Death Cultivator Read online

  I squinted at him. “That’s...convoluted.”

  “Now you see why I’m not a part of their system. Because it’s ridiculous.”

  A severed arm slammed against the cage in front of me. A couple flecks of orangish blood landed on Rali’s walking stick, and he wiped them off with the hem of his shirt.

  “So you don’t follow their laws?” I asked.

  “I’m not breaking any that I know of, but if I had to...” He shrugged.

  “What about getting off this planet?”

  “That’s Kest’s thing. If I do, whatever. If I don’t, also whatever.”

  All the we’s and us’s she’d used when she was talking about buying their way off Van Diemann came back to me.

  “I think she wants you to go with her, dude.”

  “Because she thinks it’s better somewhere else,” Rali said, grinning and raising his eyebrows like he was telling a joke.

  “I mean...” I looked around. “Isn’t it?”

  He shook his head. “Every place is different, and every place is the same. You’re not a different you, even when you change.”

  I smirked. “Is that some kind of ancient wisdom?”

  “Nah, just a dumb sewer-punk song that used to be popular. It’s got the right idea, though.”

  In the cage, the alien whose arm had been torn off finally passed out from blood loss. He dropped facedown on the stone. The scaly guy fighting him shoved him over the edge into the hole.

  Kest came up between Rali and me with her mostly empty bag over her shoulder. Sounded like there were still a few pieces clanking around in there.

  “Pretty sure I’m supposed to be carrying that for you today,” I said.

  “Oh right.” She handed it over. “Thanks.”

  “No big deal.” I hooked the strap over my shoulder.

  She jerked her chin at the cage. “How’s the disapproving going?”

  “I think I’ve passed enough judgment on violence for one day,” Rali said, turning to her. “But I’m behind on looking askance at greed and ambition. So, how did the sales go?”

  Kest rolled her lacy eyes. “Are you guys ready to head home? I want to get these leftovers melted down and scrapped.”

  “And I can get the mochi started,” Rali said.

  I hesitated. The twins were feeding me and helping me get settled into this world and even expecting me to stay at their house, already acting like I lived there. All without wanting anything in exchange. They had basically nothing, but they were being more generous than most of the people I’d known on Earth with nice houses and cars and brand-name clothes. I didn’t want to take advantage of them.

  Kest was watching me like she’d picked up on my hesitation, and for a second, I wondered if her kind of alien could read minds. It felt like I needed to say something before she did, get in the first word, or she would dump one of those big walls of words on me to convince me that I should stay with them because it was somehow to the mutual benefit of all three of us.

  But Rali was the first one to start talking, and it was obvious what he was most concerned about.

  “You’re going to love this stuff, Hake. For the inside, I make a caramel sauce so tasty it’ll make you sick. And I fry the leftover bits of dough into these little mochi chips...” He sighed and threw his walking stick over his shoulder. It donked against something. “When they’re hot off the—”

  “Oi!” A pair of arms reached out of the crowd and shoved Rali, knocking him into me. “Watch where you’re swinging that stick, fatso!”

  The guy who’d shoved Rali looked familiar, but it took me a second to figure out why. Warcry had picked up a bad enough sunburn that, at first, I thought he was some red-skinned alien. He wasn’t, though, just a ginger who shouldn’t have been wandering around without SPF One Million in a world with three suns.

  Rali bowed. “Deepest apologies for my inattention, friend.”

  “I ain’t yer friend, fatso,” Warcry snarled. He held up a fist that burst into red flames. “’Less you want yer head beat in, ya best saunter on.”

  The Bailiff

  I GOT IN FRONT OF RALI. “He said he was sorry, man. Get over it.”

  Warcry glared at me. His sunburn was so bad that the whites of his eyes were pink. He scowled when he recognized me.

  “The space trash from the shuttle.”

  “I thought you were headed toward New Iron Hills,” I said.

  “Now I’m here, ain’t I?” He limped forward a step and bumped his chest against mine. “You and your netskin lad got a problem with it?”

  “Of course not,” Rali said, stepping up beside us. “There’s plenty of Ghost Town to go around. You’re as welcome here as anyone.”

