“Some associates tell me you pulled guns at the Yaomo’s girlie bar. That kid of theirs, the tenghuang, he’s spaced. Blood on my hands, they allege,” Boss Shishito whispers below the commotion of Madame Soonyeong’s crowded parlor. “Did you enjoy the food at Bloom!, at least?”

“Don’t be a jerk, Shishi, we’re working on your dime.” Ø chastises.

“And what a cost that is.”

“Let’s recall just last night when you threw half a dead girlie onto my drink and begged for help.”

“I hired you in order to avoid commotion.”

“No, you hired us for training, then you changed the contract on us.”

“And if you were anything more than hired help,” he continues his point unabated, “I’d have a war on two fronts. The Yaomo are forgiving family, but only until a certain point,” he hisses. “Additionally, it’s disappointing to hear that so many of my girls are finding other part-time work elsewhere.”

“Get over yourself,” Ø complains, “they’re earning, so what do you care?”

“Well, nevertheless, disposing of them will be politically disadvantageous.”

“And for what, Shishi? What’s the big crime? Or is your pride all stung that your girlies get creative every once in a while?”

“It’s about respect. For me, for my business,” he retorts with the unfurling of a hand-fan, “or did you forget how things are done up here?”

“But they’re the ones that gave us our first lead,” you interject, “I’d rather not see Huhu and Kathi hassled on Ø and I’s account.”

“Yes, it’s not on your account at all. That’s for certain. I’m sure you understand, that both of you understand, that I would prefer to run my business as I see fit?”

“How many girlies do you want to lose? If you knock off two more, you might as well knock off the rest once we leave, since the job won’t be done,” you bat. “What’d you say, who likes the girls? Your guys, everyone else’s guys… Just about everyone, right? Why give yourself more trouble?”

“Tell me, Ø, does your ‘agent’ always speak for you, providing input where it’s not necessary? I would expect a woman of your stature to handle yourself. He is, after all, your new, so-called, one-man crew?”

The gladiatrix glares down at the bossman, past the untouched bottle of clear yakju, decanter affixed with a single crimson bow dotted with rhinestones, provided on the house. She remembers her old crew aboard the Cimarron. Thirty to forty-five strong, membership rolls oscillating, the ramshackle group of murderers cobbled together through her heists as a pirate queen, privateering, smuggling, slaving on occasion. She can trace them, their outlines. Some wide, others tall, feminine build or slouching. Silhouettes either on wanted posters, credit bounties plump and savory, or illuminated by a muzzle’s flash, shadow puppets in their final mortal moments.

The most incompetent, lowly wastrel she had employed, the most backbiting and mutinous, inept yet breathing, she assesses, could flay little Shishi alive. She snorts. His sense of business, what garbage, she scoffs, what detarame.

And so, he realizes that this aggressive tactic of negotiation will not end in his favor.

“I apologize,” he admits with a smile. “You both must understand that this experience has been taxing. The Yaomo are friends of mine. I only seek to return their hospitality whenever I can,” Ke reaches for the untouched bottle on behalf of his superior, offering you both drinks. “Your services and advice are most welcome. And concerning Huhu and Kathi, I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear that their… Networking has brought us closer to our mutual goal of catching the killer that plagues my arcology.”

The silence that follows is one of forced professionalism. There’s much more to discuss. Many more accusations to be leveled at gunpoint. Childhood Agapito arguments to dig up like decomposing corpses and throw atop decanters anew.

But here, at Madam Soonyeong’s inn, it’s not the time nor place. In the hours following the chase through the Settlement, you had returned Above by private elevator, redressed into your gifted Prussian blue hanten, and raced by rickshaw to meet your appointment. Shishito stood—slipper tapping with impatience—at his family compound, Ke in tow, dressed in flowing kimono, Yugure-branded hand-fans unfurled, flapping, fighting the stale humidity.

You may have been late, but the local Whisperer is your payment, and your year on the lam has taught you to never miss a payment.

