by eden Hudson
JVZ 00:12:59 Yes.
AI 00:13:18 Watch your back. Some jungle baron is offering a reward for anybody with knowledge of your whereabouts.
The only jungle baron I could think of was the father of that cute little attention-whore I’d nailed on Carina’s and my first trip to Courten, but he hadn’t been fast enough to see me slip out his second-story window. There was no way I was the first guy that daddy’s girl had gotten caught with. If he’d somehow gotten the description from one of his daughters—either the one screwing me in her sister’s bed or the one screaming at us while secretly wishing it had been me and her instead—why would he have waited until almost two years later before trying to find me?
Iceni could’ve hacked my wristpiece and made this whole lookout order up based on my location history. Just because Carina and Nick claimed they wouldn’t illegally trackback private citizens didn’t mean the candy knight played by the same rules. If Iceni had hacked my wristpiece, then she would know I was lying about still being in Soam. Maybe she was just playing along. I would play along, too, if I thought it would benefit my endgame. Why dig someone’s grave yourself when you can get them to do it for you?
So, the question became what was the candy knight’s endgame. Was she just trying to rope me into satisfying her in a way no other man ever could now that she’d had me, or did she have something more sinister in mind? She was an investigator with the Taern Enforcers, so there was always the possibility that this was some sort of elaborate trap.
JVZ 00:13:42 It’s probably not even me. Send me the ILO.
AI 00:14:01 If you know what an ILO is, then you’re surely aware that I can’t release one to a civilian.
JVZ 00:14:19 But you can message them about it?
AI 00:14:38 I’m not supposed to, but there are no charges mentioned in this order, just a general request for info. It’s fishy.
Yeah, real fishy.
AI 00:14:56 I just wanted you to keep your eyes peeled. You never know with the Soamis. Just look what happened with the Bloodslinger.
I grinned. Now she was really laying it on thick.
JVZ 00:15:17 Good point. I’ll keep a low profile while I’m here.
AI 00:15:32 Maybe message me when you get back in Emden, so I can stop worrying?
JVZ 00:15:40 You just want me to come over.
AI 00:15:58 Those pancakes aren’t going to make themselves.
JVZ 00:16:03 I’m not going to make them, either. I already told you, I don’t double-dip.
AI 00:16:12 And I already told you I’m not your therapist. Work out your issues yourself. I’m just here for the fringe benefits.
JVZ 00:16:31 Jeesh, is ignoring you the only way to shut you up?
AI 00:16:50 Whatever. Have fun with whatever poor substitute for me you’re demeaning tonight.
I didn’t respond so she would know I was ignoring her.
I closed out of my messages. The rest of the bacon and remoulade had gone cold while I was dealing with the candy knight. I ate them, but didn’t try to call up the not-quite-memories that went with them. Why bother when I could manipulate the fantasy into becoming reality?
I left behind the research for the time being and started looking for the things I would need to set my trap.
ELEVEN:
Carina
When Carina had finally, painstakingly finished cutting along the yellow lines, a new prompt popped up.
Good work, Miyo! You maintained 91.4% accuracy over the whole body!
Reward: Steady Hand—your Dexterity is 20% less affected when you see blood!
As that notification disappeared, another replaced it.
Now it’s time to remove the tithe and offer it to Envishtu!
Objective: Slice away the membrane connecting the slave’s hide to his body
Objective2: Burn the slave’s removed hide in the Fire of Envishtu!
With the two bladeless fingers and thumb of her left hand, Carina peeled up a flap of skin at the corner where the inner calf incision intersected with the gruesome ankle bracelet and began to slice away the thin fascia connecting the slave’s skin to the muscle with the blades embedded in the first fingers of her right hand.
It went much easier than the cutting. Her finger blades were sharp; they sliced away the connective tissue with an effortless wick, wick, wick sound. As she worked, the Dual Minded buff returned her Dexterity and Perception. To make sure it stayed that way, Carina kept Miyo distracted from the dark red muscle and blue veins by feeding into her anger and helpless outrage.
