“How about we don’t,” Neikir snarled. “How about I kill you for this offence, right here, right now? Whoever you are, it doesn’t matter. You speaking to me like this is a disgrace to the entire sect.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Jace nodded. “But you think you’re fit to duel a…mortal?” He motioned to the other scavengers. “You’re lowly enough to have to hurt me with your own hands? Not a good look for an heir to a sect, right?”

  Neikir sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Word will get out. Unless you kill all your workers here, then you’ll have to explain to your father how something came in and killed them all, and you couldn’t stop it.”

  “It’s not a duel. It’s a beating. Apologize, save yourself.”

  “Or what?”

  “What do you want?” the young master sneered.

  “I want you to stop abusing your workers, for one,” Jace said. “I’m sure they’d like it too, if they could speak up about it.”

  Neikir threw down his shield-whip, then flicked his hand out to the floor. He activated a technique card and drew up a swath of metal chips and filings from the floor. They wrapped around his wrist and gauntleted his hand.

  “Apologize,” he demanded, “and I’ll let you off with just a warning.”

  “Ah, so you’re a Wielder like the other guys?” Jace said, purposely trying to hint that he’d defeated other scavengers before.

  He, of course, hadn’t. Not alone. And certainly no one as strong as Neikir. His fingers wanted to tremble, but he forced them to stay still.

  No place to show weakness.

  “Fine,” Neikir snapped. He deactivated his technique card, or its use ran out, and the metal shavings fell to the ground. “In a month. You have a month. Find me and apologize, whoever you are, or I’ll be justified in enacting violence upon you, and it won’t reflect poorly on the sect. You hear? Or just apologize now and be done with it.”

  Jace exhaled. Dealing with this guy was going to be more painful than he thought. He’d caused enough of an interruption, though, that the scavengers were dropping their shield-whips and picking their rifles back up. With any luck, he’d caused enough of a disturbance that they’d be too focussed on him, and the workers would get out without a scratch.

  The workers were already cleaning up the mess they’d made with the boxes and retreating into the shadows of the warehouse. There, they hid, backs against the wall.

  Jace had bought them time. Now, he needed to get himself out of this.

  “So, anyway…” He scratched the back of his head. “I’ll, uh, I’ll be going.”

  “Not so fast,” Neikir snapped. “You have a month. Either you duel me, or you apologize. If you don’t meet me, then I’ll kill all of the workers here. If you care about them so much.”

  Jace blinked a few times. He wasn’t sure if Neikir was bluffing, and he didn’t really want to find out.

  But, he needed to escape. “Sure. Fine,” he said. Then, keeping himself in control, he said, “Meet me at…at the center of the dungeon here. On the tenth level down.”

  Neikir burst out in laughter. “You? You won’t make it past the fourth level, and that’s even if you could find where it is—”

  “In the dungeon, tenth level,” Jace insisted. “Meet me there, or don’t meet me at all. If you want your duel-apology so badly.” He couldn’t afford to waste precious time on the surface waiting for a duel, and certainly not a month.

  “You better show,” Neikir insisted, then straightened out his fingers and pointed at the workers in the wings of the warehouse. “If you don’t, you know the consequences.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be on my way, now.”

  He backed away, keeping them in his sight, then walked along the wharf in the opposite direction of the Luna Wrath. No sense in leading them right to his ship, especially when they needed to convince the harbour staff to let the ship stay.

  Then, as soon as he couldn’t hear the scavengers or workers anymore, he turned his back and ran down the wharf. When he couldn’t see any more workers, and the light of their warehouse was barely a glimmer on the steel wharf, he swung down over the edge, and dropped down to a maintenance walkway a storey beneath the wharf.

  He ran back in the direction of the Wrath, hoping Neikir wasn’t paying too close attention with his senses, until he reached their pier. He climbed back, then slunk along the pier. When he returned to the Wrath’s landing platform, he descended down to the pad and stepped over to the boarding ramp and ran aboard.

  Lessa and Kinfild both stood in the main hold, staring at him. “That took you a while,” Lessa remarked.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Jace unzipped his backpack and plucked out the stolen scavenger outfits, then tossed them to Kinfild and Lessa. “Yeah, and I only got two. Bad news is that I have a duel in a month’s time.”

  “What?” Lessa and Kinfild both exclaimed in unison.

  “There was this Neikir guy. Don’t worry, I told him to find me in the dungeon.” He passed them the uniforms. “Now, cargo inspectors will probably be coming soon. Or whoever they’re going to send. You guys have to be ready to convince them we belong.”

  Dirtmaster had always been the title given to the head of the scavenger sects. It had never been less fitting than now.

  Dirtmaster Seik Tar’s audience hall aboard the Scraphawk’s Talon had polished copper walls and luxurious holographic banners hanging from each wall. A central walkway ran down its center, and on either side was a pool of crystal-clear water. Fountains sprayed mist into the hall, countering the dehumidifying effect of artificial air circulation aboard a battleship.

  At the end of the walkway was a marble dais—stone shipped directly from the Ossel Quarries—with an angular stoutsteel chair atop it and Aes-lanterns burning in a circle around it, almost like a runic formation.

