Gatz leaned toward me slightly, his face waxy and yellow. “I can’t hold on to her much longer, Ave.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You’ve got something big cooking here, don’t you?” Orel said cheerfully.

I kept my face blank. “I do. I need Mr. Kieth to do it, too. Maybe we can strike a deal.”

Orel looked at me without moving his head, his eyes just sliding in their sockets. I imagined I could hear his eyes moving-sudden metallic scrapings.

“Mr. Cates, I can’t imagine what deal we could strike. I hired this cocksucker seven months ago on a project of my own. I paid him a significant amount of money. This same cocksucker then bought himself every little toy he’d ever wanted off the black market-most of which I see here-and ran out on me. Me! I can still hardly believe it.”

“Let me make you an offer, Mr. Orel,” I said carefully. “If you don’t care for it, well, you put one in Ty’s ear and I start looking for another Techie. But I think I can get back your lost investment, which must have been considerable to inspire such passion.”

Orel turned away from the Monk to face me, pushing Kieth around like a rag doll. The Gunner smiled, his eyes moving easily from person to person without appearing in any way worried. He opened his mouth to reply, but Kieth suddenly spoke up.

“He’s not Canny Orel,” he said.

The hand on Kieth shot to the Techie’s throat and pinched, cutting off Kieth’s voice and breath. I stared at the old man and the old man stared back at me, a slight smile twitching on his face.

“Care to test me?” he said conversationally, sounding bored.

“Care to test all of us?” I said, trying to emulate the smooth, steady disdain of his voice. I failed miserably. Whoever this guy was, he certainly scared the shit out of me, Canny Orel or not. “Let’s hear what he has to say.” I gestured at Kieth.

The old man scanned the room, did some math in his head, and then shrugged, releasing Kieth, who immediately began to gasp and cough.

“Kieth?” I prompted.

He looked up at me with damp, red eyes, rubbing his throat. “Come on, Cates,” he choked out. “There are like fifteen Canny Orels Ty’s seen personally. It’s good marketing, using that name.” He took a deep, shuddering breath, rubbing his head. “He’s possibly Dъnmharъ, but he is not the Canny Orel.”

For a moment I was unable to decide if this was an improvement on my situation. If he wasn’t the greatest Gunner who ever lived, that was good for me. But being faced with, say, the third-best gunner that ever lived… well, it didn’t make me want to do cartwheels.

“It doesn’t matter, does it, Mr. Cates? The fact remains that we have business together. The fact remains that you could not, were you to try, get the drop on me. The fact remains that I can and will kill all of you without breaking a sweat if forced to. However, Mr. Cates, as I said, I’ve heard of you. I’ve heard you play by old rules. I’ll listen.”

Amazingly, he sat down on the floor in one smooth motion, yanking Kieth down next to him. I looked around at my team-all of them useless, it seemed. I wasn’t going to be deterred now. I didn’t think I could outgun Cainnic Orel, or even an Orel-trained former member of the Dъnmharъ. He was right-it didn’t really matter who he really was. I was going to have to make him a partner.

I looked at him as steadily as I could. “I’ve been hired to assassinate Dennis Squalor. The payout is huge. We’ve got a plan to get close to Squalor. I can offer you your money back in a few weeks.”

“Double,” he said immediately.

“Excuse me?”

“Double my investment.”

What the fuck. It was more money than I could ever spend anyway, and the idea of this whole thing falling apart made me sick, my stomach contracting to a spiky ball inside me. I nodded. “Done.”

“Okay,” he said, casually producing one of his shining guns and clearing the chamber, a gleaming bullet springing into the air and hitting the floor with a metallic clink. “Okay, Triple.” He glanced up and grinned at me again.

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“If you can double, you can triple. If you can triple, you can quadruple. Let’s say quadruple.”

Swallowing burning anger, I forced myself to nod against every instinct I had and every lesson I’d learned-I was getting assfucked on this deal, and instead of beating the bastard silly, I was just looking for something to lean against. “Done,” I growled through clenched teeth.

He winked. “Well, Jesus, if you can quadruple, maybe we should leave the issue open and negotiate later.” His broad smile threatened to turn into laughter. “No? Okay, Cates. Quadruple it is. Give me the details.”

I studied him. He grinned easily, hair perfect, the clothes on his back worth more than me. I shook my head and forced myself to smile back.

“No.”

He raised a thin white eyebrow. “No?”

I couldn’t afford to show any nervousness. The only card I held was the fact that the money moved through me. If Marin found out Cainnic Orel-or one of his infamous protйgйs-was on the scene, I would be out. If the old man found out Marin was the bank on this job, I would be out. No matter what else happened, I couldn’t give this guy any details. Even if it meant Kieth got capped.

“That’s the deal. Four times your initial investment and Kieth gets a pass. You don’t get anything else.” I swallowed. “This is my job. You don’t want to back off, go take the motherfucking Techie out back and get the fuck out of my life.”

The old man stared at me, his smile frozen. After a moment he chambered another round, a nice little piece of theater to show just how little the fucker feared me. He let out a barking laugh, showing his strong, gleaming teeth.

“All right, Mr. Cates. All right. In your position I would insist on the same.”

I tried to hide the relief that hit me like a dose of cold water. “All right. What do we call you, then, if you’re not the one and only Cainnic Orel?”

He shrugged. “I think that name is as good as any, don’t you? Despite what this little turd says, as far as you know, I am the ‘one and only’ Cainnic Orel. Mr. Orel will do nicely.” This with a tight-lipped, smug grin that made me close my hands into fists. “I have one further condition, however: I am now part of your team.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?” To our right, a strident alarm blared, the sound bouncing off the walls. Kieth yelped and leaped up. Orel let him go.

Orel climbed to his feet, grinning. “You won’t give me any info, I have to hang around to protect my investment,” he shouted, somehow still sounding calm. “Put it this way, Cates. Say tomorrow night you get capped behind the ear, which is the most likely outcome of this little adventure. Would naturally put the chances that I’ll ever get my money in a dim light, no? As a result, I’d want to have the little cocksucker on his knees nice and quick. You see? If I’m not here, the little cocksucker might slip away again.”

“Cates!” Kieth yelled from his fortress of servers. He must have hit a switch, because the blaring alarms went to half-volume. “We have a problem!”

I glanced at Kieth, then back at Orel. “Okay. Give me twenty yen.”

He blinked. “What?”

“You fucked me out of twenty yen back there at the Dole. It’s part of your buy-in on this deal. Now, please.”

He laughed, reaching for his credit dongle. “You’re either totally incompetent or a genius, Cates.”

“Oh, he’s incompetent, all right,” Tanner said brightly. “Pretty soon he’ll tell you about the growing army of System Pigs who seem to always know where he is.”

“Cates!” Kieth yelled again.

I turned away from Orel as our transaction went through and walked briskly toward Kieth. “What, for God’s sake?”

The bald man was wide-eyed, his nose twitching fiercely. A fat drop of sweat was hanging impossibly from its tip, and it looked like fresh terror-sweat springing up on top of the dried residue of his previous cycle of terror and relief. “We have a visitor. Or visitors. Not sure yet.”