Page 20 of The Only Way Out Is Up

EIGHT

It’s very satisfying to drop in on Ekkeban in the small hours of the morning and lay the treasures from Ky’s house across his counter; the pile of bits he builds as he sorts through them is impressively large. It becomes somewhat less so when he deducts enough to cover my tab, but it’s enough to keep the bakery in mash for some time. And I’ve still got the sword in reserve—I’ll sell it eventually, but I wanted to study it first. I’d love to be able to duplicate it for Star.

I’ve had no sleep since the night before last, and by the time I get back to the bakery I’m ready to drop. But the front door is still shut, so I have to run the gauntlet in back, where Somi is distributing bread to the usual suspects.

“Taj!”

“Tah!”

And a wetness at my shin that indicates someone is gumming my pants leg.

“Morning, Taj,” Somi says, his voice carefully neutral. “You’ve been… busy.”

He fixes me with a disapproving glare. I give him a broad smile and a shrug. “Late night.”

“Spike was worried about you.”

“She should know me better than that.”

“Taj!” Ema says, tugging at my arm. “Can we see Star?”

Star is already inside in one of his tunnels; I don’t want to answer questions about why he looks so different. I pat Ema’s head, which she hates; she shoves my hand away and runs her fingers through her rat’s nest of straw-colored hair.

“Not today. He’ll come play with you another time.”

“Stah!” Athie says excitedly.

“Taj is very tired,” Somi says. “And his pants are filthy, Gort, stop chewing on them. Here, have a nice mash-bun instead.”

Somi’s not wrong, but being dismissed rankles. He’ll change his tune quickly enough when I toss him the purse I got from Ekkeban, though. I detach Gort and point him in Somi’s direction.

“We’ll talk later,” Somi mutters as I slip past.

“You’re not dead,” Spike says from the kitchen.

“I hope you didn’t clean out my room already.”

“Not quite yet.” She sticks her head out and adds in a low tone, “Don’t think you’re getting out of toilet cleaning that easily.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Did you win?”

“In a manner of speaking.” I can’t help a bit of a smile, and Spike’s eyes light up. “You’ll see.”

I have a present for her in my pack. Somi too. But right now my bed is calling me with an irresistible siren song. I stagger into my room, shut the door, and collapse; the world disappears for ten or twelve hours.

When I wake up I have to spend a while massaging my bad leg before it consents to bear my weight again. I should wash, but the basin is downstairs and I’m not up to facing people just yet.

Instead I sit at my workbench and start working on Star’s new combat body. I retrieved the remains of the Mark 3 from Ekkeban, but it’s so badly damaged it’s easier to strip out the surviving sigils and start again. So this will be the Mark 4, bigger and stronger than ever. I’ll need a lot more supplies to finish it, but there’s enough to make a beginning.

Star pops up through the hatch in the floor and scuttles over. He spends a while watching me lay out fresh metal plates and spars.

[Observation: when Somi repairs you, you can’t even bear to watch.]

I get a sudden memory of his needle tugging at the edges of my seared flesh and swallow bile. Yeah, yeah. You runics are superior because you don’t have stomachs to turn.

[Self-evidently.]