  With his forearm, Warcry shoved Rali back. “Didn’t I tell ya once to saunter on, fat boy?”

  I’d taken a lot of crap from jerkwads in my life, but seeing it happen to someone else ticked me off worse than anything.

  “I didn’t have a problem until you started shoving people around,” I told Warcry. “If you touch him again, you’re gonna have the problem.”

  All around us, people had stopped watching the fight down in the cage and were looking at us. Something moved near my feet.

  “That’s a PR-168-L model prosthetic.” Kest had crouched down on her heels to study Warcry’s metal leg. “They’ve got the old-style open joint for the knee, prone to lockup. It’s not a hard fix. If you’ve got a minute, I can clean it out and install an aftermarket shell to keep out obstructions to make up for my brother’s carelessness.”

  Warcry’s head and shoulders burst into flames. “Mind your own, netskin. I kicked your boy’s bollix across the shuttle well enough with a locked-up knee, didn’t I?”

  I shoved him. “Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”

  Warcry limped back a step to catch himself. The fire raced down his shoulders and arms to cover his fists, and he put them up.

  Rali squeezed between us. “Surely we can settle this without—”

  A huge hand grabbed my shoulder and lifted me off the ground. I freaked out, thinking maybe Warcry had brought a friend I didn’t notice, and started kicking and swinging elbows behind me, but my shots didn’t hit anything. Then I caught a glimpse of Warcry hanging off the ground with a huge gray ghost hand wrapped around his shoulders.

  “Now there, gents,” the kind of smooth voice you heard from movie snake oil salesmen and carnival barkers said, “there’s not going to be violence on this side of the combat wire.”

  It was the scrawny fight announcer in the bowler hat. He stepped into the space between Warcry and me, real hands stuffed in his pockets, his set of huge ghost arms holding us up.

  “You’re in Of Smoke and Silk land, boys. All violence is our rightful property to package and sell as we like. By attempting to fight independently in our domain, you gents tried to steal from us. Taking the whisky straight from our mouths.” He shook his head. “And that, the OSS simply cannot allow.”

  Warcry’s head was on fire again. “Put me down, ya cack-handed—”

  Ghostly fingers folded over Warcry’s mouth, muffling his shouts.

  “Don’t get yourself worked up apologizing,” the man in the bowler hat said. “I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s entirely unnecessary. See, I’m going to give you a chance to redeem yourself.” He took one webbed hand out of his pocket and gestured at the cage. “Our next fight was about to be canceled on account of someone cut poor Nellie’s throat last night. But because I’m the Bailiff, I can substitute you lads in. No wait, no sweat. And best of all, we’ll put up a reward for the winner.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Rali and Kest whispering about something while the Bailiff talked.

  Rali stepped forward, bending into a low bow. “Apologies, honored Bailiff, but Hake is employed by my sister for the day. Could he pay a fine rather than fight so that she might get her credits’ worth from his pledged labor?”

  “’Fraid not, my we
ll-mannered son, ’fraid not,” the Bailiff said, tipping back his bowler hat to scratch his forehead. “What’s done is done and can never be undone ’til we’re all done, as the saying goes. But don’t you worry. The OSS’ll pay the going rate for day labor, with a little bonus on top for whatever’s been left undone.”

  The Bailiff looked at me and smiled a brush of yellowed baleen-like teeth. “Hake, was it? This is your chance to move up in the world, Hake old buddy.” He glanced over at Warcry. “Or yours. Your HUD profiles say you’re both as of yet unaffiliated. Talk about a stroke of luck then to happen upon you two strapping young lads trying to settle a dispute whilst we’re looking for a new member, having just lost Nel. Here’s what I’ll do for you, boys—I’ll take care of the both of you. The winner of this fight will become the newest member of the OSS, with all the privileges that brings. The loser will be indentured to us for one local year, with the option to join the OSS once his servitude’s over, providing he shows the merit. How does that strike you boys?”

  The giant ghost hands lowered us back to the red dirt, and the one covering Warcry’s mouth peeled back.

  “I say it’s a load of space trash,” the sunburnt redhead growled. “When I get an affiliation, it’ll be with the best of the Big Five, not some dinky backwater gang trying to pretend like they’re something.”

