Free House of Shards by Walter Jon Williams Page A

after all, calling for him.
    *
    “Another alert, Khamiss. Violet Corridor, Level Eight, Panel F22.”
    Sun's voice grated through Khamiss’s skull. She drew her lips back in a snarl. She was getting tired of that particular voice and the inevitability of its announcements— Sun was fond of bone-conduction receivers, and this one was surgically implanted in the top of Khamiss’s skull, where she couldn’t get rid of it.
    Khamiss turned back to her troopers. Her three uniformed subordinates were as weary as she, and she could see their stricken expressions, recognizing them as reflections of her own.
    “Another one, ma’am?” asked one.
    “Yes. Violet Corridor, Level Eight.”
    “We're not going to run all that distance, are we?”
    Time, Khamiss realized, for a command decision. She knew, and her troops knew, that the alarm was false. Everyone but the guards was at dinner, and no one would be stealing now: their presence would be missed.
    “We'll walk,” Khamiss said. “At our own pace.”
    “Very good, ma’am.”
    Her upper stomach growled. Things were bad enough that she had to spend her day chasing up and down corridors; now she and her squad had to go without meals. She touched the microphone on her lapel.
    “Mr. Sun,” she said, “could you order a robot with some sandwiches to meet us in Violet Corridor? We're getting hungry.”
    “Certainly. I shall also send some bottles of rink.”
    Well, Khamiss thought. Things were looking up at least a bit. She began to feel a little more buoyant.
    Her buoyancy fell considerably as she was informed that two more alarms had gone off before she and her weary troopers could quite respond to the first. She opened her bottle of rink with a move that could only be called desperate.
    It was going to be a long night.
    *
    “If you will watch, madam.” Maijstral fanned the cards on the perfect white of the tablecloth. This wasn’t the deck Maijstral carried in his hidden pocket: this was a deck that Advert had just had delivered by one of the Cygnus robots.
    “I’m watching, Maijstral.” Advert, sitting in the dining room below the massive kaleidoscoping steel doors, was in a much better temper. She actually smiled at him.
    He squared the deck. “Take your table knife and cut the deck at any point. Lift your card, look at the corner, then drop it.”
    “Very well.” She did as he had asked. He squared the deck again (using a little finger break), shifted the deck from left hand to right (thumb holding the break), drank casually from his glass with the left. . . .
    “Is this one in your book, Maijstral?”
    “Actually, no.” He put the glass down and moved the pack back to his left hand. (Maintaining the break, stepping the cards.) “My book is on advanced manipulations. This one's very elementary. I’m just doing it to warm up.” (Glimpsing the card under the heel of the left hand: eight of crowns.) He squared the deck with his right hand, then offered it to Advert.
    “Shuffle it, cut it. However many times you like.” Riffling.
    “I think the Pearl’s going to be pleased.”
    “I daresay she'll be proud of you.”
    The lights of the dining room were darkening. Pale tablecloths glowed dimly. “Best hurry,” said Maijstral.
    “How do I know,” casually, handing the pack to him, “you haven’t hidden my card up your sleeve before you gave me the deck?”
    He smiled. That was just the fear he intended to ease. “Let me run slowly through the deck. Take note that your card is there. Don’t tell me when you see it, and I won’t look at your face.” (Spotting the eight of crowns, counting five cards above it. Breaking the deck there.)
    “Did you see it?”
    “Yes. It was in the deck.” (A quick cut at the break.)
    Maijstral put the deck down on the table top. “How many letters in your name?”
    “Six.”
    “Turn over six cards.”
    The lights were almost entirely down. Advert had to squint at the deck. There was another trumpet