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entertaining.
I con-
fess I entirely lost track of the time."
HOUSE OF SHARDS | 217
"Lady Dosvidern's husband?" Kyoko's eyes barely con-
cealed their rapture.
"Yes." He flicked his ears to indicate puzzlement. "You didn't know?" His
facial muscles, he realized, were be-
traying him, producing odd tics and quiverings that he was finding impossible
to squelch on command.
"I'm afraid that information escaped my researchers. She's niarried to Lord
Qlp, then?"
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"Happily. A devoted couple, so unusual and yet so . . ."
He flailed for the next word. "Unusual," he repeated, and then he gave a
frantic smile. "You must forgive me, Miss
Asperson." He sniffed her. "I've got to be about my, ah, my breakfast. I mean
business."
"Certainly, Zoot. It's been most. . . illuminating. I hope we can meet later,
and then you can tell, me what you and the Drawmiikh talked about till noon."
"Yes, yes." Zoot felt the fur between his ears rise in an involuntary attack
posture. He swiped at it with the back of his hand. "Delightful. Later. Yes.
Charmed."
Somehow he managed not to run. The effort cost him dearly, though; he kept
lurching like Quasimodo at every other step.
One way out, he thought. He felt feverishly for his pistol.
One way out.
The Duchess of Benn sat in her room, savoring her coffee and her triumph. A
few minutes after midnight tonight, she thought, and she'd ransom the Shard.
She wouldn't tell anybody, would keep it secret for months before she wore it
again, and then the occasion would be a special event
Special Event, rather. She had begun thinking of it that way.
Roberta smiled and took another sip of coffee. The Spe-
218 | WALTER JON WILLIAMS
cial Event was going to be a surprise, perhaps even more sensational than this
last.
There was a pounding at the front door of her suite, followed by a turmoil
among her household staff. Annoyed at the interruption, she cocked an ear in
that direction and continued sipping coffee. The commotion increased. Roberta
frowned, and then her door burst open and Lord Qlp flung itself in. Roberta
stood, wondering whether to be alarmed or affronted. Lord Qlp's ghastly odor,
in the event, prevented either stance from gaining much ground. She raised a
hand to her face, intending to cover her mouth and nose, and then remembered
her manners and forced the hand to her side.
"Sorry, your grace." Her butler, Kovinn, hovering in the door, wrung her
hands. "Its lordship just. . . insisted."
"Interference!" Lord Qlp thrashed in distress. "Alarms!"
Roberta steeled herself. "Very well, Kovinn. You may go." She looked at Lord
Qlp. "Coffee, my lord?" she asked, denasal.
"Ah ..." said Kovinn, but then another figure pushed past her. It was Lady
Dosvidern, disheveled, tugging at the laces of her jacket.
"Beg pardon, your grace," she said breathlessly. "But I
thought "
"You and its lordship are welcome at any time," Roberta said, as if these
things happened every day. The stench was making her glassy-eyed. "But have
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you any notion ?"
"Afraid not, your grace."
Lord Qlp continued thrashing. It belched out something in its own tongue.
Roberta took a step back from the violence of its speech.
"Humiliation!" Lady Dosvidern said. Her tone was be-
wildered. "Has not the Time of Exchange passed?" More belching noises. "Has
not the Commodity been sufficient?"
HOUSE OF SHARDS | 219
fhe sluglike body convulsed. Something flung itself across the room, thudded
into a chair. It was, Roberta saw, another oval exudate similar to those which
Lord Qlp had already spit up in her presence.
Lord Qlp roared in its bubbling tongue. Its eyes whipped wildly at the ends of
their stalks. "The Commodity is thrice-
offered! Discontinuation of existence is necessary if hu-
miliation is increased! May one not be vouchsafed a glimpse of the Preciosity,
the Eye at the Center of Existence, the
Perfected Tear?"
"Tear?" Roberta said. Her own eyes were growing tearful at the continued
olfactory onslaught. Lord Qlp's phrases gathered in her mind, and in a
glorious wave of prescience she realized what Lord Qlp had been going on about
all this time.
"The Eltdown Shard?" she said. "You wish to trade for it?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Lord Qlp bounced high in eagerness. Its
High Khosali was not quite grammatical the sentences did not comment on one
another in the preferred contextual mode but its meaning was clear.
"I'd be happy to show you the Shard, your lordship,"
Roberta said, "but I'm afraid the Shard has been stolen."
Lord Qlp's response filled Roberta with alarm. It moaned as if in pain. It
fell heavily on its side and thrashed, knocking a chair halfway across the
room. It boomed painfully, and
Roberta held her hands over her ears.
"Woe, woe!" Lady Dosvidern translated. "Your Exis-
tenceship promised to guarantee the Exchange!"
"I did?" Roberta searched her memory. "I suppose I did, then," she said,
recalling her conversation with its lordship just prior to the race.
"The Condition is altered. Discontinuation of existence is necessary for
assuagement."
220 | WALTER JON WILLIAMS
A chill crept into Roberta's heart as she thought she understood what
Lord
Qlp meant. "No!" Roberta said.
"You don't have to kill yourself. It's not your fault!" She thought
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frantically. "Can't you just take the . . . objects .
. . back?"
Lady Dosvidern's expression was frantic as she translated the bubbling sounds.
"Exchange has already commenced.
Blamings are impertinent. Zynzlyp awaits the Object of
Desire. All meaning is now invested in the Perfected Cre-
ation. Pointlessness of existence is alternative! Planetary discontinuation
will soon be necessary!"
Alarms clattered in Roberta's mind. Was Lord Qlp talking about the suicide of
his entire species?
She shook her head frantically, tried to think. She had to do something.
"I will locate the Shard!" Roberta declared. "I will bring it to you!"
Lord Qlp wrenched itself upright and began undulating out of the room.
"Crosstalk necessary before further action.
Must consider method of regaining Center of Meaning."
Roberta's mind swam with relief. It didn't sound as if
Lord Qlp was planning on murdering itself anytime soon.
She'd have a while, at least, to get the Eltdown Shard from
Maijstral and bring it to its lordship.
Lady Dosvidern was following Lord Qlp from the chamber.
She looked terrified. Roberta snatched at her sleeve. Wild-
eyed, Lady Dosvidern spun, her arm trembling in
Roberta's grasp.
"Wait!" Roberta said. "I'll try to get the Shard from
from whoever has it. Don't let its lordship do anything hasty in the
meantime."
"Yes, your grace." Lady Dosvidern ran after Lord Qlp.
Roberta stepped to the service plate and touched the ideo-
gram for "telephone."
HOUSE OF SHARDS | 221
"This is the Duchess of Benn," she said. "Call Drake
Maijstral's room. Inform him this is an emergency."
Just below the service plate, Roberta saw the two objects that Lord Qlp had
previously offered her, each wrapped in a dinner napkin. While the phone rang
endlessly, Roberta bent to unwrap them. She gasped in surprise.
Enchantment dazzled her eyes. The objects of exchange had transformed, become
something magic and beautiful.
Colors spun bright webs at Roberta's feet. Iridescence shimmered, altered,
became substantial. The telephone rang on and on.
CHAPTER 10
M
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iss Asperson."
"Miss Runciter. Are you here for the magic show?"
"I'm here by chance, but if Maijstral's putting on a show, I daresay I'll sit
through it.
Even though I know his tricks."
"Perhaps he's learned some new ones." A beat's pause.
"You seem to have met with some injury. I hope you are well."
Vanessa touched her cheek. The semilife patches had happily sopped up most of
the swelling before expiring in gorged bliss, but faint bruising was still
visible even through her cosmetic. "An accident, unfortunately."
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