Death Cultivator

by eden Hudson

  The bullet train dumped us off at a dingy underground station, then shot on down the tracks like it was ready to get out of there as soon as possible.

  “Holy cow,” I breathed.

  The walls and ceiling were made of bones. Elaborate patterns put together with curved ribs and studded with finger and toe bones and kneecaps. Miasma swirled through the place, collecting way up high like shower steam when you don’t turn on the bathroom fan.

  With the crowd and the noise, the twins and Warcry didn’t realized that I had slowed way down, shuffling along with my mouth hanging open like a total goober while I took in the ossuary. I’d seen pictures of catacombs back on Earth, but standing there, looking at the geometric patterns built of human and humanoid remains, was incredible.

  Miasma started sucking toward my pocket, and I realized Hungry Ghost had the right idea. I started gathering up Death Spirit, too. There was plenty of it there.

  I was kind of reluctant to leave, but my friends weren’t waiting for me. I took one last look, then squeezed through the disembarking passengers and jogged up the stairs after them.

  Outside, skyscrapers shot up into the night, interspersed with overpasses and skyways, hiding the black sun. People jam-packed the dark sidewalks, and neon blinked at us from every direction. Weird-looking mopeds, cars, and even something like rickshaws were deadlocked on the streets. Drivers laid on their horns and yelled at each other. It was a free-for-all.

  Zipping around just above the crowd and the traffic were dragonflies as big as my hand. Their green and purple iridescent bodies looked completely out of place in all this city grunge.

  “They’re metal,” Kest said. “If you look at them with Ki-sight, you can see the Spirit in their external circuitry. Probably sending a live feed to Technol enforcers.”

  “Watch your valuables,” Warcry said, tucking his HUD in close to his chest. “Their little warning didn’t include stealing, so it’s fair game, isn’t it?”

  He wasn’t the only one being cautious. Pretty much everybody who’d gotten off the train with us looked like they knew not to get careless in Jade City. I squeezed Hungry Ghost in my fist. I definitely couldn’t afford to lose it.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Rali grin and open his mouth, so I beat him to the punch.

  “Rali’s about to say that the things he values can’t be stolen,” I said, pointing at him.

  That got him and Kest laughing, but Warcry just shook his head.

  “Wouldn’t count on it, big man.”

  “The Wilderness Territorial’s held in the kokugikon, not far from the tourism district,” Kest said, searching her HUD for directions. “We should be able to find a hostel nearby.”

  “That’s well class.” Warcry nodded. “We won’t have to walk far to our matches.”

  “Let’s find a place to stay, then we can go register,” I said.

  That was easier said than done, though. We tried all the sleazy hostels and motels that had halfway reasonable prices and looked like you’d probably get bedbugs or murdered there, but they were full. We climbed the money ladder a little to the stuff at the top edge of our price range, but according to one of the managers, most places in Jade City had been booked months in advance for the tournament week.

  “You should’ve reserved a room last year,” she said in a condescending voice.

  Warcry’s head and shoulders caught on fire. “I wasn’t planning to end up on Van Diemann this year for burning down trash motels with their mouthy managers inside.”

  She kicked us out pretty fast after that.

  It wasn’t long before we were totally out of options. All that was left was the big-time luxury places.

  “If we pool our money, we might be able to afford a room at the Jade Renaissance,” Kest said, looking at her screen. “They’ve got a couple cancelations they’re re-booking, but it looks like they’re going fast.”

  We transferred our credits to Kest, and she hurried up and booked a room before they were all gone.

  “That’s it over there.” She nodded at a black monolithic skyscraper. “Go there first or to the kokugikon?”

  “What day is this?” I asked. “Do we have two days or just one before the tournament?”

  Kest and Warcry looked at me like I was crazy.

  Rali just laughed. “The tournament’s tomorrow, Hake.”

  I ran my hands through my hair, messing it up, then scraped them down my face. “Geez, all this running has me disoriented. Okay, so we need to go register.”

