“Well . . . that was noisy,” I muttered.
“Shut up!”
“Now what?”
She checked out the rent-a-car as we ran past, apparently fine with the way one of the gentles got wounded but put another bullet in the second one’s shoulder just to be safe. “Now they’ll get together all the embassy guards and start searching for us.”
“Good, that’s what I thought.”
“Good?”
“Yeah, good.”
Her expression reminded me of a pissed off Miranda Daniels thinking about shoving air up my dick-hole. “If I didn’t need you to run hard, I’d kneecap you.”
“Lucky for me, you do.”
“I can’t believe I slept with you . . .”
“You were desperate.”
She pointed at what was apparently the community recreation hall. “That’s the Fresno Embassy.”
I couldn’t help it. “This just keeps getting weirder.”
Session 7
“Listen, dude, I don’t care what this is if it means we don’t have to take Dingle’s final for a whole extra day. It can be the most boring experience in my life, it can be sex with Soto-crazy, I’m still going to suckle the thing at the teat and enjoy the crap out of it, ya feel me? Besides, we’ve been hearing about this for four years. It’s our turn, dude, so quit whining and stand up like a man—you’re going with us.”
That’s my best friend in the whole world. Preston Landry, Pocket to his friends. Pocket grew up in the part of California that mattered, the part where they still used ‘dude’ as a word, on the coast. Floromancer, Ultra of course, he started out a better student and ended up a worse one by the time we graduated. Not his fault so much as mine. Pocket’s a middle-of-the-road kind of guy, but he’ll stand up for you, even when you’re the one that’s blasting yourself.
“Why did you even try to go with her again, El Rey? Last time you said ‘never again, Jesus, she’s plain crazy’. I remember because you said my name like a white boy back then, yet you did it again. And now look at you. She dumped you again, she called you scum, and you went and got pissed drunk. But, more importantly: where are you getting the booze and why haven’t you told me about the connections?”
Jesus Valencia, on account of being named Jesus didn’t need a nickname, though sometimes I called him ‘Lord and Savior’ when I felt particularly blasphemous. He came to the Asylum speaking not one word of English, born and bred an orphan of Mexico, which means he’s a bad motherfucker when he wants to be. He’s also a certifiable genius and if it wasn’t for the fact he played catch up from so far behind, he’d have lapped everyone else. Faunamancer, Ultra, has an affinity for dogs, especially strays. By the first week of Single year, he already picked up the important words, like ‘fucker’ and ‘bathroom’; by the time this conversation is taking place, he spoke better English and had a bigger vocabulary than I did when he actually wanted to use it. Jesus has a thing for playing weak and playing dumb, kept him alive for many years he’s told me.
“Who are we to stand in the way of love? Valentine and King Henry are meant to struggle through life together, fighting and breaking apart and coming together again, creation and destruction, it’s when they are most miserable that they are happy. Look at him, a broken man hugging his pillow and he’s enjoying every moment of the angst.”
Raj Malik. Cryomancer, Ultra. Second-generation Indian-American, second-generation mancer. He was born in Oregon of all places and his father owns quite a few businesses up that way, mostly franchise stuff. He’s never had an enemy in his life and hate has never entered his heart. Guy’s a walking Hindu stereotype but then who am I to talk, white-trash stamped on my forehead?
Pocket poked me with a finger. “You have to get up, dude. It’s the Jobs Fair. We’ve been talking about it all year. Been dreaming about it since Single. The moment has come, dude. Ball up. Bros before hoes!”
I was face down on my bed in the Ultra dorms, enjoying the misery of being dumped by Valentine Ward for the second time in my life, for trying to do something with her we’d done plenty of times before, though not in a while leading up to the moment, sadly.
“She said she’d never speak with me again,” I mumbled into my pillow.
My three friends huddled around me. Raj in white with blue trim colors that always matched with his turban, and Jesus and Pocket looking like the least identical twins in existence, Jesus dark-skinned and as short as I was, Pocket tall—not a rival for Welf, but still over six feet—and the archetypical white guy of brown hair and green eyes. It was only made worse by their colors, one brown with green trim and the other green with brown trim. Like I told you earlier, commie shit those uniforms.
