Read Against A Dark Background for Free Online

jaw,’ Jyr whimpered, getting to his knees and holding his chin. The back of his head was bleeding. Bits of broken glass fell from him as he stood, shakily. She took a couple of steps away from him, watching him carefully. He almost fell again, then put one hand out to the dressing-table to steady himself. ‘You’ve broken my jaw!’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Not with an upper cut.’ She glanced at the bedside clock. ‘That’s you down to about a minute and a half now, I’d say.’
    He looked at her. ‘You fucking heartless bitch.’ His voice was quite steady.
    She shook her head. ‘No, Jyr, I never liked it when you talked dirty.’ She looked away from him. ‘Phone?’
    ‘Standing by.’
    ‘Please call the local p-’
    ‘All right!’ Jyr roared, then winced, and held his jaw as he stumbled for the door. ‘I’m going! I’m going! And I’m never coming back!’ He hauled the bedroom door open and slammed it shut behind him; she listened to his feet hammering down the stairs, then heard the front door crash shut; the turret shook around her. A final slam was his car door, followed by the noise of the engine, whining away into the night.
    She stood very still for a while, then her shoulders dropped a little, and her eyes closed.
    She swayed slightly, swallowed, then breathed out as she opened her eyes again, sniffing. She wiped her eyes, took another deep breath and walked away from the bed. She stopped briefly at the dressingtable, setting a couple of bottles upright again.
    ‘Standing by,’ said the room.
    She looked at her reflection in the table’s mirror. `Cancel,’ she said, then drew one finger through a thick pool of perfume on the cable’s wooden surface, and dabbed the scent behind her ears as she walked towards the door.
    She drove the bike back into town, helmet on, nightsight activated and all lights blazing.
    She arrived at the tall town house which was the home of the Bassidges, the couple who owned the other two thirds of the tropical fish business. Her lawyer was already there; she signed the necessary papers selling her share in the shop to them. She’d left her personal phone in the cliff house, knowing it would make her too easy to trace. After her lawyer had returned home and the Bassidges had gone to bed she sat down at the house’s antique desk-terminal and stayed there until dawn, taking a couple of zing-tabs to keep herself awake as she attempted to catch up on eight years of Antiquities news and datagossip.
    There were numerous outstanding contracts for the Universal Principles: several from universities, several more from big Corps known to invest in high-value Antiquities, a few from wealthy individual collectors who specialised in lost Unique books, and one anonymous contract. The latter offered the best financial advance, though only for Antiquities investigators with acceptable track records. She was almost tempted to draft a tender and mail is to the anonymous box number, but there was too much to settle first.
    She suspected she’d end up looking for the book one way or the other. According to one of the more pervasive rumours that had circulated within the Dascen family and its attendant septs in the chaotic aftermath of her grandfather Gorko’s fall, the whereabouts of the last Lazy Gun - the one stolen from the Huhsz by the Duchess seven generations earlier and hidden after the Duke’s death - had been discovered by Gorko’s agents and its location somehow recorded in the Unique book named the Universal Principles, which itself had been missing for a lot longer.
    To Sharrow, the rumour had always seemed just mad enough to be true, though how you could leave a message in something which everybody agreed had vanished centuries earlier, she understood no better than anybody else.
    At appropriate times during the night, to allow for the time differences involved, she phoned the Francks in Regioner, left a message for Miz in the Log-Jam, failed to track