Soldier of Fortune (2nd ed)

by Kathleen McClure

  Then there’d been the point he’d stopped dead in the middle of Chaucer, and she thought sure to see him flattened by an oncoming rickshaw.

  Despite the fact the mark’s untimely demise might give Mia a better shot at the draco, she’d still been on the verge of rushing out to push him onward when the driver’s bell woke the man from his stupor.

  Lucky for her he’d taken a few moments to recover, as Mia also needed a second to calm her racing heart.

  By the time he moved on, she was silently pronouncing the man a complete nutter, and figured she’d be doing the draco a favor by removing it from the suicidal maniac.

  But now, finally, he was entering the Elysium Hotel.

  Mia remained in hiding, watching and waiting until, honeycomb! A light went on in the second floor, street side.

  Not as good as one of the alley-facing rooms, but better than those facing the pub on the other side, which would be busy well past fourteen o’clock. And, with the agri-center between the hotel and the buildings on the opposite side of the square, anyone looking out a window would see nothing but trees, trellises, and rain-towers.

  She was about to slip out of her doorway shelter and make for the alley, when she spied movement on the other side of the street, which was interesting.

  It was interesting because the movement appeared to be another individual, dressed in clothes as dark as hers and, like her, moving from shadow to shadow, right before darting into the selfsame alley Mia planned to use for her own purposes.

  Someone was following her mark!

  Even as she realized this, the someone stopped dead in the light of the last street lamp before the alley, and turned in her direction.

  Though she could see no face, and in fact, suspected that face wore a mask, she did see, quite clearly, the hand which rose and pointed up to the newly lit room. After a measured pause, the hand dropped down but the finger remained pointing straight up so Mia could easily see it shake back and forth in a distinct “no, no, no,” fashion.

  Then the hand fell, the figure turned and, in seconds, disappeared into the blackness of the alley.

  Most people, faced with such specific opposition, would shrug and move on to the next mark.

  Most people didn’t have to deal with Fagin Ellison.

  Oh no, you don’t, Mia thought at her rival, already adjusting her plan of attack. No one’s getting that draco but me.

  Safely hidden by the alley’s shadows, Nahmin Soor—Mia’s rival, and General Rand’s sometimes-valet—made a few hasty changes to his appearance.

  This was his second such transformation of the evening, having already discarded the coveralls of the down-on-his-luck rigger he’d worn aboard Quinn’s tram, leaving him dressed in matte-black garb suitable for tracking one’s quarry through the streets of Nike.

  Now that Quinn had gone to ground, Nahmin needed something a bit more flamboyant.

  The hooded mask came off first, and he used it to dry off as much as possible before tossing it into a nearby compost bin.

  Next he reversed his jacket, trading the near-invisible matte black for an eye-searing puce which, with a twitch of two buttons, lengthened into a full tunic.

  From one deep pocket he drew a length of blinding yellow fabric, which he wrapped into an elegant pagri for his head, and less than four minutes after entering the alley, Nahmin emerged a changed man.

  As he approached the doors, he gave the street beyond a casual glance, though in truth he wasn’t concerned by the young thief who’d also been following Quinn.

  The little one’s tenacity impressed, but any dodger worth his lock-picks would be smart enough to know when a mark was lost, and move on. Though why any thief would be interested in the ragged ex-soldier in the first place confounded him.

  The same might be said of his employer, were Nahmin not also aware of the threat Gideon Quinn presented. Enough of a threat Nahmin had protested allowing the Pradish twins, Rey and Ronan, first attempt at containment, but his employer would not be swayed.

  Their failure came as no surprise.

  Still, that failure was his opportunity, and with one last scan of the street, Nahmin entered the Elysium Hotel to finish the job.

  8

  They had private baths.

  Private baths the size of his cell.

  With an actual tub.

  And doors that locked.

  On the inside.

  Real rain, a bathtub to call his own, or, at least his own for the two nights he’d paid for. If this was a dream, Gideon hoped he never woke up.

  Gideon clicked at Elvis, who flapped over to perch on the edge of the sink, then let his dripping wet pack thud to the tile floor.

  He stared a moment longer, then stepped back into the main room, furnished with the sort of sturdy, utilitarian furniture one might expect of keepers. The place certainly didn’t run to extras, but the low-framed bed with its equally low stand and reading lamp were well made and, with wheat-gold walls set off by tapestries, rugs, and bedding in variegated autumn tones, provided a veritable banquet of textures to Gideon’s sensory-deprived diet.

  The room also featured a meditation nook should the traveler wish to indulge, but Gideon doubted he’d make use of the space.

  His preferred method of stress relief tended to involve less sitting and more punching.

  Dani loved meditation, he recalled. Then again, someone who regularly jumped out of airships with nothing but a slender tether between herself and a fatal splat would need to maintain a certain level of zen.

  He wondered if she still meditated? Or if she was still in the Corps? Or even still alive?

  “Stop it,” he said aloud, forcing his thoughts away from the woman he’d lost—sent away—and towards something more productive.