Raj kept as optimistic as always. “She’ll speak with you again, she lights up when you are with her. You can’t beat that.”
“Unless you’re good looking and wealthy,” Jesus didn’t help.
“Like Welf,” Pocket helped as well.
I screamed into my pillow—but like a guy scream . . . roar even. Not girly at all. “How do I keep screwing this up? One month she’s sneaking into my bed and the next she’s acting like one little hand down her skirt while we’re making out is the end of the world!”
They talked over me. “But Welf already has Hope and they would never break up,” Raj pointed out.
“Well, yeah, but he might drop her for a chance at Boomworm,” Pocket decided. “And what better chance does he have than rebound sex?”
Jesus didn’t agree. “I don’t think anyone’s making a move after she lit El Rey’s ass on fire . . . is that the ‘light up’ you were talking about, Raj?”
“Leave . . . me . . . alone,” I growled to them. “Go to the Jobs Fair without me, it’s not like I can do anything but become an Artificer for the Guild anyway.”
“Come, guys,” Raj took the lead, “Leave the man alone. He’ll be back to normal and creating havoc in a few days.”
“Only if he tells me who got him the booze,” Jesus said, punching me in the shoulder.
“Jethro Smith,” I told him, mouth moving into pillow, face starting to get hot from the CO2 build up.
“You shitting me, El Rey?”
“I was walking through the Park trying to find a place to chill when he came across me and asked if I wanted to go drown my sorrows,” I explained in a muffled tone. “No hidden stash for graduation, sorry.”
“Why were you in the Park?” Pocket asked.
“I didn’t want to run into Val.”
“Good thing he didn’t or the Park would have burned down,” Raj joked.
“Not funny, dude,” Pocket, the floromancer as always protecting his trees and flowers.
“Well then, I’m content with my gleaned wisdom from El Rey: go to Smith for booze. Let’s take off,” Jesus decided. “Fair’s supposed to have real-world food from outside the Asylum.”
After three butts getting off my bed and a round of three goodbyes, I was alone to the sorrow only a man who screwed up with a woman he loved could feel. My final chance with Valentine Ward . . . over. One little hand under her skirt after we’d humped and grunted on and off for almost three years . . . you’d think I’m an asshole.
[CLICK]
I’d lied to Jesus, which I guess puts me in the company of that pussy St. Peter. Four gospels had been a Tri Languages assignment . . .
I’d nicked a bottle of rum from Jethro Smith’s liquor cabinet, not that he’d ever miss it among so much booze, really makes you wonder about the standards the Asylum has for teachers. The bottle was about a third full after the night before, so I rummaged through my closet stash of goodies and filled it to the top by mixing in three cans of coke. Sitting on the edge of my bed in that big dorm room all alone, I took my first sip and smacked my lips in appreciation.
Oh, no, drinking!
Shut the fuck up, it happens all the time in this world. I was eighteen by then, in Europe that’s legal, and in that moment, Europe was good enough.
I suppose I could have shared it with my friends . . . would have been a bonding experience. But we’d bonded plenty by then and when I get really hurt I’m not the kind to turn to people, I’m the kind that wants to be alone. It probably stems from not having anyone as a kid and it’s stuck with me to this day. Makes it hard to trust, even Pocket, Jesus, or Raj. There’s really only one person I did trust . . . still trust, to this day.
Ceinwyn Dale.
She’s not the type to go to about girl trouble, but then it’s not girl trouble that really had me bummed out and pissed off. Sure, Val giving my head a nice mindfuck ain’t enjoyable. I’d have killed for that girl and she just kept making me feel like a retard. Like we were in two different worlds with two different memories of what had happened between us. I still have feelings for her to this day . . . but . . . well . . . not like she’ll let me do anything about it. She might have talked to me again after our brief time together in Quad, might have even been friends, but never much more than that. King Henry’s love life—good and messed up as usual.
