May 20, Pann’s forty-seventh birthday, came upon the great city of Moyenne with sopping rain and swampish humidity. It did not make him happy to reflect on his age, because while his ages-at-grade had once been record-setting—he had made Z-5 at nineteen, Z-4 at twenty-two, and Z-3 at twenty-four years, seven months, and one day—he had stalled out, leaving the incrementation of days to become a liability he preferred not to keep track of, but every year as spring flowers faded and the squalor of summer set in, he was reminded that one more year had passed without his reaching the next rung.
“Forty-seven,” he muttered to himself on the way to work while a steam whistle across the street summoned factory men to their positions on an assembly line. “I’m forty-titfuck-seven and still not a Z-2. My office is half the size it should be.”
Rain was falling as he walked across the plaza to the front entrance of Headquarters. The excitement he usually felt for a day’s work had turned into dread, because he would have to see Kayla. He hated her voice. He hated her rising terminal inflection. He hated her stupid head with those stupid blonde pigtails and those stupid blue eyes in it. Most of all, he hated that “island girl” slang. Every morning: “Osha, Hampus!” Every evening: “Sha-sha, Kayla!” The fact that Hampus Bell, his boss, had taken up this new language made him rage like a dick in a thimble. “Good morning, batoh!” Gods of creamed corn, he hated that shit.
Akana kazzur Kayla. Kayla must be destroyed.
He had pulled her personnel file yesterday and reviewed it last night in his office. The woman had a knack for being a better man’s secretary every year. Today, she had Hampus Bell’s ear in her snatch, as if it were just an ordinary cigarette.
As he climbed the staircase to the second floor, he said to himself in bitter contempt, “Island girl.”
“We own half a million islands and not one of them is responsible for these stupid fucking words. They were all made up by white bitches on the Eastern Horn, and now the whole fucking office is using them. What happens to us if word gets out that Hampus Bell, who controls 73 percent of the Known World’s economy, talks like a teenage girl? Well, then it’s sha-sha Global Company, now isn’t it?”
On the way to Pann’s office, a janitor gave him a dirty look for talking to himself. Pann huffed and turned his nose up. Oh, it makes you uncomfortable? Then work faster. Serves you right for not being finished at six in the morning.
The Z-3 opened his office window, letting in cool morning air.
Pann knew it was a matter of time before Hampus inevitably tired of Kayla and her charming stupidity, fancying someone prettier and younger, which would leave her one mistake from the gallows, but he hoped whatever error fell upon her would be big enough to justify the reversal of a bad decision—the opening of the Company’s doors to women. Sure, women were as smart as men—often smarter—but it was never about that. Ancient truths had given women one purpose, and to mix that with business invariably led to terrible decisions, such as the ones the Patriarch was making now.
“Farisa, Farisa,” Pann said as he sat down at his desk. Where are you, Farisa?”
The day before, he had drafted a Proclamation of Final Truth, or “PFT,” declaring the mage dead in April’s forest fire. Twenty-three days had passed since the event, and it could not be admitted that they had failed to find her, and Company truth always had to converge on the narrative that saved as many important faces as possible. Farisa was alive, though; she had to be, because the contest between Pann and Kayla for Hampus Bell’s affections was a conflict that could snap the chain at any time. To make it a fair fight, Pann would need a weapon of his own: the Known World’s most powerful mage.
“I will find you, Farisa. Sure as a cunt is a cunt, I will find you. I can’t afford not to.”
#
Before going home that day, Kayla shouted, “Sha-sha, Hampus!”
Pann smelled anger on his own breath. It wasn’t even six o’clock. She was leaving with two hours of usable light in the sky.
“Have a great night,” the Patriarch replied. “You did a fantastic job today!”
What had she done? Pann's opinion—call it old-fashioned—was that being in Hampus Bell’s masturbation fantasies didn’t count as work.
“You’re so sweet, Hampus!”
“Before you go, I have a little something for you.”
Pann crept to his door to watch as Hampus gave Kayla a bottle of wine.
“Pinzen Fariza,” Kayla said. “What’d this cost you? Two thousand?”
Pann had never received a gift from any boss at the Global Company. It just wasn’t done in his day; it shouldn’t be done now.
“Three,” the Patriarch said. “Take it home and share it with your husband.”
“What makes you so sure I have one?”
“Don’t you?”
She giggled. “Sweet man, you own the Global Company. Go find out and tell me.”
Pann paced his office, fists balled. He tried to build the courage to slam his own door, but others would hear it, so instead he sat at his desk and uttered curses under his breath. Only one thing ever sufficed to quell this kind of anger: Work. Fresh blueprints for a warship had been left on his desk. One team had wanted to call it the Brass Cog; the other, the Sea Lion; thus, it was assigned the name of Cog-Lion.
The Patriarch poked his head in Pann’s office. “Good evening, Pann. Could you do me a favor?”
It took the patience of a statue not to spit in the Patriarch's face. “Of course.”
“Hire me five Kaylas.”
“Five Kaylas?”
