Excerpt: THE ONLY WAY OUT IS UP by Django Wexler

ONE

Only an idiot would venture into the center of the Heap.

For one thing, there’s the obvious problem that you never know when a junkfall is coming. At any moment trash could start raining from the sky, a light shower of shattered concrete or chunks of steel the size of buildings. They emerge like turds tumbling from the Asshole, carom off Hod’s armored inner walls, then tumble down to crater the surface of the Heap. Each impact throws up a spray of shattered junk that lacerates the surrounding area.

Being in the tunnels provides some protection, but not as much as you’d think. A big fall changes the geography of the Heap in unpredictable ways, setting off junkslides and junkvalanches. What seemed like a stable passage moments before can tighten up like a collapsing lung and mash you into paste. Or (maybe worse?) it can cut off your exit, leaving you wandering desperately through a wrecked labyrinth, hoping to find a way out before something finds you.

Because wandering the tunnels is its own kind of bad idea. Tunnels mean Twisted. Twisted mean jagged steel arms tearing at your squishy parts, metal monsters trying to figure out just what makes these funny flesh-and-bone things tick.

All this is why most scavengers stick to the edges of the Heap, looking for spots where recent quakes have exposed fresh veins of junk. You can spend every day patiently stripping out wire and steel, copper and glass, toss them in the big bins at the Malkuth steps, and get paid a bowl of mash and a couple bits. It’ll keep body and soul together, most of the time. Unless you get sick. Or hurt. Or pregnant. Then you’d better hope your crew is willing to go hungry to cover your share.

Only an idiot would be a hunter, looking for Twisted, hoping to strip them of their sigils and claim bounties from the authorities.

When I explain all this to Star, he thinks for a while. His answer, audible only to me, comes through as a buzzing voice echoed in my breastbone.

[Query: only an idiot would be a hunter?]

Yup, I think back.

[Clarification: being a hunter enables you to subsist?]

Pretty much. The bakery brings in a few bits, but Somi gives away more food than he sells. Without me we’d wear rags and eat raw mash.

His tone becomes triumphant. [Conclusion: your success is a product of your idiocy. Lack of intelligence is your chief asset.]

Yeah, yeah. I roll my eyes. You’re right in here along with me, pal.

At this point a multi-limbed horror the size of a sleeping bag rips itself out of the wall and stabs me in several places.

We’re deep in the Heap. Not quite at the center, still outside Rotwurm’s territory, but deeper than most will ever go. I’m in a tunnel a few meters across. Walls and ceiling made of junk: hunks of concrete and metal spars, big glass fragments and coils of wire. These materials have been shoved, bent, twisted, and braided with considerable strength and infinite patience into something like a solid surface, although you need thick boots to walk on it without cutting yourself.

I have thick boots. Also a thick coat, pants, gloves, goggles, and a helmet made from the bottom of an old sink. With a cloth wrapped around my face, there’s practically no skin showing, which is a necessity in an environment that’s about 90 percent sharp edges. Furthermore, key areas of my outfit are reinforced with repurposed steel to protect the sensitive parts of my anatomy, which is why a spike of polished rebar glances off my chest with a screech and a rusty hooked claw fails to geld me.

A third limb, however, finds the edge of my thigh pad and sinks through leather, skin, and muscle. So that’s not great.

My opponent is half again my length and several times my weight, straddling me like a particularly unpleasant lover. It looks a little bit like a centipede, a little bit like a worm, and quite a lot like a pile of junk that has somehow pieced itself together into a single functioning body without the benefit of a blueprint. Its many limbs are each tipped with something unpleasant. Here and there I see the gleam of threading wire and the rust-red surface of a sigil.

Twisted. Sigwork gone mad, the sheer will to destroy made manifest. Broken things putting themselves back together, but wrong.

The steel of its piercing limb grates against my thigh bone. The pain is really quite excruciating. Not enjoying it.

Star!

[Statement: I can only move so fast. It was you who asked me to scout ahead.]

Yeah, I think you might have missed something!

[Implication: my eyes are not perfect. Take it up with my builder.] He sniggers. [Oh, wait.]

