So what was it? I needed to get back in the game. I needed to round up my allies. I needed to discover who Khanjar the Sharp was.
And then, damn the advice I had given Medea, I needed to destroy him.
At nine sharp, Adept Cielo arrived with his clerk, having been summoned the day before. Both were hooded and cloaked, which I suppose was their idea of subtlety.
I met with them in the drawing room, with Crezia in attendance. She had dressed in a trouser suit of beige murray.
Adept Cielo was an elderly, experienced astropath, one of the best the Guild House in Ravello had to offer.
'I take it, sir, this is a private matter?'
'It is.'
'Are you purchasing my services in cash?'
'No, adept, by direct fund transfer. I have a confidential message service which I wish to use. I expect the utmost discretion.'
'You have the guarantee of the Guild, sir,' said Cielo. His clerk opened a data-slate and offered me the thumb-print scanner.
I pressed my thumb against it and then entered my code.
'Ah/ said Cielo, as the slate chimed and displayed a readout. /That's all sorted out. Your accounts have released the funds. Everything's in order, Mr Eising. Let us proceed.'
Of course, I wasn't using any accounts that were connected with the person of Gregor Eisenhom. I had good reason to suspect my finances were under observation, if not frozen. But I wasn't even going to try, because that would let my enemy know that someone with the authority to access Gregor Eisen-horn's accounts was still alive, and it would be comparatively simple to trace that access.
As with the various properties I owned, I had resources under other identities. 'Gorton Eising' had several holdings with the Imperial Thracian treasury, with enough funds for my current needs.
I had set up the confidential message service many years before so that I could send and receive messages without using my real identity. It was essentially an automatically maintained mailbox account that I could access, using an astropath, from any location. 1 could send messages through it, and read any communiques that had been posted to it. The service was registered under the name Aegis'.
When Cielo accessed the Aegis account, there were no communiques waiting to be read. Composing the contents in Glossia, I had Cielo send warning messages to Fischig on Durer, to Messina, to agents of my organisation on Thracian Primaris, Hespems, Sarum and Cartol. I used the signature 'Rosethorn'. I also sent a private, coded, anonymous transmission to a friend outside the Helican sub-sector. It was a single word message that read 'Sanctum'.