Occasionally Carina had to adjust her grip on the skin, folding it over so she could grab a handful and pull. Using her ring and little fingers to grip was awkward and it exhausted the flexors in her forearms, but by the time she made it to the slave’s lower belly, she had the hang of it.
She found it hard to believe that Nick’s parents had let him play Tsunami Tsity as a kid. Sure, having eight kids had relaxed Tarren and KBeausoleil beyond a level Carina had seen in any other parent she’d ever met, but she doubted that even they would allow one of their children to play a game where they had to skin a human being alive. If they knew about it. There was also the “what Mom and Pop don’t know won’t hurt us” factor to consider when dealing with the Beausoleil offspring.
Van Zandt’s father was another matter. Had Lorne wanted Jubal to experience this, maybe in the hopes of training his son to follow in his bloody footsteps? As if using his only child to lure women into his trap hadn’t been bad enough. And what had Jubal felt while playing it? Had he enjoyed the gore, the power over life and death? Or had it given him a window into another world, like the feelings of Miyo’s love for her father? Had Tsunami Tsity allowed him to externalize an inner conflict that a child raised by a sadistic serial murderer couldn’t fully express? Had Miyo given voice to the part of Jubal that wasn’t able to speak?
Hooray, Miyo! You’ve unlocked Dual Minded (Level 3)! You can now think of other things while overwhelmed and regain 3% of your lost Perception and Dexterity per second! But if you try to move too quickly, your focus will shift back to the blood, and we all know what happens then, don’t we?
Carina blinked away the notification and adjusted her grip on the slippery hide. All she needed to do was keep leveling up this buff until Miyo could look at blood without getting sick.
The problem with trying to figure out Van Zandt’s attachment to anything was that he didn’t see the world the way real people did. Real people existed within their idea of the world as they saw and interacted with it, for the most part unable to see the world in other ways. They were mostly honest about what they saw and thought, except in the cases where they didn’t really understand the things they thought or couldn’t be honest with themselves about the things they felt. Sometimes real people were superficially dishonest about something, but their body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions told the truth. Real people could be trusted because they couldn’t lie without being obvious.
Nick was a real person—a very special one, but a real one. It was why she loved him.
Carina was not a real person. In the same way that she knew she could never be beautiful with a face like hers, she knew she could never be real with a mind like hers. She could see the world through the eyes of anybody she met. Seeing their worlds made it possible for her to tell them any lie she wanted to with her body, voice, and face to make them think she was like them. She chose to use that ability to help instead of harm because she could also see how every moment rushed from the past toward the future, how every choice and action and inaction lined up to create reality. It was all connected—a vast web of consequences, no coincidences, no accidents, no escape.
Was it like that in Van Zandt’s mind? Carina knew he saw the connections, too, but at the same time, he believed that all of those connections revolved around him. She suspected that the main difference between her and the thief was that he assumed he was central to the overall story of reality. To him, death was the ul
timate end because he thought he was the main character. Carina knew that all humans were bit players at best, and that understanding allowed her to see the connections and their significance more clearly than Van Zandt could.
Hooray, Miyo! You’ve unlocked Dual Minded (Level 4)! You can now think of other things while overwhelmed and regain 4% of your lost Perception and Dexterity per second! But if you try to move too quickly, your focus will shift back to the blood, and we all know what happens then, don’t we?
Carina smiled. If she kept leveling up her Dual Minded like this, she might think herself into non-existence by the end of the game. Or the rest of the world into it.
The good news was she had almost finished skinning the slave. She grasped the slippery flesh suit in both hands and pulled. It tore free of the skull with a ripping sound that she’d only heard twice in her life. She wondered where the devs had sampled that. Maybe a hunter had let them record while he pulled the hide from a small animal.
As the scalp came away from the slave’s skull, a cheer went up through Tsunami Tsity. Cries of “Praise Envishtu!” and “Glory be to the God of Our Flesh!”
