Wild Cards 15 - Black Trump by George R. R. Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

quiet, conversational cadence. A giant snail's foot showed beneath swirling folds of black cotton. The joker's cowled head bobbed at the level of her elbow and something was wrong with the shape of his back and shoulders. "Are you a whore?"
    This man wouldn't kill a joker, not in the quarter. But a nat might die here, and vanish from the street in some narrow doorway. "No," Zoe said.
    "Are you, perhaps, a customer? My equipment is both adequate and unique."
    "Not a customer," Zoe said.
    "Pity," the joker said. "It is my duty, then, to escort you out of the Quarter."
    "I'm going to the City Gate," Zoe said.
    "That is fortunate," the joker said.
    They walked in silence for a while.
    "I'm going to the City Gate because I know it's guarded - by the Twisted Fists."
    She heard his indrawn breath. "A shadow organization. A myth," the joker said.
    His dismissal was too casual, too offhand. He was a Fist, or he knew them. "Bullshit," Zoe said. "They've enlisted five of my kids."
    "Five? You look rather less maternal than that. My compliments."
    "Wards. Foster kids. Whatever. You're a Fist, aren't you? Isn't everyone around here?"
    "You are a fool," the joker said "Go home."
    "No," Zoe said. What could she do to get shuttled up the chain of command? Offer to screw someone? Use her ace? She hated to do that, wouldn't unless she was forced, didn't want to be known in the streets as an ace, for aces were feared here almost as much as nats. Maybe more so.
    Zoe and her one-footed companion turned a corner into a wider street where small signs printed in three or more languages hung above barricaded doorways. Above them, the massive bulk of the gate loomed black against a cloudless violet sky.
    Jokers came from the night's shadows to set up their wares in the little square, some yawning, most silent. One looked at her and hissed. Another spat in her direction and made a sign to ward off the evil eye. A breeze brought a scent of hot fat and charcoal, of garlic and coriander and frying dough.
    Zoe clenched her folded robe in her left hand and walked to the center of the souk. The stone ramparts of the gate looked empty, but there were men with rifles hiding in shadows. She knew it.
    The snail-footed joker accompanied her to the middle of the square. "You can't leave yet," he said. "The gates won't open for another half hour."
    "I know," Zoe said.
    The joker backed away from her. In a moment, he had vanished.
    Zoe picked out an area of the wall where the shadows were deepest, where a cul-de-sac cut into the stone bulk of the gate. She walked toward it with all the bravado she could muster, her ears listening for the click of a safety. The cul-de-sac hid a passageway that seemed to end in a blank stone wall. A hooded figure waited there, his rifle pointed at her belly.
    "Good morning!" Zoe said.
    The swathed black figure wore a veil. She looked like a Halloween depiction of death.
    "Are you in charge here?" Zoe asked. She smiled brightly and tried to look innocent and confused.
    Eyes don't have much expression, Zoe knew. The mouth does. She couldn't see this joker's mouth or gauge her facial language. The guard's rifle barrel drew a small circle in the air, still pointed at Zoe's belly.
    "The Gate opens at six," the guard said. A man, not a woman. "You go home then, nat."
    He had a local accent, the melodic lilt of the Mideast. The man was tall, almost skeletal beneath that swirling robe.
    "But I don't want to leave," Zoe said. "I want to talk to you." To you , Fist, and I don't want formal speeches that you've memorized from the how-to-deal-with-stray-nats handbook. Zoe took a step forward in spite of the objections of her belly button. It was trying to retreat toward her backbone. Terror was one hell of an ab exercise, it seemed.
    "Stop!"
    Zoe stopped. "But I only want to talk ..." The quaver in her voice was not faked.
    Someone laughed, high above them on the gate, a terrible laugh.
    "I want to see the Black Dog," Zoe said "I - I have