“She’s fantastic at her job,” Hampus said.
“She’s very young.”
“She is, but I see a bit of myself in her.”
“That’s the problem,” Pann said. “Her whole career is built on men like you wanting to put bits of themselves in her.”
“You get it,” Hampus said. “It’s all about the long term. Potential. So, find a way I can hire five of her. Of course, you don’t have to do this tonight.” He sighed. “To be honest, you look like you could use some time off.”
“It’s not even six thirty. The night is young.”
“Very well,” Hampus said. “I am going out. I need to be uptown by seven. I’m buying a new house.”
“A new house? You once said a real man stopped at six homes.”
He laughed. “I did say that, but I may want to start a family again.”
Pann looked over the Cog-Lion’s construction budget. The rear of the ship’s hull, if built to the blueprint, would be needlessly reinforced—never trust engineers not to over-engineer. Five million grot could be cut there.
“Good night, Pann,” Hiero Bell said before leaving.
Two million more could be saved on labor by moving the job to Fenbill; there’d been a famine there, and workers were desperate. Seven million grot wasn’t bad for money in a minute of review. Every day that he came into this office, he earned a hundred times his salary by spotting overwork, petty embezzlement, and excessive labor costs, and he was proud to do it. He loved this job, and he would remove any threat to his position at once. He fantasized about grabbing Kayla by her hair, dragging her into his office, setting her head down on his hardwood floor, placing his adipose buttocks around her face, and forcing her to inhale the dead air of his bowels until her struggle ceased, her body fell limp, and her fingers turned blue. Sha-sha, Kayla.
#
A week passed. Tomorrow would be a holiday, so workers would want to escape the office early if they could, and therefore he chose to work in the open space in a spot that gave him as many lines of sight as possible. There was no good reason for anyone to leave the office while there was usable light in the sky, because a simple equation explained everything: time spent on pursuits other than work was, in fact, time stolen from work.
This seat in the second floor’s open space gave him a new perspective on the city. Across town in Old Withers, one could see orange evening sunlight on the Company pyramids, grand buildings with terraces where olive trees had been planted and now sprouted like shoulder hairs. The evening atmosphere was redder than usual; he hoped the rumors of an Alma Winter were true, because two years of rotten weather would force the people under him to actually work.
Sometime between Pann's first and second dinner, a Z-6 approached him. “Here’s your report.”
“Thank,” he said. Pann dropped the S; it was a feminine letter.
“Can I leave early?”
Pann looked at the wall clock. On one hand, it was only seven forty; on the other, the boy had come with a hefty envelope. Weight meant paper, paper meant work, and work meant progress toward Z-2. With a groan timed to evolve into a smile, Pann waved his hand. “Yes, go. You earned it.”
Like a child unwrapping a present, Pann tore into the envelope, ready to find, somewhere in these seven hundred pages, the makings of Kayla’s demise. He had made all the right calls and pulled all the important records—in this stiff sheaf of paper was the case he would make against her.
He learned a woman named Caliza Demeter had been born on December 6, ‘71 in Tansack, a low-slung village in the Crab Bucket. She had been one of the girls abducted in the early Eighties and was presumed dead. Sad, sad. The first records of Kayla D’Espoir’s existence dated from September ‘87; no birth certificate existed. She became one of those camp followers who sold baked goods and cheap talismans to low-ranking soldats. On January 13, ’89, she applied to join the Global Company and was—surprisingly—offered a position.
These findings, on their own, weren’t necessarily useful. Around unremarkable people, paperwork often went missing. The Global Company was, in truth, less competent than it wanted its subjects to believe. It was also not illegal, though it should have been, to change one’s name.
He turned over the second page of her job application. Date of birth: 6-11-68. “Found it.” He rubbed fist and palm together. “I’ve got you now, bitch.”
Four years before, a Declaration of Prudence had been made setting a minimum age of twenty for all office jobs. Of course, nothing was wrong with child labor in general, but this was an office, and far too many Executives had begun to bring their own kids in, hoping to give their tadpoles an advantage in the work world.
This decision, though Pann did not hold the Patriarch in general high regard, had shown remarkable foresight. The Global Company was, indeed, running out of puddles to drain. An expensive education had already been made a prerequisite for decent employment under the guise of work being “more complex” when, in fact, industrial progress had made it simpler, but this had not done enough. Setting age restrictions and adding arbitrary requirements concealed the labor market’s steadily worsening state and prevented (the bad kind of) civil war.
Of course, Pann had his own reason for supporting the minimum age and demanding scrupulous enforcement. It had not been in force when he joined, and its existence protected his age-at-grade records. No one could make Z-5 at nineteen, if one had to be twenty to join the Global Company at all. His Z-4 and Z-3 records, as well, were likely safe—if people played by the rules.
On the other hand, if people were allowed to lie about their ages, all bets were off. How old was Kayla, really? If she was, in fact, Caliza Demeter, then she was not twenty-five as according to her job application but twenty-two—a threat, if promoted twice within the next two years, to Pann’s Z-3 record. Of course, to lie on a job application was a death penalty offense; he just needed to be able to prove it.
