Soldier of Fortune

The Elysium had private baths.

With an actual tub.

And doors that locked.

On the inside.

If this was a dream, Gideon hoped he never woke up.

He 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. But while the furniture was plain, the bedding was soft and rich with autumn colors, the wheat-gold walls draped with tapestries, and the bamboo floor cushioned by a Fujian rug.

It was, to Gideon’s sensory-deprived diet, a veritable banquet of textures.

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

Dani had enjoyed meditation, but Gideon figured a person 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.

Studying the nook, 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 toward 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 set foot in Nike, or the dodger who’d trailed him to the inn.

Or, he said to himself as he turned to look at the bathroom, you could not think of anyone at all.

And for once, Gideon thought his self might have a point.

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

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

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 steaming 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, closed the door, latched it and then froze in place, suddenly indecisive.

The scents rising from the tray—which held a bowl of soup, some warm naan, a plate of lentil stew, and skewers of roast aurochs—were reducing him near to tears.

But then there was that bathtub, 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 on to another target. Or, if it was 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.

In the corridor outside Gideon’s room Bren, the young keeper who’d delivered his meal, spared a moment of gratitude that the guest hadn’t commented on the soup bowl being not as full as it ought thanks to the guest in the bright green jacket.

The man hadn’t been watching where he was going and walked right into Bren’s elbow, upsetting the soup.

At least the other guest had helped to mop up the mess, mostly by fluttering his handkerchief about so much it was a miracle nothing else spilled.

Clumsy fellow, Bren thought as he headed for the stairs, and no taste in clothing, but decent enough.

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 Quinn chose to eat in the privacy of his room, some creativity was required.

At least Nahmin had seen the full dose make it into the soup, which meant, assuming Quinn was hungry, he’d be ready to collect within the hour.

Plenty of time to call for the carriage.

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

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

Lounging in a tub filled with steaming water, he was currently using the last bit of naan to mop up every drop of sauce from the lentil stew.

He’d already done justice to soup and one of the skewers of aurochs, while Elvis put paid to the second. Only the bowl holding a piece of laden honeycomb remained untouched.

A cup of tea, poured from the squat teapot included with dinner, 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 was grooming himself after neatly dispatching his share of the aurochs. And while Gideon had been worried the draco would prove resistant to food that didn’t squeak prior to being devoured, 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 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); un-rationed 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 life would once again revert to its unpleasant norm.

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 traced one of several scars over his ribs. “You’ve tasted more than your share.”

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

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

“I was’’t expecting anyone at all.”

She danced 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 small sad 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 inn, heading to the corner of Carroll Square.

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.

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

But what did the raggedy man have to take, if not the draco?

As she asked the question, she heard a small crash, like a bit of crockery breaking, from inside the nearest window, drawing her closer. Easing forward, she cautiously peered through the fogged pane and into what turned out to be a brightly lit bathroom, where she got her first truly good look at the object of her fagin’s desire.

The draco was perched at 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. Mia’s breath caught in her throat, and for a moment she forgot she was standing on a narrow 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 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, 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,” Gideon said.

“Then why did you send me away?”

“It’s—complicated,” he said.

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

“Does anything improve with age?”

“Wine, Infantry long coats,” she glanced at his, where it lay folded neatly on the floor, “‘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 Nasa.”

“And yet here you are, holding on to 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.

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

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

“Gideon.”

He blinked, looked up to see she was studying him with an expression he could only hope wasn’t pity.

“You need to wake up now.” She placed the hand he’d released to his cheek.

“If I wake up, you’ll leave.”

“I was never here,” she reminded him, then placed her lips, warm and silky as the bathwater, over his. “Wake—”

“—up already, won’t you?” Mia didn’t know how many times she’d shouted at the man since dragging his head out of the water. Her arms were already trembling as she tried to keep him from sliding down again. Though she’d pulled the plug first thing, the water was draining too bloody slow, so she just kept holding on and yelling and hoping she wasn’t shaking a dead man.

Not that he felt dead.

Not that she knew what dead felt like.

From the way the draco was acting, shifting from leg to leg to leg on the tub’s ledge and crooning anxiously, she wasn’t the only one.

“He’ll be all right,” she told the frenetic beast, then turned her attention back to the inert head on her shoulder. “You better be all right,” she said, giving him a massive shake and a thud on the chest, which she vaguely remembered seeing a riverman do to one of his mates who’d been pulled from the water after too long a spell.

When did Dani’s voice get so high? And why is she hitting me?

Gideon opened his mouth to ask just that when a mouthful of brackish water erupted from his lungs, and he coughed so violently, he fell over on his right side.

“No, no! Not that way!” The voice that wasn’t Dani’s bounced around his ears.

“What way?” he asked, or rather, tried to ask. What came out was more a wet gurgle as he inhaled a mouthful of water.

He thought he heard a “No, no, no, no,” but everything was muffled.

Then a deep and tearing pain dug into his left shoulder, shredding the fog shrouding his thoughts and galvanizing his body into action.

Jerking out of the wet, and with the aid of a pair of fairly determined hands, he got himself sitting up enough to cough out the water he’d sucked in while not-Dani thumped him vigorously on the back.

“Bleeding keepers!” Not-Dani ceased the thumping as his eyes opened, then she began to curse like an infantry drill sergeant.

Gideon appreciated the sentiment, and would have echoed it, but at the moment he was still working on basic respiration.

He did manage to lift his head enough to see his savior, but closed his eyes again because it appeared there were three small, somewhat hazy people in front of the tub, along with an entire talon of dracos flying from one end of the bathroom to the other.

Which meant that, as predicted, life had indeed reverted back to unpleasantly normal.