Daisy took the back seat with Regina. A large paper bag filled with snacks and bottled water sat between them. The ride was quiet – a sort of sleepy silence, casual and easy. Frisk didn’t even turn on the radio, but there was no tension in the void that filled the car. Daisy began to forget her self-consciousness, relaxing in that space protected by metal walls and stained leather seats from the judgements of the world. Regina handed Daisy her cup to offer a sip of the milkshake.
“Where are we going?” Regina asked as Daisy drank. Frisk was taking a road south out of town, but it was not the one that Daisy had pointed Andre down when going to meet Cyan.
“I dunno,” Frisk answered. “Ash fields. Somewhere quiet. You know, nature.” Daisy’s parents had always taken her to the beach as a child. The land lining Ashland’s eastern coast was the most recovered from the volcanic destruction that had ravaged the continent ages ago. There were farms and even orchards out there – Ashland’s meager agricultural industry, what little they didn’t have to import from the Odhero Islands or Elverta to the south. Daisy’s mother, Reina, always wanted to go apple picking when they were out there, filling the car with baskets of the fruit. Daisy thought of the contrast to the apples portrayed in a famous Noeyen portrait of a legendary princess being offered gold platters full of shining red fruit, and the Ashland apples in Reina’s baskets always found themselves lacking in the comparison. Daisy had never traveled abroad, but from what little she knew, Ashland’s idea of “nature” was something frail and withered compared to the rest of the world.
Indeed, on the outskirts of town, Daisy watched industry and civilization meld into craggy badlands. In the flat plains south of the city proper were housing developments, some with yards, though if those yards had grass it was dry and colorless. Nothing was green out here, only silver and black and charcoal and ebony. Even the blue of the sky drained of color as dark grey clouds of ash came rolling in. It reminded Daisy of a photograph, all shape and shadow. Soon, even houses on withered plots of land gave way to dry, weedy fields, and beyond that, flat plains of dirt and ash.
Frisk continued south upon a road that wound not because it had any hills to circumvent but seemingly for no other reason than to keep the drive entertaining. Shafts of afternoon light broke through the clouds and struck against the fields around them, reflecting off the salt deposits in the soil whenever a gust of wind brushed the loose ash away. All around them, the earth sparkled like dark silk interwoven with glittering threads.
By the time Frisk pulled to a spot on the side of the highway, Daisy’s legs were cramped from sitting still in the back seat. She sighed as she stepped out with the others on a short vista point that overlooked a lower slope of field. Frisk again took her position leaning against the front hood of the car and pulled from her pocket a small brown vial that looked like it could have been any old medicine. Of course, when she pulled the cork and dipped a fingertip in, it was a thick, bright blue liquid that she lifted to her lips. It seemed that she was allowed to drink again, now. Or so Daisy hoped.
Frisk noticed Daisy looking and tilted the flask toward her. “Want any?”
Daisy averted her gaze to stare out at the glittering plains below them. “No, thanks.”
“Right, right. Gotta keep teetotaling to impress the Boss Man.”
“What?”
Regina, who had settled down to sit cross-legged in the dirt, looked up at Frisk plaintively the second she recognized Daisy’s tone. “I’ll take some.”
Frisk ignored Regina’s obvious attempt at distraction. “I’m just pulling your leg, Dell. I know you don’t need it, and why risk getting addicted if that’s just another thing to spend your paycheck on? That’s what Lia always tells me, anyway.”
“I’m not sober to impress Mr Swarz,” Daisy said, and Frisk rolled her eyes.
“Blazin’ embers, Dell, I just said I know that. Swarz is heavy sweet on you, anyway. You could do fuck-all and he’d still be over the moon for you.” She took another dab of mana and licked it off her finger.
“I thought Mr Swarz didn’t get like that,” Regina said.
“What, with women?”
“With romance. I hear Miss Agatha talking sometimes. He’ll fancy sex and all, but not all that affectionate, mushy stuff like in the picture shows. Doesn’t even want to get married, except for maybe tax reasons.”
