the chips fall.'
Chance sniffed. 'What do you want to know, Deathstalker?'
'That's more like it. I have a question.'
'Keep it specific, if you want a specific answer. My children are espers, not oracles.'
'Ask them who killed my father,' said Owen. 'Which person, specifically?'
Chance nodded, and made his way slowly down the central aisle, looking speculatively from one child to another. Owen watched impassively, hiding his own surprise at the question he'd asked. It hadn't been the one he intended to start with. He was here to ask about his father's information network. He hadn't known how badly he wanted the name of his father's killer until he heard himself say it. His father had been cut down in the street by an assassin in the pay of the Empress, and at the time Owen hadn't really been surprised. Just assumed that one of his father's many plots and intrigues had finally caught up with him. Mostly, Owen had just felt annoyed at the disruption the sudden death had brought to his previously well-ordered life. He hadn't asked who the killer was. He hadn't cared, then.
Arthur Hadrian Deathstalker, tall and handsome and ruthlessly charming, had delighted in schemes and intrigues, sometimes apparently just for their own sake. Which meant he hadn't had much time to spend on his son. When he remembered he had a son and heir, he ran Owen's life with an iron hand, doing as he thought best and to hell with what Owen might want. His was not a cheerful presence, and their few conversations increasingly deteriorated into blazing rows. The Deathstalker never understood that his son considered himself a scholar, rather than a warrior. When Owen heard that his father was dead, his first feeling was one of relief. He was finally out of his father's clutches and free to be his own man at last.
It was only in recent times that Owen had finally begun to understand the forces that had moved and driven his father. Just by being the Deathstalker, Arthur had many enemies both in and outside Lionstone's Court. An aristocrat on Golgotha could no more avoid intrigue than a fish could avoid the water it swam in. And above all that, Arthur had believed in rebellion. Whether for the sake of the Empire, or for his own amusement and advancement, Owen still wasn't entirely sure, but more and more he was inclined to give his father the benefit of the doubt. As his own eyes were opened to the evils and horrors the Empire was based on, he understood the need to fight it by any means necessary.
He still couldn't bring himself to love or forgive his father. The man who'd ordered his trainers to beat the crap out of his son, over and over again, trying to force to the surface the secret inheritance of the Deathstalkers— the boost. A mixture of gengineered glands and special training that for short periods made a Deathstalker stronger, faster, and sharper than any normal man. The process worked, eventually, but Owen only remembered the pain and the blood, all to give him access to something he didn't want anyway. Only recently had Owen begun to understand that his father had been desperate to make him a fighter rather than a scholar, because he knew a scholar wouldn't be able to survive the forces that would be unleashed by his death. And he'd been right.
As Owen became a leader of the new rebellion, and a fighter for justice, so he became his father's son at last. And only once he understood that truth at last, did he begin to understand how much he'd lost, and how much he needed to know who'd murdered his father.
He looked up as Chance beckoned him impatiently, and moved over to join the big man, standing over a cot holding a girl who couldn't have been more than ten. The child wore a shabby dress two sizes too large, and she stirred constantly, as though disturbed by loud voices only she could hear. Her eyes were closed, but she muttered the odd word or phrase now and again. None of them made any sense to Owen. Chance knelt beside her and produced a paper bag half-full of candies. He chose one, molded it between his fingers till it was soft and pliant, then eased it into the girl's slack mouth. She began to chew slowly. Chase put his mouth right next to her ear.
'Time to play the game, Katie. Time to tell me all those things you know. I have Owen Deathstalker here with me. He wants to know who killed his father. Whose hand guided the blade that took his life. Who was it, Katie?'
The girl frowned, her mouth pursing unhappily, but she didn't wake. She swallowed the piece of candy and spoke in a clear, pure voice. 'You asked me that long ago. The answer hasn't changed. It was the smiling killer, the shark in shallow waters, the man who will not be stopped save by his own hand. Kid Death killed the Deathstalker.'
Owen nodded slowly, his face impassive while his hands closed into fists. He hadn't been expecting that particular name, but it didn't exactly come as a surprise either. Kid Death, the Empress's favorite paid assassin for a while, also known as Lord Kit SummerIsle. Now a backer of the rebellion, and a friend of the distant cousin who'd taken the title of Lord Deathstalker after Owen was outlawed. Both currently headed for Virimonde, the planet Owen had once owned and ruled. It didn't matter. It didn't matter that Kit and Owen were on the same side now. Owen would kill him anyway, once the rebellion didn't need him anymore. Kit SummerIsle was a dead man, along with anyone who got in his way. Anyone at all. Owen smiled slowly, and his fists unclenched. Something to look forward to.
'You didn't come here just to ask me that,' said the young girl suddenly. Her eyes moved back and forth under her closed eyelids. 'There's something else. Something you need to know. Ask me. Ask me.'
'All right,' said Owen. There was a tightness in his chest, and he had to fight to keep his voice steady. 'The last time I was here, one of you told me how I would die. I need to know if it's still true. Has anything changed?'
'No,' said the girl flatly. 'You die here, in Mistport, alone and forsaken, fighting odds too great to be beaten by any man. And after you're dead, they'll even steal your boots.'
'When?' said Owen. 'When does this happen?'
'That's a time question,' said the young girl, turning her head away. 'I've never understood time.'
'Try!' said Owen. 'Try, dammit!'
He reached down to grab the child by the shoulders and shake her, but Chance was there first, pulling him away. Owen threw the big man off easily, but the moment had passed, and he was in control again. He stood over the sleeping child, breathing heavily, then he turned away.
'It doesn't matter,' he said finally, to no one in particular. 'I've always known I've been on borrowed time ever since Virimonde. I was supposed to die there. Only a miracle saved me. And a man can't expect more than one miracle in one lifetime. Still, it's hard to hear your own death sentence, and know there's nothing you can do to change it.'
'If you don't want the answers, don't ask the questions,' said Chance. 'And I told you before; you can't trust precogs. If everything they said was reliable, I'd be a rich man by now. For instance, they've all been saying for some time now that Something Bad is coming to Mistport, but I can't get two of them to agree on what the hell it might be. All I've got is a name—Legion. But so far, the only unpleasant thing to turn up here is you.'
'It doesn't matter,' said Owen. 'If I have to die, I'll die well, as a Deathstalker should.'
'Oh very poetic,' said Chance. 'God save me from heroes. Look, I have a business to run. Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out.'
'Cut the crap,' said Owen. 'We still have business to discuss. My first questions were strictly on my own behalf. Now we get to the serious stuff. I'm here representing the Golgotha underground, and on their behalf I'm officially reawakening and revitalizing my father's old information network here in Mistport. He didn't fund just you and Abraxus; there are dozens of people and businesses all through this city that he established and supported, in return for the gathering and passing on of useful information. Some of them went on to be very successful indeed. Movers and shakers in this big city.
'The information started drying up after my father's murder. Presumably they thought his death freed them from their obligations. I'm here to tell them different. I'm the Deathstalker now, and I am calling in my father's markers. With interest. The old network will rise again, this time supplying information to the new rebellion, or I will personally bankrupt every one of the sons of bitches. Including you, Chance.'
'Oh shit,' said Chance.
'Well quite,' said Owen, smiling cheerfully. 'You can start by supplying the names and locations you know, and then we'll get the rest from these espers of yours. You will then assist me in setting up a meeting of all concerned parties, somewhen today. In fact, within the next two hours, if they want to hang on to all their business interests and several vital organs. Get moving, Chance. I've a lot to do, and perhaps not as much time as I thought to get it done in.'
Chance made contact with the right people through his espers, a procedure from which Owen was very
