I wait to hear what she has to say, but she simply takes a little more food and fills her mouth, chewing while staring at me with what I take to be a you going to let him talk to you like that, sort of stare.
“I have something for you,” I tell her, changing the subject before it can be raised. My blood boils with fury at the way Tusk spoke to me, but I do have something for her.
“For me?”
“Servants!”
* * *
Jax
A heavy metal box is rolled into the room between two beefy korabi servants. What does it contain? Some instrument of vile torture, I’ll warrant. Something designed to make me regret the fact I ever drew breath. He's going to take all that rage he must feel, given the way that odd Tusk spoke to him, out on me.
Krush hooks open one drawer with his royal claw. I see a row of silver tools laid out before me, pincers, crushers, bolt cutters, wire strippers, a grinder… oh gods, what is he going to do with the grinder?
“If you need anything else to manufacture another leg, I will have it brought to you. If you prefer, I can have a korabi technician fashion you one. I thought you would prefer to make your own.”
I would prefer to make my own. I’m surprised he knows that about me. I’m surprised he is bringing me materials. And tools. He must know this is all much more than I need to make a leg. I can't believe he has done this for me.
“Thank you, sire…”
He lets his fingers drift beneath my chin for a moment. “Call me Krush.”
Oh gods. The king likes me. Likes me likes me.
“I may be gone for some time," he says. “Feel free to make a mess.”
Five
Krush
Tusk’s nerve outweighs his actual influence by a significant factor, but I let him speak to me as he liked because I am not yet ready to show him what he is dealing with.
I have no intention of choosing a mate at the choosing ceremony. I have even less intention of living my life by Tusk’s outdated rules. He is going to learn the hard way.
I need some time out of this damn palace. Everything here is a twisted lie. Everybody inside it is either a captive or a puppeteer, and more often than not, both.
I go to the city. To Megaris proper. I have always felt a kinship with the city. I like the way it runs according to its own laws. Elite humans will tell you that there is an inherent order to the city, but the truth is that order only exists inside the programming they run through their augmentations. The real Megaris is filthy and unpredictable. It is the scum that make this place what it is. They are the lowest of the low, they have the least of anybody, and yet they are the character and the spirit of the entirety. They are also my preferred prey.
This city is not merely a place where humans toil and suffer, and where soldiers oppress. It is also a place where the elite have a very good time within the limited boundaries of their allowed experience, and where korabi might also enjoy themselves if they are prepared to put up with the occasional scum incursion—which I am. Killing scum is one of the last pleasures left to me.
My club of choice is called Last Seconds. I enter it unobserved. Humans with elite augmentations are not allowed to see anything I do not wish them to see. Even if they were to remove their augs for some reason, and my form was to register on their little ocular nerves, they would not allow themselves to believe what they were seeing.
I order a drink. And then another drink. I follow it with another beverage. And then, feeling somewhat thirsty, I imbibe another brew. This goes on for some time. How long, I do not know. I am not paying attention to time. I am musing in a maudlin fashion, and that takes as long as it takes. Outside the day grows light and then turns dark again. I lose track of how many times it does that.
When I am here, I am nothing. I am nobody. The concerns and agendas of the palace mean absolutely nothing. They are so remote they stop existing entirely.
“Sire.”
“What.”
I don't need to turn my head to know that it is Krow, the head of security. My father’s head of security. He did not resign in shame following my father’s assassination. He did not cast himself from the highest point of our highest peak as atonement either. He kept his position and pretended as though he had not failed all of us. I wonder if he knows what Tyvian knows, that Rath K’zar is loose somewhere, perhaps outside the walls, perhaps inside them.