Now that’s the work of Envishtu’s high priestess! You’re the best at what you do, Miyo!
Reward: High Priestess—Members of the tribe who are friendly toward you and neutral toward you will look the other way now and then if you’re a little weird about some things because, hey, all religious leaders are a little weird. Just make sure you’re not too weird and you keep those flawless tithes coming!
Miyo shook inside with something blacker than despair—uncertainty. Maybe she was the wrong one. Maybe she was the evil one. Maybe she was insane to think the thoughts she’d been having. Maybe there was something broken inside of her. Why couldn’t she just be normal like everyone else? Want what they wanted, do what they did, without this disconnect between her actions and her mind? Was she really so broken that she could never just be normal?
Time to finish the ceremony, Miyo, so everyone else can get on with flaying their slaves!
Objective: Place the tithe on the hide stretcher and burn it in Envishtu’s Cauldron
Current objective failed in 30…29…28…
Another teenage girl appeared beside Miyo, holding an oval frame made of bent saplings between the last knuckles of her bladed fingers. Her aquamarine eyes—the same color as Envishtu’s Draught—watched as Carina carefully turned the slave’s skin right side out and stretched it over the frame. The girl was silent, her mouth smiling as if ecstatic, but her eyes were tense.
When Carina pulled the hide over the last bit of frame, the girl with aquamarine eyes moved her hands out of the way a little too quickly.
That moment played over and over again in Miyo’s mind as she carried the gory tithe up to Envishtu’s Cauldron and offered it up to the flesher’s god. It was almost as if the girl with the aquamarine eyes hadn’t wanted the hide to touch her.
“May our cries and shouts of thanksgiving fall pleasing upon your ears,” Miyo intoned, bladed fingers reaching toward the sky. Sparks and smoke flew up from the cauldron as the tithe crackled and burned. “May this offering warm you in the cold vacuum of space, where your only light is the stars.”
When the tithe had been made, the rest of the women began their work, skinning the new slaves, moving the flayed slaves to the smoking house where their skinless bodies would cure until they came out of their draught-induced stupor, and scraping and salting the hides that had been removed. Miyo’s part in the bloodletting was done for now. She sat beside the cauldron, looking down on her people below.
What she saw was this: The girl with the aquamarine eyes bringing Envishtu’s Draught to the men managing the slaves as quickly as the apothecary could mix it. But the girl always turned her face away when the men poured the draught down the slaves’ throats.
TWELVE:
Jubal
Nick messaged me early the next morning to see what the plan for the day was. I told him to meet me in the Ratlines’s lobby at ten. That gave me plenty of time to eat a lazy breakfast in bed, get dressed, and message Crotalinae headquarters to find out why my app said that the ’Shan’s damage list was still Pending.
According to the customer service representative, my Mangshan’s dedicated mechanic had found something wrong with the ’Shan’s core sensors, but hadn’t been able to determine what was causing the problem. For legal purposes, Crotalinae policy restricted making the list of Repairs Needed available on the app before they were sure they had everything.
I let them know that was a stupid policy, filed an official complaint, then raided the penthouse’s pop-up fridge for something sweet. The last handful of chocolate-covered coffee beans and a few sticky rolls from room service did the trick.
When I stepped into the lobby at three minutes ’til ten, Nick was leaning against the back of a leather couch, watching the penthouse elevator. He stood up when he saw me, like a guard dog whose master had just come home. The jeans and black shirt he’d been wearing since we started this mission looked as if they could use a good burning. He stuck out like the proverbial pinkie in the penis lineup in the finest hotel on the west coast, but he was going to fit in nicely with the unwashed rabble at the dogfights later.
“Somebody’s early,” I said. “Did you miss me?”
“I’m tired of sitting around doing nothing.” His eyebrows scrunched together as he took in my new cream-and-indigo tourist shirt. “Did you go shopping?”
“The clothes I left Taern in were starting to smell the way you look.” I patted my tourist shirt’s breast pocket. “Additionally, I was ready for a change of color.”
“They make them for men, too?”