WHAM, metal meets metal a few centimeters from my face. Star is smaller than the Twisted, but he’s moving fast. He grabs the mechanical monster’s head—well, its front part—and twists. His momentum pulls the Twisted up (its limb yanked incautiously from my flesh, ow ow ow) and cracks it like a whip, ass end scraping against the tunnel’s low ceiling. Then the two of them go down in a tangle of shifting, scraping limbs.

Star is a much better design than the haphazard Twisted (he said, modestly), a basic but versatile spider shape I’ve used many times. His compact ovoid body is wrapped in armor, reinforced on the inside with RESIST sigils that protect his inner workings. He has eight fighting legs ending in long, sturdy blades, plus two fine manipulators folded up inside his carapace. I put his two biggest optics in front—not strictly necessary, but I like it when he has something like a face—but there’s a ring of smaller ones as well, giving him all-around vision. Various other handy devices are tucked away behind body panels.

Unfortunately, certain unavoidable constraints of budget and tools mean that he’s only about a third the size of his opponent. For a moment his bladed legs tear at the Twisted, ripping through metal and wire, and some of its sigils shatter in sprays of fat red sparks. Two of its limbs go dead, but it has many more, and as it recovers it bends its long body around to bring them to bear. Star’s legs flip upward on their reversible joints to block, but the centipede-thing is attacking from many directions at once. As the claws and blades slash against his armor, red light glows briefly from his interior as one of the RESIST sigils fails and its energy arcs away.

The Twisted could break Star’s shell eventually, but the Twisted doesn’t know that. It doesn’t know anything other than the urge to destroy, and its attack isn’t getting the job done. It shifts its attention to Star’s limbs, grabbing one with its forelegs and one with a hindward claw and yanking in opposite directions. In a shower of red light and rending wire, both legs tear away from Star’s shell. He scrabbles like an upturned turtle, trying to get clear, but the Twisted holds him in place with still other limbs.

Something to consider in the next design. Maybe an extra limb on his back to maximize traction in unusual circumstances…

My thoughts are a little hazy. I’ve got both hands pressed over the hole in my thigh, but the amount of blood I can feel pumping out between my fingers is frankly alarming.

[Admission: this is not going well.]

You think?

[Suggestion: do something.]

Options are limited. Head is fuzzy. I’ve got a trump card, but fuck, it’s expensive…

Maybe there’ll be a yellow in there to make up for it? Moon, let there be a yellow in there to make up for it.

Star, Bug Zapper!

His gleeful chuckle rings in my mind. A panel on his body slides open and a new limb folds out. This one is short and ends in a stubby rod and definitely does not look like a mechanical dick, get that thought out of your head right now. It presses against the Twisted’s hide like an awkward boner in a chaste hug. I feel a pull on my spirit, like someone has a fishhook through my heart and gives the line a gentle tug.

Star is a runic, made of metal and wire, built around a foundation sigil at his heart. That single meta-verb is connected by threading wire to other sigils: verbs to define effects, modifiers to shape them, nouns to direct their power. Strings of MOVE sigils animate his limbs, RESISTS harden his armor, PERCEIVES focus his optics, while STRONG and FAST add extra oomph.

Bug Zapper is built around a single precious EXPLODE, a unique sigil that destroys itself and anything connected to it in a ferocious burst of power. It’s connected to a SHOCK, the signifier for WIRE, and a few modifiers to tighten the effect. When it goes off, energy floods wildly through any sigwork system in range; a runic’s foundation sigil can handle the surge, but the distributed architecture of a Twisted is uniquely vulnerable. I just hope it’s enough.

The weapon goes off with a noise like a swarm of bees taking flight. The middle section of the Twisted goes into wild convulsions, crawling with arcs of white lightning punctuated by bursts of red as its sigils explode. I wince with every blast—I need those sigils, moon damn it—but at least it seems to be working.

After a second or two, the lightning dies away and I hold my breath. Twisted don’t have a foundation sigil; they’re more like a self-sustaining network of malicious power, and killing them can be tricky. If you can take a big enough chunk out of them, though, the remnants of their energy usually bleed away. Usually.

The two ends of the centipede-thing thrash for a few moments longer. Then, to everyone’s relief, they go still. Star scrambles away from its slack grip, righting himself expertly on his now-asymmetric legs.

[Assessment: effective], he informs me. [Observation: you are leaking badly.]

