“Then you aren’t right for the job. Me either,” the other man added quickly, possibly in response to some threat Rector couldn’t see. “If Houjin knows how, let him. He mess it up, it’s not our fault. He do it right, we look good for helping. See?”

“Yeah, I see,” came the grudging response. “That don’t mean I like it.”

A crackling snap of pleasure or pain—Rector couldn’t tell which—zipped across his vision and was gone, leaving a comet trail of contentment in its wake. He smiled and listened a little longer, until he was absolutely confident that these were workmen and not guards. Almost certainly an older white man and a somewhat younger Chinese man.

Rector took a deep breath and flinched as a pang of tomorrow’s hangover made itself known in the soft spot just behind his ear. He shook it off and stepped away from the wall, but not far enough out to be easily seen or shot at.

“Hey, you fellas up there?” he called, not in a big shout, but loud enough to make it clear that he wasn’t sneaking up on anybody.

The two men above went silent, then the Chinaman called back, “Who is there? What do you want?”

“Rector Sherman here. I want to get inside the city.” It sounded grandiose when he put it that way, but he decided he was all right with that, so he let it stand. “I don’t want any trouble, and I don’t want to bother nobody. I got business inside, that’s all.”

“Business? What kind of business you got in the city? Did Yaozu send for you?”

“No sir,” he said—fast, so the two words ran together in his mouth. “I’m looking for work.”

“How old are you, son?” the white man asked.

“Not sure what that’s got to do with anything. I’ve been selling for a couple of years already.”

After a pause, the other man concluded, “So you want to come on up.”

“That I do, sir. That I do.” He took this opportunity to step out of the wall’s shadow and into the lesser dark of the cloud-covered evening, which left him somewhat less invisible but still quite fuzzy to anyone that far overhead.

A brilliant white shaft of light flared to life. It swiped at the night, curving back and forth as someone up there adjusted a focus-beam lantern. The beam settled on Rector without mercy, blinding him outright and forcing him to close his eyes against the sudden, painful attention. He crooked his elbow and tried to shield his face without hiding it. The last thing on earth he wanted was for these men to think he was up to something … which he was, but it wouldn’t do for them to suspect it.

“You’re a regular ghost of a thing, ain’t you?”

“What?”