  The kokugikon was a huge stadium only a couple minutes’ walk from our hotel, but as soon as we got within a block, the foot traffic slowed to a crawl. The streets had all been blocked off, and every square inch of sidewalk was full of tables and stalls overflowing with gadgets, weapons, and elixirs. I kept my head down whenever we passed a Distiller, just in case there were some of Muta’i’s eyes and ears hanging around.

  Kest, on the other hand, was way too excited to be worried. She bounced from stall to stall like those dragonfly spies, touching gadgets and asking the artificers questions. It was pretty cool to see her excited about something considering how serious and collected she usually was.

  When we finally made it to the kokugikon, she hesitated.

  “I don’t think you’ll need us all,” she said, looking back toward the junkyard of builds. “Whatever information they need is in our Spirit rankings. I want to see about entering some builds. If not in the official bazaar, then at the fringes where the unlicensed sellers are set up.”

  I tried not to grin at the fact that she was making excuses to stay out there.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said. “We’ll message you when we’re out.”

  “I’m going to stick with her,” Rali said. “All this signing up for things and hoping to win is sort of against everything I’m about.”

  That made me a little nervous. I wasn’t really sure where to go or what to do to register.

  I looked at Warcry. “What about you?”

  “I never miss a registration, grav. They’ll put you down as agreeing to all kinds of garbage if you don’t watch ’em—and that’s on law-abiding worlds. I wouldn’t trust Van Diemann as far as I can hurl this stinking planet.”

  Inside, we hit a line of bruisers who all looked like they knew their way around a fight cage. You probably could’ve built an army out of the scar tissue alone.

  “That’s our line,” Warcry said, striding toward the end of it. “The sign-up for the small gang riot’ll have more support players and specialists mixed in.”

  He didn’t seem freaked out by how big most of these guys were, but it really started to settle in for me that I was not going to win this thing. I wasn’t even going to get close.

  I shoved my fists down into my pockets. These guys might beat me—would almost a hundred percent definitely beat me—but I had to try my hardest to attract one of the Big Five’s attention. Rali and Kest were in this now because of me. They were counting on me.

  Death cultivator could kill competitors easily, Hungry Ghost said, bumping against my hand in my pocket. Hungry Ghost can show Death cultivator the most powerful Mortal technique.

  No thanks, I said. I don’t want to kill anybody.

  With a flash of resentment, Hungry Ghost went silent again.

  I looked at Warcry. “Did you really get sent here for burning down a motel?”

  “Nah.” He smirked. “It was an orphanage.”

  “Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes. “What’d you do?”

  “Murder. Robbery. Something that makes me look hard in front of all these class acts,” he said, sneering at the bruisers in the line on either side of us. “What about you? Panty-sniffing?”

  “I got sent here by accident.”

  “You know, grav, most people drop the innocent act once the trial’s over. No one’s going to believe you anyway, with Death affinity.” He crossed his arms and stared at the backs of the guys in front of us. “You murdere
d your whole family. That’s the kind of thing Death cultivators do. No wonder the angel of death was chasing you down. She probably wants to recruit you.”

  “She wants to cover up her mistake,” I said. “She was supposed to take this druggie whose name sounded like mine. I saw the paperwork after she killed me.”

  “If that’s true, then it’s some bollix luck.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  After we signed up for the individual competition, Warcry headed back to the hotel while I signed Kest, Rali, and myself up for the riot competition. I couldn’t think of a good gang name, so I put us down as the Hungry Ghosts.

  Missed Connection at the Ossuary

  ONCE ALL THE SIGNING up was done, I headed outside and found Kest at the outside edge of the bazaar. I wanted to ask her where Rali went, but she was busy talking to someone about her Portable Shield Wall. She had cut her old scavenging bag so it would lay flat and set out a bunch of her builds on it. People were filtering by and glancing over her stuff as they wandered through the unlicensed sellers. No one was as eager this far out of the legit bazaar, but a few of them were stopping to ask Kest about the goods.

