The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5)

by Richard Raley

  “I’m going to ignore that you said that,” she said, back to acting like a casual studier of the spectro-map. “I’m also going to ignore that you called me a manic pixie dream-girl.”

  “Ignoring pretty much everything I’m interested in doing with you or in knowing about what you’re doing, from what I can tell,” I complained.

  She smirked again. “The Learning Council believes Vega’s not interested in killing you yet . . . but try to not call him a ‘fucktard’ to anyone important in the next five days; okay, Lover Boy?”

  I fingered the ten-thousand dollar card in my pocket. “It’ll be hard . . . but maybe.”

  Eva reached up with a hand, pulling my neck down far enough so she could kiss me on the cheek. “Be safe.”

  I shrugged. Safety ain’t really up to me in my experience. “You too . . . whatever you’re doing.”

  A last smirk. “I’m hunting a shadow who is hunting another shadow.”

  “Sounds like it’s hell on your eyes.”

  [CLICK]

  I stayed away from the outer ring and focused in on the normal gambling vices.

  Wasn’t nearly as fun as I thought it would be.

  Was pretty crappy actually. Hundred dollars a hand at the blackjack table, right into the void of nonexistence, the world of accountants and tax write-offs. Who really gave a shit? They were making a hundred times that every minute.

  Big problem was that it was too passive-aggressive for my tastes.

  I’ll show him!

  I’ll go spend his money!

  I’d call myself a pussy, but that would be offensive. Like being offended means anything at all. Like the world gives a shit. You’re offended? So the fuck what? You ain’t the center of the universe, dumbass! What do I give a shit if you’re offended? I’m barely responsible for my own feelings; I’m supposed to be responsible for yours too?

  Yeah . . . I was worked up.

  Just a tad.

  Tiny bit of a hangover. Not so much from the night before but from the collective drinking of the past week. My head kept pounding in on itself and the noise and bustle and the Look-At-How-Pretty-Spectro-Anima-Is lighting of the Ouroboros wasn’t helping. Fuck the invisible offended masses.

  Cuz.

  That’s why!

  Eva . . . not sure what to think of Eva Reti anymore. Felt like she’d left me behind, gone off on adventures without me. To be fair, I’d done the same to her. Wonder what she felt when she heard about me fighting the Curator or dealing with Annie B or all the rest? This what it was like? Feeling left out? Sidelined?

  Hunting a shadow who’s hunting another shadow.

  Whose shadow?

  Can I help?

  But . . . nah. Just left to gamble fake money and pass the time waiting on this extravaganza to start. I want the Crazy now, that’s the worst part of it all. I want it. That’s what gets me over the pain and guilt and repression nowadays. Not booze, not bouts of rampant no-strings sex. Trying to figure out the puzzle of the world, putting myself in danger to do it, that’s what I needed to get over Val.

  And some of the Crazy had just dropped in for a quick chat and left me high and dry.

  Eva was doing her own shit. Val was doing her own shit. Ceinwyn was doing her own shit. None of it had to do with me. Guess you could say I’m offended I ain’t really the center of the universe.

  Not the center of shit.

  Not at the moment.

  Just a guy gambling without a bit of crazy in his life.

  Give me some crazy, Vega.

  Give me some crazy, Ouroboros.

  So I don’t have to think about all the lies and bullshit in my life. So I can just be the earthquake again.

  Someone!

  Anyone!

  Do it!

  Fucking hit me!

  Kick me in the fucking balls, Bitch-Queen Fate!

  Didn’t help that I made money at the blackjack table.

  Won five-hundred bucks in that first hour.

  Pretty sure the dealer was in on it somehow.

  To test this hypothesis I bet all ten grand on one hand.

  Came up a perfect twenty-one.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Price!”

  The other people at the table clapped.

  “Cash me out,” I growled.

  I finally took a swing through the outer ring. Snow Zone wasn’t cold so much as glittery. The women working the place still had on bikini tops with little snake-scale skirts like the rest of the place, only they were silver. Women . . . tons of women . . . in bikinis. Apparently Were Nations give less of a shit about sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits than even I do.

