Aqua Spire was the wheezing of a dying beast.
It was the glass skins of the old megacity that had long shattered, the steel bones protruding through the water, its rust scattered through the air like so much sand... Between towers were rope bridges, hung with prayer flags of intoxicated clothing and plastered placenta. In scrap yards had stuck like barnacles, welded rebar ladders joined by faith, represented scrap areas. Refugees slept on the rooftops the most expensive in the world cooked rats on rubbish fires and wished they were unaware of what passes on the water below.
The blood-filled streets were of corpses. And worse.
They were met by a yellow rope bridge, swaying fifty feet over the black, by Aya Kestrel. hers was like a being born on a line hips roll with the movement of the bridge, feet resting with pitfalls on damp rope. Her bomber jacket was heavily cut and loose over a tight black tank, the wet heat of sweat streaming in the line of her throat. Her thighs were skintight in tactical cargo pants, which were scarred and strong. She wore a gas mask as a necklace about her waist.
Her one brown, one venom green eye wrote Malik off with business uninterest. The type of gaze that a butcher gives a piece of meat prior to making decisions about its value.
Right of passage, I said. No greeting. No wasted breath. The medicine of Toll. half a course of antibiotics, a fifth a course of pain-killers, a tenth a course of antiseptic.
Malik's jaw tightened. Half our store.
"That's the price of not swimming."
And round the itch, shall we go?
Aya pointed towards the black water lapping around the tower foundations. Thirty yards out something broke the surface, in a human-like form, vanished before the eye could see it. Then you'll swim with what remains of the last convoy which came that tried. Their bones are still under water. The drowned never forget how to struggle.
Nari moved forward, her white haori shining on the decay. We got children, sick children We can spare twenty units of antibiotics. That's all.
The incongruous eyes of Aya were flitting to the truck beds, at the little faces appearing over rusted metal. There was a change in her face too quick to define, too deep to believe. Lady Shou owns the high ways. She will spare you, on condition of medicine... or blood. You will choose. She looked, without giving an answer. "Come. The Champion doesn't like to be kept waiting."
The stage suspended between three towers on a stage of welded scrap and salvaged steel. It was encircled by rope ladders and hanging cages full of wastelanders who had paid their ration of water and their flesh to get a beautiful death on a tonIGHT. Neon lights looted in the old world flickered overhead, in pink, sickly green, dying blue in which everything was seen in the colors of a bruise.
Lady Shou was reclining on a throne made of stolen theater seats, which were velvet rotting and gold flaking. She was wearing an open midnight blue haori, and the only thing that kept it in place was the curving of her shoulders. Below it was no better than a cropped wrap of black sarashi that was having trouble keeping her breasts in check and the deep ravine of her cleavage and the rung of her ribs were bare. Scars made intentional designs on her sides not cuts, but drawings. Small ornaments of brass through which the neon gleamed like hungry eyes pierced her nipples.
She smiled and her gold capped canine flashed.
The Bridge Hound, I said, voice in a languid singsong. Well, I heard such good things. The wrap seemed to slide, placing her in danger of leaping forward. Jaro would have the scars peeled away and hung up; but I believe... She licked her lips. I believe I would like to see what they can do first.
Malik said nothing. His chains loosely swung. His scars burned.
Fight my champion, Shou went on. "Win, you pass. Lose..." Nari was spotted by her fox gold eyes in the crowd. I retain the doctor. Jaro had wanted somebody to sustain his generals with the... recreational sessions. She appears to be well built. Seasoned.
Nari did not turn his face. But her hand came upon the surgical steel of her haori.
The audience cheered when the champion of Shou stepped out of a hanging cage a huge Scrap Mark fighter, a past sect executioner, six foot six of stitched flesh and metal askew to bone. His legs were like scraped members. The knuckles were capped with iron. The smile was with pointed teeth.
Malik did not pause to ceremony.
Still Furnace Breathing had lowered his heart rate to deathy slow. The world slowed. The giant tensed his muscles, and lifted, one right swing, and the door of a truck would have caved in.
Bridge Mark Instinct knew the fall.
Malik stood the impact of the punch and actually felt the breeze of it, but then he plunged his palm into the knee of the giant. Span Breaker Force. Cartilage cracked as rope snaps in wet. The gigantic blew, faltered and the chain of Malik was flowing already, binding tightly around the enormous throat and jerking him off his balance.
Dead Drop Elbow.
The elbow of Malik struck the back of the skull of the giant the weight of gravity and the anger. The platform shuddered. The giant fell through the board, the wood and the steel broke, and hung swinging over the black water, at the end of the chain of Malik, which was making one twitch to drown, throat closing.
Three moves. Maybe four seconds.
There was a silence in the crowd.
Shou clapped. Slow. Deliberate. Every touch of her palms a bullet fell.
She stood. The movement caused her sarashi to shift, and more scars and more skin were visible, the glimmer of brass. She opened the gap between Malik, so that the breath came near his cheekbone, and one of her fingers followed the crease that followed his temple to his cheekbone.
"Beautiful," she murmured. But like a courageless man you fight to have fun. trailed down her finger, along his pulse. To me would you teach to smile When killing, Jaro would pay a lesson In medicine Lasting. In passage. In pleasures Which you've forgotten how to desire.
Malik had a gravel voice. "Pass."
Shou was smiling without relent. And, on the contrary, it became more pointed.
"Pity." She withdrew, lifting her voice up to the crowd. And then you will soon discover the costly side of this city that all good things beautiful are mine.
She clucked her tongue.
The bridges of the ropes were retracted. The platform creaked, trembled, and started descending on the black water on ancient winches that did not have the power to, ever, come into the air.
"Swim, Bridge Hound." The voice of Shou was after him. Or have some other path up.
Something stirred awhile in the water. Shapes of paleness, dozens of them, take the vibration. They shattered the water merely to reveal faces swollen and unpupiled, mouths gibbering free of water and ancient screams.
Something which was once human.
And it was reminded of how to fight.