Deathstalker Legacy (18 page)

“It always comes down to the audience, darling, bless their black little hearts,” said Jesamine. “Wave and smile, wave and smile, and never let them catch you sweating.”

 

High above the Parade of the Endless, soaring the mild winter skies on his gravity sled, the Paragon Finn Durandal looked down on the people he was supposed to serve and protect, and didn’t give a damn. He felt nothing for them; but then, he never had. He’d never actually admitted that to himself before, but now that he had, it didn’t come as any surprise to him. He didn’t fight the bad guys on their behalf; he did it for himself. For the thrill of testing himself against the best opponents. He’d taken pride in his achievements as Paragon, in the legend he’d made of himself. And then Douglas took it all away, by denying him his rightful place as Champion. So he must be made to pay.

Everyone must pay, for allowing this unforgivable insult to happen.

Ostensibly, Finn was out on patrol. He’d told Dispatching that he’d be going offline for a while. That he’d be out of touch while he talked to some of his sources, following up a lead on what the ELFs were planning next. All nonsense, of course. His patrolling days were over. There was no point in being a Paragon anymore. He was something else now. Though he hadn’t actually decided what, yet. A traitor, perhaps. He liked the sound of that. To go against everything he’d been taught, everything he was supposed to believe in, tear it all down and laugh in their shocked faces; all in the name of pride, and revenge. Yes . . . that felt right. From the Empire’s greatest hero to its greatest villain, just because he chose to . . . Finn laughed aloud. He’d never felt happier.

Still; if he was going to tear down the whole Empire, he was going to need a certain kind of help. He couldn’t be everywhere at once, and he’d always known that to solve the really big problems you needed experts and specialists. So after much thought, and not a little research, he’d put together a shopping list of the right, or rather wrong, people. It hadn’t been too difficult, not with his Paragon’s resources and connections. He’d begin with a certain devious con man. Finn had given Brett Random strict instructions to be at a certain place at a certain time before releasing him, but he’d never expected Brett to actually show up. In fact, Finn would have been disappointed if he had. It would have meant Brett wasn’t the kind of man Finn needed.

He knew where Brett would be hiding. All he had to do was go and get him, and the awful thing Finn was planning could begin. He would plunge the Empire into blood and terror, set its cities ablaze, and utterly destroy what men of goodwill had spent two centuries putting together. Just to please his wounded pride. Finn Durandal descended on his gravity sled into the hidden dark heart of the Parade of the Endless, smiling a predator’s smile, his heart beating just a little faster in anticipation.

 

It was called the Rookery. A square mile or so of territory right in the center of the city that didn’t officially exist. A dark and dangerous warren of crammed-together buildings and alleyways that hadn’t changed its unpleasant nature in hundreds of years. All records of its existence had been erased long ago, in the time of rebuilding after the Great Rebellion. All it took was a little money in the right hands, and all the official maps and computers conveniently forgot that there had ever been an old thieves’ quarter. Public transport was routed around it, and knowledge of the few remaining ways in and out was passed down verbally, and only to those who needed to know. It had its own power supply, its own secret economy, and you entered entirely at your own risk. The Rookery existed because people will always need somewhere to buy and sell the kinds of pleasures you’re not supposed to want in a Golden Age.

The Three Cripples was a bar of the very worst character. Seedy would have been a step up. It was a dark sprawling place with blacked-out windows, good booze, indifferent food, and a rotten reputation. You got in by intimidating or bribing the doorman, and after that you were fair game for every thief, cheat, thug, and doxy who called the bar home. Most notably, it was a regular haunt for the ever-changing crowd of undesirables who called themselves Random’s Bastards.

In the main bar, in an atmosphere thick with smoke that was almost wholly illegal in nature, Brett Random was buying drinks for one and all, on the strength of the more than serious money he’d made selling his unauthorized coverage of King Douglas’s Coronation. The tabloid news channels had all but gone to war over the bidding, and Brett had played them off against each other with a slickness that impressed even him. Brett Random was rich; but money had never really mattered much to him. The game was what mattered; money was just how you kept score. So; it was drinks on the house, and the best of everything for him and his friends, while it lasted. And then he’d go out and dip into some other sucker’s pockets, metaphorically speaking. It was what he did best.

