“Moon?” Yi Cao asked.
The man standing over the pair shrugged. “Moon. Sure. Planet. If you like. I never took it real personal meself.” He reached for the tiny flame device on the table beside Zihan. Where most people had fingernails his hands terminated in delicate little claws like sharp teeth at the tips of his fingers. He manipulated the device carefully until a pair of small scissors popped out of one end which he used to snip the end of Zihan’s tobacco tube.
“Some people like a smaller cut.” He said. “To prolong the burn.”
He flipped the device then hit the trigger, summoning the little tongue of flame which he offered to Zihan. Zihan grinned as he popped the stick back into his mouth then lifted one finger to its tip. The finger snapped briefly into flame and Zihan sucked in a breath, lighting the tobacco before waving his finger out.
“A neat trick.” The interloper said. He set the device back on the tray then looked at Yi Cao.
“We aren’t really a planet any more. Least not since they blew the place apart some three hundred years ago. Some calls it the Tangle but that’s just admitting defeat if you ask me. I’ve always preferred to think of this place as home, the only home I’ll ever know anyways.”
Tattoo’s under each of the man’s eyes depicted a bird in flight on one side, and a circle with two crescent moons back to back on the other. His eyes slit down the middle paralleling the points that revealed themselves between his lips when he smiled. His bald pate shone in the low light and his voice rumbled like a sultry rendition of the bartender’s nasal inflection.
He turned back to Zihan and placed a hand on the table.
“Pardone, but I wondered if I couldn’t take a moment of your time.”
Zihan gestured to the seat next to him then blew out a cloud of smoke in it’s direction as the man sat down. The man smiled as the smoke billowed around him.
“An expensive blend.” He said. “If I don’t miss my guess. You must have come with money, or hit some opportunity the rest of us sorry folk keep hoping for.” He gestured to the rest of the people bustling in the bar around them.
Zihan held his tobacco to the side while he sipped at his alcohol. He studied the man in front of him as he popped the tobacco back into his mouth and pulled in a mouthful of smoke. He opened his mouth to pour it into the air around them, eddying in the breeze moving through the door before Zihan blew it towards the man sitting next to him and waved a hand in front of his face.
“I haven’t even begun to look for an opportunity.” Zihan told him. “Let alone advertising what I’m doing on this station.” Fire Ki glinted in his eyes as he met the new comer’s. “I thank you for your help with the smoke.” He flicked it to spray ashes from the tip. “But you’ll forgive me if I find it suspicious. Why don’t you tell me what you’re selling, and maybe we can continue this association.”
“Pardone, again, but you would let a man take a load off and get comfortable, only to chase him away?” The interloper smiled.
Zihan gestured with his smoking tobacco stick. “The comfort of anyone but myself has never been my concern.”
The man chuckled low in his throat. “An admirable sentiment. I can tell. Such an attitude will take you far if you have the wealth to back it up.”
Zihan raised one eyebrow and waited.
“Ti Kowobold. At your service.” The man said, leaning forward and offering Zihan his hand.
Zihan didn’t take it, he gestured towards Yi Cao instead. “Ti Kowobold. Meet Yi Cao.”
Ti Kowobold smoothly moved his hand towards Yi Cao. “A pleasure to meet the young master, I am sure.”
Yi Cao took his hand and felt the little claws at the tips of his fingers tickle his skin as they shook.
The coal at the end of Zihan’s tobacco stick glowed as he sucked in a puff of smoke. “You aren’t a cultivator.” He said.
“Me?” Ti Kowobold asked, gesturing to himself. “No. Goodness no. My mother was, but my father was a mut. Piss bots take him. Talyaya blood, mixed with an outcast Kispuhru whore. I am three worlds in one, and at the same time, none.” He smiled, showing his little sharpened teeth like daggers again. “Fourth generation on my father’s side. First on my mother’s.”
Zihan puffed smoke between his cheeks. “I don’t know what any of those are.” He said.
“Ah. Of course. Talyaya, a Goblin, like little Izzi here.” Ti Kowobold nodded as two ears approached their table and the bartender slid a new platter in front of Zihan.
“I’m no goblin.” The bartender replied, ears moving around to Yi Cao. “Goblins are a clan of little people from Kispuru. I’m Oshpik. It’s not even the same world, let alone clan.”