“You don’t say,” I mutter aloud. I reach one bloody hand around to my pack, every movement sending waves of dizziness through me. The pain has reached an existential crescendo that scrapes at the edges of my vision. If I pass out now, I’m fucking dead.

[Query: can I assist?]

You can tell Star is really worried when he drops his sarcasm. I find what I’m looking for in my pack and yank it out, gasping.

Gonna cauterize, I tell him. Even my mental voice is sounding thick. Prob’ly pass out. You have enough legs left to strip the sigils from that thing?

[Assessment: sufficient. Query: do you have enough blood left to make it home?]

S’good question. I bring the little stick to the wound in my thigh and shove my gloved finger between my teeth. My mouth fills with the tang of copper. We’ll see, right?

Like Bug Zapper, the stick contains a string of one-use sigils, starting with EXPLODE. I didn’t build this one, so I don’t know all the details, but BURN and FLESH are definitely in there, too. Expensive piece of kit, but what’s your life worth, right?

S’ a joke. I know what mine’s worth—jack fucking shit. Makes this a pretty bad trade, all told. I’m attached to it, though.

I kick the thing off. New, hitherto unglimpsed vistas of pain open up before me for a moment before darkness closes in.

TWO

It’s nearly morning by the time I make it home.

Funny how we cling to the cycle, day and night, morning and afternoon. We can see the fake sunlight that illuminates Yesod and Hod only as a gleam on the cavern walls; the big work-lights that hang from the bottom tier never dim. (Except when their sigils fail and they rain down showers of white-hot sparks.) No such thing as darkness down here in the Heap, but we pretend there is all the same.

Gotta sleep sometime, I guess. I want to sleep right now. I want it so badly my eyelids are drooping and my feet feel like someone tied concrete blocks to them. But probably if I pass out again I’ll bleed to death, which is a powerful incentive to keep staggering forward. Eventually I reach our makeshift back door—everything in the Heap is makeshift, make do, lashed together from repurposed bits of something else—and start hammering on it. My hand leaves a smear on the corrugated metal.

Star is already out of sight, taking cover in the hill of junk that abuts the bakery. Over the years he’s wormed it through with tunnels so he can come and go without being seen. The last thing I need is someone seeing a runic on its own and screaming Twisted.

The door opens after only a million years and Somi sticks his head out. He gives an involuntary jerk backward at the sight of all the blood and swears under his breath.

“Moon above, Taj, are you okay?” He shakes his head before I can answer. “Stupid question. Sorry. Come inside before you wake Spike.”

Too late. There’s a clatter of feet on the stairs, a pair of eyes and a mop of unruly hair at the end of the hall.

“Is that—” Spike cuts off with a squeak when she gets a look at me.

“Go back to bed!” Somi shouts, grabbing me by the arm.

I want to shake him off, but now that I’ve made it back all the strength seems to have drained out of me. It’s all I can do not to hang off him as we limp inside. It’s clear I’m not going to manage the stairs, so we settle for the big metal table in the kitchen.

“What happened?” Spike says, ignoring Somi’s instructions and following us in.

“Got stabbed,” I deadpan.

“By a Twisted?”

I wince as Somi shifts my legs up onto the table. “Nah, it was an elf riding a unicorn.”

Spike rolls her eyes, too old at age twelve to believe in fairy stories. Somi leans forward and picks at the charred edges of my armored trousers around the wound.

“This looks burned,” he mutters.

“Lost a bit of blood,” I say. “Figured I’d be better off not losing any more.”

He sucks in a breath. “That’ll heal ugly.”

“What’s one more scar?”

Somi frowns, clearly disapproving of my flippant tone. He glances at Spike.

“Make yourself useful and grab the sewing kit from my bedroom.” He picks a big knife from a rack, and she gives a gulp and darts away. Somi sighs and starts carefully cutting the trouser leg away from the wound.

“Don’t say it,” I mutter.

Somi doesn’t look up. “I’m not saying anything.”

“I can hear you thinking it.”

“Maybe you should use your psychic powers to keep yourself from getting stabbed.”

“Fucker was hiding in the wall. Even Star missed it.”

Somi lets out a shuddering breath. “Moon and stars, Taj—”

“I’ve got it!” Spike sings out from the doorway. “If Taj dies, can I have his room?”

“He’s not going to die,” Somi growls.

“But yes,” I say.

Somi snatches the battered toolbox from Spike’s hands and glares at her. “Upstairs.”

