by eden Hudson
The kid didn’t say anything, but the snarl on his face deepened. Maybe he hadn’t made knight yet. A fifteen-year-old squire? Talk about embarrassing. What this dumb goon needed was a reality check, not more textbooks.
Unfortunately, dealing out harsh truths isn’t my problem when I want something from a target.
“Ah, I’m sorry, man,” I told him. “You’re going to be one of them someday, and here I am, pissing all over your dreams.”
He glanced away, then remembered he was the alpha male here and glared back at me, still quiet.
I raised my hands as if to stop him from telling me I didn’t need to apologize. “No, I know that’s a dick move. I should be ashamed of myself. You’re different, though. You’ve had to do their bitch work. No rich mommies or daddies to buy you the easy road to knighthood, amiright?”
He raised his chin. “Just means I work harder.”
“Balls yeah, you do! And you know what else it means? Means you’ll appreciate the little guy when it’s your turn at the top. None of this forgetting to put consultants on the list so the man pulling security booth detail has to deal with all this fishshit while vehicles back up around the block.”
There weren’t any vehicles behind me, but his snarl cracked around the edges.
“That’s what this country needs,” I said, pointing at him. “A little less privilege and a lot more named knights who’ve had to work their way to the top.”
The last of the aggressive creases around the kid’s eyes and mouth disappeared. While he was still focusing on the misdirection, I set off my wristpiece’s alarm. He zeroed in on the sound.
“And now I’m late.” I grunted, bringing my wrist up and shutting off the alarm. “What do you say, can you buzz me through before it’s both of our heads in the river?”
He nodded and reached back inside to hit the button. The security arm went up.
“I appreciate it, Sir…?”
He glanced down at the ’Shan’s front wheel, embarrassed. “I’m not—I haven’t had my candidacy approved.”
I put on my You Don’t Say expression. “Oh, so you’re a just squire?”
“Page.” The snarl came back, but he wouldn’t look at me. I wasn’t an ally anymore, I was his better, and I was about to do what his betters always did.
“Yeowch.” I shook my head. “Forget what I said, kid. All the rich mommies and daddies in the Guild couldn’t buy your sorry siltbrain into knighthood.”
I snapped my visor down and motored off into the parking garage. In my rearview, the kid slunk back into the security booth to lick his wounds.
***
The Guild building’s old construction was more obvious inside than out—utilitarian metal and stone, with nothing soft or ornate anywhere—broadcasting their almost neurotic rejection of comfort and style.
I stepped into the first elevator I found and reached for the touchpad.
The only other time I’d set foot in the Guild was during my father’s trial, but instead of discarding the layout immediately afterward, I had kept it seared into my brain for future reference. I’d always sort of hoped I would be back to steal something exciting. So far, no clients ambitious enough.
In a classic Nehemiah defense, the first two floors were living spaces for Guild families. A knight is not only going to fortify her apartment like a clownfish surrounding itself with anemones, she’s also going to defend that place to the death—especially if she’s got a family tucked back in there with her.
The third and fourth floors were offices. Scribes, monks, and other drones studying recovered texts, translating them to Anglish, and transferring them onto illuminated manuscripts that anybody with a reader or a reader app on their wristpiece could access.
Fifth, relic authentication and study.
Sixth, climate-controlled vaults for recovered items.
Seventh, War Room.
Eighth, armory.
Ninth, tenth, and eleventh, training rooms, lecture halls, and student boarding.
All exciting places that I was undoubtedly not allowed to go, full of things I was not allowed to touch. My fingers itched to run the flat of my hand over the touchpad and light up every floor.
Recklessness is a trademark of the common housebreaker, Jubal. Smash out a window and steal all the wristpieces, readers, and screens you can carry. Sell them for enough cash to score a hit of ember dust or lay a whore. Feed those base impulses all the way to a noose made out of sheets in your prison cell if that’s the life you want, but you won’t be any son of mine. Van Zandts—
“Van Zandts are thieves. The best damned thieves in the history of the Revived Earth.”
Restless energy zinged up and down my arms and legs. I shook out my shoulders and shifted from foot to foot. Not exactly awesome how often I was hearing the old man’s voice these days.
I giggled. “Of course, Lorne, if you do a shitty job disposing of the women you torture to death to get your kicks, you’ll end up just as incarcerated as if you’d written your name and address on the wall of a smash and grab.”
I shifted feet one more time, then touched the printless pad of my thumb to the seventh-floor button. The elevator lurched into motion.
Seventh floor—the War Room. Where else would the Bloodslinger go?
***
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one headed up to the seventh floor. The moment the elevator started to move, the other floors’ call lights blinked on one after another.
On the second floor, a pair of knights in street clothes stepped in and leaned against the far wall, absorbed in the most inane conversation about the merits of everyday-carrying a knuckgun versus a set of glass knives that anyone’s ever had. Carina everyday-carried both. Not sure why these siltbrains hadn’t thought of that.
I gave them an innocuous smile and propped my heel up against the elevator wall like I had every right to be there. I wasn’t a threat and I wasn’t a friend, so their eyes slid right over me.
The doors had almost shut when something whirred and clanked down the hall.
