At coral tide the next morning, Kest, Warcry, and I grabbed breakfast at the Black Pearl’s fancy buffet on the roof. The dome overhead seemed almost close enough to touch from there, shining a pale gray with an orangey-magenta sunrise tinge creeping into one side.

  The host seated us at a four-top, me and Kest on one side, and Warcry and the baby basket on the other. We went up to the buffet in turns, two of us filling our plates while the third waited with the sleeping infant, even though the only other patron there that early—a huge musclebound blue Kaner—looked too drunk on sake and bloody marys to steal him.

  The buffet stretched from one end of the roof to the other. I picked out some grilled fish on a stick, onigiri decorated with smiling sand dollars cut out of nori, biscuits, and a little disposable cup of something my brain translated to “deluxe sea honey butter.”

  From an ice chest at the end of the buffet, I grabbed two Coffee Dranks, one for me and one for Kest. I offered to get Warcry one, but he turned up his nose at it because of “trash nutrition and impurities.” He got a bottle of purified water and a carton of manatee milk instead.

  Based on the incredibly pungent bowl of natto and pickled vegetables he’d dipped himself, I couldn’t imagine all that going down smoothly.

  After we’d all sat back down—thankfully upwind of Warcry’s breakfast—Kest double-checked that our silencers were active, then leaned in.

  “So, Hake,” she asked in a low voice, “how did your side business go last night?”

  My fingers slipped off the pop-top on my Coffee Drank, and I skinned my knuckles, almost smashing the whole can off the table. I caught it in the nick of time.

  To play for time, I opened it the rest of the way and sucked some of the spillage off the top of the can. I hadn’t told Kest or Warcry that I’d been planning to undermine Takeshi. I figured the less they knew, the safer they would be. But they were probably going to find out sooner rather than later now that things were in motion.

  “Depends on who you ask.”

  Kest leveled a flat look at me. “Assume I’m asking you, since you’re the one I addressed the question to.”

  “Spill it, grav,” Warcry said, stirring his natto. Strings of goo stuck to his chopsticks. “What’d you muck up, and who’s coming to kill us for it?”

  “I killed Agent Rav, made an alliance with a Technol trying to go straight, and promised to hand over Selk’s branch of the CPA to him. And no one’s coming after us. Yet. When a certain Komodo Dragon does, I think it’ll just be me he comes after.”

  The ginger snorted. “Like we ain’t got enough on our fight card.”

  “I’m taking care of it,” I snapped. “You guys worry about winning the electoral tournament, so he doesn’t have an excuse to go after you. Leave the rest to me.”

  “‘Lads’ means your problems are my problems, don’t it,” Warcry said, stabbing his chopsticks at my face. I leaned back a little to get away from the tangy, rotten, earthy natto smell. “You take on the Emperor, I take on the Emperor.”

  The baby whimpered, squirming in his basket.

  “Not that it’ll make any difference, will it?” Warcry said, forcing a calmer tone. “Just that we’ll both get crushed.”

  I wasn’t going to let that happen. Instead of sleeping the night before, I had used all the caffeine-induced wakefulness to come up with a backup plan for if Takeshi-ketsu went on the rampage before I was ready. I was about ninety-nine percent sure it would kill my dual problems of Hungry Ghost and Komodo Emperor with one stone.

  But I kept that to myself. Going kamikaze isn’t something you tell your friends about until it’s too late for them to stop you.

  I pointed my onigiri at the basket. “Did Hyla ever tell you what his name was?”

  Warcry glanced down at the baby.

  “Bodhi.” He crossed his arms. “It’s an old Qaspar name. Means ‘warrior at peace.’ Anyway, that’s what she claims she called him. Bodhi Thompson. Can’t even trust her for that much.”

  Then he jerked his chin at me. “Keep that in mind, grav. You can’t trust a word she says.”

  “Me?” I bit a piece of sticky rice off my thumb. “Why do I have to keep it in mind?”

  “’Cuz you’re trash at handling women, ain’t you? You reckon they’re all innocent. I’m warning ya now, Hyla’ll sense that weakness and use it to chew you up before you know what’s happening.”

  “I’m not trash at handling women.”

  Using the clean end of his chopsticks, Warcry ticked off fingers. “There was that psionic dancer on Sarca… Sanya-ketsu… that slag with the Voltage Spirit in the Contrails’ Beauty Versus Beasts broadcasting center…”

  “That gangster girl the Emperor had you target last month,” Kest interjected, looking up from her HUD. “She almost killed you.”

  “She got off one lucky shot,” I argued.

  “Because you saw she was female and hesitated,” Kest said.

  Warcry looked at me like See? and put up a third finger.

  Female Puppetmaster last night only adds to their evidence, Hungry Ghost stuck his nasal cavity into our conversation. Death cultivator nearly paid for his hesitation then as well.

  “Hyla’s landing on Selk in a couple days?” I asked Warcry, my voice a little too loud as I tried to drown out the skull stone. I gulped down some Coffee Drank. “That was fast. She must’ve been close by.”

