My noodles were almost gone when a blue guy with gills strolled up to the shack and leaned on the counter to place his order. He wasn’t paying attention to me or Kest. I wouldn’t have noticed him at all if a glowing red crosshair hadn’t appeared, targeting his head.
Sentenced to Death.
I choked on a mouthful of chives and noodles.
Kest popped me on the back a couple times. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. I took a big swig of hot tea to wash down the bite lodged in my throat. How had the Emperor already had time to Sentence somebody to die? “Just went down the wrong pipe.”
The blue guy glanced over at the meat roach jerk causing all the ruckus, then went back to ordering.
Kest said something, but I couldn’t hear it. All I could do was stare at the guy and imagine ripping out his life point right there in the street.
He chatted with the chef while his bowl was being assembled. They made customer-proprietor small talk. It was too normal. Too much like anybody would do. He wasn’t giving off any menacing vibes or doing anything wrong. He just wanted some noodles.
The Emperor’s assurances that he would never Sentence anybody except evildoers ran through my head again. Hungry Ghost picked up on the doubt immediately.
Emperor is wise, using Death cultivator’s convictions to start him killing, the trapped ancient khan said. Death cultivator can be convinced of doing the right thing at first, then gradually move through more morally ambiguous targets until he unquestioningly obeys Emperor’s will.
The muscles in my jaw tensed. Blindly doing what I was told without asking questions was what had made me a mass murderer in the first place. No way was I going down that road again. Bottom line, I wasn’t killing this guy. There was no proof he’d even done anything worth killing for.
But Death cultivator is so skilled at killing, Hungry Ghost whispered smugly.
I sent a ton of Miasma to bury him, reinforcing Jealous as the Grave. Everybody Sho-level and above—the Sentenced guy included—gave me a look.
Right, I’d forgotten that everybody kept Ki-sight going constantly. There was no way they could miss that much Spirit.
Kest frowned and leaned in closer. “What was that about?”
“The Miasma? Nothing. Just some routine maintenance on Hungry Ghost.” I nodded at her bowl. “So, how’s the tsurai pepper sauce, anyway? Is the spiciness actually helping you cope with this heat like the chef claimed?”
Over Kest’s shoulder, I saw the Sentenced guy pick up his ramen. Lots of meat slices and no veggies, also none of the peppers and hot sauce the chef had talked Kest into. He transferred his payment and winked at the chef, raising his bowl in a half-salute. Then he headed off deeper into the city. The Sentenced to Death mark faded from view as he got lost in the early evening crowd.
I kept an eye out while Kest and I finished eating, but nobody else with glowing crosshairs superimposed over their head showed up. Still, I wasn’t able to relax until we got away from that ramen shack.
After dinner, we wandered around for a while. A river ran through the center of the city, directed by banks made of concrete, with steps leading down into the water at regular intervals. One section of the river was lined with funeral pyres. I counted seven of them, all burning at various stages, from nothing left but bones and ashes to whole bodies resting peacefully on top. Concentrated Miasma flowed across the top of the river like a layer of oil.
Mourners at one of the burnt-down pyres stepped back, pressing their face to the concrete, and monks dressed in strange robes with black smeared around their eyes, nose, and mouth took these huge ceremonial-looking scoop shovels and started pushing the ashes and bones into the river. Steam and Miasma bubbled up, and a frenzied swarm of crenelated fins circled the spot, eating what the fire had left behind.
In spite of all the Miasma there, I didn’t cultivate. With the mourners and the ceremony, it would’ve been like desecrating a grave.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kest swiping at her cheeks. My heart stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
She sniffed and shook her head. “It’s just really beautiful.”
It hit me that she’d never actually seen a funeral before. The first day we’d met, she’d said she wanted off Van Diemann to someplace where your body wasn’t stripped of its valuables and dumped when you died.
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I didn’t want her to feel sad, but her eye lace was thick and dark like it got when she was really happy, and that completely messed me up.
The best I could do was put my arm around her shoulders and hope that would help. It did have the added benefit of her snuggling into my side, which I realized I shouldn’t be focused on while she was still crying, but it wasn’t like I couldn’t notice it.
Eventually we moved on, wandering back through the city toward the Soulchamber. Kest cultivated Metal Spirit from all the tin and steel around us as we walked, and I cultivated random kinds of Spirit from the surrounding area—Stone, Pollutant, Thread. Because the bulk of them weren’t aligned with my Mortal affinity, cultivating there wasn’t easy. I couldn’t just “find the vein” like Rali was always talking about. My body couldn’t use anything but Miasma, so I had to wrestle the foreign Spirit types in and painstakingly convert them to Death Spirit.
Pretty soon, sweat soaked my shirt and trickled down my face. I was breathing like I had exercise-induced asthma even though we were just walking. It seemed like a lot of effort for such a small payoff, but converting was supposed to strengthen my Spirit sea and help me use the Miasma I already had more efficiently.
“You’re getting good at that,” Kest said. “Most people don’t
