Five
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
[Puzzlement: I do not see how copulation will help matters.]
Sorry. I’m just… fuck!
I should have known. Too fucking proud of myself by half.
Sure, my designs were better. And they are, they are, but they’re meant for Star, not some idiot OBEY that can barely waddle around.
All the clever reversible joints and efficient threading in the world don’t matter if the brain of the thing doesn’t know how to use them.
And now I’m looking down at the mangled wreck of Star’s body. Moon alone knows how many sigils are still intact in there, but it can’t be a lot. Plus the armor, half the spars, some of the joints—
Fucked. Forget paying back Ekkeban, forget bailing out the bakery, I’m fucked.
I have to borrow a wheelbarrow to get the wreck as far as Ekkeban’s shop.
The look he gives me is eloquent: irritation and pity rolled together with a healthy dose of What did I tell you?
I want to tear my heart out and die on the spot.
Instead I gruffly ask him to let me stash the broken corpse for a while, and he agrees with a dismissive wave.
He’s already written me off. Bastard.
But maybe he’s right. Without a fighting body for Star, I can’t hunt worth a damn, and then what am I going to do? Sell mash-bread?
Another possibility tickles the back of my mind. But I’d promised myself. Last time—I don’t even want to think about last time.
Long walk home, my leg burning, convinced everyone I pass in the street is staring at my failure.
I can see Spike working with customers inside the front door, so I go around to the back.
Pull the door open a little too hard, so it clatters against the wall.
There’s a startled squeak from the kitchen, and I poke my head in.
Somi’s there with maybe the last person I want to see right now: Ameliana.
They’re standing a little too close and looking a little too red in the face to conceal what they were up to before my arrival.
Somi’s guilty expression only makes it more obvious.
Not that I give a shit if they make out, more power to them, but Somi’s always been straitlaced and Ameliana’s mother is suspicious of anyone vaguely male, so they’ve gotten in the habit of secrecy.
I put on a wicked grin, for the look of the thing.
“Sorry. Don’t let me interrupt.”
“What?” Somi’s eyes flick to Ameliana, and his flush deepens. My brother is utterly incapable of lying with a straight face. “No, it’s just—”
“Somi asked me to come over and take a look at you,” Ameliana says, only marginally less flustered. “At your leg, I mean.”
“Right,” Somi says, looking relieved. “Just to make sure it’s healing properly.”
Somi learned basic cut-and-stitch medicine from Fara, but Ameliana’s father was a proper physicker, and she’s studying to follow in his footsteps. I really don’t feel like being around anyone right now, though.
“I’m a little busy,” I lie. “Can we do this later?”
“It’ll only take a minute,” Ameliana says, patting the kitchen table. “Come on. Get up here and take your pants off.”
“I’ll make sure Spike’s doing okay,” Somi says, fleeing the room.
Which leaves the two of us alone. I undo my trousers and slowly let them down.
The thing with Ameliana is—
All right. I had a crush on her. Of course I did!
Her family lives across the street from the bakery, and she’s around our age, so she and Somi and I all grew up together.
Just kids playing together, until we started maturing into different shapes.
The two of them did, anyway. I stayed short and skinny while Somi got tall and round and Ameliana got… curves.
So obviously we both had a crush on her. She picked Somi. I’m over it.
She smiles at me. She has an upturned nose, light brown skin, and a scatter of dark spots across her cheeks.
Mostly over it.
“Somi says you were out scavenging again,” she says, turning her attention to my injury.
“Yeah,” I manage, looking at the wall over her frizzy bun.
“I wish you wouldn’t.” She sighs. “I worry so much about you.”
“It usually goes a little more smoothly,” I tell her. “And we need the money.”
She clicks her tongue disapprovingly and prods the stitching with a finger, which gives me a stab of pain I try valiantly not to show.
“You used a cauterizer,” she says. “This is going to make for a nasty scar.”
“At least it’s not where anyone is likely to see it.” Not anytime soon, anyway.
“Hmm.” She pokes it one more time, then straightens up. “Still. It’s healing clean. Somi’s good with stitching.”
“Glad to hear it. Can I put my pants back on?”
“Go ahead.” She clears her throat as I slide off the table. “You know, if you need money, my cousin just signed on with the Dreikin workhouse. It’s really not bad. He gets two days off per month, and there’s even a starting bonus. I think they’re still recruiting if you—”
“No.” It comes out too fast, and I cough to cover the awkwardness. “No, thanks. I’ll be all right.”
Fara said no workhouses. She made Somi and me promise. Crafting sigils like that, she said, burns you out from the inside. It’s a lucky workhouse inmate who makes it to forty, stooped and wrinkled.
“All right,” Ameliana says, not sure what to do with my vehemence. “Let me know right away if it starts to smell or leak pus.”
Right. The wound. “Believe me, I will. And thank you.”
She smiles again, and my heart does a weak double-thump. “It’s always good to see you, Taj.”
“Likewise.”
And she slips out of the room to go make out with my brother.
[Observation: when you are alone with Miss Ameliana, your heart rate rises significantly.]
I’d almost forgotten Star was in my pocket. When he’s that close, he can sense a lot about me, and he doesn’t have much else to do.
I’m sure it does.
[Observation: there is also a change in your blood flow.]
Doubtless. I’m just glad Ameliana herself isn’t as observant.
[Query: what is the purpose of this?]
Nothing. But I know he won’t leave it alone. It’s, uh, human mating behavior.
[Query: you wish to mate with her?]