He ordered a third dinner; he would be working late into the night.
By midnight, his eyelids were growing heavy and the night air in his office had turned chilly, so he closed the windows. He had finished reading all seven hundred and thirty-seven pages, but the bleariness of his consciousness suggested he might have missed something. If all the world’s information could not comprise a case against Kayla, then the world had failed him, and he would need to go out and find a new one. He shuffled the papers, like cards. He paced around his office. Something was missing, something was missing, something was missing. It was two in the morning; then four, then six. He stepped—slipped, nearly fell over—on a sheet of paper.
“Robert MacGuffin, vice constable of Tansack. Arrestee’s age: fifteen. Offense: public intoxication. Date: March 17, ‘87. Goes by ‘Kayla’ as well as ‘Caliza.’”
The young woman had signed the papers using the same signature as could be found on her job application. He jumped in exuberance.
“Proof, you bitch. You lied your way into this place, and now your head is mine.”
He sat at his desk, too excited to work, and waited for people to come into the office. When no one had arrived by ten o’clock, he remembered the holiday. He went home to rest but could hardly sleep.
The next morning, he came to work with a bounce in his step that wobbled through his body. He’d had very little sleep, but felt no fatigue at all. He waited for Hampus Bell to arrive and, as soon as his boss had settled in, walked right into the Patriarch’s office, smiling.
“You’re in a good mood this morning,” said the Patriarch.
“An excellent one,” said Pann as he laid six pages of evidence on his boss’s desk.
Hampus Bell put on his reading glasses. “What are these?”
“They pertain to Kayla. Her real name is Caliza Demeter. She was born in the Crab Bucket on… December 6, ’71.” He pointed at the birth certificate. “She joined our Global Company in—”
Hampus said, “January of ’89, it looks like.”
“The minimum age of twenty was already in effect, and she would have been—her real age would have been—”
“Seventeen.”
Pann said, “Correct.”
Bell looked up. “Is this some kind of clerical error?”
“Not so. I pulled her job application.” Pann turned the paper around so Hampus Bell could read it. “Date of birth, June eleventh of sixty-eight."
Hampus Bell took off his reading glasses. “So....”
“She lied to get a job here.”
“Huh.” Hampus Bell scratched his eyebrow. “Yes, that is what the record shows.”
A bubble of glee floated up Pann’s esophagus. He stifled a burp. “Should I draw up papers?”
“Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter.”
“She’s a liar, Hiero Bell.”
“A liar.” He chuckled. “Do you not understand the Company you work for? If you’re not lying half the time, you’re bad at your job and I should replace you.”
“We lie to the public for the Company. Kayla lied to the Company.”
“Give me a frapping break.” Hampus divided the air with his hand. “She gave this application to some bureaucrat I’ve never met. It’s hardly a capital offense.”
“The law says it is exactly a capital offense.”
“I know what the law says, Pann. However, I am the law. You assert that five years ago, a seventeen-year-old girl knowingly lied about her age to get a job here. I believe every word of your accusation. I consider it proven. So what? She does fantastic work.”
“Fantastic?” Pann spread his feet apart. “Based on what?”
“She’s a Z-5. Her rank proves that she’s good at her job.”
“She’s a Z-5 because you promoted her.”
Hampus Bell looked at his hands and drew a deep breath. He opened a drawer, peered inside as if confirming that a favorite pen was still there, and closed it. “I don’t mean to be short-tempered. I should thank you. You’ve drawn my attention to something important.”
“I’m glad you’re starting to see things my—”
“She’s utterly wasted at Z-5. I’ll make her Z-4 tomorrow. Please send a salary slip to Finance.”
“Of course.” Pann’s gaze drifted to the five-pound stapler on Hampus Bell’s desk. “I’ll do that by ten o’clock. Could I ask for one tiny favor?”
“Ask.”
“I see that you consider it unreasonable to punish her for lying on her application.” Pann bit the inside of his mouth. “It was such a minor lie, after all. Hardly worth mention.”
“I agree. So don’t.”
“Forget about Kayla.” Pann wanted to stomp on something’s skull. A small animal would do. “What's important is that you’re happy with her work.”
"Which I am.”
“I’m concerned about—well, not me, but some people care about them—age-at-grade records. They’re a big deal to some people.”
“I know they are. It’s pure vanity, but these things matter to some people.”
“I’d like for you to re-truth Kayla’s age to what she put on her application.” He had done the math; if this were done, his Z-4 and Z-3 records would be safe forever. “It’s in your power to do it. Re-truth her age, and let’s forget the rest of this ever—”
Hampus Bell’s eyebrows fenced. “You came in here because—?”
“It’s like a card game. She played out of suit and no one was paying attention, so she got away with it. Fine. The play sticks. According to her application, she’s twenty-five now. Let’s just fix her age and be done with it."
