“The bartender.” Cheyenne looked at him and took a tiny sip of the weird bubbly liquor. Nothing more suspicious than a drow at a club who doesn’t touch her drink.
“That’s what I’m thinking. She was terrified of those things watching her.”
“I’m fairly sure she was about to tell us to screw off. “
Persh’al nodded. “Absolutely, and that’s when the peacekeeping robots swooped in to remind her of her job. Which isn’t necessarily pouring drinks.”
Cheyenne stuck her elbow on the table and rubbed her lips, searching the club for whatever else might break loose. “It’s to keep people happy.”
“Stoned and drunk and enjoying themselves, no matter what. What we need to figure out is if it’s happening everywhere else. High security at a club is one thing.”
Taking another sip of the weird drink, Cheyenne centered her attention on a skaxen in a glittering cape who abruptly stood two tables down. “Something else altogether if it’s happening everywhere in the city. That would pretty much prove your theory about what the Crown’s trying to do here, wouldn’t it?”
“With a lot of missing pieces left to fill in until we can call it proof, but yeah.” Persh’al frowned at the skaxen, who leaned over his table and thrust a finger into a tensely smiling goblin woman’s face and hissed something unintelligible. “I want to burn that cape.”
“Skaxens and glitter don’t mix well, that’s for sure.”
The skaxen slapped a hand on the metal table and whirled away to storm across the club, the awful cape whipping out behind him. The goblin woman’s smile faded as she watched him leave, her brows drawing together in wary concern.
Two orc bouncers stared the skaxen down, but before the rat-faced magical could get to the exit, a spinning tray with a shot of something neon-yellow swerved in front of him.
“I could find better piss in the Outers!” His orange hand shot out and smacked the tray and the shot glass aside, spilling the drink all over a gremlin woman in a puffy dress with a weird, spiked collar rising up the back of her neck. She flapped her arms and hissed at him, but her anger filtered away when a new tray came to deliver her a neon-yellow shot as well. She smiled grimly and took it while the skaxen stormed toward the door. The two orc bouncers stopped him, muttering something too quiet for anyone else to hear.
Cheyenne glanced around the club. The dance floor was still full and in full swing, but the magicals who weren’t dancing or hadn’t drunk themselves into oblivion were silent, looking everywhere but at the skaxen arguing vehemently with the bouncers.
I wonder if this thing turns the volume up too.
Without needing to be prompted, the activator responded. Her eyelids fluttered as a river of electric energy climbed up her hand and arm and into the back of her head. Then the conversation she’d wanted to hear came in loud and clear.
“You good?” Persh’al leaned forward to catch her attention.
Cheyenne nodded and shot a second-long glance at the skaxen before tapping her finger on her lips and looking away. We need to work on our secret signs, apparently.
The troll said something else, laughed sharply, and drank more mudshine, but she wasn’t listening.
“This is the last time we’ll offer you a way out, Bergo,” one of the orcs grumbled. “Take the goldsmile and enjoy yourself. Forget about whatever happened and think about how good you have it here right where you are.”
“Lotta bastards would sell their kids to get moved into Uppertech, man. You know that. Hell, even just to get inside the city walls. You know what’s gonna happen if you start causing problems.”
The skaxen snarled and jabbed a clawed orange finger toward the second orc’s face. “Don’t talk down to me, Rinter. We came up the same, and you’ve sold your life for a fell-damn piece of junk.”
“It’s a job, and I’ll be around a lot longer than you if you don’t get smart and take the fucking vial.”
“I’m not touching that filth. You can’t drug me into complacency, not like she’s drugged you, apparently.”
The first orc, who Bergo the skaxen obviously didn’t know as well, glanced at the two silver orbs creeping quietly down from the ceiling toward the altercation. He nodded at the skaxen, and the orbs disappeared again.
“It’ll wear off in a few hours,” Rinter muttered. “Take it. Sleep it off, and screw your head on right, huh?”
“You can take the deathflame torch you’re holding so fell-damn tightly,” the skaxen sneered, shaking his fist, “and shove it up your ass. This is all wrong. All of it!”
“Shut up!”
“You’ve all lost your fell-damn minds,” Bergo screamed so everyone could hear. He jabbed a finger at the other club patrons, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. Cheyenne winced at the squeal in her head, and the volume dampened immediately. “It’s poison, you idiots. All of it!”
Rinter slammed his fist into his old friend’s jaw and sent the skaxen staggering sideways. Two seconds later, a panel opened in the metal wall behind him, and half a dozen snaking silver whips snatched him around the middle. Bergo screamed, the mechanical arms jerked him into the wall, and the panel slid back into place. The skaxen’s cries cut off abruptly, and the conversation in the club picked back up below the pounding bass of the weird music as if nothing had happened.
What the fuck? Cheyenne’s activator turned up the volume as she focused on the disappearing panel, which didn’t bring up a hint of a visual. She picked up the bouncers’ conversation instead.
“You gave him way too many chances,” the first orc growled. “We’re here to stop things before they turn into a shitshow like that.”
“Come on, man.” Rinter shrugged under his co-worker’s yellow glare. “I know the guy.”
“You knew the guy. Not our responsibility to keep friends or make new ones, got it?”
“You didn’t have to call in the—”
“Do I need to put in a request to transfer you, dae’bruj? Or
