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“I’ll do it,” I mutter. “Now, what’s the prize?”

The Duke of Hands laughs merrily. “Glad you asked! My darling, we’re stealing the most valuable thing in all the worlds.”

MY ASSOCIATES STARE AT the Queen’s Kiss on my glass coffee table. They have not moved since I set it down. I examine the drooping clock in the painting on the wall. One of my favorite Dalís. With the original lost or destroyed, even a forgery of La persistencia de la memoria is a treasure. This one I stole from a robber-baron Silver in the Mass. Time stands as still in the room as in the painting.

“This is a lark, isn’t it? Another one of your games, Eph,” Cyra finally says, waving her hands in her animated way.

Dano chuckles to himself from his place on the formofabric couch next to me. He’s sprawled on it like a drunk cat, leg over the armrest. Overcompensating his slickness like we all don’t know how insecure he is about being fifty kilos soaking wet. He smothers his spent burner in the coffee-cup-turned-ashtray on his stomach and lights another. The smoke slithers into the air, stained green and purple by the AI lover advertisements that writhe out the window on the building adjacent mine.

Cyra sneers at him. “Is this a joke to you too?”

“Lass, life’s a joke,” Dano whispers as smoke comes out his nostrils.

“Wonderful. It’s all a joke. And we’re the damn punchline.” Cyra stares at the untouched vodka lemon I poured her, trying to come to grips with the tale of my night with the Duke. I want her to drink it. Shit, drink four of them, woman. She’s a damn stress when she’s sober, and only mildly tolerable when inebriated.

It’s the late hours of the evening, dark cycle. A sluggish late summer rain falls on Hyperion. And I’m stuck between a madman with a buzzsaw and a job that will certainly kill me. I feel a sense of resignation. This is the end of the line. What the Syndicate asks is impossible. This business is so far past their paygrade I thought the Duke was joking.

We’re going to die. But dying pure and quick on a job is better than dying slow at their hands. Now, just have to convince my crew. If I don’t, anyone who doesn’t play along will have an octopus in their mouth and their body in a gut

ter by morning.

“This is your shit, Eph,” Cyra says. “They came to you. So, fine. You take the contract. I’m not interested. Never wanted to tangle with those psychos. If you’re smart, you’ll realize you shouldn’t get involved in this shit either. This is big. Too big.”

“You are not out,” Volga says without any malice. “Ephraim needs our help. He helped us. You are in.”

“Slag that.”

“Yeah, I’m with the grass ass for once,” drawls Dano, burner dangling from the corner of his mouth. “This is manic, and not in a sexy way.”

Volga leans forward. Cyra involuntarily flinches. “Dano, you would be in Whitehold or dead if it weren’t for this man. Cyra, where would you be if Ephraim did not pay your debt to that data shark? I would still be on Earth, loading boxes and collecting loans from sad men so I could eat.” I watch her with an unfamiliar warmth going through me. I hurt her outside the bar, but still she has nothing but love for me. Why? “We will help him because he helped us.”

Dano claps his hands. “Bloodydamn fine speech.”

“Cut the yapping, you mutant,” Cyra sneers at Volga. “No one owes anyone anything here.”

“They know who you are, Cyra. They know who we all are,” I say into my Pernod. It’s a drink from the days back when I used to care, emerald green with the taste of licorice. Trigg loved them. I knocked back a pair while waiting for my team to arrive, watching the news recycle clips from the Reaper’s dismantlement at the hands of the Vox Populi. Lionheart couldn’t do anything to stop it. Made me feel warm and fuzzy, seeing the king and queen get caught with their pants down.

“They want my team. It wasn’t a request.”

“What if we refuse it?”

“We refuse the Queen’s Kiss, we’re dead,” I say.

Cyra has a burst of inspiration. “We can leave town. Set up farside in Endymion. There’s plenty of work there.”

“I’m not going to Endymion,” I say sharply.

“Eph…”

“No, actually it’s a grand idea. Their Endymion outfit will be waiting to welcome us to the city. Show us the sites. The Crescent Orb, the Tridian Palazzo, the Ephor Spires.” I put a finger gun to my head and pull the trigger. “Then they kill us.”

“We can go off-planet.”

I sigh. “The Duke of Legs has men in the docks. They’ll kill us in transit.”

“Then we don’t fly commercial. We charter a ship farside out of Eridan Interplanetary. I can wipe the transit records. Or get us documents for Earth or Mars.”

“Cyra, you might have enough money to charter a ship. But to buy vintage Solar Republic passports with hologram veracity and magnetic coding on this timetable?” I ask, knowing how dearly she fancies her sparkling new condo in the Sordo District. One of the new Redache glass buildings. Gaudy shit. “After the down payment on your haunt, how much do you have left?”