Soldier of Fortune

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Mia muttered as she slid through a gap in a fence, leaving a scrap of her trousers, and darted through someone’s handkerchief-sized garden.

It was only one of the obstacles she’d had to slide through, climb over, under, or avoid while trailing the draco that was trailing the carriage Gideon had been forced into.

And even as she did her best to keep up with Elvis, Mia wondered if the draco was really flying after Gideon, or if he was simply on his way to the nearest fishmonger for an early breakfast.

But then she glanced up to see Elvis circling back—as if to confirm she was, in fact, following—before striking off once more toward the city center, where the rich and powerful of the city dwelt.

Since there wasn’t much in the way of fish stalls in the risto neighborhoods, Mia took heart and put on some speed.

Nearing the familiar territory of the Circus, she ducked low and sidled through a gap in the next fence, which brought her to the Carroll Square agri-center and wind farm next to the Elysium Inn.

She turned to look at the hotel, most of the windows dark by now.

From above, a high, keening call drew her attention skywards where the draco urged her onwards.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” she muttered, picking up speed so, when she reached the gap in the agri-center’s boundary hedge, she fair dove through the opening.

And came up short against the bulk that was Ellison.

“Figgered you might make a stop ’ere abouts,” the fagin said, grabbing her arm.

“I expected you a mite sooner, and wif a draco under your tunic,” Ellison growled as his hand tightened around her arm, hard enough that Mia had to bite down the protest. “I always knew you was trouble, but I never figured you for bein’ disloyal.”

“Let go o’ me,” she cried, trying to peel Ellison’s white-knuckled fingers from around her bicep. “Let go or . . . or I’ll lose it!”

“Lose it?” Ellison ignored the young dodger’s struggles and hauled her up high enough she got a face full of whiskey-tinged breath when he asked, “Lose what?”

At which point a shrieking draco came diving down at Ellison, his extended talons raking, causing the fagin to drop Mia in order to cover his bald head as the screaming, flapping Elvis continued to torment him.

“That,” Mia said, springing to her feet and racing away from the cowering fagin.

Once she was well away, Elvis gave one last remonstrative shriek before swooping up and into the night after her.

Ellison, his blood running cold, remained where he was, hunched over between the winter wheat and the dead remains of tomato plants for many minutes, until he was convinced the demon with wings wasn’t going to come at him again.

Eventually, when it became clear no further claws would come to tear at his exposed flesh, he slowly lowered his arm to find that, yes, he was alone.

Or rather, mostly alone.

Just on the far side of the tomato patch, a man of stocky build, wearing the keeper colors of saffron and crimson and carrying a hoe with the same assurance a soldier carries his sword, stood staring. “Might one ask,” the keeper began, his basso voice deceptively pleasant, “what in the comb you’d be doing in my wheat in the wee hours?”

“I . . .” Ellison’s eyes darted wildly to the sky and then around him, then to the sky again. “Didn’t you see it?”

The keeper’s eyes widened, and he hefted the hoe suggestively. “See what?”

As he spoke, two other keepers, a woman of middle years and a youth, came racing up to join the first keeper.

“We telephed the precinct,” the youth said. “They’ll be sending someone along, quick as they can.”

“They also said it may be a while.” The woman turned her disapproving eyes on Ellison. “They say it’s a busy night.”

“That’s fine, that is,” the first keeper said. “It’ll give our friend here time to settle and explain himself in proper fashion.” His weighty gaze fixed on Ellison. “Won’t it?”

“It . . . I . . . Yes,” Ellison replied at last, still hunching in on himself.

On the whole, Ellison was accustomed to confrontations with people under the age of fourteen; when it came to facing off with adults, he generally found cowardice to be the better part of valor.

Or, in this instance, cowardice and bald-faced lies.

Lies produced for the keepers and reiterated on the arrival of the coppers, in which he claimed himself a victim of thieves who set upon him as he stepped out of his favorite tavern.

Afraid for his life, he’d run roughshod through the streets until he’d finally gone to ground in the agri-center.

The scratches? Received when wrestling through a wire fence, two—or was it four?—streets back.

“And can you identify these thieves?” the uniformed officer inquired.

“Of course,” Ellison said, accepting a mug of tea from young keeper Bren, while DS Hama and the two older keepers looked on. “Well, two of ’em, any road. One’s a kid. One o’ them dodgers as works the streets of a night. You know the type,” he added, glancing Hama’s way.