“This is awfully silly.” Hampus leaned forward, on the edge of raising his voice. “I’m surprised I’m telling you this, but there are things to know about breaking rules. If you break a rule for your own benefit and you’re caught, people will dislike you, even if they didn’t care about the rule. That’s one case. On the other hand, if you break a rule for someone else’s benefit, it makes those people like you more. They feel flattered, special. That’s the second case. But there’s a third, which is when someone sees you break a rule for someone else, in a way you would never do for him, and this—”
“Makes him resent you.”
“Yes. It does make people stew. It also makes them work harder for your approval. As for Kayla, I already know everything you’ve told me. She lied her way around a stupid policy, it is true, but we are the ones who benefit. It shows... what is the word? Initiative. I’d like to see more of it.”
“Initiative,” Pann said neutrally, to hide his contempt. “I trust your judgment.”
“As you should.” Hampus Bell waved a hand to point at the door, indicating that he considered the meeting over.
Pann walked back to his desk. Proving Kayla’s mendacity had achieved nothing. What could he have her do—or have it appear that she had done—that the Patriarch would find unforgivable?
The Z-3’s anger simmered throughout the day, but it turned to pure fury when Kayla’s promotion was announced, because Pann’s calculations proved she had beaten his Z-4 age-at-grade by thirteen days. Hampus Bell ordered a cake, one with white sugar and truffles, to celebrate her attainment of the rank. Pann was so disgusted, he refused a third slice on principle.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
#
“Dead,” said the Z-5.
Pann blew air through his lips. “All of them?”
“Yes, Hiero. All.”
“Dead dead? Not coming back dead? You’ve checked?”
“The cables say so. Are you asking me to go three hundred miles—?”
“No, of course not.” Pann stomped. It was almost June, and he'd made far too little progress toward his goal. “You’re not the one I’m angry at. These fucking Exmore clowns.” He shook his head. “Are there more?”
“More orcs? None with training, they say.”
“Tell them to train a hundred more.”
“I will, but—”
“You can go now.”
Before the boy was out of sight, Pann said, “Wait.”
The Z-5 turned around.
By this time, Farisa would have escaped the city. Starting another ethnic riot, or releasing a few dozen orcs, might be entertaining, but it wouldn’t get him closer to finding the woman. The fairy had escaped his bottle.
“Forget everything I just said. Exmore’s out of the picture.”
“So...?”
“I need to think.”
Pann shut his office door and sat with his legs spread and beat his fists on his thighs. His idea, of loosing trained orcs on the city of Exmore, had been a brilliant one. The world underestimated orcs, whose technology had outpaced human invention well into the Castle Age, in spite of their having no capacity for speech. Orcs could not vocalize more than a grunt but, under motivation of pain, they could be taught to read simple sentences, and it was clear that they had the same basic intelligence as most humans. They would never pen the sonnets of Pallastro, but in Pann’s view, they were the future of labor—they worked harder and faster than humans, and could be trained to learn the vast majority of jobs.
For example, orcish reports had delivered the information Pann had used to determine that Claes Bergryn had entered Exmore around May 18. Alas, it seemed unlikely that the man was still there. Surely, the old hedge knight and magical tarsha had escaped the city, but how? Where could they have gone? He ran through a hundred scenarios in his mind, but none stood out as more likely than any other.
Ten months ago, Pann had asked the Derationalization Department to spread a rumor in which Dashi Zevian had survived the lethal house fire in Loran and joined the annual crop of idiots trying the Mountain Road. Dashi had never been known for vainglory, but Pann figured there was a one-in-a-hundred chance of Claes Bergryn taking the bait.
“Where are you, Farisa?”
The world was, alas, too big a thing to be controlled by one person, but Pann, as manager of the Global Company’s General Fund—or G-Fund—came close to the achievement. Forty percent of the Company’s budget was spent on executive salaries and those insane research gambits (flying machines, investigations of magic, indoor cooling) that never came to anything. But the other sixty percent all went through the G-Fund, which covered all those logistical details Hampus Bell considered boring: cleaning brothels, bribing city mayors, and feeding soldats. None of this work was glamorous, but it was important. If Pann stopped showing up at Headquarters, armies would starve and war machines would rust. He often considered himself the world’s secret owner, and yet, in spite of having all the world’s resources at his disposal, he had failed to find a small brown woman.
The Patriarch entered his office.
Pann loosened his balled fists. “Hiero Bell! It’s so good to see you!”
“You speak as if we don’t see each other every day, Pann.”
“In the Global Company, all things are wondrous.”
“All things?”
“All things.”
Hampus shuffled his feet. “Strange reports have come to me from Exmore.”
“Another food riot to re-truth? A labor issue? I’ll handle it.”
“No. Some orcs were released—forty, maybe fifty—a couple weeks ago. Did you have something to do with this?”
Pann tried a coy smile, but it didn’t fit his face. “Maybe.”
“Well, stop it.”
“It is stopped. It didn’t—rumor tells me, that is—it didn’t work. ”
“Don’t start it again. What have the people of Exmore ever done to you, Pann?”
“It’s what they have done to you. They gave shelter to Farisa Lakewind.”
