Ariel Read Free Page A

about thirty miles as the crow flies. We ought to be in Atlanta sometime tomorrow afternoon."
    "Shit—another night on the road." She had picked up many of my speaking habits. It's strange to hear a unicorn swear. Come to think of it, it's strange to hear a unicorn talk at all. "Hey, it's not so bad," I told her. "We could be spending the night in a city." Cities are where all the rejects hang out.
    "Where, no doubt, you'd get us into another test of our defense capabilities."
    She wouldn't leave me alone about Jacksonville, no matter how much I insisted it wasn't my fault. I'd gone to a trading bar to look over some equipment and weapons. I was always on the lookout for new things I might need.
    Trading bars are nasty places. They serve as a combination bar/whorehouse/trading post/news center, and are mainly frequented by inner-city dwellers and loners "just passing through." Some loners have "buddies"—animals held to them by loyalty spells. Occasionally you see somebody with a Familiar —a person with an almost symbiotic relationship with a magical animal—like Ariel and me. As Familiars will fight ferociously to protect each other, and spellbound buddies will die to protect their masters, they aren't allowed in trading bars, so I had to leave Ariel outside. I didn't like it one bit and neither did she, but those were the rules and everybody abided by them—or else. She stood in front of a furniture store across the street, well away from a buddy-lion crouched beside the entrance to the trading bar. It watched us warily.
    There were a few people inside, mostly loners, it seemed, looking at the weapons-display tables. Over to one side was the dark entranceway to the bar. I walked among supply aisles, looking for anything that struck my fancy. There were no prices on any items; you had to negotiate with one of the dealers. Haggling had become a fine art again.
    At the end of the aisles was a guard shouldering a cocked crossbow, expressionlessly watching the customers. Nobody stole from trading bars.
    At one aisle I reached for something—I think it was a small, folding camp stove—and picked it up to look it over. They'd want an arm and a leg for it, but it might be convenient sometimes. It was the only one on the shelf.
    Somebody snatched it from my hand. I turned to see someone huge and hairy and looking like an almost human grizzly bear glaring down at me. "Hey, little fuck," he said, holding up the folding stove, "this mine. Saw first." His teeth were rotted. He stank. He wore a black leather vest, cut-off blue jeans, and combat boots.
    "Sure, fine," I told him. "I was just looking at it. If you want it, go ahead."
    "I want, I take anyhow, little fuck," he growled.
    Since he already had it and I didn't really want it anyway, that should have been the end of it. But he just stood there like an oak tree, as if he expected me to say something.
    I turned and walked into the bar.
    It was lit by a few candles scattered here and there, and the air smelled heavy and pungent like a barn. I dropped my pack beside a barstool and sat down. The bartender came over to me.
    "Yeah?" he said.
    "Uh—" I hadn't wanted anything; I'd just come in to get away from that gorilla. "Do you have any Coke?"
    "Coke?" He smiled a left-sided smile and I felt stupid and started to tell him never mind, but he bent down behind the bar. I heard a rattling as he unlocked something.
    "It'll cost you," he said, straightening back up. "This stuff don't grow on trees." He held a small cellophane packet of white powder between thumb and forefinger.
    I flushed. Cocaine! I'd wanted a Coke, you know—Coca-Cola.
    "Where—where do you get this?"
    "Guy comes in from New York twice a year, regular. Rides a griffin."
    New York! I'd heard things about what New York was like now. They were horror stories.
    He put his elbows down on the bar and leaned toward me "Just drops off these little bags and takes one of them." He nodded toward one of the three women