  Jungle Zone had this mist in it that made my throat itch for a drink. The specific game of skill for floromancers involved wrapping a vine up a pole marked with levels. Each level gave you a roll at a wheel of fortune where you could win different amounts of money. Complete with multiplier spaces and bankrupt spaces. Were Nations also don’t give a shit about stealing Pat Sajak’s job.

  I ended up in the Rock Zone, which had big boulders strewn about blocking your path. On top of the boulders were the same Ouroboros girls headbanging to generic metal tracks. The game of chance was called Rock Breaker. There was a giant boulder on a pedestal and next to it a list of rules.

  Rule 1: Hundred dollars per punch.

  Rule 2: No anima pooling beyond a minute in length per punch.

  Rule 3: Please be well-practiced in personal conjurations before attempting, Ouroboros Casino will provide H.A.M.S to injured parties but will also charge your account at the current market rate.

  Rule 4: Crack the Rock to claim the special prize at the center and the prize pool.

  Above the boulder was a tally at just over one-hundred grand.

  Not bad.

  I watched a couple of Guild cocksuckers each take a punch at the thing and laugh off the fact that they didn’t make a single mark on the stone. It was a big hunk of rock . . . be a long time until it broke. Iron fist hits hard if you’re hitting a human, but the earth itself? Better to just conjure into it with anima than to try brute force.

  Still . . .

  That’s one hell of a dick measure you got there, Ouroboros.

  I went up to the employee running the thing and handed over my money card. “Thirty worth.”

  The guy was an Asylum graduate given the way he nodded over my geomancer’s coat. Intra geomancer I guessed, from before my time by four or five years. “Excuse me?”

  “Thirty goes at the boulder, man, not complicated math. Comes out to three-thousand.”

  He did some frowning, fellow graduate or not. “You’re going to stand here for thirty minutes and punch that rock over and over?”

  “Something like that.”

  “If you break the rules—”

  “I won’t break the rules. Nothing over one-minute self conjurations, I get it.”

  Won’t break the rules this time. Might come back and crack that boulder before the week is over though.

  Always say I’m not a stone guy since I’m shit at working with it, but breaking it? I’m good at breaking everything.

  The Intra finally took my card and deducted the three-thousand. His eyebrows rose at his computer screen. “You’re King Henry Price?”

  The two Guild guys stopped yucking it up and started paying attention to me then. Nice being infamous. Ain’t quite as nice as being famous and loved, but it sure beats the hell out of being forgotten by history the moment you go into the grave. “Only when I have to be,” was the crack I made back.

  He returned my card. “Thirty punches then. You . . . want me to order you some Slush for after? Maybe a drink and a snack for you to eat while you pool between punches?”

  I ignored him.

  Went up to the boulder instead.

  How you doing, baby?

  I did a circle around it, eyes half closed as I felt where the seams in the rock were. But there were no seams. Wasn’t a normal boulder. Had been strengt
hened and molded by some other geomancer and they had done a damn good job at it. No easy way then.

  Of course some part of me wanted to actually break the thing the first week it was set up in place. Wave my big geomancer dick around. But, okay, no go. All I get out of my three-thousand was some psychological therapy session. Figure that’s how most of them go and that’s what most of them cost ya, just don’t have to sit through some asshole with a degree telling me I want to fuck my own mother.

  They liked to make you do that at the Asylum. Bring us kids in for an hour occasionally; have us talk about life, how our feelings were—all that shit. Can’t blame the faculty, given that madness runs in our veins and given we averaged at least one suicide a year, but it always bored me. Especially when Mrs. Dingle somehow drew my straw.

  Miracle I didn’t end up in the Holding Room after every one of those.

  Language, Mr. Price!

  I finally picked a side of the rock to punch. Big rock up close. Taller than me. Taller than T-Bone or Pocket too. Seven or eight feet. Not as wide as it was tall but it got thicker at the base. Stone was smooth and sanded on the surface so you could see if you cracked it.

