Death Cultivator

by eden Hudson

  Honestly, I was pretty well bushed, but I got the feeling he was asking more because I needed to work on that part of Ki to stay alive than because he wanted to keep hanging out. I agreed and kept cycling Spirit through my freezer-burnt muscles. It didn’t take that much focus to keep it going once I started, so I checked my Spirit level.

  “Guys, we did it,” I said, turning my arm over so they could see my stats on the Winchester. A big fat smile shoved its way onto my face. “Nineteen hundred twenty-seven.

  Kest grinned. “You did it. You made the quota—over the quota.”

  “Hooray, Hake’s going to eat tonight!” Rali spun his walking stick into the air and caught it behind his back with a little flourish. “Justice and dinner are served.”

  I laughed a lot harder than that deserved, but I hadn’t gone hungry since I was little, and I’d been dreading it. Know the eating streak was going to continue was a huge load off.

  While I was looking, the number ticked down to 1926 Spirit.

  I blinked. “Why did I just lose some?”

  “You’re expending a small amount on maintaining your internal alchemy,” Kest said.

  I let the cycling stop.

  “But you should keep it up,” Rali hurried to add. “It doesn’t take much, and you only needed eighteen hundred, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay, I’ll use five more points, then stop for the night.”

  That took almost twenty minutes, and by then, I was feeling much better. Maybe even better than I had before I’d died, when I was just normal and not beat up or on an alien planet.

  “Thanks,” I told the twins as we left the cemetery. I tried doing a bow over prayer hands like Rali did. It felt kind of awkward, but I really wanted them to know how thankful I was for their help. “For everything, today and yesterday.”

  “Meh.” Rali waved it off and swung his walking stick onto his shoulder.

  Kest stared at me for a second, then said, “I’ll find a new screen soon,” like that was related to what we’d been talking about.

  It took me a minute to realize she meant to replace the cracked one on the Winchester.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “It still works great.” And I already have to pay you for the HUD in the first place.

  We split off, and they headed toward the southern outskirts of Ghost Town while I went down the main street to the distillery. The last day sun had gone down, and the black sun was taking up most of the sky.

  Muta’i was in the back room, writing labels on brown bottles.

  “Ready for your transfer already?” he asked.

  “I thought that was automated.”

  He shrugged. “Some indentures like to do it when they reach their quota so they can keep whatever they cultivate afterward and the leftovers don’t count toward their sponsor’s commission.”

  I froze. It felt like the cold from the Miasma was settling into my brain.

  “The what?”

  “The commission.” He set a finished bottle down and picked up another. “The Bailiff found you, so he gets a commission of the Spirit you cultivate while you’re here. Ten percent. He didn’t tell you?”

  “Ten percent?” I scrambled to figure out the numbers. Nineteen hundred and twenty-one Spirit minus ten percent... that was around a hundred ninety-two... borrow from the nine... That only left me with seventeen-something.

  But that would change if they took out the quota first, then skimmed the ten percent off the top of what was left. It depended on their order of operations.

  I looked at the minotaur. “Does the commission come out first or after the quota’s taken?”

  “Which do you think?” he said in a deadpan rumble.

  “Crap!” I dragged my hands through my hair. “This is bull—” I stopped short, remembering who I was talking to. “It’s unfair.”

  Muta’i went on writing labels. Dude did not care at all.

  I headed for the door. “If I go back now and cultivate for another couple hours, maybe—”

  The Transferogate beeped, two long and one short, next to my right ear.

  “Guess you’ll have to try again tomorrow,” Muta’i said.

  Then I lost track of him and everything in the shop.

  From the middle of my forehead all the way down to the pit of my stomach, I felt this swirling vortex like water circling a drain. Except it was less physical movement than it was an emotion. A whirlpool of the guilt from every time I’d fought with Gramps just because I was being a jerk, plus the humiliation of the times I’d done something stupid or embarrassing or just plain bad when I knew beforehand that I shouldn’t, all caught up in the sucking regret that I could never, ever go back and do it right or say I was sorry.