So you four then hustled then on foot, as is tradition, to maintain face, Ke implied as the mare handed him Whitesuit’s blood-stained identification card for further research. Rustic paper lanterns lit your journey through the twilight. They advertised Madame Soonyeong’s three-story, hand-built inn, nestled next to designer and knockoff handbag boutiques closed for the evening and gangland skyscrapers, where bevies of off-the-clock girlies look busy in koi-pond-dotted lobbies, shuffling semi-official mon-stamped paperwork, chittering about their love-lives while their manicured fingers clean automatic weapons at their desks, the girlies safe behind the locked glass double-doors of their businesslike fronts. It’s almost quiet, this far from street vendors’ hawking, if not for the odd straw-basket-hatted komuso professional beggars wandering about, bamboo flutes—high-quality and probably stolen—shrieking into the night.

And the Madame’s compound impresses all who enter, sober or not.

It’s a traditional construction of imported rosewoods and papers, all authentic. Unlike the plasticwood elsewhere, the support beam on which you lean is soft, inviting, buttery to the touch. As the fifty other bossmen, professionals, and plenipotentiaries lay on the reed mats sipping their own expensive spirits—sakes and baijiu—the humidity soaks into the natural wooden slats above, the entire building breathing, sighing, along with the humidity rather than against it.

The center of the open room lays bare, itself a small amphitheater, awaiting the entrance of the esteemed host herself; Madame Soonyeong. Here she’ll perform her kabuki, dancing, jiving, gyrating. You assume. In accordance with the bastardized mysticism from which she derives her stupendous income. Whisperers, as your host has emphasized against your tardiness—brushing sweat from his foreheat with a mechanical arm, his speed-walking slightly too uncomfortable, slightly too slow to make a difference in time—are a great source of entertainment.

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Ø transfixes on the site of the future performance. Her mouth waters from the pear-infused soju and rose hwajeon cakes, her tonsils begging for a smoke to cleanse the palate. However, she fights off her animalistic need, laying in slight discomfort, her splayed starfish-like form decidedly masculine like the mafiosos and magnates surrounding you, resting on elbows, scarred calves laid open.

She’s attentive, more than usual, no cans of beer at her greedy digits.

Her mane is stylized and set with a curly Italian cut, sorrel facial coat sporting heavy black eyeliners, cheek coloring halfway to a warm blush. Her black lips are slathered with dark red mixture of traditional cosmetics that matches her carmine-white, short-cut tomesode kimono. Even with her terrible posture, unwiped crumbs collected on her cream-diamond sternum, she’s one of the better looking, and the only, woman in attendance.

She hasn’t actively thought about it, and you realized while investigating the new gold rings on her furry fingers on the bumpy, cramped, rickshaw ride over, she’s dolled herself up in her own volition.

It’s unlike her to give reverence towards any form of voodoo, or to respect the unspoken rules of any sanctuary. The time between the first mention of the evening’s outing and the show’s curtain has been filled with too much alcohol and anatomy to allow your own research. Somehow, another scantily-clad girlie show pales compared to the hundreds of nude forms you saw today, decapitated and dismembered, and the intimacy you had felt while pitting that gangster, white suit on red-leaking corpse draped on black body bags.

“Just,” Shishito begins, attempting to reassert himself, sounding both insulted and uncaring.

“What’s your problem now?” Ø growls.

“Please make an earnest attempt to mitigate any further issues. I’d like to avoid the Settlement Police if at all possible. My sources say they’re investigating your work, and if by some means they track you down, it would complicate things much further. For me, and most importantly my Family.”

His nagging falls on deaf ears. Ø is more enthralled by the nutty aftertaste of biscuits, the smell of mugwort incense that drifts between the burning tobacco and puffs of opium. Your mare drags herself to her knees, sitting properly for a woman of her stature, nearly a head and a half taller than your host. She loudly slurps her drink with both hands in a mock respect, nodding an offensive thank-you to Ke, who accepts it, none the wiser.

Before she can point, lips flapping, launching into a tirade, her ears go flat at the commotion.

A hush falls through the crowd, settling across the top of your glass. All around you, the once-laughing faces of bossmen become serious as they roll and shimmy towards the central platform. Lurking dishabille forms snuff the traditional lanterns, the room remaining lit only by the small oil lamps encircling the stage. They’re porcelain, white surfaces painted with pictographs.

Drinks are still and cigars extinguish in reverence.

From behind the paper curtains, the silhouette of a single figure ensnares the audience. Slowly, languidly, to the tap-tap of assorted taiko drums, with a piercing, short tonality that makes the mare tense with Pavlovian reflex, the outline of Madame Soonyeong edges into view.

