Yorick was beyond replying, his frail body totally catatonic. The Swagman watched him for another moment, then walked over to the dresser and took one of the two remaining five-hundred-credit notes.

“Reimbursement of expenses,” he explained to his motionless host.

He took two steps toward the door, stopped, shrugged, and went back to the dresser, appropriating the final note and placing it in his pocket.

“Filthy habit, drugs,” he said, staring at Poor Yorick and shaking his head with insincere regret. “Someday you’ll thank me for removing temptation from your path.”

A few minutes later he was on his way to the spaceport, lost in thought as he examined every angle of his situation with the cold precision of a mathematician. He finally balanced all the diverse elements and came up with a solution just before he arrived. Shortly thereafter he began making the arrangements that would once again put him back into the heart of the equation.

Part 4

The Angel’s Book

15.

They call him the Angel, the Angel of Death,

If ever you’ve seen him, you’ve drawn your last breath.

He’s got cold lifeless eyes, he’s got brains, he’s got skill,

He’s got weapons galore, and a yearning to kill.

Nobody knew where he came from. It was rumored that he had been born on Earth itself, but he never spoke about it.

Nobody knew where he got his start, or why he chose his particular occupation. Some people say that he had been married once, that his wife had been raped and murdered, and that he took his revenge on the whole galaxy. Some were sure that he had been a mercenary who had gone berserk during a particularly bloody action—but no one who ever met him and lived to tell about it thought him crazy; in fact, it was his absolute sanity that made him so frightening. Others thought that, like Cain, he was simply a disillusioned revolutionary.

Nobody knew his true name, or even how he came to be called the Angel.

Nobody knew why he chose to work the Outer Frontier, out on the Galactic Rim, when there were so many more worlds within the Democracy where he could ply his bloody trade.

But there was one thing everybody knew: once the Angel chose his quarry, that quarry’s days were numbered.

In a profession where reputations could be made by a single kill—Sebastian Cain, Giles Sans Pitié, and Peacemaker MacDougal actually had a combined total of less than seventy, and Johnny One-Note was still looking for his sixth—the Angel had hunted down more than one hundred fugitives. In a profession where anonymity went hand in glove with success, the Angel was known on a thousand worlds. In a profession where each practitioner carved out his own territory and allowed no trespassing, the Angel went where he pleased.