The Sin Eater filled his hand, and holding it in a double-fisted grip, he looked up the yawning stairwell, waiting and listening. Shrouded as it was in murk, Kane couldn’t see its mouth. Faint footfalls reached him, and then a brief burst of gay laughter.
The Mags wouldn’t be employing flashlights, relying instead on their night-sight visors. As a hybrid, Baron Sharpe’s eyes possessed a natural sensitivity to high light levels, and so his vision functioned more efficiently in shadows.
Kane knew very little about Sharpeville or its baron, simply because there was little to know. All villes in the network were essentially the same, laid out identically, each with its own Magistrate Division. The contact between different Mag divisions in different villes was a routine exchange of Intel, and most of that was forgettable.
Still, Kane knew he faced four hard-contact Magistrates, presumably just as highly trained and as zealous in the performance of their duties as he and Grant had been. He knew what to expect from them. Baron Sharpe and his vertically impaired doom-sniffer were the random elements, the wild cards. A baron’s presence on a dark-territory probe was utterly without precedent, sane or otherwise.
Under his breath, Kane repeated Lakesh’s thumbnail description of Baron Sharpe “He’s mad, like Emperor Caligula was mad.”
Whatever that meant, it didn’t sound encouraging.
A melodic voice, brimming over with cheery high spirits, echoed down the throat of the stairwell. “I know you’re down there, my friend. Is the game to be hide-and-seek, then? If so, let me warn youI’m very good at it.”
Kane’s jaw sagged open slightly in astonishment. His finger rested on the blaster’s trigger.
“Here I come, ready or not!” cried the voice in a lilting singsong.
A shadow shifted far above. Kane pressed the trigger.
The bullet smashed a shard out of a step ten feet below the stairwell opening. The round ricocheted away with a buzzing whine, like an angered insect. It bounced four times from wall to wall before finally crashing to a stop.
The deep boom of the shot reverberated for some seconds. All three of the Magistrates instantly recognized the report, and the type of blaster that produced it. ^Cameron was the first to exclaim, “A Sin Eater! Some bastard is shooting at us with a Sin Eater!”
Baron Sharpe cast mildly interested eyes in his direction. “Your point being?”
Cameron swallowed hard, glancing from Deylen to Miles for support. They didn’t step away from him, but they studiously avoided making eye contact.
Clearing his throat, Cameron said, “It’s the official Mag Division side arm, Lord Baron.”
Baron Sharpe lifted a brow ridge haughtily. “Indeed? Am I supposed to find that significant?”
Cameron had no easy response. Ericson had briefed them on the op, glossing over the reasons why the first squad had been sent out. He had touched only briefly on the subject of renegade Mags from Cobaltville. If the baron didn’t know about them, it certainly wasn’t Cameron’s place to repair his lord’s ignorance.
“No, my Lord Baron,” he muttered at length.
Baron Sharpe shook his head in exasperation and looked down at Crawler. “I confess I am a bit bemused,” he said. “If my new friends want to play a game, why are they shooting at me?”
Crawler’s face creased in a relaxed grin. “Isn’t it apparent? They know you cannot dietherefore the use of firearms is only to add spice to the game. Something like tag.”
Comprehension dawned in the baron’s eyes. “Oh, I
get it. Instead of tapping each other with our hands, we use bullets instead, right?”
“Just so.”
A line of concern appeared on Baron Sharpe’s normally smooth forehead. “But if I tag my new friends with bullets, won’t they die?”
Crawler chuckled patronizingly. “By no means. They, too, have crossed over and back. That’s why they want you to join them in their play. Afterward all of you will have a celebration in honor of your immortality.”
Baron Sharpe laughed, clapped his hands in delight and nearly dropped his Copperhead. He caught it, aimed it down the dark stairwell and squeezed off a round. The shot echoed hollowly, followed by the whine of a ricochet.
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