A plate slid in front of Yi Cao with some kind of cubed meat wrapped up in thin bread and covered in a steaming vinegar sauce that reminded Yi Cao of the smell in their room.
“All One people on the rock.” Ti Kowobold intoned.
Izzi, the barkeep, hopped onto the empty chair to glare at the self proclaimed mut then snorted. “As though I would choose to mate with anyone half your size.”
“Incidentally,” Ti Kowobold said, looking to Zihan, “Never mess with the Kispuhru, their women specifically. It’s their gift you see. They might come on as pleasant, but they’ll take your seed and send your own son to gut you while you sleep. Something to do with their fertility goddess. The one runs their place beyond the fold.”
Yi Cao picked up the flatbread and tried to figure out how to eat it without spilling it everywhere. “I heard the technomancers were the ones to fear.” He said.
“Fear?” Ti Kowobold smiled as though Yi Cao had said something funny. “No, never fear. Watch out for certainly. Not that I’d recommend messing with anyone showing a bit of metal. You never know what a technomancer’s got up their sleeve, then again, you never know who the technomancers might be if they don’t make it obvious. Some of them keep their augments hidden as they upgrade. Use their natural skin color instead of flesh metal or cogs and wires, or keep the augments on the inside. But people are all the same beyond their blessings. Just looking to catch a little break between shifts, or a big break that will let them put this place behind them.”
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Yi Cao managed a bite of the flatbread and felt the vinegar sauce burn on his tongue.
“And what about us?” Zihan asked.
“Inscrypti?” Ti Kowobold asked.
Zihan gestured with his smoker. “Cultivators.”
“Inscrypti are easy.” The bartender replied from the chair he hadn’t yet vacated. “Your lot are all the same. Scrape and bow to everyone above you, then kick the shit out of everyone less powerful. Wonderful employees.” He scowled. “Terrible bosses.”
Zihan tittered and Yi Cao felt his spine quiver at the laugh.
“If there isn’t anything else.” The barkeep said, looking around the lot of them again, pausing when Ti Kowobold put out a hand.
He looked at Zihan. “We were just discussing what service I could perform for the Young Master.”
Zihan raised an eyebrow. “Were we?”
“Certainly. Certainly.” Ti Kowobold touched his claws together and smiled. “I am… was, a liaison of sorts for several, shall we call them, independent operations on this rock. Have been for most of my career.” He nodded to the tobacco stick smoking in Zihan’s hand. “If the young master saw fit to supply me with some fine fuming stick like the one you have there, I might see fit to serve as your guide to this tangled world for an evening, if you wish, or just to answer any questions you might have since your apparently recent arrival.”
Zihan considered the offer for a moment while the Goblin bartender remained perched on the chair, then came to a decision and nodded to Izzi. “Bring it for him.”
“On your tab?” The barkeep asked.
Zihan shrugged. “Why not.”
The bartender left and Zihan studied Ti Kowobold while Yi Cao continued to eat.
Ti Kowobold leaned back in his seat as Izzi returned with the smoke and he quickly snipped the tip and lit it as he’d offered to do for Zihan. He took a long drag before puffing out a cloud of smoke. “Ah. A fine fume. Far better than the stinking air served up in this part of the moon. Should have replaced the purifiers in this station ages ago, then again, the governor’s plans showed this particular hab demolished ten years ago, yet here we stand.” He took another drag from his smoke stick, knocked a bit of ash from its tip, then leaned forward towards Zihan.
“Now. Call me TC, and tell this TC how he can be of service while you eat.”
Zihan took one more hit from his tobacco stick before he balanced it over the rim of his cup of water and picked up his flatbread. “Independent operations.” Zihan mused out loud. “Something about that makes them sound somewhat illegal.” He tittered again and tore a bite out of the flatbread. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about those, and what you do for them.”
TC blew smoke between sharpened teeth. “Certainly, certainly, but first.” He flourished his fume stick as he touched taloned fingers delicately to his throat and coughed. “A little liquor might go a long way towards easing this old throat of mine. I’ve spent my life in this hab you know, and as I said, they should have replaced the filters ages ago. And one for yourself of course, to keep me company while I drink.”
Zihan rolled his eyes and shouted for the bartender to bring them another round.
Yi Cao finished his flatbread and took a slug from his liquor. He leaned on the table as the fire passed down his throat to warm his belly and he rubbed at eyes that felt grainy despite his recent nap. Two naps, really, in he didn’t know how many days since leaving downfall city. Every bone felt like a weight beneath his skin.
