Deathstalker

help us, I can definitely promise to restrain my companion here from picking up all those papers in front of you and scattering them to the four corners of the room.'

The clerk grabbed the nearest pile protectively. 'That's right. Threaten me. Intimidate me. Who am I? Just a clerk, a minor cog in the great wheel. I can feel one of my funny turns coming on.'

'How about if we offered you a small payment?' said Hazel.

'How about if you offered a big payment?' countered the clerk.

Hazel produced a large silver coin from her purse and dropped it onto the desk before him. The clerk looked at it sadly. Hazel had to add three more before he sighed deeply and scooped up the coins with a practiced sweep of the hand.

'All right, give me the name. I'm not promising anything, mind.'

'Ruby Journey.'

'Oh, her. Why didn't you say? She's working as a bouncer down at the Rabid Wolf. And long may she stay there, well away from civilized people. It's been ever so peaceful around here since she moved. When you find her, remind her that her license runs out next week. I should do it from a safe distance, mind. Now go away and upset somebody else. I have papers to shuffle and civil insurrection to plan.'

He picked up the nearest piece of paper and stared at it fixedly. Owen and Hazel exchanged a look and then shoved, elbowed and intimidated their way back through the crowd and out into the calm and quiet of the street.

'Well,' said Owen, 'that was… different. Are there a lot of people like him in Mistport?'

'Unfortunately, yes,' said Hazel. 'A lot of people arrive here fleeing from the tyranny of Empire, expecting to find some kind of free, civilized Utopia. The rather different reality of scraping out a living on an unhospitable rock of ice with a population consisting mainly of outlaws, failures and criminals upsets a lot of new arrivals, and some never really get over it.'

'Don't you find that rather worrying?' said Owen.

'Not as long as explosives remain really expensive.'

'So, you and this Ruby Journey go back a long way, then?' said Owen as they set off down the street. He couldn't help noticing that they still weren't heading north.

'I had a try at bounty hunting myself,' said Hazel briskly. 'I didn't last long. I was too soft; kept bringing them in alive, and there's no money in that. Ruby was my sponsor and mentor at the time. A good friend, if a trifle… unpredictable. I can't believe things have got so bad for her that she's been forced to work as a bouncer. Mind you, I bet she's a good one. No one would argue with her twice.'

'What sort of place is this Rabid Wolf she's working at?'

'A dive, the last time I was there. Dope joint, gambling house, a few girls and a bar that never closes. You know the sort of place.'

'Well, actually, no,' said Owen. 'But it sounds… interesting. Still, I can't help thinking Ruby Journey can wait. Surely we need to find Jack Ransom first, before someone else finds us. He'll be able to protect us from whoever comes after us. Jack Random could stand off a whole army. I mean, the man's a legend.'

'Was a legend,' said Hazel, looking carefully straight ahead and not slowing down one bit. 'The man is well past his prime. The last I heard of him, he was telling stories of his past exploits in bars in return for free drinks.'

'Are we talking about the same person? Jack Random, the professional rebel?'

Hazel sighed, but still wouldn't look at him. 'Being a rebel and an outlaw is hard work. It wears you down. Jack Random is not the man he used to be. Hasn't led a major uprising since that fiasco on Blue Angel, when he got his ass kicked in no uncertain manner. It was a miracle he got out of there alive and mostly intact, and everyone knows it. And that was years ago. Random is… an unknown quantity. I know I can rely on Ruby. She's death on two legs, with an attitude. The best in the business.'

'And currently working as a bouncer.'

Hazel glared at him and increased his pace. Owen trudged after her, maintaining a diplomatic silence. He felt as though he should be defending Random more, but the more he thought about it, the less actual evidence he could find to support his argument. All right, the man was a legend. No denying that. He'd led more rebellions against the Empire than any three other outlaws put together, but though he'd fought in some famous campaigns, he'd only ever won fleeting victories. He had the charisma and the rhetoric, but the Empire had the numbers. It always had more ships, more guns, more men to call on. And as the years went on, Jack Random lost more campaigns than he won and was hounded from planet to planet and from battle to battle, while the Empire still stood. Owen sighed. If you couldn't trust Jack Random, who could you trust?

