hunch of my shoulder, caught a few rays of sodium light. It wasn't as wet or as blotchy as you might have expected from the amount of crying she'd been doing-which was good, because I wasn't sure I could keep a grip on the situation if our ork audience thought I'd been hurting her.
'You got choices. There are places besides the sprawl, orks that aren't squatters,' I explained, pitching my voice to her alone. 'Don't think facing these guys means you have to stay with them or on these streets. I got places you can go, people you can count on.'
I cocked an eye at the three ork toughs. They were about where I'd left them, shuffling their feet and growling ork-like noises. I didn't speak or'zet well enough to track everything, but the gist of it was spurring each other on mixed with hints of disgust that no one had smashed my skull yet.
I was peripherally aware of the two shapes beyond them moving forward.
I looked back down at Monica, her chin still between my thumb and finger. She was gazing at me with something like surprise.
'You've got choices,' I repeated with better grammar. 'And the first one is how we go about getting out of here.
'These young gentlemen,' I tilted my head in their direction, inspiring a fresh chorus of growls, 'Are trying to rescue you and I do not want to hurt them. We need to show them what's going on before things get out of hand. Okay?'
Monica licked her lips, flinching slightly when her tongue hit a new tusk. She nodded.
I let go of her chin and put the arm back around her shoulders. Lowering my right arm, I turned her slowly until our audience could see her clearly in the streetlights.
There was a moment of silence.
'Huh,' minimalist ork quipped cleverly.
The two from the stoop paused mid-street. Standing in the full glare of four sodium lamps, they were still shrouded in shadow-as though they'd brought the gloom of the hidden doorway with them. I knew the reality was I was being persuaded not to look directly at them, but I didn't bother pressing the issue.
'She got dumped,' I explained. 'She asked me for help.'
'How you plan on helping, ujnort?' middle ork demanded. 'What you think you going to do with her?'
My ears pricked at his awkward phrasing. My guess was street jive was not his default argot. Which appeared to support Julius' Sons of Sauron theory-you'd expect ork separatists to speak or'zet exclusively.
'I was thinking I'd take her home.'
'You got a nice apartment?' Second ork, ranged to my right, gestured vaguely with his club. 'Maybe some pretty pictures and toys for her to play with?'
'Pasadena,' I said, keeping it simple.
'What's that? A Humanis dumping ground for freaks?'
Second ork was clearly the humorist of the group.
'It's a blended community,' I said to Monica. 'No ghettos. And between the college and the university there's a lot of opportunities.'
I didn't come right out and say she could do a lot better in Pasadena than in the L.A. refugee camps, but no one in the alley misunderstood what I meant.
'She belongs with us.'
The woman's voice was low, but it seemed to resonate off the plascrete beneath my feet. The alley walls didn't so much echo as repeat her words.
I was not surprised to discover the middle of the boulevard was no longer shrouded in darkness.
The speaker was ancient by ork standards and wrapped in several layers of symboled robes. Her hair was gold. I mean the metal, not blonde. Most folks would have thought it was a wig, but the filaments grew from her scalp. Fine as optical fiber, they were braided into intricate patterns-an echo of the web that connected her to the astral and to the city.
Her eyes were white with cataracts but she had no trouble keeping them locked on me as she strode forward. The black staff in her hand rang softly against the plascrete; metal, no doubt crafted from whatever she considered the bones of the world around her.
Middle ork shifted, making way for the street shaman without looking at her.
'This is our child, a daughter of this city.' The resonance wasn't illusionary. I felt the vibration through my soles. 'She belongs with us.'
I felt Monica tense beneath my arm.
Another step, halfway between us and Monica's would-be rescuers, the shaman stopped as though she'd hit a wall. Her eyebrows-silver wire, I noticed-climbed toward her hairline. She looked down at Dog, sitting with his tongue lolling from his grinning mouth, and then back up at me. It took no great leap of logic to deduce what had happened; Dog had raised the astral curtain enough to let her know what she was up against.
The shaman gathered herself, and for a moment I thought she was going to try to overcome. I braced myself as well as I could while maintaining my reason, and tried to anticipate what attack would make sense to an urban.
Instead, she relaxed visibly. 'Respect.'
'Respect,' I agreed and dropped the confusion spell. If she was giving respect, the three tough guys weren't going to give trouble.
For their parts, the bully boys blinked and muttered, looking disoriented as their minds suddenly cleared. The erstwhile comic gave me a bug-eyed stare, apparently the only one to realize why they'd been too bewildered to attack.
Monica stood straight as her own uncertainty evaporated. She didn't pull free of my arm, but she was no longer leaning against me for support.
My own cranium took a deep, cleansing breath. Don't try this at home, kids.
'This child is as connected to this city,' the shaman said, speaking clear and straight, with none of the drama and declaration of her earlier pronouncements. 'She belongs here.'
'That's her choice to make.'
'She has made it.'
I wasn't surprised when Monica stepped forward, breaking her contact with me.
'Wait a sec, kid.'
She turned back to face me. She looked excited, anticipatory, maybe a little nervous. Pretty much confirming what I already knew. You can't get complex expressions like that under compulsion.
I took her too-young hand in mine, pressing one of my old-fashioned business cards into her palm.
'If you need us, send 'Bastion Chien' to Pasadena.'
Monica smiled, her eyes clear despite the pain meds.
'You're a good man,' she said.
She turned away again. The shaman half-turned her head, indicating the street behind her. Monica walked past the old woman, close enough to touch but not touching, and joined the older ork male still standing in the middle of the boulevard.
The shaman's white eyes were on me. I thought of six clever things to say in as many heartbeats and kicked myself for each of them. Instead I kept my eyes locked on to her gaze and bowed, leaning forward about thirty degrees at the waist.
She acknowledged the respect with a deep nod to me and then a bow of her own to Dog. Without a word, she turned and made her way across the street to the shadow beneath the stoop. Monica and the ork fell in step behind the shaman as she passed.
The three toughs were still milling and bemused, looking after the shaman and back to me a few times. Two of them knew something they didn't understand had happened-the third wasn't talking. I cocked an eyebrow; he flinched. No doubt when he felt they were safely out of range, he'd tell his chummers how close they'd come to death by magic. Eventually the three decided they couldn't see me and headed off into the night on whatever mission I'd interrupted.
Leaving Dog to watch the street, I strolled over to the dustbin Monica had hidden behind.
Five minutes later I was on the street, headed back toward Fun City. The sidewalk, empty throughout the little passion play, was again busy with the foot traffic of late night. People scurrying with heads down, hoping not to be
