I looked up and saw no sign for it. “Never heard of it.”

“Basalt brand, not quite up to Timbiqui, but good. They brew it up in Contressa, where Broad River meets the ocean. I have it brought in.”

I reached into my pocket for money, but my benefactor shook her head. “My treat.”

“I owe you for saving my life.” The man behind her snorted as he parsed the sentence.

“If lives being saved is the criterion, Mustang should be buying for both of us, for a long time.” Her brown eyes glittered with red-and-yellow highlights from the sign. “You’d have tipped his stool back, then what, stomped on his groin and his throat?”

“One or the other. I’m new here and don’t know him that well.”

“If you did, it would have been both. Repeatedly.” The beers arrived and she slid one to me. We raised them and clinked them together. “I’m Alba Dolehide.”

“Sam Donelly.” I drank and the beer was good, very good, but I found myself distracted by the tattoo on her right forearm. It was the Lament insignia.

She lowered her bottle and smiled. “So, what is a MechWarrior like you doing in a scrapyard like this?”

“Could be a long story. Do you want to sit?”

“Sure.” She started off through the crowd and I found myself distracted again, but not just by her body. She moved so well, so supple and lithe was she, that parts of me were inclined to aching. Her long black hair had been loosely knotted with a red bandana and swayed back and forth from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. She wore her sleeveless gray shirt snug where it should have been snug, and that applied to her cargo pants as well.

What distracted me more than her walk was the way the others looked at her. Whereas I’d been regarded with cold hostility when I came in, my being in her company offered me a dispensation. Some folks even gave me a nod, about as close to a welcome as I’d get before I’d bled alongside them, and maybe not even then.

Alba reached a table that, while she was still incoming, had been fully populated. By the time I got to it, an ashtray leaking smoke and several condensation rings were the only evidence that anyone had been there. She drew a chair back against a wall and I came around to her left. My back remained a bit open, but if anyone in here wanted me dead, they weren’t going to worry about angling to shoot me in the back.

She sipped her beer. “You were going to tell me why you’re here.”

“Same reason as you are, I suspect. Victories are bought with blood or gold. Our blood, their gold.”

Alba nodded easily, both in agreement with what I’d said, and acknowledging that she’d heard that sort of reasoning before. “Gold is to be had here, but I thought this was going to be a private little affair. Someone else sent for you because I know I didn’t, which means you’re not on my team. As the saying goes, you’re either with us or against us.”

“There’s another saying: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”

She regarded me carefully with sloe eyes. “You have enemies?”

“A guy named Baxter Hsu. There was some trouble on Acamar and he set me up to take a fall for him. I was told he was heading here, to Basalt, so I came after him.”

She shook her head. “Name’s not coming up in my directory, Sam. He’s not one of mine.”

I glanced around the room. “I notice no Dracs or Caps. Personal preference or…?”

“My employers’ preference.” She shrugged. “Pity, since they are good fighters, but the crew here will do fine.”

“They look hard enough.” I scanned the room again. “You’re right. He’s not here, at least, not here.”

“Describe him.”

“Average everything, black hair, brown, almond eyes, yellow skin. A bit more cunning than I expected, but I think someone was pulling his strings.”

“Could be one of millions here.” She regarded me quizzically. “You gonna climb those strings and go after the puppeteer?”

I drank, savoring the heavy taste of the hops. “Not unless he knots those strings on me. Now, if Bax isn’t one of yours, who would he be working for?”

“Someone else. Take your pick.” Alba shrugged her shoulders. “Warriors are being collected here like coins.”

“Who’s got the biggest collection?”

She smiled. “You follow the analogy. Good. Most of the folks here think analogies are why you sneeze during pollen season.”

“Flattery. I like it.” I gave her a nod. “And a nice deflection of my question.”

“If you’re as smart as I think you are, you can answer the question all by yourself.”

I thought for a moment. “Emblyn, of course, can afford as much muscle as he wants. But the biggest collection isn’t always the best.”

Alba smiled in spite of herself. “Wise words. The best collection here might not be paid quite as much as the largest, but there will be a lot of slugs and plugged coins that won’t ever spend their gold.”

“Just leak their blood.”

“Exactly.”

“What does the best pay?”

She shook her head. “You’re still an unknown quantity, Donelly. I will take some time to check you out. You’ll be talking to others, I’m sure, so you’ll know the going rates and see what you can negotiate. I’d expect nothing less.”

“And I’d do nothing less.” I finished my beer and set the bottle down. “Thank you. I’m staying at the Grand Germayne. If they don’t have this in the bar, I’ll ask them to order it. I’ll buy when we speak again.”

“I hope we can reach agreement.” She nodded as I rose. “I’d rather it be your gold than your blood.”

Manville, Capital District

Basalt

Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere

29 January 3133

My previous comments about the tradecraft of leaving threads in doors and the like, and the futility of doing that because the others in the craft know to look for such things, came around full circle as I returned to my room in the Grand Germayne. When I’d left my room, instead of trapping a thread between door and jamb, I just left one on the floor close to where it might have fallen were the door opened. The careful sneak subsequently entering my room would notice it and would likely believe that housekeeping or someone else had opened the door, knocking the thread loose. They then had to decide if they would leave it there—which they would if they wanted to get in and get out, since I would blame housekeeping for the intrusion—or replace it.

The thread had been trapped just below knee height, which is the recommended area, since no one ever looks there. The only reason for putting the thread back was because they wanted me to think things were normal in my room. They wanted to surprise me and, while I was getting used to the idea that I might as well not even have a door on my room, surprises I could do without.

Being unarmed at the moment, the dodge of pretending to be room service, or a valet, really wasn’t going to work. Instead of opening the door, I backtracked to the lifts and used the house comlink to call my room. I let it ring four times and got no answer. I called again, waited for four rings, and hung up. I did that three more times and finally got an answer.

It was a female voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “Hello?”

“It’s me, Sam. You’ll be a long time waiting for me to join you.”

My comment met with momentary silence, then she growled. “Gypsy sent me to fetch you.”

“Gypsy?”

“You know him. He’s quite handy.”

I nodded and her voice clicked into place. I’d not recognized it because she was speaking without her jaw wired shut. “Ms. Elle, so glad you escaped Aunt Helen.”