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The Silvios stopped necking with Thomasi, and watched.

Aware of their jealous scrutiny, he leaned closer. ‘Luna?’ he laughed. ‘Are you madness?’

She caught her bottom lip with her teeth. ‘I have been called that.’

Trin felt the bravura heating him. There was something dangerous about her. Her slenderness suggested she might be an eccentric, like Mira Fedor—only far, far more beautiful. Intoxicating. With eccentrics you never quite knew ... A few such familia, picked for their special talents or attributes, had been permitted to come when the Cipriano Clan abandoned Latino Crux. Fedors had been selected for their piloting skills. Trin wondered what Luna’s familia had brought to the new world—aside from sheer magnificent beauty.

‘Are you going to dance with me or simply admire?’

He glanced at her minders. Something in their aspect nagged at him. ‘Who are you to have Palazzo minders, beautiful Luna?’

She flushed a little. Her eyes flashed. This close he could see the tiny age lines round her lips. ‘Don’t you know?’ she whispered.

Trin ran his fingers along Luna’s brocaded arm and brushed the palm of her hand. ‘Tell me.’

She slipped off the high-backed chair and melted into his arms. ‘Later, perhaps. But first I would like to dance with a handsome young man.’

Her slight emphasis on his youth prickled a warning against his skin but the bravura’s urge was stronger. Insistent.

Luna chose the dance—formal courting steps usually reserved for couples on their wedding night before they left the celebrations and went to the marital bed. Using it in this context—a ginko bar with a stranger—was so shocking that it heightened Trin’s exhilaration.

He mirrored her ritual movements. His arousal had him sweating and breathing heavily.

She finished coyly with her back to him.

Indifferent to who was watching now and what they were thinking, Trin thrust his hips against the crease of her flanks and slipped his hands around her to cup the stiff brocade that hid her breasts.

Luna jerked her head back with a little faux cry.

By some unspoken agreement, her minders, hovering close, pulled her away from Trin.

Before he could react they had cloaked her and hustled her out. He staggered as if he had been robbed and left punch-drunk.

The Silvios pounced on him in a moment, pulling them back to their table.

‘Did she dump you, Trinder?’

‘Trinny, Trinny.’

‘Did she leave you rovente, poor darling?’

‘Ohh. Aah,’ they mocked. ‘Take it out on us.’

Furious, Trin brushed them aside and grabbed a jug from the table, swilling down the entire contents in several gulps. The bar began to swirl around him. Cold shivers crawled across his overheated body. He looked around wildly for a focus, something to quell the nausea.

Uuli.

It slithered dejectedly in its transparent containment film. Streaks of mucus coloured the sides, creating a kaleidoscope. Its pathetic manner infuriated him. For Crux sake. . .

Trin climbed onto the table and smashed the empty jug into the containment film. It gave a pressure-change thud as it cracked open.

‘Get out. Get out,’ he shrieked at the uuli.

It blazed scarlet and shrank from him.

He reached in and grasped it with both hands, intending to release it. But it shredded, lumps of mucus sloughing onto his fingers.

‘Trinder!’

‘Trinny—no!’

They were shouting at him now. All of them. Not just the Silvios.

‘Come here,’ Trin shouted at it. ‘I’m trying to help you.’

The uuli screamed and churned through a rainbow of colours.

Rough hands dragged him down and took him to Riso’s den.

Riso stood by his desk, rigid with rage, staring through the wall film into the bar. He turned slowly ‘If the uuli dies, even Franco won’t be able to afford the bill. Here’s my favour to you,’ said Riso, his voice thick with fury. ‘I will not call the Carabinere. Go home and sober up. Never come here again. Your behaviour blasphemes against the name Pellegrini.’

Trin laughed at him.

‘Spurious idios,’ spat Riso. ‘Throw him out.’

*