  It was more luxury than any other Dirtmaster had achieved in their lives. But Seik Tar had earned it. Years of hard work had finally paid off, and why shouldn’t he enjoy the results of his effort.

  He’d pulled himself up from nothing. He’d ascended the ranks of the Brakamen sect, and with his abilities as a Wielder, had proven himself capable of taking charge.

  So, when a messenger announced that an envoy from the Eastern Alliance was arriving, Seik Tar had risen to the opportunity. A chance to sign a formal scrap-management contract with a major military power? It could skyrocket their influence in the galaxy. The Brakamen could soon become a household name.

  When the doors on the opposite side of his audience chamber hissed open with a puff of steam, he pretended not to have been expecting any visitors or guests—instead, he held up a glass of Aes-infused wine and took a sip, then whirled around in fake surprise.

  Important figures—especially non-wielder politicians—liked to assert dominance through position and rank, and to establish it early in a conversation. If he were one of them, such pretend surprise would’ve left him on the backfoot.

  But he preferred they underestimate him. At only Level 43, it was likely that some Wielders would underestimate him. A normal human wouldn’t know.

  At first, though, he thought he acted too early. No one passed through the doorway.

  Then came a wheezing breath, and a metallic foot clanked against the perforated steel deck outside the audience hall.

  A single figure stepped through the steam. It was humanoid, but with a hunched back that poked up higher than its masked face. It was spindly and slender, with limbs made entirely of stoutsteel and kyborg joints. A smokestack stuck out its back, chuffing black smoke, and a spherical starcoal furnace-and-boiler setup burned away where a core would’ve otherwise been on a man.

  With each step, it swung its arms. On its wrists were shards of orange Whistling Glass, which lit up and screeched with each swing of his arms. Like gauntlets with gemstone inlays, only these inlays released concentrated plasma Aes with each movement.

  Seik Tar dreaded what would happen if he was on the receiving end of one of those punches.

  He also dreaded to know where this…kyborg got the gems from.

  But it couldn’t just be a kyborg. A faint pressure pushed against him, weighing him down. It was…stronger? He sensed channels flowing around its form, carrying Aes to the reaches of its body and fuelling…were those real organs within its metal ribcage.

  Seik Tar nearly gagged at the sight of it, but he held his composure, then said, “Greetings, exalted envoy. How may I serve you this evening?”

  The Scraphawk’s Talon hovered steadily above Ifskar’s capital city—a stilt city near the equator, where all the administration of the city took place. It was the perfect location for an occupation, and there was no better threat than a battleship blotting out your sun for weeks on end. It wouldn’t have been hard to find, and he hoped he hadn’t wasted too much of this envoy’s time by insisting that they meet here.

  “Seik Tar,” said the envoy in a scratchy, half-human half-mechanical voice. “You are the leader of the Brakamen sect?”

  “I…am. Who am I in the company of?”

  “You may call me Rallemnon.” The kyborg marched down the central walkway of the throne room, drawing close enough that Seik Tar could see his bloodshot eyes through the slit in his mask. “I have been sent by the Generous Hand to retrieve a treasure from this world, and you will not stand in our way. In return, we will sponsor your sect and allow you a pick of the top scrap contracts in Koedor-Terginia.”

  He reached into a pouch on the inside of his robe and produced a scroll of parchment. When unrolled, it displayed a contract with full terms and a wax seal in the bottom corner.

  “Are these terms acceptable?”

  Jumping straight to the point? Seik Tar liked this…Rallemnon. But he didn’t exactly like the terms.

  “What treasure do you speak of?” Seik Tar asked. “We laid claim to this dungeon planet, and by all logic, the prize at the bottom should be ours.”

  “Do you know what it is?” Rallemnon asked, circling around Seik Tar. “I don’t suppose you would. It is a weapon, which scavengers have no need of—and certainly not the likes of you. The Halcyon Spear.”

  “We would sell it.”

  “Our contracts are worth ten times what you’d earn from that spear on the black market.”

  “The Watchmen might pay more.” Seik Tar didn’t exactly know what a Halcyon Spear was, and he didn’t particularly care about its function. But it was clearly valuable if the Alliance wanted it so badly.

  “If you do not willingly assist me, I will venture down into the dungeons of this world alone and retrieve the spear, and then I will kill you. If you try to break the terms of this deal in any way, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  “Not a choice at all, then.”

  “Not a choice.” Rallemnon flicked the sheet with a metallic talon. “Sign it. Now.”

  Seik Tar reached into the pocket of his robe for a pen, but before he could produce one, the other pocket buzzed. A small wireless transmitter whirred, and he plucked it up then activated it. “Yes? Be quick. I am in an important meeting.”

  “Father!” a voice whined through the transmitter’s speaker. “Father, your scavengers are useless. They—”

  Seik Tar shut the transmitter off, ending his son’s voice. Neikir would deal with it, or he wouldn’t, but this meeting was more important. He turned to Rallemnon and said, “Very well. You have a deal.”