The Clan Chronicles Series

---

Excerpt from This Gulf of Time and Stars

Prelude

Fingers, four and a thumb, tapped the metal edge of the vent. The fingers were dark blue from tip to second joint, as if dipped in paint.

Or Pox blood.

The fingers gripped and pulled. The covering grate came free without sound or resistance, revealing an opening twice the span of those fingers wide.

Wide enough.

The right hand led the way, scrabbling into the pipe. Body parts, riding on tough fleshy limbs and careful of clothing, followed in turn. The head produced eyes to survey the shadowed rooftop, but didn’t tarry. It ducked through the opening, canting forward so its well secured hat went first.

The left hand did what it could to pull the grate into place behind it, breaking a nail. Regardless, it subvocalized a chuckle.

At last, their time had come.

***

Barrels waited on their racks, the more costly brews festooned with cobwebs and dust. A pair of aged portlights hovered near the rafters, their fitful glow doing little to dispel the gloom. The cellar’s chill suited only one of those gathered around a table made from two empty barrels and a sheet of real wood, and only one felt sufficiently at ease to sit on a stool.

Board Member Theo Schrivens Cartnell, representative for the Human species in the conglomeration of mutual interests known as the Trade Pact, trusted he appeared at ease and not exhausted. To reach Stonerim III unremarked, he’d travelled in a succession of starships, each more decrepit than the one before. In the last, he’d had the choice of being crammed together in a cabin with itinerant Lemmicks or Turrned Missionaries. He should have gone with the missionaries. After vomiting most of his insides at the stench, the rest of the journey had passed in a haze. He’d staggered into the first portcity hotel for a bath and change of clothing.

And the last of his stims.

What mattered was this gathering; typically, an important member wasn’t here. Late, he hoped, or waiting to make an entrance.

Risky, with such as these. Cartnell lifted his glass in a gloved hand and pretended to admire the bubbles rising through the tawny liquid as his stomach roiled in protest. “Rare, this,” he said. “Sure you won’t join me?”

The other Humans in the room, a slim woman with her face hazed behind a vis-shield and an even slimmer man, his face pocked and scarred, didn’t move. “Time’s wasting,” she said, her voice distorted. “You called us. Get to the point.”

“I accept and gladly.” A callused palm engulfed a glass, ivory-tipped fingers clicking together like castanets. The contents were drained in a single swallow. As Brill went, the male was almost dainty, no bulkier than a very large Human. Still, he’d opened his coat with an exclamation of relief. Warmth was a trial, given those layers of blubber and thick leathery skin, and the land above the cellar was in the midst of a tropical summer.

It couldn’t be helped. This was their first—the only—chance to meet. They couldn’t do so for long.

Not with the aliens known as Clan on all their worlds.