Principles of Angels by Jaine Fenn

as he’d finished speaking.
     
    Taro returned to his space. It wasn’t long before the lag who’d spoken to him earlier came over and asked, more curious than hostile, why he’d gone off like that. Taro decided it wouldn’t do any harm to let people know the Minister’s eye was on him, but when he said he was working for the Minister, the tart laughed and told him, ‘Hope yer not gonna start thinkin’ that makes you special - you ain’t the only one got Angel lineage, you know.’
     
    The girl beside him chimed in, ‘Our older sister shacked up with an Angel fer a while. Never got to wear the colours or take her name ourselves; still, word gets around, y’know.’
     
    ‘But now—’ He shrugged to show their fall from grace.
     
    ‘Aye, I know,’ Taro said. ‘Same fer me. I’ll deal with it.’
     
    The boy nodded, happy he’d made his point, and walked off. His sister said, ‘We was lucky though. Her girlfriend dumped her fer somethin’ pretty she found at the Exquisite Corpse, rather than . . . you know.’
     
    ‘The Exquisite Corpse? That place real?’ Malia had mentioned the name, he thought - and something about an alien who ran a bar in the Undertow? It’d sounded gappy to him: Malia had been wrecked at the time, so he’d assumed she’d been winding him up. Apparently not.
     
    The girl laughed ‘Aye, it’s real enough. It’s under the Merchant Quarter. Never been there, but they say Angels come from all over the Undertow. Only Angel brood get served, though. Anyone else prob’ly gets used fer target practice.’
     
    ‘No shit,’ murmured Taro. An Angel bar in Nual’s part of the Undertow - where better to overhear gossip about her? He still had his colours; that’d get him in. He just needed to work out how to get there.
     
    He was just about to ask the girl’s name when Keron came out the bar and shouted, ‘Hoi, you two! Less talk, more action!’
     
    She gave him an apologetic grin, pulled her top down and focused on the Street.
     
    Taro knew the drill. When he’d turned fourteen, Malia had given him a choice: find a trade, or find another place to live. Being good-looking and easy to get on with didn’t put mash in the pot or water in the skin in a normal troupe, and she wouldn’t be around for ever.
     
    Gappy idiot that he’d been, he’d thought she was wrong on both counts, and he’d set out to prove it. An older woman, a troupe leader, mother of a boy who’d dumped him, had come on to him just the week before - but of course he’d turned her down; she was old and he had his pick of the local action. He went back to her and offered himself to her; in return, he wanted the necklace he’d seen her boy palm from a topside boutique. It was as easy as that. He’d offered the necklace to Malia, and told her, proudly, how he got it. So that’s your choice. That’s what she’d said; not, Well done , or I knew you had something special. She’d looked at him oddly - he’d wondered if she’d been upset at his choice of occupation, but then she’d said, In the end, we’re all whores. You give pleasure, I take lives.
     
    Over the last three years she’d directly pimped for him half a dozen times, and told him to go find himself some trade two dozen more. Many of his own clients had become regulars - but other than the necklace, she’d never taken anything from him.
     
    Though he did it mainly for the cash, he didn’t mind the hustle. He liked sex, and he was good at it; doing it as business made everything simpler: there were no misunderstandings, no broken promises, no hurt feelings. All he had to do was put up an invisible shield, and keep the client on the far side of it. And the hustle was just a way of filling in time until the Minister took him on; he’d always known that was what he was destined for. So what if all his other relationships broke up within a month; he’d never cared for anyone enough to want to prolong things once they started to go