City of Diamond, стр. 6
“Sure, Ma.”
She leaned even farther forward, placing the small china plate on her knees in danger. “Is there any chance we’d be invited to the wedding?” she whispered. “There’s lots of room in St. Tom’s, and your demon seems to have influence with Adrian….”
“I wouldn’t set my heart on it.”
She pouted and leaned back in her chair. “Ah, well,” she said philosophically.
There was a knock at the door. She hauled herself up from the armchair with difficulty, walked over, and slid the door open a crack.
“It’s Timmy,” said a young voice outside. She looked down on a small blond head and scuffed shoes.
“Only the link-boy,” she called, as she turned back inside for a second and blinked. “Stratton?” Her son had disappeared from the front room. She looked down again at the boy. “You have a message for me, Timmy?”
He nodded, producing a blue envelope from his shirt. “Came over the comer link for you just five minutes ago.”
“And weren’t you fast!” She pulled a coin from her dress pocket and put it in Timmy’s. “Many thanks, sweetheart.”
She closed the door and began opening the envelope. Spider reappeared beside the tea tray with a questioning expression. His mother glanced at the contents, looked disgusted, and handed it to him. A smaller envelope was inside the larger, marked “Stratton Hastings.”
Spider ripped it open. A short printout was there: “Meet me under St. Kit’s Bridge at six o’clock. If I’m late, wait for me.” No signature. He checked his timepiece—it was only three-thirty, plenty of time for a rest and a snack.
“Nothing important,” he told his mother, falling back into the armchair again.
“I suppose your demon knows where I live,” she said disapprovingly.
“He just knows where to reach me. It’s no big deal, really.” She set her mouth firmly, and Spider said, “Come on, Ma. If Tal hadn’t pulled me out of the recycler line, where would your only son be?”
“Father Brady says—”
Spider was not the sort of son who interrupted his mother, but he said suddenly, “Is Father Brady your only confessor?”
“Dear heart, I don’t think that’s any of your bus—”
“I’m only wondering how many people know I’m on Tal’s payroll.”
“No one breaks the seal of the confessional, Stratton.”
“I don’t think Brady would. But it never hurts to know where you stand.”
She sniffed. “As it happens, he kept after me about why he never saw you in church. I had to tell him in confession just to shut him up.” She paused, seeming to hear how that sounded, and said, “Well, it was his duty.”
They were both silent a moment, considering the problem. There was an automatic excommunication order, based on very old church law, on anyone who went out of his way to abet demons. Of course, no one knew of his moonlighting for Tal, so no one knew he was excommunicate. And technically, since he was damned anyway, he might as well pile sin on sin and go to church alongside the righteous. Neither Spider nor his mother thought it illogical that he would not.
Spider sighed. All right, it was true Tal was a demon— nobody knew better than he—but it was Tal who’d gotten him out of the execution line and given him a new chance and a new roll of cash, where the best City society could come up with was ghosthood or death. Poor Rat, the stupid bastard. One did what one could. Spider, too, was practical.
“Ma …” he said, wondering how to broach the subject. “Uh, does Father Brady know where the money comes from?”
“Are you crazy?” She looked around the cozy little room at all her dear things. “It would be ‘tainted fruit.’ He’d want me to have it confiscated.”
Spider leaned back with his cup and grinned. Good old Ma.
Chapter 2
Exporting a religion across cultures can lead to unfortunate consequences. Exporting a religion across species would seem disastrous.
WANG CHANG’AN
“The False Promise of Redemptionism”
Brandon Fischer watched in horror as Adrian rolled up his dress shirt into a ball and threw it across his bedchamber.
“Adrian, that suit has been approved—”
“You approved it, Brandon.” The Protector of the City of Diamond grinned, pleased with the effect he was having. He’d been far too cooperative this last week; it gave Brandon a false sense of security, of which he needed to be disabused. “You approved it, the tailor made it, and Lucius got me into it; have you ever heard about ‘leading a horse to water’?”
“But—” Fisher groped for words. “You’ve never complained before about my choice of costume for official affairs.”
“I was never engaged to be married before.” The young man and the old one looked at each other, while Adrian’s valet, unimpressed, walked over to the discarded shirt, picked it up, and brushed it off. “The shirt is brown, the breeches are brown, the boots are brown. My hair is brown. My skin is brown. I look like something thrown out of the recycler.”
Fischer said patiently, “It’s a very inoffensive color. No symbolic values attached to it at all. Green would have been too religious, yellow would have suggested the Veritie family colors, white—”
“Brandon, I have as much respect for the political values as anyone, but was there some reason my personal appearance couldn’t have been taken into account in this equation?”
Fischer pursed his lips. The Mercatis were known for a streak of vanity a mile wide, but the boy had never given him trouble in this area before. Finally he said, as though explaining to a student, “This is a historic meeting. I know we’ve been messaging back and forth incessantly, but from an official point of view—”
“—official being the only point of view that matters—”
“It’s the first reception of anyone from the City of Opal since the end of the Civil War. This will be their first impression of you. You will be greeting them as the Diamond Protector,