  “Well, I suppose I could just kill you now,” the Bailiff said. One of his ghost hands brought out a knife big enough to make a bowie knife feel stupid and pressed it to Warcry’s throat. “Then you won’t have to worry about it.”

  That shut Warcry up pretty fast, but it didn’t stop him from glaring holes through the Bailiff’s bowler hat.

  “That’s what I thought.” The Bailiff showed those brush-teeth again in a wide grin. “See, pal, the OSS isn’t just something. Out here in the Shut-Ins, we’re everything. If you want proof, yell for your favorite Big Five gang. Give it a shot. See if they come running to save you.”

  Warcry sawed his jaw, but didn’t say anything. The Bailiff pressed the blade a little harder into his throat. A trickle of blood ran down his neck.

  “What’s that you said? I couldn’t hear you. Speak up.”

  Warcry’s face twisted into a snarl, and I gritted my teeth because I knew what came next. He was going to say something else to escalate things even further. I’d been backed into corners by jerks often enough to know you can’t back down once you start. I’d never had a deadly weapon to my throat when it happened, but the principle was the same. If no one stepped in, he was going to get himself killed just to be a dick.

  “We’ll fight.” I stepped forward. “Let him go and we’ll be your next fight.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rali’s head fall back on his shoulders, and Kest scowled.

  The knife came away from Warcry’s throat.

  “Smart boy,” the Bailiff said, patting me on the back with his free ghost hand. He hooked one ghost arm over my and Warcry’s shoulders and turned us toward the far end of the cage. “Right this way. We’ll get you gents into the chutes and get you announced.”

  “Just a second!” Kest ran up beside us. “I need to talk to my employee.” When the Bailiff raised an eyebrow at her, she added, “With the honored Bailiff’s permission.”

  “Go on, then.”

  She dragged me a few steps away.

  “Sorry,” I said. I started unstrapping the Winchester from my arm, figuring she’d want it back since I was about to become either a criminal or someone who served criminals, basically the thing she and Rali had been avoiding their whole life. “I know this is a crappy way to repay everything you guys have done for me, but he was just being such a dick, and—”

  “Go for the knee and don’t get kicked,” she said in a low voice. “The PR-168-L isn’t a top-quality prosthetic even when it’s functioning correctly, but it is mostly metal. If he’s had it for any amount of time, he’s probably developed a fighting style around kicking with it. It’ll be heavy and have a huge amount of momentum behind it. If you intercept him with a kick to his left knee, though, the real one, it’ll force him to put all his weight on the prosthetic.” She checked something on her HUD. “He’s got buckets of Spirit, so he’s probably used to fighting other cultivators, but if you force him onto his fake leg early, you should have a chance.”

  I stared at her.

  “Got it?” she asked.

  “That was a lot of information, and I’m kind of about to fight somebody to the death right now. I need the short version. A summary.”

  Kest blinked. “Right. Summary. Kick his left knee and don’t get kicked back.”

  “Okay, got it.” I held out the Winchester. “Here.”

  “What are you doing?” She grabbed it and strapped it back onto my wrist. “Keep that on. It’s not much, but it’ll at least give you something to take the sting off a block.”

  She took a breath like she wanted to drop another huge amount of information on me, but then she let it out.

  “Don’t die,” was all she said.

  The Bailiff came up beside us. “Don’t you worry, little miss Selken,” he said, patting her on the shoulder with one ghost hand. “This here is a join-serve fight. The OSS isn’t going to let either of its investments get ruined or killed.”

  The ghost hand grabbed my arm and slapped a piece of what looked like plastic wrap onto my forearm, smoothing it out. The thin plastic sank into my arm and disappeared, and a black tattoo appeared on the skin there. It was similar to the script that powered the Winchester, all lines, but these were clustered into three separate characters instead of two.

  “There you go,” the Bailiff said. “Safe and sound from most anything but decapitation and giant holes through vital organs.” He held up his HUD, a fancy one that made Kest’s SignalSong look like junk, and tapped the screen. “And we’ll always know right where you are. See?”

