I kept my eyes fixed firmly on a point just above the girl's head. "Hey. I'm looking for Rembrandt."

"O-oh! I see. Just a moment, I'll go get him." She sashayed out from behind the counter and over to a door in the wall, glancing behind her to see if I was looking. I was. She smirked at me, knocked, then stuck her head in to say something. A moment later a pair of people came out of the door. One was a bald man in a sharp forest green suit, with fine features and skin the color of caff with plenty of cream. The other was a narrow-faced woman in long sleeves and a long skirt, younger than he was, pale-skinned and blonde.

"Is she alright?" the man was saying.

"She'll likely have a bruise, but she's more angry than hurt," replied the woman.

The man frowned. "As she should be. The guy's still here?"

"Morton's apprehended him."

"Good. Fayette will have a talk with him, I think." He glanced over at the chromed-up woman in the corner. She nodded and headed gracefully up the stairs, boards creaking beneath her titanium feet. I got the idea that 'talk' was a euphemism.

"So you're the one Clyde sent, are you?" the man said to me as he approached.

"That's right. You're Rembrandt?"

He cracked a very white smile. "To some. Most people call me Madam Adam, though." He extended a hand. I noticed his cufflinks were gold, shaped like the clasped-hands symbol of the Guild.

I took it, his palm warm and dry. "Sharkie," I said. "Good to meet you."

"Not Sawyer?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

I slumped a little. "If you like. Think I was the last one to hear about my own new name."

"Ha! It's better than some I know, at least." He turned to the blond woman, who waited at his side like an assistant. "Erica, do you mind keeping the place standing for about half an hour? I've got to help Miss Sharkie, here."

Erica gave me a suspicious look over her half-rimmed glasses-it fit her face well-before answering. "Of course, sir. About the matter upstairs-"

"Fayette can handle it, don't worry," Madam Adam interrupted. "Just keep an eye on things down here. You'll be fine."

Erica nodded firmly and went behind the counter. The redhead gave her an affectionate hug, and Erica tried prying her off to no avail.

"Alright. Follow me, please." Adam led me across the lobby and through another door on the back wall. We passed by bathrooms and a few storage rooms, then went through a steel door which he unlocked by passing his wrist over a scanner. Behind it the decor underwent a stark change, from dark, dim wood to bare concrete and sickly greenish fluorescents. He seemed comfortable to leave me at his back, which was both surprising and reassuring. We headed down a flight of stairs into some kind of service tunnel, the walls lined with conduits and dripping pipes.

"I hope Lisey didn't tease you too much," Adam said suddenly. "You seemed uncomfortable."

"The redhead? N-no, no. Not her fault." I paused as we edged around a big puddle on the tunnel floor. "She did seem to be having fun."

"She always does, I think. Even volunteers for overtime, weekends."

"Are most of your people like that?" I asked hesitantly. "Not to pry or anything."

We passed by a few side tunnels, either collapsed or ending at locked doors. "It's fine. Some genuinely enjoy the work, I'd say. Lisey among them. Others sort of fall into it, and find it tolerable enough to continue. Just like any other job. Yours truly was a little of both." He must have sensed my surprise, for he glanced back and winked. "You didn't think I started out as a madam, did you?"

"I-I don't know," I answered, flustered. "I never really thought about it. It's not exactly the kind of job I could do."

"Au contraire," Adam said. "I apologize for being uncouth, but I think you'd be in high demand."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "No shit. Me?"

"You've a rather unique appearance, meaning no offense. And we all have our peccadilloes, don't we?"

I supposed he was right, though I suspected mine were rather tamer than the one's he'd run into in this line of work. "Sure. But I'd rather be more to someone than a fetish."

"Everyone is someone's fetish, Miss Sharkie."

Someone in his line of work would look at it that way. "I'll take your word for it," I muttered. For a minute or two the only sound was the rhythmic clop-clop of his fancy shoes on concrete. Eventually he took us through an unblocked side door, up two flights of stairs and into an unfinished concrete foundation pit. "Your friend is up there, off to the left." he said while pointing to a ladder leading out. "Would you let Clyde know I said "One down, one to go?"

"Sure thing. Thanks for the help." I shook his hand again. He hadn't been an asshole or anything but for some reason I just wanted clear of him.

