but the two square meters in the center of the shed were clear.
There'd be a catch hidden somewhere, but I wasn't going to hunt for it. I swept my bar in an arc through the flooring. Nails pinged bitterly within the cloud of sawdust; the head of one bounced from my shin.
I stepped forward, turned, and drew the reverse arc. The crowd outside was pushing for a better view, but Stephen planted himself in the doorway to keep people out of my blade's way. Patten and Vantine watched in dawning awareness.
Stringers gave. The rough circle of floor fell with a crackle under my weight. I kicked the fragments of lumber aside.
A rectangular steel door measuring a meter by eighty centimeters was set in concrete where there should have been bare soil. I gripped my bar with both hands.
"Jeremy?" Piet Ricimer called.
I looked up. Piet handed Stephen the white silk kerchief he'd worn around his neck. "Cover Jeremy's eyes," he said.
Stephen knotted the silk behind my head. I saw through a white haze. The doorplate had no keyhole, but the hinges were external.
"We didn't-" Patten shouted at the top of her voice, but the scream of my bar cutting metal drowned her out.
A rooster tail of white sparks cascaded to either side of the bar's tip, pricking my bare hands and charring trails of smoke from the wood they landed on. A chip of steel flicked my forehead. Momentary pain, gone almost as soon as I jerked my head.