by eden Hudson
Maybe for the first time since I had cut her line over the jungle, Carina smiled. “You know the thing about strangling your reflection, Van Zandt? You’re the one who ends up fighting for air.”
“Do whatever fancy little word dances you have to do to make yourself feel in control.” I curled and uncurled my toes inside my sneakers. “I’ll let you run out the line as far as you want to. The hook’s set, and you’re not going to throw it. Not in this lifetime.”
Nickie-boy came out of the bedroom with his duffel over his shoulder and started to open his mouth.
I clapped my hands together. “Who’s hungry? I know a place with the best biscuits and gravy in Emden!”
FOUR
I picked up the Mangshan from the moto section of the Guild’s garage and waited near the exit for Carina and Nickie-boy to catch up to me.
Just before the Council meeting had adjourned, the War Angel, my new immortal buddy, had sent them into a conniption fit by offering to let me hitch a ride with the investigatory team and borrow a parking space in the Guild’s garage until we made it back. I’d said yes to the ride but declined the parking space just in case a certain fishdicked scribe decided to hold the ’Shan hostage if I came back without one or both of their knights. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve relished showing some religious fanatics that they haven’t made the vault yet that can keep something away from Jubal fucking Van Zandt, but with the PCM advancing so quickly, I didn’t know what kind of shape I’d be in when I got back to Taern. Besides that, I would have a library full of ancient texts to pore over and a mystical garden to find. I wouldn’t have time for the Guild.
A pair of sad, blue, noble gaseous excuses for headlights appeared behind me, announcing the arrival of Nickie’s junker. I tightened my helmet and ventilator straps—the second time I’d had to do that since being diagnosed—then eased the ’Shan out into the evening.
Acid sleet pocked off of my helmet and jacket as I led the way across town to the little diner I’d taken Carina to just before the Soam job. Nick parked across the street while I wheeled the ’Shan into an alley that provided my baby with decent shelter from the elements.
When I got inside, Nickie-boy and Carina had already found a table in the corner. Not the one Carina and I had sat at the last time we were here. Had she picked a different table to show me how different things were between us now or to prove that I couldn’t predict where she would sit because I didn’t really know her at all? Not having been there to witness her choice made attempting to deduce meaning from it pointless. For all I knew, Nick could’ve picked the table because it gave them a full view of the restaurant floor plan and put their backs to the wall at the same time.
I slid into the seat across from Nickie-boy. “Did your boss—I mean fiancée—already order for us?”
He glared at me over his menu card.
“The waiter hasn’t been by yet,” Carina said.
“I’m starving. I could probably eat ten orders by myself.” I set my helmet and ventilator on the table across from her. I checked the reflection in my helmet’s wraparound visor, then pushed it a degree to the left to adjust the view. If they thought they could make me uncomfortable by forcing me to sit with my back to the door, they were going to be sorely disappointed. “Nick, you look like a man who can appreciate some well-made biscuits and gravy. Not like this heathen.” I jerked my head at Carina. “She’ll smother it in red pepper flakes before she even tastes it. And don’t even get me started on the jizz-water in this place. Order the bottled. Your colon will thank me later.” I plucked the menu card out of his banana fingers. “Here, you’re not going to need that. Nothing here is good but the biscuits and gravy.”
Nickie-boy’s glare downgraded to bewilderment for a split second, then turned suspicious. Everything from my familiar body language to my tone of voice was telling him we were friends. His brain wanted to shift gears, but his fists still wanted to wring my neck.
Carina studied my face warily, but didn’t say anything.
The waiter showed up and took our order. Nickie-boy got the bottled water, and Carina went with the supposedly filtered version.
“It’s okay,” I told Nick after the waiter left. “She’s not a closet hippie. She has an iron stomach.”
He looked at her then, a question. Carina answered it with a shrug.
I smiled.
