House of Shards by Walter Jon Williams

Asperson will quote me there. That would be lucky.”
    “I’ll need you to go to the jewelry shops on Red Level,” Pearl Woman said. “Find a substitute stone. It might fool them for a while. If I’m cornered, I can say the real one has been hidden, so it won’t be stolen.” She pounded a fist into her palm. “But then it would seem as if I were afraid of them.”
    “But I know I said something embarrassing about Rip and his friend—what's her name? Something about the way she laughs all the time.”
    “Are you listening, Advert?”
    “Oh. Yes. I’m sorry. What did you want?”
    Pearl Woman's eyes narrowed. “You should learn not to ask that sort of question, Advert. The answer might not be to your taste.”
    *
    Another light glowed on Mr. Sun's console. Sun's nerves tautened. His blue heaven was beginning to smell of sweat and annoyance.
    Sun touched an ideogram. “My lord,” he said.
    “Mr. Sun.” Baron Silverside's anger translated very well to hologram. He was a compact, broad-shouldered man, a former amateur wrestler. Burnsides flared on either side of his face, a pale brown halo. One hand was visible, stroking the whiskers.
    “What,” the Baron demanded, “is the meaning of all these alerts? Have your people gone mad?”
    Sun feigned surprise. “Sir?” he asked.
    “They are running about the halls carrying guns while my guests are walking to dinner. I have been receiving complaints.”
    Both hands were stroking the whiskers now. Sun calmed his nerves. He was still the spider in its lair, ready to pounce. There had been a few problems: nothing he could not deal with.
    “Beg pardon, your lordship,” Sun said. “We seem to have been receiving false alarms from the utility tunnels.”
    “You assured me,” the Baron said, “the security system was infallible. And that your guards would be inconspicuous.”
    Sun could feel sweat prickling his forehead. “Sir,” he said. “Begging your pardon, but I said almost . . .”
    The Baron froze him with a look. He was twisting little lovelocks around his forefingers. “Sun,” he said, “I will have no more of this. You have caught no burglars, and you have terrified my guests.”
    “My people are eager, of course,” Sun said. “We have been drilling for a very long time. But I shall order them to be more . . . relaxed.”
    “Kyoko Asperson is here, Sun,” the Baron said. “She would dearly love to report that I have a fool for head of security.” His eyes turned to fire. “Do not give her that opportunity, Sun.”
    “Yes, my lord.”
    “That's all.”
    “Yes, my lord.”
    The ideogram for “May I be of assistance?” replaced the Baron's features. Sun snarled and told his console to turn it off.
    Another alarm cried out. Sun's finger hovered over the ideogram for “general announcement,” hesitated, then stabbed down.
    “Another alarm,” he said. “Watsons, let’s walk to this one, shall we?”
    *
    “Ah. Zoot. We were wondering if you were indisposed.”
    “Marquess. Marchioness.”
    The Marchioness Kotani was a young, dark-haired woman with wide, tilted eyes, a full, pouting lower lip, and a distinctive expression that was quite sullen yet in some inexpressible way attractive. Before her marriage, she'd been Lady Janetha Gorman, the daughter of an old and quite penniless Imperialist family; she had earned a living as a model and made periodic, if unsuccessful, forays into acting. Now that she was married, she had given up both modeling and acting. Even Kotani knew better than to use her in one of his plays.
    “I expected to see you in your jacket,” she said as she sniffed Zoot's ears. A choker of matched glowstones shone at her throat.
    “Not for dinner, I think,” Zoot said. He smiled, tongue lolling from his muzzle.
    “One would have thought the Diadem would have insisted,” said the Marchioness.
    “There are still a few things,” Zoot said stiffly, “in which I have a say.”
    “Bravo, Zoot,” said the Marquess.