I walked quickly away, jimmying my way through the crowd and leaving curses in my wake. It wasn't like fights were uncommon in D, but you still didn't want to hang around for the loser's friends to show up-though the tweaker's had left pretty quickly. I crossed the street without looking, jumped at the blare of an ancient jingle-hack's horn as its brakes squealed. I ignored the driver's harangue as he wrenched the truck back into gear. A whole family of quarriers filled the stakebed. The children's wide eyes followed me as I kept moving.

I really hadn't liked the way poor Dezhda looked at me, there. Made me feel like a real bastard. Maybe once the shock wore off, she'd be glad. Maybe I'd done her a favor. Yeah, sure, and Dag would hire me back tomorrow. Dezhda hadn't really been a reason. She'd been an excuse. I felt bad for her, bad I'd probably caused her trouble with her boss. Trouble sleeping too, maybe. Try as I might, though, I couldn't muster any remorse for the tweaker. I wondered if he was still curled up on the floor like a spooked sewerbug. I wondered if he was still breathing.

It wasn't the first time I'd done something like this. D-Block is not a place conducive to sheltered childhoods. Once, when I was fifteen or sixteen, 'Sawada Finishing School' (as I called it) had let out early. I'd been running around with some neighborhood kids, the children of vat workers and waste processors, small-time dealers and petty thieves. We were running around tagging, spraybombing 'art' on walls of sheet metal and conplas and acid-eaten brick and doing a little shoplifting as part of the bargain.. Me and another kid, a boy my age or a little older, ended up in some damp alley after running from an irate shopkeeper.

With the two of us alone we'd ended up getting into an argument over who got what share of the loot. I didn't even remember what it was, exactly. He'd shoved me, I shoved him back, he threw a punch and I hit him. Then he'd pulled a knife and I hit him a few more times until his skull cracked hard against the cinderblocks and he tumbled to the pavement boneless as a gelfoam toy. I left him there where he fell and told no one, not even Sawada. When I realized later it had been two weeks since I'd seen him, I felt...nothing, really. Certainly not guilty-which, funny enough, was something I ­had felt bad about.

I didn't know what I was feeling now. There was a taut and nervous energy running through me, like that feeling you get after too little sleep and too much caffeine. Like you're looking at everything three times a second but still missing something. There were too many people around. Bumping me, pushing me, looking at me. I felt every inch of my height, right then. Had to get away.

Finally I slipped into a narrow, shaded alley, the silhouettes of dumpsters and rusting machinery looming in the dark. I tried to catch my breath against the wall. It wasn't working. I inhaled deep as I could and still felt like I wasn't getting enough air. What the fuck was wrong with me? Was I feeling guilty about what I'd done? I really, really thought about it.

No, I decided. I really didn't. Maybe that in and of itself was the problem. Could be it was that I'd fucked over Dezhda, or the fact that I'd acted so stupidly.

Maybe it was that I'd liked hitting him.

None of that really mattered right now, I told myself. The fact was it had happened, and all I could do now is deal with the consequences. I stood there another minute or two, letting my breathing slow, focusing on the cool feeling of the conplas wall against my forehead.

"...size of a fucking tail barge. Where in the fuck'd she go?"

"Down here, maybe? Kingshit, it's dark."

Voices. First female, then male. I'd heard them before. They weren't laughing now. Tweaker's friends had come back after all. Immediately I crouched low as I could and scuttled behind what looked like a half-corroded commercial stove.

For once I was glad to live in D-block. In Vitroix and B I'd heard they cycled the lights up and down every few hours, like the old day-and-night cycle. Here we lived in perpetual gloom. Sawada said it was on purpose, to make having so many different shifts easier. The shadows hid me as I watched through the stove's gutted shell.

"Don't you have a light?" That was the man speaking. The pair of them were silhouetted in the alley's mouth, slowly walking towards my hiding spot. Oily metal shone dully in their hands.

"It's dead," said the woman. Her voice was husky for someone so thin. "Never charged it this morning."

