Page 4 of Mongrels United
Grady borrowed one of Kailash’s responses to people throwing their weight around. She crossed her arms and stayed right where she was.
A bot rolled up to Hyson’s side. It had one of the flat faces some owners liked to put on theirs. This one’s face was amiable. It reached into the basket attached to its stubby torso and held up a black shirt.
Hyson donned his shirt.
Grady put it together. The whistle had been to bring the bot to him. The bot had all his possessions he’d put aside for the fight, including his shirt.
Hyson fully clothed would be easier to deal with than half-naked. She stepped over the pipes and moved to where he and his bot were sorting out the rest of his things, including a medallion that he gripped as he slid the chain over his head, so she couldn’t see it. He pushed the medallion inside the shirt and fastened the shirt, hiding it again.
He said something to the bot.
Silence fell.
Grady pushed out a breath of relief at the sudden cessation of noise. The bot was loaded with one of the new silence shield generators and Hyson had invoked it.
Her breath was loud in her ears.
Hyson stood with his shoulders squared, looking down at her. “You cost me the fight.” His voice was low. Deep.
Grady straightened her own shoulders. “It isn’t my fault you got distracted.”
“I haven’t seen you here before.”
Grady hesitated. “I’m here to keep a friend company. As soon as he’s completed his business, we’re leaving.”
Hyson smiled. “Can’t be a legitimate deal, if he’s closing it here.” The smile was a bare lifting of one corner of his mouth. And did it have a little twist in it?
“Self-awareness and arrogance are an unusual combination in a person,” Grady observed.
His brow lifted, the grey eyes glittering with…something. “I like a direct woman.”
Her middle rippled. “How nice for you,” she said politely. Then, to shift the conversation away from the personal, she said, “Why Dere Street?”
He spread his hands, as if that was obvious. “To enjoy myself.”
“No, I mean, why is this party called Dere Street? It’s a strange name.”
“Not if you know what the first Dere Street was.”
“What was it?”
“A dead straight road built across a country, on Old Earth. The people who built it were long gone, but the road was still there. The people living around it didn’t use it.”
She thought about that. “People use this lane all the time.”
“They might have once. They don’t, anymore.” He lifted one thick, dark brow. “For the Chief of Staff, you’re woefully uninformed.”
She blinked.
“Yes, I know who you are,” Hyson added. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“Surprisingly, no,” she admitted. “If they’ve never seen me in person, before, they often don’t connect me with the Forum picture.”
“Or the endless news footage,” he added.
“That, too,” she admitted. She ended up in the frame of cameras more often than she liked. Siran Carpenter was the person the lensesshouldbe focused upon.
Hyson shifted on his feet, resettling his weight. It drew her attention to his physicality. “You don’t know that people will use the magline even to move from the Esquiline to the Capitol, because the chance of being robbed or beaten when you use this lane is too high?”
