The place hadn’t changed. Two lines of ramshackle cots filled the long narrow room, pressed close together, with a narrow aisle down the center. On the cots lay dozing children, from four or five years old to emaciated, spindly teenagers. Intravenous drips fed nutrients into their veins, and catheters carried everything else away into grimy jars. Some of the children were covered in blankets, while others had thrown them off. A few were strapped down. There was a strong pervasive smell of cheap disinfectant and rubbing alcohol. The children were espers, brain damaged as often as not, too weak to survive on a harsh world like Mistworld. Chance bought them from their parents and used their esp abilities to spread a telepathic web over all of Mistport, seeing and hearing everything. And that was Abraxus. Chance kept the children alive as long as he could; it was in his interest to do so. But none of them ever survived to adulthood. They were the weak and the damaged, the broken and the abused, and by the time Chance got his hands on them, it was already too late. It didn’t affect Abraxus. There were always more. The children were loyal to Chance, sleeping and awake; he was the nearest thing to a friend most of them had ever known.
Owen shook his head slowly, but wouldn’t let himself look away. The first time he’d been here he’d been sickened to his soul. He’d wanted to tear the place apart, and Chance with it, but he hadn’t. Much as he hated to admit it, Abraxus was the best these children—genetically damaged and idiot savant espers with terrible pasts and little future—could hope for.
Just another product of Empire rule. Owen turned to glare at Chance, founder and manager of the Abraxus Information Center. Chance was a large muscular man, almost as broad as he was tall, wearing black leathers with metal studs. Half his face was hidden behind a complex and very ugly tattoo. His smile was meaningless, his eyes were too bright, and he didn’t blink often enough. Owen often wondered if Chance had been crazy before he started Abraxus, or if endless exposure to death and suffering had sent him over the edge. Either way, Owen maintained a safe distance, and kept his hand near his sword. Chance nodded abruptly to him.
“Knew you’d be back, Deathstalker. What can I do for you this time?”
“Don’t you know?” said Owen. “You must be slipping, Chance. I have questions that need answering.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” said Chance. “I feel I should point out you exhausted all your credit the last time you honored us with your presence. And my prices have risen dramatically. You understand how it is; small businesses always have to fight to stay afloat.”
“Your business exists because my father’s money made it possible,” Owen said flatly. “Technically, as his only heir, I inherited Abraxus.”
“You were outlawed,” said Chance. “All assets attached to the Deathstalker name were confiscated by the Empress. And besides, this is Mistport, where possession is every part of the law. Abraxus is mine.”
Owen smiled humorlessly. “I think you have me confused with someone who gives a damn. I’m back in Mistport to revitalize the old Deathstalker information network, and make it part of the ongoing rebellion again. And that very definitely includes you and Abraxus. Since, for my sins, I’m one of the people currently leading the rebellion, Abraxus answers to me. So if you want to keep your presumably very well paid managerial position, I strongly suggest you stop pissing me about. Got it?”
“You couldn’t run Abraxus without me,” said Chance. “The children are mine, body and soul.”
“They’d soon get over you. Children are so very adaptable, after all.”
Chance thought about it. “You’d risk ruining my operation, just to get control?”
“Of course,” said Owen. “I’m a Deathstalker. We have a long history of getting our way, and to hell with where the chips fall.”
Chance sniffed. “What do you want to know, Deathstalker?”
“That’s more like it. I have a question.”
“Keep it specific, if you want a specific answer. My children are espers, not oracles.”
“Ask them who killed my father,” said Owen. “Which person, specifically?”
Chance nodded, and made his way slowly down the central aisle, looking speculatively from one child to another. Owen watched impassively, hiding his own surprise at the question he’d asked. It hadn’t been the one he intended to start with. He was here to ask about his father’s information network. He hadn’t known how badly he wanted the name of his father’s killer until he heard himself say it. His father had been cut down in the street by an assassin in the pay of the Empress, and at the time Owen hadn’t really been surprised. Just assumed that one of his father’s many plots and intrigues had finally caught up with him. Mostly, Owen had just felt annoyed at the disruption the sudden death had brought to his previously well-ordered life. He hadn’t asked who the killer was. He hadn’t cared, then.
