I stared down at their faces for a long time, confusion and anger and frustration simmering just under the surface of my skin.
Finally, I sent back, That’s not proof of anything. The six-armed lady wasn’t even in the photo.
See for yourself, Death cultivator. You should be able to find her using Sentenced to Death’s pull.
I frowned, then shut my eyes. At first, I didn’t feel anything. Then I noticed a faint pulse, almost a feeling but not quite, almost a color but not quite. Some kind of additional sense, drawing me to the west.
I grabbed my boots. The centipede Sushi had been after fell out of the tread onto the wood planking. The little fish pounced.
“I’ve got to go out,” I told her. “Do you want to come with me or stay here?”
“Sushi stays with Warcry. Cultivates Lost Mirror,” she said, without looking up from her coiling, pincering prey.
“Don’t get caught,” I told her.
She crunched the centipede’s head off impatiently.
“It’s okay. Warcry says Sushi can.”
“What?”
She nodded her whole body, then drew herself up, a scowl narrowing her mismatched brown and blue eyes.
“‘Take it, fishstick. I ain’t using it, am I?’” Her imitation of his accent was pretty decent for a fish.
My eyebrows shot up. “When did he say all that?”
“Grady says, ‘Just give me a couple days, Sushi’—”
“I don’t sound like that.”
“—so Sushi asks Warcry. Warcry says, ‘Might as well do, hadn’t ya, fishstick? Get yer next level.’”
That definitely sounded like him.
A dizzy giggle and shutting door down the hall reminded me that he’d stuck around at the bar with the saloon gal who used his room.
I looked at Sushi. “Just... maybe knock first and wait for him to let you in, okay?”
She nodded her round fish head earnestly, then went back to munching on centipede sections.
I snuck out the back of the saloon so I didn’t have to answer any questions from the hooligans or Warcry.
As Sentenced to Death led me across Tikrong, over dozens of shallow canals, the buildings shifted from large adobe and bamboo businesses to squat little one-room shacks made of bamboo and scavenge. Most of the shacks had no windows and their doorways were open to the night air. The spicy, savory smells of a hundred different suppers hung in the air like a cloud of Miasma. Through the stick-walls, the low house sounds of people going to bed drifted out—hushed talking, yawns, what sounded like a lullaby. No one on this side of town had electricity, and it looked like most of the cook fires had already burned down, so there wasn’t any point to staying up in the dark.
Sentenced to Death kept pulling me until I came to a slightly bigger shack on the edge of a canal. Compared to the rickety dwellings surrounding it, this place was a tiny mansion. It had two rooms and even faded silk curtains over the windows and doors.
That was where my target was. I could feel her inside.
Feeling like I was going to get called out as a peeping Tom at any second, I masked my Spirit with Last Light, Last Breath, then snuck up to a window and looked under the bottom of the fluttering curtain.
It was a bedroom. Two bedrolls lay out on the mat covering the dirt floor—one adult-sized and one kid-sized. Only the kid’s bedroll was occupied, dark hair spilling out from under the blanket. The little rat-spider-dog thing was asleep in the tangles. No glowing red crosshairs.
Fabric rustled nearby and the Sentenced to Death pull shifted slightly. The target was on the move. I shrank behind a rain barrel to hide.
The doorway curtain pulled aside, and the beautiful six-armed lady slipped out, red crosshairs glowing over her face. She glanced back inside and murmured a good night. Through the window, I saw an elderly six-armed woman enter the bedroom and lower herself, gnarled joints popping and cracking, onto the adult bedroll.
Outside, the target let the curtain drop and headed into the night alone.
I gave her a few seconds to get far enough away that I wouldn’t get her attention, then followed her back through the sleepy little shacks, across canals, and into the bustling entertainment district. She passed saloons and gambling parlors and barfights that had spilled out into the streets.
Finally, we came to a dance hall with yellow lamplight and loud, stringy music leaking through the walls. Inside, somebody yelled, “Then dance!” and started shooting.
The six-armed woman flinched a little at the noise, then pulled her headscarf tighter and hurried up the steps into the building.
I circled around the side and leaned against the wall next to a window, angled just out of the light. Last Light, Last Breath would’ve been way more useful for sneaking around if I could get it to cloak all of me, not just my Spirit.
Inside, on a stage lit up with a row of clamshell lamps, half-dressed alien women swayed and whirled. Their audience was every combination of cowboy and samurai alien you could think of. Across the hall from my position, the shooter continued making somebody dance, but his six-gun wasn’t aimed at one of the dancing girls. He and his gun-toting samurai buddies were terrorizing a drunk-looking red alien in a cowboy getup. The drunk guy stumbled and hopped around, trying to avoid getting a toe shot off, while they howled with laughter.
The dance number on stage and the one in the audience ended at about the same time, and guys threw coins or transferred credits to the dancers—the professional ones. The women left the stage to mingle with the audience while a staff member came through to scoop up the physical currency, and while he was up there, he put out all but the center two stage lights.
After a slight record-scratch, a
