Skeen's Search Read Online Free

spray of stars. She sighed. “Probably no one’s ever challenged her and she just forgot. She has other things on her mind. Besides she knows me, she knows I can take care of myself.”
    â€œSkeen? The Rooner? Ship Picarefy?” Briony leaned forward, a desperate eagerness breaking through her professional mask. “That’s your friend?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHe doesn’t know that.” There was no question in her voice. “Call her.”
    â€œIn a while. Why me?”
    â€œBecause you’re new, you’re young, you’re attractive, he saw you and decided he wanted you. Because that’s the way he is. He sees something he wants, then he takes it. If someone tries to stop him, he cries challenge, and that’s the end of it. I’d best tell you, he never loses. Not in the five years standard he’s been here. Not in the more than hundred challenges he’s fought.”
    â€œThere’s always a first time. What happens to me when I kill him?
    â€œWhen?” Briony bit her lips, her eyes shining with emotions Timka couldn’t sort out. “If you kill him,” she said softly, paused lips twitching into a tight nervous smile as Timka made a gesture of protest, “when you kill him, nothing happens to you. The Challenge is recorded. A life challenge. No, he can’t know who your friend is.”
    â€œHe doesn’t know me. If by some wild chance he happened to defeat me, what happens?”
    â€œHe keeps you till he’s tired of you, then he sells you where he can get the most for what’s left of you.”
    â€œI’ve no recourse but fighting him?”
    â€œSkeen. Call her.”
    â€œNo. I don’t think so. If I stomp him, but don’t kill him?”
    â€œHe’ll get you. I don’t know how, but he will.”
    â€œThen I’d better make sure he’s dead.” She waggled a finger at the pile of chips. “It’s not that, is it. You hate the man.”
    Briony chewed her lip, looked around like something timid and trapped, then shrugged. “What does it matter, everyone knows. And you paid the price for whatever I can tell you.” She closed her eyes, clasped her hands so tightly the tips went pink. “A friend of mine,” she breathed, “a sister, by love if not by blood. He took a fancy to her, but she loved me.” Her eyes opened, she flushed, paled. “She had a quick tongue, too quick. She told him to go play with himself, if he was lucky maybe he’d enjoy it more than his women had. She was wise enough to have a stunner pointed at him when she said it. She bought me a badge from the Shtrazi but couldn’t afford two. When he called challenge on her, she fought him and tried to make him kill her. He didn’t. He used her and humiliated her, he broke her, then threw her out when he was finished with her. She killed herself.” Briony shook herself, with visible effort she put off the grief that twisted her face and recaptured the image that greeted the patrons of Xochimiyl. She slid her hand under a fine gold chain she wore about her neck, lifted a black metal triangle from under the gauzes of her dress. “I still have the badge, I renew the fees every year, I will do that until he is dead.”
    Timka rubbed her thumb across her fingertips, flattened her hand on the table. “Thank you.”
    Briony slid the badge under her gauzes. “Why?”
    â€œDon’t be silly, you know the answer to that. Um … you implied I could call Skeen to help me.”
    â€œTo fight in your place. Not beside you.”
    â€œAnything to complicate matters. Games, tchah!” She heard herself and laughed. “I … no, I can’t explain, not without telling you the story of my life. So. Hested Vanker. How does he fight?”
    Briony folded her hands, looked inward, spoke with soft non-emphasis. “A challenge lasts three days standard,