The singer was coming out now, and the patrons applauded. Bemie, glancing around the room, leaned over and hissed to her brother: “See, there are women in the audience.” Will glared at her. There were women in the audience, but not the sort a good Cities boy would choose to associate with his sister. The singer, however, was another story, and one far murkier. She was a woman on the verge of middle-age, with brown hair and a sharp nose and sharper eyes. She wore a black shirt and skirt, and carried a portable keyboard, which she set up in the spot. Clearly she was a heartsinger, and Willie wished he were elsewhere. He hated heartsingers and their black visions. He was glad to his bones that Lysette wasn’t a heartsinger.
“My name is Elinor,” said the woman, in a gentle voice. And she touched the keyboard, enhanced in the range of melancholy and delighted irony that heartsingers loved.
And distraction from the song came, though not in the form he would have wished.
“I’ll be damned!” cried a nearby voice. “It’s Willie Stockton, gone slumming. We’re out of uniform, aren’t we, Willie?”
Timothy Lee, every hulking foot of him, came over to their table and stood between Bernadette and Will. Will looked back and saw that Timothy Lee had come from a table where he was sitting with Parry Winzek, yet another old schoolfriend. And although Parry looked at him with dark, unhappy eyes that had a trace of hatred, Will knew that Parry wouldn’t fight him. Although perhaps Timothy was too drunk to realize that.
Bernadette twisted her head to look up at Timothy Lee. “You’re a little drunk, Tee-lee.”
He ignored her. “You bring your sister to places like this, Willie? No wonder you’re such a popular guy. Hey, who’s this?” His glance had fallen on Jack Freylinger.
“Jack, this is Timothy Lee.” Bemie’s tone was short.
“This your husband?”
“Fiance,” said Jack, offering his hand. Because there had been no church declaration of intent to wed, they could not officially refer to themselves as husband and wife. The aristos were free and easy about these things, and so was Sangaree; but on F deck, Jack made it clear, they waited for the actual ceremony.
“Fee-onse,” repeated Timothy Lee, making the word sound ridiculous and alien. “You know, I thought that Willie here was the bastard, taking the Guard’s way out. But I always believed this his sister was one of us. And here you are, as ready to climb into the laps of the letterdecks as anybody. Your fee-onse likes Sangaree bars, does he? Did he bring you here like one of his whores?”
That was it. Will stood up. Jack was pushing back his chair, too, but Bernadette grabbed his hand. “It’s Willie he wants,” she said.
“That’s right, letterdeck, it’s Willie I want. How about it, Willie? Tell you what—if you can beat me, maybe I won’t turn you in for being out of uniform.”
Will’s eyes were blazing, but he’d learned a long time ago that he was better off fighting in cold blood. The bar was quiet; the heartsinger, with a look of annoyance, had retired from the field almost immediately. There were bars where fights—and other things—went on below the music all the time; but the Coeur de Noir was not one of them. Will raised his voice. “Parry, did you hear what your friend just said?”
“I heard him,” said Parry Winzek.
“You want to join in this?” asked Will.
“No.”
“You shit,” said Timothy Lee. He glanced toward his companion and then back to Will. “So what? You don’t even come up to my collarbone, Stockton.”
Parry Winzek had stated in front of witnesses that he’d heard his friend agree not to report Will if he lost. Public opinion would be against Timothy Lee if he reneged; and in Sangaree, public opinion could be violent.
“Everybody heard you,” warned Will.
“Think that bothers me? You don’t trust my word?”
“Maybe Parry doesn’t trust your word either,” said Will, and when Timothy turned his head to look at Parry Winzek, Will hit him a hammerblow in the gut.
In Sangaree they don’t wait for you to take your glasses off, Will’s father used to say; and he should know, he’d died when Will was twelve, in a knife fight over a heartsinger. Though why anybody should be carrying drinking glasses on them, Will had not understood—he’d never seen a pair of spectacles till he left Sangaree.
A look of startlement and agony had come over Timothy Lee’s face. It was a vicious blow, aimed at the solar plexus, and he stopped in the exact position he’d been standing in, with the wind knocked out of him. His knees buckled slightly. Will seemed to have a thousand years in which to move and a clear field to do it in; he reached out in dreamlike fashion and jabbed his thumb forcefully just above Timothy Lee’s adam’s apple. This completed the cutoff to his air supply. Timothy Lee’s trachea collapsed, and so did he. With a gasping sound he dropped to his knees. A second later he was unconscious on the floor, still making fishlike sounds.
Bernadette was gathering her things, and Johnny was rising from his chair. Will was suddenly conscious that he’d been sweating, and hoped he didn’t smell as rank as he felt. Jack took Bemie’s arm and headed for the door. Will and Johnny followed, leaving Timothy Lee to the care of his friends and enemies in the Coeur de Noir.
Outside, Jack turned abruptly to Will. The words tumbled out as though he had no control over them. “Is it true that nobody can graduate into the Guard who hasn’t killed someone? Performed an execution, I mean?”
Bernadette looked horrified, and even Johnny, who tended not to register any emotion beyond a vaguely benign affection, appeared to be appalled.
Jack was too excited to realize he’d