This time, she decides not to cross him. He flips the box open and roots around.

“Seriously,” I venture, “if—”

“Shut up.” He shoves a steel rod wrapped in leather into my mouth, already stippled with the bite-marks of previous patients. “And hold still.”

Somi is actually a deft hand with a needle, whether he’s sewing up fabric or flesh. But it still hurts like a motherfucker. I don’t pass out again, but I wish I had.

Afterward he wipes my leg clean and tosses the towel in the slop bucket, then sinks back against the counter with a sigh.

“I’m going to have to wash all this down, you realize,” he says. “And I’m supposed to start in less than an hour.”

“Eh.” I struggle up on my elbows to look at him. “So what if the day’s rolls are a little Taj-flavored?”

“Can you take this seriously for a second?” There’s real fear in his eyes. “You could have died, Taj.”

“Always a possibility when you get stabbed, I hear.”

He glares at me, and I glare back.

Somi insists that he’s my older brother, although truthfully neither one of us knows our exact birthday. We didn’t start out as brothers, either, just two starving kids Fara took pity on. Somi was always bigger than me, though, and got more so as we grew up. Now in his early twenties he’s tall and broad, but as pillowy-soft as one of his own lumps of dough. (Whereas I didn’t so much grow as harden into a wiry string of gristle, all tendons and bone.)

“I got the fucker, if you’re interested,” I tell him.

“I’m not.”

“Plenty of sigils,” I lie. “Should sell for a good price.”

“Taj—”

“You know we need the money,” I snap. “Unless you’re going to start turning those kids away from the back door.”

“Taj!” He straightens up, mouth hardening. “They’ve got nowhere else to go. You want them to starve?”

“I don’t want us to starve. Or get our fingers broken by the Clawmarks.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to hunt Twisted. There are other ways of making money.”

“I don’t think I’d make as much selling my ass in a back alley.” I look down at myself. “Not enough meat on it. Or were you thinking I should sign up for a workhouse—”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Somi says, practically shouting. “Why can’t you just be a little—”

“A little what?”

“Careful,” he growls. “For moon’s sake, Taj, I just want you to be safe. You and Spike are all the family I have.”

I snort and look away. He’ll take the money in the end, the fucking hypocrite. I swing my legs off the table, ignoring a stab of pain, and manage to get down without collapsing or taking Somi’s outstretched hand. Score one for spite, I guess.

---

My room is a mess of tools and spare parts. About the only clear space is my bed in the corner, and I barely manage to pull my armored coat off before I collapse into it. My thigh hurts like—well, like it’s getting stabbed by a Twisted, but over and over with every heartbeat.

I’m so tired. You’d think falling asleep would be easy. But stab stab stab and each time makes me want to tear open the bandages with my fingernails.

It’s never dark in the Heap. But I papered over the windows in my room long ago to keep out prying eyes, so with the door closed there’s a kind of semi-darkness broken by chinks and seams. By this faint light I spot movement on the floor; a grate lifts, slowly, and from the tunnel below I can see the owlish gleam of Star’s primary optics.

[Query: you are not asleep?]

I wish I was, I send back with a grunt. You’re okay?

[Assessment: I still possess in excess of seventy percent of my limbs. For the moment that is sufficient.]

And you’ve got the sigils?

[Confirmation.] His fine manipulator extends, dropping a sack on the cluttered floor. It’s a lot smaller than I’d like.

How many are there?

The pause before he answers tells me all I really need to know.

[Regret: seventeen.]

All red?

[Further regret: yes.]

Seventeen red sigils, probably the most common types like MOVE and RESIST. A decent haul under other circumstances, but not when I’d had to burn two EXPLODES to get hold of them, not to mention two of Star’s legs. It certainly isn’t going to solve the bakery’s financial troubles.

[Consolation: also 3.4 meters of threading wire and several interesting joints.]

I smile. Star hates stripping wire, so if he bothered to take it he must have known how badly this trip was going to set us back. It’s a drop in the bucket, but he’s helping as best he can.

The fight is in three days. Two days, really, since it’s basically tomorrow already. Seventeen might be just enough to fix up new legs, but not for any of the upgrades.

[Hesitation: perhaps you should forfeit.]