  Because if he was going to think about anyone, it should be Jessup Rand and the two mercenaries Rand had set on him the second he stepped off the barge, or John Pitte, who’d been another of Rand’s weapons, or the dodger who’d trailed him to the hotel…

  Or, he turned to look at that bathroom again, he could not think of anyone at all.

  For this one night, he could just enjoy the moment, and this room. This clean, private, utterly empty—

  The sound of a fist on wood broke into his determined revery, reminding Gideon he’d asked the desk keeper to have dinner delivered.

  Still, he opened the door with caution, but found only another keeper, this one young and slightly flushed and, most importantly, carrying a tray crowded with filled dishes.

  Gideon could have kissed him. Luckily for the both of them, he restrained himself, and merely took hold of the tray, thanked the keeper and closed the door. Then he opened the door again and tipped the young man, who was still standing there, looking a bit shocked. Gideon closed the door again, latched it, and then froze in place, suddenly indecisive.

  The food—some sort of soup with a bright, citrusy scent, warm naan, and a plate featuring masala dosa and skewers of roast meat (he thought it might be bison or-no-aurochs but who cared because meat)— was reducing him near to tears.

  But then there was that bathtub—long enough for even his long legs—begging to be filled.

  He looked at the tray, then at the bathroom door, then back at the tray.

  Several minutes later, Gideon eased into a tub filled with steaming hot water.

  The tray sat on the floor, within easy reach of hungry bathers.

  He could only hope whoever was following him had been a pickpocket, willing to move onto another target.

  Or, if it were one of Rand’s operatives shadowing him, that they would do the sensible thing and wait until he turned out the lights to try anything stupid, because if anyone dared interrupt him now, he would happily kill them.

  It was something of a surprise to Mia she’d been able to use the alley approach after all but, seeing as the competition had taken the front door, she figured there was naught to lose.

  At least, she assumed the gaudily dressed indi
vidual prancing out of the alley was the same slick operator who’d entered it, after warning her off.

  The cheek!

  For certain the fop’s height and build matched that of the masked man, even if the clothes and walk were completely different.

  So different that Mia had questioned the instincts telling her this was the same person. Then the man had paused at the inn’s door to scan the street, and the competence belying the frivolous drapings confirmed her suspicions.

  Since he entered the inn with no further admonitions, she trusted he’d not seen her, and made a careful dash to the alley, keeping always to the shadows.

  Once there, she assessed the building.

  Like much of Carroll Square, the Elysium was constructed of granite blocks during the Second Expansion.

  Mia loved Second Expansion buildings. Not because of the design so much, but because the structure’s age meant older, softer mortar.

  Older, softer mortar crumbled, making a good place for a person to grasp onto should this person, for various reasons, need to scale the structure.

  Admittedly, she preferred this sort of climb in dryer weather, but lucky for her, the alley also featured a compost bin directly under the lowest landing of the inn’s fire escape. In a tick she was on the escape’s landing. Another two ticks saw her climbing over the second-floor railing to the narrow ledge, barely half the width of her feet, and her fingers trusting to the lovely, crumbly mortar to keep her from falling.

  In the corridor outside Gideon Quinn’s room, Bren, the young keeper who’d delivered Gideon’s meal, contemplated the hefty tip. Keepers didn’t go in for this sort of thing, but the man had simply thrust the money at him and shut the door with nary a word.

  He hadn’t even commented on the soup bowl being not as full as it ought, or that the soup that should have been in the bowl was soaking into Bren’s tunic.

  Not that it was Bren’s fault.

  It was the guest in a horror of a green jacket, not watching where he was going, so that he knocked right into Bren’s elbow and upset the soup. Though it was also true the green-jacketed fellow had been apologetic enough, helping to mop up the mess, mostly by fluttering his handkerchief about so much Bren thought it a miracle nothing else spilled.

  He’d even given Bren a half-star for his trouble, which he needn’t have done, thus making this an unusually profitable night.

  Clumsy, and no taste in clothing, but decent enough.

  From where he lurked on the stairs leading to the inn’s third floor, Nahmin listened to the young keeper’s whistling retreat before stepping back into the hall outside Quinn’s door.

  Dosing the soup in transit was a calculated risk, but since his quarry chose to eat in the privacy of his room, some creativity was required.

  Now to contact his employer.

  By the time the carriage arrived at the inn, the spiked soup would have done its work.

  Still, as Nahmin made his way back downstairs, he couldn’t shake the sensation that, by leaving the target still breathing, he was in some way cheating.

  9

  This, Gideon decided, could well be the ultimate dining experience.

  At present, he was lounging in a tub filled with steaming water, a plate in one hand and the last bit of naan in the other, using the second to mop up every drop of sauce in the first.

  He’d already done justice to the one of the skewers of aurochs (Elvis devoured the second), and the soup (foregoing the spoon and drinking it straight from the bowl), setting each empty dish back on the tray, which he’d sat on the floor, in easy reach, and on which only the bowl holding the traditional piece of laden honeycomb remained.

  A cup of tea, poured from a squat clay teapot, also on the tray, sat on the tub’s ledge, adding its own modest trail of steam to that of the bathwater.

