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makers because they fed the gangs and the tunnel czars. I hated the way he could so casually suggest I give up my family to the Clerks and their executioners. But I’d always had a strange…respect for Kapa. Of all the people I knew, he was the only one who was really his own master.
    “Kapa. Don’t mess with this. Emiliya says Fortress is taking an interest.”
    “You’d better believe it.”
    I prodded him in the shoulder with my finger. The look he gave me was dangerous, but at least he was looking at me. “Do not mess with Fortress, Kapa. The new Saeos are not, I repeat, not like old Lou and Bea. They are diamond hard and twice as sharp.”
    He swatted at my hand, but I’d already pulled it back. “I know, Amerand. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He leaned close. He smelled of whiskey, smoke, and sweat, but his eyes were clear and steady. “What I tried to tell her.”
    A streak of cold shuddered across my shoulders. “You’re not making sense.”
    “I’m making plenty of sense, you just don’t want to believe what your clean little ears are hearing.” He shrugged again, his sharp, restless gaze roaming across the port yard, cutting out whatever he thought he could use. “The Saeos themselves are setting up something special for Solaris, and it’s all hands to help Erasmus and we all rise together.”
    My mouth went dry. “Kapa, you even think about pulling Emiliya into this and I will kill you with my bare hands.”
    “News for you, Brother.” He prodded me in the shoulder, once. “She’s already in it. I was here to get her out.”
    With that, he strolled away across the open port.

 

    THREE
     

    TERESE
     
    When I woke up the morning after Misao’s phone call, I’d managed to deal with the guilt and fear brought by the news of Bianca’s death by becoming righteously angry. What the hell did Misao think he was doing, calling me up on my daughter’s birthday? If he thought he could just interrupt my life anytime he felt like it, he’d learn different. He could just wait until I was damn good and ready to see him.
    So I lingered with my family. David made his classic slow-recovery breakfast: waffles with butter and maple syrup, or ice cream if you wanted it, which the kids invariably did, except for Jo, who ate her waffles naked to prove one of her more esoteric points. Don’t ask me which one. There was also bacon and stewed apples. Not even Jo turned those down. I drank a third cup of coffee while talking about nothing much with the kids.
    I felt Bianca’s eyes on me the whole time. Her dead gaze made a pressure that started right in the black hole beneath my skull. I ignored it as best I was able. If I wasn’t successful, the kids didn’t say anything. Neither did David.
    Jo was leaving that day, returning to Hong Kong on the spaceplane. Allie and Dale were staying over. Jo and I would take the cable together to the Ashland ’port. I’d say good-bye to her there, then catch the bullet train down to Chicago. That would put me at the office at about five o’clock. If Misao wanted to badger me for an extra-long time, he’d have to go hungry to do it, and serve him right…
    I’m a liar.
    This is what was really going on:
    I was scared. I was doing everything I could not to admit that. I was afraid of what would happen once I walked back into that building, of what I would think and feel once I heard what the emergency was and how Bianca had died. I didn’t want to leave my family as we sat around the chipped, stained dining table, stuffing food that was going to mean an extra cholesterol-flush for me and David, and laughing at jokes that were over a decade old.
    But there was that stone in my heart and Bianca’s cold gaze on the back of my neck, and neither one would go away.
    “Your eye’s twitching .”
    I jerked my head around and stared at Jo, who pulled a face back at me. We stood on the transit platform, waiting for the cable bus with our small packs on our