“Hey, it’s not so bad. I get down here with the kids sometimes, they have a great time, ‘s a good mix of people, not so fucking snooty like they are at the south end. Oh yeah, you, man. Rad’s pal.”

I looked up, surprised. “Yeah.”

“Someone asking after you.”

I paused on my way across the skimmer’s flank. Cool drenching of Envoy preparedness, inked with a tiny, joyous splinter of anticipation.

The hangover receded to the back of my awareness.

“What did they want?”

“Didn’t say. Didn’t even have your name. Described you pretty solidly, though. It was a priest, one of those northern weirdos. You know, beard and shit.”

I nodded, anticipation fanning into warm, shivery little flames.

“So what’d you tell him?”

“Told him to fuck off. My woman’s from Saffron, she’s told me some of the shit they’re getting into up there. I’d string those fuckers to a weed rack with livewire, soon as look at them.”

“This guy young or old?”

“Oh, young. Carried himself too, know what I mean?”

Virginia Vidaura’s words drifted back through my mind. Sanctified solo assassins against targeted infidels.

Well, not like you weren’t looking for this.

Vidaura came up to me and put a hand on my arm.

“Tak—”

“You go back with the others now,” I said quietly. “I’ll take care of this.”

“Tak, we need you to—”

I smiled at her. “Nice try. But you guys don’t need me for anything any more. And I just discharged my last remaining obligation back there in virtual. I’ve got nothing better to do any more.”

She looked steadily back at me.

“It’ll be okay,” I told her. “Rip out his throat and be right back.”

She shook her head.

“Is this really all you want?”

The words chimed, real-time echo of my own question to Sylvie in the depths of the virtuality. I made an impatient gesture.

“What else is there? Fight for the glorious Quellist cause? Yeah right. Fight for the stability and prosperity of the Protectorate? I’ve done both, Virginia, you’ve done both, and you know the truth as well as I do. It’s all so much shit on a prick. Innocent bystanders blown apart, blood and screaming and all for some final greasy political compromise. Other people’s causes, Virginia, I’m fucking sick of it.”

“So what instead? This? More pointless slaughter?”

I shrugged. “Pointless slaughter is what I know how to do. It’s what I’m good at. You made me good at it, Virginia.”

That took her like a slap across the face. She flinched. Sierra Tres and the pilot looked on, curious. The woman who called herself Quell, I noticed, had gone below to the cabin.