have protection from the law. He’d have money. More than enough to compensate Mrs. Smith and the others for the loss of their jobs. All he’d have to do was kill people, though he had promised himself he’d never earn his living that way again.
Not that there was any societal stigma involved in professional killing, at least among the Children of the Sun. Murder in the cause of a blood feud was honorable, and murder in the service of one’s sworn lord a sure way for a bright young person to advance. Other races had difficulty understanding this cultural tradition, though one crabbed Yendri philosopher had advanced the opinion that, since the Children of the Sun seemed incapable of practicing any form of birth control, perhaps it was best to let them indulge their need to slaughter themselves as a means of keeping their population at manageable levels.
Smith respected tradition as much as the next man. He just didn’t like to kill.
But it was what he was best at, and he had no other options that he could see.
Other than a dinner date with demons.
He had nearly reached the bottom of the hill, and was in the neighborhood of the grand hotels, the gracious private houses fronting on the sea. Cold waves boomed on the empty beach, but along the Glittering Mile it might have been summer, so many lights were lit, so many well-dressed people were out and promenading on the seafront or being jogged from one fashionable address to another in open palanquins.
Smith hurried through them with his ragged coat collar turned up, looking for the spa. It was easy to find: it covered several square blocks. Everything was on a grand scale, with a lot of white marble and soaring columns and domes. The main entry hall was lit with barrel-sized lanterns brilliant enough to have guided ships at sea, and Smith felt dreadfully conspicuous as he scuttled in out of the night. The desk clerk stared at him in disbelief.
Fortunately, however, he was expected, and so the clerk led him out through the scented gardens to the grandest suite in the complex. It looked like a temple from the outside. It looked like a temple from the inside, too, as Smith was to discover.
“It’s our old friend the caravan master, Nursie,” Lord Ermenwyr yowled in delight, flinging the vast double doors wide. The clerk paled and vanished into the night. Lord Ermenwyr was stark naked except for a flapping dressing gown of purple brocade and what appeared to be a pair of women’s underpants on his head. His smoking tube was clenched in a ferocious grin, and his pupils were tiny. Behind him, a prostitute was attempting to depart discreetly, in evident distress at lacking a certain item of her attire.
“Welcome, Caravan Master!” The lordling flung his arms around Smith. “My, you smell a lot better. Come in, it’s a catered affair, don’t you know! Lots of lovely excess. What?” he snapped at the girl, who had timidly pulled at his elbow. “Oh, you’ve no sense of romance at all.”
He yanked off the underpants and handed them to her, then turned with aplomb and took Smith’s arm in his, towing him from the hall. “Look at it all,” he said, waving a hand at the vaulted ceiling with its mural of fluttering cherubs. “Pretty grand after all those nights of wretched wilderness, eh? Of course, a Yendri would purse his sanctimonious lips and say the glorious immensity of the stars was a far more splendid canopy for one’s repose, but you know what I say to that?” He blew a juicy raspberry. “Oh, I love, love, love decadent luxuries! Look at this!”
Dropping Smith’s arm he ran to the immense canopied bed and hurled himself into the middle of the scarlet brocade counterpane, where he began to leap up and down. The canopy was a good fifteen feet in the air, held aloft on a gilded finial, so he ran no risk of bouncing into it.
“I—despise—Nature,” he panted. “Whoopee!”
“Master, did you pay that poor girl?” Balnshik came into the room, attired in a white robe demurely tied shut. “You’ve left the door open, darling. Hello, Smith.” She turned and caught his head in both her hands, giving him a kiss that left his knees weak. “Don’t mind him. He’s overexcited. You haven’t even offered him a drink, have you, you little beast?”
“Eeek! What was I thinking?” Lord Ermenwyr scrambled down and raced into the next room, reappearing