“Hold the door!”
The moron arguing in favor of glass knives lunged forward and grabbed the panel.
“Thanks.” A knight twice the size of Nickie-boy, wearing dirty mech armor that announced itself with every step, ducked into the elevator and took up one entire wall.
“No problem,” Glass Knives said. “You just hear?”
The armored knight nodded. “Wristpiece went off just as I was opening my door. Just got back from a double active over east.”
Glass Knives grunted. “Rough assignment. Spent the better part of last month there. I’m still picking the algae outta my teeth.”
I leaned my head back against the wall, smiling that harmless smile. This conversation was making the knuckguns versus glass knives debate sound like genius-level deliberation.
The elevator pulled up to the third floor next and let in a wave of monks and scribes. Two more monks squeezed in on the fourth floor. The elevator skipped the fifth floor, then stopped on the sixth so a crowd of nerds could look surprised at the cram and say they would catch the next one up.
As much as I hated the shoulder-to-shoulder, it was good to know that everyone seemed to be headed to the same place. Made it all the more likely that I’d find Carina there.
Finally, the door opened on the seventh floor. Genetically upgraded and untampered with bodies alike flowed out into the hall, joining a much larger throng coming from other elevators and stairs around the building.
All these salmons were headed upstream. Even more good signs.
The War Room’s floor was as grim as its name implied, not so much as a designer sconce or an inspirational Hang in There, Pollywog! holoposter in the place. No directory, either. If you ever made it to this floor, you were expected to know where you were going.
The salmon run turned down the third passage on the left, then took another left, and dispersed into an auditorium at the dead center of the bui
lding. The layout in my brain flashed War Room Proper. Because you can never have too many things named after war.
The place was set up the way I’d always imagined a classroom would be—long, semicircular desks on every tier, with upload/download ports in the tabletops, all in various shades of slate and charcoal.
I didn’t see Carina anywhere, but Nickie-boy was down in the second row at an eight-seater. I grinned and headed down the center aisle.
“So, what are we doing?” I asked as I slipped into the seat next to him.
To his credit, Nickie didn’t jump. His head turned like it was on rusty ball bearings until his baby-grays were glaring at me. “How did you—”
I slapped him on the meaty shoulder. “I go where I want, Nickie-boy. Seriously, what’s with all the hullabaloo? Are we finally invading the Waste Side? Force-converting some heathens? Burning witches? I hope it’s witches. I brought marshmallows.”
“This is a private briefing, breaker,” he growled. “Guild members only.”
The door to the left of the lecture floor opened and out of it filed Carina in her street clothes, eight Guild members in suits with Council patches denoting their sections, and the War Angel.
I waved at Carina, but she didn’t look my way.
Nickie-boy was still talking to me. “So you can get the—”
“Shh!” I hissed. “It’s starting.”
I’d never seen the War Angel up close before. The stuff you read about her always claims that she’s God’s greatest work of art, the beauty of righteous war translated into the feminine form. Obviously the scribes were taking egregious poetic license with the words “beauty” and “feminine.” If I’d been the one writing, I would’ve described her as androgynous, expressionless, battle-scarred, and armored like an HSC. Even with the near-starvation and the acid scars, Carina was better looking than the War Angel, no contest. At least Carina’s face had an attractive side.
“Thank you all for assembling on such short notice.” Even the War Angel’s voice was androgynous. I wondered where the scribes had picked up that feminine pronoun. Probably the pale skin and the button nose. It was a mistake any virgin who’d taken a little too much communion wine could make.
“Those of you who have been to the Northern Front lately are well aware of the pagan tribes’ recent strange behavior,” the War Angel said. “Rumors are circulating that a new power is uniting the tribes—and not only up north, but to the east as well. Last week, one of our aid groups to the Upper Swamps was attacked and slaughtered by raiders. The raiders crucified our missionaries and med workers, then demanded that the villagers swear their loyalty to their new god. Anyone who didn’t comply was burned.”
You could hear the genetically modified jaws and carpal-tunneled fists clenching around the room.
I grinned.
“What the hell are you laughing at?” Nick growled at me. “You think this is funny?”
“No, I think it’s hilarious.”
They had called everyone here to announce that the Guild was on the warpath. Except this time it was a more focused warpath than usual. That was why they had Carina standing up there alongside the Council. If you wanted to destroy a group of enemies to the last man, woman, and child, the Bloodslinger was your knight.
Nickie-boy’s lip curled into a snarl. “You—”
“Shh!” I stage-whispered at the top of my lungs. I could almost hear his teeth grinding. I folded my hands and leaned my elbows on the table, every bit the rapt pupil.
“Sir Xiao is taking a team to review the scene,” the War Angel said. “Combat-ready individuals only. Anyone considering volunteering should be aware that they’ll be heading into the Upper Swamps. We will only take knights whose parasitic immunos are up to date.”
The Upper Swamps! I almost cackled. Carina’s team was going to be right in the Dead Estuaries’ backyard. This gambit was turning out to be even more fruitful than I could’ve hoped.
Off to the side, Carina was scanning the room, purposely looking everywhere but at me. Obviously, somebody needed another hour or two alone with her meathead fiancé.
