by Andrew Post
Stepping near, Dreck arched an eyebrow. “Oh? Even if it meant breaking trust with your new mates?”
“I wouldn’t do that.” You walked right into that one. Again, his mother’s voice. Why?
“Oh? Come to think of it, your act can be pretty convincing. Maybe when you switch from Lord Snooty to the court jester, your loyalty gets just as mixed up.”
“You said not a moment ago you think it’s an act,
that I—”
“See, Gorett?” Dreck said, throwing his arms wide, matching the giant metal woman’s pose behind him outside. “Like you, I can also spin my head around.” He snapped his fingers, loud, in Gorett’s face. “Like that. Trust you, then not.”
“Dreck, I—”
“We can just as easily take the wendal stone without you, disregard our whole ‘You cheat, you bleed’ thing, forget I ever said anything about going halfsies. I can cut your throat in your sleep as easily as give you half my plate at every dinner bell. Your life is entirely in these hands right here. Every little second. Consider each a pittance that slipped between my fingers a damn mercy.”
“I understand. But . . . w-we had a deal.”
Waving him off and hissing, disgusted, Dreck turned away. At the window, leaning with a hand on the thick pane, he peered out, quiet for an uncomfortable length
of time.
“All I’m suggesting here,” he said at last, fogging the glass, “is that you pray to your god my boys find Father Time. And failing your willingness to do that—since egotistical tossers tend to throw offerings at only their own feet—pray she sees something in you that has a purpose.” He thunked a knuckle on the glass, toward the staring metal lady. “And if she sends one of those feelings my way suggesting I do something not very nice, I’ll do it. My loyalty to her is tempered, incomparably, so you know I will. You’ve seen how much so.”
“I have, yes,” Gorett softly agreed, fighting to push back the memory of the man who was surely now only a skeleton with a broken back in the desert somewhere. Aksel, whom they’d flung from the back of the Magic Carpet. Gorett sometimes saw it replay in dreams, the young man rolling off the ramp, tumbling into the empty sky above the Lakebed. Their glances had met momentarily. Gorett had wanted to help but done nothing.
Nothing, Mother echoed.
CHAPTER 4
A Day in the Life of a Bullet Eater
Aksel Browne’s single eye fluttered open. Sitting up, he looked about the rented room, reluctant to return to himself, a prisoner of his flesh and circumstance. At least better than where he’d just been; his nightmares were exclusively about falling from high places.
Luggage—all bearing the Srebrna Academy insignia—was neatly piled into one corner. Since he and Karl were the only ones in need of sleep, unlike the other three, he and the big man alternated using the single lumpy bed in shifts.
The bottom of the closed doorway was lit. Evidently Karl Gonn was already up and watching—or still watching since yesterday—in the next room.
After dressing—black slacks, jacket, and tie—Aksel knocked. Karl gave a nasally grunt, and Aksel walked in.
The big man with wise almond eyes sat before a broad accumulation of holomonitors displaying a dizzying mosaic.
“Heading out?” Karl said, gaze never leaving the monitors.
“In a minute, yeah.” Aksel leaned on the doorjamb, watching Karl a moment. They’d developed a weird sort of rapport, like two men who didn’t think of themselves as their jobs—in their case, uninformed mercenaries for cold-blooded employers—but just two schmoes punching a clock.
The dozens of feeds showed Adeshka’s suburban streets, crowded downtown intersections, and endless mega highways. Occasionally a blurt would come from Karl’s headset, what Aksel assumed was guardsmen’s radio chatter.
“Sleep lately?”
Karl moved a holopanel away with the precise sweep of an enormous hand. “They don’t, so neither can I.”
“Could always say you dozed off, forgot to scramble a security checkpoint. Let them get busted.” Aksel was only sort of kidding.
Karl laughed.
“Where are they anyway?” Aksel stepped in closer. Watching the feeds made his head spin. How did Karl manage to sit in here so many hours every day and not have his brain turn to ash?
“Well, Moira’s still on recon, and Raziel and Tym were uptown at the port this morning.”