What really bummed me out and pissed me off was the Jobs Fair. My friends didn’t get it. Jesus as a Beasttalker could be a vet or work in animal testing or ride as a cowboy for all I know. Raj, Winterwardens get to do icebreaking on ships, create ice sculptures, save the planet from Global Warming, tons of stuff. Pocket, Forestplanter, what the fuck couldn’t Pocket do? Everyone wanted Forestplanters: farms, lumber companies, zoos, gardens, carpenters. Plus all the other options open: working as a teacher at the Asylum, as a Recruiter, as part of the Learning Council’s police force, or just being a normal person with a normal job.
But me? Artificer? You work for the Guild and that’s that. If you didn’t . . . shit-storm, epic shit-storm. Surprise—but I’m not the kind of guy that likes to be boxed in, paying my dues, designing by the Guild’s laws, not experimenting for myself. I hadn’t even been trained beyond normal geomancer by then and I already dreaded my fate. Any machine that tried to make me a cog was going to be stripped and flaming.
A bottle of rum and coke. Good enough for Mom, good enough for me. The bottle was about half-empty again by the time I decided to man up and see the Jobs Fair for myself. Great idea, King Henry, great idea.
I took the bottle with me.
Better fucking idea.
[CLICK]
There were four-hundred and one students set to graduate as mancers in two weeks time, so there were four-hundred and one, seventeen and eighteen-year-olds pushed in among the stalls that had been mounted over the Field. Asylum bylaws state that the maximum capacity per class year is no more than four-hundred. The one left over ain’t me actually. It’s a corpusmancer girl I’ve never met, but was set to be kicked from the rolls the moment I arrived the last day before class to replace her. Ultras are more valuable than Intras. Everything is more valuable than an Intra corpusmancer, especially an Artificer.
I’m told the Lady called it a ‘regretful situation’ and that it was only after Ceinwyn threatened to resign when the girl was allowed to stay on instead of facing an early death to insanity. A onetime deal for one very lucky girl.
I don’t know her name, I don’t know what she looks like, or what she did with her life, but I’m glad I didn’t force another mancer into ‘Good Days’ and ‘Bad Days’. I don’t know if I could have lived with that, especially it being a corpusmancer like Mom . . . which is probably why Ceinwyn insisted . . . she’s good at looking out for me even when I don’t realize it.
So the Jobs Fair was crowded. An easy place to disappear, even for King Henry Price, the living fucking legend. I wore my colors like a good boy that day, tucked in, just one of many geomancers. My emblem designating me an Ultra stayed off, safe in my pocket. Just a normal geomancer, looking for a job at some earthquake relief center or something equally boring that had nothing to do with the Guild of Cocksucking Artificers.
I was drunk.
Not totally out of it, not even walking in a zig-zag, but I definitely had a buzz going. That bottle might have been mostly coke, but the proof on that bitch was pretty good. Good enough to make me forget about Val. My lovely Boomworm. Those cheeks that could cut. Those dark eyes that were a void without iris. That long blond hair I’d grab onto as I wrapped my other arm around her waist and . . . well . . . let’s say I miss her now. But back then . . . forget about her. Rum and coke, that’s my lover of choice.
I couldn’t forget about the Guild though. They had one of the biggest booths. As big as the Asylum did. It’s a serious operation: clerks, assistants, mancers willing to supply anima, accountants, sellers, and of course: the Artificers themselves. I was the only geomancer in Quad who walked far around the thing the first time by. The rest of them would have given anything to be an Artificer. Even Robin White, Sandra Kemp, Tamiko Lewis, and Naomi Gullick were inside, playing with the anima toys the Artificers had provided to entice applicants.
Later, I told myself, and walked a circuit around the stalls. Just another geomancer . . .
[CLICK]
One horrible fact about this world is that there is only so much booze in any bottle.
I’d walked two circuits through the maze of stalls and tents by the time I ran out. Not one teacher noticed me, or at least bothered to say something about it. None of my classmates either. Though I did get a rude glare from a pair of floromancer girls when I threw the bottle away in the trashcan instead of the specially marked recycling bin. Take that, environmentalist hippie-commies, one glass bottle at a time. I’d have clubbed a polar bear to death with it if one had been on hand too!
