The old pain seared. Dodger turned his shoulder to her; he did not want her to see the emotions her words had wakened. 'I am no paladin. I never will be. I refuse to be twisted to serve any person's will.'
'Yet you serve this norm,' she said softly.
'I do not serve him. I help him.' Dodger turned to look at her, but her face was shadowed under her hair. His hands hung uselessly at his side. 'There is all the difference in the world between those two words.'
'You always did worry about words.' Teresa toyed with the chip. She would not look him in the face. 'Why are you helping him?'
'We are friends.'
She tilted her head slightly. He could see her pensive expression now, achingly beautiful in its somber composure. Her serious mien shifted into a wistful smile. 'We were friends once.'
Dodger swallowed hard, '/thought so.'
At last she met his gaze. Her eyes were pure emerald and as bottomless as he remembered. He had lost himself in those eyes long ago. He found himself ready to do so again.
'But you left,' she said.
Time in the shadows had toughened him, honing away the fat and softness of his corporate life. He opened the door to the apartment, allowing Inu to scamper in through his legs, and found that Inu's excited yapping had done its work. Sally was awake.
'Get enough exercise?' she asked slyly as she tossed back the covers.
He smiled, knowing what kind of exercise she had in mind. 'I thought we were supposed to have a lesson this evening.'
'Too much work makes Sam too dull.' She stretched, testing his resolve. Seeing that he withstood the temptation, she shrugged and pulled on her shorts. 'I thought we'd try a conjuring tonight.'
Sam frowned. 'Why? You know I don't want to do that kind of stuff.'
'Every magician needs to know how,' Sally said, lacing the strings on her halter. 'If you don't know the basics of conjuring, you can't banish an enemy's sending. That's too useful a skill.'
'Banishing is sort of like an exorcism, isn't it?' 'Give the boy a gold star. Yeah, it's like that but it doesn't have any of the religious nonsense attached.' Knowing it was a sore point, Sam said, 'Religion is not nonsense.'
'Don't start with me.' Sally's eyes flashed with adamant heat, then softened. 'Anyway, what I wanted to do tonight was to get you an ally spirit.'
Sam knew what she meant; he'd done some reading. Perversely, he played dumb. 'You mean like a familiar.'
'Another star.'
'You don't have one,' he pointed out. He was surprised by the petulant tone in his voice. From the look on her face, Sally noted it too.
'I'm not hung up on learning magic, either. An ally may be what you need to break this block you've got.'
She was not going to give up. Well, neither was he.
'I won't deal with the devil.'
'Idiot! There aren't any devils but the ones running the megacorps. Spirits may quibble and bargain, but they're not demons. They're just energy forms cast into a particular construct by the intelligence whose energy forces them to coalesce. They don't have any connections with fallen angels or cosmic malignancies or anything like that. All that drek is stories made up by pasty-faced old men to scare impressionable kids into following orders that are too stupid to defend logically. I thought you had a better mind than that.'
'You're entitled to your opinion,' Sam said huffily. He knew that most of what was said about spirits being demons was garbagea151he wasn't a total idiot. 'This dealing with spirits just doesn't seem right. Even you say that they talk. That implies sentience, but whether they are free intelligences or not, talking to spirits is just too crazy for me. I had enough of that in those nightmares last summer when I talked to the dog spirit. I haven't had one of those episodes in months, and I don't want to do anything to start them again. I'm just getting back on track. I've put all the troubles that followed Hanae's death into the past where they belong. I don't want to wake that kind of craziness again.'
Sally shook her head, her expression hardening into contempt. 'You'll never learn with that kind of attitude.'
'I'll survive,' Sam said defensively. 'I've done all right so far.'
'Babe, you're in the woods. You're alive 'cause I keep you alive.'
Sally might believe it, but Sam knew better. He had learned his lessons. 'You weren't there last night.'
'And you nearly got smoked.'
'We did fine.'
Programs, and subsidized communities, while shipping what they considered refuse to the hell they called Yomi. They had seduced Sam from her. Yes, he would refer to her as a kawaruhito, if he referred to her at all.
In just one month Yomi had taught her more about the world and how it worked than her eighteen years in corporate society. The lessons were harsh, but she had learned. She'd had to. Failure meant death. Despite the pain, the rejection, and the horrible realization that she was no longer normal, she had not been ready to die.
She'd learned just how luxurious her former corporate life had been. Renraku menials had a better life than even the self-styled overlords of Yomi. The depths to which the weak and ordinary inmates sank was beyond rational thought. It was just as well that most of those confined to the island didn't remain rational long. She had learned how to survive. Over a year ago her body had changed, and twisted her life into a new pattern. Now, for whatever reason, her body had changed again. Was she condemned to keep changing? God forbid that she was infected with some nasty new type of goblinization that never stopped. She had survived one change and was stronger for it. Thus far, she had coped with the new change, but she didn't know how much she could take. What if she changed yet again?
The face she now saw in the mirror was alien. After her first time, she avoided looking in mirrors, having found the asymmetry of her ork physiognomy repulsive. But her new visage was more regular, though hardly more human. She was finding her new body shape more congenial as well. She had expected to find the fur unbearably warm, but it hadn't been so. Her long limbs were still uncoordinated, making her every movement awkward. She felt ungainly and frus trated at her lack of control. If Shiroi hadn't found her in the Walled City, she would have been prey for the jackals who scoured that garbage heap.
But he had found her and offered help. She had been scared when she had accepted his offer. Scared of her surroundings. Scared of what had happened to her. Scared of trusting him. So she had taken a chance. After all, what did she have to lose?
Now, her life was taking another crazy twist. This time it was a dream instead of a nightmare. Her memories of her 'luxurious' corporate life were being tattered to shabbiness. With Renraku, one had to be at least a vice- president of a regional branch to rate a private aircraft such as the one in which she travelled.
The flight was over now. The craft had taxied to a halt and the vibration from the engines had stopped. The pilot emerged from the cockpit, nodding and motioning her forward. His smiled was forced. The rest of the crew was nowhere in sight. She'd be seeing Shiroi soon. Who was he, to command such extravagance?
She rose from her seat. With three long, wobbly strides, she reached the pilot's side. Undogging the toggles, he lifted the latch and swung the cabin door wide. Brilliant sunshine flooded through the opening, forcing her to squint painfully. The cabin's climate control coughed and shuddered into high gear to fight the invasion of hot, humid air. For a moment, she was back on Yomi and she shuddered. Remembering to breathe, she sucked in air. It was thin, and she felt light-headed. Even her new, larger lungs didn't seem to have enough capacity.
The pilot stepped through the hatchway and pressed himself against the railing of the stairway. He seemed to want to give her as much room as possible. Up close, she could smell his fear. What did he think she was going to do? Eat him? Ignoring him, she looked Shidhe's law, her life was forfeit. Only Sam's death at Hart's hands might release her from that harsh judgment.
It took Hart three minutes to run through the halls to her quarters. Worry nagged at her the entire way, almost disrupting the concentration she needed to maintain her invisibility spell. She knew some of the palace's guardian creatures had marked her passage. The damned, cluttering leshy seemed to see her too, but none of the elves she passed were aware. That was good.
There were no guards at her quarters. The alarm had yet to be given. She wasted no time packing, only
