"...all beasts are happy,
For, when they die
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live, still to be plagued in hell."
               - Christopher Marlowe, "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus"

"Nemo liber est qui corpori servit."
(No one is free who is a slave to his body.)
               - Seneca

The air was thick as the Amazon in August, but the stench was all its own. Stale beer and fresh vomit: a sure sign that I was on the wrong side of town. Or perhaps I was on the right side, which would make this one hell of a town. There was a chair beneath me, though I was hardly sitting on it. My arm lay on a sticky table and my head leaned on a sticky wall. The raunchy laughter nearby was deafening, though hardly audible above the rest of the din.

At least the lights are low, I thought as I fluttered my eyelids and the rough glow of a few kerosene lanterns pierced their way to the back of my skull.

Kerosene lanterns. Where the hell am I?

The room fit ten tables uncomfortably, enough for a hundred men and as many rats. They were the kind of people my mother had warned me about, and my mother was a pirate who harboured in ports that made Mogadishu look like Club Med. At present, I was fortunate enough to be in a corner—they're sought after commodities in places like this.

Things started spinning, and I lurched as far from myself as possible. It was a dry-heave. Gazing down at the fresh pile of vomit beside me and realizing that it was probably my own, I figured I had been here awhile—too long to bother looking for my wallet.

The sickness was all in a day's work, of course, but it was rarely this bad. To be unconscious upon arrival was dangerous, as drops were usually made in seedy areas. So when I could I would arrange for a bait wallet or satchel in a jacket or trouser pocket—a cutpurse may slit my throat out of spite if they didn't find anything to take. A wallet with a fistful of local currency could keep me alive, and would also keep a thief from searching the small of my back, where I kept my far more substantial stash of local currency. Unfortunately for whoever stole my wallet on that particular day, however, I had put something personal in it for the trip, something I didn't want my bosses to know I was taking with me. I had learned cycles ago that the suits always search the stash you hide on yourself, but never the expendable bait wallet. The suits are nothing if not predictable.