Chapter 66: Contingencies

The Victor's Boon.

The winner of the Etemenos Cup – in theory, the greatest mechaneer in the galaxy, although the tournament scene seemed sufficiently removed from actual combat for Ellie to doubt that title – was always offered one favor by the Federal Senate in recognition of his achievement, as would once have been gifted by the emperor.

Ellie doubted Marcel Avalon understood how much his offer of aid meant to her.

Or, paradoxically, how little.

Principle knew she appreciated the admiral's offer. That he would help Jack, who had ever been his enemy, spoke volumes for his kindness. That he would expend so valuable a gift as the Victor's Boon spoke volumes for his charity.

None of which would matter.

The Boon had to be something within the senate's legal powers, and there were provisions for denying a Boon the senate deemed too dangerous or imprudent.

Provisions, but no precedents since long before Emperor Theophilos Astroykos died in the space outside Etemenos. Denying a Boon was political suicide and politics had become Etemenos's life.

“There's a first time for everything,” Ellie muttered. She ignored the hard glances she got from the other people on the broad promenade outside Avalon's manor-suite. Servants, which was what his neighbors took her for, were supposed to be seen, not heard.

Ellie didn't believe the senate would actually pardon Jack, though it was technically within its rights, its precious legal rights, to do so. Or perhaps only Ferrill valued the law – assuming she wasn't just hiding behind it.

Regardless, the Federal Senate wanted Chloe. To get her, they needed Jack.

The only question was which faction in the senate would be forced to suffer the political fallout of refusing what, on the surface, would seem a reasonable Victor's Boon.

Ellie had told Avalon as much, but he refused to believe it.

Perhaps Ellie misjudged the situation. Chloe would have to come to Etemenos well ahead of the end of the Etemenos Cup. She'd already be in the senatorial trap by the time Jack's fate was decided.

“Have to buck up,” Ellie reminded herself. Jack's fate rested in Avalon's hands and the senate's. She could no more stage a rescue in a world-city where the very walls would be against her than she could fly unaided between the stars.

She could deliver a warning, though.

Jack was relying on her to do it.

And, she thought with a bittersweet mix of pride and anger and sorrow, she ought to be up to the task. Her son, her Alex, had been even closer to martial perfection than Marcel Avalon.

Ellie felt as if her old wounds had been broken open again, but also as if some kind soul had given her medical nanopaste for them. Just as Avalon could never walk without a limp unless he consented to having his leg broken again and allowed to properly heal, so Ellie felt about her heart. He had broken it again when he told her the truth about Alex. She would come back stronger and happier for it. The sorrow would never go away, the anger would never stop being just. Someday, she knew, the pride would eclipse both.

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Perhaps it already had.

Perhaps, Ellie thought, she was dawdling. Unless she wanted to suffer another such wound – and oh, Merciful Principle, she did not! – she had to find Chloe before the Feds did.

Trouble was, she didn't have the first idea how.

She wandered Etemenos's streets, letting the few people who even noticed her assume she was Marcel Avalon's servant. There weren't many advantages to being a hybrid on Etemenos, but she'd found at least one. To most people, she was a non-person, and that meant she wasn't worth paying attention to. If she'd had any kind of goal, anywhere worth looking, she probably could have gotten past any civilian security simply because they didn't deign to notice her.

Ellie considered trying to see Jack again. Last time, she'd gone with President Ferrill's dispensation, but she might be able to get back to him with a combination of social invisibility and expired documents.

Or, she might get arrested and leave Chloe in the lurch.

As much as she missed Jack, Ellie knew neither of them could afford to risk that.

Instead, she descended a smooth-flowing 'sidewalk' into a sort of park or garden. The promenade had rotated into contact with it for the moment, answering her questions about how Etemenos's citizens grew flowers: with the same energy keeping the rest of the world-city in motion. Seven miniature suns powered the interlocking, planetary-scale rings. Some of their energy filtered up to heat the ground the plants grew in, and more powered the lights glowing healthily above them.

It seemed like a lot of work to Ellie, but the results were undeniably beautiful.

Ellie paused beside a cluster of small flowers, brilliant in their contrasting black and gold. She smiled. Corin Basilios had given her a bouquet of these several lifetimes ago. He'd claimed they were his favorites. Later, Ellie found out they belonged to his eldest sister, but the thought hadn't counted to her at the time.

Ellie sighed.

Seeing a noble at war had reminded her of the noble who fathered her son. Thinking of Corin reminded her of the noble she'd last seen fight.

Ellie had been operating under the assumption she couldn't possibly know where Chloe was. She still didn't.

She did, however, know who Chloe had been with.

Stephan Kyrillos.

Not just liege-lord to Corin Basillios, not just the mechaneer-aristocrat who went by the moniker Black Rook.

During the Civil War, rumors had always swirled around the Kyrillos family. Stephan ranked high among the young heroes of the mechaneer-aristocracy, yes. When his bannermen weren’t listening, though, or when they weren’t watching their words carefully, they told a different tale.

Even the nobles had needed an intelligence service. The Kyrilloses were supposed to have sullied their honor to provide it. Corin had once whispered to Ellie that he believed his liege lord had gone so far as to rule over criminals. Ellie had even seen them from time to time, visitors from Oligarchial space, crude, intense, treated with guest rights and shepherded into the counsel of the Kyrillos family.

The mechaneer-aristocrats fell in battle. Outnumbered a thousand to one. Perhaps outflown, for all their power. They lost the Civil War.

The Kronistine Syndicate remained.

Ellie couldn’t know for sure it was the remnants of the Kyrillos intelligence network. She couldn’t know for sure if it remained loyal to its old masters.

She believed both, because she had no other choice.

The Syndicate traded on vice and secrets and power. They would maintain offices in Etemenos, the heart of all three in human space.

When Chloe came – and she would come, of that Ellie had no doubt – she would probably make use of the Syndicate to get into the world-city.

Ellie didn't have to find anyone.

She just had to find a way to persuade Etemenos's most dangerous criminals to find her.