  Right after my mom OD’d, we’d had a garage sale of her stuff. Gramps didn’t want to do it, but we needed cash to pay for the funeral and hospital bills. My dad had said he could get the money, but Gramps didn’t want Dad doing anything stupid. Which he ended up doing anyway. But the point was, while Gramps and I were having this garage sale, he taught me a trick that draws in customers. One of you goes out and pretends to be looking at stuff like you might want to buy it. I thought it was dumb at first, but every time we did it, somebody would stop and see what we had that was so interesting.

  Since Kest was busy talking, I squatted down by the corner of her display and studied a drill-gun-looking thing like I knew what it was. A few more people crowded around, looking over my shoulder, including this Ylef lady about a foot taller than me with a spikey mohawk and both arms covered in HUDs and metal stuff I couldn’t even begin to identify.

  Mohawk Lady pointed a metal-clipped finger at the bracer covering my OSS tattoo.

  “What kind of work is that?”

  “Hers,” I said, nodding at Kest.

  “Let me see it.”

  I stood up and held out my arm. Mohawk Lady fingered the welds, then put half a pair of glasses on over her left eye and leaned in close, turning my arm over while she checked the bracer out.

  By then, Kest was finished with her other customer, so I got her attention.

  “You’ve got another interested party over here,” I said.

  Mohawk Lady straightened up and looked at Kest. “This your build?”

  Kest nodded. “It’s a modification on a script amplifier I was working on. I wanted to make something that would nullify script, but I didn’t have the right materials at the time. It’s kind of rough, but so far it appears to function without any unwanted glitches.”

  “You do know it’s illegal on all the Confederated planets to create or sell location-cloaking tech?” Mohawk Lady asked, sticking a metal-plated hand on her hip.

  She said it like a threat, which kind of ticked me off, but Kest didn’t seem to care.

  “I didn’t sell it to him,” Kest said. “He’s my friend. It was a gift, which isn’t covered in Universal law.”

  Mohawk Lady smirked. “Guess you’re here looking for offers from the Technols like everybody else out here in the bazaar?”

  “I can’t see the odds on that being high, especially given the number of artificers out here.” Kest gestured at me. “We entered the riot bracket as a backup plan.”

  “Not too dumb, then,” Mohawk Lady said. “And you’ve got that innocent look. Born on Van Diemann, I’m guessing?”

  “I’m third-gen.”

  “Then let me give you a tip. If you ever get off-planet, you keep that location-cloaking to yourself. Even knowing how to build it will get you locked up most places.”

  Kest nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Mohawk Lady typed something on her HUD. “And if you don’t make an affiliation from the riot bracket, message me. The Technols could use a builder who’s not afraid to fight. We might even be able to fund some off-planet expeditions for someone who looks clean and knows how to get around Universal law.”

  Kest’s HUD buzzed.

  Before either of us could say anything, the huge woman moved on down the line of unlicensed sellers.

  When Kest turned to me, her lacy eyes were wider than ever.

  “That was a Technol,” she said. “A Technol who wants me to work for the most well-supplied builders on the planet—maybe the universe. Technols run a lot of the most advanced unConfederated planets, and word is they’re the brains hiding behind a lot of the legit manufacturers in the Confederated system.”

  A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. “Kest, are you excited?”

  “I can’t tell. I think so? I kind of want to run after her and beg her to let me work for her.” She shook her head. “But you don’t jump at the first sign of interest. That’s what they want me to do. I need to get leverage. Negotiate.”

  Then her lacy eyes cut to me and she blurted, “Don’t tell Rali,” out of nowhere.

  “What?” I frowned. “Why not?”

  “If he hears about it, he’ll put everything he’s trying to accomplish to the side.”

  “What’s Rali trying to accomplish? He doesn’t care about...basically anything.”

  Kest rolled her eyes. “You seriously haven’t seen through that yet? Rali’s got more irons in the fire than you know—than even I know, because I don’t ask him—but he cares about his friends more than anything.”