  Make people punch harder and punch more often once it started to go.

  Millions on the line by then.

  One crack.

  I can put one little crack in this bitch

  Thirty punches for one crack.

  I let go of my thirty-minute-pool like a jockey loosens the reins and just like a thoroughbred my pool bucked to get outside of my body as quickly as it could. Every geomancer in the Rock Zone flinched, feeling it like a big ol’ thunderclap at their feet, the earth roaring vengeance on civilization. Only I tightened in those reins just outside of my skin, contained it all outside of me. I felt the customary flash of pain over every inch of skin and then the lighter annoyance at the base of my neck I’d acclimated to over the last few months.

  I grabbed a minute of precisely measured anima, guided it into my fist, and struck out into the boulder with a stiff jab. Inside the boulder, geo-anima reverberated from the blow like a big sloshing pit of impact gel.

  Two more quick jabs in succession.

  Thud, thud, went my fist against the rock.

  Ping, ping, went the anima inside the stone.

  My something-extra sense tracked it all. Felt the waves. Felt the way it transferred force and gave you nothing hard to hit at. Felt the way this whole thing was a cheat.

  Way it was, this boulder wouldn’t go to a single punch until whoever was in charge of it decided it should go and to who it should go to.

  Bullshit.

  Artificers would smirk at the first punch and never throw another punch into it. Intras though . . . they’d keep believing. Eventually someone would come along and mark it up week to week, make it look like real progress was being made. But no . . . that boulder was a piece of the unbreakable.

  Fine.

  Forget a crack.

  Let’s break this bitch.

  I threw a hook at the boulder, slid to the left and then threw another with my opposite fist.

  Nothing happened on the outside, but inside of that rock I studied the way anima collided against itself. Sure, they’d made it able to take blow after blow by messing with the internal structure of the rock, turning it more into geo-anima laced soup than real stone, but if you could get that soup moving in just the right way . . .

  Ever been walking down the hallway and suddenly your drink decides it wants to be on the front of your shirt? Or how about breaking glass by hitting the right pitch?

  Same fucking principle.

  Oscillation, all about the oscillation.

  Move that stone in just the right way. Get the anima vibrating at the correct frequency if you will.

  My next five punches were tests in how it all collided against each other if you moved around the boulder quickly enough.

  The next five all went into one side to see the same.

  I’m an Artificer.

  Anima might tell Newton to stick his apple up his ass, but I’m a big believer in experimentation.

  Science, motherfucka.

  Can you dig it?

  “How is what he’s doing possible?” I heard one of the Guild of Artificers guys ask the other. He was an Artificer like me, same age as me, only he had on that Guild skullcap and I’d never seen him before in my life. Probably because he’s French. Continental Academy of Elementalism graduate. Didn’t have a clue about the tricks I’d learned in the last year. Just like most people my age.

  Further proof I’d made the right decision going rogue.

  Even if Ceinwyn told me off, at least she admitted there were secrets about anima being hidden from me. I knew it was there, that meant I’d search it out. That I could search it out. In the Guild, I’d just be doing things the way they had always been done, clueless as shit until they filled me in.

  Oh, by the way, now that you’re old and have a family and you’re all settled down and sucking the cog-juice . . . you’re kind of a badass, Price.

  Just FYI.

  Finished with my tests on the boulder, I had fifteen iron fists worth of anima left.

  More than enough.

  Only needed twelve.

  Rotate clockwise.

  Rotate counterclockwise.

  Then the next four into one side.

  Make it seven.

  No reason to be wasteful.

  Break!

  You bullshit piece of shit!

  Break!

  Break! Break! Break!

  Session 51

  I waited until midnight . . . so Ceinwyn would win the bet.

  I even played the gentleman for once and walked Naomi back to the Dorms. We happened to cross paths with Miranda, who only rolled her eyes at me like I’d done something so very cliché it was hurtful.

  Good, let her report back to Val that I’m moving on; that I’m putting away my telescope and ain’t doing no star gazing in the future. Got myself a nice flower to play with.

