Will it only be children, with their joy and uninhibited imagination, who'll be the universe's fantasyscape artists?

«Some day soon, Laurus,» Torreya's disembodied voice urges. «Jante just loves the estate. With eyes and legs he can run through all of it himself. That's the very best present anyone can have. It's so gorgeous here, better than any silly candy bud land. The whole world must envy you.»

Laurus is following her voice down a corridor of laburnum trees that are in full bloom. Sunlight shimmers off their flower clusters, transforming the air to a lemon haze. He turns the corner by a clump of white angels trumpets. Torreya is standing beside the machine, and even that seems to have thrived in its new home. Laurus doesn't remember its organic components as being so large.

«As soon as we can,» he says.

Torreya smiles her irrepressible smile, and holds out a newly plucked candy bud. Refusing the warmth and trust in her sparkling eyes is an impossibility.

• • •

The starling is already eighty metres off the ground. Laurus thinks it must have owl-eye transplants in order to fly so unerringly in the dead of night like this.

Ryker hurtles down, and Laurus feels feathers, malleable flesh, and delicate bones captured within his talons. In his rage he wrenches the starling's head clean off. The candy bud which the little bird was carrying tumbles away, and not even Ryker can see where it falls.

Laurus contents himself with the knowledge that they are still well inside the estate's defensive perimeter. Should any animal try and recover the candy bud, the estate's hounds and kestrels will deal with them.

He drops the starling's body so he will have a rough marker when the search begins tomorrow.

Now the big eagle banks sharply and heads back towards the mansion in a fast silent swoop. The ground is a montage of misty grey shadows, trees are puffy jet-black outlines, easily dodged. He can discern no individual landmarks, speed has reduced features to a slipstream blur.

He curses his own foolishness, the satellite of vanity. He should have known, should have anticipated. The Laurus of old would have. Three days Torreya and Jante have been at the estate, and already news of the candy buds has leaked. Programmable neurophysin synthesis is too big, the stakes are now high enough to tempt mid-range players into the field. There will be no allies in this war.

Ryker soars over the last row of trees and the mansion is dead ahead, its lighted windows glaringly bright to the eagle's gloaming-acclimatized eyes. Camassia is still fifty metres from the side door. There's no urgency to her stride, no hint of furtiveness. One of his girls taking an evening stroll, nobody would question her right.

She's a cool one, he admits. Kochia's eyes and ears for eighteen months, and Laurus never knew. Only the importance of the candy buds made her break cover and risk a handover to the starling.