staring up at Tempus wide-eyed. One whimpered to Shadowspawn and clutched his
thigh.
‘Room key,’ Tempus snapped to no one in particular, and held out his hand. The
concierge, not Amoli, brought it to him.
‘Hanse?’
‘Coming.’ He extended a hand to one girl.
‘Alone.’
‘You are not my type,’ said the thief, suspicious.
‘I need just a moment of your evening. You can do what you wish with the rest.’
Tempus looked at the key, headed off towards a staircase leading to the room
which bore a corresponding number.
He heard the soft tread of Shadowspawn close behind.
When the exchange had been made, the thief departed, satisfied with both his
payment and his gratuity, but not quite sure that Tempus appreciated the trouble
to which he had put himself, or that he had got the best of the bargain they had
made.
He saw the woman he had robbed before she saw him, and ended up in a different
girl’s room than the one he had chosen, in order to avoid a scene. When he had
heard her steps pass by, stop before the door behind which the big Hell Hound
waited, he made preclusive threats to the woman whose mouth he had stopped with
the flat of his hand, and slipped downstairs to spend his money somewhere else,
discreetly.
If he had stayed, he might have found out what the diamond rods were really
worth; he might have found out what the sour-eyed mercenary with his high brow,
suddenly so deeply creased, and his lightly carried mass, which seemed tonight
too heavy, was worried about. Or perhaps he could have fathomed Tempus’s
enigmatic parting words: ‘I would help you if I could, backstreeter,’ Tempus had