As long as the money kept flowing there was no shortage of people willing to drink and carouse at his expense and tell him what a fine fellow he was, so Brett had a large, noisy, and good-natured audience all to himself as he roared and boasted and, not for the first time, pushed his claim to be the greatest of all Random’s Bastards.

His audience was a motley crowd, all considered. Men and women from a hundred worlds and societies, most of whom couldn’t go home again. Sometimes their families actually sent them regular payments, on the understanding that they’d stay away. They lived the outlaw life and thrived on it, preying on the suckers and each other with equal glee. The death rate was high; but they found ways to keep cheerful, most of them illegal outside of the Rookery. There were even some aliens; certain individuals who’d developed tastes or needs that couldn’t be satisfied back on their homeworlds, or who’d gone native after spending too long among humankind, and couldn’t be allowed back for fear of contamination. The Rookery embraced them all. It was a vile and squalid place, where they’d steal the fillings out of your teeth while you slept; but it could still be a kind of home, for those who needed it. For those with nowhere else to go. In the Rookery lost souls found kindred spirits, and stayed, to work quiet and very profitable revenges against those who had driven them there.

Several saucy-looking waitresses with exactly the same face moved among the tables, laughing and joking and slapping the occasional face as they dispensed drinks, drugs, and bar snacks of a rather unsavory nature, all of it on Brett’s tab. They were clones; Madelaines to be exact, a waitress franchise currently very popular in cities everywhere. These were knockoffs, of course, bootleg copies. And in the Rookery, these Madelaines owned their own contracts.

Brett Random sat on the exact middle of the long wooden bar counter, legs dangling, face flushed, ripped to the tits on absinthe, crazy as a bag full of weasels, and happy as the night is long. The only thing better than running a successful con was boasting of it afterwards, preferably to a crowd of his compatriots who were secretly eating their hearts out with jealousy. He’d got rid of the distracting bright red hair, had a new eye put in to replace his spy camera, and was now back to his usual mousy brown hair, mild brown eyes, and weakly handsome face. His real appearance, that he only ever showed to his own kind. He was telling the indulgent crowd again how he’d sneaked into the Court, and all the things he’d seen and done while he was there (including many things he’d thought about doing, or wished he could have). He made a big thing of how he’d escaped afterwards, with Court Security baying at his heels, but drunk as he was he still had enough sense not to mention Finn’s involvement. They wouldn’t have understood. Hell, he was there, and he didn’t understand it.

Besides, he didn’t like to think about Finn Durandal. The man scared him. Ditching the Paragon was the smartest thing he’d ever done. Brett Random hadn’t got where he was without being able to recognize trouble when he saw it. He wasn’t even going to think about the man again.

Brett stopped boasting to prepare himself another drink. It took a while, but it was worth it. Brett always drank absinthe, when he had the money. There were other drinks that tasted better, or got you legless faster, but for sheer halfbrick to the side of the head impact, there was absolutely nothing to match absinthe. It cost an arm and a leg, was bad for you in practically every way possible, and some of the hallucinations it brought could be downright unsettling; but drink enough of it, and the world could be a fine and wondrous place. But most of all, Brett loved the ritual of it.

First, pour yourself a glass of absinthe and place it on the bar. Next, take a spoon (flat, pure silver, shaped like a leaf) and place it over the top of the glass. Next, place a sugar lump on the spoon. Then dilute your drink by dripping spring water over the sugar lump, until the liquor below turns from a dull blue into a vivid green. Then, and only then, drink. And hold on to your hat. Absinthe could do major damage to the liver, the kidneys, and the brain; but it was very good for the soul. Especially when taken to excess. Suitably refreshed, Brett turned back to an audience even more refreshed than he was. In fact, some of them were so refreshed they weren’t even in the same time zone as him.

