Grayson clutched the bottles tighter, and gave the man a wit-befuddled smile. If he could convince the soldiers that he was a street drunk, that someone else had dropped the boots beside him as he lay there in the mud...
"You," the soldier said again. His upper lip curled even as he spoke, as though the man were trying to avoid breathing the stench of the noxious mud and garbage. "Where'd these boots come from?"
"Wha-a?" Grayson slurred his speech and turned his grin idiotic.
"Sergeant!" Here was a new voice. Grayson followed its sound and saw another squad of soldiers coming up the street from the other direction. They must have sent this second patrol ahead to another main street so that they could work back, hoping to trap him between. The newcomer was an officer, his Guard's Lieutenant uniform more gold than green, looped with aiguillettes and tassels that glittered in the red sunlight. "Any
sign of him?"
"He came this way, sir. Look."
The two examined the cloak, bandages, and boots for a moment, their own boots only a meter from Grayson's bare, muddy feet. The lead officer shook his head. "He didn't get past us. You must have missed him."
"He might be trying to blend in with the street scum, sir,' the sergeant said. At this, the bottles trembled in Grayson's hands and his heart pounded so furiously he was certain it would give him away. "We could round them up and question them all."
"Pah! Or shoot them."
"I might be able to help you, Lieutenant." That new voice sent chills along Grayson's spine. Rags moved down the street, and a filthy and unshaven man lurched into view. It was the young man he'd thought was following him. He must have been close enough behind Grayson to see him preparing his hasty disguise!
Grayson tensed, readying himself. If he jumped up and ran, the soldiers would cut him down before he made it around the curve of the road, unless he could take them by surprise. He wondered how fast his bare and tender feet could move over broken chunks of sun baked ferrocrete.
"You see this guy?" the Lieutenant asked, holding up the boots.
"Sure did." The street dweller glanced at Grayson, his face neutral. "See that pipe?" he said, gesturing at the drainpipe above Grayson's mud pool. "Fella came tearing in here maybe a minute ago. Stripped off his boots, plopped 'em down there, and shinnied up that pipe like a leaflighter in heat." He pointed across the flat slab roofs back in the general direction of the palace. "He headed off across the roofs off that-a-way."
"Damn," the Lieutenant muttered. "He's trying to backtrack on us. You men! At the double! C'mon!"
The troop gathered into ragged ranks and clumped off down the street at a half-run. The one holding. Grayson's boots tossed them aside. When the soldiers were far enough away, he sat up slowly, dusting ineffectually at the mud caked on his tunic. "Thanks."
The man glanced up and down the street, then his dirty face with its scraggly growth of beard broke into a wide, unexpected grin. "Don't mention it. You looked like you were new in town."
"Well, you might say that. Who are you?"
The man gave a sweeping, polished bow. "Renfred Tor, at your service."
"I think it should be the other way around. I'm indebted to you, sir."
"Why were they after you?"
Grayson hesitated. His first inclination urged caution. The stranger seemed friendly enough, but maybe he was just looking for more information about the fugitive before turning him in. Picking his way across the street to retrieve his boots, Grayson turned various possibilities over in his mind. If he was going to have to do any more running, he would need those painfully tight boots.
Suddenly Grayson realized that the man had used two names. He could not possibly be a native of Trellwan! "You're an offworlder," he said, avoiding the other's question.
"You might say that." Tor's eyes shifted down the street "Offworlders don't seem very popular around here."
Grayson nodded and smiled ruefully. "I'm Grayson Carlyle. I was with the Commonwealth garrison Lance at the Castle."
"Pleased to meet you. Uh... you seem to have misplaced your 'Mech Lance."
"They misplaced me. The bandits attacked the Castle and I was left for dead. When I came to, my unit had already pulled out"
"Ah," said Tor.
"How about you? What are you doing here?"
Tor stared at Grayson a long moment, then told him, "I'm the DropShip pilot who brought those bandits here in the first place."
8
Renfred Tor was a native of Atreus, but it had been many long, standard years since he'd seen the capital of Marik's Free World League. At fourteen, he'd shipped out as cargo handler on a Tristar Lines freighter. By the time he was 20, he had worked his way up through sundry crews to deck officer. Then, he and his four brothers bought equal shares in an aging rustbucket freighter that they'd named the Invidious by the end of an evening of drunken celebration.
The celebration turned out to be premature. A scheme to transport laser rifles and man-portable inferno launchers to an embattled revolutionary front had ended with the revolution crushed, his partners imprisoned or broke, and himself and an unhapppy fifteen-man crew plotting a jump route series into the Lyran Commonwealth. Their flight had ended in the Commonwealth's Periphery, and Tor had been buying, borrowing, or scamming spare parts and new crewmembers to keep the Invidious going ever since. Five years of short-term contracts and