She took a small square of clear flexi from a pocket in her robes, along with a credit chip. She handed them to the kivist and gestured to Coir. The man stepped only as close as he needed to, held out the items. When Coir would have taken them from his hands, his eyes on the credit chip above all, the kivist twitched away with a scowl and gestured that Coir should put his palm out flat. Coir did so, and the chip and flexi square dropped into his palm, warm from being in the noblewoman's robes. The kivist was already back under the umbrella behind her.

The flexi square, Coir saw, as rain beaded on it and the credit chip, was for a one-use contact.

"In your migrations," the woman said, "if you should come upon a white animal, small, with violet eyes, contact me through the flexi. The chip has a modest amount on it; if you find the animal and contact me, a substantial amount more will be applied to it--along with ident for passage offworld, should you wish it."

"An animal? Why would you do that for me, for an animal?"

"It served us well. Just now, it completed its final task. But now it has left us. It has gone rogue." She studied Coir a moment longer, then turned away. She added, not looking at him, "I am sorry for what our warring brought upon your people."

Coir watched until the great dome of yellow drowned behind the rain. He stared at the things in his hand. He would have thought her crazy, driven so by loss, maybe, which would explain the fear her attendants displayed. White animals wandering in the night, offworld ident for the finding of them--these were tales told to children. Except he had seen the white dog. It was a possible future that he tucked in his pocket, the flexi and credit chip--if he could find a small white assassin dog in the wet night.

Retracing his steps, Coir began to walk slow circuits outwards from Ordinal House. He saw no other people, the night and the city seemingly empty. On his fifth circuit he glimpsed a flash of white, moving along the high wall of a walkway over one of the city's canals.

He followed the dog the rest of the night, out of the city streets and up the east road, to a rocky bit of shore by the sea. Toward dawn the rain faltered and the clouds began to shred. Monstroso fell out from beneath them, heavy and swollen, to press a flat luster into rough shore, rising cliffs, and the vast expanse of the sea. The smell of the sea, its restless hoosh and murmur, made something ache in Coir, something he'd thought not to feel again.

The dog was a white smudge of motion, low to the ground, luminous against the dark gray of rocks and sand in the shadow of the cliffs.

The dog stopped finally, head canted back to look up the cliff.

Coir followed the dog's gaze. In the rocky overhang above he could see a closed up home, its energy barrier still active, a shimmer and blur of the air. An outworlder had lived there, Coir knew, until the Dread became too horrible. The outworlder had been a genetic speciationist attached to Final Clan.

Celail Fuizi, her name came back to Coir--outworlders were rare and gossip about her had been common. By all accounts she'd come to Ird to study its bloodtech. People said she swam naked and had little regard for the thorny niceties of Irdish society. Coir imagined her out on the rock-cut terrace, gazing over the green sea.

Speciating killer dogs, perhaps?

The dog sat back and howled.

Coir winced at the lonely sound.

As the howl faded among the rocks, the dog, head hanging, turned one way, then the other, a little aimlessly, then began to walk on.

Coir followed. Day seeped into the sky with plumbic light, the air cool and sea-flavored. The repetitive wash of waves echoed among standing rocks furred with moss. The dark gray sand was streaked with opal and beyond the plane of green seawater the sky went slowly ivory.

"Wait," Coir said. It was almost an involuntary thing, the word triggered by the rise of an impulse he couldn't contain.

The dog stopped and stood waiting for him, watching him.

"Thank you," Coir said, because the animal had saved his life. He knelt in the sand and hesitantly touched the white fur, felt the dog trembling.

By the time the sun came over the cliffs--only to be swallowed by a new body of dark clouds--the dog sat nearly curled in Coir's lap under a sheltering bit of cliff. He'd shared pilfered food and water with the animal, marveled at the silky roughness of fur, the thinness of skin over bone on legs, the fangs in the muzzle that now lay heavy on Coir's arm as the animal slept.

He'd slipped the flexi from his pocket some time ago, squeezed it hard enough to activate it, then settled back against the rocks, watching the sea.

The dog twitched and whimpered in dream. The close weight, the touch of another living being, the warm smell of skin and fur--all sank into Coir, like water into drought-hard land, the rain finally reaching him. He found himself crying, sobs pulling through him painfully.

The lassitude that followed led him to join the dog in sleep.

Rain was falling thin and steady when the animal shifted, growling. Coir woke tense, blinked. The dog tracked something with a shifting of eyes under tufted brows of white fur. One ear twitched.

Down the curve of the coast, the city looked unstained, flat roofs and higher towers sluiced in morning light.

"What?" Coir whispered.

The dog stood in front of him as several figures moved into view just outside the overhang. The noblewoman under her great dome of yellow Third Moiety umbrella, held by the muscular bearer, the nervous kivist at her shoulder, come in answer to his activation of the flexi.

The sigil markings on the umbrella dome were uncovered now. The woman was Aktritha, Final Clan's Warrior Printep.

Final Clan, for whom Celail Fuizi, genius speciationist, had worked.

Aktritha stood regarding Coir and the dog for some little while, her eyes all black in the filter of gold light under the umbrella. The rain popped rhythmically on it, running in streams to the sand. Behind her, the kivist, also protected by the great dome of umbrella, took in everything through his augmented sense array.

"Canis familiaris," the Warrior Printep said. She was speaking to the animal. "You are even more intelligent than I believe your creator knew. But you must have known we would find you.

"You have served us, served Ird, exceptionally well. But," Aktritha looked into some distance only she saw, "your tasks are done now. And there is no place for you, for the evidence of you or your existence." She fell silent, some feeling leavening the severity of her face. Sadness, Coir thought.

"The getting of the genetic material to create him was quite costly," she said to Coir now. But her gaze drifted. "I had a dream, you see. Of a way to end the Dread."

The dog whined and backed slowly.

"She was a master of her art, Celail Fuizi, the minutia of codes, the creation--or re-creation--of beings of blood and bone, flesh and mind. She made my dream live, walk, breathe. Kill."

The Warrior stepped out from under the umbrella dome, a slight hand gesture keeping her attendants back. Pulling a small weapon from out of her robes, for a moment she just watched the dog, the weapon held in her hand, the metal bits in her robes glinting with her breath. The animal growled, stopped, whined. Slowly Aktritha lifted the weapon.

"No." Coir put his hand out, then gathered himself with a lurch to his feet and stepped between them.

"I should kill you, too," Aktritha said. "Those who needed to die have been killed. But there must be no one to blame, no trace of villain."

Coir opened his mouth, swallowed. The Warrior Printep would not hear the word no. "What you offered," he said, instead. "I'll take him with me, offworld. I'll never tell anyone. Never." He met her black gaze. "Give me this." I am owed, he didn't say, but the words hung between them, were acknowledged in the Warrior Printep's eyes.

She looked gravely into that distance only she saw. Her fingers closed over the weapon with an abrupt motion and she turned sharply away. She went back under her umbrella and did not look at them again. "This has not happened," she said. "There are no witnesses."

The kivist at her shoulder nodded slightly, blinking as he deleted a record. The noble and her party turned and disappeared away down the beach, back into the rain.

Coir sank to his knees and let his hand close in the white fur on the dog's back. The animal leaned into him with a grunt.

The world arranged itself to this small point of meaning, the touch of the dog's gaze. Here was something Coir understood.