  He turned his wrist to show me a satellite map of the Shut-Ins and surrounding land, with a pair of blinking red dots in Ghost Town. He tapped one of the dots.

  Warcry Thompson, planetary Spirit rank #12,578, preliminary OSS affiliation

  Then he tapped the other.

  Grady Hake, planetary Spirit rank #2,191,987, preliminary OSS affiliation

  “In case you get any funny ideas about running off,” the Bailiff said.

  Behind him, Warcry was scowling down at a tattoo identical to mine on his scar-lined forearm.

  “All right,” the Bailiff said, ghost hands slapping us on the backs. “Enough fiddle-farting around. Let’s get you boys in the cage!”

  Fight in the Cage

  THE BAILIFF LED US around the cage to the door. Nearby, the shark guy who’d won his fight was having his biggest gore wounds bandaged by a minotaur. Like the tattoo cling wrap, the bandages sank into the shark guy’s skin and disappeared. Fresh black tattoos bridged the wounds, stopping the bleeding.

  “Hang in there, Ripper,” the Bailiff said cheerfully as he led us past.

  He stopped at the cage door, then opened it with one of his huge ghost arms to let the winner of the last fight limp out.

  “Congrats, fella,” the Bailiff said. “Guess Chali wasn’t as tough as he thought. You boys wait here ’til I announce you, then come on in.” He headed out on the plank, already yelling, “What a fight! What a fight! Collect your winnings, folks, or let it ride on this next little doozy yours truly just turned up—a human brawl!”

  Whistling and shouting drowned out everything for a second, and my brain started to register that this was really happening. I was about to cage match some dude in front of a bunch of criminals so I could join their gang. One of us could potentially die, and if we didn’t, we’d be serving the gang for a year.

  My stomach crawled around my insides like it was looking for a way out.

  “Hey.” I looked over at Warcry. “How do we know who won? If we’re not supposed to kill each other, how can we tell if the fight’s over?”

  “You say you gi
ve up,” he said, “then I stop the beating.”

  My fists balled at my sides. “Man, you’re a douche.”

  Out on the rock island, the Bailiff screamed, “Yes, place your bets with the barristers now, folks! A pair of humans—you don’t see that every day—both vying for entry into the OSS fold. Watch as they rip each other’s throats out for a chance to live the dream Of Smoke and Silk!”

  With his huge ghost arms, the Baliff waved us on. Warcry shouldered past me through the door. I glared at his back, following him across that flimsy plank to the middle of the cage. Heights don’t usually bother me that much, but I was pretty glad when I made it to solid rock without falling.

  “Whoop ass, boys!” the Bailiff crowed.

  Before I could even think what to do, Warcry was flying through the air at me. I hunched down and threw my fists into high guard, slamming a cross block into his punch. Pain rang through my arm bones, and the shock ran up into my shoulder. It felt like I’d stopped a lead pipe.

  Then my ribs crunched, just barely audible over a ping like someone nailing a home run with a metal bat. I folded in half, clutching my side.

  The prosthetic! Don’t get kicked with his prosthetic was what Kest had said. That flashy Superman punch had been a setup for his kick, and I’d fallen for it.

  A cuff to the ear knocked me the rest of the way to the dirt. Then another stiff baseball bat kick caught me in the stomach. I threw up Coffee Drank.

  Warcry grabbed me by the hair.

  “Pathetic,” he sneered. “Give up?”

  I was having a hard time thinking about anything right then, so a smart comeback wasn’t ready in the queue. When I saw him leaning on his left leg, though, I remembered his other one was bad. I planted my feet in the dirt and slammed my shoulder into the knee of his good leg.

  Warcry didn’t go down immediately, just started raining punches down on me, but my head and neck were tucked up into his thigh where he couldn’t get in a good shot. I could take shots to the shoulders all day.

  I scrabbled my feet in the dirt until he went down, then I rolled away from him and stumbled back to standing. I probably should’ve stayed on top and twisted the heck out of his good leg or beaten the crap out of him while he was down. But I’d done basically no grappling in my entire life, and I hurt a lot, and all I could think about was getting to a distance where he couldn’t kick me again.