He moved up alongside Hazel and pulled his cloak tightly about him. There was a bitter wind rising, and it seemed to blow right through him. Owen was beginning to find the sudden shifts from icy cold exteriors to piping hot interiors and back again increasingly distressing. Probably end up with a streaming cold on top of everything else, and light years away from civilized medicine.

He tried hard not to think about leeches.

Owen and Hazel trudged off down the street, lost in their separate thoughts, and never saw the hooded figure with a crossbow rise up from an overlooking balcony and draw a bead on Owen's unprotected back. The assassin's finger tightened on the release, and a stone from Cat's slingshot hit him right between the eyes. He fell backward out of sight, and the arrow disappeared into the mists. A cat shrieked briefly in outrage. Cat grinned and recovered his balance on the outcropping gable he was crouching on opposite the balcony. Funny thing about assassins; it never seemed to occur to them that while they were stalking someone, someone else might be stalking them. This was the seventeenth bounty hunter he'd deterred, and he was running out of stratagems. Not to mention stones for his slingshot. He wished Owen and Hazel would work out where they wanted to be and settle there. It was hard work tracking them across the city, jumping from roof to roof and taking care of the apparently endless stream of would-be assassins who dogged their I trail. And now they were off again, heading even deeper into Thieves' Quarter, into areas people usually had enough sense to leave well enough alone. Cat sighed heavily and set off after them, eyes alert for further dangers. He hoped Cyder had some plan to make money out of these people. He'd hate to think he was doing all this for nothing.

The Rabid Wolf was a festering dump tucked away up a side street with no lighting, as though even the street was ashamed of its presence. The only light came from a brazier burning unattended halfway down the street. Owen wasn't sure what was actually burning in the brazier, but it smelled awful. Also, from the look of the street, several horses had recently taken the time to use the street as a toilet. At least, he hoped it was horses. He looked at Hazel, who was looking calmly down the street as though she'd seen worse.

'We don't really have to go down there, do we?' said Owen. 'It's going to ruin my boots.'

'Don't be such a wimp, Owen. Just watch where you're treading, and don't talk to any strange women, and you'll be fine.'

She set off down the street, and Owen followed her, being very careful where he put his feet. The Rabid Wolf looked as though it had seen a great deal of hard use down the years, not to mention the occasional firebombing and outbreak of plague. The front of the inn was covered with scars and gouges and suspicious stains, and the two windows had been boarded over long ago. The open door was guarded by a huge hulking figure with bulging muscles and glandular n problems. The last time Owen had seen something that big it standing upright, it had been glaring back at him from its cage in the Imperial Zoo, as though telling him where he could stick his peanuts.

Hazel walked right up to it, stuck her face into its, and the two of them exchanged tough sounds for a moment, just to establish they were both hard, desperate types, and then Hazel slipped the figure a coin, and it stepped back from the door to let Owen and Hazel enter. Hazel stalked past it with her head held high, and Owen hurried after her, keeping a wary eye on the doorkeeper as he dodged past it, his hand never far from his sword. He tried a tentative smile, and the doorkeeper opened its mouth to reveal four sets of gleaming steel teeth. Pointed gleaming steel teeth, in neat rows. Owen knew when he'd been out-smiled. He looked away as though he'd meant to all along, and almost bumped into Hazel from behind. She'd stopped just inside the bar and was looking around with barely disguised nostalgia.

Owen wrinkled his nose at the smell and thought he could detect several kinds of smoke in the air that were banned throughout the Empire on the grounds that they were dangerous to whoever happened to be around when someone else was smoking them. The light was dim, not helped in the least by the thick smog in the air. The inhabitants of the bar looked the kind who preferred it that way. At least, if Owen had looked that unsavory, he'd