For there would be a next time. Soon after Malcolm's release his mother became pregnant again, and this time it was she who entered the private hospital, since Stephen Tressalian's gene expert had determined that Malcolm's comparatively advanced stage of physical development had had something to do with his adverse reaction to the therapy. The fetus that would become Larissa received a refined course of injections in utero, and the change seemed to do the trick: when she was born her body exhibited none of her brother's physical disabilities, while the power of her mind was quickly revealed to be astounding. In addition, her beauty from the first looked to exceed even her mother's. In every way, Larissa seemed the living vindication of all the risks her parents had taken.

Of course, there was the strange matter of that silver hair, with which Larissa too had been born; but Stephen Tressalian refused to see this as anything other than a coincidence, and emphasized the differences between his two children rather than their similarities. "Of course, he never even suspected the most important thing that Malcolm and I had in common," Larissa said as we lay on my bed together. Yes, together: for her story had quickly transformed my uneasiness about her work as an assassin into an emotion that ran much deeper than the infatuation I'd felt to that point.

"Which was?" I murmured, touching some of her silvery locks and looking deep into her ebony eyes.

She looked at the ceiling rather blithely. "We were both a little mad. At least, I can't think of any other way to describe it."

It didn't seem an entirely serious statement. "I'm sure you were," I cajoled, in a tone to match hers. "And your parents never suspected?"

"Oh, Mother did," Larissa answered. "The entire time we were poisoning her she kept screaming to Father that she knew we were killing her, and that we were both insane."

I propped myself up on my elbows and dropped the bit of her hair I'd been toying with. "ŒPoisoning?'" I said.

But Larissa didn't seem to hear me. "Father never would believe it, though," she went on. "That is, not until we pushed him out of the airplane. Then—just then I think he realized that there might be something to it ..."

I sat up on the bed. "How old were you?" was all I could think to say. Larissa's face screwed up in a childlike fashion. "I was 11 when we took care of Mother. The business with Father happened about a year later."

Utterly at a loss, I found myself reverting to the role of criminal psychologist. "And did they—was it—premeditated?"

She glanced at me a bit dubiously. "Gideon—everything Malcolm and I do is premeditated. It's what we were bred for. But if what you're really asking is whether or not there was provocation, then the answer is yes, there was." She looked at the ceiling again. "Rather a lot, actually."

I kept watching her, retreating still further into professional objectivity yet somehow angry with myself for the reaction. "Such as what?" I asked. She suddenly gave me a small, genuinely happy smile and pulled me back down against her warm body. "I like sleeping with you," she said. "I wasn't sure I would."

I returned the smile as best I could. "A gift for flattery was not, apparently, the primary goal of your genetic engineering."

"I'm sorry," she laughed. "It's just that—" "Larissa," I said, touching her mouth. "If you don't want to tell me about it you don't have to."

She took my hand. "No, I will," she said simply. "It's really not very complicated." She turned to the ceiling again. "Father'd bred me to be smarter and prettier than Mother—so I suppose it shouldn't have been much of a surprise when he decided that he'd rather have sex with me than her." I hissed in shock, but Larissa proceeded with a detachment not uncommon to victims of such trauma. "She thought it was my fault—he'd have sex with me and then she'd beat me for it. Malcolm always tried to stop both of them. But he's never had any real physical strength." Her eyes glistened with profound love and admiration. "You should have seen him, though—swinging those crutches at them, calling them every evil name imaginable."

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