Arthur Hadrian Deathstalker, tall and handsome and ruthlessly charming, had delighted in schemes and intrigues, sometimes apparently just for their own sake. Which meant he hadn’t had much time to spend on his son. When he remembered he had a son and heir, he ran Owen’s life with an iron hand, doing as he thought best and to hell with what Owen might want. His was not a cheerful presence, and their few conversations increasingly deteriorated into blazing rows. The Deathstalker never understood that his son considered himself a scholar, rather than a warrior. When Owen heard that his father was dead, his first feeling was one of relief. He was finally out of his father’s clutches and free to be his own man at last.
It was only in recent times that Owen had finally begun to understand the forces that had moved and driven his father. Just by being the Deathstalker, Arthur had many enemies both in and outside Lionstone’s Court. An aristocrat on Golgotha could no more avoid intrigue than a fish could avoid the water it swam in. And above all that, Arthur had believed in rebellion. Whether for the sake of the Empire, or for his own amusement and advancement, Owen still wasn’t entirely sure, but more and more he was inclined to give his father the benefit of the doubt. As his own eyes were opened to the evils and horrors the Empire was based on, he understood the need to fight it by any means necessary.
He still couldn’t bring himself to love or forgive his father. The man who’d ordered his trainers to beat the crap out of his son, over and over again, trying to force to the surface the secret inheritance of the Deathstalkers—the boost. A mixture of gengineered glands and special training that for short periods made a Deathstalker stronger, faster, and sharper than any normal man. The process worked, eventually, but Owen only remembered the pain and the blood, all to give him access to something he didn’t want anyway. Only recently had Owen begun to understand that his father had been desperate to make him a fighter rather than a scholar, because he knew a scholar wouldn’t be able to survive the forces that would be unleashed by his death. And he’d been right.
As Owen became a leader of the new rebellion, and a fighter for justice, so he became his father’s son at last. And only once he understood that truth at last, did he begin to understand how much he’d lost, and how much he needed to know who’d murdered his father.
He looked up as Chance beckoned him impatiently, and moved over to join the big man, standing over a cot holding a girl who couldn’t have been more than ten. The child wore a shabby dress two sizes too large, and she stirred constantly, as though disturbed by loud voices only she could hear. Her eyes were closed, but she muttered the odd word or phrase now and again. None of them made any sense to Owen. Chance knelt beside her and produced a paper bag half full of candies. He chose one, molded it between his fingers till it was soft and pliant, then eased it into the girl’s slack mouth. She began to chew slowly. Chase put his mouth right next to her ear.
“Time to play the game, Katie. Time to tell me all those things you know. I have Owen Deathstalker here with me. He wants to know who killed his father. Whose hand guided the blade that took his life. Who was it, Katie?”
The girl frowned, her mouth pursing unhap
pily, but she didn’t wake. She swallowed the piece of candy and spoke in a clear, pure voice. “You asked me that long ago. The answer hasn’t changed. It was the smiling killer, the shark in shallow waters, the man who will not be stopped save by his own hand. Kid Death killed the Deathstalker.”
Owen nodded slowly, his face impassive while his hands closed into fists. He hadn’t been expecting that particular name, but it didn’t exactly come as a surprise either. Kid Death, the Empress’s favorite paid assassin for a while, also known as Lord Kit SummerIsle. Now a backer of the rebellion, and a friend of the distant cousin who’d taken the title of Lord Deathstalker after Owen was outlawed. Both currently headed for Virimonde, the planet Owen had once owned and ruled. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that Kit and Owen were on the same side now. Owen would kill him anyway, once the rebellion didn’t need him anymore. Kit SummerIsle was a dead man, along with anyone who got in his way. Anyone at all. Owen smiled slowly, and his fists unclenched. Something to look forward to.
