Free The Thousand Emperors by Gary Gibson

Director’s ear.
    ‘I look forward to seeing you receive your honours in the Palace,’ said Garda, briefly turning back to Luc, but it was clear his mind was already somewhere else. ‘Affairs of
state, I’m afraid.’
    Luc nodded, and watched the Director step away and greet someone else.
    ‘Feel like washing your hands?’ asked Eleanor, moving up next to him.
    Luc suppressed a grimace. ‘I guess I should have expected him to be here.’
    ‘You had a look on your face like you’d just drunk your own piss. To be honest, I think he noticed.’
    ‘If he did, I don’t think it bothered him a great deal.’
    ‘First Lethe, now Garda. Just when you thought you’d be able to relax a little.’
    Luc shook his head wearily. ‘Fuck assholes like Garda. There’ll always be people like him.’ He reached out and took her hand. ‘I need to see you. Soon.’
    She nodded. ‘Look, I’m sorry about last night, it’s just—’
    ‘It’s okay,’ he said, stopping her. ‘I seem to be about the only person in all of SecInt who isn’t on active duty right now.’ He shrugged. ‘And maybe
it’s not such a bad thing that you weren’t there.’
    ‘Why not?’
    He hesitated, wondering how she’d react to what he was about to tell her.
    They had become lovers the year before, on a joint trip to Yue Shijie in the 94 Aquarii system to try and track down one of Black Lotus’s many sources of funding.
    Like Aeschere, Yue Shijie orbited a gas giant, but unlike that desolate moon, Yue Shijie was well within its system’s habitable zone, and large enough to support a habitable biosphere. He
remembered standing with Eleanor on the balcony of a ziggurat-like building that, like much of the rest of that world’s capital city, rose out of dense jungle stretching to the horizon in all
directions. He remembered looking up to see the gas giant’s streaked atmosphere, marked here and there by outpourings from Helium 3 factories ploughing through its upper reaches.
    They had been stuck there for the better part of a month, chasing after lines of enquiry that led nowhere. Demonstrations and riots stirred up by Black Lotus had made the city streets too
dangerous to venture onto. Boredom and alcohol had combined with inevitable effect.
    He recalled in vivid detail the curve of her small, high breasts beneath the thin blouse she wore that evening, the curve of her spine when she leaned against the railing beside him. Falling
into bed had seemed the obvious thing to do on such a long and lonely night, but neither of them had anticipated how quickly and how deeply their feelings for each other would develop. He wanted to
keep her at a safe distance from anything that involved Cripps, yet at the same time, he knew there was no one he could trust more than Eleanor.
    ‘I had a visitor yesterday evening,’ he told her. ‘Bailey Cripps. He spent the whole time quizzing me about my loyalties.’
    Her eyes became round and she stepped back a little. ‘ Bailey Cripps? Visited you where, here?’
    ‘He turned up in my home.’
    She had a look in her eyes like she wasn’t quite sure she could believe him.
    ‘Listen, I swear on Cheng’s teeth he was there,’ Luc insisted.
    ‘He doesn’t strike me as the type to make impromptu house calls.’
    ‘There was nothing impromptu about it. He data-ghosted into my apartment without any warning. I guess Council privileges extend to home security overrides.’
    ‘He questioned your loyalties ?’ Her eyes darted to the side and then back again, and he guessed what she was about to ask. ‘Are you sure it was really him?’
    ‘I checked. It was him, all right. He seemed to think I couldn’t be trusted because I’m from Benares. He also mentioned something about an investigation, but I have no idea
what investigation he was talking about.’
    Her expression became more alarmed. ‘Investigation? Into what? Aeschere?’
    ‘No, he seemed to mean something else, but he didn’t seem interested