“Didn’t say he wanted to marry Dell. Just, you know, she’s the favorite.” Frisk brought the vial to her lips and drank directly from it, and Regina wilted a bit at the sight. When Frisk lowered the vial, her eyes locked onto Daisy, although she didn’t turn her head to face her. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make a big thing of it. I’m just bitter, is all.”
“At me?” Daisy asked.
“At Swarz. You know, Vicks and I’ve been at Stripes for years now, doing runs through gang territories and out here with the rednecks, risking our asses daily. We get the product to Swarz’s clients, and look how much thanks he gives us for it. Then you saunter on in with your fancy shoes and college degree, and in a week he decides you’re the best person he’s ever met.”
Daisy thought again about the ride home from introducing Mr Swarz to Cyan. “Doesn’t seem that way from where I’m standing,” she said.
“Yeah, well, Swarz emotes on a bit of a different frequency. You learn to read it after a while.” Frisk recorked the vial and stuffed it in the pocket of her slacks. The gleam in her eyes was verging on manic. “Damn, didn’t mean to bring this whole outing down. Come on, let’s stroll.”
Frisk pushed off the car and led the way in a simple walk across the ash plain with the others following. Soot clung to their clothes and skin as every step stirred up a loose layer of dust. Whether the clouds also dropped fresh ash onto them hardly mattered for how smudged they were. They spent their walk chatting about the recent Orion Hevera film and the new dress that had gone up in the boutique window three blocks down from the office. Regina pointed out stray lizards that skittered out of the girls’ pathway to duck under porous rocks that littered the landscape. Sitting watch in the distance was one long-legged heron, standing ankle-deep in what was likely a small spring sprouting up precious clean water in the otherwise barren landscape. It looked up at them once when Frisk began hooting and waving her arms at it, trying and failing to see if she could spook it into flight.
Their trek was short, or it felt like it was, before Frisk proposed returning to the car and finding some kind of eatery. “Rubes have all the best food,” she said. Daisy had never spent much time out of the city and couldn’t recall that she had ever eaten at some backwater diner, so despite her reservations about Frisk’s claim, she didn’t feel she had the authority to argue it.
They drove further down the road, stopping at a small settlement that seemed to extend its borders no further than the four corners of an intersection between the highway and a smaller back road – two houses on the southern-most corners, a gas station at another, and in the final corner a squat little building marked by a sandwich-board sign reading: “OPEN – TORTILLAS, COFFEE” and a third menu item that was too smudged to read.
Inside the restaurant, they took a seat at a table near the window, though the glass was so smudged it was nearly blacked out. Little candles on the tables provided most of the interior lighting. Each chair at their table was mismatched, all rescues from various neighbors, most likely. Baubles of similarly eclectic aesthetic – stone idols from Iongath, baskets woven in Yen Highlander style, things of that sort – decorated the shelves along the walls. The staff of the joint was quiet and reclusive, all probably family members from one of the two houses across the street. The menu offered mostly Elvertan dishes, and Daisy ended up just copying Amelia’s order.
No one else was present in the establishment except a young woman who appeared to be a waitress on break, sitting at a table alone and reading a magazine. The entire restaurant was dim and eerily quiet – most of the noise coming from the clatter in the kitchen – and no one at Dais
y’s table spoke until the on-duty waitress returned with their food. The plates stacked high with rice and bean dishes were twice the amount that they could get in the city for the same price. Daisy stared at her plate in dismay, knowing already how much of it would go to waste, but Frisk and Regina began devouring their meals with abandon. Amelia, who readily took up a fork but ate at a slower pace than the other two, noticed Daisy’s staring.
“It’s the drug,” she said. The girl at the other table didn’t even glance up, although Amelia didn’t bother to lower her voice. “Kicks the metabolism in the pants. That’s how Angel described it to me.”
“That would explain how they stay so trim, certainly,” Daisy said.
