Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

a living out of politics. But it wasn’t the same somehow.
    His present circumstances were comfortable but modest. He had a one-bedroom apartment in the office building adjoining Parliament. He’d chosen it so he could always be there on the spot if he was needed, and also because he needed the extra security to ward off his many enemies. He’d upset a lot of people in his time, on all sides of the political spectrum. Everyone agreed the deal he’d struck with Blue Block over the Families had been necessary, but that didn’t mean anyone had to like it.
    Personally, he didn’t give a damn. The assassination attempts were the only real excitement he got these days. But he worried about innocents getting hurt or even killed just by being near him at the wrong moment, so he had reluctantly moved his few belongings into more secure accommodations. The frequency of attacks dropped dramatically, but his new home wasn’t the kind of place where friends could just drop in. There were times when the spartan apartment seemed unbearably quiet and empty.
    After the rebellion Jack and Ruby had set up house together, but it didn’t last. They were just too different. Their opposing tastes, needs, and characters drove them apart inside a month. His spartan clashed with her sybaritic; he wanted to work, she wanted to play. He was a man of duty and honor, and she… would rather go shopping. Or start a fight in a crowded tavern. Just because they loved each other, it didn’t mean they could live together. And they couldn’t spend all their time in bed. Their growing frustrations finally culminated in a major shouting row, in which they both said unforgivable things and then threw heavy objects at each other. They wrecked their house room by room and then walked out on each other. Once they were set up in separate apartments, a comfortable distance apart, they were soon friends again. Jack didn’t blame Ruby in the least. He’d never been easy to get along with, as any of his seven ex-wives would no doubt be only too happy to point out, in considerable detail. And besides…
    Ruby had been drinking a hell of a lot. She said the Maze changes protected her, but Jack wasn’t so sure. She was slowing down. Getting sloppy. Making mistakes. Trusting people her instincts would have warned her about less than a year ago. Jack knew why she drank. It was something to do. Ruby could stand anything except boredom. And she’d always had a strong self-destructive streak. It came with the bounty-hunting territory. You couldn’t kill people on a regular basis and not start to see all life as trivial, even your own. Perhaps especially your own.
    Jack sighed and went back to his brooding. He had a lot to brood about. Once he’d fought the System.
    Now he was a part of it. He’d become a politician, setting aside a lifetime’s ideals in the name of compromise and making deals with people he detested. He’d had to make deals in the past, to raise the funding he needed for his rebel campaigns, but he’d never once compromised his principles. Now more and more he was being pushed or maneuvered into situations where he had no choice but to give up on some of his lesser beliefs in the name of a greater cause. Just to get a chance at implementing some of the things he really believed in.
    His trouble was, he’d been a leader too long. Men and women had jumped to obey him, swayed by his great cause, his endless rhetoric and charming smile. Now he was just another man of influence, forced to argue his corner over every damned thing. Forced to rely on reason and ingenuity. And when that failed, join up with those nearest his beliefs to outvote the other bastards. And then pay his new friends’ price for their support. He found it frustrating, and occasionally sourly amusing, that all his marvelous Maze-given powers and amazing new youth were useless for getting him what he wanted now. He could always intimidate his fellow politicians, force things through by the threat of what he might do, but that would betray everything he’d ever believed in. He would have become what he’d always hated most—the enemy he’d fought for so long. It all came back to the Families. Not only were they ceding more and more authority to the shadowy Blue Block, but they clearly weren’t keeping their side of the bargain he’d struck, to the letter or the spirit. He’d always expected them to try to wriggle out of it
    somehow, but not this soon, not this