"Quiet!" yelled Lauren, holding up a hand for silence. "These them. Got good guns. Help, we help 'em get women away baron. This is big one, friends. We hit hard and mebbe win forever."

There were about a dozen of what Ryan figured were the top hands in the outfit. All had the killer look around the eyes and mouth. It was immediately obvious that they didn't much care for having four strangers suddenly in their midst.

"Why the fuck we need 'em, Jak?" asked a tall woman whose lower jaw was disfigured with a livid scar zagging across her neck.

"You don't need us, lady," replied Ryan. "Way I see it, if you keep alive and Tourment doesn't get no stronger, in about fifty years you might be able to put a real fucking fright up him."

There was a general relaxing of tension, and some of them laughed openly. The woman spat on the floor and turned away in obvious disgust.

"I don't like a bad winner, lady, but I sure hate a fucking sore loser," added Ryan, pushing it deliberately, knowing that this wasn't a place to back off even an inch.

"Let it lay, Zee," snapped Jak. "We voted and they're in."

"These women he got... mean a lot to you, brother?" asked the woman, still not beaten.

"Do muties shit in their pants?" he replied, getting a bigger laugh and even a grudging half smile from Zee.

Jak shook his head. "That's enough. There's some serious talk to go down. We know his place. Even got plans from city files. What we didn't have was blasters and mercies. Now we got 'em."

Finnegan didn't much like that. "Not fucking mercies, kid. We go where we want and chill who we wantto chill. You need us more'n we need you, kid."

Suddenly there was a flicker of light, and Jak was in a classic knife-fighter's crouch in front of Finn, the blade dancing from hand to hand, faster than the eye could follow.

"Don't call me kid, fatso."

Ryan knew better than to try and step into a scene like this. Finn, despite his chubby, amiable exterior, was a bloody-handed killer and was quite capable of drawing on the boy and spreading him all over the far wall. If that happened, things would get hot. "Don't call me fatso, kid."

Jak was balanced on his toes like a wind-blown feather, watching Finnegan, red eyes locked on the older man's face. "You got balls, fatso."

"Kids like you, they got lotsa gall but no fucking sand. I could drop you before you could use the knife, kid."

Lauren grinned wolfishly. "Sure you could. You're here cause you're good, fatso. Heard you chilled some sec men this morn. You draw, you mebbe hit me, but you're on your fucking back looking up at sky, wondering why you wanted to be a prick."

Ryan could see a real risk, after the first combustible moment, that they might talk each other into killing each other.

"That's it," Ryan said, feeling the ripple of disappointment around him. For a kid of fourteen, Jak Lauren had some serious respect from his people. They really thought he could take Finn.

Maybe he could. Ryan wasn't going to find out.

"It's gone noon," he said, showing his chron around. The place was badly lit, with a row of flickering lamps, in glass bowls with swimming fish engraved on them. At one end of the sloping room was a massive maroon curtain with golden tassels draped across it. From what he recollected, Ryan guessed that there would be a screen behind it.

"Sure has. You're right, Ryan." The slim knife disappeared as quickly as it had sprung to his hand. Though Ryan was watching him intently, he hadn't seen where the boy had hidden it.

"We talk about how we do this?" asked J.B., moving casually against the right-hand wall. It was second nature for the Armorer to seek out a position where he had his back against something solid.

Jak half bowed to him. "Sure. Talk plan. Can't go until after dark. They're too ready. Tourment's no fool. Before talk, we'll show something to you. Rare. From before the quick sick came."

"Food?" asked Finnegan, omitting the "kid" this time.

"Sure. Always ready. Talk. Then go in and get the prisoners."

Ryan spotted something in the use of the word. Something that meant more than just Lori and Krysty. "How many prisoners, Jak?" he asked.

"Three."

"Three?"

"Yeah. Night 'fore last. Mephisto sec men snatch squad got lucky. Picked up my father. This time tomorrow Tourment'll have killed them all."

"Then let's get to it," suggested Ryan.

The boy nodded, solemn-faced, the cascading white hair framing his skull like a silver halo.

Chapter Eighteen

Krysty wroth was angry with herself. Angry that she'd let her emotions govern her good sense. Mother Sonja's often repeated motto, Strive for Life, had been momentarily forgotten.

It was scant consolation that Baron Tourment's evening roll call would be two sec men short.

They'd come in a couple of minutes after the giant ville chief had lumbered clumsily out. They were both small, with sallow complexions, looking as though they'd been standing out in the rain for too long. When they spoke, she heard the nasal tones of the bayous and guessed they came from Cajun stock. The one with a small mustache looked around thirty; the other, with a three-day stubble on his chin was nearer twenty. Both men carried greased M-16 blasters.

There hadn't been time for Krysty to do more than hiss a warning to the sobbing Lori to try to hold out and tell the baron nothing. Then the sec men were walking cockily to stand between them.

"Yellow hair or red?" one said.

"Yellow."

"Why?"

"Already got her snatch warm and waiting. Red's got hers sewn up in her pants. Baron might guess ifСn we cut her naked."

The one with the mustache, called Neal, ran a hand under Lori's disarranged skirt, giggling as she wriggled at the touch, "Warm and wet, Alain. And yellow as a possum's guts."

Krysty had tried. "You do that one more time, you sack of cancerous pus, and I'll snake on you to the fucking baron."

"He don't care," said Alain, nibbing a hand thoughtfully over his rough chin. "Long as we don't do no mortal hurt. He don't give a fuck."

"Why not do yellow first? Then fuck red in the mouth; and see how she likes it."

"I'd bite it off, if it's big enough to get my teeth in."

Both guards laughed. "First off, Alain here'd push the muzzle of his old blaster half a foot up your fucking nose, bitch. You even set your fucking teeth in me, and they'll be wiping your fucking brains off the ceiling."

It crossed Krysty's mind to let them. Lie there and blank her mind clear of what was happening to her. She could do it. She'd done it before, back in Mocsin with the sec boss there. Kurt Strasser. Before she'd met Ryan Cawdor.

But there was Lori.

The girl, despite her bizarre upbringing, had an oddly unflawed innocence. If Krysty lay there and allowed these two brutish pigs to do what they wanted, she knew they wouldn't stop at a simple fucking. That would just set them on other ways of humiliating and hurting them both.

"Gaia, help me," she whispered, closing her eyes, trying to relax and draw on the immense power of the Earth Mother. Part of Krysty's mind told her this would be futile. But she recalled what Ryan had said about leaving a place a tad cleaner than when you came to it. That she would do.

The cords that bound her ankles and wrists were made of waxed whipcord, tied so tightly that there was blood seeping from under the nails of her fingers and toes, burst from the swollen flesh. The pain had been easy to control, but she worried that she might not be able to function well in a fight.

"Help me, help me, help me," she repeated, drawing on the strength in the way that her dead mother had taught her, way back in Harmony.