Regina nodded as she finished swallowing her current mouthful. “That’s why I got on it to begin with. I don’t get much out of the high – it doesn’t last long for me, and then I’m just burnt out. But I had dysphoria real bad as a kid, and the… you know, the stuff helped me control my shape a bit.”
Daisy tried picking at her food. The chicken was sautéed in something spicy and greasy, and she wasn’t sure if it was good or just abundantly flavorful. “Can’t doctors treat that sort of thing these days?” she asked, hoping medical talk wasn’t over the line.
Regina shrugged, indifferent to the question. She seemed to quietly revel in being the focus of the conversation, even. “Oh, sure. My mom even got the folks at our temple to put together a little fund to pay for it, but then a drunk driver crashed into our temple – took out a whole wall. My family wanted to use the fund to help repair the temple first, so my surgeries got postponed until we could save up some more again, but I couldn’t wait that long. By then, flat girls were all the rage, anyway, so I started dosing to cut down the muscle and fat I didn’t want. Once I started losing weight, I looked the same as any other girl who dosed. If you take enough, it just kind of reduces you down to your skin and bones.”
“Vicks likes that side-effect, too,” Frisk said through a mouthful of rice. “Keeps people from guessing on his, you know, morphology. I kinda miss having a little muscle, personally – I feel like I’m made of glass some days.” Regina bobbed her head in agreement to that last point, and Amelia kept quiet, going at the plate in front of her at an even pace.
“I guess I never considered that it might have other practical uses,” Daisy said.
“It’s alternative medicine,” Regina agreed, her tone laced with only a hint of sarcasm.
“I mean, people do what they do for a reason,” Amelia said. “It’s not so different than drinking, really. Probably safer, even. Benefits and risks, either way.”
“Then why don’t you take it?” Frisk asked, and Amelia sneered.
“I intend to keep my tits, thanks.” Frisk cast her a lopsided grin before returning to her task of devouring the mountain of cheap roadside food before her.
Daisy could only make it halfway through her dish before it was time to head back on the road, and the food was too greasy to bag up. Still, the portion she had was more than enough, and with a full stomach, she napped on the drive back to town.
Johnston turned out to be a much more active participant in Ming’s operation than Linden had been. He had called her to his office just as she was trying to piece together a plan to locate a target. Her intention had been to track down that group that had dropped the bird charm – the girl in the gold dress or her friend that Jase had shot – but when Ming’s efforts to relocate either of them didn’t show results within a few days, Johnston intervened and called Ming in for a meeting.
Ming had half-expected that he would backtrack on their deal just as Linden had, but instead he was ready with, of all things, helpful feedback.
“We need to be mindful of this approach, of course,” Johnston muttered as he paced along his bookshelf, speaking as much to himself as Ming. “Someone too important – a professor or corporate executive… no, no, that would just breed panic. Fearmongering is Linden’s game, so we must take the compassionate angle. Our target must be harmless, pitiful. Someone dainty and pretty.”
Ming thought against about the girl in the gold dress. She had never been one to ogle any random beauty walking by on the street, but she could recognize conventional attractiveness as well as anyone. That girl had looked like she could have been on an advertisement for soap.
The bird charm was settled in Ming’s breast pocket. She had sort of taken to carrying it around like a lucky token, though little good it had done so far. But when it occurred to her that Johnston might know more about it, she pulled it out and held it forward in her palm. “Could you track this back to its owner?”
Johnston paused in his pacing to squint at what she held before rushing over. If he meant to alarm Ming with his charging, well, he did, but she didn’t flinch or back away. “What is this?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I found it in a speakeasy. Some kind of magic…” She paused to search for the word… “trinket.”
“An artifact, perhaps?” Johnston stepped back, seemingly for the purpose of puffing out his chest a bit, but Ming wasn’t sure if he was even aware of his own posturing. “A magic that originates on the Yen continent. Methodical magicians in Ashland have tried to recreate the enchantment process but have found little success.”