“And the other?” Officer Prudawe prompted, her tongue poking from between her teeth as she transcribed his statement into her spanking new notebook, oblivious of the mug Bren set at her side.

“Tall feller, and skinny with it,” Ellison replied promptly. “Hair’s sorta brownish-gray, not much to look at. Wears an infantry coat, and he’s got himself a pet draco.”

At which point the last mug, which Bren had been about to hand to DS Hama, tipped wildly, sloshing its contents over the floor.

Ellison watched as Hama looked at his tea, spreading across the tile, then up at the flushing youth.

“Something you’d care to share, Keeper Bren?” the detective asked.

“It’s just,” Bren said as Keeper Thalia fetched a cloth, “that sounds a lot like one of our guests.”

“Does this guest have a name?” Hama asked.

“It was Quinn,” Bren said, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Msr Gideon Quinn.”

Even as the morph took Gideon under in Celia’s bedroom, Jessup Rand woke with a start, momentarily uncertain of his surroundings.

But with wakefulness came the realization he was in his study, where he’d joined Celia after seeing the last of their guests depart.

He and Celia had shared a drink, he recalled, and she had entertained him with her stinging observations of the various and sundry ristos who’d been their guests, but Jessup must have been much more tired than he thought, for he’d fallen asleep.

Tired, his querying mind prodded, or old?

Too old for the vibrant woman he’d married—the woman he’d killed for—and she’d left him there, snoring in his favorite chair.

Alone.

Unbidden, his fingers stroked over the chair’s leather arm, taking comfort in its battered familiarity, as this particular chair had been through many a change with Jessup, following him from post to post, all the way back to the Academy. In fact, he’d often boasted he could trace his career in the various dings, stains, and scuffs that marked the oak-tanned aurochs-hide, from the wine stain of graduation day to the nick from a Midasian’s sword in Upper Allianza.

That was the same post where Celia had missed the evacuating airship, he recalled, and thus been stranded, leading to the Gideon Quinn’s Twelfth Company being sent in to extract her.

This in turn led to Gideon Quinn setting eyes on Celia, and that had led to a cycle of violence and treachery which Jessup had struggled nearly seven years to forget.

On the arm of the chair, Jessup’s hand clenched in a fist.

“Darling?”

He looked up to see Celia had entered the room, her gown whispering as she neared. Jessup, blinking, thought the red silk spilling from that single twist on her shoulder appeared more like a bleeding wound than the numbingly expensive dress it was.

“I fell asleep,” he said, struggling to shed his exhaustion.

“I know.” She stopped beside his chair. “I didn’t have the heart to wake you, but then I got lonely.” She held out a hand and he, smitten as ever, took it, rising sluggishly from his chair to follow her out of the study.

At the base of the stairs, he paused. He’d been worried about something, had he not?

Quinn, he recalled. He’d been thinking of Gideon Quinn—the more so after hearing Killian’s report. “Should have dealt with him the first time,” he murmured.

“Dealt with whom?”

“What?” He shook his head and forced himself to focus on his wife, who was waiting. “Nothing. Just an old annoyance. It can wait.”

“Good,” she said, starting up the stairs again, “because I will be wanting all of your attention.”

Jessup followed, thoughts of Gideon Quinn quieting to a dull echo.

All he knew, as she opened the door to the bedroom, was her smile, the soft sigh of her dress, her fingers in his hand, tightening in anticipation.

And then he was inside the bedroom, and there, sprawled at his feet in the flickering light of the fireplace, was Gideon Quinn himself, lying unconscious on the floor of his bedchamber.

He looked up. “Celia?” Her name was a question.

“Yes, I know, but as much as you deserve an explanation, I’m afraid we’ve run out of time.”

“Celia, what are you talking about? Why is he here?” Jessup asked.

Or rather, meant to ask.

In fact, he only got as far as “Celia—” before Nahmin, who’d been waiting in the shadows, stepped up and slid something bright and cold between Jessup’s ribs, piercing his heart so the rest of his questions went forever unvoiced, and so unanswered.

As he fell, however, Jessup did have time to wonder why Nahmin, bloodied blade in hand, was offering Celia a salute—and not the standard Colonial Corps salute, either, but the odd tap of the forehead that the Coalition forces favored.

Then he was on the floor, staring at the hated Gideon Quinn, which made him wonder . . .