Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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lewd to show much ankle. Much of anything, on a woman. Stripping the limp bulk of the peasant woman
was difficult; the clothing was filthy, but no more so than a soldier's after a week or so in the field.
Her sword and dagger went in the bottom of the handcart; she arranged it carefully, with the hilt easily
available but not likely to be found unless they searched exhaustively. The clothing was simple, a long
dress of coarse linen with several layers of petticoats and a thick hooded tunic, a cloak of the same
material, and tattered gloves that looked like third-handfessas castoffs worn for decency's sake among
strangers. Shkai'ra shed her blood-stiffenedsolas suit and sliced it into rags, stuffing them past finding with
a stick into various liquid puddles of offal. Something else for Megan's sake; she gripped the Arkan
woman under the armpits and dragged her into the rear of the alley, behind a fall of crumbled brick. A
tattered blanket from the cart went around her, and the Kommanza left a chain of silver resting on her
chest, hidden under the blanket. More than compensation for the cart and all its possessions.
One last thing. She gathered hersolas-style fighting braid and haggled it off, then began to crop her hair
okas-short. I'm going to be fucking baldby the time it's over, at this rate .
Only for you, my heart, she thought, gritting her teeth at the tugging pull of the nicked blade.
"Movealong , there, woman!" the watchman said.
Shkai'ra shuffled her bare feet in the dust of the sidewalk.Remember , she told herself.Hands folded,
eyes down, shoulders slumped, knees together . Sweat trickled down her flanks, and ran stinging into
her eyes from her stubbled scalp. The fine concrete of the avenue was blinding bright; the final layer had
been mixed with crushed quartz and flung back the light like flecks of polished metal. There was color in
plenty, gaudy cloth and the paste-and-ceramic jewelry that even poor Arkans wore, stone facings in a
dozen colors, pavement-paintings in chalk done in the florid Imperial style. Heat radiated from the masses
of stone and brick; the air was damp and heavy with an underlying smell of rot.
"Move! Your kind aren't wanted here. Understand?" The watchman prodded at Shkai'ra with the butt of
his spear.
Only for you, my love, she thought, turning the instinctive snarl into a simper. Nothing and nobody was
going to move her away from the marble-gilt-and-glass building at her back, the General Deposit Box
Office, 5th Southwest Quarter, intersection of Delas Rii Crescent and Aesas-Berakalla Road. Not after
four days of squatting here in these ridiculous clothes.
The watchman was not particularly impressive, well into middle age and with a broken-veined nose that
had looked long and hard into many cups. His companion was younger, with the twitchy not-there look
of an Arkanherb addict; doubtless the best of the capital police were out at the front, trading spear
thrusts with the Lakan infantry levy, or getting their heads beaten in by Schvait war flails.
Bad luck to you and may your butts break out in boils, she thought, simpering ingratiatingly and
drawing the side of her hood across her face for modesty. It was a relief not to have her breasts bound
down, and the way they showed under the bodice was enough to convince anyone of her gender. Which
made ithighly unlikely she would be identified as the Postal Slasher.
The rumors had spread around the city quickly; she had even overheard a few expressions of sympathy
for the mysterious bandaged figure, mostly accompanied by speculation about battles lost because of
misplaced letters, historic battles, a century or two past, whose crucial missives still lay somewhere within