Wagers of Sin

by Robert Asprin

  Marcus paused, dark eyes blazing with unspoken emotion.

  "Don't mention it. All in the package deal. One combat, two escapes. C'mon, let's make tracks before those guards figure out which alleyway we dodged down."

  They waylaid a hapless freedman by simply racing past him and snatching off his peaked cap. They rounded two corners and Marcus jammed it onto his own head.

  "Hope he didn't have head lice," Marcus grumbled.

  Skeeter laughed aloud. "Rachel Eisenstein will disinfect you nicely, if he did. And I don't think Ianira would give a damn even if Rachel didn't disinfect you. Okay, one more block, down that little alley, then we slow down to a nice leisurely walk, a citizen and his freedman out for a stroll. . . ."

  About ten minutes later, mounted Praetorian guardsmen tore past them, searching the crowds for a fleeing gladiator and his collared companion. Marcus waited until they were out of sight to sigh in heartfelt relief. Skeeter grinned. "See? Told you it'd be a piece of cake." He didn't mention that his knees were a little weak and his insides shook like gelatin in a blender.

  Marcus glared at him. "You did not say any such thing, Skeeter Jackson!"

  His grin widened. "No. But I thought it, to give myself the nerve to try pole-vaulting out. And look at us, now; we're alive and we're free. Let's keep it that way, if it's all right by you."

  Dark emotion bubbled up in Marcus' eyes again. "It is very much all right by me."

  "Good. I think I see an inn up ahead. Know anything about it?"

  Marcus peered through the crowd. "No. But this is a good part of town. It should be safe enough and serve food worth eating."

  "Sounds good to me." He chuckled. "Nothing like that proverbial purloined letter."

  "The what?"

  "A story I read once. Sherlock Holmes. Best place to hide something is right out in the open, where nobody expects to find it."

  Marcus laughed, not from mirth but from sheer amazement.

  "Skeeter Jackson, you astonish me more and more the longer I know you."

  Skeeter rubbed the side of his nose, feeling heat creep into his face. "Yeah, well, I've had an interesting sorta life. I'd about ten times rather have a great wife and a couple of kids, right about now. Hell, I'd settle for a friend." Marcus cast a glance in his direction, but didn't speak. Skeeter felt the silence like a punch to his gut. He dragged in a deep breath, even that hurting, and muttered, "Okay, here we go. Your Latin's better than mine and something tells me rich guys don't do the dickering."

  Marcus smiled. "You learn quickly. Keep closed your mouth and no one will be the wiser."

  Skeeter grinned, then dutifully closed his mouth, shook loose some coins, and handed several of the silver ones over. "That be enough?"

  "I'd say so. Now hush and let me play the hero this time."

  They stepped into the cool quiet of the inn and met the bright smile of the proprietor. Marcus launched into Latin too rapid to follow, but it got results. They were taken to a private room and shortly were feasting on chilled wine, roasted duckling, and a pot of boiled beef and cabbage. Skeeter ate until he couldn't hold another bite.

  "Gawd, that was heavenly."

  Marcus wiped his mouth and nodded. "Much better than wheat gruel." He paused, then added awkwardly, "If—if you will take that tunic off, Skeeter, I will wash and bandage your injuries."

  Skeeter didn't argue. His wounds stung and burned every time he moved in his stolen garments of wool. Marcus tore up some of the bedding and laved the long slice with clean water, then wound strips of cotton around Skeeter's torso. "There. That should keep the blood from seeping out and giving you away." He cautiously dabbed at the stains on the side of the tunic, which the long toga had hidden. Most of them came out with the application of cold water. Marcus finished that chore and hung up the tunic to dry, then cleared his throat. "If you will give me the sword, I will stand guard. You are exhausted, Skeeter. Sleep. Anyone looking for you will have to kill me."

  Skeeter held his gaze for a moment and realized Marcus meant it. He didn't know what to say. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . all those prayers he'd uttered back at the start of the fighting had given him back not only his life, but a chance at winning back the friendship he'd so thoughtlessly shattered?

  Because he couldn't have spoken to save his half-wild soul, Skeeter sank back on the denuded mattress without a single word and was asleep before Marcus had finished setting aside the dishes from their meal. His final thought was, If I do have a second chance, don't let me screw it up. Please.

