“They’re strong flyers,” he said as he watched the shimmering flight. “They colonized islands over hundreds of miles of open water even before they started hitching rides with the early colonists. Saves me carrying it back myself.”
There was no shortage of hydropters on the tidal flats. If he’d had use for a speciman he’d have killed this one without a qualm. Daniel didn’t care to do harm out of sheer laziness, though; not even to a bug.
The hydropter was out of sight. Daniel turned and smiled a trifle wanly. It hadn’t been likely that he’d find an unknown species in Kostroma Harbor. “A very common insect, it appears; interesting only to me.”
A popping sound rippled from outside the building. That would be fireworks signaling the start of the Founder’s Day activities, though he’d be surprised if anything significant happened in the next half hour.
The buzz and shuffle of conversation in the front corridor grew louder as Kostromans moved toward the portico. The spectators here were middling merchants from Kostroma City or nobles from islands at a distance from the capital. The very rich and powerful sat with Walter III on the grandstand in the plaza, but those who’d gained entry to the palace were the next stage in local importance.
“I’m concerned about the conditions your sailors are living in,” Adele said with a frown. “I know it was their choice, but they’ve simply emptied an alcove that was used to store decades of junk. It’s clean, now—I looked in on them. But there isn’t nearly enough space for twenty people to live in.”
Daniel laughed. “I’ll take you aboard the Aglaia,” he said. “That’ll show you cramped—and a communications ship has an enormous amount of room compared to a corvette with an equal crew. Besides—”
His tone changed slightly. “Most of the detachment are riggers, you see. Folk who spend their duty hours at the edge of the universe. The Matrix is a glow they can touch and there’s nobody nearer than the rigger on the next antenna. They like to have their living quarters cramped.”
Another salvo of fireworks sounded. The display would lose a great deal at midday, but the Elector had wanted sunlight for the floats and tableaux of the procession.
“Look,” Daniel said, “the other reason I came to see you now was because this is a perfect place to see the parade. I’ll share my goggles—”
He tapped the band squeezing down the soft brim of his fatigue cap.
“—and you can tell me what’s going on.”
“Fighting that crowd?” Adele said, looking doubtfully toward the door. She couldn’t see the Kostroman spectators from this angle, but their noise had risen to a sullen roar.
“Oh, no!” Daniel said. “I’ve found us a much better place than that.”
He offered the librarian his hand. “I hope,” he added with a grin of anticipation, “that you’ve got a good head for heights.”
* * *
“My God,” Adele said as she faced the peach-colored expanse of roofing tiles. The thirty-degree downslope was bad enough but the way it stopped ten feet away, straight as a knife-edge, at the gutter—that was terrifying.
The spectators below in Fountain Street cheered. The sound had seemed louder when she was in the library; either the palace hallways had channeled the noise, or her own fear was numbing her ears. Seabirds wheeled above and keened like lost souls.
“See?” Daniel called cheerfully over his shoulder as he walked—not crawled, walked—toward the gutter. “I told you it’d be easy once we were up the ladder.”
“Yes,” Adele said. “You did tell me that.”
To her the most amusing part of the whole business was the fact that an hour before she’d have truthfully said that she wasn’t afraid to die. It appeared that she was, however, afraid to mash herself to a pulp as the climax to a hundred-foot fall. She supposed it was vanity.
The ladder onto the roof was in an alcove off the south stairwell; the hatch was the front of a small glazed cupola. Adele hadn’t known the route existed until Daniel led her to it. The iron ladder was bolted against the brick wall. It was absolutely vertical. Water leaking from the hatch slicked the iron and covered it with flaking rust.