"Well, that was fucking dumb."

"Sure, and where's yours at, tva?"

"Shut it," the man muttered. "Swear to kings she came this way..." He was close enough now that I could make out the knife in his hand. Six-inch fixed blade with a clip point, the type sold for a few denars at gomi stands all over D. They were brittle, dull, prone to rust, and perfectly deadly if stuck in the right place. The lady had a plastic pistol, the small and cheap sort you used once then dropped in a garbage can. It was obvious what they wanted to do when they found me.

All I had on me was two flashlights and my own fixed-blade. Far from ideal. I'd messed around throwing knives before-what little girl who'd seen Sura the Vampire Maid hadn't?-but I'd never gotten any good at it. That did give me an idea, though. I pulled my steel and waited for them to get closer.

"What'd they say about Zaemon?" the woman asked.

The man spat. "Spleen's burst and his brain's bleeding. Almost a hundy he's in the vats by morning."

"That fucking cunt."

Well. That was one question answered.

They were quite close, now. Twenty feet. I hesitated, feeling the knurled rubber of my knife's grip. Was I really going to do this? Hitting someone was one thing, but this was assault with a deadly weapon. Premeditated murder. But the moment passed. I ought to have been shaking like a junkie, but for some reason my body felt calm and steady. They could have let things lie, but instead they were here to kill me. And regardless of their reasons, I wasn't just going to lie down for them. So I pulled my spare light out and tossed it in a high arc, way over their heads.

It landed behind them with a crack of plastic against pavement.

"What was-"

They both whirled around to look, and I was moving. Because of her gun, the woman had to go first. She was just turning back around when I reached her. Never having stabbed anyone before, I erred on the side of caution and did it hard as I could. The knife went hilt-deep into the side of her neck. I felt warm blood spatter my hand for an instant before she collapsed, taking the blade with her. "Shit." The word came out half growled, the grunt of an ape. It barely sounded like me.

The man was staring at me, knife held up like a talisman. He looked like he couldn't decide whether to be pissed or terrified. "Rad-sucking bitch," he bit out, and came at me blade first.

I backed away from the first wild swing, but then he moved in with loose-jointed, almost drunken suddenness. I got my arm up just in time to keep his knife out of my throat. The feeling of steel grinding on my ulna almost made me stumble. It bound up the knife, though, just long enough for me to put my other fist into his throat. He recoiled, and before he could recover I grabbed him by the face and smashed his head one, two, three times into the wall until there was a wet and hollow cracking sound and then I dropped him, panting, sweating, heart pounding so hard my chest ached. I was pissed off, terrified, fucking excited for some reason. I stood there stock still and trying to breathe for about five seconds before doubling over and spewing spicy chicken and noodles onto the pavement.

When I finished puking, I put my forehead against the brick and just leaned there, like I'd been doing when they found me. I'd killed two people. Completely on purpose. Without waiting for them to take a swing, even. I didn't know what to think.

There was a wet feeling on my left elbow and I realized I was bleeding pretty good from the cut on my arm. I'd have to go see Sawada to get it stitched-

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Sawada. The thought of facing him after what I'd done almost made me cry like a kid. Then I realized I'd have to pull my knife out of the woman before I left, both because it was evidence and Sawada had given it to me as a gift, and my eyes actually did start watering. If I hadn't tried to take the nano. If I'd just ditched work to take it. If I'd stayed in instead of going drinking, if I'd stopped after one, if I'd just ignored that fucking tweaker. If if if.

But fuck that, I realized. Standing here wishing things were different wouldn't do anything. What was done was done.

I bent down and gingerly pulled my knife out of the woman's neck. The sound almost made me heave again. I shook it a few times, blood wicking off the ceramic coating, then sheathed it under my coat. My cut I bound up as best I could with a strip torn off the hem of my shirt.

I looked toward the alley mouth, toward light softened by fog, shuttered by scissoring legs and beat-up cars. No, I wasn't going that way. I was pretty sure the other end of this alley let out on Rochelante near the Cage. From there it wasn't far to Sawada's. I flicked on my remaining light and headed deeper in.