“La’ewind is pronounced lay-vind, Pann. The W is a V. As the vampires say it.”
“I don’t think vampires talk that way.”
“No.” Hampus chuckled. “No, ve don’t talk that vay.”
Pann smiled; he had no choice, with his job on the line at all times.
Hampus bit the top of his chin with his upper teeth. “You realize that ve are the wampires, right?”
Pann laughed as if Hampus’s joke was the funniest he’d ever heard.
“I’m all for a bit of office fun, but let’s be serious.” Hampus put a hand on Pann's shoulder. “Why should we care about Farisa?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Pann clutched a pen. “She... what is that word the Vehu are always using? Vurkt. She vurkt your son.”
“That’s not what happened. My son vurkt himself.”
“You may feel that way, but as a matter of image—”
“May I be frank with you, Hiero Grackenheit?”
Pann nodded. “Please.”
“To me, it seems you are using Farisa as an excuse to biscuit around while the rest of us make the money that pays your salary.”
“We almost found her. We were so close.”
Hampus Bell closed Pann’s office door and said in a low voice, “I don’t want to find her.”
“You’d rather she get away with what she did to your son?” Pann, as he let discretion fall away, started sweating. “No, no, I think I understand. Witch-hunting got you the Mahogany Chair, right? You owe your career to her. You feel indebted.”
Hampus straightened his posture. “I think I understand what you think of me."
Pann gulped. He bit the inside of his lip; pain was a welcome distraction from the tingle of anxiety in his lower colon.
“You’re exactly right, Pann. The legend matters, the girl doesn’t. She is out there, alive—alive and irrelevant, and that’s good for all of us. My career once depended on the public anxieties her... episode... stirred up, in Loran, but also all over the world. It no longer does. However, your career still depends on me. You do understand this, right?”
Pann nodded.
“Do you?”
“I do."
“This is a direct order. Spend one cent on Farisa—or waste one minute of office time, or even utter her name in this building—and I’ll fire you. Is that clear?”
Pann swallowed. “Yes, Hiero.”
“It’s good to square this sort of thing up once in a while.” Hampus walked to the office door. “Shall I close it or leave it open?”
“Open.” Pann looked out the window. It was cruel that the sun shone on days like this.
Toward the end of the day, Kayla said her goodbyes (“Sha-sha!”) to the office. It wasn’t even half past six. Pann pounded his fist on his desk. In Smitz’s day, there were no favorites, no Kaylas. To leave the office at 6:23 on a summer afternoon would have been grounds for immediate termination. You like fresh air so much? Go! Have all of it!
This kind of nonsense was why women didn’t belong in the Global Company. They turned powerful men soft and stupid.
Pann snarled as he inhaled. His job had been threatened because he had dared to do it. What a world, in which a woman who had maimed a Patriarch’s son enjoyed protection by that very Patriarch. What a world, in which the most powerful man alive used phrases like “osha” and “sha-sha.” You are the Chief Patriarch and Seraph of All Fucking Human Capital and you behave like a child. Pann shut his eyes and his legs shook. A tornado of bile filled his body. He became a swell of magma ready to tear up the world; he became Mount Alma the moment before it sprouted a fist-shaped metal cloud forty miles high... booming, burning, smoking... choke sounds, choke sounds, darkness... darkness, hot darkness... and from that darkness, light... and from that light, clarity. Oh, the clarity! It came at once, the perfect plan.
#
Kayla was chewing gum when she walked into Pann’s office. “You asked for me?”
“I did.” Pann leaned back, hands behind his head. “I have a project for you. Complete it, and you’ll be a Z-3 like me in no time.”
Kayla beamed.
Hampus Bell didn’t want to find Farisa, but no one else had been told the fact. Kayla wanted to please Hampus Bell; Kayla could do the legwork of the search for Farisa, and then be assigned blame for all the costs as well as the successful result. Pann would have his mage, and Kayla would be gone. Both objectives would be achieved. Two birds, one brick. Two boats, one bomb. Two girls, one trap.
“Close the door,” he said.
She did. That stupid smile was still on her stupid face.
“How much do you know about Farisa La’ewind?”
“Fa-what-uh?”
“Farisa.”
Kayla shook her head. “Never heard of her.”
He explained the mage’s history with the Bell family. “Finding her is the Company’s new top priority.”
“Oh! I think he did say something about—”
“I’m sure you’ll do a great job. I ask you one favor.”
Kayla’s tongue moved the chewing gum to the other side of her mouth. “What’s that?”
“Until the job is finished, Hiero Bell doesn’t need to be burdened with the daily details. He’s very busy. Only talk about this with me. No one else, not even him. Definitely not him. If you bring it up with him, you’ll overwhelm him and he’ll make rash calls. Do you understand?”
“Of course.” Kayla’s eyes widened. “Ooh, I’m so excited.”
Pann laughed. “When Farisa gets into your brain, there’s no getting her out.”
“Thank you for this assignment, Pann. I could hug you.”
“Please, there’s no need for that. We are in a place of work.”