  Then all was silence and peaceful sleep while Marcus stood guard over him, placing his life between Skeeter and the door.

  Goldie Morran spent an unhappy two weeks, waiting with the rest of TT-86 for word of Skeeter Jackson. As she'd discovered already, she didn't want Skeeter dead. Kicked off the station had seemed like a grand idea, but now . . . all she could do was wonder what he was up to downtime. Rescuing Marcus? She snorted. Goldie really couldn't credit that, Dr. Mundy and vidcam evidence notwithstanding. A person could always interpret a bit of evidence ten different ways from Sunday. Besides, Skeeter was too much like Goldie to spend his time rescuing a worthless slave when he could be scamming so much gold downtime, she'd never catch up. Of course, Brian might disallow it, on the grounds that the wager was on hold. Or—she shuddered delicately behind her cold, glasstop counters—that dratted librarian might just decide that since Skeeter would have had no way of knowing the wager was on hold, his earnings would count.

  Curse the boy!

  She was theoretically ahead, with more than half the bet's term left to run. If Skeeter returned.

  What if Skeeter never returned? Some people thought Goldie was a heartless sociopath. She wasn't—although she put out considerable effort to seem that way. So if Skeeter Jackson, never mind that nice kid who tended bar at the Down Time never came back, she'd have their fates on her conscience.

  And backstabbing cheat that she knew herself to be, that was something she knew she couldn't live with. Please, she whispered silently, bring them back. I miss that obnoxious little bastard. She was discovering she actually missed watching that boy con tourists out of cash, cameras, wristwatches, wallets, and anything else he could lift to turn a buck. She even missed the arguments over whiskey and beer at the Down Time while tourists who wandered in watched, goggle-eyed. . . . I miss them. Bring them back, please. Whatever I felt before, I never meant for this to happen.

  Goldie didn't realize she was crying until the tears dripped with a soft splash onto her glass counter. When she sniffed and looked around to find a handkerchief, she found a young Asian woman she'd never laid eyes on standing in front of her counter. The girl offered a clean, beautifully embroidered handkerchief.

  "Here, Miss Morran, you are hurting. You have much to be sorry for, but we understand."

  Without another word, she slipped out of Goldie's shop, moving with the unobtrusive grace of a girl trained in one of the finest geisha houses in Japan. Goldie stared at the embroidered handkerchief, stared at the doorway, then very slowly dried her face and blew her nose. It wasn't easy, facing the fact that if those two boys didn't return, it would be largely her fault.

  "All I ask," Goldie muttered, blowing her nose miserably again, "is a chance to tell that miserable, thieving, no-good cheat that I'm sorry—to his face."

  A tiny whisper at the back of her mind warned her to be wary of what one asked the gods for, lest they grant it.

  Just where was Skeeter Jackson? And what the living hell was he doing down there in ancient Rome? Playing hero? Or playing the cad? She hoped she'd have the chance to find out which.

  Goldie sniffed one last time and wadded up the exquisite handkerchief until her hand hurt.

  "Come back, damn you!"

  Only the chill of her glass cases, filled with cold, rare coins, cool, smooth miniature sculptures in precious stones, and the frozen glitter of a few scattered jewels on shivering velvet heard.

  Chapter Nineteen
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br />   For the remainder of their stay in Denver, the man calling himself Chuck Farley spent his time visiting one cathouse after another. Margo wrinkled her nose as they watched quietly in the darkness while he entered yet another establishment of ill repute.

  "I hope he catches something really nasty!"

  "He might, at that," Malcolm muttered. "He's doubtless been inoculated, because smallpox is still rampant in these parts, but he might catch a social disease and be put into quarantine. Dr. Eisenstein could either heal it or recommend permanent quarantine. Uptime, too; Rachel Eisenstein takes her job very seriously, she does. She wants to ensure diseases like that don't get passed on to anyone in the real world." A bitter chuckle issued near her ear. "He would certainly deserve it. But it's more likely he's gathering additional inventory."

  "To make up for the pieces that didn't come through the gate with him?"

  "Exactly."

  Margo flounced as only Margo could do while standing perfectly still. Her dress rustled like wind through aspens at her movement. "He's disgusting," she muttered under her breath. "And he doesn't look or act rich enough to keep those for himself. Wonder who his uptime buyer is?"