"Of course. Shall I tell Lisey you said hello?"

"Um-"

He laughed. "Kidding, I'm only kidding. Stay safe, Miss Sharkie." His green-clad back disappeared down the stairs, the fine clothes incongruous with their surroundings.

That was two very odd people I'd met already. At least the next one would be less of a surprise. I climbed out of the foundation into an alley between conplas buildings. No clue where I was, though I couldn't have gone too far. The only light was secondhand from signs and holos. I could hear the Port Town crowd not far off.

I went left as Adam had told me. After about a hundred feet of treading through garbage I was glad I couldn't see, I rounded a corner and found Marie there in the alley, leaned up against her vic. She was on the short side, thin but wiry, with silvery-blond hair pulled into a tight bun behind her head. Her face was tan, hard, raw-boned, but it cracked into an easy smile when she caught sight of me. "Sawyer! Ya made it!"

I shook my head at the name. "Yeah, yeah. I'm here. What's up?"

"Oh, just another day in paradise." She pulled deep on a cigarette. I could see the skeletal tattoos down her fingers, filled in with runes and stave patterns like Walker's. She wore tight jeans, a tank top, and a rivet-studded leather vest, letting me get a good look at her ink. The Holy Bones tats went all the way up her arm, radius and ulna and humerus traced out in stark black lines. There was a band of thorny white roses inked around her other bicep, the style totally different from the gang tattoos. Oh, and she had a gun, of course-a heavy-looking stainless automatic in a shoulder holster beneath her left arm. Altogether, for being in her forties she looked pretty damn good.

She finished the cig and ground it out with a pattern-stitched boot. "How've you been, Sharkie? You're lookin' a hell of a lot better than last time I seen you."

"I hope so. That was about the worst I've ever looked. I'm healing up quick, though. I'd say I'm maybe...ninety percent good?"

"Glad to hear it. The other night was more like single digits. Fuckin' Blue assholes. But hey!" She perked up. "We get to stick it to 'em today. You bring it?" I opened my jacket, letting her see the package. "Fuckin' sweet. You ready to take a little ride?"

"Yeah, let's go." I moved closer to her vic, finally getting a look at it in the dim light. "Where are we-whoa. This is your ride, Marie?"

She grinned at it proudly. "Yup. Helluva lot nicer than that hog of a truck I had last time, huh." She wasn't wrong. She'd brought an older Norden Khamsin, which was a ute-a funny kind of vehicle that's a two-door car in the front, pickup truck in the back. It had two-tone paint: a dried-blood burgundy metal flake over a black that sparkled like the night sky in ancient movies. It was obviously custom, nicer than anything it would have come out of the factory wearing. The thing was absolutely slammed, too, frame rails almost sitting on the pavement. The deep-dish racing wheels were tucked just perfectly into the fenders. Dezhda would be beside herself if she could see it.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"Nice? It's fuckin' beautiful, Marie. Who did the paint?"

"You're lookin' at her. Hand me a wrench and I wouldn't know what end to use. But a spray gun?" She shrugged. "I got an eye for it, I guess."

She was being humble. Even in the low light, this thing was magazine-quality."Well, it looks wild. The way that flake lays, man..."

"Wait'll you hear it start. Hop in." I did as she asked, heading around to the passenger side and folding myself though the low door. I felt the suspension elevate to compensate for my weight, but the car was so low I still felt like I was sitting on the pavement. Other than the rollcage, the interior was old-school, all black with a three-man bench seat. Maybe two and a half-man, with me in there. Marie swung in next to me. She fished around under the seat, coming up with a six-pack of Ippon Light tallboys dangling from her hand. Two were already gone. "Wanna beer?" she asked. "They oughta be cold, yet."

"Uh, sure." She tossed me a can, pulled off another for herself and took a long gulp. "'Kay. I'm sick of smellin' that damn water. Let's get outta here." She turned on the ignition, flipped a complex and seemingly random sequence of switches on the center console, then hit one last toggle. An electric fuel pump whined for about a second, then she punched the starter button. The engine fired up immediately, an angry, throaty roar spitting out of the sidepipes. It settled down to a lumpy idle, coughing and snarling.

