Palace by Katharine Kerr, Mark Kreighbaum

gifted Arno, the hope and pride of the entire guild, a product of centuries of informal gene-type breeding, really, since the guild’s masters, male and female both, tended to pick marriage partners with their own abilities. Everyone talked about Arno, everyone admired Arno, but Arno had sought Rico out and made him a friend - only to disappear, to drop out of the guild and out of sight just a few months past. Now Rico had found him only to lose him again.
    ‘I can’t,’ Rico said. ‘I can’t just not say anything.’
    Hi groaned under his breath.
    ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Rico went on. ‘I know you’re my master and my patron, but I don’t care if you kick me out of the goddamned guild. I don’t see how you -’
    ‘Then shut up and listen!’ Hi let out his breath in a sharp puff. ‘Do you think I like seeing Arno that way? It’s the drugs, Rico. Listen to me. Listen hard and think about what you’ve just seen. We can’t get full access without them, but some people fall in love with the damn cyberdrugs, and then their lives are over. They end up here, begging in the streets to buy more.’
    Rico stopped walking and gaped. Drugs? Arno was a drug addict? He shook his head, an unconscious no.
    ‘Being a genius isn’t easy,’ Hi said. ‘He found something he needed in those drugs, Rico, something I couldn’t give him.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Rico whispered. ‘I didn’t know.’
    ‘Do you think I wanted anyone at the prentice level to know? But hell, maybe I was wrong. I owe it to the rest of you, all you apprentices, I mean, to tell the truth about this. I don’t want this happening to anyone else, understand me? And especially not you.’
    ‘It won’t, I promise.’
    But as they walked on, Rico could only wonder why he didn’t believe his uncle. No, not drugs, not Arno. He knew Arno, knew him better than Hi ever had. He was too smart, too strong, to fall like this. Something was going on, something had to be going on. Maybe Hi didn’t even know the truth of it; in fact, judging from what his uncle had just said, most likely he didn’t. Bet I can find out, Rico thought. Son of the morning, Child of the Gyre, and morning light - Rico repeated the metas until he could be sure he’d remember them. If he could get a chance to try them out without Hi or another guildmaster catching him, he was going to take it.
    * * *
    By the time Vida got home, coloured light flooded The Close. From some blocks away she could see its spires, glowing against the foggy twilight with a hundred strip lights of pink, crimson, and indigo. Behind its synthistone wall, it rose three storeys high, the best, the most expensive brothel in all of Pleasure Sect. She lingered a moment, watching the lights change in a ripple pattern. She could take at least a little pride in her life knowing that she’d be working The Close, not some mouldy cheap whorehouse down by the river. A clock floated past - sixteen of the seventeens - she was late, over an hour late for dinner. Aleen would be furious. Vida ran down the alley to the gated back door of The Close. At the speaker unit she gave her name.
    ‘Voice confirmed,’ it whined. ‘Print?’
    She laid her thumb on the ID plate.
    ‘Confirmed.’
    The gate snapped open, and she trotted into the service tunnel. Behind her, the gate slammed shut. Vida was planning on sneaking through the pantry and up to her room the back way, but when she opened the back door, she found Tia, waiting for her. Aleen’s second-in-command looked as fierce as a Garang whose blood oath has been denied. She stood in front of Vida with her arms crossed, like one of the fortified Colossi whose pulse waves guarded the main gate out of Pleasure Sect. Vida had about as good a chance of getting by her.
    ‘Where’ve you been?’ Tia’s usually pleasant voice was flat.
    ‘Seeing the festival.’
    ‘Oh?’ Tia’s expression became even grimmer. ‘I told you to stay home, didn’t I?’
    ‘You said to wait for you.