Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (best books to read .TXT) 📕

It felt like I needed to say something before she did, get in the first word, or she would dump one of those big walls of words on me to convince me that I should stay with them because it was somehow to the mutual benefit of all three of us.

But Rali was the first one to start talking, and it was obvious what he was most concerned about.

“You’re going to love this stuff, Hake. For the inside, I make a caramel sauce so tasty it’ll make you sick. And I fry the leftover bits of dough into these little mochi chips...” He sighed and threw his walking stick over his shoulder. It donked against something. “When they’re hot off the—”

“Oi!” A pair of arms reached out of the crowd and shoved Rali, knocking him into me. “Watch where you’re swinging that stick, fatso!”

The guy who’d shoved Rali looked familiar, but it took me a second to figure out why. Warcry had picked up a bad enough sunburn that, at first, I thought he was some red-skinned alien. He wasn’t, though, just a ginger who shouldn’t have been wandering around without SPF One Million in a world with three suns.

Rali bowed. “Deepest apologies for my inattention, friend.”

“I ain’t yer friend, fatso,” Warcry snarled. He held up a fist that burst into red flames. “’Less you want yer head beat in, ya best saunter on.”

The Bailiff

I GOT IN FRONT OF RALI. “He said he was sorry, man. Get over it.”

Warcry glared at me. His sunburn was so bad that the whites of his eyes were pink. He scowled when he recognized me.

“The space trash from the shuttle.”

“I thought you were headed toward New Iron Hills,” I said.

“Now I’m here, ain’t I?” He limped forward a step and bumped his chest against mine. “You and your netskin lad got a problem with it?”

“Of course not,” Rali said, stepping up beside us. “There’s plenty of Ghost Town to go around. You’re as welcome here as anyone.”

With his forearm, Warcry shoved Rali back. “Didn’t I tell ya once to saunter on, fat boy?”

I’d taken a lot of crap from jerkwads in my life, but seeing it happen to someone else ticked me off worse than anything.

“I didn’t have a problem until you started shoving people around,” I told Warcry. “If you touch him again, you’re gonna have the problem.”

All around us, people had stopped watching the fight down in the cage and were looking at us. Something moved near my feet.

“That’s a PR-168-L model prosthetic.” Kest had crouched down on her heels to study Warcry’s metal leg. “They’ve got the old-style open joint for the knee, prone to lockup. It’s not a hard fix. If you’ve got a minute, I can clean it out and install an aftermarket shell to keep out obstructions to make up for my brother’s carelessness.”

Warcry’s head and shoulders burst into flames. “Mind your own, netskin. I kicked your boy’s bollix across the shuttle well enough with a locked-up knee, didn’t I?”

I shoved him. “Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.”

Warcry limped back a step to catch himself. The fire raced down his shoulders and arms to cover his fists, and he put them up.

Rali squeezed between us. “Surely we can settle this without—”

A huge hand grabbed my shoulder and lifted me off the ground. I freaked out, thinking maybe Warcry had brought a friend I didn’t notice, and started kicking and swinging elbows behind me, but my shots didn’t hit anything. Then I caught a glimpse of Warcry hanging off the ground with a huge gray ghost hand wrapped around his shoulders.

“Now there, gents,” the kind of smooth voice you heard from movie snake oil salesmen and carnival barkers said, “there’s not going to be violence on this side of the combat wire.”

It was the scrawny fight announcer in the bowler hat. He stepped into the space between Warcry and me, real hands stuffed in his pockets, his set of huge ghost arms holding us up.

“You’re in Of Smoke and Silk land, boys. All violence is our rightful property to package and sell as we like. By attempting to fight independently in our domain, you gents tried to steal from us. Taking the whisky straight from our mouths.” He shook his head. “And that, the OSS simply cannot allow.”

Warcry’s head was on fire again. “Put me down, ya cack-handed—”

Ghostly fingers folded over Warcry’s mouth, muffling his shouts.

“Don’t get yourself worked up apologizing,” the man in the bowler hat said. “I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s entirely unnecessary. See, I’m going to give you a chance to redeem yourself.” He took one webbed hand out of his pocket and gestured at the cage. “Our next fight was about to be canceled on account of someone cut poor Nellie’s throat last night. But because I’m the Bailiff, I can substitute you lads in. No wait, no sweat. And best of all, we’ll put up a reward for the winner.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Rali and Kest whispering about something while the Bailiff talked.

Rali stepped forward, bending into a low bow. “Apologies, honored Bailiff, but Hake is employed by my sister for the day. Could he pay a fine rather than fight so that she might get her credits’ worth from his pledged labor?”

“’Fraid not, my well-mannered son, ’fraid not,” the Bailiff said, tipping back his bowler hat to scratch his forehead. “What’s done is done and can never be undone ’til we’re all done, as the saying goes. But don’t you worry. The OSS’ll pay the going rate for day labor, with a little bonus on top for whatever’s been left undone.”

The Bailiff looked at me and smiled a brush of yellowed baleen-like teeth. “Hake, was it? This is your chance to move up in the world, Hake old buddy.” He glanced over at Warcry. “Or yours. Your HUD profiles say you’re both as of yet unaffiliated. Talk about a stroke of