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so closely with Tony’s uncle. ‘That Askia man and me, we hardly talked. He spent most of his time in his tent, or running out across the rock. He has those plastic muscle extenders – he can sprint like a ziphound. And even when he was out and about with the wizards he didn’t say much more than yes or no, and shut you down with a sharp look if you tried to be friendly. What with that and trying to keep track of the work, I didn’t have the chance to get alongside him.’
    ‘He had a q-phone,’ Tony said. He knew that he was angry with the old sidesman because he was angry with himself, and because he had been so thoroughly and publicly humiliated, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘How could you have not known about that? It was your
job
.’
    ‘I know I failed, young master. And I’m more sorry for it than I can say,’ Junot said.
    A sturdy broad-shouldered man with a mass of curly grey hair squashed inside his pressure suit’s helmet, dutifully loyal and patient, he was from one of the families which had been with the Okoyes long before they had been given Skadi as a reward for their part in the overthrow of the Second Empire, and had served aboard
Abalunam’s Pride
for two years and counting.
    ‘What about Fred Firat?’ Tony said. ‘Was there any sign that he was communicating with someone off planet?’
    ‘That I think I would have seen,’ Junot said. ‘I was as close to him as his shadow for the most part. And if he had a q-phone, he hid it cleverly. It wasn’t in his personal stuff.’
    Tony had sent Junot to check the dead wizard’s possessions before they were packed up with the rest of the camp. They were standing in the shadow of the ship now, watching the wizards stack equipment and folded tents onto a pair of sleds. Two of the ship’s hands moved smartly to and fro amongst them, carrying unfeasibly large loads, their white carapaces luminous in the level light of the eternal sunset. Lancelot Askia stalked up and down, now and then stopping to check a crate or package. They were taking everything, even the garbage. Everything except the body of Fred Firat. That lay on a flat rock nearby, wrapped in a winding sheet of pyrotechnic explosive printed by the ship.
    ‘He was a very clever man,’ Tony said, softening a little.
    ‘Do you really think he was a traitor, young master?’
    ‘It would be awfully convenient if he was, wouldn’t it? It would justify his execution, and show me up for a fool. In any case, his death will put a serious crimp in the work, which will please my uncle no end. He has been against it from the start.’
    ‘One thing I know to be true,’ Junot said. ‘There really is a labyrinth under those Ghajar ruins. Some of the wizards essayed a little expedition into them. They were looking for eidolons that might have absorbed something of the stromatolites’ code. But they didn’t find anything, and neither did I when I checked the place a few days after they finished. Just endless tunnels lined with dirty white plastic.’
    ‘Could Firat have kept himself hidden from the claim jumpers down there?’
    Junot shrugged. ‘It would depend on how hard they searched for him, and how hard he worked at staying hidden. But those tunnels do go a long way back, and a long way down, too.’
    They watched the wizards work for a while.
    Junot said, ‘Can we get home safe, you reckon?’
    ‘Oh, I have a good escape plan,’ Tony said. ‘Which also involves a tunnel, oddly enough.’
    At last, after everything had been loaded onto the ship, Lancelot Askia marshalled the wizards in front of their leader’s body. They stood quiet and still in orange sunlight and long shadows while Tony said that if anyone had any last thoughts for their former chief they should think them now. He gave them a minute’s grace before he triggered the pyrotechnic shroud. It burned with a brief fierce intensity, sending up a plume of greasy smoke that the wind bent out to sea. Ash fell all around, on