"Ritser! We have more problems. I'll get back to you."

The voice from theInvisible Hand blathered on, but now no one was listening.

Like some undine of Balacrean myth, the waters of North Paw had slowly gathered themselves, rising and spreading from Ali Lin's carefully designed shore. "Sunlight" wavered through the million tonnes of water that billowed over them. Even without controls, the park lake should have stayed approximately in place. But the enemy had left the lakebed servos running in rhythm...and the sea had quietly oscillated into catastrophe.

Nau dived for the tunnel hatch. He braced himself and pulled on the massive security cover. The wall of water touched the lodge. The building groaned and the windows shattered before a mountain of water moving implacably at something more than a meter per second.

And the wall of water became a thousand arms seeking through the breaking wall, swarming chill around his body, tearing him away from the hatch. Screams and shouts, quickly drowned, and for a moment Nau was completely submerged. The only sound was the rumbling crumbling of his lodge as it was torn to rubble. He had a last glimpse of his den, his burl-surfaced desk, the marble fireplace. Then the slow tsunami broke out the far wall and Nau was lifted up and up in the swirl.

Still submerged, lungs burning. The water was numbing cold. Nau twisted, trying to make sense of the blurs he could see. The clearest view was downward. He saw the green of the forest behind the lodge. Nau swam down, toward the air.

He broke free, sending threads of water skittering ahead of the main surface, and launching himself into the open space beyond. For a second or two, Nau floated alone, drifting just fast enough to stay ahead of the flying sea. The air was filled with a sound Nau had never imagined, an oleaginous rumble, the sound of a million tonnes of water turning, spreading, falling. The surge had hit the cavern's roof, and now the sea was coming down, and he beneath it. In the forest below, the butterflies had for once stopped their song. They huddled in massive clusters in the largest groteselms. But far away,something was in the air. Tiny dots hovered near the side of the towering sea. The winged kittens! They seemed not the least frightened of it—but then Qiwi claimed they were an old sky breed. He saw one splash into the side of the undine. It was gone for a moment, and then emerged, and dived in again. The damn cats might be just agile enough to survive.

He turned again and looked back through the water, into the park's sunlight. It glittered golden on rubble, on human figures trapped like flies in amber. The others were paddling his way, some weakly, some with emphatic force. Marli dove into the air. An instant later Tung breached the water wall, then Ciret with Ali Lin in his arms.Good man!

There was one more figure, Ezr Vinh. The Peddler came half out of the water, about ten meters from the rest of them. He was dazed and choking, but more awake than he had seemed during the interrogation. He looked down upon the treetops they were falling toward, and made a sound that might have been a laugh. "You're trapped, Podmaster. Pham Nuwen has outsmarted you."

"Phamwho ?"

The Peddler squinted at him, seemed to realize that he had let slip information that he had been dying to protect. Nau waved at Marli. "Fetch him here."

But Marli had nothing to bounce against. Vinh splashed against the water, drawing himself back within—to drown, but out of their reach.

Marli turned, firing his wire gun into the forest and propelling himself back toward the falling water. Nau could see Ezr Vinh silhouetted in the sunlight, flailing weakly, but now several meters deep in the water.

The treetops were brushing up around them. Marli looked around wildly. "We have to get out of the way, sir!"

"Just kill him then." Nau was already grabbing at the treetops. Above him, Marli fired several short bursts. The flying wire was designed to tear and mangle flesh; its range in water was almost zero. But Marli was lucky. A haze of red bloomed around the Peddler's body.

And then there was no more time. Nau pulled himself from branch to branch, diving through the open spaces beneath the forest canopy. All around was the sound of breaking tree limbs as the water pushed through the groteselms and oleenfirn, a sound that conjured fire and wetness all at once. The water wall shredded into a million fractal fingers, twisting, reeling, merging. It touched the edge of a butterfly horde, and there was an instant of piping song, louder than Nau had ever heard—and then the cluster was swallowed.

Marli boosted ahead of him, and turned. "The water is between us and the general entrance, sir."

Trapped,just as the Peddler said.

The four of them moved along the groundwort, parallel to the wall of the park. Above them, the roof of water came lower and lower, well past the forest crown and still descending. The sunlight was a glow from all directions, through dozens of meters of water. There had only been so much water in the lake. There would be enormous air pockets throughout the park—but they had not been lucky. Their space was a not-so-large cave, water on four sides of them.

Ali Lin had to be dragged from branch to branch. He seemed fascinated by the undine, and totally oblivious of the danger.

Maybe..."Ali!" Nau said sharply.

Ali Lin turned toward him. But he wasn't frowning at the interruption; he wassmiling. "My park, it's ruined. But I see something better now, something no one has ever done. We can make a true micrograv lake, bubbles and droplets trading in and out for dominance. There are animals and plants I could—"

"Ali. Yes! You'll build a better park, I promise. Now. I have to know, is there any way we can get out of the park—without drowning first?"

Thank goodness the ziphead could see an upside to this. Ali's central interests had been frustrated again and again in the last few hundred seconds. Normally, ziphead loyalty was unbreakable, but if they thought you were getting between them and their specialty...After a moment, Ali shrugged and said, "Of course. There's a sluiceway behind that boulder. I never welded it shut."

Marli dived for the rock. A sluiceway here? Without his huds, Nau didn't know. But there were dozens of them opening into the park, the channels they'd used to bring the ice down from the surface.

"The zip's right, sir! And the open codes work."

Nau and the others moved around the rock, looked into the hole that Marli had uncovered. Meantime, the walls of their cave of air—their bubble—were moving. In another thirty seconds, this would be under water too. Marli looked across at Nau, and some of the triumph leaked out of his expression. "Sir, we'll be safe from the water in there, but—"

"But there's nowhere to go from there. Right. I know." The channel would end in a sealed hatch, with vacuum beyond that. It was a dead end.

A slowly curling stalactite of water splashed across Nau's head, forcing him to crouch beside Marli. The lowering mound of water retreated, and for a moment their ceiling rose.Step by step, I've lost almost everything. Unbelievable. And suddenly Tomas knew that Ezr Vinh's blurted claim must be true. Pham Trinli was not Zamle Eng; that had been a convenient lie, tailored for Tomas Nau. All these years, his greatest hero—and therefore the deadliest possible enemy—had been within arm's reach. Trinliwas Pham Nuwen. For the first time since childhood, Nau was gripped by paralyzing fear.

But even Pham Nuwen had had his flaws, his abiding moral weakness.I've studied the man's career all my life, taking the good parts for my own.As much as anyone, I know his flaws. And I know how to use them. He looked at the others, cataloguing them and their equipment: an old man that Qiwi loved, some comm gear, some weapons, and some gunmen. It would be enough.