The Emperor of Everything

“We’ll have to be more careful now,” he told the others. “I’m going to run ahead and see if the way is clear. You follow at a slower pace. If you hear or see something you don’t understand or that seems dangerous — or if you meet with anyone — get off the path and hide in the forest.”

Ruiz looked at Flomel, saw the sly expression he wore. “Above all, don’t let Flomel get away.” He took the leash out, fastened it to Flomel’s neck, and gave the other end to Dolmaero. “And if he attempts to cry out or otherwise attract attention, kill him as quickly and quietly as possible. Can you manage that?”

Dolmaero nodded, face somber. He fingered the dagger he carried in his sash. “You may rely on me, Ruiz Aw.”

Flomel’s expression wavered between outrage and disbelief, but he said nothing.

Ruiz bent and brushed his lips against Nisa’s and whispered in her ear so that only she could hear. “Watch them all.”

Then he ran away down the path.

When he was several hundred meters ahead, he slowed to a more cautious pace. The forest was unchanged, though the path had become a broad promenade, paved with ochre bricks.

He began to pass stone benches with fancifully carved legs and backs, and it occurred to him that the path functioned as someone’s picnic ground. But he met no picnickers, though he hoped earnestly to — preferably picnickers with a high-speed airboat, armored and bristling with weaponry. He laughed at himself. He might as well wish for his picnickers to also be too abysmally stupid to use any of the security technology such a vessel would carry.

No, what he needed was picnickers with, say, five motorized bicycles.

The path looped through the woods in graceful sweeps, and Ruiz would have cut across, had the undergrowth not been so dense. Because of the path’s curvature, he could see only a short distance ahead. There was an unidentifiable change in the air, and a feeling of imminence touched him. He began to think that the highway junction must be near, and he became even more cautious, keeping to the shadiest side of the path, alert for any sign that he was not alone.

Ruiz came around the last curve and discovered that his hoped-for “highway” was actually a canal.

The path terminated in a sunny clearing, in which stood an elevated landing built of shiny pink granite, over which rose a decorative gateway — two columns in the form of attenuated weasels, supporting an arched lintel carved in the likeness of two winged reptiles, toothy snouts kissing in the center. Here and there striped poles rose above the landing, still carrying ragged scraps of faded cloth, apparently left from a time when the landing had been covered with a festive canopy.

The immediate impression was of long disuse, and Ruiz’s heart sank.

He approached the landing slowly, still alert, but with a growing sense of futility. The scattering of recent trash on the path had raised his hopes, but the landing’s air of abandonment had dampened them.

He climbed the steps and went across the landing to the canal. The canal itself seemed to be in perfect repair. It had two narrow channels, separated by a strip of monocrete. The still black water had an unpleasant oily quality, but no debris blocked the channels — hopeful evidence that the canal was still in occasional use. He looked to the left. The canal cut south through the trees in a perfectly straight line, and though the branches formed a tunnel over the canal, none of them hung low enough to impede the progress of a barge. It appeared they were trimmed on a regular schedule.

Ruiz went to the verge of the canal, and peered over the monocrete curb. Repulsor strips were set into the side, just above the waterline, an indication that the canal was maintained by folk of a fairly high-tech level. No growth fouled the canal sides, another indication of advanced engineering.

He sat on the curb and considered his options. Was there time to build a raft? Perhaps — he could use the splinter gun to fell trees, though that would severely deplete its power cell. But what then? When Corean arrived, her sniffers would lead her to the canal, and she wouldn’t have to go far to catch up to them. Besides, it was doubtful they could pole the raft at a significantly greater speed than they could walk.

Maybe they could confuse the trail — go down the canal a couple of hours and kick Flomel off the raft, run him into the woods to divert the snifters. No — without a good deal of luck — and an improbably degree of incompetence on Corean’s part — that would be no more than a brief delaying tactic. All their scent-signatures were surely on file in Corean’s computers and accessible to her sniffers. She would either ignore Flomel, or split off a portion of her forces to catch him.

Idly, he flipped a twig into the dark water. It lay there for an instant, and then he felt a high-frequency vibration in the curb. He jumped up and stood back, but not before he saw the twig shatter and then dissolve in a swirling pool of foam. The vibration ceased.