With Thrennikos vouching for them, they got to use the scenic elevator. The clear-walled car rushed them down an inertially dampened rail, on the outside of Coaster City, with a view of the local flora and fauna. Tarekuma’s macro-biology flourished within the chasms, simultaneously reaching for and shrinking from the solar radiation above. What they saw looked like something from a children’s story, where a gem merchant had planted his stock and found it growing in the morning. Vines crawled up the chasms’ sides in a riotous profusion, budding and fruiting with faceted nodules. Leaf-like plates spread to sieve the distant sunlight, which fell in increasingly impoverished rainbows to the tiers below. Kris saw mobile life there, too – jewelled beetle-forms and lurching baubles with a spidery legspan of ten metres or more. Nothing looked familiar or even organic.
Here and there were cages, half hidden in creeping foliage that writhed visibly. Many of the governing gangs and cartels liked to make a public show of their displeasure. Most of the human body couldn’t be metabolized by the native life, but salt and water were potent lures. It wasn’t the animals that got you, she understood, but the diamond-sharp tips of the questing vines.
What lovely places we end up visiting.
Within Livvo Thrennikos’s reception rooms there was a good span of armoured glass looking onto exactly the same vista, but he was low enough down the chasm that noon outside looked like twilight, and the whole serpentine jungle glowed and glinted with a constellation of gleaming bioluminescence. It really was very pretty, if you could forget its lethal potential.
The remaining crew had found a fairly genteel eatery where they could wait. They departed grumbling that they couldn’t afford to eat there, but Kris’s waspish thought was that it had been their choice to come in the first place.
The life of a Tarekuman Prosecutor agreed with Livvo, Kris had to admit. He was wearing a suit cut in the Berlenhof style, with plenty of pleating and wide sleeves. Tarekumans valued show, though, so instead of drab-yet-expensive greys, Thrennikos wore russet, with lines of gems set into lapels and cuffs. Kris would have preferred to dress up as well, but her wardrobe had gone with the rest of the Vulture God.
Livvo met her with a fond smile and a wrist-clasp that became a brief slapping match as each went to tug the collar of the other. An old student habit from Scintilla, where your honours grade was worn as a coloured flash at the throat. Despite his years of easy living, he actually beat her to it but paused, hand on her scarf. He was one of the few people who knew why she wore it.
She stretched up on her toes and lightly kissed his cheek. Then he ushered the three of them into his office, making sure everyone got a good gawk at another glimmering view.
A table had been set with finger-food for three humans and two Hanni. The minister they’d come to meet was already seated, one of Kit’s conspecifics rolling a few nuts around the tabletop with his smaller mandibles. Kris had to stop herself staring, because this was a rich Hannilambra, and she hadn’t seen many of those on the spacer circuit. His shell was encrusted with organic gems in complex, spiralling patterns. A half-dozen bejewelled critters, the size and shape of human thumbs, were tethered to his shield arms with gold chains. They were in constant motion across these armoured surfaces, scattering the light with their faceted backs.
‘Advocate Almier,’ Livvo introduced Kris. ‘And Captain Rostand, Factor Kittering, this is Minister Shreem.’ And with that he had earned his payment, save for a little light hosting and pouring the wine. Kris considered that although he’d been kicked out of the Scintilla law schools, while she’d left with her dignity intact, Thrennikos had certainly landed on his feet.
Minister Shreem’s legs chirped and rattled against each other, and a translator bobbing on the swag of his soft belly said, ‘I am, of course, delighted to make your acquaintance. I wish you all prosperous endeavours.’ The voice was an old man’s, rich and husky with a slow, assured cadence. Kris wondered how much he’d paid for it. ‘Now I understand that you’re desirous of an introduction.’
‘To Broken Harvest,’ Rollo broke in. ‘A matter of some urgency, my friend.’
Shreem settled lower on his stool by a delicate rearrangement of his six legs. His quintet of eyes gazed calmly at Rollo, the spikes above them capped by a jewelled diadem. Minister Shreem, it seemed, did not wish to be hurried.
Then Kit chirped something, and the minister shifted again, leaning forwards. There was a staccato exchange, mostly shorn of any context Kris could follow. Kittering seemed to be bragging about something, or at least he was raising his shield arms. This generally meant a Hanni was establishing his credentials in some way. Then the two of them just left the table and went to play Landstep on a virtual board projected by the minister from one of his gem clusters.