  When the swirling stopped and the Transferogate beeped again, the back of my throat hurt like I was trying not to cry, and a noose made out of an extension cord seemed like a pretty decent solution.

  “Geez.” My voice was hoarse. I looked at Muta’i and genuinely meant it when I asked him, “Am I in hell?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Drama queen.” He set aside his label-writing project and checked something on his HUD. “Hundred ninety-two Spirit to your commission, one thousand seven hundred twenty-nine toward your quota. Better figure out the difference before tomorrow if you want to eat. Come on.”

  The minotaur jerked his head at the door. I followed him outside into the black-orange-pink evening light, down the street to a sort of stock barn with a pair of big open doors. The sign overhead said Stables.

  Muta’i led me inside.

  Yellow electric bulbs stuck out of posts linked by long strings of that cracked black insulated wiring that’s in every old house on Earth. They kind of half-lit the place so that everything looked dirtier and dimmer than it would have in daylight. But maybe not by much. The stables didn’t look like they’d seen much regular cleaning since the days livestock had lived there.

  Being from a farm town in Missouri, I was used to seeing cow barns, with feed troughs and big stock pens all over the place. But this was set up more like the horse barns I’d seen in movies, where the center aisle had stalls lining either side.

  I saw people inside some of the stalls, either stretched out on cots or sitting in wooden chairs. A couple watched us pass. Most of them had plates and were eating something brown and sloppy, pinching it up with pieces of flatbread. It didn’t smell gourmet, but it looked like food, and that was enough to make my mouth water.

  Muta’i took me to a stall on the far end of the stable and shoved open the half-door. I followed him inside.

  Some of the yellow light from the aisle bulbs shined over the low walls, illuminating a bare cot crammed in next to a rough wood table. The chair had been broken into pieces and set on fire in the corner. Charred pieces of leg and back were still poking out of the cold ashes.

  “This’s yours until your indenture’s over or you die, whichever comes first,” he said. “Outhouse out back, water pump out front, power goes off for the night in an hour and turns back on at blue sunup.”

  He didn’t stick around to help me get acquainted, which I was especially thankful for. I was at that point of exhaustion and anger where you just want to be alone so you can hate everything in peace.

  When I was little and hungry, the best thing to do was go to sleep and hope Dad would remember about eating tomorrow, so as soon as the stall door shut, I dropped onto the cot. The canvas creaked underneath me like it was about to rip in half, but thankfully it held. I made a mental note to ease myself down next time.

  It took some twisting and turning to find the least uncomfortable way to lay with the Transferogate on my shoulder. I was just about to nod off when the Winchester buzzed with a message.

  It was from Kest.

  Rali wants to know what you’re eating for your quota reward supper.

  My stomach growled and tried to strangle itself. She and Rali were probably eating something amazing that he’d cooked, with those sweet mo
chi balls he’d been talking about for dessert. I had no idea what mochi was, but I pictured them like homemade donut holes. Mom had made a batch of them once when I was little-little. They’d just been those biscuits you get out of a can, cut into dots with a cookie cutter and deep fried, and she’d probably only made them because she and Dad had the munchies, but they had been so good, hot and greasy and crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and she’d let me pour sugar and cinnamon all over them. I would’ve killed for one of those right then.

  I scrubbed my hands across my face and blew out a long breath.

  They gave us some kind of brown goop and bread, I sent back to Kest. It looks weird, but it tastes like victory.

  Training

  I WOKE UP TO MY HUD buzzing again. I assumed it was Kest since I’d been texting with her for a while the night before, but when I checked the message, it was from the Bailiff.

  Wakie wakie, Smart Boy. Time for the training dummy to come to the fight cage.

  I groaned and tried to get up. The Transferogate got in the way, so I had to lean back against the fabric, then throw the momentum into rocking forward. That time it worked.

