Hellflower (v1.1) (17 page)

Varra fanned the sticks again, and flicked one over to make The Circle Of Fire. I passed over two more plaques and took the sticks. "Not listening, girly-girl. Looking to find Fenrir, somewise. Need to lift." I spilled Falling Tower and Varra looked at me in disgust. "Not so lucky, stardancer," she said. I saw her tail flick out and go back under the chair. "Maybe you should see what Silver Dagger wants to buy."

Payday-and an answer I didn’t want to hear.

"Maybe Alaric Dragonflame might be better?" I suggested.

The glittering black fans of her ears snapped shut and folded against her head. "You aren’t wanted here," Varra said. "You want to drink? Go try Mother Night’s." She flipped the last of my credit-plaques at me-hard-and took the king-sticks and left.

The man behind the bar was reaching under it when I looked at him. I left too.

###

I found a quiet doorway and gave Paladin an edited update: Silver Dagger wanted me and everybody knew it. Paladin told me what I already knew: Lalage Rimini owned Mother Night’s.

Lalage Rimini was plain-and-fancy trouble. There was no reason on the face of entire Borderline for me to go to Mother Night’s and ask for Silver Dagger just so she could settle old hash.

Except one.

How much hard credit would it take to make Fenrir slap a hold order on some poor-but-honest smuggler and then do a bunk until darktrade economics caught up with her? Hell, he might not even be in the same quadrant now if he’d been paid enough.

And I was a sitting target.

Paladin said that I was highjumping to conclusions. I said that the only Jumping we was going to do was that unless I found Fenrir or a reasonable facsimile. He said Fenrir still wasn’t home. It’s amazing how much information you can pull off a standard terminal, even deactivated.

I headed for Mother Night’s.

###

I legged it through wondertown past all the little shops selling dreams, memory-edit, fake ID, half-price slaves, discount tronics, souvenir painted blaster grips, love machines, deadly weapons, toys, mind candy, and more. Junk, mostly. Anything I needed wasn’t here and I didn’t have time to stop for it anyway.

About then I picked up a tail. No figment, and no hellflower.

I cut back and forth at random, doubling back into the wondertown nearer the port while I tried to figure out who and how and whether I was going to get any older. Told Paladin my latest troubles, but there wasn’t any damnthing he could do. He said to look on the bright side. Might just be some roaring boy after my kick.

With this happy thought in mind I turned down the next byway that promised to be noplace and son of noplace anyone’d want to go, and on the tackiest street in all wondertown I found just what the Gentrymort ordered.

It was one of those little hole in the wall places where you can find every illegal or legendary piece of junk the owner figures you might want. Had a broken suit of Imperial Hoplite Armor out front-that’s the old powered stuff discontinued about fifty years back for being too dangerous. The suit was all orange-red and silver-blue, and Entropy her own self knew where the fellahim had copped it. I looked up and down the empty street and ducked inside.

Minjalong’s Very Good Artifact Emporium (so said the baldric on the hoplite armor) was crammed full of the unidentifiable flotsam the enquiring epigone can skim from the ebb and flow of such a galactic hub of commerce as Borderline City. Things was piled up to the ceiling on both walls and all down the middle. Minjalong was nowheres in sight.

Useful. I slithered out of sight myself and watched the door, after tucking a couple grenades into the doorjamb to kill time while I was waiting. Paladin says sometimes I’m aggressively antisocial, which I guess means careful. Eventually my tail wagged.

Oh, it was roaring boys all right, but not after my kick. They had the sleek look of bought muscle; some crimelord’s pride and joy. Not Rimini’s style, and about as far from hellflowers or Ghadri as it was possible to get.

There ain’t no justice, but at the moment I wasn’t quite as interested in justice as in a back way out.

"Captain-Owner St. Cyr-can you hear me?"

So the hardboys could walk and talk. I concentrated on slithering silent.

"Don’t make us get rough, please. All we want to do is talk. I’m sure we can work out an accommodation agreeable to all of us." Why all these people think I’m born yesterday I’ll never figure out. Goon Number One started in closing the night-shutters over the front and the junk shop started to sink into your basic tenebrous gloom. That made it high time to kyte.

"We’re sincerely anxious to come to an agreement here," called Goon Two hopefully. I could hardly wait. "I hope you can be reasonable." Goon One said something to Goon Two I couldn’t hear.

