Read Online Necessity's Child (Liaden Universe®) by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee - Free Book Online Page B

happy juice when he wasn’t looking, Mike thought. He took a hard look at the streeter’s face—white and sweaty. Might be shock—or might be fury. Whichever, maybe he’d say more.
    “Where?” he asked.
    “Up ta north side, two blocks in,” Danny said through gritted teeth. “What’s my reward, Goldie?”
    “Have to see the body first,” he said, tucking his hands carefully into his pockets. There was law, now. And the law said he couldn’t just break Danny’s neck for being a bad act and all-around nuisance. He said he’d killed somebody, but there wasn’t no murder until there was a body. Mike took a breath.
    “I’ll get back to you,” he told Danny and stepped away, gesturing to the security.
    “Yessir.”
    “Can you keep these guys close?”
    The security shrugged. “Danny ain’t goin’ nowhere, is my bet. Gin already hit him with a calm-down dose and she’ll hit him with another one ’fore she gets done, not to say some antibiotics. That’s a bad cut, like you said. She lets him outta here, it’ll go septic for sure. Woman hates to see her work wasted.”
    Mike nodded. “Patrol can take Mort and Hank.”
    “I’ll call ’em and set it up.”
    “Thanks,” Mike said. “They have anything with ’em when they come in?”
    “Took some things outta pockets, but I’m guessing the good stuff, if there was any, went with Dwight and Parfil.”
    Mike nodded. “Me and Patroller bar’Obin will wanna look at what’s there.”
    “Sure.”
    * * *
    Like the man’d said, there wasn’t much—some coins, a snap knife with a grippy handle, a box of strike-anywheres.
    Patroller bar’Obin used her chin to point at the knife.
    “That is off-world,” she said.
    Mike nodded to show he’d heard her, though it didn’t help all that much. Lately, anybody with enough money, or a light touch, could have an outworld knife.
    “Do you have orders for the Patrol, Michael Golden of Boss Nova’s office?”
    He sighed and looked at her, seeing only a kind of smooth politeness.
    “Yeah. See if you can get a line on the knife. And ask Chief Tilden to send a couple Patrollers up into the warehouses—north side, first—to see if they can find a pot—or a body.”
    * * *
    The gadje breathed yet, far more than the five Udari had called. That he would continue to breathe through the night, or that he would mend—those were questions even the luthia could not answer.
    “We will do what may be done,” the luthia said, her bag repacked and her face pale with strain from her labors. Kezzi brought her a cup of tea, there by the hearth. Inside, Jin sat with the gadje , holding his undamaged hand between both of hers, so he would know, even in the depths of his coma, that he was not alone.
    “Will he live?” Kezzi asked again, sitting on her heels next to the fire. For many hours, she had bound and held and snipped and washed as directed by the luthia . The gadje —he had been like a doll, smashed under a heavy, heedless boot. His right hand—the tiny bones broken like so many twigs—his ribs, his face, and things broken inside, too, so that the luthia had called for the Deep Healer—the first time Kezzi had ever seen this device used.
    “He may live or he may not,” Silain said, giving the question the only answer she would. “We have done what we are given to do. We have shown the universe that we do not willingly let him go.”
    A shadow moved at the edge of the fire.
    “And why,” asked Alosha the headman, “do we not relinquish him, O luthia ? What do the Bedel owe this gadje that we will return him to life, and trust him not to betray us?”
    The luthia looked to Kezzi. “Bring tea for the headman, small sister. And take some for yourself.”
    Alosha sighed, and sat at the luthia ’s right hand, legs crossed and face weary.
    “Udari’s actions at the first seem sensible. A dying gadje at our very door! Such a thing must be removed, and quickly. The furnace was near, and certain. Child,” he