Ortho clicked his tongue and took the business card from the grey-suited man. He gave it a scan, feigning interest. “Steerwater, huh? From the Logos Hoshing Association? I know you. I’ve got a date with your mother in five minutes, so make it quick.”

The Steerwater’s pale lips thinned at the comment. “Well, Ortho—can I call you Ortho?”

Ortho’s tongue rolled in his mouth. He tossed the business card onto the low table in front of him and settled into his sofa, hand resting on his shield. “No,” he said thickly.

“Right…”

Steerwater seated himself on the sofa opposite Ortho and clasped his hands in his lap. The kakaliz on his shoulder flashed in and out of recognition as its camouflage adjusted to its new surroundings. Its yellow, pupil-less eyes gave Ortho the sense that it was always watching him. It remained poised with its head poking up and forward, mouth ajar.

The only indication that the kakaliz was even alive and not some near-invisible taxidermy was the slight adjustments of its legs to balance itself on its handler’s shoulder. Steerwater reached up idly and scratched the kakaliz’s head with a finger. The monster didn’t respond.

Ortho would have found it kind of endearing, if not for the perpetual stink rolling off of it. That was a problem only he had to deal with, however.

A low table divided him, Ortho, and Morder. Steerwater turned to Morder, who was watching from the side with wide-eyed curiosity. “Mind if we have a bit of privacy, mister…?”

Morder’s face split into a smile. His false teeth danced light over Steerwater. “Oh, the big shot from the sports leagues thinks he can order Morder around.”

The area around Ortho was starting to get real crowded. Morder’s dark-suited, popped-collared soldiers were already taking up more space than what they were worth, most of it on the sofas themselves. Two men stood behind Steerwater in grey suits and ties, who shot daggers at Morder’s soldiers. To add to that, a number of bouncers wearing poorly fitted suits were hovering around nervously, anxious checking each other’s eyes for a sign of how to handle this situation.

Every one of these men and women had a hand stuffed into their coats or lingering near their pockets, ready to draw whatever afto they had buried away. It wouldn’t have been Ortho’s first time seeing an afto fight in the Shanties, and they were all too common in these sleazy fight pits. After all, the sorts of people that had money in this city were also the sorts of people who owned aftos.

Steerwater returned Morder’s grin with a slight ticking up of his lips. “Well, this big shot is just a headhunter who finds and represents clients on their journey into the big leagues. Nothing too special. However, the people I represent have a lot of friends, some of which are quite familiar with your superiors, Buitre.”

“Well, perhaps Morder will have his superiors talk to your superiors about your…” Morder waved his hand about, as though searching for a word. “Etiquette. Morder isn’t from Anypaxia but he knows that you’re being a little grupp. But that’s for another time.”

Morder stood and adjusted his jacket. His soldiers, previously fanned out to fend off any would-be attackers, now formed a tight ring around him. They all slipped out of the ring of sofas that Ortho and Steerwater had parked themselves on. One of the soldiers even bumped Ortho’s shield with his leg, probably on purpose. Ortho made sure to shift his leg enough for the man to bump into his shin guard. The soldier’s face contorted with pain but he made no noise. Ortho stifled a smirk.

As Morder was leaving, he turned back to Ortho. “Oh, and Morder will be talking to you soon about the remaining thirty thousand kin you owe us.” He winked, and he left with his soldiers. His oil-stink vanished as well so that only the rot of the kakaliz remained, drowning out Ortho’s senses.

Steerwater faced Ortho and cocked an eyebrow. “Is the amateur hoshing ring not paying enough?”

Ortho shrugged and settled back into the sofa. “This is just a hobby. My other one is going on dates with lonely mothers whose sons keep asking annoying questions.”

“But you’re quite talented at hoshing,” Steerwater said, ignoring the provocation.

“You like what I did to your boy?” Ortho chuckled. “Why not give me a job in his place?”

Steerwater’s lips twitched slightly. “I’m afraid you have a misunderstanding of what I do. See, I already have a number of clients who I represent on behalf of the LHA. My purpose is to get them prepared to enter the city-wide and national leagues. If they do well in the amateur leagues, then I receive a portion of their winnings.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“And if they don’t succeed?”

“Then I cut my losses. Don’t look so shocked, Mr. New-bar Kileh-bi. This is a business, after all.”

“Uh huh.” Ortho leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the head of his helmet, which was resting upon the table. “You business types have no honour.”

“What is honour other than a measure of one’s wealth? In that regard, my honour is much higher than yours.” Steerwater leaned forward and spoke a little lower. “And the way that I gain such honour is by finding the best talent and helping them succeed. Which leads us to tonight.”

