Warsinger James Baldwin (read this if TXT) 📖

“Not everyone has to be hard and bitter like we are.” I managed not to look at Suri. “How’s the arm treating you?”

“This? It’s the tits.” He made a fist with it and gave it a little pump. The area around the graft was still bandaged, but he was able to move the mana-driven metal prosthetic just as well as a real arm. “Light, tough, strong enough to break a man’s jaw. Rin outdid herself.”

“She’s a kind person,” Suri said. “I worry we take her for granted, sometimes.”

“She likes to help out. We just have to keep checking in with her and make sure she’s happy with how much and how often,” I replied. “I take it we're headed to the Undercity?”

“Only place in Dalim I know,” Suri said bitterly. “Only place I'm allowed. The Fireblooded don't even get to share the open spaces under there with the Lower Castes. I was lucky. Most Fireblooded born in Dalim never see the sky.”

“Jeez.” It was hard to imagine that kind of hidden squalor from up here, with the wind blowing the sweet aroma of jasmine to our noses. “Dangerous?”

“Yeah, for sure.” Suri ran her fingers back through her hair and pulled her helmet on. “There's parts of Gadada Sha' that make Taltos' Cat Alley look like a luxury resort.”

The beautiful, exotic parts of the city receded above us as the airship came in for landing. Unlike the open-air Taltos skyport, Dalim's was more like a grand central station, with paved platforms and cargo cranes and a control tower. The ship was seized by huge, magnet-like devices that guided it into its bay, and I saw for the first time how such a strict social hierarchy was maintained in a city of this size. The port was crawling with soldiers... and magitech. Guards in gold and white uniforms idled in groups of three or five, armed with sabers and muskets, but they were backed up by mechs: the kind of powered armor we used to call Striders in the Army.

The artificed machines had a vaguely reptilian look about them, with lanky, prehensile legs and bladed arms clearly modeled on hookwings. They had open cockpits with crenellations on four sides and a small awning for shade. The pilots had plain old bows and arrows, and they rode in such a way that they could crouch and shoot in any direction. More puzzling were the lanterns: each strider had an oversized lantern hanging from a long, arched antenna that bobbed behind it. The lanterns cast a circle of vivid blue-violet light that caused bugs and bits of food to sizzle on the ground when it passed over it. The crowd bustling along the platforms gave the powered armor troops and their weird lamps a wide berth.

“The fuck are those things?” I hissed to Suri.

“Valusa,” Suri muttered back. “Roughly translates to 'Sandstrider'. Those lamps destroy weak magical items. Wear a spellglove under one of those, and it’ll explode on your arm.”

“I thought they hated magic in Dakhdir?”

“Yeah, they do. No one ever said the Sultir wasn't a huge fuckin' hypocrite.”

Fireblooded weren't allowed in the port, but we'd made a simple-ish plan to get into the city. We were going to conceal our noble status in case things turned pear-shaped. I was now Jurchen Lurou, the Tuun foreman of a mine in Myszno. I’d come to broker a deal with the Iron Merchants Guild in Dalim, a powerful and respected guild with deep criminal connections. Vash and Karalti were my bodyguards, and Suri - with a hood on under her impassive full-plate armor - was our pet Artifact. We'd made a few cosmetic tweaks to her armor to make sure she didn't show any skin. Ebisa had forged us some permit papers showing that Suri had been built in Litvy, and had told us that the customs people would want to see the Maker's Mark and probably charge a tariff based on how much mana she needed to 'power' her. Rin's mark - a diamond made up of four smaller diamonds - was stamped on the inside of one of her pauldrons. It was stupid as hell, but Suri had assured me that, even if the guards saw her own markers of nobility, that they wouldn't let her into the city. The casteless stigma took priority over any title Ignas could give her. Either we snuck her in as cargo, or we weren't getting in.

“There's so many flies!” Karalti grumbled as she tagged along behind me, forming one point of a triangle. We'd traveled first class, so we were near the front of the line, waiting for the gangplank to connect the hovering ship to the platform.

“I know!” Vash was on my left, regarding the scene ahead of us with childlike delight. “These little southron ones are adorable. Look at their fuzzy green butts!”

“Do I really have to like flies to be a Baru?” Karalti scowled, irritably - but gently - brushing one off her nose.

“Absolutely. Flies are the holiest of all creatures. They eat our garbage and prevent disease, they clean our wounds, they nourish the soil that grows our food.” Vash nodded. “Flies, beetles, and bats are all Burna's creatures.”

“I like bats. They smell stinky, but they taste good. And they have a funny texture! Kind of like eating lasagna noodles off a carpet.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “I don't know what's weirder: the image you just inserted into my brain, or the fact that you know what lasagna is.”

“Hector, you ate so much lasagna that I can recall the taste, texture, AND temperature. You liked the kind you were supposed to put in the oven, but you were impatient, so you put it in the magic heat box instead.”

I winced. I had, indeed, eaten a lot of microwaved oven-bake lasagna in my lifetime. “Hey now, don’t be judging.”

“I'm pretty sure it's delicious no matter what,” Karalti said dreamily. “Now I want lasagna.”

Suri,