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I wasn’t thinking clearly. I couldn’t throttle back the irritation I felt, steady low-burning irritation that was buried rage trying to work itself free. When you live your life on the edge of adrenaline and steel, you can get really jittery. It’s best to clean it all out with exercise, cleanse the toxins from the body and clear the mind.
I stalked through the hotel lobby, ignoring the normals—guests and employees—scattering out of my path. Japhrimel fell into step behind me, close as my shadow. Just as he had since he’d met me. “You’re ru
I didn’t dignify the obvious with a response.
Cracked pavement and a crowd of normals greeted me. I glanced up to get my bearings and turned to my left, heading generally westward and lengthening my stride.
New Prague is old, having been settled well before the Merican Era. The buildings are an odd mix of new plasteel and old concrete, as well as some biscuit-colored stone. The shape of the buildings is different from Saint City’s, echoing a time before hovers and plasteel, a time before accredited psions, even though Prague had been a town known for its Magi and Judic Qabalisticon scholars.
It is also a town full of history. Here was where Kochba bar Gilead’s last Judic followers had been killed by laserifle fire in the overture to the Seventy Days War, and where Skinlin had first learned the process of creating golem’ai, the semisentient mud-things that were a dirtwitch’s worst weapon. This town was old, and I wondered if Japhrimel had ever been here before on Lucifer’s business.
I wished I could find a way to ask.
One of the good things about being a Necromance is that even in a Freetown people get out of your way in a hell of a hurry when you come striding down a sidewalk with your sword in your hand and your emerald flashing. Many Necromances only use their blades ceremonially—there’s nothing like good edged steel to deal with a hungry ghost or to break the spell of going into Death. The ones who, like me, deal with bounties or law enforcement are combat-trained. There’s also a subculture of Mob and freelance psions who are generally very tough customers. Most normals are more frightened of a psion reading their mind than they are of the weaponry we carry, something I’ve never understood.
Jace had been Mob freelance. He’d been very good, but I’d had to hold back sometimes while sparring with him.
Thinking of Jace, as usual, made a lump of frustrated grief and fury rise to my throat. I slowed down a little, Japhrimel’s soundless step reverberating behind me. He was demon, and all but shouted it now that I was hedaira and peculiarly sensitive to him I could feel the harpstrings of Power under the physical world thrumming in response to his very presence. Part of it was sharing a bed with him, my body recognized him.
But that wasn’t it, was it? I frowned, trying to figure out why it felt so different. Was it just because he was a full demon again? I stalked along the sidewalk, one little corner of my mind focused on tagging the people around me, cataloguing their various levels of dangerousness. There weren’t a lot of psions out on the streets—of course, it was during the day. Hard to find a psion in the morning, unless you spot one heading home to bed.
I still hadn’t figured it out by the time we reached the sparhall, a large gray building due west of the hotel with the universal signs of violence-in-training—magscan and deep combat shielding, a twisted sparring cage dangling from a hook bolted into the side of the building high enough that slicboarders could tag it and make it rock, slicboards racked along the front of the building, and the blue psychic haze of adrenaline and controlled bloodlust waving like anemones in the air.
Oh, yes. This was what I wanted—effort, maybe enough to sweat, a few blessed seconds where I wouldn’t have to think, only move. No memory of the past, no thought for the future, only the endless now.
Japhrimel said nothing as I stepped inside, but his golden hand came over my shoulder and held the door open for me. I tapped my swordhilt with my fingernails and met the wide blue eyes of a Ceremonial behind the front desk.
Her tat curved back on itself, she wore a rig with more knives than I’d ever seen before. Propped next to her against the desk was a machete with a plain, functional leather-wrapped hilt. I measured her, she measured me, and her hand leapt for her blade.
“Whoa!” I lifted my hands. “I’m here to hire, not to drag anyone in.” I didn’t blame her one bit, I was popping with almost visible twitchy lasetrigger anger, and I looked like a demon to otherSight. Not to mention the fact that I was being followed by a very tall definitely-demon.
Her hand paused. I felt Japhrimel’s attention behind me, drew myself up and leaned back into him. He was wound just tight enough to go for her if she twitched. I didn’t like to consider how I knew or my instinctive response both to soothe him and to keep him away from her. I wasn’t sure I could stop him if he started, but keeping myself in between them seemed like a really good idea. I’d never seen him in this mood before, not even during the hunt for Santino.
I heard the faint sounds of a sparhall behind soundmuffling—little sounds of effort, the clang of metal, the clicking of staves.
The Ceremonial eyed me, said something in Czechi.
Oh, damn. She doesn’t speak Merican?
Japhrimel replied over my shoulder in the same language. I am really going to have to learn a few new languages, I thought as I caught a flicker of motion.
The roll of New Credit notes landed on her desk as Japhrimel said something else, short and harsh. I felt the air pressure change, and knew without looking back that he now wore a small chilling little smile.
I’d seen that smile before, and I hoped my reaction was less visible than hers. She paled, the inked lines of her tattoo suddenly glaring on her cheek. Her aura flared with fear, the air full of the rough chemical tang of it. The smell was pleasant, not drunkening like a sexwitch’s fear but still enough to make my breath catch.
She reached slowly for a communit on the desk, spoke into it. I heard the ghostly tones float through the rest of the building as she made an a
The sounds of metal clashing and heated exclamations trailed off. I restrained the urge to look back at Japhrimel, instead watched the Ceremonial’s right hand as it hovered near the hilt of her machete.
She relaxed a bit, scooping up the roll of notes and riffling through them. She glanced up at Japhrimel, jerked her chin up fractionally at me, and rose. She picked up her machete, carefully keeping her fingers away from the hilt. She said something that sounded vaguely conciliatory, then backed away to put her shoulders against the wall.
I didn’t blame her one bit. I’d had that reaction before too.
“We may go in,” he said behind me.
“Great. You’re making friends all over, aren’t you.”
“It must be my personality,” he replied, deadpan. I actually laughed, surprising myself.
I went past the desk to a pair of heavy airseal doors, pushed at them. They opened easily, the whoosh of airseals and the chill of a sparring room’s climate control washed over my skin, roughening the smooth gold. Hedaira don’t often get goosebumps—but I felt awful close for a moment.
The air swirled uneasily. If there was a place to find psions during the day, this was it.
Several Shamans, each of them holding a staff and eyeing the door uneasily. Three more Ceremonials, males each with edged steel, gathered around a watercooler, sweat gleaming on tats and wide shoulders. A few Skinlin and one Magi were scattered around. At the far end of the room a heavy bag shuddered as a double oddity—a male Necromance, with the trademark spatters of glitter in his aura—worked it low and dirty, throwing an occasional elbow, paying no attention to anything else. I took all this in with a glance.