Only to be confronted by a man standing with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, watching me in the calm-wary way I might have looked at an unfamiliar cat. I froze. How long had he been there?

"Now, correct if if I'm wrong, but you seem to be having a rough night." The voice coming from under his wide-brimmed hat was raspy with smoke, its accent a broad quarry drawl. I flipped off my light and drew my knife, crouching. A muscle in my face quivered. Not again.

"Don't get any ideas, little miss. I got a gun on you, and I'm a little tougher to distract than those jackasses." He coughed. "Ain't here to hurt you, anyway. In fact I wanna give you a hand."

What the fuck was he on about? "With what?" I called. The sound of my own voice shocked me, it was so low and rough. Shaky, even.

"Them two you just did for. Do me a favor and look at their faces."

He had the gun, so I listened. I flicked my light back on and aimed it at the woman. I had to flip her over with my toe. I cringed, but her features were slack, not frozen in shock like I thought they might be. That didn't keep me from seeing what the stranger wanted me to see.

"Aw, hell," I muttered.

Below her left eye was tattooed a pair of blue triangles, one a little bigger than the other. I hadn't even noticed them in Orrech's earlier. She was Blue Division, a guard, a made man. I didn't want to touch what was left of the other one's head but I was sure I'd find the same mark.

"Yeah. Hell." His accent almost made it two syllables, hay-ill. "Blues are gonna be all over your ass now."

"But nobody-"

"Somebody always sees. And it ain't like you were too stealthy there in Orrech's earlier."

My eye was twitching again. "You saw that?"

He laughed quietly. "A friend did. Said some crazy jo-san the size of a Praetor kicked the absolute shit out of Zaemon Pak right in the middle of the floor. I was curious, and here we are. I'm guessin' that was you?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Sheeit. He was pretty important, you know that? Ran distribution for the whole Third Ward."

Kings' bones. If what he said was true, I really was fucked. "Those two said he was probably dead."

"S'what I heard, too." He fumbled around in his jacket, pulled out a cig and lit it with a match like somebody's grandfather. "And there ain't no probably about that mess behind you. 'Twould seem you got a certain, shall we say, facility for this sorta work."

That wasn't really a compliment I wanted. "Where the hell are you going with this?"

Harsh smoke reached my nose as he puffed away. He smoked the same nasty bac that Dragan did on break. "You might've noticed that lately, relations between Blue Division and the Holy Bones ain't been too, ah, cordial."

That was an understatement. "Lots of heads turning up on Clasp Row, yeah."

He coughed out a chuckle. "Yeah. Plenty of traditionalists round here. But what I'm gettin' to is, you already met the Blues, and from here it don't seem like you an' them get along too well. I play for the other team."

"You're with the Bones?"

"Yes'm." There was another puff of bitter smoke. "I'll be honest, we ain't doin' so good. But neither are they. It's just been a fucking quagmire, goin' back and forth. Somethin's gotta change or things'll get way out of hand."

I frowned, realizing something. "Is this a fucking job interview?"

"Aw, come on!" he laughed. "You're doin' great so far!"

"I'm not a gangster."

"You do a pretty good impression. And you ain't got much of a choice anyway."

"The fuck does that mean?" I asked, eyes narrowed.

"The Blues'll have a warrant out for a big lady with black hair by morning, most like. Only reason you got to Zaemon in the first place is cause of the war, in fact. They're short-staffed as we are." He dropped his cig and crushed it. "So listen. We say you're a prospect, you fucked up, didn't know who you were clipping. We make restitution-relations ain't broke down completely-and wa-fuckin-la, you work for us and there's no contract out on your ass."

I didn't like being herded like this, so I cranked out some bravado I didn't really feel. "So maybe I say no. Maybe I clip you too, gun or not. You don't know me."

"I know you won't last a day if you say no, and you won't last an hour if you do manage to kill me, little miss."

"Hour longer than you."