Then came the interruption.

The night-shutters got down to my little addition and stuck, and then the grenades went off. The explosion sprayed the shutters outward and Goon One inward. I snapped off a discouraging shot and sprinted lun— the back door.

Didn’t make it. There was a flicker of light on metal, and the piled goods behind me exploded in a spray of white ash and ozone. I dropped down just in time for the sweep to take the back of my jacket instead of my hack, and cut round the other way. Then the air was full of ash and I was under and behind everything I could think of, until Goon Two stopped for breath.

So much for sincere discussion. Those sons-of-glory had a disintegrator ray. Did they know how much those damn things cost? You could m n
Firecat
in dock on a molecular debonder’s energy-pak.

Goon Two hosed the fire I’d started into nonfiction with his expensive playtoy and came after me. Where in the hell was Minjalong when you wanted him?

"You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that, St. Cyr," he almost said. He got about as far as "you" and stopped, sudden-like.

I opened my eyes. The air was misty white, thick with dust. Silent. I raised up my head real slow. Goon Two was asleep on the floor wearing charcoal perfume.

There was a sound from the back.

"Nerves bothering you these days, Gentrymort?" asked Eloi Flashheart, holstering his blaster. "Oh, for the love of Night, St. Cyr, put the handcannon away before you hurt somebody."

I stood up. "Well, if it ain’t Big Red. Too reet to see you again, for sure. So tell me what brings you to beautiful downside wondertown?" Eloi went over to the middle of the floor and picked up the debonder. I’d wanted that but I was happy to trade it for a clear shot at the way Eloi’d come in.

"My, what a lot of trouble you’re in, sweetheart, and after giving up darktrade to ship rokeach, too," said the dashing space pirate. "In case you were wondering, these citizens used to be some of Kroon Vannet’s very best hired help." And the missing Dommie Fenrir worked for Vannet, so Paladin said. Did Vannet think I’d iced his pet Teaser?

"And you just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought you’d dish. Don’t farce me, Eloi-che-bai; too much heat drop bye-m-bye for me to worry about dusting you." I joggled my blaster to underline the point.

"Dammit, Butterfly-you never did have any brains! We were friends once. I’m trying to help you-you’re in a lot of trouble."

"Old news." The back door was open and the alley looked clear. I slid a step toward it.

"Come back to Mother Night’s with me. I’ll guarantee your safety."

"Sure."

"Alcatote’ll tear you apart if you shoot me, sweeting. You should remember that much. Will you listen to me?"

"No hope, Eloi-bai. You got nothing I want to hear." I jerked my blaster at him and he raised his hands.

"You’re making a big mistake. You’ve got hellflower trouble, Butterfly-and worse. Worse than you can imagine. I know about Fenrir. Let me help."

"On the floor, you Chancerine son-of-a-spacewarp." I waved my blaster. Eloi-the-Red was pretty sure I’d shoot him, which was more than I was. He went down.

###

I got out of Minjalong’s and turned back toward the port. On the way Paladin confirmed that Kroon’Vannet was a hardboy who hauled cubic indeed; he was the nighttime man for the whole Crysoprase, including Kiffit and points west, and had gone long time head-to-head with Oob of Coldwater, my boss. But as I’ve said before, it’s bad for bidness to ice stardancers. Why would he want to kill me?

"The interesting thing about this, Butterfly, is that Vannet left Kiffit yesterday morning on the Imperial high-liner
Grace and Favor
. He did not declare a destination."

Which meant he could get off anywhere along the run just by paying the differential penalty-and it also meant he’d left orders about me dating from before I landed. Me personally, Butterfly St. Cyr, darktrader.

"I’ll complain to the Guild," I muttered. "I swear I will."

I got back to
Firecat
alive, which was beginning to seem more like a miracle each time I did it, and Tiggy was trying to climb out of his sleepsling. He’d already ripped off the feederpak.

"Stop that," I said. "And lay down. What’s the good word, babby?"

"I-where are my clothes? And my
arthame
?" My boy Tiggy, making new friends every waking moment. I dumped the stuff I’d picked up at the port shop on the deck.

"Clothes are in disposal with half Ghadri population of Kiffit. Knife’s safe."

"Where is it?"

"Around." I wasn’t in any mood to cater to the young-at-brain.