“Your fiancée’s got an iron stomach, you’ve got iron eyes—you’re a match made in indigent heaven.” I pulled on my ventilator, then gestured at the lobby’s revolving doors. “Let’s get this showboat on the road. We’re meeting with our bookie in half an hour.”
“Bookie?” Nick repeated, with a level of confusion that only someone slower than a brained fish could muster.
“Short for bookmaker,” I said. “It’s a person who takes bets on the outcomes of sporting events. In our case, dogfighting.”
“I know what a bookie is. What I meant was, why do we need to see one?”
“He’s a huge fan of toadies overencumbered with muscle and underencumbered with brains, and I wanted to show him mine,” I said. “Obviously, we’re going to bet on the dogfights. You look like an Enforcer, so you’ll have to have a ticket from a bookie to convince anybody that they should let you in.”
That was mostly true. Plenty of corrupt Crystebon Enforcers frequented the dogfights, too, but they would have betting tickets because why go if you weren’t making a little back on your admission? Besides, my plan required that Nickie have a stake in the fights.
Since he wasn’t moving, I took the initiative and led us to the exit. The revolving hammered brass and glass door was heavy, but perfectly balanced and pneumatic-assisted, so it spun with the slightest touch. I walked into a wedge-shaped section and pushed it through the vaculock with a whumph, then stepped aside.
While I waited for Nick, I adjusted the straps on my ventilator to ensure a better seal around my nose and mouth. You couldn’t be too careful in an old city like this. Not only was it a breeding ground for mildew, but the ambient pollution and diverse population could give you any number of airborne STDs.
I blinked a few times. It was strange wearing my ventilator without my helmet. My eyes are by far my best feature—which is really saying something—but they felt exposed without the visor.
Nick whumped through the revolving door. “Dogfighting is illegal. I could lose my knighthood for gambling on one.”
I shot him a finger gun. “Then you’ll want to place your bet under a fake name like the rest of your Guild buddies do.”
***
The bookie I’d gotten an appointment with ran his business under the guise of a money chan
ging firm. His offices were located in a high-rise of other equally legitimate but affluent businesses near the northwestern edge of Crystebon’s business district.
Inside, a fat greasy-haired acne-faced teenager peered out from behind the administrative assistant desk, swiping at a projection screen and pretending to be a real secretary.
“What can I do for you gentlemen today?” he asked, touching the talkpiece clipped over his ear, rudely disconnecting his imaginary friend.
I leaned my elbows on the raised section of the desk and glanced around the office.
“Where are your mommy and daddy?” I asked.
The kid sneered, trying and failing to keep his composure. “Is there a reason you’re here?”
“We have grown-up business with Mr. Hubert.”
“Do you have an appointment, sir?”
I grinned at Nick. “Isn’t that the cutest thing?” Then I turned back to the kid. “If I could just speak to an adult…”
“I am twenty-three,” the kid growled, his face turning crimson.
“Wow, such a big boy! No wonder daddy lets you come to work with him.”
“Mr. Hubert,” the kid snapped before regaining control of his voice and returning it to inside volume, “is in a meeting right now. Feel free to take a seat and flip through our brochures. I’ll let you know when he’s ready for you.”
“All right, kiddo,” I agreed, pulling up the timer on my watch. “I’ll play office with you for two minutes starting…now. One second longer and we’re taking our business to the hwaryna outside the Cryst Rider’s Cathedral.”
We watched the attitude drain out of the kid’s face.
“I—you—” He glanced over his shoulder at the faux oak door with Hubert’s nameplate on it. “I can’t interrupt him in the middle of a holo-com.”
“That’s fine.” I turned my back on the kid and picked out a chair. I sat down, kicked my sneaks up on the little glass table running projections of odds sheets disguised as the current monetary conversion rates, and wiggled my butt and shoulders until I was reasonably comfortable. Then I checked my wristpiece. “He’s still got one minute and twenty-six seconds before the two highest rollers he’s ever booked walk out his front door.”