  Malcolm stared at her with considerable surprise. He hadn't expected her to pick up on that part of it so fast. But there were uptime billionaires who paid agents to loot the past for their collections. A tiny number of the agents moving downtime then uptime again had been caught, their stolen antiquities confiscated and turned over to IFARTS for evaluation and return downtime. Disgusting was far too mild a word for the kind of man who'd pay others to take the risks, do the legwork—the dirty, often lethal work. The payoff from the actual client would, of course, be only a fraction of what the antiquities were worth, but enough to keep them busily moving back and forth time and again, to steal even more artwork.

  Malcolm realized from Margo's look, she'd like to do murder when Farley exited the house. And with the gun concealed in her fur muff, she probably could have drilled him through whichever eye she chose. As though following his thoughts, she glared at the cathouse Farley had entered. He half expected a Margo-style explosion or an outright attack murderous with pent-up emotion, but all she said was, "Creeps."

  The deep silence of the late Denver night was shattered abruptly by the rumbling, squeaking, and groaning Conestoga wagons—a long line of them—which began forming up nose-to-tail on a long, dirt road that led southeastward out of town. "Malcolm," she whispered, "is that what I think it is? A real, honest-to-goodness wagon train?"

  With the ease of long practice, Malcolm shifted into his Denver persona.

  "Yeah, I s'pect so, ma'am. Lots of prairie schooners in that train."

  Malcolm's uncanny ability to mimic local languages, even dialects, always amazed Margo. It was his way of reminding Margo that she, too, would have to master the knack.

  "But I thought all the wagon trains were a thing of the past? I mean, I read somewhere that the whole continent had been settled by 1885 or so."

  Malcolm shook his head. "Nope. With book learnin' you has to go deep to ferret out truth. Lemme 'splain somethin', ma'am. This here city o' Denver weren't nothin' more'n paper plans, laid out nice and neat, back in '59. Then along comes the Pike's Peak rush—over what?"

  Margo's brow furrowed delightfully. Then her whole face lit with an incandescent glow. "Gold! The '59 Gold Rush."

  Malcolm chuckled. "Very good. 'Cept nobody could find any. Miners called it the biggest humbug in all history, they did, and left in disgust. But the experienced men, now, the ones who'd sluiced and dug out the big Georgia and California motherlodes, they stayed on. Saw the same signs, they did, same as the signs they'd noticed before. So they stayed on and come late '59 and into '60, made the really big strikes. Caused another rush, o'course," he chuckled.

  "Yes, but what's that got to do with that?" She pointed toward the wagons.

  "W-e-e-l-l-l, that's another story, now, ain't it? There's still odd bits and pieces o' land rattling around this big country, pieces that're still unclaimed for homesteadin'." He lowered his voice to a nearly inaudible murmur. He whispered into her ear, "In fact, four times as many acres were homesteaded after 1890 than before it, but you'd never guess it from period attitudes about land. It borders on sacredness." Then at a slightly higher volume and a more discreet distance, he said, "Take careful note 'o what those wagons is carryin'. And what they ain't."

  Another lesson, even during the very serious duty of watching for sluglike Farley? Malcolm Moore was always so sure of himself, yet so gentle compared to the men in her old life. She studied each wagon in turn, trying to ignore weird shadows thrown against the canvas tops as those departing checked over their equipment. She saw the usual rifles and pistols, bandoliers and boxes of ammunition to hunt game for the table, dozens of tools whose use Margo could only guess at, and a few rough-hewn bits of furniture.

  "No women's things," Margo said abruptly. "No trunks for clothing or quilts, no butter churns, no barrels of padded china from back East. And no children. Those men aren't married. No farming equipment, either, and no livestock except the oxen and horses pulling those wagons. Not even a single laying hen—and you can hear them clucking a fair distance away. And believe me, they cluck loud when they're upset. Do you hear any chickens?"

  Malcolm shook his head solemnly.

  "No, me neither."

  "Very nice, indeed," Malcolm purred. "You've a good eye—and ear—for detail. Now just keep up with the bookwork and you'll make one damned fine time scout."

  Margo's fierce blush was, thank God, hidden by the dark night.