  When I came out of my stall, a pair of saloon gals were sitting at a card table across the way, drinking from mismatched teacups. One looked like a frilly flower and the other was a plump cat lady. The cat smiled at me with sharp-looking cat fangs and waved a furry hand. The flower lady turned up her bump of a nose.

  I gave them an awkward smile and headed for the big open doors.

  The tail end of the black sun was still in the western sky when I got outside, and the normally pale blue sun was a deep midnight color at the very edge of the eastern horizon. I needed to find some kind of clock app on my Winchester so I could get my brain oriented as to what time those things meant. All anybody around here ever said was approximate, like dark thirty and blue sunup.

  There was a line at the outhouse and the pump—servants from the stables going through their morning routine—so I found a place off by the distillery’s back fence to take a leak. Washing up and getting a drink were going to have to wait. I’d just have to get up earlier tomorrow so I could get a good place in line.

  When I got to the fight cage behind the saloon, the Bailiff and a few other guys were waiting. Warcry was one of them. It made me a little bit happy to see that his eyes were all puffy and he looked dead on his feet. Hope he enjoyed that celebration beer and whatever he’d eaten for supper.

  The Bailiff grinned at me, showing his yellowed brush of whale teeth.

  “How nice of you to join us. If you’re not here before first light tomorrow...” He chuckled. “Well, I’ll just get the script remote back from Muta’i, then you won’t be late, will you?”

  I was in a pretty bad mood considering I hadn’t had anything but a ball of sugar and flour to eat in the last day, but luckily, Warcry cut in before I could mouth off.

  “Why are we training at the cracked end of dawn anyway?” Warcry grumbled, rubbing at his eyes. “Does it really matter when a hooligan wakes up if all he’s doing is shaking down store owners and scaring off rival gangs?”

  “No, I reckon it doesn’t matter at all when just any old hooligan wakes up,” the Bailiff said in that tone teachers use when they’re about to own some jerk for talking back.

  Warcry missed the warning, though. “Could be doing something useful right now, like sleeping off me bleedin’ hangover or cultivating. You can train at any time of day.”

  One of the Bailiff’s ghost hands shot out so fast that all I saw was a blur. Then Warcry was picking himself up off the ground, his head on fire and fists up.

  The Bailiff’s ghost hand locked around his throat.

  “You can train at any old time of day.” The Bailiff nodded. “That you can do. But your opponents in the Wilderness Territorial are going to be waking up with the blue sun and getting stronger every day, all day. And they would’ve dodged that same little love tap you just let through.”

  Warcry’s face twisted into a snarl. When the ghost hand let him go, he wiped a smear of blood from his split lip.

  “See, lad,” the Bailiff continued, “your opponents want a Big Five affiliation. Want it so bad it wakes them up from a sound sleep and gets them working harder every day. I was under the impression you wanted one, too, Mr. IFC Champ, but I must’ve been mistaken. That must’ve been somebody else who told me he was Big Five material.”

  He gave Warcry an opening to shoot his mouth off again, but the redhead just stood there glaring, flames smoldering on his head and shoulders.

  The Bailiff smirked. “I want a Big Five affiliation, brother. You better believe that. Of Smoke and Silk is a power out here in the Shut-Ins, but with an affiliation, we could be a power over the whole damn Wilderness Territory. Now, my theory is, if you aren’t moving up in the world, you’re falling down. I want to be moving this gang up, moving me up. And when I rise, you boys do, too. Oh, you’re welcome to stay no-account hooligans at the bottom rung of a little Wilderness gang. But why not step right up with me and take your place as combatants for a true power with connections all over the universe?”

  Ripper, the shark guy from the fight the day before, snorted and scuffed his cowboy boots in the dirt.

  “You tired of hearing yourself yap yet, Stroyd? We came to fight. Let’s quit burning daylight and get to it.”

  A couple of the other guys laughed at that.

  “Well put, as always, Ripper.” The Bailiff tipped his bowler hat to the shark. “While I orient these feisty little human things, how’s about you and the boys get started with some rioting? No mortal damage, if you please. Save it for the tournament.”

