Ortho was brooding, not that he was showing it. As far as any onlookers were concerned, he was as relaxed as a kakaliz under the sun. His hands were knotted and couched behind his head, his elbows splayed out, and he was whistling a discordant tune that he made up as he went.

But whenever Stella wasn’t watching, he was shooting her death stares. And she hardly ever looked at him.

The thin, winding road they travelled turned abruptly around a thin building. Ortho had no idea how these thin, wobbly structures managed to stay upright, but he supposed it helped that the city wasn’t constantly under siege from monsters the size of houses.

They turned again and the street angled them back the way they’d come from. Stella hissed her frustration at the grey building that towered above her and turned sharply on her heels. Ortho followed behind, revelling in her frustration. He wasn’t busy tonight. The only place he needed to be was right there.

“So, when can I get my stuff back?” he asked casually.

Dangling over Stella’s shoulder was a fat hessian sack containing all of his goods: armour pieces, dog-head helmet, and his prized shield.

Stella didn’t so much as glance sideways. “When I’m in the mood to deal with you.”

Ortho shrugged. “Alright. But what do we do if we get attacked? Don’t you want your client to defend you?” He made sure to rub that word in.

Grumbling to herself, Stella stuffed her hand into the hessian sack and pulled out one of Ortho’s shin guards. Slapped over the core nestled snugly in its back was a piece of paper that had a complex pattern drawn on it in dark lines. As the shin guard moved in her hand, the lines on the paper caught the light and flashed in pearlescent hues.

“If we get attacked, you’re doing nothing,” Stella said, “because all your stuff is torment tagged. It’ll take even the best Nullskyll at least a few minutes to remove the tag without scrambling the afto’s circuits, and then a few minutes more to bind all this stuff. And I doubt you’ve got the same talent in binding and unbinding as a Nullskyll.”

Ortho’s hands tightened into fists behind his head. Stella was touching his gear. That was personal. It took everything Ortho had to press his face into a calm expression. “If you give my stuff back now,” he spoke through gritted teeth, “then I’ll show you how useless those posers are compared to a real warrior.”

“You’ll get your stuff back when you pay off your debt.” Stella stuffed the shin guard back into the hessian bag.

They passed by a group of Shanty-rats sitting around a step. They were all drinking, and they eyed the Stella and Ortho as they passed. Ortho eyed stared directly at the biggest one, daring him to try start something.

Stella lowered her voice. “Someone caught your tail?”

“Huh?”

Stella gave the hessian bag a shake. “You get real jittery whenever you see someone touch it. Even in the guard station you were like that.”

Ortho huffed and looked away. “Because they’re mine.”

“They’re aftos. They’re tools for killing monsters. And people, if that’s what you’re into.”

“The armour belonged to my mother,” Ortho snapped. “And if you want to see a murder, touch them one more time without my permission.”

Stella tipped her head back and let out a long groan. “I can’t wait to get out of this grupp pen of a situation.”

“What?” he said condescendingly. “Poor little fence doesn’t want me to be her client anymore?”

“I don’t want to be associated with you. But I got all your debts lumped onto me, so this is how it’s going to work.”

She rounded on him, forced them both to a stop in the middle of the street. Passing citizens, hauling their day’s production by in thin trolleys, eyed them suspiciously. Ortho puffed his chest and welcomed any threats, from them and Stella.

The sneering fence leaned in and poked him in the chest. “My party needs a tank to prevent them from suiciding themselves on the first heliotoma they meet, and you just so happen to be a tank who owes me. So, you’re going to work until you turn green, and then I’m going to head back to the Unfortunate Maid for a nice—a mediocre—beer.”

Ortho slapped her hand away hard enough to make Stella wince. “I’m no damned tank,” he growled. “I’m a warrior of Nubah Kilebhi. The only thing I tank is the wine I down after another successful hunt.”

“Wow, don’t try to be too modest.”

The sack kept swinging idly towards Ortho. He was really considering just taking it from Stella. It wasn’t like she could stop him. If this was a year and a bit ago, his father would have had words with him for just thinking such a thing. Ortho was supposed to be an example for the tribe. So much for that.

As though reading his thoughts, Stella turned and thrust her phone in his face. The scent of steel and stinging oxon running through its circuits tickled his nostrils. The screen showed two enma charts.

