Price of Ransom Read Free Page A

prison.”
    “Not anymore.” Fury underlay the words. The woman turned her head to look at the screen, revealing in that movement the careful, traditional coiffure of her hair: it took him a moment, but then he identified it: Indian subcontinent, neo-Hindi. “He was last seen with Gwyn.”
    “Well, good for Hawk,” muttered Korey under his breath. Louder, he said, “I don’t recognize this last one. Never seen her before.”
    “She was also seen with Gwyn,” explained the first man. “We suspect her to be a new recruit.”
    “Well, I never thought of Gwyn as a recruiter.” He hesitated examining the six photos left and then his three inquisitors. “What’s her name?”
    “We believe it to be Heredes also. Lily Heredes.”
    “All right,” said Korey, stepping back from the wall. “I’ll bring her in. In trade for my license back.”
    “That wasn’t the deal.” The woman dismissed the suggestion with a brusque wave of her hand.
    “Listen. I bring her in, she’s got current information on Gwyn, and maybe on Hawk. You make a deal with her, and you won’t be asking me to break old loyalties.”
    “He’s got a point,” said the second man.
    “Anjahar!” snapped the woman. “Are you suggesting that we bargain with—with this ?”
    “My dear—”
    “No,” broke in Korey. “He seems to be suggesting that revolutionary notion that we saboteurs might yet have some semblance of human loyalty. I know you’re ready to lock what’s left of us in the zoo and let the kids come down on the holidays to get a gaze at the old throwbacks to the days when we’d just as soon rip each other’s throats out as rip out the throat of the local rabbits for food, but hell, even back then before fire was invented we ran in packs. So don’t push me.”
    The woman rose from behind the console. “You’ve got no ground on which to threaten me.”
    “My dear.” The first man’s voice had not lost its evenness, but it was firm. She did not sit down, but she stopped speaking. “Agreed,” he said, looking back at Korey. “Bring in Lily Heredes, and we’ll restore your license.”
    “Without the revocation clause?”
    “Agreed as well. You’re a good bounty man, Windsor. We’d hate to lose you.”
    “I’ll just bet you would,” muttered Korey. “You don’t find many people these days willing to track out into The Pale. So where do I find her?”
    “You’ll start by going to Diomede.”
    “It is The Pale, then.”
    It might have been his imagination, but through the shadowy glass he thought he saw the man smile. “No. It’s a little farther out than that.”
    After the guards had removed the prisoner, the three agents sat in silence for only a few moments before the woman turned, abruptly and with anger, on the first man.
    “I can’t believe you bargained with him like that.”
    “Maria, my dear, we are civilized human beings. I hope. And he is, I think, also human.” His tone was gently reproving.
    “Yevgeny, that we approved cruelty, violence, and aberrant behavior in our long and frequently sordid history does not mean we should continue to tolerate those in our midst who are—as Windsor himself quite rightly put it—throwbacks to the very worst in human nature.”
    “I think you exaggerate, Maria.” Yevgeny tapped his vest slate, reading the time display, and rose. “I have an appointment. We’ll meet again next week?”
    She nodded, curt, but respectful. But as the door slipped closed behind him, she turned to her other companion. “Just think, Anjahar, the eight saboteurs on that screen are known to be collectively responsible for five thousand deaths. Officially recorded ones, that is.”
    “Maria,” protested Anjahar, “you know I dislike them as much as you do, but after all, all but seven of those deaths were during the war. And most were Kapellan casualties.”
    “The war,” she repeated sarcastically. “That excuses everything, doesn’t it? And maybe, just maybe—although