  The shark nodded, and he and the other two aliens broke off and started a three-person rumble that didn’t look like they were trying to avoid killing each other. The first punch sounded like somebody smacking a bag of meat upside a brick wall, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it’d taken the guy’s head off. But his head stayed attached, and he whaled on the dude who’d hit him. Ripper fought his way into the middle of them, and then things really got ugly.

  The Bailiff stepped into my line of sight, blocking Warcry’s and my view and forcing us to pay attention to him.

  “You boys put on a decent fight yesterday, just like I knew you would when I saw you. You might say I have a talent for spotting a good show in the making. ’Course,” he said to Warcry, “you’re in just awful shape for an IFC fighter, even if it was the Under-18 division. That match yesterday should’ve ended as soon as it started.” He pointed one ghost hand at me. “You shouldn’t have lasted one second, let alone the eleven it took for him to throw you off the Stand.”

  Warcry spat off to the side. “He didn’t use Spirit.”

  “Just because your opponent was handicapped, you figured you’d handicap yourself?” The Bailiff shook his head. “That’s loser talk. That’s five more years unaffiliated talk, and for it, you’ll do six rounds of my patented body-conditioning drill when we’re done here today. Best hope your skin toughening is in tip-top form, bucko.”

  “I do a week-long blade forest and gravity well training every year,” Warcry sneered, crossing his arms.

  “Think you can take a whack from one of these babies standing?” the Bailiff asked, whipping out that huge Mega-Bowie knife.

  Warcry finally figured out that he should shut up.

  “Then a week a year wasn’t enough.” The Bailiff looked at me. “Speaking of, we’re not going to be able to sharpen our hooligan pal here on your unprotected hide, Smart Boy.” He pulled one webbed gray hand out of his pocket and checked his HUD. “Says here you’ve hardly got enough Spirit to pinch a flea. That just won’t do at all. Out of the kindness of my dratted soft heart, I’ll lend you a Spirit stone. But I expect to have the balance back in full tonight on top of your quota.”

  “And your ten percent,” I said.

  He typed something on his screen. “Fifteen percent now. Muta’i’s adding on th
e attitude tax as we speak.” The Bailiff chuckled and grinned from me to Warcry. “You boys sure are a high-steppin’ pair, aren’t you? Let’s see if we can’t work some of that off.”

  He made Warcry do some exercises that looked like tai chi, then he turned to me and took out a porous piece of white stone a little bigger around than a shooter marble. I’d been feeling a little on the shaky side since I hadn’t eaten, but when the Bailiff held the Spirit stone to my OSS tattoo, energy flowed down my forearm and filled my whole body. The hunger and weakness disappeared.

  Once it was used up, the Spirit stone went from bright white to a grimy gray color.

  “Take that Spirit and redirect it to your muscles,” the Bailiff coached me. “Focus on making them faster and stronger.”

  To make sure I was getting it right, he held out the emptied Spirit stone in one ghost hand.

  “Take it.”

  I saw what was coming a mile away, so I lunged for it. Didn’t matter. His hand was gone before I even got close.

  “Too slow. Speed them muscle fibers up some more. Go ahead. Take it.”

  We played that game for about ten minutes before my fingertips finally grazed the stone.

  “That’ll have to do for today,” the Bailiff said.

  I leaned over and put my hands on my knees, trying to get my breath back. Sweat dripped into my eyes. It was embarrassing to be sweating my butt off from a game people use to tease little kids, but when the Bailiff called Warcry over, he was soaked, too, and all he’d been doing was these slow, relaxing push and pull motions. Also, he reeked like beer barf. That made me feel a little better.

  “Face your opponent,” the Bailiff said. “Bow.”

  I did a clumsy imitation of Rali’s bow.

  Warcry’s looked way more practiced, all sharp angles and precise lines, and when he stood back up, his expression had flipped from contempt to stone cold and ready to kill.

  The ancient caveman part of my brain started grunting and flailing its arms in terror.

  “Take your fighting stances,” the Bailiff said.