"That's a nasty cam you got in this thing," I marveled.

"Yup. It's custom. I know a guy back in Ansuz pit; he built the motor for me."

"What kind of motor?"

She looked over, grinning proudly. "It's a V8, a 427 stroker. Titanium bottom end, Vought fuel and spark, and a big fuckin' Lysholm blower. Nine hundred horse at all four wheels last time I dyno'd it."

I let out a low whistle as she pulled the column shifter into gear and pulled up to the alley mouth. Her engine was worth more than my apartment. Dezhda would love this.

"So, what do you use all that for?" I ventured as she honked her way across the sidewalk and turned north into traffic. "Stunting on Fourth Ward bosos at red lights?"

She scoffed. "Well, it ain't like it won't do that. But I take it racing, mostly. We run time attack out in the deadlands between pits. Rallies too. Sometimes on pavement, sometimes dirt. You'd get a kick out of it if you're into cars."

"I'd like to go sometime," I said. I was thinking of Dezi, too.

"We'll get you out there eventually," Marie said. "Once you see where quarrymen're raised a lot of things start to make sense-" She cut herself off to blow the horn at a half-dressed bargeman stumbling aimlessly across the street. "Outta the road, you drunk motherfucker! Move!" she screamed out the window. The guy looked up at her real slow and bleary-like, then resumed his progress with nary a change in speed.

When he finally got out of the way, Marie flipped him the bird and floored it. The engine bellowed loud as gunfire, the supercharger shrieked like a banshee, and my eyeballs did their best to push through the back of my head as we shot forward with lunatic force. She let off after less than a second, but we'd already left that intersection far behind.

"Kings damn..." I muttered.

She smiled at me. "I know, right? It's ruined me. Can't drive anything slower, now." She took another big swallow of beer. "I fuckin' hate Port Town, man. Rough, dirty Kingsdamn place."

I took a sip too. "I'll say. I saw some barge lady up and kill someone in the middle of a fight, earlier."

"You got to be careful. There's some mean-ass motherfuckers that run those boats." She shook her head. "What were they fightin' over?"

"It was the barge crew and some Amsidyne steveys. Someone called someone else a dolo, I think."

Marie laughed humorlessly. "Of course. Imagine that. A slave gettin' mad another slave calls him 'slave'. We're all fuckin' slaves here except for the bastards in Vitroix. Stupid." She crushed the beer and dropped the can on the floor.

We were quiet the next few minutes. The Khamsin growled its way north, out of Port Town and into Fifth Ward. I nursed my beer and watched the lights go by outside the window. Bright, dark, bright, dark. Vatmen stomped home in their orange jumpsuits. A girl gang catcalled the car from the steps of a tenement, gleaming machetes dangling from their hands. A small child watched us, bright-eyed, from a half-burnt store.

I looked away, finished my beer and crushed the can into a flat puck of metal. "So are you part of Walker's crew?" I asked. "Or do you just help him out sometimes?"

Marie's face screwed up as she thought. "Kinda both? He ain't my boss, technically, but being a Rune he can dragoon up whoever he needs if they ain't in the middle of something. We go back a while, so he calls me first, I guess." She looked over at me, smirking. "We went out for a few years, you know? Almost got married."

If I'd had any beer left I would have spat it out. "Seriously?"

"Yeah! What's so weird about that?"

I rubbed my face, still kind of shocked. "I don't know, Marie, he just...he doesn't seem like the marrying type."

"You ain't wrong, I suppose. That's why we split. The Holy Bones're his life, Sharkie. If he's married to anything it's the gang. One day we just up and decided it wasn't gonna work, and we broke it off. Stayed friends, though. And to be honest, it worked out good for me."

"How's that?"

"A little while later I started realizin' I was more into chicks anyway." She looked over and winked.

I laughed a little and looked down. "Somethin' funny?" said Marie with a dangerous glance.

"No, no," I said hurriedly. "Just, I'm kind of in the same boat."

"No shit?"

I felt myself blushing a little. I was embarrassed, but I hadn't had much of a chance to talk about this before. Especially not with another woman. "Yeah, man. It's like, I'm into guys, I've gone out with 'em before and all that. I just think I'm into girls more."