“Why don’t you go back and get some sleep.” Zihan told him. “I don’t really need to sleep that much anymore, but you clearly still do.”
Yi Cao briefly considered disagreeing simply out of spite, but he sighed and nodded. He pushed the last of his drink towards TC then stood to go.
“Your blessing must be quite substantial to require less sleep.” TC remarked as Yi Cao left. “I was never blessed with my mother’s powers for cultivation, but I have seen what can be accomplished. Such an impressive gift. How far along are you in your advancement?”
“Far enough to ignore questions I don’t want to answer.” Zihan replied.
“Point taken. Ah, and here are our drinks. Thank you Izzi.”
The hallway hummed as Yi Cao moved down it to their room. He barely noticed the stink of piss and pickles as he passed through the door and fell into his sheets. Zihan’s blankets were as soft as they’d looked when he spread them on the floor, and it took Yi Cao almost no time at all before he fell asleep.
At some point he began to dream.
In the dream there were chores to be done.
There were always chores to be done.
He knelt on the wooden floor of some wealthy cultivator’s home in the inner sanctum of the sect, polish and brush in his hand as he scrubbed at the floor. The dream came from memories and in the memory he’d been just six years old, enduring his first assignment as a junior disciple in the rough spun robes and green belt he would wear for the most of the next twelve years of his life. Chairs and tables loomed over him in the twilight interior of the home while the sun shone outside and other boys moved throughout the house, sweeping or chasing bats out of the rafters as they’d been told to.
He’d never polished the floors at home.
The thought followed Yi Cao from the memory. The floors of the Cao family compound were packed earth and straw, pits where the youngest dug holes in the winter even though they were told not to and rolling hills beneath the tables where his father played at leaves with the uncles in winter while mama and the aunts stoked the fire and stirred hot rice wine over dancing flames.
They’d never polished the floors. Never had to. Just swept them out every spring and fall, and spent as much time outside as possible.
Then again, their home hadn’t been as nice.
He dabbed tung oil onto the boards and stared at his reflection in the spreading pool.
A stranger looked out at him. Older, scared, dressed in black robes with odd buckles running up the sides.
He scrubbed the reflection away and tried to think again of mama, sitting by the fire while she listened to the other women talk about their men, their children, and the spring.
Somehow he couldn’t remember her face.
A door opened somewhere and footsteps rang through the cultivator’s home. Someone giggled and Yi Cao looked up to make sure the other boys were still working, but no one was there. Just an empty house.
He scowled and turned back to his work, scrubbing harder at the floor until he’d moved another foot along the boards and needed to add another dab of the oil.
He heard footsteps and more giggling and his scowl only deepened as he worked the oil viciously into the wood.
No one was there. He would look up and the house would be empty. The footsteps he heard just the empty wind rattling in the window shutters, or figments from some other dream. The other boys had left, had told him what needed to be done and left him to the chores while they played games somewhere outside.
He thought of games he’d played on long winter nights with his cousins and siblings, in the loft or on the floor among the pits and hills of polished earth. Games he’d always been invited to and welcome to join.
He heard more giggling, and more footsteps behind him and scrubbed harder, as though to erase the memories and the reflections staring back at him from the wood each time he made a pass with the rag dipped in oil.
More footsteps, and this time he whipped around to catch whoever it was and tell them that he’d tattle to the master that they hadn’t completed their work before leaving without him.
Only he wasn’t there anymore.
Footsteps fell like rain around him in a dark place while bodies moved like ants along the wall, ceiling floor, all around him, and he moved with them, just another pair of feet echoing in the darkness.
Someone sighed as a woman giggled and the vaguely human shadows all around him picked up their pace, sucking him up, down, through the throat of the thing he’d been trapped in until a whirlpool appeared at the far end of the abyss churning and hissing as it wrapped long arms around him and tugged him, screaming in complete silence, into the abyss and crushed him.
He woke to the smell of pickles. And piss. And something more… human, and less identifiable.
Slots cut into the wall hissed quietly above him, and he could hear the sound of several people breathing in the narrow space of the room he thought he’d only shared with Zihan.
Yi Cao pulled his trousers on underneath his covers before he got up and found Zihan snoring in the bed. In the blanket next to him lay two girls, naked, except for the bits of mechanical augmentation that stuck from them like jewelry.