I place the warrant face-down. Flick open the flamebox, light up the last decent lho-stick I'll see for a while. Breath it in, blow it out. Lho-smoke curls around the ammunition.

"Sir? Mistress?" The serf is up, making his way to his assigned post. He knows it's 'sir,' and he knows exactly where I'm standing—and knows enough not to show it. I let him have that; Throne knows he has little else. The scars radiate from his eye-plate like shatter-lines across a lined face and shaved pate. But that's the only touch of the machine upon him. I flex my metal hand, remembering things I'd rather leave dead and buried.

"Over here. Two clips, large-cal, second fire-lane from the left."

I unload the 17-cal, break it open, work through the gun-rites. Work through the Moross Below as well. I don't have to think about the rites; all muscle memory now. Get interrupted though, it works a number on you. You lose your place, can't figure out where you were. Have to start over. You learn that one early, the hard way—don't interrupt the old hands.

I think about Ve while my hands do Magistratum work. I don't know where she is, but I know where she'll be. Like blood from City stone, getting three words in a row from the moll after the coordinator's office. But she, I, and the smoker, in the cell warrens, that much she swore to. "Tsa! Yes. You and your machine-speaker. Later." she said. My eyes lingered on the sway of her body as she walked away into the shadows. We'll see.

The serf knows well enough to stay quiet, listening to the clack and rattle of gun-rites. I appreciate that. Have nothing to give him that isn't marked with the Pit's poisons—or words that aren't useless to a man bereft of eyes and all he once was. I set it aside, my bleeding heart. Ram a clip home, chamber the topmost, look downlane and think about the shot-pattern I'll put into the flakboard.

Walking the Cell Warrens

I pull out the same issuance lho-stick for the third time, put it away again. Stink of preservatives, like a fundament spill. Like the bad times in the low Sepat district, the crumpled bodies left by gangers in the waste-strewn shaft alleys. The same stench. Emperor damn the memories.

But I'm thinking about the moll as the cell warrens wrap their damp walls around me. She's easy on the eyes, too easy, and Emperor-damned hard on everything else. The sort of dame pulls blades on a master of the Pit is the sort of dame will get a man dead. But done is done, and now there's the questions waiting. Questions and a meeting with the smoker.

The corridor narrows. Plasteen ration bottles lie crumpled beneath a pillar etched with manufactory devotionals—where the passage of blind hands hasn't worn it smooth. The scents of neglect, bad air, slow fans in the fundament vents. I know where I'm going. I don't know where I am. The cell warrens are that way, a knot of levels and an armor for the lost. A way to hide from the watchers and the damned. Find a cell where the locks still work, push out the serfs who use it—another indignity to place atop all they've lost—and sleep like the dead. So I keep at it, wait for the old memories to tell me where the ways cross. Chains for the blinded on the walls, and a symbol carved on each stair and junction; I'll find the ones I know sooner or later.

I flick the flamebox lid in my shot-coat pocket, try to squash the lho-itch. I think through the number Ve worked on the coordinator. He knew what happened in the master's vaults. Don't know how, but he knew. The drenn-tic in his eye like the moll was pulling on his puppet-threads, all the way from on high. Me, I ranked nothing, just another mark in the Man's ledger, but that clean-robe would have clawed down the walls to get away from the dame. He kept it in and iron-straight, the twitch and the jerk, long enough to set an assignation, I'll give him that much. Spend the years drenned to the hilt and it never leaves, always that last dreg feeding the fires. The chem-burn makes them jump and turn to its heartbeat, makes them crazy in the end, biting blood from their own arms to stop the screaming. The coordinator wore long sleeves, eye-covers to hide the hollows. Made it part of a look. He wasn't fooling anyone who matters—but he's still the one who'll tell the machine men to take your eyes or send the watchers to break you. I remembered that while the drenn-sweat formed on his face, and the moll watched him like he was half a squashed raque, squirming.

The Machine-Speaker

What do you say to a man you haven't seen in five years, twenty by his clock? But who you haven't really seen since the low City days, the schola, the bad times. Not his face, not the one you knew. First the obscura, then the machines. Then the Man.

"Long time, Orven," I say. Feels like I said nothing at all.

The smoker laughs through the grill that took his mouth. Machine noise, like nails on the nerves. "Long time, Callehan."

The small room is heady with obscura-scent, littered with the meager possessions of its displaced occupants. A single lumen, a small prayer-mirror, a rusted cleanser. The smoker halfway reclined on the single stained sleep-pad, red cloak falling open to show me things I don't want to see. The raw junction of oiled machine and chem-treated skin. The roots of metal tendrils. They explore the room like blind worms, like they have minds of their own, turning over each new discovery. Makes me too aware of my metal hand. The nerve-tugs I try not to notice, the times I wonder who just moved my fingers. Different. Not my own.

There are stools, plasteen and flimsy. I kick one to where I can watch the door and the machine-man I once knew. Drop the carry case, take a seat, a little too heavy.