“What’s at the port?”
“Uh, commercial frigates, starships, tourists?”
“I know that much, smart-arse, but what’s there of interest to them?” Karl’s gaze shifted, which Aksel knew meant he’d been entrusted with something the Brothers Pyne didn’t want shared.
Aksel, the peon here, let it drop.
“Got a lead this morning. Odium defector,” Karl supplied instead. “So if you’re among the living again, they’d probably like you out there, ready to move.”
Adjusting his tie, Aksel stepped near the door. “Soon as I have my coffee.” Spurts of rebelliousness helped Aksel remember he was still alive. “Want one?”
“No, just don’t forget your suitcase, dear.”
Picking up his bag from beside the door, Aksel took one last glance over the room. For murderers, at least they were neat. Aksel was glad, since if they had trashed the place, Vee would have his head. Not that Aksel’s sister threatening his life was anything new, but the Chrome Cricket was hers—Adeshka’s only combination hotel, pub, apothecary, shipwright, bail bondsman, notary public, auto-body, costume rental, and fireworks outlet.
He locked the door behind him, pocketed the key for room six, and started along the worn carpet.
It was once a brewery, but when the surviving sommeliers left and the building was hosed free of soot, Vee bought the place whole with some friends she’d made while working as a fire dancer on the Originalle carnival circuit. Pooling their savings, she and each of her colorful pals had a slot in the big brick cupboard on Delmark Avenue, while she, voted the most responsible among the circus runaways, assumed the role of landlord.
Bit of a laugh if you were to ask Aksel— his little sister winding up a landlord, of all things. But she did and did it well, really making the Chrome Cricket her own. Rewired the place top to bottom to pass code, put up electric braziers, learning everything she needed in how-to books, no need for any handyman, thank you. Gave all five levels of banisters and hardwood floors so many coats of warm-colored varnish that the place looked like the victim of a honey flood.
It’d been Aksel’s stupid idea to suggest he and his “new friends” stay here. For the life of him he couldn’t remember why he had. Certainly didn’t take long for Raziel to make the connection between Aksel Browne and Vee Browne. Once he had, he promised if Aksel did anything to betray them, the Chrome Cricket would burn. Again.
Maybe it’d been an involuntary decision. Maybe Aksel, deep down, wanted to help Raziel, Tym, and Moira kill their eldest brother but needed a reason to stay in line and do his dirty work obediently, so he’d supplied one himself. Or maybe he wanted some semblance of normalcy while he was a hired gun. And being able to see Vee regularly for the first time in years was a blessing—even if they both had invisible guns trained on them.
She could probably tell her invisible gun was pressing her temple and Aksel had been the thing that’d invited it into her life. Even though he hadn’t told her what his “new friends” were up to, he probably didn’t really need to. This was Vee. She knew. Just like when he’d lied about his age and joined the Fifty-Eighth militia all those years ago. Minute he came home, one glance across the dinner table and Aksel knew she knew. She was the only one who understood his fences, which knothole to look through to spy the truth within. And now, again, she said nothing—her looks about as torturous as the unspoken lecture.
Turning on the landing, he put on his eye patch, letting the strap fit into the pale indentation crossing his forehead, its home. Hooking his bag on his arm, he slipped on a set of cream-col
ored gloves to cover the square scar on the palm of his hand—the most important part of his disguise.
On the ground floor, the smells shifted as he strode past the shops. The apothecary’s bowel-churning aroma of boiled this and that, the sweetness of drying ink from the notary’s, the pleasant industrial tang of the auto-body—heavy oils and new metal.
Ahead, Vee was just opening the doors to the pub. Whenever he saw his little sister, he couldn’t help but smile—even if lately it was seldom returned.
Always: cowboy boots, tights or leggings, a miniskirt bearing an animal print of some stripe or another, loose-fitting blouses with billowing sleeves, and hand-blown glass-bead necklaces she made herself. Like him, she was abundantly freckled and blonde, except her mane was struck with bolts of blue.
“Sister. Good morning.”