  Warcry took the subject-changing bait. “She was entered in Fight Month on Ku-Noctred. It’s another inner planet, so she ain’t got far to travel.”

  Kest’s eyebrows jumped. “That tournament’s an invitational, isn’t it? No weight, gender, or age classes?”

  “Yeah, and she was tearing it up, too.” He shook his head. “Bleedin’ waste.”

  “I mean, it is her kid,” I said. “That’s more important than some tournament.”

  “That title was hers to lose and she forfeited it,” Warcry argued. “The way she’s been fighting lately, Sam-ben-Garcia was the only FM competitor who could’ve beat her. Sam’s an intuitive fighter, but that only gets you so far, yeah? Hyla’s all technique and head games.” He tapped his forehead. “She gets up here and she stays up here.”

  Obviously, I didn’t say out loud.

  But Hyla giving up her shot at a title for her kid made me respect her more. She might tear your head off so she could laugh at the blood geysering out of the stump, but I’d met plenty of friendlier people who wouldn’t have given up breakfast for their kid.

  Warcry went on, listing all the reasons she shouldn’t have, but he was stretching so far that it came off sounding like he was making excuses. Like, if she had stayed and won the title instead, he would’ve said she should’ve forfeited it for her kid.

  So maybe Hyla the Hangman wasn’t the only toxic ex from the Burning Hatred cultivator-vindictive Nameless Ylef relationship.

  ***

  With sixty-four champions remaining in the electoral tournament, sixteen bouts were scheduled for that day and then sixteen the next. Apparently, they had it set up the same way until the tournament got down to its final eight. Then they would do a night of four bouts, one night off, a night of two bouts, and then the championship on the last night.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  It was an incomprehensible system, but I guess it must have made for big money in ticket sales, concessions, souvenirs, and hyperweb pap-per-viewing.

  Since he’d beaten the electoral tournament’s number three seed the day before, Warcry’s next fight was supposed to kick off later that afternoon, almost in the evening when the serious candidates’ matches started.

  I was hoping he would want to chill in his room until then, so Kest and I could hang out. It felt like she and I hadn’t been alone once since we landed on Selk, and that ring was burning a metaphorical hole in my Crucible Casket. If we could snag even five seconds without someone else breathing down our necks, I swore I was just going to blurt out, “Will you marry me?”

  Actually, maybe not like that. Hopefully I’d think of something better by then.

  Plus, I still hadn’t heard how things went with her dad after we left the party.

  But Warcry had cultivated a ton of Burning Hatred Spirit overnight, and he wanted to spend the morning condensing. On Sarca, Warcry had told me that he hadn’t been overcultivated since before he advanced to Ten, back when he and Hyla were training rivals. That message-fight with her the night before must’ve really gotten to him.

  I suggested he condense alone in the safety of his room, but Warcry wanted to do it in Pearl City’s galaxy-famous Park of the Tranquil Eye, which had supposedly been built on an ancient cultivation locus. That meant his bodyguard had to go condense with him to make sure there were no repeats of the Chibi Incident.

  Turned out Kest had some interviews to do that morning anyway, so we split up. The Malleable Metal master of the Heartblood Crown went off to get her public relations stuff done, while Warcry, me, and Baby Bodhi caught a rickshaw across town.

  The best we had come up with at breakfast for a babysitting plan was just to switch off watching him until Hyla got there. Kest would take Bodhi during Warcry’s matches, I would watch him if she and Warcry both had something to do at the same time, and Warcry would take him the rest of the time or if my newly complicated side gig with Selk’s CPA called unexpectedly.

  Since I knew exactly zero about babies, I had my fingers crossed that Kest and Warcry never had something to do at the same time.

  Park of the Tranquil Eye was on the opposite edge of the dome from the ancient temple I’d been Claiming the Dead from over the last few days. Our rickshaw rolled out of the hotels and entertainment section of Pearl City into a neighborhood of townhouses and brownstones, all perfectly painted and picketed by wrought iron gates, then along streets with sprawling Victorian mansions surrounded by walls made of lava rocks, sea glass, and other undersea fencing materials.

  As we passed one, I stretched up a little in my seat to see what kind of yard the rich people were protecting from us undesirables. Instead of grass, they had lawns of sparkling black sand dotted with fountains and dry coral formations.

  At the edge of Pearl City’s dome, our rickshaw pulled up to an arched tunnel that stretched out the side of the dome into the ocean. A brass plaque with To Park of the Tranquil Eye had been riveted over the gate.

  We paid our driver and hopped out, Warcry packing Bodhi’s basket. The baby had fallen asleep during the ride, but the second we were on solid unmoving ground, he instantly woke up. I held my breath and waited for Bodhi to go wild, but he just looked around, let out a shuddery sigh, and zonked again. Apparently, when they weren’t screaming, babies slept a lot.

  There was a two-credit fee for non-Selkens that the gate charged to our HUDs automatically as we walked through into the tunnel.

