“Welcome to my world,” I said.
“Your world’s bollix.” He tipped his packaging back and drained the last dregs of the food into his mouth, then dragged the bag of jerky and fruit closer.
Unu got up and handed off steaming MealBagz to Smoky and Valthorpe. Sushi flowed silently along behind him.
“I know you’re back there, little Mirror Spirit,” the rock guy said.
Sushi gasped and disappeared.
Unu chuckled and sat back down by the fire.
“Awfully small for a Martial Devil,” he said, stirring his rehydrated ration.
I grinned. “She’s scrappy, though.”
A couple seconds later, I felt Sushi’s fins brush against my neck. I checked, but she was still invisible.
“Grady,” she whispered in my ear. “Unu knows Sushi’s Spirit. Is Unu Sushi’s friend?”
“If you want him to be, I guess.” I caught the crusty rock guy smiling down at his food. He wouldn’t have needed Ki-enhanced hearing to hear Sushi’s stage whispers. “He seems all right to me.”
The tickling at the back of my neck disappeared.
Valthorpe obviously wasn’t having the same hangry problems Warcry was. He was so excited that he kept talking while his MealBag got cold.
“We’ll get an earlier start tomorrow,” he said, sitting forward on his log. “I think we’re on the right track here. Every sign points toward the top of the temple. The winged figures are dragging their captives upward, ever upward.”
I tried to picture the top story of the temple. From the ground outside, the tree canopy blocked most of it.
“Maybe there’s an altar at the top for sacrifices,” I said.
Valthorpe shrugged. “It’s likely, but we can’t rule out other possibilities yet.”
Purple scales flashed right in front of Unu’s nose. He lurched back as Sushi appeared.
“Sushi is Lost Mirror Spirit, not Little Mirror Spirit,” she said.
Unu opened his mouth, then it looked like he thought better of whatever he’d been about to say.
“My mistake.” He held out his free hand to her. “Pleased to meet you, Sushi. Unu—that’s me—is Broken Mirror Spirit.”
She swam in close and inspected his hand.
“Broken Mirror,” she said, like he’d expected her to confirm it.
Unu picked a couple white crystal flakes out of his nose, then grabbed a rock from the outer ring around the fire.
“Want to see a geode?”
Sushi’s eyes got wide, and she nodded her whole body.
My HUD buzzed twice, one notification after another.
I heard the snap of Unu’s Spirit breaking the rock open, but I didn’t look up from my Winchester’s screen. There had to be some kind of mistake. Twelve thousand credits had just been transferred into my USL account.
“It sparkles!” Sushi shouted in joy.
Smoky muttered, “Show-off. My brother could break rocks, too.”
The second message I’d gotten was from Sanya-ketsu.
Good work on the Technol ambush. Just heard from Valthorpe today. Send reports on non-Sentenced kills to get paid. The Emperor isn’t tracking them.
I scratched some of the grit from the day off my cheek. It was one thing to get paid for killing somebody I’d been told to take out, somebody I knew was a bad guy who deserved to die. Asking for money for killing guys who’d been about to kill us didn’t feel right. Like, surviving and keeping your friends alive was supposed to be its own payment, wasn’t it?
But the tone of Sanya-ketsu’s message made me doubt she’d see it that way.
I cleared the notifications without getting back to her. Right then, I didn’t even have the energy to be disgusted by the blood money. My stomach wasn’t roaring its head off anymore, and the weight of exhaustion was suddenly pulling me down. All I wanted to do was pass out and sleep for a month.
I got up and headed for my tent.
“Turning in already, Death brat?” Smoky asked.
“Kinda early, ain’t it?” Unu swapped the rock he’d been snapping in half and putting back together for a half-full liquor bottle. “Got some big ambitions for tomorrow?”
Geez, can’t a guy go to sleep in this camp without getting everybody’s attention?
“Leave the grav alone.” Warcry nodded at my HUD. “He wants some private time to chat to his girlfriend.”
Sushi left Unu’s side and swam after me.
“You can hang out here,” I told her.
“Sushi wants to chat, too,” she said. “Ask Kest how Rali is, Grady. Sushi misses Rali.”
“There’s your problem with Martial Devils,” Smoky said, his long face stretching into a leer. “Always cramping your private time.”
Unu chuckled. “No wonder he was trying to sneak off.”
“No wonder he’s always in a killing mood. It ain’t the Death Spirit after all.”
Explaining that I just wanted to sleep would take more time than keeping my mouth shut now that everybody had made such a big deal out of nothing, so I just told Sushi to come on if she was coming and headed for the tent.
Kest didn’t have as much time to text as she had earlier—apparently probationary Technols were expected to work pretty much around the clock—but she assured Sushi that Rali was having a good time, making friends and cooking lots of tasty food.
Once we’d signed off, I used another piece of script ribbon to clear away the bone dust and sweat and grime from the day, then collapsed on my bedroll.
Except now that I was there, I couldn’t fall asleep. My brain wouldn’t shut down. It kept coming back around to the blood money and exactly how much of the rest of this life I should expect to be killing people for the Eight-Legged Dragons. Probably all of it.
Finally, I gave up on sleep. I grabbed my jeans and dug that red gem out of the pocket.
Sushi perched on my back, studying the looping, whirling script etched into its surface over my shoulder.
“This.” She swam over and nudged the gem with her nose. “Lost Mirror has some.”
“Some what?”
She took a deep breath, then on the exhale projected the image of the little bronze mirror she’d swallowed hundreds of years