“I don’t suppose you could point me to the kind of magician who could make something like this?”
Johnston rocked on his heels. “Not anyone in my circles, I wouldn’t expect. This is… folk magic, I suppose you might say.”
“The hell does that mean?” Ming asked. Johnston spread his hands dismissively, but Ming suspected she knew what he was getting at. Unassimilated. Did even magicians in their underworld care so much about establishing and policing norms?
“My best guess would be out near the industrial district. If you found this in a speakeasy, then we can guess its owner is not some loner entirely disconnected from other magicians, and if they don’t run in academic circles, either, they’re likely working-class. The industrial district is something of a hub for this type – cheap rent, but a ‘respectable’ enough district that law enforcement largely ignores it.”
“Can you narrow it down any further than that?”
Some of Johnston’s posturing deflated as he hummed in contemplation before striding over to his desk and procuring a sheet of paper and a pen. “I have only passing knowledge of that neighborhood and its magician culture, so to speak, but these points of interest may be able to lead you to a more solid find.” When he finished scribbling his notes – names and addresses of businesses in that area, from the look of it – he held it out for Ming to take, but when she grabbed ahold of it, he wouldn’t let go.
“Do you know why I advocate for these magicians, Miss Roxana?” His question was soft and solemn. Ming knew he was keenly aware of the irony in calling what he was doing now “advocacy,” so she didn’t point it out. “It’s the consolation of power. The most moneyed people to first reclaim Ashland feared competition, so they began drawing lines around who and what was considered proper. They draw lines around magic, around gender, around generations, when they could have just as easily drawn them around the pitch of one’s voice or the color of their eyes. Maybe they have the wrong kind of sex, eat the wrong kind of food, take the wrong kind of shits.”
Again, Ming didn’t point out the obvious. Somewhere in the world, any of those exact lines separated people into either places of power or the margins. And even in Ashland, if one didn’t fit the right mold, then, yes, all of those things became the subject of scrutiny and suspicion, as well.
“It’s dangerous thinking, Miss Roxana, devaluing one’s fellow man.”
“Person.” She wasn’t going to let that one slide. He had just mentioned gender, himself.
Her correction didn’t shake him. “Magicians and ogres laid the groundwork for this nation – all its infrastructure and technology. People were happy to accept their innovation until it became inconvenient or there were opportunities to g
ain. People with power and a chance to gain more could just as easily turn against any other group at any other time.”
“And you’re afraid that you’ll be next?”
“No.” He finally released the list of locations. “I am afraid that this nation will not survive many decades of that nonsense. A society is maintained by its social residents, and all this sneering about magicians and presumptions about what they’re like, what they do – that’s all quite anti-social. You have guessed that my personal circles run… magician-adjacent.” It hadn’t occurred to Ming before that comment that Johnston himself might secretly be a magician, but she supposed it didn’t matter. She couldn’t exactly make him the target. “Magicians are no more dangerous than anyone with a knife or gun, and they are not some unified violent ideology. They know they do not deserve what our society gives them. I can tell you that they will not lurk in the shadows enduring this treatment forever. No one would, no one could. If our society continues to abuse this group or that, it will incite backlash, which will turn into – to borrow a phrase from Franklin Blaine – a culture war. And from there Ashland is on a trajectory to become the very fascist state that our ancestors from Algretau or Berngi fled.”
So that was it. Johnston’s family had been terrorized or killed in one of the fascist regimes across the ocean that had formed a century ago. Some of those regimes were still active or scrambling for a resurgence; the Ashlander children and grandchildren of those who fled from the north continent could sometimes be sensitive to the notion of fascism following them to their young homeland. Ming’s family had left Gao to escape plague, not any human machinations, so she supposed she never thought about fascism much.
That explained, too, why Johnston was willing to see one of his dear magicians murdered to further his own ends. A sacrifice to preserve the security of his nation. But it wasn’t really a sacrifice when it was someone else’s life, was it?
Moonshine Page 16