That would mean abandoning the entry fee, which I’d scraped together across several hunts. Not to mention giving up any chance to wipe that pitying look off Somi’s face.

We’ll have to do the best with what we have.

[Frustration: I wish I could take part.]

I know.

[Gloom: the idiot will wreck my body.]

I close my eyes and give a mental sigh. Probably.

THREE

Hey!” Spike says when I emerge into the upstairs hall. “Since when are you up and about?”

“Since now.” In fact I get a jolt of pain every time I put weight on my bad leg. I’d like nothing more than to go back to bed, but the fight is today and Rekas is nothing if not punctual. “Things to do.”

“Well, in that case you can get your own breakfast.”

Spike gingerly touches her hair, making sure it has stayed in today’s preferred shape of a long front-to-back crest. It’s still green at the tips, the rest slowly fading back to her natural light brown. My little sister has light brown skin, a hatchet nose, and dark eyes brimming with world-weary sarcasm beyond her twelve years. She wears a too-large apron, particolored with dozens of patches.

“If you’re going out,” she says, courteously waiting for me to limp past, “Somi has a grocery list. You could spare me a trip.”

“Sorry. Things to do.”

“What things?”

“Things.” I wiggle my fingers mysteriously. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

She rolls her eyes. “If you’re going to a brothel you can just say. I’m not a kid.”

“Nothing so grand.” I’ve never had the bits to spare for amorous adventures, anyhow.

“Fine. Be cryptic. You’re probably just going to a physicker to ask why your poop smells weird.”

“What? It does not.”

“Does too,” she calls over her shoulder as she stomps downstairs.

“How would you know, anyway?”

“Because it stinks up the whole house!”

It takes me a little longer to descend, easing my bad leg onto each step. The sweet-sour smell of mash-bread is everywhere, the day’s first batch cooling on the table. The front door’s shut until we open for business, so I go to the back. That takes me past Somi’s room, and I give a surreptitious glance at the money jar. The big glass cylinder has never been more than half-full of steel bits that I can remember, but what’s left in there now barely covers the bottom.

My lip twists. Whatever Somi says, we need whatever I can bring in. Another pair of hands in the bakery isn’t going to accomplish anything, but if I can win this fight…

I clench my fists to keep them from shaking and take a deep breath.

Somi himself is outside the back door, surrounded by a horde of pint-sized monsters. He has a tray of small loaves, as he does every morning, and he holds it high in the air while handing one to each of the grubby children who shout and tug at his clothing. Sometimes he reaches down to gently smack one who tries to steal from their fellows.

“Everyone gets some,” he says with the exasperated air of a person repeating himself for the hundredth time. “No snatching.”

“Taj!” says Ema, a girl with a mass of filthy, unmanageable curls.

“Tah!” says Athie, a boy with a finger permanently wedged in his nose.

Gort, Ema’s brother and barely old enough to walk, takes the opportunity to try to chew on Somi’s pant leg.

“Hi,” I say to them. I haven’t learned the names of the rest of the skinny, faceless horde. Don’t want to. Get too attached to them and you end up like Somi, soft as dough.

“Can we see Star?” Ema says breathlessly.

“Star!” Athie shouts, and the others take up the chant. “Star! Star!”

Well. I need to meet up with Star anyway. I give a whistle, purely for show, and send, Your appearance is requested.

[Pride: my adoring public.]

Most people can’t think to their runics; they have to gesture or speak aloud. When I was a kid it took me a long time to understand that, and I nearly got into trouble several times because of it. Most runics also don’t have much to say back. Star is unique, and not just because I built his body from scratch.

He emerges now from a hole in the wall, kicking his legs grandly to the delight of the crowd. I’m the only one who winces at the sight of his two latest replacement limbs, crude work not up to my usual standards, but all I could manage in the time we had. They work, at least, though I don’t know if they’ll stand up to sustained use.

If we win, I’ll have time and money to fix them properly. If we lose…

Star does a little hop, then a flip, inverting his legs to land with a clatter. The kids laugh and applaud.

“Careful,” Somi says, shooting me a look. “You could hurt someone.”

Hard to explain that Star knows what he’s doing. Not even Somi and Spike know he’s not a typical runic; they just think I’m particularly good at commanding him. I give a nod.

Wrap it up. I’ve still got a few tweaks to make before the fight.

[Excitement: but they are so adorably fragile.]

