The little girl sobbed and clapped two pairs of hands while the third pair stretched toward her pet.
Finally, traffic came to a stop so the cross street could go. The kid pushed out of my grasp and ran over to Warcry.
“Get a leash on that thing,” he snapped, shoving the rat at her.
While she squeezed her rescued pet half to death, Warcry and I headed for the market.
“Dude, you just saved a puppy,” I said.
Warcry scowled. “That thing? That was some kind of trash animal, grav, not a puppy.”
“Saving a trash animal means you’ve got a heart of gold.”
“What it means is I’ve got bollix of steel and the reflexes of a bleedin’ cat.”
That got me laughing.
At the market, we loaded up on MealBagz and dried food, this time making sure to grab double what we estimated we would eat.
“I knew you were a good nephew,” said the old lady selling the fruit-and-jerky mix when I told her how much we wanted. “So helpful to your dear auntie and her bad leg.”
“Don’t you mean your back, auntie?” Warcry sneered.
Her eyes narrowed. She reached under her pile of bundling cloths and pulled out a candy bar.
“Free for my good nephew,” she said, handing it to me. “Don’t share any with your miser friend.”
Warcry let loose with a bunch of rude names. I apologized to the old lady before pushing him down the row, but I doubt she heard me. She was busy cussing him out, too.
“Geez, dude, didn’t you ever hear to respect your elders?” I asked when we were out of earshot.
He shot a glare over his shoulder. “That old battle-axe’s givin’ as good as she got, ain’t she?”
“She’s allowed to call you whatever she wants. She’s old.”
“Hey, the big-timers are back!” the potbellied kid with the jewelry tarp said, shading his eyes from the sun with one pair of hands. “Whatcha need now?”
I hadn’t actually planned to buy anything from him unless he had a refill of those cleaning scripts; I was down to the last couple in the reel, and I’d been saving them for the next time I got in a fight with someone gooier than the skelebuddies. But something on his tarp caught my eye.
A faint pearlescent sheen of green and purple glimmered over a piece of jewelry. It was a tiny black coffin on a silver chain. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to carve the coffin with filigree and inlay it with tiny slivers of silver metal.
I shifted my weight. From an angle, I could just barely see glimpses of a greenish-purple skull floating over the coffin.
“What’s that?” I pointed.
The kid grinned. “That’s a soul catcher. Whoever wears it can’t die. They get fatally wounded, boom, it sucks their soul inside and waits for the next available body to spit them into.”
“Can’t even open your gums without lying, can you?” Warcry growled. “We can see it ain’t got any script or Spirit workings on it, you little scum-eater.”
The kid laughed. “My mistake, big-time. I thought you were as dumb as you looked.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d seen a skull like that before, hovering over an ancient Death cultivator’s stash. Like Warcry and the kid, Kest and Rali hadn’t been able to see the grinning mark there, either.
“Can I see that?” I asked.
“Can you?” The kid laughed obnoxiously at his own joke, then said, “It’s free to look, but ten credits to handle.”
I shrugged; ten credits wasn’t even on my radar anymore.
“Sounds fair.”
The kid’s jaw dropped, and his arms all gave a sudden spasm before he got ahold of himself and went back to pretending like he’d expected me to agree all along.
I transferred the money, then crouched down on my heels and picked up the coffin necklace.
That greenish-purple skull flashed across the backs of my eyelids as soon as I touched it.
New Death cultivator accepted, a female voice purred. Transferring Crucible Casket information.
An image of the coffin appeared in my brain, along with a line drawing of a guy, half filled with Spirit. The lid of the coffin swung open, and the guy climbed inside. The lid closed. He started to cultivate, but for every bit he took in, his Spirit doubled. I could tell there was more to it than that, sense the time passing faster inside the casket than outside and the Spirit changing, growing stronger, more intense, but I couldn’t quite grasp what the apparatus was trying to tell me.
Then the guy exploded. I flinched.
The casket lid swung open. The guy climbed out, all in one piece again, and his kishotenketsu newly advanced to the next level. A cloud of dark and light Spirit wavered around him like a halo.
The information transfer tapered off, and the noise from the marketplace flooded back in. I blinked a couple times, readjusting to the sudden light and sound.
“It’s not whatever you said it was,” I told the kid. “It’s some kind of cultivation intensifier. Somehow it concentrates your cultivation so you advance faster.”
Warcry grunted in appreciation.
The kid’s mouth popped open and shut again.
“Price of touching it just went up a hundred credits.” He snatched the coffin out of my hand. “And looking at it’s fifty.”
Icy metal links brushed across the back of my neck, and a cold lump of wood bumped onto my chest like it had been dropped. I shivered, then reached inside my shirt and pulled out the coffin necklace.
“How...” The kid’s eyes narrowed, and his nose scrunched up. “You stole it!”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “It’s a Spirit apparatus. It accepted me as its owner when I picked it up. I’ll still pay you for it, though.”
“Ten thousand credits!” he snapped like that was the highest number he could think of.
“Cop on, ya leech.” Warcry slapped my arm. “Let’s go, grav.”
“I’ll take it,” I told the kid.
His eyes just about popped out of his head. “What?”
“Here.” I transferred the money while he stared at me like he was