I stood up.
Every hyperfocus-augmented and reading-strained eyeball in the room zeroed in on the greatest thief in the history of the Revived Earth.
“Talk about a stroke of luck,” I said. “Earlier today, I contracted Sir Xiao for an exploratory expedition into the Upper Swamps.”
Carina didn’t bat an eye. “Van Zandt wanted to propose a job, but I turned him down.”
“Van Zandt?” The Guild Council’s head scribe frowned at the mention of my name. He lifted the reader in his hand and pulled up what I presumed was my file. Obviously just the summary because all he read was, “Van Zandt, Jubal. Son of the serial killer Van Zandt, Lorne (deceased) and unknown female (presumed deceased). Occupation: thief. Affiliation: unaffiliated. All interaction with, prohibited.”
On that last word, the head scribe glared at Carina.
Nickie-boy stood up. “I witnessed the interaction. Sir Xiao kicked the breaker out as soon as he proposed working together. He’s lying.”
As if anybody could believe the retard vouching for his fiancée while wearing a visible form of self-castigation.
The War Angel’s hazel eyes bored into mine, irises shifting slowly from the color of muddy river water to a pale blue. It felt like she was trying to pick the lock on my skull and look inside.
I smiled at her. I’m Jubal fucking Van Zandt. Eighteen months before, I’d found an unfindable village and walked a Guild knight right into the center of it. Before that, I’d gotten into the Hotel and back out again with Crangel’s sledgehammer. I had untied the fucking Jordanian knot when I was nine years old—and even twenty-two years later, I still could’ve tied that moldy cord back up exactly the way I’d found it. A treasure chest wrapped in a log chain tied in a G-knot and shackled with ten thousand axolotl locks has nothing on my big, beautiful brain. If I don’t let you in, you don’t get in.
“Unaffiliated?” the War Angel finally asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t care who is god as long as he, she, or it leaves me alone.”
“You were aware when you walked into this building that you could be arrested as soon as you were discovered?”
“I’m aware of a lot of things.”
Somebody in the back came down with a sudden coughing fit. Good to know at least one of these meatheads had a sense of humor, even if Carina was suppressing hers.
“Sir Xiao turned your proposal down,” the War Angel said.
“In my line of work, that’s more of a ‘we’ll see’ than a ‘no.’”
Carina was glaring at me with those emerald daggers she called eyes. I gave her a micro eyebrow wag to let her know this was all going great.
By then, the rest of the Council was reading my file off their wristpieces and readers. It must’ve been the exhaustive version because one knight looked up from her reader at me, apparently horrified. I shot her a wink and a finger gun. I had a pretty good idea what sorts of things had been added to my file since the prodigal Sir Xiao had returned home.
“I’d like to speak with you, Sir Xiao, Sir Beausoleil, and the Senior Council,” the War Angel said. “The rest of you are dismissed. Download the information packet on the Upper Swamps mission before you leave. Study it and pray on it. If you’re led to volunteer, see me before midnight. You should have your answer by then.”
As soon as the room started to clear, Nickie-boy stalked down the aisle to his future wife. He stood there between me and Carina as if she needed his protection. I could practically hear the overgrown muscle fibers in Nickie’s fists and asshole clenching.
I grinned as I strolled down to the lecture hall floor, too, but gave the meathead some distance. If Carina wanted to talk to me now, she would have to come to me. The next move was hers, and she knew it.
The Council was arguing amongst themselves, leaving the War Angel all by her armored lonesome. She stood unmoving, arms cr
ossed like an infuriated statue, but her eyes—which were still that chilly blue—followed me all the way down the aisle to her side.
I stuck my hands in my pockets and pretended to watch knights downloading information packets. “So, do you have a real name or do you prefer the air of mystery that comes with everyone calling you the War Angel?”
“I have a name, thief, but it’s not for you,” she said.
“Ah, the Untouchable Immortal act,” I said. “I bet you get a lot of mileage out of that.”
The War Angel did something then that I wasn’t expecting. She blushed. It didn’t make her look pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but it went a long ways toward making up for the unnerving androgyny.
I cackled. “You do! Good for you, sister! Work what genetics gave you.” I cocked my head at her. “Wait, do angels have genetics?”
The last of the non-Council stragglers at the desks unplugged their wristpieces from the ports and headed for the door. The War Angel looked away from me to watch them leave, her irises darkening to gray-blue.
“Why did you choose Sir Xiao for your exploratory mission?” she asked. “Why not go through any of the more available, less reputable channels of muscle for hire?”
“I don’t know why I have to keep explaining this to you people,” I said. “I’m not some last-class breaker trash, I’m the best damned thief on the planet. I only work with the best, and Carina’s the best at what she does.”
“You’re not damned yet,” she said, “but you will be if you insist on following this through to the end.”
I tilted my head back and looked down my nose at her. “Are you sure you’re not the Minor Semantic Nitpicks Angel?”
That bright blush spread across the top of her pale cheeks again, and she shrugged, a gesture that was eerily human. “Words are important.”
But the money shot was in her color-changing eyes—they shifted from gray-blue back to that silty river water.