And filthy.

[Agreement: as well!]

---

The outside of the Heap is bounded by the cavern wall, which Heap-dwellers with their boundless creativity refer to as “the Wall.” That’s where most of the people live, as far as possible from the twin threats of junkfall and marauding Twisted. Our bakery is on the inner (that is, poorer) side of town, a lopsided two-story building leaning against a massive pile of broken concrete. It’s surrounded by shacks and shanties built from whatever material the junkheap provides, all filled with a seething, noisome mass of humanity.

Walking outward (directions in our circular world are inward, outward, clockwise, and anti), you quickly reach a better part of town, marked by houses that seem to actually have been planned instead of grown. A little farther anti and there’s Stair #3, an endless pile of metal steps supported by a web of girders and gantries, stretching all the way to Malkuth high above.

At the base of the stair is the market, and I make my way there step by painful step, Star scuttling obediently behind me. It’s bustling as always, thick with desperate energy: children selling pots of water for an eighth-bit (for those too lazy or broken to make it to the public fountains); stitchers with fabric fluttering from their outstretched arms, living billboards for their work; butchers offering so many different cuts of meat that with a fat coin-purse you could reassemble the pig. Workhouse stiffs in their Malkuth clothes, mass-issued and ill-fitting but still finer than most, taking advantage of a day’s leave to strut tall among their less gainfully employed fellows. And, of course, the Clawmark enforcers, easily picked out by the three scarred lines on their cheeks, gliding through the crowd in little bubbles of quiet deference.

Ekkeban has his own shop, buried at the back of an alley between two overflowing shanties, invisible except for those who know what to look for. He deals in hard-to-find items the Arbiters might frown on. Not that we get a lot of Arbiters wandering around down here, but stick out too much and they might make an example; hence the low profile. The door squeaks and groans, and I hear more twisted metallic complaints from the back as Ekkeban levers himself out of his chair behind the counter. He’s a big man, dark-skinned, with a face that’s a wasteland of pockmarks and ash-gray hair coiled in tight locks.

“Starting to wonder about you,” he says when he sees me. “Usually you’re in here next day.”

“Ran into some trouble,” I tell him. “Left a couple of liters behind. Had to rest for a bit.”

“Glad to see you up and about, then,” he says. His eyes are on the bag at my side. “What you got for me?”

Straight to business, as always. Ekkeban and I have maintained a successful relationship for years based entirely on the understanding that there’s nothing between us that can’t be measured in bits. Unfortunately, I’m about to put some serious strain on it.

“Not as much as I’d like,” I admit.

I tip the sack onto the counter, sigils clunking dully. They never look like much, these things that everyone wants so badly. Red circles of clay about the size of my palm, each inscribed with a single character in charred black lines. Most of what’s written on these are the basics: the triple spike of MOVE, the double circles of PERCEIVE like owlish eyes, the bent lines of RESIST. Some of them still have scraps of threading wire attached.

Ekkeban sorts them with casual expertise, prodding a few to make sure they’re not already cracked. He grimaces as he looks up at me.

“Thirty-three,” he says. “Because I like you.”

“I nearly died, you know,” I say, without much hope.

“And if you did, I would be sorry. You’re a good customer. But these…” He clicks his tongue. “Nothing special, and some of them I think are near collapse.”

“You’ll sell them anyway.”

He waves that away. “Not the point.”

It’s not worth arguing, especially when I know he’s right. I sigh and look around the shop, stalling.

“How’s business?” I ask him.

“So-so,” he says, sudden suspicion on his face. “I get by. Why do you ask?”

I shrug. Most of what’s on display on the tables is crap, in case some desperate thief tries a smash-and-grab. He keeps the good stuff in the back under lock and key. On the wall over his head, though, there’s a green gleam. His pride and joy.

“Still haven’t sold that thing?”

Ekkeban snorts. “Nobody can afford my baby.”

It’s a sigil, a simple RESIST, but the clay disc it’s burned into is green. Sigils are made in different colors in ascending order of strength, like a rainbow from one of Somi’s books: red, orange, yellow, green, and so on into the stuff of legends. Each step up multiplies the cost by at least a hundred. At least. You can get an orange or two off the largest Twisted, and once a year I might find a yellow and we all eat like pigs for a month. I’ve never seen a green besides this one.

