Extraits

The Grand House on New Samara was exactly what its name suggested. Luxurious without being ostentatious, it eschewed the garish, dancing holos or blinking neon used as advertisements by those gaming establishments that lacked its pedigree. The outer walls were plated a rich, deep green so dark as to be near-black, with only the most delicate touches of decoration here and there: a few tiny, winking lights which served merely to outline and define its bulk, tasteful uplighting on the two small balconies open to the sky and, most important of all, no visible name. The Grand House was an imposing, dark green iceberg taking up a sizeable plot of hugely valuable land in the middle of the richest district on all New Samara: if you didn’t know what it was, you didn’t belong inside.

The tower at one end, not so tall as the surrounding skyscrapers but sharing their curved aesthetics, was a hotel affordable only to the rich. There was no requirement to visit the gaming floors while staying in the hotel, of course, but few would pass up the opportunity given that 10 per cent of their bill was refunded in the form of credit chips. It did, however, explain why patrons were always charged in advance. The Grand House would not wish to see a guest suffering any complications with regard to their accommodation following an unwise flutter. After all, there were standards to be maintained.

Ichabod Drift couldn’t help but feel he was automatically lowering them simply by being present.

He more or less looked the part, of that there was no doubt. His suit, the first such item he had ever owned, was a midnight blue, his shirt was silky smooth and starched at the collar and cuffs, and he’d abandoned his long-serving military-surplus boots for a fancier, shinier pair of shoes (which nevertheless had enough grip to run and enough weight to kick, as Ichabod Drift was in many ways a cautious man). He’d even re-dyed his hair to match the suit, abandoning the violet colour he’d sported for the previous eighteen months or so, and had persuaded Jenna to polish the small amount of visible metal on his augmented eye.

It was the darnedest sensation. Here he was, in New Samara’s Grand House, a casino so posh you weren’t even allowed to call it a casino, dressed like a toff and gambling huge amounts of money . . . and not one bit of it was a lie. There was no angle, no scheme in the works, and they weren’t scoping the place to rob the vault. He and his business partner Tamara Rourke had actually done that once, but in far less opulent surroundings. Even then they’d needed to assemble a one-off team of nine specialists, which meant the payout hadn’t been that great after being split so many ways. Such a venture would be suicide in the Grand House, however, so it was just as well that he was, for once, completely honest and above board.

At least, if you ignored the fact that the money he was gambling with had come from one of the private accounts of a man named Nicolas Kelsier, former corrupt government minister turned terrorist, and now thankfully and quite definitely dead.

“So,” he asked, sighing with pleasure as he surveyed the scene of well-moneyed gambling laid out in front of him, “what do you feel like hitting tonight?”

“You.”