She’s older. A civet with a black-and-white mask. Crow’s feet draw from her thin eyes, the lack of smile on her face cushioned by her dense natural eyelashes. Her body is sloped, misshapen, skin loose and muscle worn. Archaic scarification marks her artificially flat chest, evidence of traditional medical procedures. Short claws, not elongated or sharpened, go with skin showing no sign of artificial tautening.

Every contortion reveals another flaw, another point of imperfection where a surgeon may find fault.

But, possibly because of the imperfections, the well-practiced moves, or the voice that Whispers behind your ears, she remains the mutual object of attention. You’ve never seen a Whisperer before, or how she scans the room, mouthing nothings to the solicitous audience, seemingly talking over great distances, pushing and pulling as if she were at the center of a great web, all viewers ensnared with silk tied at her knuckles.

Her performance is of all flavors. First to stringy, harmonic tovshuur rhythms, then a short strip to the biting guzheng zither, both performed by some unseen pluctress high in the criss-crossed ceiling of wooden dougong corbel brackets, so as to not distract the audience from the gyrating civet on stage.

The Whisperer is barely covered, hidden only by the two large akomeogi fans in her hands, the cinnamon-dyed paper casting shadows across her nude form in a shadow play that proves she is, beyond all, a natural.

Finally, at the guzheng’s melodious yowl, her eyes lock with yours. They’re conciliating pupils, showcasing a bright mind rather than murderous intentions. She’s calming, absurdly so.

Every rhythmic step she takes resonates in your veins, your nervous system unconsciously marching to her beat. She bores into you, Whispering, asking questions in far-off dialects, visiting within you and Ø as her naturally plum lips mouth incantations. It’s interesting gibberish, with breathy laughter that tussles that backs of your ears and brushes your soft neck. And against your palms, invisible fingerpads. Her cursory hello.

It’s mystic’s introduction, before she invites herself in.

You and Ø sit before her as she wanders around the cockpit of the Mr. Memory, dragging her gnarled digits across the hundreds of interfaces, chatting in silence with Dyle’s imperfect, laughing, jocular hologram, sharing blue-cartoned, sweat-stained cigarettes with a busted android and headless mercenary. They chit-chat. Periwinkle stardust dances around them, in perpetual faster-than-light transit that won’t—can’t—come to an end.

Or, she stands next to you in the private boxes of George Merrick Amphitheater, feeling the rain beat down on all you three in unison. She sleeps in The Deseret’s grimy linen hammocks on New Port Moresby, beside you, on top of you, the three of you to a pile, sopping wet, snoring, skin wet and pus-filled, bleeding along reopened scars, bare feet warmed in the gladiators’ hypocaust before sinking into mud. Sitting aboard the Feast of Saint Anthony, bubbly in hand, she congratulates you both on a job well done with a polite clap, showing off her lacquered teeth to your mysterious old host, who returns a knowing grin before enjoying a well-deserved silence, punctured by cicadas’ hisses.

You’re wrong. She’s near you on Fontvieille, in the crowds of hurried guests, pulling slot machine handles, winning, losing, enjoying herself nonetheless, and later, or concurrently, where an ass-headed assistant plays cards with her grandfather near an open window smelling of sawdust, the Madame’s glass of liqueur de myrte is consistently refilled. Madame Soonyeong smiles at your mare; the grandfather’s cheating again, isn’t he?

You sit, mouth agape, headache worsening, eyes crossing as she drills into your psyche, you and Ø sharing the intimacy as if she were always a part of you, pinned between you, tied together at your flat, scarred, diamond-painted chests and breathing, huffing shared cigarettes and citrus at fog-filled racetracks pockmarked with ancient olive trees.

With a last flourish, however, the civet’s dance concludes. You blink, and you’re staring once more at the wooden stage. In the silence of a final pipa’s pluck, Madame Soonyeong slinks towards your corner. Making no effort to cover herself, she passes to you both the twin fans, her eye contact darting between the both of you equally.

Unsurprisingly, you two are chosen for the evening, the fifty-or-so other bossmen shrugging shoulders, elbowing compatriots, chewing on their disappointment like tea leaves. And who can blame them? Your host betrays grimace of unhappiness at his lack of invitation.

Before changing his tune, smiling politely, of course.