"You will give my
arthame
to me at once!" Tiggy yelped, thrashing his way out of the sleepsling to hit the deck in a way that had to of caused him serious hurt. He didn’t make a sound.

"Sure I will. Nice to see you’re still alive too, you stupid git." I went over to where he was and turned him over gentle as I could. He glared but he didn’t fight. I guessed he’d found out how bad hurt he was.

"Last night, bai, I cut off half your leg, because you’d been roundaround track couple times with Ghadri wolfpack—" Paladin’d said that Tiggy had a bad case of politics, not that his explanation made any sense at all after that. I wondered if the high-heat that’d ordered the chop had any idea what the wetwork looked like.

"Don’t touch me,
chaudatu
!" Tiggy bared his teeth. He looked scared to death and scraped to the bone, but the med-tech I’d used on him’d been targeted to his B-pop from the git-go, and he’d come a lot farther toward being well than I had. On the other hand, he had farther to go.

"S’elp me, if you’ve busted any of my surgery, hellflower, I’m going to nail you to the deck with your god-lost
arthame
. Now hold still. Your cherry’s safe with me." I started to reach for him to see if the head wound’d opened up again.

He grabbed me by my bad wrist and I backhanded him hard as I could with the good one. The throwing-spike strapped to it helped. It sounded like punching the bulkhead.

Tiggy made a sound like something you’d stepped on in the street. I rocked back on my heels.

Sure. Beat him to death to save him. I couldn’t even save myself. Captain Flashheart’s timely appearance in Minjalong’s was no accident. Eloi’d been on Wanderweb, too-Gibberfur must have took out a full page ad in the Wanderweb Daily Truth announcing my itinerary.

Or maybe Eloi was looking for me special. Maybe Eloi and Dommie and Vannet’d all heard from the same person I was coming to Kiffit, and then Eloi came and went looking for me.

Fine. And when he found me, His Nobly-Bornness Political Assassination Bait Tiggy Stardust was going to be nonfiction.

My hand hurt where I’d hit him. I put it up to my face and saw him watching me. He looked scared.

Damn him.

"I got no time to deal with your delicate glitterborn alMayne sensibilities just now," I told him. "Somebody’s trying to ice both of us, Tiggy, and that’s home-truth. So make nice." If I didn’t back him down he’d run, and if he ran he was dead. And I cared about that, and it was stupid to care about something you couldn’t change.

"I want my
arthame
," Tiggy said, not looking at me. I’d split his lip open again. It was bleeding.

"Yeah, sure-but you’re going to give me hellflower promise first, glitterborn."

"A promise?" He was trying for arrogant, and missed. Running for his life and having no one to run to yesterday had knocked some of the polish off.

I knew what it was like.

"No more running off ever again like yesternight, kinchin-bai. What we got is some kind trouble you can’t shop all on your lonesome. So you’re going to promise me you’ll stick with me come hell-and-HighJump until we get you back to your da."

"You wish to return me to my father? Only that?" He sounded suspicious. I couldn’t blame him.

"All. You runaround lone, ‘flower, you get a serious case of being dead. So you promise me you do what I tell you and stay where I put you and don’t farce me with it."

I watched him try it on. He wasn’t going for it. Not yet.

"But I cannot do that-I cannot live in a house without walls, with a— You do not know what you are asking!"

"Oh, my house’s got plenty of walls all right." And they was all closing in on me. "And if you want to see that faunching coke-gutter of yours this side of entropy, you promise."

He’d been afraid before, but that was of hurting. He saw his death now.

Just like I’d seen mine.

"I will do as you wish. Now give me my
arthame
."

Hellflowers’re rotten liars. "You’ll do what I say-until I hand you over to your da. Promise. No promise, no knife. Hellflower, I could tie you down and burn the damn thing to ash and you’d have to watch. And I’ll do it if you make me. I swear by any money."

He was trying to face being dead; I could see it.

"Look, bai, I’m not shaping for to trash your honor. Just to get you back to your da, safe."

"Why?" Why are you doing this to me, he meant.

"Does it matter? I bought real grief and the chance to lose my First Ticket keeping you alive, and if you make that all for nothing with your damn hellflower nonsense—"

I’d do what? It might of been kinder to let him die. But if he’d wanted to die he wouldn’t of come to me. I looked away and almost missed what he said next.