ground by her chair, then smiled at Tallon and Jacks.
'I always like to bring home a little souvenir when I go traveling.'
The two Loki men produced handkerchiefs and began cleaning sprayed blood from their faces. No emotion showed in their faces, but their hands weren't as steady as they might have been. Valentine bowed slightly to Donna Silvestri, in acknowledgment of the point made. Kid Death cleaned his blade with a rag and then sheathed the sword. His face was impassive save for a slight smile.
'Time for another election in Graylake East,' he said lightly.
Donna Silvestri smiled at Valentine Wolfe. 'I hope we understand each other.'
'Oh, we do,' said Valentine. 'I'm just glad I'm working with professionals for once.'
Julian Skye sat locked away in his bedroom again, staring at his reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite. He looked like shit. His body slumped in the oversized chair like a battered toy discarded by a child who played too rough. For once Julian wasn't thinking about his once love, BB Chojiro. He had more immediate concerns.
He'd just been fired from his own holo show. Ever since the rebellion ended, and he discovered to his great surprise that he was still alive and on the winning side for once, he'd been making a good living starring as himself in a weekly holo series featuring his many exploits as a dashing, devil-may-care agent of the rebellion. Such shows were very popular right now, but his was the only one featuring the actual person concerned. His acting was frankly average, but the emphasis of the show had always been on stunts, explosions, and last-minute escapes, so he got by.
Only now they'd fired him. Replaced him with a look-alike actor, because Julian didn't look like himself anymore. He'd been ill for some time, the continuing side effects of his incarceration in Lionstone's interrogation cells. They came and went, so he learned to live with them and got on with his life. But just recently he'd been getting worse. A lot worse. He thought he'd hidden it by not giving in to it, and working just as hard as always, but apparently you can't fool the camera.
The show's executives had called him into their luxurious office, sat him down, made sure he had a large drink in his hand, and then showed him footage of himself as he used to be and as he was now. Julian was shocked by the difference. He'd become painfully thin, his face gaunt and hollowed, with dark shadows under the eyes. He looked twenty years older. The executives said they were very sorry to have to let him go, but makeup could only do so much. They assured him they'd be happy to take him back again once he was better, but everyone in the room knew that was a crock. He wasn't going to get any better.
Those white-gowned bastards in the interrogation cells had killed him, after all. It just took a while for his death to catch up with him.
So he'd gone home. Home was the old Sky Family house. Not a Tower. Not even in the same neighborhood. The Skyes had never been more than a very minor Family. And soon they wouldn't be a Family at all. Both of Julian's parents were dead, and all his grandparents. Wars and politics and duels. His uncles and aunts, knowing a sinking ship when they were on one, married into greater Families, and took those Families' names as their own. There were a few minor cousins, of various removes, but for all practical purposes, Auric and Julian had been the last generation of Skye. And they never had children.
Now Julian Skye was the last of his line, and when he died the name would die with him. He couldn't really bring himself to care much. He'd never given a damn for being an aristocrat, not least because he was at the bottom of the pile, and looked down on by every other Clan. And he was an esper, which should have been impossible in the carefully controlled bloodlines and intermarriages of the Families. Espers weren't people. They were property.
But somewhere along the line a Skye had gone to bed with someone they shouldn't have, and the esper gene had gone skinny-dipping in the Skye gene pool and emerged in Julian. If his parents had found out, they would have had him quietly killed. But as soon as Julian's powers started emerging, his older brother, Auric, was right there with him, calming his terror and helping him hide what he was from his Family and the world. No one ever knew. Till Auric died and Julian gave his life to the rebellion.
And now here he was, back home again, living alone in an empty great house with most of the rooms shut up and only a few old Family retainers for company. They stayed out of loyalty, out of memory for the way things had been, rather than the money. Which was just as well. Julian had made a great deal of money as a holo star, but tended to spend it as fast as it came in. If the bank hadn't been so scared of him, they'd probably be sending him threatening letters by now. He would have worried how he was going to support himself in the future, if he'd thought he had a future.
He hurt pretty much all the time now. There were painkillers, of course, but the only ones strong enough to deal with the pain left him sleeping all day or stumbling dimly around like a zombie. He preferred to spend whatever time he had left in his right mind. He was pretty sure he was going to die this time.
He'd come close to dying on Haceldama, but Giles Deathstalker had used his powers to work a cure. Only like so many things with Giles, the appearance hadn't been reality. The cure hadn't lasted. And now Giles was dead, and the four remaining Maze survivors were all off-world somewhere on unknown missions. Even if he could have tracked them down, and brought himself to beg, he doubted very much they could get back to Golgotha in time to do him any good. And besides, he'd never been any good at begging. That was one of the things that had made him a rebel in the first place.
Julian looked back over his early rebel days with a rueful smile. He'd been so young, so sure, ready to take on any mission, any risk, as long as it was for the cause. In retrospect, he had to admit he did it mostly for the thrills and the action. For the kicks. But he did a lot of good along the way, and saved as many lives as he took. The new government had wanted to give him all kinds of medals, but he'd politely turned them down. He never really felt he'd earned them, because it had all been such a good time.
Until the Empire caught him, and put him in the interrogation cells, and gave him to the torturers. All because his one true love BB Chojiro betrayed him. She broke his heart, and they broke his spirit, and even though Finlay Campbell rescued him, he was never the same afterward.
He sighed and did his best to push the old, bitter thoughts aside. If he was going to die, he was determined to make the most of what was left of his life. Have some fun while he still could. Do all the things he'd meant to do but never had because the rebellion intervened. He'd enjoyed his time as a rebel, had his fair share of adventures and more, but it had quickly taken over his life. There was never time to relax, let his guard down, have a good time with a few friends. The rebellion had been his life.
And then they took it away from him. By winning.
He couldn't be an adventurer anymore. His fighting days were over. The new order had no use for him even before his frailty became clear. His brand of get the job done and to hell with the consequences fighting was out of fashion. It was all diplomacy now, with carefully worked-out deals and compromises put together in private smoke- filled rooms. Usually with someone from Blue Block adding quiet advice from the sidelines. It was all politics now, and Julian didn't understand any of it.
He had considered going back to Haceldama and spending his final days in Summerland, but he couldn't do that. His death would have upset the toys too much.
Most of his friends were dead. It had been a hard war, and the rebellion had chewed up young men and women as fast as it could take them. Julian had learned the hard way not to get too attached to anyone. The only real friend he had was Finlay Campbell, and these days the old assassin was in almost as bad shape as he was. Finlay had been coming apart at the seams for some time now, and the more Julian tried to help, the more Finlay pushed him away.
The only other man Julian had really admired had been the legendary Young Jack Random. Julian never really got over finding out he'd been following a Fury, a Shub war machine in the shape of a man. He'd destroyed the Fury with his esp, but it hadn't helped. It seemed like every time Julian ended up trusting someone, they always betrayed him in the end.
He'd killed the man who killed his brother, Auric, the Masked Gladiator himself, and that at least had been something he could be proud of. He could have killed the bastard a dozen times and never tired of it.
And yet for all his successes in the rebellion, he hadn't been there at the end. Hadn't made it down to the hell Lionstone had made of her Court, hadn't got there in time to see the Iron Bitch dragged from her Throne and humbled before everyone. He'd seen the recording on the holo later, but it hadn't been the same. He should have been there. He'd wanted her to see his face, to know he'd helped bring her down. He'd paid for that right in blood