No! I give a mental shrug. I mean… not really. Not as things are. Not that I haven’t thought about it, though. Thought about it quite often, in fact, at night when everyone’s in bed.
[Investigation: then why this behavior?]
Human bodies are complicated. They don’t always listen to what you tell them.
[Incomprehension: how can your body “listen” or not?]
Like I said, it’s complicated. Just be glad you don’t have to deal with it.
[Superiority: I am always glad of that, meat creature.]
I lie face down in my bed, musty sheets and hard lumps.
Somi moved into Fara’s room after she died, but this one has been mine for as long as I can remember.
This place has been mine, the sweet-sour scent of mash-bread, Somi kneading dough, Spike rolling her eyes at me since she was old enough to talk, the kids at the back door, and my desks full of sigils and wires. Home.
I think of the jar in Somi’s room, almost empty. I think about Ekkeban’s pitying look.
I really thought runic fighting was going to be a way out.
Because Somi’s right, I can’t go on hunting Twisted forever, not alone; sooner or later one of them is going to get the better of me in spite of Star’s best efforts.
And without Star it’s practically suicidal.
But building up another combat body for him sigil by sigil could take years.
There’s only one place to get the cash I need. Stave off disaster for a little bit longer.
I think we have to go back to Yesod.
Star doesn’t respond for a moment.
[Query:] His voice is cautious. [I thought you promised never again.]
I did.
[Reminder: we were nearly captured.]
I remember.
Twisted, after all, can only kill you. Arbiters can keep you locked away for decades, force you to waste away crafting sigils, torture you for kicks.
If you make them mad enough, they can haul your family in, too.
Our supposed deliverers of “justice” might take that job seriously for citizens of the higher tiers, but they make it clear that Heapers barely count as human.
And while down here we might see them make a show of force twice a year, in Yesod they’re everywhere, eager to pounce on anyone who looks out of place.
I know all this. And yet.
We need money, I tell Star. I thought that fight was going to be our big score. Now I need to pay Ekkeban, repair your body, and help Somi. Where else are we going to get the bits?
[Query: does the thief body still work?]
Sure. I might have borrowed a few pieces here and there, but nothing I can’t replace easily.
[Query: and the Arbiters?]
I think I know what went wrong last time. Pounding down a dark alley, booted feet behind me, forcing myself through a too-tight maintenance hatch just barely ahead of grasping hands. This time we’ll take it nice and slow. No mistakes.
[Resolution: no mistakes.]
That leaves me with some work to do before nightfall.
Star’s thief body is a lot smaller and lighter than the Mark 3.
It’s the same basic oval-with-limbs shape, but it has only four legs, plus two slimmer arms with small blades and fine manipulators.
Without armor and sporting only flimsy weapons, it’s not much use in tunnel fights with Twisted.
But the broad “feet” are made of threaded-fabric-wired BIND sigils, which can stick to any surface; this body can run up walls and hang upside down like a real spider.
He also fits in an unobtrusive backpack, so I can carry him around without attracting notice.
When I get him wired in, he tests each limb in turn, then jumps up and does a skittering lap of the workshop.
The thief body isn’t as strong as the Mark 3, but it’s so much lighter that Star is as bouncy as a kitten.
He unfolds his manipulators and interlaces the fingers in a high-speed cat’s cradle.
[Assessment: you have managed to remedy the previous deficiencies.]
Thank you.
[Prediction: new deficiencies will become evident in time.]
I roll my eyes. Doubtless.
[Query: are we ready to go?]
I think so. My pack is half-full of my own gear. Everyone else should be asleep by now.
It’s no darker outside than ever, of course, but curtains pulled over the windows provide a semblance of gloom in the house.
I creep out of my room, glancing to make sure Spike’s door is firmly shut, then pad quietly to the stairs.
From Somi’s room on the ground floor comes the reassuring sound of his snores.
“Aha,” says a quiet voice.
I turn, just barely silencing an exclamation. Spike is in her nightshirt with her hair down, but her eyes are fully awake and already too suspicious to bluff. I glance over my shoulder, but the snoring continues from downstairs.
“You’re going out again,” she says.
“Obviously,” I mutter.
“Where?”
“Well,” I say cautiously, “there’s a girl who’d quite like to see more of me, and she suggested—”
“Be serious, Taj,” Spike hisses. Ouch. “You want me to wake Somi up?”
“Please don’t.”
“Then where are you going?”
I let out a breath. “You really don’t want to know.”
“It’s dangerous?”
I shrug. “Probably.”
“Are you taking Star with you?”
A small limb emerges from the top of my backpack and waves.
“That’s something,” she says with a thoughtful expression that belongs on someone twice her age. “But…”
I put on an offended look. “You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust you to look out for yourself, no.” She frowns. “Somi doesn’t, either. That’s why you’re sneaking out, isn’t it?”
“It just seemed easier.”
“Taj…” Spike bites her lip, and suddenly she’s young again. My scared little sister. “Just be careful, okay?”
“Hey. Come here.” She steps forward, and I wrap her in my arms. With her force of personality it’s easy to forget how small she is, skin and bones, all hard edges under too little flesh. She hasn’t been eating enough. “I’ll be back before you wake up. Promise.”
“Okay,” she whispers into my shoulder.
I squeeze her tighter. “You won’t tell Somi?”
She sniffs, her voice barely audible. “If you do my toilet cleaning for the month.”
“What?” I pull away to look her in the eye. “Really? I thought we were having a moment there.”
She shrugs. “Business is business. Deal?”