I saw stalls for everything. Fire Department Consulting, Algae Regulating Assistance for the green power push the United States government is working on as our way to escape shithole status, Psychotherapists looking for mentimancers as understudies for mental wards—already in one, bitches—even the US Marines and the other armed forces hitting up corpusmancers. Super soldier alright, Cap.
Anything you could think of to do with the Mancy—there was a stall for it. But for me . . . only the one. I hit up the Guild tent with my feet finally starting to feel the effects of the booze. I staggered inside . . .
And there were Boomworm and Welf, standing together, laughing with one of the Guild of Artificers bozos. Val never got why I hated Welf, she never saw the mean side to him, that cruel superiority. He wanted her, so he lavished her, treated her like a goddess, better than he even tried for Hope Hunting, his long time girlfriend the whole time we were at the Asylum together. Not that Val ever liked Welf. Poor sap got into the friend zone and never got out no matter how hard he tried. Not that I’m saying I did much better in the end . . . still, least I loved and lost as some British guy once wrote.
None of the three saw me. I’d come up behind them, but they were unmistakable. Welf’s height, Val’s hair, and the Artificer in Guild robes of brown not unlike mine, with the Guild skullcap sitting on his head looking like a spectacular cocksucker. Welf had his hand at Val’s elbow, lightly touching it, trying to make it casual, but I saw how his eyes raced to the spot of contact. I knew the look.
Yeah . . . fuck this shit.
I staggered right back out, catching sight of Hope near the exit, playing with some kind of Artificer created game of bars and puzzles manipulated by anima control—little five second bursts that wouldn’t have done anything in the real world. I tapped her on the shoulder and got a pissed off look in return.
Hope is as light as Welf, blond towards the platinum side, eyes toward gray, and skin right at home on the ice shelf. No figure to her though, tall and thin, but that muscled and hard kind of tall and thin that some guys can get into. Given her attitude, her twat might have also been frozen shut, but I got no proof on that one.
She turned, a piece of the game getting messed up in the process. I got a glare down at me—again with the tall women—and a, “What could you possibly want?”
“Little tumble back behind the tent would be nice.” I leered at her, hazy and feel
ing more reckless than usual.
“Are you drunk?” she asked, face frowning at me and petite nose sniffing for liquor.
“A little . . . just like the rest of me. Well . . . save for one part . . .” I leered again.
“Leave me alone.” She turned back to the game.
“Sure . . . sure thing, Hope, just . . . pay attention to your man, will ya?”
There was a turn and a glare eventually, when she saw what I’d seen. I left the Artificer tent to yelling and screaming. Shouldn’t have touched Val’s arm, Welf.
[CLICK]
There was only one other place I could go. I still had three years to decide and the Guild would protest and the Lady would have to rule on it, maybe even forcing me to join them instead, but . . . it might be my only shot.
I headed to the Recruiters tent. A familiar face manned the place, but not Ceinwyn Dale. “Quilt, what up!”
He still hadn’t married Audrey Foster by then and worked the geek like a champion, despite the fact he neared in on the top side of the 20s. Cords, t-shirt with either a power ranger or a gay ninja on it, and his always present glasses.
“K.H,” he greeted me. “My favorite Artificer.”
“Your only Artificer,” I corrected, sitting down next to him behind the counter, in what I took to be the worker area. Only way I got my butt down in the chair was to lean on the table for support, else it would have been right down to the ground.
He gave me a roll of his eyes. For some reason, we were the only ones there. Though from the small stacks of brochures and ‘Recruit Yourself’ guides, many had already come and gone. “Where’s your Ultra sigil?”
“Incognito,” I explained with a wave of my hand at my tucked in shirt. “Like Tsar Peter in England, right? I seem to remember that from a history exam . . . it’s a kingly thing to do I’m told and I’m a kingly guy.”
“Eventually they found Peter out,” Quilt reminded me.
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (The King Henry Tapes Book 1) Page 23
