That brought a frown of displeasure, quickly wiped from her face. Sly knew she wasn’t so young anymore, but why did her body have to keep reminding her of the ugly fact? She kept her tall, lean form in good shape, her muscles in tone, with daily exercise. She was still as strong, as fast, as she’d ever been—or at least so she told herself. But there was no denying that she was thirty-three, no, thirty- four , her birthday had been two weeks before. A hard workout—or a particularly strenuous shadowrun—more and more often left her with a backache. And her left knee, which she’d blown out some years back when taking the quick way to the street from a third-story window, had a tendency to throb when it was raining. Which it did in Seattle nearly all the fragging time, of course. Physically speaking, she could still do anything that she did fifteen years ago—plus all her experience making her much more competent than she’d been at nineteen—but there was no denying it took her longer to recover afterward.