“Someday I’m going to take it off you,” I tell him.

He gives me a fond look. “You know the price.”

“Yeah, yeah. A million bits.” I shake my head and add, as though it’s an afterthought, “I’m going to need some stuff. A couple of thread junctions, four STRONGS, some plate…”

Ekkeban looks at the sigils on the counter, then back up at me. “You have cash?”

I wince, and his eyes narrow.

“I’m going to need—”

“Don’t say it,” he spits.

“Credit.”

“Taj.” He taps the counter, where crude characters are burned into the metal. “What does the sign say?”

“Most of your customers can’t read anyway!”

“Taj. What does it say?”

I sigh. “No credit. No exceptions.”

“Does that answer your question?”

“I’ll need it for an hour, Ek. The fight’s today. I just need to put the finishing touches on my masterpiece.”

“Taj.”

“How long have I been buying from you?”

“Since you only came up to my knees,” he says grudgingly. “So what?”

“So you know me. My brother and sister run the bakery. I’m not going to run out on you.”

“Not worried about you running out on me. Worried your fight won’t pay off.”

“If it doesn’t I’ll just have to hunt some Twisted for you.”

“And get yourself killed.” He snorts. “Then I’d be sad and broke.”

“Please, Ek. I’ve put up the entry fee already; you want to just hand that to Rekas for nothing?”

Ekkeban grunts. Nobody likes Rekas.

“And we’re not talking that much, are we? Four reds and a couple of joints?”

“Let me see if I’ve even got the joints to sell you.” He taps his finger on the counter thoughtfully, then turns away to duck through a doorway into the back. “Don’t get excited yet.”

I can’t help it. My foot bounces nervously as he roots around, and I scan the walls of the shop for a distraction. Beside the counter is a bounty board, with official Arbiter notices at the top and less official bounties tacked up below. Heading the list, of course, is Rotwurm; that monster has ruled the central Heap since before I was born. The offer of two hundred stripes—more money than the bakery could earn in a dozen lifetimes—has only managed to lure a few score fools to their horrible ends.

Below the reigning champion are a slew of other Twisted that have acquired names, become local legends; a whole team might have to organize to hunt one down. Broke Valley Ripper, 3 m long and MEAN, 0.1 s. Big Belly Bob, spits flaming oil, 0.2 s. Below those are the new arrivals, identified only by where they can be found: Half a klick clock-inward of Stair #3, killed 3, 145 b. Two klicks inward of Zema’s place, took over homestead, big pincers, 210 b. And so on.

If I had the money to upgrade Star’s body, I could go after some of those myself. Of course, to get the money to upgrade Star’s body, I’d need a big bounty to buy parts, a rich kill, or (more likely) both.

Or I could win this fucking fight. My foot tap tap taps.

Beside the bounty list is a new poster, the paper so clean and white it can only have come down from the tiered city. Usually that means bad news, arrests, or proclamations, but this one looks more inviting than opposing. It says ASCEND in large block type, and below that, The Hod Council invites all to participate in our most ancient tradition, the Ascent Runic Tournament. Test your skill and ingenuity against the very best in the city, and win the ultimate prize.

Then, in slightly smaller type, Entry Fee 100 s.

“What are you putting this shit up for?” I ask Ekkeban as he returns. “You get a lot of customers who can spend a hundred stripes on a ticket?”

“A couple of Arbiters came around and asked me politely to post it,” he says. “And you know I’m always eager to assist the authorities any way I can.” He dumps an armload of stuff on the table, the thread junctions and sigils I asked for. My face lights up, and he sighs and holds up a warning finger.

“I gotta ask you one more time, Taj,” he says. “You really sure this is what you want?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

“If I do this for you, and it goes wrong, don’t think I’m going to write it off.”

“Of course not. You’ve never let a single bit slide between those fat fingers.”

“That’s right.” He leans closer to me. “If you can’t pay, that means Rekas. The Clawmarks. You understand?”

“Sure.”

“Taj!” He fixes me with his gaze. “I like you. So I want to make sure. You understand?”

“Yes.” I give him my best sincere look. “I understand.”

“Fine.” He shoves the pile across the counter. “Good luck today.”

I hurriedly sweep the goods into my sack. “Thanks.”

I’m going to need it. Because if I burn this bridge, I’m fucked.