belonged-along Moke Rahone, specialist in curiosa. It wasn’t powered, but it wasn’t locked either. I slid it back and looked inside.
There was a empty waiting area, full of vitrines that were full of junk. I walked in.
"Yo, che-bai, je tuerre? Art t’home, forbye?" I said in broad patwa. Nobody answered this brilliant conversational sally, but maybe Moke Rahone, dealer in curiosa, didn’t like being shouted at.
There was a door with the Intersign glyph for "boss inside" on it, and I opened that one too.
Kiffit is a dry planet. It was wet in that cubie, and dark. I stood there long enough for my nose to tell me what the smell was, and then I backed out. Then I waited a moment, got my torch out of my pocket, and went back in.
I’ve slaughtered pigs and I’ve killed men, but it wasn’t like either one. When I was ten years old a field hand on our farm got caught in the harvester. He was half-shredded before we could stop the team, and the sweet-metal stink was just like this.
Moke Rahone’d been human. Funny how your body knows a smell before your brain does.
Brother Rahone hadn’t got caught in a harvester, though. I turned the torch on him and studied what I saw like my life depended on it, which it might.
Somebody’d nailed Moke Rahone to his desk and butchered him open. It was dainty-like. Real bodysnatcher work, done with something sharp-something that didn’t burn like a pocket laser or chew up the meat like a vibro.
What this meant to me was that Brother Rahone wasn’t in the paying for cargo business anymore, which put me in what Paladin calls your basic delicate moral quandary, because I had to deliver Gibberfur’s cargo to someone or call in the Guild. Terrific.
And there was one other thing. It was sticking up out of Rahone’s insides and it hadn’t been part of his original manifest. Hadn’t noticed it before in the general confusion, but it might tell me who killed him, and who might be interested in taking over his cargo.
"Trouble, Butterfly?" said Paladin through the RTS.
I rubbed my jaw where it felt electric-furry. "Um. Rahone’s retired from darktrade business. Messy."
I pulled off my glove and yanked out the optional extra somebody’d left with Brother Rahone. What I got for my trouble was long and thin, pointed at one end and with feathers at the other. It was mostly red, but where it was dry it was a kind of blue animal bone with carving on it.
I’d seen bone like that before. In The Knife Worth A Afterlife. Hellflower work.
I wondered how Tiggy’d got the whistle on my kick and its new home and why he cared. Hellflower honor, probably-making sure I didn’t see the profit I’d dragged him out of his way to get. I wrapped up the wand in a piece of thermofax I found. Maybe I’d take it back to him up close and personal.
I’d just shut the door of the inner room behind me when the outer door opened. The hellflower wasn’t Tiggy, but he looked real pleased to see me anyway.
"Ea, higna," the hellflower said. Then he went for his heat.
I’d decided more than a week ago that hellflowers was bad news, which gave me almost enough edge on this one to get out of the way. I went down behind a bench so his first shot went high and then I sprayed the room with blaster fire, hoping to get lucky.
I didn’t. The bench stopped his first bolt, so I picked it up and threw it at him. He thought that was real amusing. He threw it back, but I wasn’t waiting around for the critical reviews and had already made it back through the inner door into Brother Rahone’s office.
I found the lock in the dark and used it. The light switch was next to it. With room lights the thing on the desk looked even worse. The smell was something awful and this time I noticed that the floor was covered in blood.
"Higna, yai," said this friendly conversational voice from the other side of the door. The hellflower wasn’t mad-far from it, the voice seemed to say. He liked my style. We could be best
There was a empty waiting area, full of vitrines that were full of junk. I walked in.
"Yo, che-bai, je tuerre? Art t’home, forbye?" I said in broad patwa. Nobody answered this brilliant conversational sally, but maybe Moke Rahone, dealer in curiosa, didn’t like being shouted at.
There was a door with the Intersign glyph for "boss inside" on it, and I opened that one too.
Kiffit is a dry planet. It was wet in that cubie, and dark. I stood there long enough for my nose to tell me what the smell was, and then I backed out. Then I waited a moment, got my torch out of my pocket, and went back in.
I’ve slaughtered pigs and I’ve killed men, but it wasn’t like either one. When I was ten years old a field hand on our farm got caught in the harvester. He was half-shredded before we could stop the team, and the sweet-metal stink was just like this.
Moke Rahone’d been human. Funny how your body knows a smell before your brain does.
Brother Rahone hadn’t got caught in a harvester, though. I turned the torch on him and studied what I saw like my life depended on it, which it might.
Somebody’d nailed Moke Rahone to his desk and butchered him open. It was dainty-like. Real bodysnatcher work, done with something sharp-something that didn’t burn like a pocket laser or chew up the meat like a vibro.
What this meant to me was that Brother Rahone wasn’t in the paying for cargo business anymore, which put me in what Paladin calls your basic delicate moral quandary, because I had to deliver Gibberfur’s cargo to someone or call in the Guild. Terrific.
And there was one other thing. It was sticking up out of Rahone’s insides and it hadn’t been part of his original manifest. Hadn’t noticed it before in the general confusion, but it might tell me who killed him, and who might be interested in taking over his cargo.
"Trouble, Butterfly?" said Paladin through the RTS.
I rubbed my jaw where it felt electric-furry. "Um. Rahone’s retired from darktrade business. Messy."
I pulled off my glove and yanked out the optional extra somebody’d left with Brother Rahone. What I got for my trouble was long and thin, pointed at one end and with feathers at the other. It was mostly red, but where it was dry it was a kind of blue animal bone with carving on it.
I’d seen bone like that before. In The Knife Worth A Afterlife. Hellflower work.
I wondered how Tiggy’d got the whistle on my kick and its new home and why he cared. Hellflower honor, probably-making sure I didn’t see the profit I’d dragged him out of his way to get. I wrapped up the wand in a piece of thermofax I found. Maybe I’d take it back to him up close and personal.
I’d just shut the door of the inner room behind me when the outer door opened. The hellflower wasn’t Tiggy, but he looked real pleased to see me anyway.
"Ea, higna," the hellflower said. Then he went for his heat.
I’d decided more than a week ago that hellflowers was bad news, which gave me almost enough edge on this one to get out of the way. I went down behind a bench so his first shot went high and then I sprayed the room with blaster fire, hoping to get lucky.
I didn’t. The bench stopped his first bolt, so I picked it up and threw it at him. He thought that was real amusing. He threw it back, but I wasn’t waiting around for the critical reviews and had already made it back through the inner door into Brother Rahone’s office.
I found the lock in the dark and used it. The light switch was next to it. With room lights the thing on the desk looked even worse. The smell was something awful and this time I noticed that the floor was covered in blood.
"Higna, yai," said this friendly conversational voice from the other side of the door. The hellflower wasn’t mad-far from it, the voice seemed to say. He liked my style. We could be best
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