Todor sighed and looked down at his large, gnarled hands, which played with the glass of rum. “On Gatmander, far Gatmander,” he sung, more off-key than even the quartet drinking around the piano, “on the very edge of skies…” He blinked and looked away for a moment. Then he added, “And maybe it lies far enough. Aye, far enough. Beyond the reach of Radha Lady Cargo.”
Hugh nodded. Suspicions confirmed. “Company cops after you?”
Todor glanced briefly at the door. “Soon enough. There was a bauble she wanted and the thought was in me that she oughtn’t have it. There was talk, there was black mutiny, and ship fired upon ship. But as regards the commodore, there was an occasion of success; and obedience and remorse overcame the unruly, save only those ships that severed all communication and fled. The commodore’s ship was wounded, but the prize was his, and perhaps by now, Lady Cargo’s. Here’s to hope,” he added, raising his glass, “that the ship of the commodore foundered on the ’Saken road.”
Hugh reached out a hand. “Come with me. My friends need to hear this, too.”
Todor drew back suddenly and stared at him narrow-eyed. One could almost hear the creak of leather in that squint. “And for why with respect to you should there be unto me an occasion of trust?”
“Because we mean to take that ‘bauble’ back.”
“Do you?” Todor drank a swallow directly from his rum bottle. “Against Cargo House itself?”
“We were ready to take the Hadramoo,” Hugh said mildly.
The Gat shook his head. “As it pertains to you, there is an occasion of madness. By now it’s too late, and a man ought to increase, not decrease, the distance to Old ’Saken. Not that it will matter in the end.”
“Oh?” said Hugh. “And why not?”
Todor laughed. “The best-kept secret in the Spiral Arm…All right. As regards myself, what matter whether you command or Lady Cargo—when Gatmander ears lie far from your voice and hers alike? For the price of the transit, the story will be told. And well damned be all of you.” He stood again and Hugh stood with him and they left the Mild Beast together, climbing the short flight to the dark, deserted street.
Hugh paused to consult his wrist strap for directions and Todor seized the moment to lift the rum bottle to his lips.
The bottle exploded, and for a mad instant Hugh thought, That is powerful rum! But his instincts preserved him and he dove for cover behind a dustbin, pulling Todor to the ground with him, just as a second shot struck the bricks. “It wasn’t a trap,” he said to the Gat. “I swear I didn’t lead you into a trap.” But he saw that, as regarding Todor, there was no occasion for assurance. The bullet that had shattered the bottle had continued into the mouth and out the back of the head, and amid the blood, brain, and bone that spattered the wall where he had stood was whatever else he had been prepared to tell.
A third shot struck the dustbin, penetrated, and rattled about inside. Hugh wanted to shout that he was not one of the ICC renegades. But he knew the assassin would take no chances. Whatever secret Todor had been killed to preserve might easily have been revealed already to his companions. Hugh shivered. It had taken weeks for the assassin to track his man down. Those companions could include everyone inside the Mild Beast.
Hugh pulled from his jacket the knife he had purchased on Jehovah. The sica did not seem much. It was an assassin’s weapon, not very useful for defending a position; but it was all he had. He frisked Todor’s body and found a small caliber handgun. He weighed it in his hand, thought about it, then he pressed it into the dead man’s hand, curling the finger around the trigger. He found a trash bag that had missed the dustbin and propped the arm on it so that the gun could be seen around the corner.
He peered into the darkness, seeking the sniper’s position. Todor had stood thus, had lifted the bottle so, and the bullet that had killed him had come from…He saw the building across the street, the slight flutter of drapes, the open window on the second floor. …from there. But the killer had most likely shifted. An assassin who stays too long in one place is a fool…usually a dead fool.
Hugh put himself in the assassin’s mind. He must make sure of Todor and his companion, but he wouldn’t come out the building’s front entrance. Hugh had no gun, but the assassin wouldn’t know that. So, he’d go out the back to the alley behind. The airyways were blocked, so he’d have to go to one corner or the other. Not to Alkorry Street, which was farther and brightly lit, but to the left. And coming around that corner would give him a clear shot into the space behind the dustbin.
Now the only question was whether the sniper would expect astuteness of his quarry and so outguess the guesser. But one could reason oneself into paralysis in that manner, and paralysis, he knew, was the one fatal strategy.
There is this paradox of those who live on the edge, and that is that one may keep his life only by putting it at hazard. He must, as an ancient maxim had it, “desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.” Or, in the words of an older maxim, “He that would lose his life, the same shall save it.”
He was already running on cat feet across the empty street when he heard the shot whine off the paving. It had come from the direction of the main street. Hugh hunched over, dove for a shadowed airyway, and vanished into it. Stupid! he told himself. There had been two of them. The first to cover the Mild Beast; the second to block the way to the transit station. But he was sure there was no third man. Anyone positioned at the other end of the block would already have had a shot behind the dustbin. He listened, but heard no footsteps. The second man was either uncommonly silent or he was maintaining discipline.
The airyway was blocked like all the others. Hugh studied shadows, saw a deeper darkness in the ambit of the stairs, and melted from the airyway to crouch in its protection. From there he could slip through the garden-level passage under the stairs and up the other side. That put a stone staircase between him and the second sniper and he could move, with care, to the next building. Then, down again through the passage, and up, and that put him just at the corner.
There, he waited, either for his quarry to come or for the second shooter to move into a better position.
He listened.
The breeze was steady, channeled by the rows of buildings on either side of the street, but not strong enough to lift more than dust. A stone rattled from a careless kick. Hugh smiled grimly. The assassin likely thought he faced only a couple of drunks from the Beast, one of them—if he were in communication with the second man—last seen cowering in a blocked airyway two doors up the block.
He felt a presence approaching: stealthy, but not too much so. He readied himself, exhaled softly, emptied his mind, waited for the moment. A figure stepped around the corner with an air rifle already shouldered, a bead already hunting for the space where Todor lay with gun extended, and Hugh sprouted from the very pavement like a spartos from a dragon’s tooth, inhaling broadly as he did. He seized the gunman’s mouth in his left hand and ran the sica across his throat with the right, then pushed him forward to stumble and fall onto the street.
Hugh reached for the air rifle, but a bullet sang on the paving and he withdrew once more into the shadows. The second assassin was coming—he could hear the soft, rapid footsteps—and he had no intention of allowing Hugh to get to the fallen weapon. Of little use, now, his sica. He would get one throw, but the curved blade was not a good throwing knife and was unlikely to deal a death blow.