The Past
After a year sleeping in rooms the size of coffins, this suite in one of the most expensive inns in the city seemed enormous. A gold-chased silver samovar sat on a low table by the doors leading out onto a balcony. She went to pour herself some tea.
"Get some of this in you. You look like you need it." She took off her jacket; some of her hidden weapons were then visible. Her sleeveless gray pullover had a sheen to it, like scales, or some metallic patina. Perhaps it was magicked to be impenetrable. She had scored plenty in her life and was the type to invest wealth into what kept her working.
He poured the strong tea into a cup whose bone porcelain bowl was held in an elegant cage of cloisonné. It was probably worth more than what he had shoved into Dett's hands. All his concentration went into not dropping it, not letting the dark tea slosh over the sides. His limbs felt like they were made out of wood.
"Oren." He looked up, seeing the man as if for the first time. Auburn hair, hazel eyes; youthful for his age, but older than the last time he had seen him. His dark robe was open to his waist, the broad chest smooth and muscular, the stomach flat and hard. He had been a wrestler once and still looked it. "The sun's up, Oren. This is your lucky day, my boy."
Oren whipped his arm sideways and the man easily ducked the scalding tea. A brown stain ran down the ricepaper wall. He saw the angular gold ring in his left earlobe. The man smiled.
"Get your tea, Oren," Ava said. "You're fine, but you aren't going anywhere until this family reunion has happened." She sat on a silk futon and began to tend to her arsenal. She didn't bother looking up, but he knew she was aware of him as he crossed the room to pour another expensive cup of tea.
"You're still too young to remember how I got to be where I am, Oren." He ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. A heavy gold cuff flashed on his wrist. "Alfsos. Yzranor. Loregard. But we invented you in Aur'arnis, Oren."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"We fucked in Aur'arnis," Ava supplied.
"After a run in Aur'arnis," Galeas added.
"Tried to burn down the local cartel. Yeah, I heard about it. Nobody else got out." Sensing an abrupt tension, Oren looked up to see his father walk to the doors letting out onto the balcony, gazing at the river and the land beyond.
"Just us."
Oren shrugged and sipped his tea.
"The money we made was enough to get our foot in the door in Cathena City. We didn't stay together, but we raised you. Trained you."
"Great. I've enjoyed this little trip down memory lane, but I think I'll just be going now..."
"I made you, Oren."
"You have fuck-all to do with me, friend," he said, twisting the false word like a dagger only he didn't know how to draw blood from a stone. "You have enough to hire your ex-assassin paramour to haul me up here, and that's all. I don't work for you anymore. Just looking for my own Aur'arnis so I can get the hells out of here and start over someplace else." He crossed over to the balcony doors and looked down toward the seedier side of the quays. "That's where I live now."
"I hear you're trying to con the streets into killing you when you're not looking."
"You hear?" he asked incredulously.
"I never claimed to be a good father. I never wanted a family. But I keep up on your jobs. You're suicidal, Oren. I give you a month and if I'm wrong... I had a Mystic take a look at you. He said your body will wear out inside a year the way you're using. We have a solution."
"We?" Oren asked, a challenge. "Who is "we"? You, Ava, and your pet Mystic?"
"What would you say if I told you we could correct the damage done to you, Oren?" Galeas suddenly looked to his errant son as if he were carved from a block of metal; inert, enormously heavy. A statue. Oren knew now that he was dreaming. The drugs were burning through him, sure, but they were only exacerbating the damage done by his punishment. He was an example made that even a blood bond wouldn't keep a traitor safe from Galeas' wrath. And now he wanted to reverse all that? This was a dream and soon he would wake up. Galeas wouldn't speak again. His dreams always ended up as frozen pictures, and now this one was over. He would wake up and he would still need things to help him deal with damage that wouldn't heal.
"What would you say, Oren?" he asked again.
The wastrel looked out over the river and shivered despite the heat. "I'd say you were full of shit." He paused as his father nodded. "And then I'd ask what your terms were."
"Not so very different from what you're used to, my boy."
"Let the man get some sleep, Gal," Ava interjected from her futon. It was a slight improvement; at least the woman who was his mother acknowledged that he was a man while the man who was his father still called him a boy as if there was some affection between them. Her weapons were arrayed on the silk of the futon like some expensive puzzle. "He's coming apart at the seams."
"Terms," Oren demanded, "and now. Right now." He was still shivering. He couldn't stop.
The Present
Descending into the Middens was always fraught. He had hit rock bottom before in another city with another slum not so very different from this one. But he had climbed out of one and he knew he needn't fall under the surface here never to return. He came disguised, of course, in what he hoped was the right balance of don't fuck with me bulk and innocuous just leave me alone energy. Armed to the teeth, he only had his kunai showing, slung from his belt. He wanted people to know he was armed and dangerous, but not so dangerous that he was a threat that needed to be eliminated. In any case, he was dressed as shabbily as anyone else.
His tricks were turned and he was looking about suspiciously. No pickpocket would attempt anything on someone clearly looking out for himself. He walked as though he knew where he was going, and he did. This was where he had washed to shore, so to speak, when he had first come to Kalzasi, before he was even fit for the Low-City. Human detritus.
Celisa's shadowy financier operated out of the Low-City, but he had uncovered some connections even deeper in the dregs and he was here to explore. Elwes was tracking him, though he couldn't see her. It was good to know someone he trusted could watch his back even down here. He didn't fancy ending up dead. Every day he survived was a small victory, a fuck you to those in other realms who wanted him dead.
Something connected the criminal underworld with the Golden Peacock Theater and he didn't understand it yet. While Aurin wanted to oust Celisa to give his nascent keiretsu some unassailable social capital, he didn't think a crime syndicate could get much of the same out of this arrangement.
He pretended to wander the Hahseu, giving Elwes enough time to keep pace with him as he narrowed in on where they were going.
The aether here was tinged with desperation and need. It made him miss the ebb and flow of lust and intoxication in the Velvet Cabaret, Arry's frustrating knot of desires, Torin's clean needs. Even Lord Yserloo's party had been rife with intrigue and dissembling, but the aether here actually made him feel dirty. If only he could turn off his trick, but he needed every edge, metallic and magical, to keep his skin where it belonged down here.
Rounding a corner, he saw a face he recognized—one of the thugs from the Low-City when he had been forced to make a run for Ashoka's, changing his face and his clothes from one neighborhood to the next. Glancing between two stacks of crates, he saw a shadowy form move past, its pattern clearly recognizable as that of his old Rathari friend. She would be watching from deeper shadows lest he need backup.
But if he was doing his job correctly, his investigation ought to be subtle enough to attract no attention.
