Venus Time: 11:11, March 25, 2295

  Pavilion of Zither and Lute (琴瑟閣), The Citadel District, Jin Syue, Northern Venus

  The ballroom left an impression. Lacquered floors reflected hundreds of floating lanterns on silk cords. Musicians blended guqin strings with a percussive rhythm Sigrun didn't recognize. Nobles murmured. Drinks circulated.

  Marcus had claimed a pillar near the wall, arms folded, watching the room. Jabari circulated with a drink he wasn't drinking, trading words with minor officials, smiling easily.

  Xin drifted near the periphery with H?kon, who was trying to catch his own reflection in the lacquered floor.

  "Pappa, other HAW-koon there!"

  "That's you, buddy."

  "Small HAW-koon look funny." A chirp. "Handsome, Pappa?"

  "Very handsome, buddy."

  Sigrun's Nucleus Watch — tuned to Diego's relay — crackled once against her wrist.

  Diego's voice came through, barely above a whisper: "Es hora del espectáculo. Intel from Roach. Tianshu Terminal is clear. Maintenance access through the women's restroom, eastern corridor, third floor."

  Dilinur appeared beside Sigrun a moment later, two cups of tea in hand, offering one. To anyone watching: two women sharing a drink.

  "If records of Meiya or Ume exist in Jin Syue's systems, they are in that terminal." Dilinur's lips barely moved. "Xin needs a window. And the prince needs a distraction."

  "I know how to keep men busy." Sigrun drank the tea. "How long?"

  "Twenty minutes. I am adding ten for complications."

  "Half an hour." She set the cup down. "I can work with that."

  She caught Xin's eye across the ballroom and held up three fingers, low, by her hip. Then pointed two of them toward the eastern corridor.

  Go. Take H?kon. Third door.

  Xin adjusted his glasses. The slightest nod.

  Joon-Seok came to her before she could cross the room.

  "Miss Sigrun." He offered a glass of golden wine. "A Jin Syue specialty. They say the bees produce sweeter nectar because Venus has no winter."

  She took it. Probably not poisoned at a diplomatic event with witnesses. Probably.

  "Thank you, Joon-Seok."

  He gestured toward the musicians. "Do you dance?"

  "When there's music."

  "I believe there is."

  She set the glass down and let him lead her onto the floor.

  The dance was a Venusian court form she didn't know, but the bones were universal — lead and follow, step and turn, proximity calibrated to station. Joon-Seok was trained. One hand at her waist, the other holding her fingers with a grip that said I am comfortable being in control.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Her body filed the data the way it always did. Thirteen centimeters taller. Strong hands. Trained fighter under the prince's polish. The gold buttons on his coat pressed against her collarbone when he drew her close for the turn.

  "You handle yourself well," he said. "Most foreigners fumble the second measure."

  "I'm good at following when I choose to."

  "An interesting qualification." His eyes studied her face. "You are not what I expected, Miss Sigrun."

  "What did you expect?"

  "Passion. Wildness." He turned her through a step. "The Nordling traits."

  "So I'm some kind of fancy space barbarian to you," she quipped.

  A short laugh from him, nearly warm. "You don't look like one."

  "And what do I look like, exactly?" she pressed.

  He sounded interested. "The ancient Mencius wrote that those who are sincere need not speak, and those who speak need not be sincere. I wonder which category we fall into."

  "Both, probably."

  Another chuckle. "Indeed, Xing Hong has sent its best this time."

  The music shifted — slower, strings drawn out in long aching notes. Joon-Seok adjusted, drawing her half a step nearer so the crimson lining of his cape brushed her hip.

  "Tell me, Sigrun. Your Prefect speaks of Fenris as if they are a plague to be cured." He turned her through a step, voice carrying only to her ears. "Yet in Choson, we have an older understanding. The Xunzi teaches that nature is neither good nor evil. It simply is. The tiger does not apologize for hunting."

  "Tigers don't build armies from raping women."

  "They build territories. They control breeding grounds. They cull the weak so the strong survive." His amber eyes held hers. "One could argue the Fenris Horde performs the same function. Crude in method, perhaps. But effective."

  Sigrun's stomach turned. She kept her face pleasant because the room was watching.

  "That's a generous reading," she said.

  "Generosity is the privilege of those who can afford it."

  His hand at her waist shifted. Fingers spread wider across the cobalt silk, thumb tracing the curve of her ribs, then drifting higher — slow enough to seem accidental, firm enough to make clear it wasn't. His palm settled against the side of her breast, and he let it rest there through the next half-turn as though the dance demanded it.

  Sigrun's jaw tightened. Her pulse kicked and she weighed how much a man's wandering hand was worth against the cost of making a scene.

  She let him hold the position for three full beats of the guqin.

  Then her right hand — the one resting on his shoulder — slid down to cover the hand on her breast. From across the ballroom, it would look intimate and encouraging. A woman laying her hand over a prince's cupping her mound.

  Her fingers curled around his knuckles. Her thumbnail found the soft webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

  She pressed.

  Power: 7 meant more than a Nucleus Watch stat readout. It meant Sigrun could crack a walnut in her fist. The pressure she put into Joon-Seok's hand was enough to grind the small bones of his fingers, her nail biting a crescent into the skin hard enough to leave a mark that, without Medi-Vap, would purple by morning.

  "Tigers are okay. But I grew up on Europa. Nordling country. We don't admire them." Sigrun said, her voice warm and social as her nail dug a little deeper.

  "Do you not?" Joon-Seok's expression didn't break. Almost. The corner of his mouth twitched and something flickered behind those amber eyes. His breathing stayed even, but his next step came a half-beat late, the rhythm stuttering for anyone trained enough to notice.

  She leaned in, close enough that her lips nearly brushed his ear. "We skin them."

  She released his hand and let it return to her waist — lower this time, where it belonged. The crescent mark on his skin was reddening.

  Joon-Seok recovered in a single breath. His smile returned, smooth, but when he turned her through the next figure, his grip on her waist was lighter. The hand she'd marked stayed curled at his side for two full measures before returning to the dance.

  "You are full of surprises," he said.

  "I try."

  Over Joon-Seok's shoulder, at the far edge of the ballroom, Sigrun caught movement. Xin pressing a hand to his stomach, grimacing with convincing discomfort. He murmured something to a servant near the corridor. The servant pointed. Xin shuffled toward the eastern hallway, hunched and embarrassed, one hand on his gut. H?kon clung to his shoulder, scales turned a muted gray, playing sick right alongside his Pappa.

  Nobody watched them go. Every eye in the ballroom was on the prince and the tall blonde foreigner.

  Sigrun let Joon-Seok turn her through the next step, her smile easy, her laugh timed to the music.

  Good luck, Xin. Good luck, H?kon.

  Across the room, Ming sat at the ballroom's edge with a cup of something warm between her hands. She'd been watching the dance. Now her eyes found Sigrun's through the crowd, and a look passed between them — brief, layered.

  Ming raised her cup. The barest gesture.

  Sigrun couldn't tell if it was a toast or a warning. She suspected it was both.