  Never really thought about how floromancers would be like certain flowers and bushes and even cacti until that moment. Would be books about it in the Library somewhere. Suppose Naomi was some pretty flower, open to everyone to come and get a sniff. Jasmine maybe. Or a rose, she could be prickly too.

  What about your best pal?

  Pocket . . . some type of big, sturdy tree. Type that people gather around in the summer for shade. Children playing on his limbs; even got a tire swing on one of them. Guy’s gregarious as fuck all without asking anything in return. Would have to be to befriend King Henry Price.

  Wasn’t really doing Pocket well by going after Naomi. Not that he’d ever seemed to mind her or paid any attention to her after it was clear he’d hurt her feelings with the Sabine fiasco. Even seemed to enjoy it when Raj went out with her for that bit during Tri. Guess I should ask him if he was cool with it before I put more moves on her. Well, not moves so much as copious amounts of alcohol.

  I went up to Pocket’s room and knocked on his apartment door.

  “Who is it?” he called from quite a bit away, probably already in bed.

  “Only take a second,” I said back.

  Half a minute later he barely pulled the door open a crack. “What you want, dude?”

  I tried to peek in. He shut the door so I couldn’t see. Huh. “Got a girl in there?”

  “Just . . . uh . . . sleeping in the nude. Since, ya know; no one else around.”

  “Oh. I cooked breakfast nude this morning.”

  “ . . . that doesn’t sound very sanitary.”

  “Wasn’t as enjoyable as I thought it would be,” I admitted.

  “Right . . .”

  “Sure you ain’t banging in there?” I teased him, sure he wasn’t alone. Think I heard breathing.

  “What you want, dude? Besides torturing me.”

  I nodded. Wonder who she was? Isabel? Hah, not even if she was bodied up as a Victoria’s Secret model, kiddies. “Yo
u okay with me fucking Naomi?”

  “I never even dated her,” Pocket reminded me.

  “I know, but I’d get pissy if you were fucking Hope without asking me,” I guessed the most outrageous possibility I could come up with, listening for a shocked gasp from the bedroom.

  But nada.

  “Go ahead, have fun,” was all Pocket said, still behind the door. “Might want to ask Raj too. Since . . . they actually dated.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Ain’t Vicky in there with you, is it?” I tried again.

  “Leave or I start throwing ferns, dude.”

  [CLICK]

  I waited until midnight . . . so I would have time to do reconnaissance on my target.

  It was an old house, like the Lady’s. 1920s original Asylum-make—big house, big yard, even two stories. It was four houses down from the Lady’s too, which meant I walked by the place a couple dozen times in my life without ever being aware my future mentor was inside drinking his own urine and using tissue boxes as shoes.

  Unlike the Lady’s house, which has an inviting picket fence with an open gate every twenty feet, Plutarch’s place has a good eight-foot fence surrounding the backyard, and one of those Old-Man-Keep-Off-My-Lawn metal chain-link things in the front.

  I studied the front yard from the other side of the street. No lights on in the house. Big front window, no curtains. Think I saw an old refrigerator inside; so it must be the kitchen. There’s a couple flower beds, but most of the yard is just grass. Statues though, plenty of stone statues dotted around the yard, like it was Medusa’s place, just ready for Perseus to make a showing and chop her head off.

  Stone.

  Not much of a stone guy myself.

  Metal, like metal. And glass . . . just don’t tell anyone that.

  Got a reputation to keep up.

  Plutarch likes stone . . . okay. Read a few books about the Theory of Anima Personalization concerning my own discipline and stone-favoring geomancers are supposed to have hard, unforgiving personalities. Makes them perfectionists and good leaders, long as they accept that the world ain’t got the same standards as they do. If not . . . they end up crumbling.

  End up a crazy hermit?

  Plutarch ain’t supposed to be crazy. Just don’t like people from what I understand, especially children. Can’t blame him for that. One day teaching and I’m already thinking about quitting.