"Long time." the slumped machine-man grates, slowly. A flat machine-voice where there should be feeling, emphasis, anything. "What did you bring for me?"

"Go to hell, Orven." Too tired for the old back and forth. His poisons should have rotted him out from the inside long ago. The same each time, making like I'm fresh from an obscura den, weighed down and generous. The little mockery that's like a hopeful needle, jabbing at me. The Man sends you away, takes years from you, cuts out a part of you that you didn't know you had left. You fight your way back, only to find the rot, the things that wormed their way under your skin. All just waiting for you.

But I'm tired. So I cut to the chase. Ask him what the story is with the Pit. Meaning what's new, what's going to get a man killed. Whether working the coordinators for time on the outside is still good. Who's in, who's out. I want to build a foundation. Work up to understanding when I can expect the master and the coordinator to cut me short at the neck for standing too close to the moll.

The smoker coils his dendrites, gives me the glassy, silent treatment. That's fine. I'm not going anywhere. I get up, start knocking around the stow-shelves. Figure there's going to be something to drink in here somewhere. That'll make it easier all round.

"The tranq is under the cleanser." The smoker's words, like rust in a dead man's lungs.

I look. A cerajar, dirty, and the contents smell bad. Acrid, but not as bad as the issuance lho-sticks. Suits my mood. Back to my stool, and I take a swig. Tastes like cleaning fluid. It burns going down before the numbness starts to kick in. Smears out the pains and the need to sleep, makes them hard to see, like plasteen sheets wrapping through the body. I'll cut out a few scints from the stack later, leave it for the blind. For what it's worth. The eyes of the God-Emperor stare accusingly from the prayer-mirror.

So we catch up, the smoker and I, in our own way. Like an old wound. Can't chase what's gone—Emperor knows we just have to live with what is.

The Sharp Edge

The moll makes her entrance like she owns the room, all two scints of it and its waste. The smoker's rust-serpents rise up sharply, rearing from their drugged coils. The only part of him that moves like it's alive. Interested or threatened? The tranq is bad, fluid dregs from a power cell, but numbs me enough not to care one way or another. Half left now, was making it last.

"Clean was too much, no?" Ve surveys the walls and cluttered floor, flares her nostrils at the scent of it—at the oil-obscura odors of the smoker. Lips thin, tone clipped. A tutored spirebase accent, like she shrugged off every last trace of the joygirl in the cleanser. She's a guilder's escort-guard now, sheen-slick armorgown heavy with plates and a ceremony blade across her back. High priced, beautiful. The gown slits at the thigh, and the tranq isn't enough to keep my eyes away.

"No ears, no watchers. That's clean enough." I proffer the cerajar, indicate a stool. "Have a seat...Veneth. Join the party. Tell me why we're not both dead." The tranq drags me straight to the point, paints on an edge of frustration, just like always.

"Vecca. Mistress Vecca. But Ve keeps it simple." Her clear eyes locked on mine. "So people don't slip up." Each word slotted precisely in its place, the emphasis on "people." Real subtle. Not scoring any points.

The moll eyes the plasteen stool like it's dirt, chooses the cleanser edge for a throne instead. Where she can see the door, and where she's a half-step from standing. One heel against the cleanser, long leg bent at the knee and naked outside the armorgown. She ignores the offered tranq. Her loss. So I take a swig and watch her. Like a hundred bare rooms, a hundred faces across the table, a hundred questions, a hundred murders. Put on the Magistratum mask and say nothing. The City hates silence; they always talked.

But the moll says nothing. Makes it a contest.

The smoker's voxgrill grinds out a broken non-word, an attention-getter. "A thought. The master has an uncertainty. Whether watchers can kill you before you find out." Ve glares down at him, and his dendrites recoil as though burned, curling back onto the stained mattress. One leg twitches beneath the robe.

A pause. "He fears you kill him first, regardless of after," Orven finishes. The same obscura-slow pacing of flat, machine-made words.

I shake my head. He lets me think he's rusted to nothing, then shows there's a little of the old left in there somewhere. Buried under the metal and the mind-poisons. God-Emperor damn him for it.

"Let's say that Orven's right. A dangerous game you're playing—winning by not caring about winning."

"It is my game to play," counters the moll, sharp and certain.

"No. It's our game now, with both names on the same pledge. You dragged me into your wager, and I backed you up anyway." The tranq makes it sound angrier than I want. Throne knows this isn't the first time I've done this, said this. It's just been a while. You feel out the edges of the bargain, find out how to get along, how get the job done. That's the way it is, nothing to get heated over. But she loathes being challenged, I see that clear and lumen-bright in the tension of her stance. Is that her, or is it like the joygirl sway, painted on thin? Damned if I can tell. The door's right there and she isn't walking yet, however—that has to count for something.

"It was your choice. What is it that you want?" She leans back, my eye caught by the line of her from ankle to neck under the armorgown. The blade-hilt past her shoulder.

What do I want. That's a start. I can work with that.