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telling, however, was the absence of the ubiquitous shoulder pack
of bio/logic programming bars that fiefcorpers always kept within reach.

    "You said he was here, Papizon," barked the Blade. "Where is he?"
    A puzzled stammer came over the connection. "You mean, hehe's not there?"
    "No, he fucking isn't."
    "But the scope says ... There's still ... If Natch isn't there, then
who's working in MindSpace?"
    Ridgello, the only one still using battle language: No sign of him,
Lieutenant.
    The troops had relaxed their guard by now and were all casting
dazed looks at one another. One of them scratched his beefy head with
the barrel of his disruptor gun, against all weapons protocol. Officers
were poking through closets and peeking under tables on the off
chance that Natch might be cowering in some undiscovered corner. A
woman standing behind the workbench in Natch's office turned to face
one of the interior windows and was startled to read the text printed
there in bold letters:
A PRIVATE MESSAGE FOR MAGAN KAI LEE
    Back in the hoverbird, Magan blanched. Rey Gonerev's face
showed some amalgam of disgust and amusement. The snake knew we
were coming, thought Magan. How could he possibly have known that?
Magan counted the people who had known the details of this operation
ahead of time on three fingers: the Blade, Papizon, himself. Not even
Ridgello had known what was going down until late last night.
    The team leader had seen the text by now. Do you want to read this,
Lieutenant? he said.

    Magan felt his mind downshifting, looking for a more acceptable
gear. The smart thing to do would be to ignore the message and get his
people out of there as fast as possible. But wasn't that what Natch was
expecting him to do? The message on the window was such a transparent
ploy to get Magan into the apartment that the fiefcorp master must be
counting on him to not take the bait. In which case ... shouldn't he do
the opposite? The lieutenant cursed silently. How difficult it was to use
logic on a creature whose entire nature rejected the concept.
    Magan opened the supply chest at his knee, grabbed a canister of
black code darts, and snapped it onto the barrel of his dartgun. "You're
not going in there, are you?" said the Blade incredulously.
    "Shit," replied the Council lieutenant, striding for the door of the
hoverbird. "I guess I am."
    Within two minutes, he had made it up the hill to the tenement
building's northwest entrance. Magan was approaching middle age
and no longer possessed the feline agility of his younger troops, but he
still doubted that any of the building's occupants had seen him. Magan
glanced up at the balcony of the third-floor apartment, where the
officer standing guard confirmed his assessment with the okay signal.
Two other guards were escorting the unconscious woman back to her
bed, where she would wake up in a few hours with a splitting
headache. Even the dropped mug of nitro had disappeared back inside.
    The yellow-starred officers in the apartment saw the look in
Magan's eyes and gave him a wide berth. He walked into Natch's
office, ushered the massive Nordic team leader out the door, and
opened the message on the viewscreen with a gesture.
SMILE FORTHE CAMERAS.
    Magan frowned. What kind of message was this?
    Suddenly his eyes widened. "Out! Everybody out!" he snapped,
unencrypted, startling the Council officers into a pell-mell gallop for the exit. "No, he knows we're here-southeast exit!" The group
skidded to a halt and reversed directions. Rey Gonerev was yelling
something in his ear, but Magan couldn't process it quickly enough.
He managed to decipher the solicitor's words just as they burst into the
southeast courtyard: "No, stay inside. The drudges, the drudges!"

    Standing in the snow outside Natch's building was a pack of men
and women whose eyes were lit with predatory glee. Magan recognized
many of their faces on sight: the craggy visage of Sen Sivv Sor, the
dandyish