I stood in the opening and felt more thoroughly scanned by eyes than I’d been when dropping into a hot zone. There were probably a hundred people in the Egg, excluding staff, and easily half had a feral sense to them. They were sizing me up as trouble, as a possible ally, and most certainly as a potential kill.
I let them have a good look, then walked to the bar. A bartender came over to me and glanced a question. I pointed to a neon sign. “That sign true? I’ll have one.”
The heavyset guy wearing a sleeveless shirt to my left hunched his shoulders and chuckled into his beer. “The only way there’d be Timbiqui Dark in the place is if you drink it someplace else and pee it out here.”
I looked at him. “Do you realize you have more hair on your shoulders than you do on your head?”
He had so much beer in him, or so little sense, that it took him a moment to realize I’d meant that as an insult. As he began to get up I found it easy to imagine him being Boris’ little, dumber brother—an assessment I did mean as an insult. His left hand tightened on the barrel of his mug. He intended to splash the beer in my face, crash the glass against my forehead, then pound glass splinters into my skull with his fists.
Everyone does need a hobby and, from a glance at his scarred knuckles, I gathered he rather enjoyed his.
A hand landed on his right shoulder. “At ease, Sergeant.”
He moved up for another second, then turned to look at the speaker with confusion knotting his brow. “Did you hear what he said?”
“He asked for a beer.” The dark-haired woman moved to slide between me and Boris Junior, but she had to wait for me to take my right foot off the back leg of his bar stool to do so. When I did, she bellied up to the bar and rapped her knuckles on it. “Tina, two bottles of Diamond Negro.”
I looked up and saw no sign for it. “Never heard of it.”
“Basalt brand, not quite up to Timbiqui, but good. They brew it up in Contressa, where Broad River meets the ocean. I have it brought in.”
I reached into my pocket for money, but my benefactor shook her head. “My treat.”
“I owe you for saving my life.” The man behind her snorted as he parsed the sentence.
“If lives being saved is the criterion, Mustang should be buying for both of us, for a long time.” Her brown eyes glittered with red-and-yellow highlights from the sign. “You’d have tipped his stool back, then what, stomped on his groin and his throat?”
“One or the other. I’m new here and don’t know him that well.”
“If you did, it would have been both. Repeatedly.” The beers arrived and she slid one to me. We raised them and clinked them together. “I’m Alba Dolehide.”
“Sam Donelly.” I drank and the beer was good, very good, but I found myself distracted by the tattoo on her right forearm. It was the Lament insignia.
She lowered her bottle and smiled. “So, what is a MechWarrior like you doing in a scrapyard like this?”
“Could be a long story. Do you want to sit?”
“Sure.” She started off through the crowd and I found myself distracted again, but not just by her body. She moved so well, so supple and lithe was she, that parts of me were inclined to aching. Her long black hair had been loosely knotted with a red bandana and swayed back and forth from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. She wore her sleeveless gray shirt snug where it should have been snug, and that applied to her cargo pants as well.
What distracted me more than her walk was the way the others looked at her. Whereas I’d been regarded with cold hostility when I came in, my being in her company offered me a dispensation. Some folks even gave me a nod, about as close to a welcome as I’d get before I’d bled alongside them, and maybe not even then.
Alba reached a table that, while she was still incoming, had been fully populated. By the time I got to it, an ashtray leaking smoke and several condensation rings were the only evidence that anyone had been there. She drew a chair back against a wall and I came around to her left. My back remained a bit open, but if anyone in here wanted me dead, they weren’t going to worry about angling to shoot me in the back.
She sipped her beer. “You were going to tell me why you’re here.”
“Same reason as you are, I suspect. Victories are bought with blood or gold. Our blood, their gold.”
Alba nodded easily, both in agreement with what I’d said, and acknowledging that she’d heard that sort of reasoning before. “Gold is to be had here, but I thought this was going to be a private little affair. Someone else sent for you because I know I didn’t, which means you’re not on my team. As the saying goes, you’re either with us or against us.”
“There’s another saying: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”
She regarded me carefully with sloe eyes. “You have enemies?”
“A guy named Baxter Hsu. There was some trouble on Acamar and he set me up to take a fall for him. I was told he was heading here, to Basalt, so I came after him.”
She shook her head. “Name’s not coming up in my directory, Sam. He’s not one of mine.”
I glanced around the room. “I notice no Dracs or Caps. Personal preference or…?”
“My employers’ preference.” She shrugged. “Pity, since they are good fighters, but the crew here will do fine.”
“They look hard enough.” I scanned the room again. “You’re right. He’s not here, at least, not here.”
“Describe him.”
“Average everything, black hair, brown, almond eyes, yellow skin. A bit more cunning than I expected, but I think someone was pulling his strings.”
“Could be one of millions here.” She regarded me quizzically. “You gonna climb those strings and go after the puppeteer?”
I drank, savoring the heavy taste of the hops. “Not unless he knots those strings on me. Now, if Bax isn’t one of yours, who would he be working for?”
“Someone else. Take your pick.” Alba shrugged her shoulders. “Warriors are being collected here like coins.”
“Who’s got the biggest collection?”
She smiled. “You follow the analogy. Good. Most of the folks here think analogies are why you sneeze during pollen season.”
“Flattery. I like it.” I gave her a nod. “And a nice deflection of my question.”
“If you’re as smart as I think you are, you can answer the question all by yourself.”
I thought for a moment. “Emblyn, of course, can afford as much muscle as he wants. But the biggest collection isn’t always the best.”
Alba smiled in spite of herself. “Wise words. The best collection here might not be paid quite as much as the largest, but there will be a lot of slugs and plugged coins that won’t ever spend their gold.”
“Just leak their blood.”
“Exactly.”
“What does the best pay?”
She shook her head. “You’re still an unknown quantity, Donelly. I will take some time to check you out. You’ll be talking to others, I’m sure, so you’ll know the going rates and see what you can negotiate. I’d expect nothing less.”
“And I’d do nothing less.” I finished my beer and set the bottle down. “Thank you. I’m staying at the Grand Germayne. If they don’t have this in the bar, I’ll ask them to order it. I’ll buy when we speak again.”
“I hope we can reach agreement.” She nodded as I rose. “I’d rather it be your gold than your blood.”
22
If you listen to what people say, you will fish rabbits in the ocean and hunt fish in the forest.
Manville, Capital District
Basalt