Skeeter leaned around the column to see where his "mark" was-and heard a solid thunk next to his ear. Startled, he turned his head. A knife haft quivered in the air, the metal blade still singing where it had buried itself in the plastic sheathing of the fake column. Skeeter widened his eyes. If he hadn't leaned around just when he had ...

He jerked around, looking through the crowd

Oh, God.

Lupus Mortiferus.

The gladiator charged.

Skeeter bolted, yanking the knife out of the column as he went, so he wouldn't be completely weaponless if the enraged Roman actually did catch up with him this time. Diners waiting patiently in line stared as he dashed past, knife in hand, with a gladiator in cowboy chaps in hot pursuit. A sting made itself felt along the side of Skeeter's neck He swore and swiped at it, then gulped. Blood on his fingertips told him just how close he'd come. A swift glance down showed a thin line of drying blood on the edge of the knife he'd snatched.

Holy ... if that was poisoned ... then he'd be in big trouble, and soon. His legs went shaky for a couple of strides, then he dodged up a staircase and pounded down a balcony crowded with shoppers. Weaving in and out between them, Skeeter made it to an elevator. The door opened with a soft ding. He dove inside and punched the top floor. The elevator doors slid closed just as the enraged gladiator stormed past an outraged knot of shoppers.

The car surged smoothly upward. Skeeter collapsed against the wall, pressing a hand to his neck. Damn, damn., damn! He needed to go to the Infirmary and have Rachel Eisenstein look at this. But pride-and fear-sent him plunging into the heart of Residential, instead. If he reported the injury to Rachel, he'd have to explain how he'd managed to sustain a long slice across the side of his neck. And that would lead to unpleasant confessions about profiteering from time travel ...

Nope, a trip to the infirmary was out.

And that blasted downtimer might have learned enough about La-La Land by now to anticipate him going to the clinic, anyway. Skeeter cursed under his breath and headed for home. By the time he made it to his apartment, Skeeter was trembling with shock and blood loss despite the hand he kept tightly pressed to the wound. Blood seeped between his fingers to drip down his shirt. He was tempted to call Bull Morgan and report the attack, consequences be damned. That gladiator scared him. Winning the wager with Goldie was one thing. Dying for it was quite another. Hand shaking, he locked the door and stumbled into the bathroom, swearing softly at the ashen cast of his face when he switched on the light.

He dabbed gingerly at the long, shallow slice, hissing. between his teeth. "Sorry, Yesukai, but that stings." Antiseptic, antibiotic cream, and bandages made him look like the victim of a wide jawed vampire. "Turtleneck sweaters for a while," Skeeter muttered. "Just great. I really, genuinely hope that goddamned knife wasn't poisoned."

If it had been, he'd know soon enough.

He still wavered between calling Bull Morgan and keeping silent as he switched off the bathroom light and stumbled into his living room. He switched on the in-house TV news channel and flopped into his favorite chair, exhausted and scared and still trembling slightly. He needed food and sleep and painkillers. Food and sleep could be had without leaving the apartment. Painkillers ... well, aspirin thinned the blood, which was no good. He'd have to settle for something like ibuprofen, if he had any.

The evening newscast's theme music swelled through the darkened little apartment. La-La Land's news program was, like the Shangri-La Gazette, more a gossip forum than a real news show. Most of the so called journalists who drifted into and out of the anchor job were muckrakers who couldn't get work uptime for one good reason or another. They tended to shift from time terminal to time terminal in the hope that some juicy tidbit worthy of a real network job would relaunch their uptime careers. They also complained perennially about the lack of budget, equipment, and studio room. Skeeter shrugged-and winced. After his return uptime as a child, he'd grown utterly disgusted with them, camping out on the lawn for a chance at a photo session and maybe even an exclusive with the kid who'd lived with Genghis Khan's father and the toddler who would become Genghis Khan, himself.

Journalists had been a large factor in his decision to simply leave during the night and head for New York.

In the Big Apple, rotten to its scheming, seamy core, stories like his could easily be buried under the sensationalism of expose after expose on corrupt politicians, waving crime, and the spreading violence and sin that made the City the place for one little half-wild adopted Mongol to practice hard-won skills. Skeeter sighed. Those had been rough years, rougher in many ways than living in Yesukai's camp. But he'd survived them. The thought of going back...

"I could always walk through the Mongolian Gate again, he told himself. Temujin's out there somewhere fighting for his life against Hargoutai and his clan right about now. Temujin would take me in, might even remember the boy who used to do tricks to amuse him at night while the men were busy eating and telling stories and drinking themselves so sick they'd have to go outside and vomit. Living with Temujin'd certainly be better than going back to New York. Just about anything would be better than going back to New York.

He wasn't sure he'd live long, if he went back, and Skeeter Jackson had become terribly fond of creature comforts, but there were fates worse than dying young in battle.

Speaking of which ... should he call Bull Morgan or not?

The news program he'd been waiting for had come on, flashing the familiar, sickly-sweet face of "Judy, Judy Janes!" onto the screen. She smiled at the camera, looking (as always) every eyelash-batting bit as idiotic as she sounded. But her opening statement caught Skeeter's attention fast.

"A disturbance this evening on the Commons just outside the Epicurean Delight has left 'eighty-sixers mystified and Security baffled. An eyewitness to the event, well-known station resident Goldie Morran, was willing to share her impressions with our viewing audience."

The camera treated Skeeter to a close-up of The Enemy.

Skeeter swore creatively. In Mongolian.

"Well, I couldn't be sure, everything happened so fast, but it looked to me like Skeeter Jackson bolted from behind that column over there and ran from a man I've never laid eyes on."

"Are you positive about that identification, Ms. Morran?"

Skeeter's official station identification photo appeared briefly on screen, grinning at the audience. The caption read "Unemployed Confidence Artist." Skeeter saw red-several seething shades of it.

The camera cut back to the Commons and Goldie's moment of triumph. Her eyes glittered like evil jewels. "Well, no, I couldn't swear to it, but as you know, Skeeter and I have made a rather substantial wager, so I've been at some pains to keep track of his movements. I'm afraid I wouldn't do Station Security much good as a prosecution witness, but it certainly did look like him. Of course," she laughed lightly, "we get so many scoundrels through, and so many of them look alike ..."

The rest of the report was nothing more than innuendo and slander, none of it provable and every word of it calculated to wreck any chance he had at conning a single tourist watching that broadcast out of so much as a wooden nickel. Skeeter closed his fists in the semidarkness of his apartment. Report his injury? Hell would freeze first. He'd win this wager and kick that purple-haired harpy from here to-

Skeeter punched savagely at the channel changer. His apartment flooded with soothing music and slowly shifting vistas taped both downtime as well as uptime. He'd deal with that pissed-off gladiator as best he could, on his own. Nothing was goin to sour this wager. Not even Lupus Mortiferus and his-fifty goddamned golden aurii.