The Crown Jewels by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

pedestal very carefully and found nothing resembling a trap or alarm, and then gave a mental command to his darksuit that opened a collapsed ruck on his back. Time to finish the job and get out.
    His gloved hand reached for the object, closed around it, and perceived its considerable weight. He picked it up and in one swift movement dumped it into his rucksack, which automatically closed around it. He began floating past the level of the balconies, toward the skylight. The object was a cold weight between his shoulders.
    A door opened to an inner room. Maijstral’s heart crashed in his chest. His inertialess drift ceased immediately. His scanners deployed at the speed of thought.
    A small domestic robot entered the room on muffled wheels. It wheeled to a rack of de-energized Rebellion-era weapons and deployed a feather duster.
    Maijstral calmed his nerves. The robot didn’t even see him. Cloaked in his darksuit, he began floating gently toward the skylight again.
    The robot finished knocking dust off the beam guns, then began roiling toward the niche. It paused and began to shriek in a hysterical feminine voice.
    “Help! Help! We’ve been robbed!”
    A masculine voice answered from within the house. “What’s that, Denise?”
    “Intruders! I think he’s still here! Bring Felicity and your guns!”
    A different female voice. “We’re coming, Denise! Any intruders are going to get what’s coming to them!”
    This conversation would probably have gone on for some time— the people who wrote security programs for domestic robots really should have been doing soap opera scripts for the Diadem— but Maijstral silenced the robot with a quick blast from his disruptor, something he would have done more quickly had he not somehow missed the pistol on his first grab. A streaming sable cloud, Maijstral arrowed through the skylight and fled across the sward outside, followed by a bouncing trail of media globes.
    His darksuit informed him that his black boxes, placed outside the perimeter, were doing a good job of repelling the mansion’s efforts to cry for the police. He passed through the cold-field, his suit neutralizing it automatically, and then fled to where Gregor waited in the flier, manning his own larger black box that was scanning all neighborhood communications wavelengths. Gregor looked up with a grin as Maijstral settled into the driver’s seat.
    “What is that you’re always telling me about automatic guards being safer and more predictable?”
    Maijstral punched the power button and the flier hissed into the night on its silent repellers. The artifact pressed against his back. Media globes trailed like firecrackers on a puppy dog’s tail.
    The recordings of this commission, Maijstral decided, were decidedly not going to be sold to the broadcasters.
    *
    Maijstral’s character was formed, entirely by accident, when he was sixteen. His character was supposed to be formed by then; he was a senior classman at the Nnoivarl Academy, one of the best-regarded schools in the Empire, which promised to develop character or kill the boy trying. In common with his classmates, he had learned a lot about High Custom, languages, and the Khosali liberal arts, and damn-all about anything else. His acquisition couldn’t really be called character , but rather a surface veneer, handy in many situations, however much lumber it may be in others. Still, many get by with nothing but polish their entire lives, and if their character isn’t tested they’ll never know the difference.
    Drake Maijstral’s particular bad luck was to get his character tested before he was ready for it. That’s usually the way with character tests— one never realizes what they are until they’re over, and by then it’s too late to prepare.
    As a senior classman preparing for his exams he had been allowed a certain amount of liberty— he could leave the academy without permission, and travel in civilian rig. He took full advantage of his newfound