“Heck yeah. Did you expect a palace?”
Ramsey had a room, rent one Irwadi month in arrears, in a cold-water tenement near the river which demarked the Old and the New Quarters. The façade of the old building was dark now. His landlady was probably asleep, although you never could tell with that old witch. Ramsey knew it wouldn’t be the first time she stayed up through half the night to await a delinquent tenant.
“I—I never went to a man’s room before,” the blue-skinned Vegan girl said. She was rather pretty in a slender, muscleless, big-eyed, female-helpless mode.
“You’re a dance-hall girl, aren’t you?”
“Still, I never spent the night in a man’s—”
“What’s the matter with you? You think we’re going to spend the night here? Somebody over at those gaming tables will be able to identify me. Garr Symm’ll be on his way before long.”
“Then what are we going to do?” The girl was shivering with cold.
“Hide,” Jason Ramsey said. “Somewhere. I just came back to get my things. There isn’t much, but there’s an old m.g. gun which we might need.”
“But they’ll find us, and—”
“You coming upstairs or will you wait out here and freeze to death in the cold?”