Free Starpilot's Grave: Book Two of Mageworlds by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald

when I hand them the bill.”
    Jessan considered the statement for a moment. “Prompt payment is usually a good idea,” he conceded.
    “Damned right it is.” Tarnekep scowled at the pitcher of beer. “And it looks like our friend and his interpreter have gone off and left us with the tab for the bar.”
    “Oh, dear,” Jessan said. “Do we have any local cash at all?”
    “Zero point zip. We’re going to have to turn one of our Ophelan bank drafts into something negotiable before we can settle up and get out.”
    Jessan finished his beer and stood up. “I can handle the money changing,” he said. “You hold down the table so the manager won’t think we’re trying to skip town without paying.”
    “That’s right,” said Tarnekep. “Stick me with having to drink some more of this stuff.”
    Jessan nodded toward the grill. “Order some of the lizard-on-a-stick instead. It can’t be any worse.”
    “You really think it’s lizard?”
    “Who knows? You can tell me when I get back.”
    “Hah.” Tarnekep looked up at Jessan. As always, the red plastic eye patch made it hard to read the expression on the captain’s face. “You take care, Doc, wandering around dirtside with all that money on you. I’d hate to lose a perfectly good copilot.”
     
    The sun was coming up over Namport, and Klea Santreny was tired. She picked her way along the dirty streets in her uncomfortable shoes—her working shoes, cheap and flimsy and overdecorated, with open toes and with heels too high and narrow for the sticky black Namport mud. Even though she stayed on the duckboards as much as possible, she would have to clean the shoes when she got home, no matter how tired she felt.
    One more chore to do before I can sleep, she thought wearily. If I can get to sleep at all.
    She hadn’t slept much yesterday or the day before: the nightmares were back again. She’d had bad dreams for as long as she could remember, dark and confusing stories with no beginning and no end, but never as often or as dark as lately.
    I don’t even remember what I dreamed yesterday. But it was bad, I know that much.
    Tonight, though, had been even worse. Sometime around the third trick of the evening, she’d starting seeing things again. The pictures weren’t real—she’d figured out that much by now, but the knowledge didn’t help. The pictures were thoughts, other people’s thoughts, come loose somehow and crawling into her head: images of faces that weren’t in front of her, drifting patches of color, a stab of pain in someone else’s leg, the occasional word … . Bitch. Slut. Whore.
    Klea hadn’t thought anything could be worse than the pictures. She’d actually begun getting used to those, or at least she’d started learning how to sort them out from her own thoughts. But the images kept getting sharper, and the words kept getting louder, and now the feelings weren’t just the ones on the surface anymore. She’d wondered sometimes what the customers at Freling’s Bar really wanted when they bought themselves a few minutes’ use of her body in one of the rooms upstairs; lately she was finding out. A stiff drink—a real drink, not one of the fakes she had while she was working—helped blur the thoughts a little, but not enough.
    If it’s like this again tomorrow night I don’t know how I’m going to stand it.
    She laughed unsteadily. “If today’s as bad as yesterday, kid,” she said aloud, “you may not last until tomorrow night.”
    One of the neighborhood’s early risers was passing by in the other direction, on his way to whatever crack-of-dawn job forced him awake and out onto the streets. He caught what she was saying—she hadn’t made any effort to lower her voice—and increased his pace.
    Emotions touched her as he went past: a suffocating wave of disapproval … electric blue tickles of fear … a dark image of the warehouses by the spaceport.
    “No,” she muttered—under her breath, this time. “No, damn