“You didn’t come here just to ask me that,” said the young girl suddenly. Her eyes moved back and forth under her closed eyelids. “There’s something else. Something you need to know. Ask me. Ask me.”
“All right,” said Owen. There was a tightness in his chest, and he had to fight to keep his voice steady. “The last time I was here, one of you told me how I would die. I need to know if it’s still true. Has anything changed?”
“No,” said the girl flatly. “You die here, in Mistport, alone and forsaken, fighting odds too great to be beaten by any man. And after you’re dead, they’ll even steal your boots.”
“When?” said Owen. “When does this happen?”
“That’s a time question,” said the young girl, turning her head away. “I’ve never understood time.”
“Try!” said Owen. “Try, dammit!”
He reached down to grab the child by the shoulders and shake her, but Chance was there first, pulling him away. Owen threw the big man off easily, but the moment had passed, and he was in control again. He stood over the sleeping child, breathing heavily, then he turned away.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said finally, to no one in particular. “I’ve always known I’ve been on borrowed time ever since Virimonde. I was supposed to die there. Only a miracle saved me. And a man can’t expect more than one miracle in one lifetime. Still, it’s hard to hear your own death sentence, and know there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
“If you don’t want the answers, don’t ask the questions,” said Chance. “And I told you before; you can’t trust precogs. If everything they said was reliable, I’d be a rich man by now. For instance, they’ve all been saying for some time now that Something Bad is coming to Mistport, but I can’t get two of them to agree on what the hell it might be. All I’ve got is a name—Legion. But so far, the only unpleasant thing to turn up here is you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Owen. “If I have to die, I’ll die well, as a Deathstalker should.”
“Oh very poetic,” said Chance. “God save me from heroes. Look, I have a business to run. Don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out.”
“Cut the crap,” said Owen. “We still have business to discuss. My first questions were strictly on my own behalf. Now we get to the serious stuff. I’m here representing the Golgotha underground, and on their behalf I’m officially reawakening and revitalizing my father’s old information network here in Mistport. He didn’t fund just you and Abraxus; there are dozens of people and businesses all through this city that he established and supported, in return for the gathering and passing on of useful information. Some of them went on to be very successful indeed. Movers and shakers in this big city.
“The information started drying up after my father’s murder. Presumably they thought his death freed them from their obligations. I’m here to tell them different. I’m the Deathstalker now, and I am calling in my father’s markers. With interest. The old network will rise again, this time supplying information to the new rebellion, or I will personally bankrupt every one of the sons of bitches. Including you, Chance.”
“Oh shit,” said Chance.
“Well quite,” said Owen, smiling cheerfully. “You can start by supplying the names and locations you know, and then we’ll get the rest from these espers of yours. You will then assist me in setting up a meeting of all concerned parties, somewhen today. In fact, within the next two hours, if they want to hang on to all their business interests and several vital organs. Get moving, Chance. I’ve a lot to do, and perhaps not as much time as I thought to get it done in.”
Chance made contact with the right people through his espers, a procedure from which Owen was very definitely excluded. He waited impatiently on the steps outside, debating whether to carve his initials into the door or the brickwork. Chance made an appearence just a few moments too late, looked at his door, and winced, then led Owen down the exterior stairway and off into the dizzying maze of narrow streets that made up the center of Mistport. The mist had thinned, but a fine annoying sleet was falling, turning the snow underfoot into slippery slush and mud. Owen stuck close behind Chance and tried not to think what he was doing to his expensive new boots.