As much as I would’ve liked to continue sinking my claws into Nickie-boy for Carina’s viewing pleasure, he wasn’t giving me anything to go on, and I didn’t know enough about him to start a friendly conversation. In the interest of sounding natural, I opted for questions they could both answer until I could draw him out.
“So, what’s going on with the team who’s supposed to be volunteering for this investigation?” I asked. “Do we really have to wait until midnight before we leave? Seems like a pretty arbitrary deadline.”
“However many people are supposed to go will have volunteered by then,” Carina said. Then she looked at Nick, and her tone of voice changed ever so slightly. “We already have one confirmed. A kid from the 454th class.”
“Young,” Nick said. “This his first call?”
Carina nodded. “His record’s basically a clean slate. Two actives so far, both over east, both uneventful.”
“As uneventful as any active over east ever is,” Nick said. “He somebody’s nephew?”
I leaned my elbows on the table and hunched toward Nickie. “It’s pretty hilarious that you care whether favoritism is benefiting somebody you’ve never met when you’re engaged to marry the holoposter child for Guild nepotism. How many assignments did Carina get that you got passed over for outright?”
Nick scowled at me, but didn’t answer. The Guild sure did build ’em big and simple.
“All right, so we’re stuck in civilization until the arbitrary deadline,” I said. “I’m definitely not complaining. In fact, I would complain significantly less if it turned out we weren’t leaving until morning. I’d like to get in one last night of wild carousing followed by a hot shower and the comfort of sleeping in my own warm, dry apartment.”
“Our flight’s at one,” Carina said. “You can catch some sleep on the plane.”
“If I’d known that, I would’ve gone straight to the carousing and let you goons fend for yourselves for supper. It’s fine, though. There’s bound to be some hot pagan tail to chase in the villages that haven’t been burned.”
The waiter dropped off our drinks. When he was gone, I turned to Carina.
“So, what do you think will happen with the boxes while you’re gone?” I uncapped my water and took a swig. It wasn’t top-shelf—you could taste the plastic and the filtration—but it wasn’t the explosive dysentery in Carina’s cup, either. “Will they pile up while you’re out or will they wait for you to come home?”
She pulled a Carina-pause before answering. “I expect them to have stopped by the time I get back.”
I giggled and shifted from one side of my butt to the other. “You know, an uglier, less charismatic, more paranoid guy might take that as some sort of threat to his life. You’re not planning to dump your emotional baggage in the Upper Swamps along with one very handsome body, are you?”
“Vengeance belongs to the Lord,” Carina said, the unscarred corner of her mouth quirking upward slightly.
I felt the twist of her lips in my gut, a jolt of electricity like I’d felt earlier when she saw me, and it wrung a genuine smile out of me. “And we all know you’re such a stickler for the rules.”
She exhaled a laugh, quiet and dark.
“You figured out a way to get rid of them?” Nickie-boy’s grating voice—a sound like queer bullwolves humping—broke the spell.
Carina blinked, then shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s been suggested that they’re only in my house because of a recent accumulation of emotional baggage, that I’ve somehow cursed myself. But I have a feeling that this mission is going to resolve that baggage one way or
another.”
Nickie-boy grunted.
“The theory’s sound,” I told him. “Do some research on tagalong curses if you don’t believe me. They’re well documented. That guy who had the heat of the sun beating down on him wherever he went…and there was that chick in the late 700s whose legs turned to stone.” I looked at Carina. “The only question I have is why the boxes don’t appear everywhere you are. Why don’t they tag along?”
Another Carina-pause. Nickie and I waited it out patiently.
“That house is my refuge,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows. I thought I knew where she was going with this, but I wanted the whole story.
“Enhance,” Nickie-boy said. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied with that answer, either.
Carina opened her mouth to say something, but the waiter picked that second to drop off our food. The whole time he was there, she projected friendly—but silent—gratitude.
After the waiter left, Carina touched Nick’s arm. “Can you hand me the red pepper flakes?”
Nick picked up the shaker and held it out to her. She reached for it. He snatched the shaker back, and her fingers closed on air.
