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had tried to replicate the Animus, scraping off cells, carefully experimenting with shed fragments of scale and skin, but the clones never seemed to take. She was unsure whether the Animus could feel true amusement, but on the news of yet another failure, Yskatarina thought that he had. But to dwell on this more closely would have meant criticizing her aunt, and Yskatarina found this too hard. The guilt at her own disobedience often came close to overwhelm-ing her.
    She ran a hand down a nearby tapestry, as if admir-ing it. The tapestry glowed briefly, the nerve-threads woven within it sending out ambiguities, false informa-tion, bewilderment to the ever-present spy-eyes. She knew that it would give her no more than a minutes grace, but it was enough to slip behind the tapestry, out of the sight of the spies, and into the glassy hollow of the wall. From here, she could make her way up Tower Cold to the genet-ics lab. Here, she was forced to double over, for the labyrinth of the wall was really only large enough for a child. But even at nineteen, Yskatarina was more flex-ible than a whole adult. An artificial arm could be un-screwed, or legs removed to permit her to snake through gaps, like a grub within a hive. And she wanted to find out what Elaki was really planning. Her aunt, on the previ-ous night, had told her little: only that a child had been grown on Earth that would somehow be a threat to Night-shade
    .
    "But who grew the child?" Yskatarina had asked.
    "Our enemies," Elaki answered.
    "But who are they?"
    "Let me tell you a story," Elaki said. Yskatarina set-tled down to listen, for she loved her aunt's tales: the story of how the Ship of Elders had fled from Earth to Night-shade a thousand years ago, bringing their forbidden males with them, the perils they encountered on their long journey, how the ship sacrificed itself to grow the little colony…
    But the story that Elaki now told was different.
    "A hundred years ago this clan held key information about modifications to the human genome, prepared by its greatest scientists—two sisters, of Tower Cold." A pause. "My sisters. We worked together, united, while the other clans sank into an atrophied insularity from which they have never emerged. And together, it was we who contacted the Kami, and learned so much thereby. To-gether, we developed the paradigms of haunt-tech. But when our clan offered that technology to the Martian Matriarchy, there was—a disagreement. The sisters and their Animus—for they had only one between them—fled to Mars in a prototype haunt-ship, taking the data store with them. They vanished for many years and I believed them to be dead. But recently I have tracked them down, to a place called Fragrant Harbor. It seems they have been biding their time, plotting against me, preparing a weapon."
    "What kind of weapon?"
    "The girl whom you are to kill."
    "How can a girl be a weapon? And why do you not go to Earth and kill them? Why not slay this child when it is still in its bag?" Elaki scowled and Yskatarina added, pan-icking, "I do not mean to criticize, please do not think that. Only—"
    "It is a fair question," Elaki said, somewhat grudgingly. "I could not get near them. They know me too well, and— apart from yourself—they know those close to me. They have been keeping an eye on those members of our clan who inhabit our Mission on Earth."
    "Could not someone there hire an assassin?"
    "1 do not wholly trust those at the Mission," Elaki said after a pause.
    "Why not?" Yskatarina frowned. She remembered the group who had left for Earth some years before: nine sis-ters, all with a faint look of Elaki. They had terrified Yskatarina, but she could not have said why.
    "You would not understand. I need someone on whom I can rely." The tight porcelain skin of Elaki's face seemed to soften. "Someone whom I love, Yskatarina."
    And Yskatarina, flattered beyond words, asked no more questions.
    But now, no more than a day later, those awkward