A grotesque face pressed against the inner surface of the bell. The smoke faded, revealed the wreckage of a body, one arm withered, the rest gnawed by fire, blind, all the handiwork of an assassin who had been almost lucky enough.

"Ah. My loving child Valerena. And her plaything."

"My son, Father."

A shrill cackle surrounded her. "I have eyes that see farther and deeper than these blind scars. But who or what you bed is your own affair." A moment. "Are you Valerena indeed? Or her Other?"

"I'm Valerena Prime."

"That's a comfort. Sometimes I think you send your Other when your conscience bothers you."

Guilty, Valerena tried to change the subject. "Why did you summon us?"

"The most pessimistic projections suggest that the beast is down on P. Jaksonica 3 and has been recognized. That entire Presidency will be crawling with Travelers carrying the alarm. We count the game begun. Soon they'll come sniffing up the trail. And we'll seize a Guardship for House Tregesser."

"You underestimate them." Valerena sounded tired. She had argued this before. "You risk the existence of House Tregesser against a quantity you know only from fragmentary reports that survived the Enherrenraat."

"I have shielding the equal of theirs. I have Lupo. The rest is firepower. When the Guardship arrives it will be cut off from the Web and under fire so intense its screens have to overload. It'll be surrender or die. The only choice they give the rest of the universe. Then House Tregesser will have its Guardship, Hellspinners, and the secret of lifting so vast a mass onto the Web."

"That's the strategy of the Enherrenraat revenant. They thought they'd win with firepower. They're extinct. The Guardships aren't. And they're five hundred years wiser now."