Last to Rise(4)

When my head cleared a little, I realised that it hadn’t been the guy attacking me as I’d thought. He’d been thrown against the wall, had hit me instead, and now lay dazed and confused on the floor.



In the room opposite us, clearly visible because some idiot had rearranged her curtains, a woman stood in utter outrage, fists clenched, eyes hot, a curving, satisfied smile on her lips. It might seem odd that the first thing I noticed about her wasn’t that she was flying, or rather hovering a foot above the floor. Given that it’s me we’re talking about here, the first thing I noticed was that the shapeless rag of a tunic she wore couldn’t hide the fact she had a stupendous figure, all round and curvy in the best places, and some of those places were heaving in a very distracting manner. Noticing the hovering only came quite far after that, and smacked me in the head with the thought. It wasn’t the guy with the thin face, crumpled at the bottom of the wall, that I was looking for.



He wasn’t the mage.



She glared at me, one side of her face red with a handprint, her head held high and her chin almost regal in the way it lifted, as though she was goading me. Try it, go on, I dare you, that look said. You try it and I’ll slam you too. Just you see if I don’t.



I lived for this kind of challenge – that is, ones involving women.



I got slowly to my feet, trying my best to look as non-threatening as possible. It was hard when, even with her hovering, I was still a touch taller. I was also substantially broader across the shoulders and dressed in a black allover that purposely mimicked the uniforms of the deadly Ministry Specials. It’s helpful in putting the fear of the Goddess into my more usual clients – runaways, men with a bounty on their heads, small-timers for the most part, nothing too dangerous because I liked my face where it was. Tracking down possible mages was a new sideline, and I wasn’t even getting paid for it.



It was pretty hard not to stare at all the heaving, but I made a valiant effort to roll my tongue back in.



She tensed, ready to let something else go I was sure, maybe slam me into the wall next to the other guy, so I turned on the old Rojan never-fails smile. I’d sworn off women and had been doing well for at least two, almost three days – a new personal record of which I was quite proud – but I was bound to fall off the wagon at some point. If that point made it easier to stay alive, well, that’s always a bonus.



The smile didn’t fail me now because the tension in her shoulders relaxed, just a touch.



“So, I’m a mage,” she said, defiance in every drip of a vowel. “What you going to do about it? Turn me in for the reward?”



I shoved the pulse pistol back in my pocket, though I kept my hand on it just in case, and racked up the smile another notch. Screw it, I was sworn off women, but never turn an opportunity down, right? Besides, the way she held herself, the waft of her as she hung in the air…



My other little failing is that I’m a sucker for women. All of them. Tall, short, big, small, pretty or plain, it’s not any of those things that are my undoing. But I can’t resist a show of grace in movement, the way they hold themselves. Gets me every time. It doesn’t usually last long, granted, because resisting temptation isn’t a strong point of mine. Also, once I have what I want, I have the attention span of a small beetle and I’m really world-class at screwing things up, but by the Goddess’s tits it still gets me.



Besides, if she was a mage, we needed her, especially as she seemed to have a handle on it, unlike most of our other recruits. So I wasn’t being entirely selfish when I said, “I was wondering if you were free for lunch?”





Chapter Two





Once the offer of food was on the table, she didn’t take much persuading – with a siege on, everyone was hungry, more than hungry, at least everyone Under Trade. A bit of a blow to the ego that it was the food and not me that held the appeal, but probably for the best. Even more trouble with women was the last thing I needed, and I had a fair bit already – my life was such that I’d have been worried if I didn’t.



She called herself Halina and she was suspicious and wary and so cynical she made me look like a beacon of hope. She battered me with questions and sneered at the answers as I led her through the ragged recesses of Boundary. Past dripping concrete houses all crammed together like mangy puppies huddling for warmth, all in a pile on top of each other, squeezing each other at the sides, squashing all the even worse places below. Damp and dingy houses that had seen better days – hell, better decades. Walkways launched themselves across yawning gaps between crumbling buildings or crept around them like naughty children. Near-constant rain pattered through their mesh, sliced into a million tiny misting droplets, every one of which seemed to delight in aiming itself down the neck of my jacket. Stairwells led off into twisting darkness up and down, most likely with a mugger on every turn that didn’t have a Rapture junkie. The walkways, stairwells and the streets that were bolted more firmly to buildings were all but empty, always seemed empty in those desperate days when people were more concentrated on food, on what was at our gates and trying to come in. A few of the more dissolute wandered the walkways in a haze, from starvation or desperation I could never be sure. A single dark figure drifted along a street on the other side of the chasm, a level down, his face pale as it turned up to look at us.