"Yyyyup. Right on. I know that feeling. You got a squeeze?"

I shook my head. "Nah. I know this girl, real nice, real cute. But I've only known her a little while and she's got a boyfriend."

Marie hissed through her teeth. "Damn. Too damn bad, Sharkie."

"No, it's fine. Seriously. We're friends, and I like her as a friend, and I don't want to screw it up."

"I get it. Still, though. It sucks. Hey, you're young. You probably heard this a thousand times from people my age, but someone'll come along eventually." She gave me a sly little grin. "In fact, I ain't seein' anybody right now, so if you wanted to grab some barbecue when we're done..."

If I was flushed before it was a full-on sewer flood now. I probably looked like a beet. I looked at Marie in a different way than I had before. Sure, she was older, a few lines just starting at the corners of her eyes, but she was very far from ugly.

Marie cracked up. "Kiddin'! I'm just kidding, Sharkie. No need to get heated."

Ah. A joke. No surprise there, really. I didn't know why I'd even gotten my hopes up. I was still hurt, though, and angry that I was hurt. Felt like being a kid again, like all those times being excluded, being called too weird and big and ugly. My face was hot with it.

Marie must have noticed, for she quit laughing as we pulled up to a red light. "Oh, I didn't mean it that way, hon! You know I didn't! It's just-Well, I gotta be twice your age, Sharkie. I ain't tryin' to rob cradles, here. I'm sorry." She gave me a sympathetic look. It made me feel a little better, but I could help thinking of a quote from a book I'd read: 'Pity is the greatest enemy of desire.'

I glance back at her, hoping that I didn't still look like a tomato. "All good, Marie. It's not your job to worry about me."

"Now that just ain't true," she said firmly. "You ain't inked yet, sure, but as far as I'm concerned you're as much in the Bones as anyone-and Bones Kingsdamn look out for each other. I worry about you, you worry about me-even after I drop a dumbass line like I just did, I hope."

She actually sounded serious. I still wasn't used to people that weren't my dad actually, you know, giving a shit about how I felt. It felt weird, in a nice way."It's all good," I repeated, though with a bit of a smile this time. "Walker'd probably be annoying about it anyway."

"Whoof!" Marie shuddered. "He'd never quit bustin' me. 'Was I too short for you, 'Rie? Well?' I can hear it now."

I laughed a little. "He that worried about his height?"

"He's cool about it most of the time." She smirked as she hit the gas and turned left, remembering something. "Though I think the main reason he asked me to dance at the Saint Anthras Day fair was 'cause I was the shortest girl there-and I still had an inch on 'im!" She laughed again, quieter this time. "Fuck, that was a long time ago. Never get old, Sharkie. It turns you into a ramblin' Rik-damned weirdo."

"I'd rather be alive and weird than cool and dead." I said it more to myself than to Marie. Whenever I'd come home sad or embarrassed or ashamed, Sawada'd always reminded me to keep perspective. "This too shall pass, my girl," he'd say. "You're still alive. Maybe you're sad today, maybe you're sad tomorrow. But you got a whole life's worth of days ahead of you. Plenty of time to be happy, too."

We lapsed into silence once more as Marie kept heading north. At the edge of Fifth Ward we went through a dark zone. Marie flipped on the high beams. The laser-pumped lights cut through dark so deep it seemed substantial, something that would weigh you down, choke off your breath. She took it slow, avoiding pot holes that could have been one foot deep or a hundred, watching for traps or ambushes. A few vagrants fled our lights with eyes covered. Once or twice I made out vague figures on crumbling roofs, holding bows with arrows nocked or just watching. Burnouts, probably. I even saw a purple flash in a window, there and gone-a pergato, though not nearly as large as Junior from the park.

Ten or so nerve-straining minutes and we were through, beneath the faded lifelights of Eighth Ward. It was a nicer part of D-block, most of the buildings real solid structures rather than shanties. Pretty quiet too, I'd heard, half-abandoned after the wood export ban killed all the carpentry and cabinetry shops that once lined its streets. Its only other claims to fame were being far enough west of the Chasm to touch K-block, and being very solidly a Blue Division hood. I glanced back at the huge Bones skelly-hand sticker across the back window and wondered just what we were doing here.