“Is that all?” Kayla said.
“It is. Again, say nothing about this project until it’s done to anybody. It is best for all of us that he receive our success as a pleasant surprise.”
“You’re so good to me,” Kayla said.
“Leave the door open on your way out.”
Kayla winked at him over her shoulder before leaving his office. “Sha-sha.”
Pann, thankful he would not have to hear that nonword much longer, said, “Sha-sha, Kayla.”
#
It was early June now. Kayla was taking well to her new assignment, though she missed a lot of details. Pann had to admit he found it somewhat cute when, after he handed her a spreadsheet he’d marked up to correct her mistakes, she said, “Girls don’t math.”
Gods of pork, Pann’s life would have been so much easier had he been born a woman.
Around five o’clock in the afternoon on the hottest day so far, Kayla entered his office without asking and shut the door. “We might have a problem.”
“What?”
“Farisa.”
“Lower your voice, Kayla.”
“How much did you say I could spend on this project?”
“A quarter million.” Pann had found some money to scrape off other projects without drawing notice. “Three hundred thousand at absolute most.”
Kayla flinched as she handed Pann some papers. “I may have gone over.”
“Let me see.” Pann circled the relevant figures and added them together. “The total is... one million, five hundred ninety-two thousand, six hundred and fourteen grot.”
“That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“It’s six times what I allowed.”
A tear fell down Kayla’s cheek, causing Pann to develop an erection. “Everything seemed important.”
“Kayla.” Pann stood and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “This is your first big project, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“I’ll tell you what. Hampus Bell trusts you. If he sees your signature on these expenditures, everything will be fine. Let me get you the papers.”
“I’ve failed you. I screwed up.”
“Kayla, you haven’t. This will all—”
“You’re mad at me.” Kayla’s face reddened and she sobbed. "I can tell. You’re so mad at me.”
“Not at all,” Pann said, adjusting Kayla’s hair. “It’s your first project. I do wish that for a million six, we had a better idea where Farisa—”
“The Mountain Road,” Kayla said.
“What?”
“She’s on the Mountain Road.”
“Unlikely,” Pann said. “Of course, I’ve heard this rumor—I hear all the rumors; you really can’t keep a secret from me—but I am certain it's false. Where’d you hear that?”
“Justin Harrow.”
Harrow was one of the Company’s best people, and he wasn’t the sort to run pranks. Why had he spoken to this idiot Kayla? What was his angle?
Kayla sniffled. “Who is Claes Bergarine?”
“Claes Bergryn.” Pann scoffed. His mind had now split into a hundred different places, corresponding each to a different possibility. Had the old fool taken the Mountain Road bait?
Four years ago, the Company had formally granted amnesty to all the ex-Reverie people, but of course this had only been done for the sake of public image, and Claes was still a named target. At the same time, Claes had been such a minor figure that Kayla wouldn’t have known the name unless she’d encountered something recent and real. He would have to find Justin and have a “drill down session” on the matter.
“Excellent, excellent work, Kayla. Keep it up.”
Kayla had stopped crying. “I can’t wait to find her. It’ll make Hampus so proud.”
“It will,” Pann said. “It sure will. At the right time, we’ll show him everything we’ve achieved. For now, Kayla, spend as much as you want, but keep track of every expense. You get me the information, and I’ll handle the numbers.”
“How are we going to get to the Mountain Road?” Kayla’s eyes seemed to tighten in thought. “Isn’t that on Bezoaria?”
“Bezelia, and it’ll be easier than you think.”
#
It was only June 11, and summer was already sitting on Moyenne like a fat girl. The upper floors of Headquarters smelled of body odor, and even the second floor was warm enough to evince a sweat in the absence of decent airflow. Decades ago, the Company had asked its best engineers to solve the problem of indoor cooling. They had found a solution, but not an inexpensive one, insisting it was harder to cool a space than to heat it. This, they blamed on “entropy”—as if office disorder were an excuse for shoddy work.
Pann, on hot days like today, worked in 4-04 because the building’s interior was often cooler than the periphery, but also, comfort aside, he just loved the place. This room, known as the Perf Room, was one most employees avoided, given its well-earned reputation as a place where people were told their services were no longer needed—where they disappeared and then were not found. A perk of being a manager was, now and then, being able to approach a subordinate and say, “Four oh four.” You could smell the fear. In the Perf Room, a thirty-year career could dissolve in an instant. Grown adults became sobbing wrecks in this sacred place. One of Pann’s favorite hobbies was to bring a subordinate in, do some paperwork while saying nothing, and wait for tears to form or explanations to be given for shortfalls he had never been aware of. He would then break out in laughter before assigning the “Meets Expectations” rating, sufficient to continue life in the Global Company.
The Z-3 had made some of his fondest memories here. The first year the Company allowed women to join, he gave a female subordinate the dreaded “Barely Meets Expectations” rating. She fell into an apoplexy not unlike that “Blood Marquessa” disease mages got. In tears, she explained that her sister would be killed if she couldn’t pay their deceased father’s debts. She told Pann she would do anything for an improved rating. He smiled and said, “Anything?” She offered him her virginity. He took the deal, never letting on that he was also losing his.