  On the edge of the sink, Elvis, still uncertain about this whole “water,” thing, was grooming himself after neatly dispatching his share of the aurochs.

  Gideon had been worried the draco would prove resistant to food that didn’t squeak just prior to being devoured, but so far he seemed to be adapting nicely.

  And if the warm, sleepy glow infusing his body was any indication, so was Gideon.

  With a satisfied sigh, he set the all-but-licked-clean (okay, fine, completely licked clean) plate alongside the rest of the empty dishes, contemplated the honey and decided to hold off, content for the moment with the tea, of which he managed one or two sips before his muscles began to melt into the warm water.

  Going with it, Gideon set the cup aside, let his head rest against the back of the tub and soaked in the tangible proof of his freedom: food (not a dehydrated, rehydrated food-like substance but actual food); unlimited amounts of (clean) water; and a door that closed (with—and this could not be overstated—a lock on the inside).

  It was close to perfect.

  Certainly closer than he’d any right to expect.

  Lounging, eyes closed, in water up past his chest, he could only assume events of an unpleasant nature would soon infringe on the near perfection, and then everything would once again be unpleasantly normal.

  Cynic, a voice from his past chided him.

  Realist, he corrected the memory, before sliding easily into the dream.

  “Of course. Forgive me, how could I forget your motto?” the memory said, standing at the side of the tub, studying him. “How did it go? ‘Don’t get comfortable, don’t even make dinner plans because if you do, life will just serve you up a dish of pain.’” She leaned over and let her fingers trace the scar over his collarbone. “You’ve tasted more than your share.”

  “Dani…” Her name came out as little more than a breath, stirring the water.

  “Who else?” She sat on the edge of the tub, seemingly unconcerned that her uniform was getting wet.

  She brushed her fingers over the water, head tilting as she met his gaze, “Why are you looking at me that way?”

  “Because you’re not real.”

  “True,” she said with a smile.

  Mia had just come even with her target’s window when a motion below prompted her to flatten herself against the granite.

  Peering down, she saw the man in the garish green coat and yellow pagri making a beeline out of the hotel.

  Did that mean he’d already gotten to the draco?

  She focused on the retreating back to confirm there was no sign of a pouch or box, no suspicious lumps; just the bright, slim figure of a man in a hurry to be someplace else.

  In short, no sign of the draco.

  Which meant either he’d been unable to get hold of the creature or the draco wasn’t his goal.

  But what would be the goal, if not the draco?

  As she asked the question, she heard a small crash, like a bit of crockery breaking, from inside the window.

  Normally, that level of noise would have sent her in search of cover, but this time something—a sense of curiosity or foreboding, she didn’t know which—made her look through the fogged window and into the brightly lit bathroom to see the object of her fagin’s desire.

  He was perched the edge of the sink, rearing up on his hind legs, and he was brilliant, with his iridescent brown gold scales, and bright cat eyes, and her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment she forgot she was standing on a ledge in the rain with her fingers and toes going numb with the cold of it.

  Only for a moment, however, and since there appeared to be no one else was in the room, she angled for a better view of the draco, whose neck and wings were now outspread. He was so close, she could even see his pupils, thinned to mere slits as his head turned to the bathtub.

  So intense was his focus on that particular feature, Mia couldn’t help but follow the draco’s single-minded gaze.

  The first thing she spied was the broken teacup on the floor. Then her eyes moved further left and she saw the tub, and the water sloshing over the edge and, lastly, the draco’s owner sliding, all unaware, under the surface of
the steaming bathwater.

  Her smile had always undone him. “I missed you,” he told her.

  Even saying it, he knew how inadequate that sounded, even though it was nothing but true.

  “Then why did you send me away?”

  “It’s—complicated,” he said.

  “That was a pathetic answer six years ago,” she chided him, though gently, “and it hasn’t improved with age.”

  “Does anything improve with age?”

  “Wine, the Infantry long-coats,” she glanced at his, where it lay folded over Gideon’s clothes, “Blue Suede Shoes—the song, not the footwear—and us,” she said lastly, no longer smiling. “We could have improved with age, if you’d given it half a chance.”

  “There was no chance.” He wondered how it was possible for a dream to hurt so deeply. “Not after Rand. Not after Nasa.”

  ”And yet, here you are, holding onto a dream.”

  She wasn’t wrong. And not only because, without thinking, he’d taken hold of her hand.

  Carefully, he released it.

  “Gideon,” she murmured his name.

  In reproof?

  In forgiveness?

  He would never know because, though she’d been his for a brief, bright once upon a time, life had indeed served up a dish of pain.

  Gideon, refusing to let Dani to share that particular dish, had pushed her away.

  She’d pushed back, hard, but in the end his stubbornness proved greater than hers.

  But even then, even after Gideon successfully shut Dani out of his life, he spent the next half dozen years dreaming about her every night.

  There had even been some days when his memories of Dani—her smile, her tragic inability to bake anything without turning it black, her passion for classical Earth music—were all that stood between him and a one-way stroll through the crystal veins.