  "Those," Malcolm continued very quietly, "are hardened frontiersmen, always on the move. They follow the remnants of the buffalo herds for their hides, which are commanding good prices again, now that there are so few buffalo left. They follow hints and whispers of gold found on this creek or that. Or they work for hire as ranch hands, even drovers, although that profession is just about as extinct as the poor buffalo. Now that bunch," he turned Margo's head toward the front wagon in the caravan, "is bound for the Indian Territory, or my name isn't Malcolm Moore."

  "Indian Territory?" Margo echoed.

  "Later renamed several things, but Oklahoma was generally mixed in there somewhere. Right now men are streaming in by the hundreds to support David Payne, a cutthroat frontiersman leading a band of even more violent frontiersman in a war against the Indians given that land, even against the Federal Government."

  "Your accent's slipping,"

  "Right you are, ma'am, and thank you it is for the reminder."

  "So," Margo concentrated, her brow deeply furrowed as she thought it through, "these men are going to stir up Indian tribes by taking part of their land illegally?"

  "Yep. Worse trouble'n anybody thought they'd stir up. But the whole country's clamorin' to kick out the 'savages' and open up Oklahoma for 'decent' folk to settle."

  Margo shivered, watching these men pack away their clothes, excess weapons, and whatever they considered valuable enough to take along. The rest, they abandoned along the road, in bundles and boxes, for anyone to salvage. "The more I learn about history, the more savage I find it was. These men are going out to murder as many Indians as they can get into their goddamned sights, aren't they?"

  "My dear lady, you shock me! Such language!"

  Gentle reprimand, steel-hard warning behind it. Ladies of quality did not curse like sailors in 1885, not even in the frontier. Of course, barmaids and whores could be expected to say anything and everything . . . but Margo did most emphatically not wish to be associated with them.

  Not Minnesota prudishness this time—she'd lost a lot of that on a beach in Southeastern Africa—but a cold, calculated decision in the direction of survival. Time scouts, as her grandfather Kit Carson put it, had to be bloody careful anywhere downtime. Especially if scouting an unknown gate. Shaking inside her frontier, multibutton, impossible-to-fasten boots (until Malcolm, shaking with silent laughter, handed her a butto
n hook and explained its use) Margo recalled her formidable but lonely grandfather, a man who'd stepped through a gate to rescue her, not knowing if he'd survive the trip to the other side; then glared at the men in those murder-wagons, at the ones standing outside in little knots, smoking some kind of foul-smelling cigars, their boasts of killing no-account Indians like it was some insane game where they tallied score by the number of people they butchered.

  Not that she thought the Indians shoved into that Oklahoma Reservation to be the peaceful, nature revering, squeaky clean role-models the TV ads and movies made them out to be. She'd read with a clinical, removed-from-the-dreadful-scenes detachment as her only defense against descriptions of massacres perpetrated by desperate and enraged young warriors, young men with their blood up, refusing to give up either tribal or manly pride. Pride! How much trouble that one little word had caused the world . . . That was new—these insights and connections she'd begun making about all kinds of subjects, to the everlasting astonishment of her professors and the steady rise of her GPA.

  She slitted her eyes slightly against the sting of wind-borne cigar smoke, thinking it all through as carefully and thoroughly as possible—as Kit and Malcolm had jointly taught her to do. No, the Native American tribes hadn't been peaceful nature lovers at all, even before the coming of Europeans; before that momentous date, they'd made war on one another in just as savage a fashion as they later made war against the pale invaders of their continent. But what the American government had later done to these people was hideous, unforgivable.

  Margo liked getting her facts straight, more and more so the longer she was in college, delving through books she had once abhorred, so she could understand the real message behind admittedly biased writing on Native American Indians—contemporary accounts by trappers, traders, settlers, mountain men—as well as modern scholarly research-hero-worship crap about people who—according to several archaeological site-analyses written by the archaeologists themselves—tossed their meal scraps right out of the tepee's front door for weeks, maybe even months on end (at least, that was true of some of the plains tribes, well before the arrival of the European); people who thought nothing of making their immediate surroundings a latrine/cesspit and thought their women attractive in hair dressed in bear-grease applied six months previously. Margo shuddered delicately.