Ortho wasn’t the type of person to take chances. He relied on his gut or, more often, his nose to pick out a threat before it gutted him. And right now, he almost wanted to puke. Steerwater wasn’t a monster, even if he was shouldering a literal monster, but in many ways, he was less predictable. And Ortho was technically unarmed—the hoshing shield he’d dumped in the hoshing ring wouldn’t have helped in a real fight. What he needed was an afto, and to bind an afto, he needed spare levels.

So, Ortho got to work. He shifted a hand over to the thin bracelet at his side, one of the hoshing weights he’d just taken off. It was an orange five level weight. It took longer to unbind aftos that required more levels, so five levels was a good place to begin.

Feeling the weight out with a gentle flow of invisible, unformed enma from his fingertips, he made contact with the afto. It wasn’t the same as flowing enma into the afto itself, controlling it through the fine circuits that allowed for safe manipulation of the aftocore. Rather, he was just feeling it, called delving.

There was no melding involved—he was never good at them anyway. Once the delving began, his consciousness was tugged towards the weight and he became acutely aware of the afto. Of the monster it once was. And then his mind filled with madness.

Images, noises, smells, and all manner of horrors bombarded Ortho’s mind. There was nothing rational about it—a drawn out note sung in a whisper, fire that turned what it touched to stone, two drops of black liquid that passed through each other with no resistance, the smell of decaying sympathy, and so on. He made out something hard, like a rock, which he assumed had something to do with the monster’s old form, before its core was extracted.

Within the jumble of abstractions was something resembling himself. He just had to find it.

That was all happening in his head. On the surface, however, Ortho might have looked just a little constipated. Given the grupp he was talking to, though, that was a given.

“You mean how I beat your boy?” Ortho said, trying to side track Steerwater, hoping to buy time for the unbinding.

Steerwater flashed a frown for a brief moment. “He wasn’t supposed to lose to someone that was so much lower in rank.” He dipped his head slightly. “No offence meant.”

The maddening phenomenon that Ortho was experiencing, called aposyndortion, would have rendered most dungeoneers immobile as they tackled with the afto. However, Ortho was different. He was a warrior of the Nubar Kilebhi tribe, and one of the things his tribe specialised in, that Ortho had skirted with death in order to have, was binding aftos.

“Brother, you’ve been offensive since the moment you arrived. You and that thing sitting on your shoulder. Are you going to let it eat your kids when you’re not looking?”

Steerwater glanced to his empty-looking shoulder. “Kakalizes have a certain… agreeable demeanour that I find rather pleasant. Even so, I do keep it caged at night.”

“Yeah, they don’t do anything until one day they’ve eaten a cow whole.”

Steerwater clicked his tongue. “Anyway, this was an exhibition match. It was intended to show that my client, Ripper, was still competing so that he wouldn’t lose score in the amateur circuit.”

“Hey, I’m sure he’ll get his honour back. He was pretty tough. The toughest I’ve faced with one hand tied behind my back.”

Steerwater’s hands clasped tightly in his lap, turning the knuckles white. “Unfortunately, after the hit he took from you at the end of the match, Ripper may not be able to recover in time for his next match.”

Ortho spun around. Through the made rush of his senses, he made out the lucid reality of the sleazy club. Barely.

Two men were holding a shirtless Ripper by the shoulders. They’d stripped off his weights, including the dragging deadweights. They probably should have left the deadweights on, though, because each time he took a step, he was leaping into the air. His team’s hold on him was more to keep in down than up, but in doing so, some of the curse was being passed on to them and they too were starting to hop a little. They shuffled him through a door into the locker rooms.

“He looks fine, brother,” Ortho said, turning back around. “He’s even got a bit of a hop in his step.”

There was a logic to the images, a pattern that he could recognise by instinct. He followed it through. A whining elephant toppled a tree with its tail. Ortho leapt onto the tree. It fell and crashed twice. He followed the second crash down through the earth and emerged into the night sky. The moon was up. He dived towards it, then went through it, then came out on the opposite side into a grassy field. A dog was howling at a cloud that was burning like a funeral pyre.

He seized on that last image. With a single, great pull, he snapped the connection. His enma dissipated once the connection was broken. The afto was unbound. The nonsensical images faded and he was instead blasted with whatever face-slapping music the club was playing and the rot of that damned kakaliz. He would have preferred the aposyndortion.

Steerwater sat straight, his back completely rigid, and let out a sigh. “Mr. New-bar Kileh-bi, may I scan your aftos?”

Ortho turned to one of Steerwater’s personal guards and let out a short chuckle. “He’s a bit forward, isn’t he? Don’t you Anypaxians usually have to take someone on a date before asking something like that?”

Steerwater’s voice dropped an octave. “Let me rephrase. I am going to scan your aftos.”