“You were enhancing?” he prompted.
A reluctant smile played across Carina’s face. She swiped a strand of hair away from her scars and said, “I was getting to that.”
Nick snorted. “Sure you were.”
“Well, I’m getting to it now,” she said. “Give me those.”
He flashed her a lopsided dog’s grin and handed the red pepper flakes over.
“Could you two stop licking up each other’s vomit for five seconds so I can enjoy my food?” I said. “It’s rude, not to mention disgusting.”
Carina’s eyes dropped to her plate for a second, but the satisfaction in her smile deepened. She looked like a kid who’d been caught rubbing her naughty bits in public but wasn’t sorry because she’d already gotten off.
Maybe the expression was genuine, or maybe it was for the sake of this little show she was putting on, dancing around with the meathead to prove a point to me. I didn’t dwell on it because that was what she wanted me to do. Instead I dug into my food.
The hot gravy and heavy biscuits filled that cold spot in my gut with warmth. Good thing I’d gotten that third order.
With her food blanketed in insulting red pepper flakes, Carina started talking.
“The wet-country house is a place of rest and happiness,” she said. “It hasn’t been attacked in generations. Mom and Dad never trained there, and they never let me train there, not even on vacation between years at the Guild. It’s safe. Physically, mentally, spiritually—they made sure it was a refuge. I internalized that.” She scooped up a forkful of red-flecked gravy and spread it across an already smothered biscuit. “But I spent a lot of time in the wet-country house while I was in the prison pit. Just wandering from room to room, sitting by the fire pit, reading, drinking coffee, soaking in the tub—mentally enjoying all the stuff I didn’t have physical access to at the time.”
She shrugged, but didn’t look at me or Nick. She wasn’t sharing the information with us, just describing it while we were within earshot. It was still hers.
My mouth watered, and my teeth ached to bite into mahogany skin. Under the table, I pinched the inside of my thigh until my hand shook.
“Now that I’m back, boxes full of junk have been crowding the physical house,” she said, finally rejoining us in the diner. She gestured at me with her fork. “Van Zandt suggested that the metaphorical nature of curses pointed to emotional baggage as the cause. I’ve considered it, and I don’t think he’s completely wrong. I think while I was in Soam, I tracked some mental crap into my refuge, and it’s cluttering up my life. Once I wash that out, there’s a good chance the boxes will clear out, too.”
I glanced away from Carina just long enough to catch the look of sappy adoration on Nickie-boy’s face.
“There’s your problem,” I said, popping a forkful of the best biscuits and gravy on the surface of the Revived Earth into my mouth. I chewed and swallowed politely before elaborating. “You made your refuge a real place. Rookie mistake. They can always get to you in real places.”
“They?” Carina cocked her head at me.
“Whoever’s out to get you. Me, for example? Mages, vocors, and elder beings without number would love to get their magical fingers around the ruggedly handsome neck of this gorgeous bastard right here, but they never will because my refuge doesn’t exist in this reality.”
Carina knew better than to ask. She had just outed hers in front of both of us and understood the level of intimacy that revealing something like that would require. But Nickie didn’t.
“What is your refuge?” he asked, his mouth full of partially chewed biscuit.
I shot him a wink and a finger gun. “None of your fucking business. That’s what it is.”
His eyes narrowed. Then he turned back to Carina.
“So this mental refuge, it’s a common thing?” he asked. “You both have one. Do other people?”
“Ho-ho, no, Nickie-boy,” I said. “It’s not common at all. You might say it’s reserved for the super elite. Maybe one person in every million can hold together a mental location well enough to take refuge in it. Even fewer can do it in the amount of detail that your betrothed does—hanging out reading books or taking what I choose to imagine was a very erotic, candlelit bubble bath with fragrant oils and a waterproof personal massager.”
Carina rolled her eyes. “You would.”
“You’re damn right I would, sister. I’m doing it right now. And I have to say, the candlelight really downplays that mess on the side of your face.”
