Free The Thousand Emperors by Gary Gibson Page A

in telling me precisely what.’
    ‘We need to tell someone about this.’
    He shook his head. ‘No.’
    She shook her head in disbelief. ‘For God’s sake, why not?’
    ‘This is Bailey Cripps we’re talking about. There has to be a reason he approached me directly, instead of going through Lethe or Hetaera. If I tell them or anyone else, I might not
get to find out what that reason is.’
    She sighed, tilting her head back to stare up at the Palace’s illuminated underside. ‘I don’t like this,’ she said, bringing her gaze back down. ‘You should tell someone .’
    ‘I’m telling you , aren’t I?’
    She shook her head in exasperation. ‘Don’t you think you’ve been through enough already?’
    ‘Look, maybe Cripps came to me in the way he did because he knows something about Black Lotus. Besides . . . he’s one of the Eighty-Five. What they want, they get.’
    ‘There are some members of the Council,’ she said, speaking to him as if he were dim-witted, ‘you don’t want to get tangled up with.’ Her eyes slid to one side, and
he followed the direction of her gaze until he alighted on Garda, still working the crowd.
    ‘I just want to find out what Cripps wants. Then I’ll go talk to Lethe.’
    He could sense the anger brewing behind her thinned lips. ‘Is that a promise?’
    He nodded. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Good,’ she replied, ‘because this is starting to feel like Aeschere all over again.’
    Garda mounted a stage set up at the centre of the plaza and began to speak, while mechants from half a dozen different news agencies buzzed through the air, jostling for the
best vantage point.
    Luc’s attention soon drifted back to the Palace floating overhead. Something about the sight of all those millions of tons of metal floating unsupported in the air always felt like a test
of one’s faith in technology. He wondered, not for the first time, just how many seconds he’d have left to live should the AG pods holding it in place suddenly fail to function.
    Glancing at Eleanor beside him, he saw she had an expression like she’d swallowed something nasty. She hadn’t taken the news about Cripps well. But during his recovery, left with
little to do but think, it had come to Luc that so much of his life had been devoted to finding Antonov that there hadn’t been room left for much else. He’d sometimes wondered what kind
of life he might have led if the Battle of Sunderland hadn’t brought everything to a crashing halt at such a young age.
    Maybe now was the time to find out. And as much as he hated to admit it even to himself, Cripps’ vague allusion to an unspecified investigation had awoken within him a sense of purpose he
had not felt since his departure for Aeschere.
    Garda’s speech finally came to an end, and Luc realized he hadn’t taken in a single word. Two massive doors in the Palace’s underside, positioned directly above the plaza,
slowly swung apart on cue. All around the park, fliers thrummed into life while low, sonorous music flowed out of hidden speakers.
    The interior of a docking bay became visible beyond the doors. Dozens of mechants rose towards it, as if the Palace were in actuality a moon, the mechants drawn upwards by the tug of its
gravity.
    ‘This is it,’ said Eleanor, taking his arm and flashing him a smile that looked only half-genuine.
    A mechant approached and asked them to follow it. They trailed after it towards a sleek-looking craft onto which at least a dozen other people were already filing.
    They boarded and took their seats, Eleanor taking his hand and holding it tightly.
    ‘Nervous?’ she asked.
    ‘A little,’ he admitted. He wondered if Cripps would be present during the ceremony. He leaned back, half-listening to the people chattering around them as the flier waited for
clearance. Most of them were ordinary citizens, on their way to be granted privileges and rewards for services rendered. It was all part of the Temur Council’s unceasing