She tapped the wedge under the door and stepped inside, never looking his way. “More like good afternoon. Giving air a chance over alcohol today?”
The place, dark like a good pub should be, held a residual buzz from the night before, matching Aksel’s headache: its dark twin, the ghost of good times.
“Mind that.” Vee stepped around a crusty puddle, but then she paused to glare back at him. “Or should I be asking you to get the mop?”
Aksel regarded the vom. “Not mine. I don’t like carrots. Besides, isn’t it the bartender’s job to know when to cut a bloke off?”
Vee walked on. “Aye, but that’d be chasing money out the door. What concern is it of mine if they opt to gin themselves into oblivion?” She went behind the bar, clicked on some more lights, which stung Aksel’s eye.
He took a seat at the bar in his usual spot at the corner of the ancient hunk of Ciaa hardwood, draping his cheap suit coat onto the next stool. He set his bag on the floor, close, so one leg was touching it.
“Or potato wine themselves into oblivion, in a particular someone’s case,” Vee added, filling two earthenware mugs with coffee.
Aksel shrugged. That was his poison of choice. Indubitably.
“And what’ve you got going on today?” she said in that Vee way, shaking some crag sugar into her cup but not into his, because she knew not to.
He swallowed self-hate with the first bitter sip, buying a moment to patch a lie together. “This and that.” Okay, so not a great one.
“Villi, you’ll recall,” Vee said, stirring in cream, “got mixed up with a bad lot.”
Aksel nodded. Villi, the youngest Browne, had joined a gang. The expected had happened.
“Yes, I recall, but with me, it isn’t like that. I’m an adult, for one.”
“Und verdda feri du etta, flawe,” she said, adopting their native language. Adeshka had been their home for most of their lives, but their true home was the scrubby tundra of Kambleburg. Aksel hated it when she used that particular tongue with him since it reminded him too much of their parents, but he knew she used Kamblean only because it blew Common’s swears out of the water.
“I know,” he said. “I know I’m an idiot. News to no one, that.”
“So what’re you gonna do to fix it?”
“I think it’s a permanent condition.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I need the work.” Actually, they’ll kill me—and you—if I refuse them.
She studied his face a moment, for knotholes. “What do they have over you? Money? Do you owe them something, because I could lend you—”
“Stop. I’m fine.” He sipped his coffee. “You worry
too much.”
She scowled so hard her lips paled. “What’re they having you do? I see you going out all hours, then coming back all beat up. Taking suitcases all over. That one you have with you now—what’s in there?” She stretched an arm toward his bag on the other side of the bar, necklace beads clicking on the clear coat.
“Vee, please,” he said, gently pushing her back, “I have a headache.”
“And that,” she said, straightening her blouse. “You drinking so much. I know you and potato wine were never strangers, but I see you in here every night. It’s been grand seeing you so often, really, but I know the difference between a man who drinks to have a good time and one trying to get blinders fitted.”
Aksel couldn’t help but smirk. “You sounded like Mum just then.”
“Why, because I’m asking you to be a good boy? Then I’m glad. Not that it ever seemed to be successful, coming from her—or me.”
“I consider you a success, just in a different way. Apart from the puddle over there, this place is amazing. I’m very proud of you.”
“Thank you,” she said, clipped, “but don’t try shifting topics on the sly. I am the queen of evasive maneuvers in conversation. How do you think I keep the bank off my freckled arse? Now, about those four you’re staying with up in room six. Are they—?”
An interruption, a second voice in Aksel’s head. Karl, upstairs: “During your time with the Odium, ever meet a Coog McPhearson?”
Aksel stood, picked up his coat and bag. “I have to go. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Aksel . . .”
“I’ll see you tonight.”
Hopefully.
Out on Delmark Avenue, Aksel lugged his heavy bag.
“Coog McPhearson?” he asked Karl. The implant grafted onto his DeadEye didn’t have an off switch. Karl, Raziel, Tym, or Moira could join him in his skull anytime they pleased. An ignored call was impossible so long as Aksel remained breathing, Raziel Pyne had promised in that oh-so-cuddly way of his. Off the clock, for Aksel, was an impossible concept.