When Nickie didn’t react immediately and violently to what I’d said, I checked to make sure he was still alive. Those baby gray eyes were far, far away from the diner.
“You could develop it,” he said half out loud, half to himself. “Wouldn’t be that huge of a hassle. Come up with the schematic, memorize it, put the materials together. It’s basically just a mental mockup.”
“You should try it out,” Carina said.
His eyes focused on her. “And then you could come visit.”
Her whole face lit up with pure, unadulterated delight. The smile spread across her right cheek and slammed up against the wall of scar tissue on the left.
The ecstatic laughter of two little kids rang in my head—but the boy sounded different, wrong. He didn’t sound like me.
I could feel the downward pull at the corners of my mouth and eyes, but I laughed. “You crazy lovebirds make me sick, you really do. Can you two get your minds out of the sex dungeon at least until we’re finished with dinner? If this is my last decent meal before we run off into the pagan wilderness, I’d like to be able to hold it down.”
“All right, Van Zandt,” Carina said. The shift in her focus was immediate, down to her posture and all-business tone of voice. “Let’s talk about your exploratory mission, then. We haven’t had a chance yet to hammer out the details of our contract.”
“Now, that’s what I like to hear.” I dropped my fork with a clatter and rubbed my hands together. “Talk money to me, sister.”
“Our base fee is eight hundred thousand per knight, locked in to transfer—in full—first thing tomorrow morning before you set foot on the Guild flight tonight.”
“Waterway robbery!” I cackled. “I’ll pay it!”
Carina nodded. “Since we’re flying out and back on the Guild’s dime, and we’ll be spending most of our time in the wilderness, almost all of our incidentals will be spent on firepower. We won’t ask for much in the way of a per diem, but because this is a potentially high-risk operation, we’re going to need danger pay. I’d say ten thousand a day per knight should do it.”
“Starting only after we finish running Guild errands and leave on my leg of the expedition,” I specified.
“Obviously.”
“And you’re going to want that in two indi
vidual accounts under your own names so I don’t snoop into your purchases.”
“Based on your track record, I don’t think you’ll be able to help yourself, but I appreciate the pretense.” She gestured at my wristpiece. “You’re welcome to set all of that up right now.”
Nickie watched the whole negotiation go down with a furrow between his heavy brows. He might not have been able to appreciate the full context of what we said, but even his sluggish gray matter could recognize a dance when it saw one.
I set the money to transfer, then requested the danger pay accounts be set up and linked to Carina and Nick’s wristpieces.
“First thing tomorrow morning you’ll have your money,” I said, extending my hand to Carina.
She shook, but held the contact a second too long.
When she started to pull away, I clamped down. Her eye bored into mine like green drill bits.
“Xiao?” I said. “I’m putting a dead man’s switch on the transfer.”
She smiled. “Then you’d better do your best not to die. If that money gets repossessed, I’m coming after your reputation first and your crotchrocket second. We don’t protect backstabbing thieves for free.”
FIVE
After supper, Carina and Nickie-boy headed back to the Guild to await the calling of the rest of the team for their investigatory mission. I turned the ’Shan around and burned rubber across town to my loft. Figuratively, of course. I would never abuse the ’Shan’s tread like that. The cold cut through my jacket and slipped into the bottom half of my helmet around my exposed neck, but the hot food plus the conversation had left me sated and content for the time being.
Taern isn’t the richest city in Emden—you’ve got to get up toward the Crystal Lakes before you approach a development that would be in my tax bracket if I cared enough to pay taxes—but it is the largest and most economically homogenous because of the steady presence of ancillary Guild-related work. You don’t see a bunch of street urchins running around trying to steal tourists’ wallets or night trawlers out pushing chems and whores. Don’t get me wrong, the night trawlers do exist—Taernites need their chems and whores so they can forget the soul-crushing grind of mediocrity just like any other upper-middle-class city does—but they’ve at least got the self-importance and the cash to be discreet about it.
