Yet, she’d given in last night to that urge.
It was as if it offered up freedom of the body, the knowledge of all existence. The seed in need of fertilization. The silence of Death. The underlying want to hurt another. Underpinning all of her being, her thoughts and hatreds. Drawing them forth from the depths of her mind and body. From deep within her soul.
Whispers of truths from her past.
What did it all mean?
“You’re finally back, Snow Eyes. Took your time.”
She tamped down the fleeting visions of Wren naked atop her, beat down the longing within the mist. Stilled her flapping heart.
Evander leaned against a tabletop. He tilted his head as if looking at something that wasn’t there. And then he smiled as he stared intently on the small swell of her breasts under the miner’s tunic.
“What do you want?”
“Elian wants to see you. After your stunt last night at the villa, he ain’t pleased. I tried to talk him down, but he wasn’t having it.”
His mere presence made Ashe’s skin crawl as she thought back to the dead servant. Evander’s red aura was a sickening tint of garnet, a far cry different than Wren’s. He’d enjoyed her killing the man, she realized. Made him want her even more. Zenith’s cock, she had to be even more wary of him going forward. “Why?”
Instead of answering, Evander’s face glazed, jaw slack, listening to the unseen voices in his head again. He was truly a peculiar person. Blazing red around him. Back to her, “Elian wants to see you.”
“You said that.”
“You ever gon’ accept my offer?” he asked as Ashe pushed out of the booth. She steeled her face, barren of emotion. She didn’t respond. “One day, you’ll be mine, Snow Eyes,” he called after her.
Even the Pentax couldn’t make that a reality. “Stop calling me that,” she yelled back.
Toward the back of the tavern sat a man upon a gilded throne. Overweight with a balding pate of a constant flush, Elian had a scraggly yet thick beard over ruddy cheeks and a stomach as round as a column base. In the cushions that were his cheeks, sat deep brown eyes. He had no aetheurgy like some of the other gang leaders, but the man was as smart and clever as they came. Brutal too, willing to spill blood for the right amount of quadrans.
Two brutes flanked the gang leader, two of the dirtiest buggers in all of Drenth: Quick Fingers Cyrus and Red Tulio.
Quick Fingers had a rodent-like face, pinched and fuzzy. He was a shrewkin, a dubious race found in Filfangin. Shrewkin were of a similar size to lapin but much nastier in appearance and behavior. Quick Fingers had beady eyes and a wiry body. His overly elongated fingers were always in motion because he was, as were most shrewkin, a deft thief. A wheellock pistol was stuffed into his belt; a cudgel strapped to his hip. He goggled her as she approached. Quick Fingers once tried to cop a feel, but his fingers weren’t so fast when she sliced a pinky off as payment for his unwelcome advance. He never bothered her again after that.
Whereas Quick Fingers was small and jittery, Red Tulio was lumbering and calm. A massive male orcir, tall and bulging with muscles under his grey-green flesh. He had a massive underbite and a misshapen nose, broken from too many fistfights, chocolate-colored eyes, and possessed a shock of red hair on both scalp and face. Most orcir were odorous and uncouth, but Red Tulio’s rare orcirish coloring wasn’t why he was called Red Tulio, no, it was because he liked to bathe in the blood of any poor sot unlucky to be in his path.
“Girl,” Elian started, running a fat finger over the horns of the satyr mask, his aura a sickly emerald. Greed. “Sit.” His gruff demeanor made her cringe but sit she did. The bastard had taken her in on Neenah’s word, and she didn’t want to offend him. Didn’t mean she had to grovel, though. “A fine relic of Eminence. Worth every bit of coin they said it would fetch. Brio’s been hot lately, what with His Festival of the Grape upcoming.”
“Is it?”
“It is. But I hear you almost got nicked. Using that gift of yours in full view.” Nobody outside Elian’s crew and the vicars knew of her ability to use aetheurgy, so her alarm rose.
“You said this job might lead me closer to discovering my parents.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
He shrugged. “Guess my contact was wrong. Perhaps you should’ve stuck with the Scattered Shards,” he continued, “being so reckless. I don’t need vicars turning their steely gaze on my endeavors. Scourges are one thing, girl. Same with Solanine. Last thing we need is another gang upended.”
Regardless of her trying not to, Ashe felt her cheeks flush. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Killian Ness got himself seized while making a deal with the Gutter King. Tried swindling the rebel bastard. Serves him right. Resourceful, Ness may’ve been, but you can’t outfox the Gutter King. He’s entrenched deep in Drenth.”
The Gutter King, the myth of Drenth. Ashe knew very little about the rebel leader. He was difficult to spy on, and no amount of aetheurgy gained her any closer inspection. The histrionics with the bombs indicated the Gutter King was making his move against Lu Har and the Imperium. Only with open warfare on the horizon would one decide to level the aethecite factories.
Say what the people of Drenth did about the Gutter King, the man had some seedpods on him.
A grin split Elian’s husky face. “I know what you’re thinking, your secret’s safe with me, lass. You’ve earned me my fair share. But that means others may be wondering what you mean to my operation. Many know only Shards sprat have tattoos such as yours.”
“Basing that hypothesis on a bit of ink?” Soft cough, she put the back of her hand to her mouth. “Hope Solanine’s ass tastes better than that.” A deeper pulmo cough followed the first. At least it kept her from saying something else stupid.
“Pulmo’s an unpleasant death, I’m afraid.” Elian made a sympathetic gesture, though, there wasn’t much sympathy in it. But he pointed toward the Terris rune upon her inner wrist. “I pay to know the right information. You really think I let you join my crew without knowing all there is about you? Come on, girl, you’re smarter than that.”
Did Neenah tell him? She thought to look at the smuggler but refrained. “Who’d you have to slice up for that intel? Hope it wasn’t the one you call mother.” Much to her detriment, she couldn’t keep her tongue quiet sometimes.
Elian chuckled, his flabby jowls jiggling. “Does it matter?” He handed the mask to Quick Fingers and stood, a perceptible groan of appreciation from the throne. Standing over her, he glared down his bovine gut. “If Solanine knows of a Shards-trained sprat’s running amok in the second sector, then you can bet your pretty little face the other gang leaders know as well. Just remember who you can trust and who you can’t. It might save your life on the next job. I don’t want to go the way of Ness and I won’t allow any of my crew to make it so. Drenth’s no place for unwary little birds.”
It wasn’t empathy, O Pentax no. It was because of her aetheurgy. A man like Elian could only get so far up the gang ladder without having his grease-coated fingers in other places. But her aetheurgy had led Elian to a rung above most.
And worst, she knew he owned her.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“What’s what?” A lazy swirl of mist circled about her ankles.
“Don’t play coy with me, girl?” Elian said, pointing at the golden braids about her wrist and fingers.
Ashe lifted her left hand, the one now garbed with the golden bangle. “It’s nothing. Just a babble I bought in Marketside.” The mist prodded her ankles like a toddler pestering their parents to buy them a stuffed doll. “I liked the colors,” she lied.