Pann loved using 4-04 for mock firings, but he never enjoyed having to give “the talk” for real. The Great Global Company, like a ship on a long ocean voyage, required maintenance—some people were bilge water, and while no one liked the job of evacuating such a substance, the job had to be done. It was important, but it wasn’t something one should enjoy. Pann wasn’t a monster, after all.
He would, however, enjoy delivering such news to Kayla, and he did know that, when Hampus came around to the correct decision, it would fall upon him to conduct the final discussion, because Hampus hated that part of his job. Pann could see why. The truth was that, when it came time to fire someone, one didn’t find joy in their misfortune, but just wanted them gone. The process was uncomfortable and boring. Sometimes they cried, sometimes they swore, and sometimes they refused to believe what they had been told and went back to their desks until brown-clad men could be summoned to evict them.
In Kayla’s case, though, he would relish the sight of her screwed-up face, the steaming heat of her tears, and her wordless wailing as she realized her life here was over. Most of the spoiled brats in this office had family money, but Kayla had, like Pann, come from nothing, and so to be severed from the Global Company—to be severed from all sources of income—would be a death sentence. And it would be savory to watch Kayla die.
“Four oh four, I love thee,” he said to no one but the empty room.
Sitting here in a Perf Room gave Pann a sense of power that must have been what Cyril and Smitz Bell had felt in the Company’s golden age. Oh, how great this Global Company had once been! It had smashed strikers' knees with batons and their skulls with lead pipes. It had burned whole families alive for witchcraft, a crime that had mostly never existed. It had leveled cities to make space for concrete pyramids that would last a hundred thousand years. Hampus Bell failed to understand the Global Company’s augustness because—this was the gods-of-dogs truth of it—his lack of an heir had divorced him from the future. His wife and brothers were dead. His daughter despised him. His sole living son was Rychard Bell, the notorious dog killer, an embarrassment not even the name of Bell could cleanse. Officially, the boy had perished at sea, but the truth had never been well-concealed. Rychard, now in his thirties, had run off for northern Terosha, where he had joined a group of bandits and had become, some reports suggested, its leader. To find him, Pann had hired the world’s second-best bounty hunter, the so-called Dry Man. If all went well, Rychard Bell would be delivered into Pann’s secret custody before the end of the summer.
The more important task, though, was the search for Farisa. He’d have fun with the boss’s son, sure. He was quite proud of the scheme he’d concocted, but that was a schoolyard game compared to what he’d do upon capturing the world’s prize mage. He had read enough about Farisa—he had studied her diaries, which no one else had read—to know something was different in her from the thousands of mages who had perished, powers depleted by Smitz’s experiments, in those concrete pyramids. There was a resilience in her character that could be used, in as few words, to save him.
“The stars and galaxies at my back,” he heard himself say. He liked that phrase.
He would acquire Farisa. He would possess her, and she would give him something far more valuable than the Bell family’s wealth or the Mahogany Chair—she would give him beauty and youth and power unmatched.
#
The man across the table had an asymmetrical face, a stunted frame, and no standing at all with the Global Company. Pann could not be seen with him anywhere else, but this seedy tavern on Moyenne’s southern fringe was a place where respectable people did not go. The man’s ugliness put chills into the body of anyone who looked upon him. His hair was greasier than a difference engine. Even the way he spoke, down to the pauses between his words, made a listener feel ill-at-ease. However, this so-called Wet Man was the best bounty hunter in the world.
The Wet Man poured a clear liquid into an espresso. “Farisa? You want me to capture Farisa?”
Pann sipped his own coffee from a chipped white mug. He hated the taste of the stuff, but it dulled his sense of smell and blunted this place's ambient odor of poverty. “That’s right.”
The mercenary smelled of wet dog, but his aura of perfect, ugly competence had no imperfections. A long scar crossed his cheek. “I suppose I’m not in the position to be choosy about the jobs I take.”
Pann chuckled. “Having read your file, I quite agree.”
As a teenager, the Wet Man had served nobly in the Company Youth, but as a soldat he had made a mistake that would end his career before it could begin. He and a few fellow lowborns had snuck into an officer’s brothel, which ordinarily would have been only a mid-level offense, but in this case led to a cascade of Reduction of Confidence letters so ongoing, due to cross-office grudges and alliances, that Smitz Bell had been called in to make a personal ruling. If this hedge spy had come within two hundred yards of Headquarters, he would have been shot on sight. Forever outside, this Wet Man had nevertheless proven himself an excellent tracker and captor of people, taking missions no salaryman would deign to touch.
The bounty hunter’s damaged relationship with the Company was an asset from Pann’s perspective, because it meant there was no risk of betrayal. Any Z-4 would collect a scalp to make Z-3, but could only do so with a Z-4’s knowledge of where scalps should be delivered. If the Wet Man ever told the world that this meeting had occurred, Pann would simply use his status within the Company to truth that it had not.