“My fellow Bastards!” he said grandly. “So good to be back among family again! Fleecing the sheep can be fun as well as profitable, but it’s only here with you I really feel at home. In a very real way, I like to think of you all as my children, gathering at my knee to listen and learn. I have this strange urge to make you all go upstairs and tidy your room . . . Are you all wearing clean underwear? Then feel free to go out and get knocked down by a truck; I promise I won’t care. But never forget, boys and girls; you may be Random’s Bastards, but I alone am worthy of the title of The Bastard.

“My father, as many times removed as he could stand, was the legendary Jack Random. Just like all of you. God, he put it around. But my dear mother, equally removed, was the just as legendary Ruby Journey! My genes are so damned heroic it’s a wonder I’m able to bear being in the same room as the rest of you.”

He grinned unmoved into the face of raucous derision from the crowd, who might be pissed as farts but could still recognize bullshit when they heard it. Even the Madelaines stopped serving long enough to jeer at him, and throw things. One of them threw her room keys. Brett plucked them out of midair with practiced ease, and dropped her a wink.

“Ruby Journey famously never had any children!” said a half-alien Random from the front row. “Everyone knows that!”

“Jack and Ruby donated sperm and eggs before their last mission,” said Brett, with exaggerated patience. “It was a charity thing.”

“Ruby wasn’t known for being charitable either,” said the half-breed, smirking all over his gray face. “Not unless it involved killing people.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Brett. “You’re just jealous.”

And that was when the Paragon Finn Durandal strolled casually into the bar. Brett’s first thought was to put such an impossible sight down to the absinthe. Drink enough of the green liquor, and you’d see all kinds of things. He only realized Finn was actually there in person when everyone else in The Three Cripples took one look at the new arrival, screamed as one, and immediately began running in all directions, heading for every exit the bar had and making a few new ones where necessary. For a moment it was pure bedlam, and Brett was so drunk, he actually hesitated before jumping down from the bar with the express intent of legging it for the nearest horizon, or possibly the one beyond. But that hesitation was all the time Finn needed to draw a bead on Brett Random and shoot him in the stomach.

Brett looked down at the dart sticking out of his gut, recognized the distinctive green and white markings on the feathers, and just had time to mouth the words
oh shit
before the compressed air in the barrel of the dart shot the dose of Purge straight into his system. His whole body convulsed, slamming him back against the wooden bar, and then he was on the floor, kicking and screaming and begging for death. Purge was an industrial-strength sobering agent, absolutely guaranteed to remove all toxins and intoxicants from a person’s body in a matter of seconds, by the shortest route possible. Or to put it another way, via every orifice possible, including tear ducts and sweat glands. Didn’t matter whether you were drunk, stoned, or in a parallel reality to this one, Purge would have you stone cold sober in under a minute, and make you regret every one of those fifty-odd seconds. Saying Purge had a dramatic effect was like saying the Empress Lionstone could get a bit tetchy on occasions.

Finn watched the projectile vomiting from a safe distance, entirely unmoved, and when the nastiness was finally over, and Brett had been reduced to a sweating, quivering, trembling mess with his back propped up against the bar, Finn strolled casually over to join him, politely ignoring the smell, and drank the last of the absinthe.

“Charming place you have here,” he said. “Really quite charming. Such . . . ambience. And so many guilty consciences in one place . . . anyone would think they’d got something to hide. How are you feeling, Brett?”

“Sober,” said Brett. “I don’t think I’ve been this sober since I was born. God, it feels awful. You bastard, Finn; I’ll never be able to come in here again. And I was just about to get lucky too. How the hell did you track me
here
?”

“I know lots of things I’m not supposed to. I just file it all away, until the time comes when I can make use of it. Get up.”

“Oh sure, just like that. Give me a hand?”

“Not if you were drowning. Get up.”

Brett slowly levered himself to his feet, and really hoped it was just sweat trickling down his legs. He tried to glare at Finn, but didn’t have the energy. “What do you want with
me,
Paragon? I’m just a con man. No one special. You can find a hundred like me in the Rookery. Well, a dozen . . .”