Sanya-ketsu led us through a maze kind of like the underground castle of Dragon Heartchamber 1 on Van Diemann, except this place—the Soulchamber—had open windows looking out onto brilliant green jungle and letting in the occasional vegetation-scented breeze.
I glanced up at the yellow orb in the sky. That would be Shinotochi, the system’s only star. Kest and Rali had nerded out over it on the trip over. They’d grown up on Van Diemann, where there was a pair of day suns—one blue and one white—and a black night sun, so they were excited to visit a planet where the only light and heat came from a single yellow sun.
Warcry, on the other hand, hadn’t been impressed. He’d spent most of his life traveling around the universe to different Intergalactic Fighting Championship tournaments, so he’d seen enough variations on the solar theme that they weren’t cool to him anymore. I hadn’t said anything on the ship, but I’d gotten kind of tired of the twins’ single-sun talk, too. If you’ve seen one yellow sun, you’ve seen them all.
Now that we were on Shinotochi-Ryu, though, I was weirdly happy to see it up there, all alone. It felt homey. Whenever we passed a window as Sanya led us through the halls, I craned my neck to look out at it. Who knew you could miss your planet’s specific type of sun?
The Sown Dream cultivator stopped us at a heavy dark wood door inlaid with a small fortune’s worth of Spirit stone. The stones were glowing, which meant they were full of Spirit, maybe as a temptation to anybody dumb enough to try to absorb it on the Emperor’s turf. The inlay was in the shape of a dragon, with all eight of its legs clutching a throne.
The strongest gang in the Big Five really liked their dragon motifs.
Sanya-ketsu pressed her rubber-gloved palm to the inlaid throne.
“Enter,” a deep voice called from inside. There was a hint of accent there, but I couldn’t place it. Some kind of Russian or Eastern European.
The Sown Dream cultivator turned her flate head to stare sidelong at Warcry. For a second, he frowned, then he realized he was the closest one to the door besides her. He yanked it open and stood back so Sanya could go in, then he shrugged like whatever and gestured for the rest of us to go, too.
As I passed the Spirit stone dragon, all the Spirit in me drained away. It was similar to what the Transferogate had done when I’d been a Spirit farm for the OSS, but subtler. Less like I was having every good thing sucked out of my soul and more like I was circling a drain and couldn’t do anything to stop it. A crappy feeling, but not like I’d never felt it before, so I didn’t freak out. Rali didn’t seem affected at all, maybe because he didn’t have any Spirit to drain.
The other two were a different story.
Kest doubled over and clutched her solar plexus, baring her teeth in a silent scream. She was going to drop if I didn’t do anything, so I looped an arm around her and held her up. I wanted to tell her it would pass in a second, but she probably wouldn’t have heard me. I’d never been able to concentrate on sounds outside my head when the Transferogate was going, either.
Warcry didn’t have anyone to catch him. He stumbled into the doorframe, just barely managing to grab it before he fell.
“What’s this bollix?” he winced through gritted teeth.
“A precautionary measure,” Sanya-ketsu said. “You’ll get your Spirit back if you leave.”
Not when you leave.
Inside, the room where we met the Emperor of the Eight-Legged Dragons wasn’t anything like I’d been expecting. On the prison planet, I’d had an audience-slash-murder-trial with Van Diemann’s Dragon Shogun, and that had been in a fancy throne room, while the Shogun looked down from a huge golden throne surrounded by beautiful silent geishas.
This place looked more like a lawyer’s office crossed with an ancient Asian antiquities museum. The walls were lined with shelves full of books, scrolls, weapons, vases, and Spirit apparatuses, and a huge dark wood desk covered in maps and jade books stood at the center of the room.
Leaning over the desk was a cross between a bipedal Komodo dragon and one of those World Strongman competitors, bracing himself with both enormous arms. He looked like a careless flex would make his fancy tailored suit burst into threads around him. An air of intensity and authority surrounded him, almost as strong as the pressure Sanya-ketsu had put on us in the dream pod room, except his didn’t seem intentional, like it was just an aura he gave off.
“The Death cultivator and his entourage from Van Diemann, your excellency,” Sanya said, bowing at the waist.
Rali and Kest were the first ones to get down on their knees and press their foreheads to the floor, which reminded me to do the same thing. On my left, Warcry grunted as he folded his prosthetic leg under him.
Papers shuffled, then jade clicked. The Emperor wasn’t in any hurry to acknowledge us, at least not before he got everything settled the way he wanted it.
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Finally, he came around the desk and perched on the corner in front of me. His shiny black shoes were so close to my face that I could smell the polish.
“Sit up,” he said in that almost-Russian accent. When we straightened up, he was staring down at me with flat lizard eyes. A forked tongue slithered out and tested the air. “Grady Hake, yes? Not much cultivated for man who can kill hundreds in single Spirit attack.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I went with the truth. “I’m new at this, your…” I couldn’t remember what Sanya had told us to call him, so I went with, “your almightiness.”
“Carpet bomb approach is only useful sometimes,” he said. “You can direct your attacks to single target, yes?”
“Yes, Almighty Emperor.”
“What about scattergun tactic? A handful of targets—eight, ten—while avoiding certain other targets. You can do this?”
That one I wasn’t so sure about. “Maybe?”
I didn’t like where this was going, but the Emperor wasn’t giving anybody a chance to answer any questions he hadn’t asked. Before I could say anything about not wanting to become his right-hand serial killer, he shifted focus across the room.
