"Happen? When did what happen?"
She reached out a hand and drew it back, while the body of the young man shuddered convulsively and one of Condemeign's supporting hands ran suddenly red with blood. Then he saw the dagger in her hand and his teeth chattered. The body clumped to the floor.
"Don't be so upset," the girl said. "It's probably the way he was intended to go anyway."
"But they said it wouldn't be painful!" he protested.
She was very pretty, with a high-built head of red hair, a rather good nose and pale cheeks. She smiled.
"I think it usually isn't," she said. "But one thing they don't tell you is that anything really goes. There are no laws against murder on Nepenthe, or against anything else. If you happen to get in the way of someone who doesn't like you before the death department has a chance to arrange their histrionics, the front office calls it cricket."
"I suppose ... I suppose," began Condemeign, wiping his sweaty forehead with the sleeve of his pajamas, "that the death department never wastes a good set-up." He stepped back as a couple of attendants came out of a corner, finally, and took the body away. A few interested revelers went back to their carousing.
"I haven't been here long enough to find out," the girl said. "But those boys and girls are high-priced talent. And Doctor Munro is a cagey sort. He probably has the first penny he ever made in his counterfeiting machine as a boy." She paused, watching Condemeign's face flicker from white to pink and back again. "Wait here a minute," she said, and then came back with a beaker of something alcoholic and highly refreshing.
"I'm Firelie Gluck," she remarked, following the convulsions of his Adam's apple as he drained the glass.
He tossed the beaker onto a pile of dead streamers and stood up.