 

Ortho Nubah Kilebhi

Level: 24

Classification: Dungeoneer

Rank: Aspirant (E)

Forms (Flow / Spike):

Whim: 34 / 37

Ease: – / –

Blame: – / –

Conform: – / –

Urge: – / –

Torment: – / –

 

Stella ������

Level: 20

Classification: Fence, Freelance

Rank: Kin

Forms (Flow / Spike):

Whim: 30 / 36

Ease: 26 / 30

Blame: 35 / 40

Conform: 22 / 29

Urge: 30 / 37

Torment: 22 / 33

 

Ortho blinked at the screen in confusion. “Is this supposed to prove something?”

“Yeah, it proves I’m stronger than you,” Stella said. She pocketed her phone again. “So don’t try anything, or I will shove so much enma down your throat that your stomach will burst.”

Ortho scoffed. “Please, sister. I can hit you faster than you can meld empty air.”

“Not with my blame spike at forty, you can’t.”

“What are you going to do? Give me a little push?”

Stella shifted the hessian sack behind her back and got in Ortho’s face. She bared her teeth at him. “Want to see? You think I grew up on a grupp farm and never learned how to meld?”

Ortho chuckled deep and obnoxiously loud. He spread his arms wide, letting the wadis fixed on his wrists glint in the light pouring out of the windows all around. “You think a guy that grew up fighting monsters in the plains of Huhl Hadem never learned how to defend himself without an afto?”

“I know you can’t defend yourself without an afto,” Stella said, poking a finger against his chest. “Because I research every one of my clients before letting them into the dungeon, and I know you’re a helpless sheep when naked.”

Ortho was tempted to grab her finger and squeeze it until it broke. However, even without his father to lord over his every mistake, demanding he set a better example for the tribe, Ortho wouldn’t stoop so low.

He leaned in and almost butted his forehead against Stella’s. There was alcohol on her breath, and the dregs of pork stuck between her teeth blended with it into a scent that made Ortho want to puke. “Then you should have done more research, because a warrior of Nubah Kilebhi is never unarmed.”

Stella rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Warrior this. Huhl Hadem that. And here you are, oh brave warrior, slumming it out in Shanties.”

“Oh, believe me,” Ortho growled. “This is nothing compared to the crap I’ve slept in. My life would make a delicate little flower like you pale.”

“Delicate?” Stella shrieked. She shoved a hand in Ortho’s face. In the soft light pouring from workshop windows, still whirring away in the dead of night three stories above, he could make out the callouses on her hands. “Does this look delicate to you? That’s what a lifetime on a grupp farm looks like, and I’ve got some nasty scars to go with it.”

“Pah! Grupps.” Ortho lifted the leg of his shorts to reveal a deep, angry scar that ran across his thigh. “This is what it looks like when you fight real monsters, not some oversized goats, or bug-eyed monkeys down in Anypaxia’s pathetic excuse for a dungeon.”

“Woah, you’re so cool!” Stella said sarcastically. “I bet there isn’t a single dungeoneer in this city who’s faced a super strong monster before like you have. That must be why you love this city: because you can show off all day instead of living up to your own hype!”

Ortho eyed the sack slung over Stella’s shoulder. “Oh, believe me, sister, there’s nothing I like about this place. It smells like sewage all around, and that’s only half because you’re here.”

Stella threw a hand to the side. “Then go. If you hate it here so much, then why don’t you go back to your precious family and all their made-up honour.”

“Because they’re all dead!”

Stella’s jaw went slack. Whatever retort she’d had prepared for Ortho clearly died on her tongue. That had shut her up, but Ortho felt dirty for having to use his dead family to put her in her place. It would have been easier to just hit her, honour be damned.

Collecting herself, Stella leaned back and shook her head. “It’s always a sob story with you,” she said softly.

Ortho’s hands balled into fists. Softly, he growled, “Open your mouth one more time and I will—”

“Cry into your arms!”

Both Stella and Ortho froze when they heard the oily voice. Five dark-clothed figures emerged onto the street, coming out of alleys and doorways, blocking Stella and Ortho’s escape. They’d emerged so suddenly and so smoothly that it was like they came straight up from the ground like a nuedal.

Then a sixth man emerged from the alley. His pinstripe suit was worn loose and the collar of his black shirt was popped. When he flashed his teeth, speckles of multicoloured light danced across the buildings.

“Oh, did Morder interrupt a lover’s quarrel?” the Buitre mocked them.