“The Selken twins from the traitor’s line.” He appraised Rali and Kest, then turned to Warcry. “And meat roach war hero’s estranged offspring. Sanya tells Takeshi you are all extremely powerful, both alone and as team.” The Emperor glanced at Rali and frowned. “Or were at one point, yes? Unfortunately, Dragons have no use for broken Spirit sea fighters.”
Warcry’s lips pulled back in a snarl, but he managed not to say anything that would get us all beheaded.
“Almighty Emperor,” Kest said, bowing her face to the floor again as she spoke. “Rali will be powerful again. It’s only a matter of time before we make a breakthrough and discover a way for him to cultivate.”
“Eight-Legged Dragons didn’t become strongest gang in galaxy by making allowances for weakness, Metal cultivator,” the Emperor rumbled.
“Of course not, your excellency. Forgive my outburst.”
“Takeshi knows your work, Selken. You spy on the Technols for us, yes? Which of the Shinotochi planets were you stationed on when you used platinum favor card to negotiate this meeting?”
“Shinotochi-Sarca, your excellency,” she answered without raising her head.
He nodded his scaly head. “Did you discover what these Technols search for on Sarca?”
“No, your excellency. The matter your favor card was used to resolve came up and I was forced to attend to it first.” She meant saving my butt from getting executed by the Shogun and taking Rali and Warcry down with me. “I’m only considered a probationary member of their organization, so I wasn’t given a full briefing on what we were looking for, only tasks to complete for my superiors.”
Emperor Takeshi-ketsu grunted, then stood up and went back around his desk.
“Stand,” he said.
We did.
“Gang war is coming. Not just between Dragons and Heavenly Contrails—” He glanced at me like, Thanks for that, by the way. “—but between Dragons and greatest enemy, Technols. Technols are encroaching into heart of Dragon territory. Is direct insult to Eight-Legged Dragon authority in Shinotochi system.
“Wearing guise of ruins salvagers, they are delving into Sarca’s deepest jungles,” he said, shuffling through a stack of what looked like satellite photos and overhead shots of stone ruins. “Technols we take alive fry their circuits—poof—before can tell us what they are looking for.”
The Komodo Strongman Emperor looked at us. “Legends exist of powerful prehistoric weapon lost to time in Shinotochi system—is part of reason we took this system in first place—but no one knows what weapon is. Technols must have new information to steal into Dragons’ territory so boldly.” He straightened up and locked eyes with Kest. “You were implanted with Technols until recently, yes?”
“Yes, your excellency,” she said. “I was working with the group on Sarca, but my superior wouldn’t let me near anything classified until I finished my probationary mission and became a full member. They’re waiting for me to return.”
“You left Technols in good standing?” Takeshi-ketsu asked.
Kest nodded. “They gave me a two-week leave to go to Van Diemann and do what I could for my brother. I’m supposed to pick up where I left off when I get back.”
“You return to Technols tomorrow,” the Emperor said. “Complete probationary mission and learn for what they are searching.”
“Yes, your excellency,” Kest said, bowing deeply. “If I could make a request, Emperor?”
All the air went out of the room, and Warcry, Rali, and I looked at Kest like she’d lost her mind. This wasn’t the time or place for her to act like…well, herself.
But the Emperor just waved a scaly hand at her. “Ask.”
“Since you have no use for Rali, might my twin return to Sarca with me?” she asked. “It would legitimize my claim that I went to Van Diemann to rescue him, and two sets of eyes and ears are better than one when it comes to gathering information.”
“Dragons grant this,” he said. “Transport will be arranged.”
“If your excellency would rather not take the time to make arrangements,” Kest continued, because obviously surviving one ballsy move wasn’t enough for her, “I have a smuggler on call who would gladly return us to Sarca. He’s the one who picked me up and smuggled me onto Van Diemann—”
“And further legitimizes story,” Emperor Takeshi-ketsu said impatiently.
“He’s also close enough to pick us up tonight rather than waiting until tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes, make arrangements.”
“Thank you, Almighty Emperor,” she said, kneeling and touching her face to the floor again.
“Selkens,” the Emperor muttered. He turned to me and Warcry. “You two, human smash-em-up brothers. Dragons have teams on Sarca searching ruins and attempting to stay ahead of Technols, but this takes time and is much trouble because ruins are full of ferals. Team can’t begin searching until ruins are cleared, and many are dying to stealth Technol attacks. Only answer is to send muscle to pave way for them. You will join ruins delving team on Sarca, do pre-search work, clear ruins, kill Technols who attack. Get operation moving forward at speed, yes?”
“Yes, Emperor,” Warcry answered.
I kept my mouth shut. I was hung up on the “kill Technols” part. I hadn’t one hundred percent figured out this moral killing code yet, but slaughtering dudes to keep them from finding some ancient artifact before we could didn’t sound very honorable.
“Is good.” Takeshi-ketsu didn’t leave room for any other conversation, probably because he’d had enough of that with Kest. “Transport leaves in two days. You will be sent for when is time.”
The Emperor waved a scaly hand at Sanya-ketsu. She opened the door, and a servant in a silk yukata bowed in.
“Show newly arrived Dragons to guest lodging,” Takeshi-ketsu told the servant.
The servant bowed again, then gestured for us to follow him. We started to retreat toward the exit to avoid showing disrespect by turning our backs on the Emperor.
“Not Death cultivator,” Takeshi-ketsu said, pointing at me. “You stay.”