“Yeah. Remember him?”
“No.”
“How about his alias: Proboscis?”
Aksel faltered, flashing back to when he’d been brought aboard the Magic Carpet. Specifically to the man who’d chained him to a stationary bike and forced him to keep pedaling. A man with a missing nose: Proboscis. “That’s familiar.”
“Good. Maybe you’ll recognize him,” Karl said.
Cutting through the market district, weaving between holey tents, he heard peddlers crying out for his attention, each in a different tongue than the one before. He dodged useless things, little misshapen pots and crates brimming with defunct, cobwebby electronics and cords.
“He’s the defector?”
On the other side of the market, Aksel reached the intersection just as the light changed. He sprinted to catch up to the group that’d already started across.
“Apparently. Tym found him on the Adeshka visitor registry. They managed to zero in on his last known location.” Aksel could hear Karl abusing a keyboard. “And now I’ve got eyes on him. Pretty easy to keep him in sight. He’s not moving too quick. Whoever he met with must’ve roughed him up. Explains that call to the City Patrol from that pub in Lowtown this morning.”
“Where’s he at now?”
Aksel moved aside as a ragged Mouflon lumbered the other way. The look on his—or her—face said, I’m not about to step aside for any puny human.
“Twenty-seventh Street. Where’re you?”
Aksel chuckled morosely. “Just left, still on Thirty-seventh.”
“Quite the hike.”
Aksel waited for an opportunity to cross, humid traffic wind riffling his hair. “No shite. So what now? And where the hell are Raziel and Tym?”
“They’re following the girl.”
“Girl?”
“Just move.”
Turning a corner, Aksel started across Thirty-sixth. “So what’s the plan, then? Once I get sight of him, take him out?” Aksel was surprised at the callosity he’d heard in his own voice. The bag at his side grew a bit heavier.
“Absolutely not. We need to know whatever he told the girl. Put some speed on it. He’s on the move.”
“Which way?” Aksel said, ramping up from a stroll to a genuine run.
“Westbound.”
“Still on Twenty-seventh?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Let’s use our think meat, Karl. What e
lse is on Twenty-seventh Street?”
“The port.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can you get to him?”
“It’d certainly be in my best interest to try.”
Tearing across just as the light changed got him moving westbound. Pushing through a group of red-robed idiots chanting to someone they called Queen Disease, curses pelting his back, he swung his bag’s weight to help pull him along.
“Raziel and Tym might need your assistance once you’ve got Coog.”
Aksel gulped for air, cursing every pinch of mold he’d ever smoked. “Need my help? What would they need my help for? It is just one gal, yeah?”
“Not exactly Mr. Current Events, are we?”
“We don’t get many personal days, Karl.”
“The girl is Margaret Mallencroix. The fiancée of Clyde Pyne—our mark.” Then, suddenly, “Something’s spooked him. Get to the port. Now. Go, go.”
Aksel charged on. To anyone else, he was just a businessman in a suit and tie bolting to get to the office. No one he passed knew that in his bag was anything but paperwork.
One block, two blocks, three . . .
By the time he arrived, his artificial lung was rattling like an accordion full of metal shavings. But, at long last, the spaceport. The West Lowtown building, one of the first built, with its pompous red-rock pillars allied across a grand staircase. It made anyone marching up feel they were about to meet a god that’d won the lottery. Right now, it was just an obstacle for Aksel, who leaped three steps at a time, tie fluttering.
After bursting through the front doors, he paused and turned away from the checkpoint where people were lined up like cattle in a maze of ropes.
On an elevated platform, Raziel and Tym stood, looking down at him, both in getups that, if you knew how they really looked, would be almost laughable; dab-on foundation that gave them almost too even of complexions, those stupid colored contact lenses.
Raziel, the shorter but more malicious of the two, made a small gesture.
Aksel turned, following the man’s pointing finger, noticing a chark bar on the floor. Then, a few yards on, another.