The Wet Man sat back in his chair, hands interlaced behind his head. “Now, I was told Farisa died in that... forest fire.”
“That’s what we’re saying, but I’m almost certain she’s alive.”
“Where?”
“That we don’t know.” Pann leaned in. “You’ll find this absurd, but I think she’s taking the Mountain Road.”
“The Mountain Road?” The Wet Man chuckled. “A cruel trap.”
“The Company has tried to reach the Antipodes by every means imaginable. Terosha’s jungles teem with trolls, jaguars, and squibbani. The oceans get storms that make Loran’s worst cyclones look like rain showers.” Pann shook his head. “So, people try the desert, where the heat gets up to eleven flags.”
“There is an Alma Winter coming.”
“Ten-and-a-half, then. Still kills you. Our experiments say it takes about a day and a half. A tenth of that if you’re dehydrated.”
The Wet Man drew a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.
“So, yes, the Road is a cruel joke. There’s nothing beyond Switch Cave. Still, my sources strongly suggest—no, prove—that she’s going there with this idiot, Claes Bergryn, who thinks he’s going to find... well, I don’t have time to explain it. You can follow her, or catch her on the way back. Whatever’s easier.”
The Wet Man asked, “What are the numbers?”
“Hold on.” Pann smashed a chocolate pastry between his teeth. “I haven’t given you the job just yet.”
“Your concern is...?”
Pann swallowed. “Her magic.”
“Blackrue,” the Wet Man said. “Mages don’t handle the stuff very well.”
“So you’ve done your homework, but blackrue only grows in—”
“Cait Forest, which lies under a foot of ash, and I’m sure your guys are still there, so there’s no way I’d get in. I’ve thought about that. Most species of blackrue are tropical, and some must still exist in the Bezelian highlands.”
Pann wasn’t sure he accepted the Wet Man’s argument, but there was a value in men who showed this kind of arrogance—they would suffer to support their sense of superiority. If an ugly job could be done, you could always count on someone like this to try. “Continue.”
“I am also a—I believe the Company term is ‘Person of Talent.’”
“A mage? You’re claiming to be—?”
Pann’s toupee fell off his head.
The Wet Man smiled.
“Parlor trick.”
The Wet Man dug his thumb into the wooden table, which blackened and sizzled. Smoke rose. “Does this convince you?”
“A little more,” Pann said. “The job is yours.”
“If I accept it.”
“Right.”
“Do I like the numbers?”
“What would you consider fair?”
“Standard in my line of work is twenty-five hundred grot for provable remains. Five thousand for an intact body.”
“No issue,” said Pann, “but a man of your prowess would consider himself humiliated if he did not achieve—”
“Live capture,” said the Wet Man. “Of course, that is my intent. The standard is ten thousand, but if I am able to bring her to you in good health, I believe circumstances entitle me to a bit more.”
“Oh?”
He looked around himself before fixing his gaze on Pann. “Fifty thousand."
Pann clicked his tongue. The Wet Man was a world-class bounty hunter—a mage too, apparently—but he was no businessman. Fifty thousand? Pann would have offered a million. “That’s a little high, but I accept. This is on contingency?”
“Of course. The only advance I need is four hundred for rail and sail.”
“I will have to make a case, but you’ll have an answer soon.”
“If I come back successful, I’d like to be restored in the Company’s graces. I’ll want a Z-5 position.”
Pann cleared his throat. “Well, that may be harder to arrange. A no-work Z-5 typically costs sixty thousand. A no-show is eighty-five.”
“You misunderstand. I want a Z-5 with work.”
“You are my kind of man,” Pann said. “I’ll tell you what: if you capture Farisa, I’ll make you Z-4. Is there anything else?”
“I’d like to know why you want her so bad.”
“Good question.” Pann decided to give his hireling a final test. “You’re the mage. Enter my mind.”
“Ha!” The Wet Man drummed his fingers. “You think I’d get myself spent here, where you might have plainclothes backup? You’ve got to be—”
“You passed.”
“So are you in love with her?”
“No. My boss might be, and that could cause a problem.” Pann cleared his throat. “Rail and sail, you mentioned. That’ll be no problem. You’ll ride our fastest steamship for free, meals paid.”
“Then I need no advance.”
“I do have to give you something. We are talking about a major job.” One of Pann’s favorite hobbies was to pick pockets around the office. He often carried spare change as a result. “It looks like I’ve got thirty-six grot, nineteen cents. Take it.”
“That’s very generous,” said the Wet Man. “More than I need, and I will pay you back.”
“In kind, you better not. It won’t be good for either of us if I see your face before you’ve caught me a Farisa.”
The bounty hunter stood up and began to leave. “I’ll come back with her, or dead.”
Pann Grackenheit shouted the Wet Man’s real name.
The Wet Man looked back. “Yes?”
“You said, ‘I’ll come back with her, or dead.’ Not to be pedantic, but no one comes back if he’s dead.”
The Wet Man, before slamming the tavern door behind him, said, “You have no idea how driven I am.”