He scoffed. "Kings. Pretty good impression of bein' fuckin' nuts, too. Let's be real about this."

Yeah. Lets. He really did have me down an alley without a piece in every sense. And I did need a job. "They'll really let it go? I thought you said this guy was important."

"I get the sense his bosses didn't like him much. He did his job well enough, but from what we know he was skimming a little too much for himself. They really cared about him in particular, he wouldn't be leavin' his squat without a passel of heavies, let alone goin' out to eat. We pay 'em off and say sorry, things'll be fine." He paused. "Or whatever the contemporary ee-quivalent is."

I pressed a hand to my forehead. "I have some conditions."

"Oh?" the gangster said, sounding amused. "What are those?"

"I'm not gonna go around breaking legs for interest payments, or collect protection money, or any of that shit." I really did feel nuts. Negotiating about killing people over a couple of fresh corpses.

"We got people for that. What we need is soldiers. Done."

Was there anything else I wanted? Besides out of this Kingsdamned mess? Ah! There was one thing. "My rent. I don't want to pay it anymore."

He looked taken aback. "Well, where d'you live at?"

"The conexes on Kyiv Street. Across from Gulo's."

"Shit, we own those? Whaddaya pay?"

"Three hundred."

He really laughed that time, long and loud. "Hon, I'm gonna pay you five grand for your first job. You ain't gonna be living in a crate no more. But fine. No more rent. We got a deal?"

I guess we did. "Deal." He walked up and stuck out his hand for me to shake, the other one in the pocket of his brown leather jacket. He really did act like someone's dad. I took it, mine dwarfing his. When I let go I heard the distinct click of a safety flipping on, and his other hand appeared a moment later. He walked towards the alley mouth and I followed. Pretty confident of him to leave me at his back.

When we got out into the street, I finally got a good look at him. He was pretty short, maybe five foot eight, but his build was broad and dense, like the prizefighters that showed up on pirate broadcasts sometimes. He wore pointy boots under his jeans, colorless with dust. Beneath the hat, his face was clean-shaven and strong-boned, craggy like a sculpture that'd been roughed out but not quite finished.

He pulled another cig out-hand rolled, I noticed-and lit it. He smoked like a quarryman too, the burner pinched between forefinger and thumb like something he wished he wasn't touching. He was a bit old for me, but the overall effect was-was pretty handsome, actually. But why the fuck was I thinking about that now?

Sensing my gaze, he glanced up at me. "It's Walker, by the way. Kings, you're fucking tall."

"Sharkie. You know, people keep telling me that, but I don't see it."

"How's that?"

"I think you're all fucking short."

"Heh." His cig flared orange as he took a long drag. "You oughta go home fast. Someone'll come by with info tomorrow afternoon, probably. You better stay outta sight until then. We don't want any accidents."

"Sure."

"Good. And one more thing."

"Yeah?" I asked warily.

"Look up there." He pointed to a conplas tenement building, five or six stories high, and I watched the roof.

Walker spoke into his collar. "Monta, say hello to our new friend, would you?" For just a moment, I saw a green laser beam visible through the fog and exhaust smoke, tracing a line from the roof to my chest. It flicked off so quickly it was like it wasn't there. A sniper.

"He was there the whole time?" I asked. Maybe I should have been scared, but I just felt worn out.

Walker finished his burner. "Yup. Monta's a good shot, you can take my word on that. Threaten my life again and you'll get a demonstration." I narrowed my eyes. He was a gangster, after all. "But that ain't gonna be necessary, I think. It's just good to be on the same page, right?"

"Right."

He squinted at me for a few seconds, and I wondered what he was looking at. "Listen. It might seem like shit's bad and only gets worse, but it can always get better, too. You understand me?"

I leaned back, confused. "I guess."

"Good. Be seeing you soon, pard." Without further ado, he walked off and was instantly lost in the crowd. I was a bit jealous.

At this point I was so tired I didn't really know what to do except follow his advice, and headed towards home. Maybe things would make more sense in the morning.