They passed out of Merchants Quarter and into Guilds Quarter, and the streets and buildings improved almost immediately. There were proper pavements and regular streetlights, some of them even electric. The buildings were decorative as well as functional, and the people passing by looked of a much richer, if not necessarily happier, class. Chance finally came to a halt outside one of the older Guild Halls, and paused a moment so Owen could study it and be properly impressed. It was a squat, sturdy building with three stories, high Gothic arches, wide glass windows, and hundreds of wooden rococo doodlings in every spare inch. The gutters ended in great carved stone gargoyles, water spouting from their mouths, giving the unfortunate effect that they seemed to be vomiting on the people below. Or perhaps it was deliberate. It was a Guild Hall, after all. Owen didn’t have the heart to tell Chance he’d seen more impressive privies at Lionstone’s Court, so he just nodded thoughtfully, to show he’d finished being impressed, and gestured for Chance to lead the way in.
There were two armed guards at the front door. They bowed respectfully to Chance, and ignored Owen. He didn’t kill them. He didn’t want to make a scene. Yet. Inside, the main foyer was large and comfortable and extremely respectable. There was much polished wooden wall paneling, and a richly waxed floor that gleamed brightly in the light of the electric lamps, set not so much as to provide light but so that they could be admired the more easily. The various furnishings and fittings were luxurious to the point of opulence, and the whole place positively smelled of money, like an old family bank. Owen felt almost homesick.
As they strode in the doorway, stamping their boots on the metal grille and brushing the sleet and snow from their cloaks, a butler strode imperiously toward them, wearing an old-fashioned cutaway frock coat, a powdered wig, and a practiced sneer of utter condescension. Chance showed the butler his business card, and the man bowed briefly, a mere tilting of the head. He took Chance’s and Owen’s cloaks between thumb and forefingers and handed them over to a flunky who’d dashed forward to receive them. He then demanded they turn over their respective weapons to him, too, and that was when the trouble started.
“I don’t hand my weapons over to anyone,” said Owen.
“Don’t make a fuss,” said Chance, unbuckling his belt and handing over his sword. “It’s nothing personal. Just standard security. Everyone does it.”
“I’m not everyone,” said Owen. “And my weapons stay with me. They’d feel naked without me.”
“I must insist,” said the butler, in icy tones. “We don’t let just anyone walk in off the street, you know.”
Owen punched him out. The unconscious butler’s body made a satisfyingly loud thud as it hit the waxed floor some distance away and slid a few yards before coming to a halt. People everywhere turn
ed to look. A few looked quietly approving. Security guards with drawn swords appeared from hidden doorways, only to stop dead as Owen let his hand rest ostentatiously near his energy gun.
“He’s with me,” Chance said quickly. “Much as I wish he wasn’t. He is expected.”
The security guards looked at each other, shrugged, and put away their swords, clearly deciding that this was someone else’s problem. Everyone else in the foyer came to the same conclusion, and the polite murmur of conversation resumed. Owen nodded graciously around him as the unconscious butler was dragged away.
“Please don’t do that again,” said Chance. “First impressions are so important.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Owen. “Now get a move on, or I’ll piss in the potted plants.”
“I wish I thought you were joking,” said Chance. “This way. Try not to kill anyone important.”
They pressed on into the depths of the Guild Hall, Chance leading the way in something of a hurry. The surroundings remained determinedly lush and expensive. Servants and real people hastened back and forth on silent errands of great importance. Speaking was apparently discouraged, save for the occasional hushed whisper. Owen felt very strongly that he would have liked to sneak up behind some of them and shout Boo! in their ears, just to see what would happen, but he didn’t have the time. Maybe on the way back.
They all looked very neat and businesslike. Their outfits were a bit dated, but this was Mistport, after all. They all seemed to know Chance, and never missed an opportunity to bestow a lip-curling sneer in his direction whenever they thought he wasn’t looking. Chance ignored them all magnificently. They finally came to a dead end, personified by a grim, entirely unsmiling secretary behind a desk in an outer office, set there to protect her boss from unwanted visitors. She was slim and prematurely elderly, and looked tough enough to eat glass. The guards probably sharpened their swords on her between shifts. Her clothes successfully erased any sign of femininity, and her gaze was firm enough to shrivel weeds.