  “Why not just tell us what he wants?” I asked. “We could’ve been helping him get it.”

  “It’s just what he’s like. To him, it would look bad for someone who’s worked so hard at cultivating the appearance of a carefree slacker to get serious about something. It’s like an honor thing, except with looking lazy. I don’t read those old sword epics, so I don’t know what kind of nonsense quest he made up. I just know that if it comes out the Technols made an offer and I’m considering it, Rali will drop whatever he’s doing and put all his energy behind getting me affiliated.”

  “Kind of like he’s doing right now for me and Warcry?”

  “That’s different. Your lives are in danger.”

  I nodded, but it didn’t sound different.

  “Swear you won’t tell him?” Kest asked.

  “If you really don’t want me to, I swear.”

  She hugged me. “Thanks.”

  Everything in the whole world stopped. I tried to think about anything but how awesome it was that she had her arms around me, but she was crazy soft, and she smelled like welding, and I wanted to remember everything about that second forever.

  When she stepped back, I said, “Um, I’m going to see if I can find a cemetery to cultivate for a while, then head back to the hotel. You want to come?”

  “The bazaar doesn’t shut down for another hour,” she said, glancing up at the overpasses blocking out the sky. “I’m going to stick around for a while. See you back at the hotel?”

  I nodded. “Have fun doing metal nerd stuff.”

  She grinned. “Have fun doing death nerd stuff.”

  According to the hyperweb, Jade City, like most of the larger cities on Van Diemann, didn’t have a cemetery within city limits. Because of the rapid growth the planet experienced as soon as the Confederated Planetary Authority started using it as a criminal dumping ground, most of the major settlements had been forced to take out their old cemeteries for expansion. The bones that came from the old graveyards had been used to build ossuaries belowground, which eventually became train stations like the one we’d come into the city through. Nowadays, the page said, most cities left a corpse for a year out in the wastes, then brought in whatever was left and added it to the subway architecture.

  I followed the m
ap to the ossuary closest to me, trying not to stare up at the mechanical dragonflies spying on me and everybody else as I went. Down in the station, I found a spot in the corner where I wouldn’t get stepped on. It wasn’t quite as busy there as the first station, maybe because outsiders weren’t flooding into the city through it. Everyone who stepped off the train seemed like they knew exactly where they were going and what they were doing. They didn’t even look up at the bones.

  Which was a shame, because the place was beautiful. There’s something about meticulously lined patterns that really appeals to my eyes. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the texture all those lines imply, like you could run your hands over them in a neverending series of ridges.

  I stared up at the millions of femurs and tibias and fibulas, humeri, radii and ulnas, and breathed in the Death Spirit. Miasma filled the station like steam in a sauna. I pulled it into my Spirit sea, keeping a little cycling through my tissues and organs to maintain internal alchemy, while Hungry Ghost sucked more than his fair share of the turquoise smoke into my pocket.

  After a while, I realized this hulking catfish guy in a pinstriped suit had been there for a few trainloads in a row. He leaned against the wall at the end of the platform, watching me. His long whiskers twitched when he saw that I’d noticed him.

  The catfish guy’s eyes traced the patterns of bones, then looked pointedly back at me.

  I couldn’t see him doing anything with Spirit, not even when I stopped cultivating and poured all my focus into checking him out with Ki-sight.

  He stepped away from the wall, coming my way. I sent out a thin wall of Dead Reckoning in preparation.

  A train screamed into the station, wheels clacking like an air rifle against the rails. People of every shape and size shoved out of and into the cars. Under the cover of the crowd, I jumped up and moved away from where I’d been sitting, getting lost in the flood and watching for the catfish guy.

  Then the train doors wheezed shut, cutting off anyone who’d been left on the platform. The train screeched back into motion, and the people who hadn’t been able to make it into the subway in time cussed and wandered over to the benches or stood looking down the tunnel for sign of another train.