  In contrast to the sky-like illumination of the dome over the city, the tunnel’s barrier was crystal clear. Because we were so far below the surface, the only light came from thin blacklight safety strips along the edges of the walkway and phosphorescent deep-sea creatures passing by outside.

  Warcry and I both stopped and stared out at the passing tornados of schooling fish, giant sea turtles, and something that looked like a cross between a glowing man-o-war jellyfish and a whale. In the distant darkness, the barely visible edge of a kelp forest waved in the currents.

  An octopus crawled overhead, suckers pulling it across the arched glass, and giving me a half-second of fight or flight. But the glimpse I got of the thing’s eyes weren’t anything like Ling Fey’s from the night before. These were full of animal frankness, like it was moving on instinct rather than malice or conniving. Judgment Beyond the Veil hadn’t even show me anything from the sea creature, so I took that to mean the octopus was a beast not a person.

  Our HUDs beeped with an automated message from the Park of the Tranquil Eye, snapping us out of our mesmerized awe of the depths.

  Non-locals, please be aware of the narrowness of the entrance/exit tunnel to the Park of the Tranquil Eye. Politely limit gawking until you are in the park proper to avoid obstructing the entrance/exit for others. Thank you, and have a tranquil visit!

  No one was waiting for us to move in either direction, but we took the hint and headed for the park at the end of the tunnel. The archway opened into a dome much smaller than the city’s, but with the same clear barrier.

  Similar to the fancy lawns we had passed, the Park of the Tranquil Eye had sand instead of grass, this time of black and white. A handful of park employees were busy raking the white sand into lacy designs across the black. If you swam to top of the dome outside and stared in, it probably looked just like the eye of a happy Selken.

  There were a few other cultivators already there, well spaced out and barely visible in the thin strip of blacklights that lined the park’s winding walkway. They sat on benches looking out into the darkness and did Swallowing the Universe breathing, or stood off to the side doing gentle moving meditations. No one spoke, and there were no hidden speakers playing storm sounds. The only sounds came from the workers’ rakes hissing through the sand.

  The air in the park was so cold and so pure that it was right on the verge of uncomfortable. It smelled like winter in the middle of a field of newly fallen snow, but without that nostril-crisping dryness. Tension from the Coffee Drank, the lack of sleep, the search for attackers, and everything else seeped out of my shoulders and neck. Warcry’s fists relaxed, and in the basket, the baby got a goofy grin on his face.

  Curious, I switched over to Ki-sight.

  A fog of robin’s egg blue Soothing Spirit swirled along the ground like mist, while waves of pale gray Purification Spirit drifted up from the sand, absorbing and cleansing spiritual and physical contaminants, before filtering through the ceiling into the ocean.

  It was the sand. Each grain had been imbued with one of the Spirit constructs, black with Soothing, white with Purification.

  By silent agreement, Warcry and I found an empty area and settled into the lotus position with our backs to the dome and the basket between us.

  Warcry closed his eyes and focused on creating whatever shape Burning Hatred condensed into. He wasn’t exhibiting any of the telltale jitters, coked-up-dog-with-the-zoomies hyperness, or word vomit I’d had the first time I overcultivated. But he had been more talkative at breakfast and on the drive over than he usually was on match days, which probably meant he had a lot of condensing to do to keep from burning down the hotel while we slept tonight.

  Since my Spirit sea wasn’t hurting for storage space, and almost all of my Miasma was already wound into tight turquoise spiral galaxies, threaded through with veins of Cursed Death, I kept my eyes open. I pushed Dead Reckoning out far enough to warn me if an attack came toward us, and worked on pulling in the different Spirits from the park and surrounding waters and converting them, first to the Mortal supertype, then to Miasma I could actually use.

  Most cultivators didn’t bother with Spirit conversion, but I practiced it often enough that I was starting to get the hang of it. There was sort of a trick to it, in that it went faster if you could figure out how to connect the foreign Spirit’s supertype to yours. Sort of like the Six Degrees game or one of those word puzzles where you changed one letter at a time to make new words until you got to the one the puzzle wanted. Like, if I started out with Hydrothermal Spirit from one of the nearby lava vents, which was an Elemental supertype, I could connect it to the idea of the Saline Life Spirit from the creatures that lived around the vents, which were Organic supertypes. Obviously, everything organic eventually died, which led to the Mortal supertype, and from there it was a short hop to Death Spirit.

  By the time Warcry reopened his eyes and jerked his head at the exit, I had managed a decent amount for a conversion session. And with all the Soothing and Purification in the air, the exhaustion from the sleepless night had drained away, leaving calm, clear-headed energy in its place. I was actually glad we had come all the way out here.

  After all that peace and quiet, the creak of the basket when Warcry picked up the sleeping Bodhi and the crunch of the sand beneath our boots sounded unnaturally loud as we headed for the exit.

  Some cultivators cracked an eyelid as we passed. One dude, a ripped yellow guy in a black gi and hakama, swiveled his head to watch us. His stare made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  Once we were a few yards beyond him, he went to messing around on his HUD.

  That ratcheted my Alert gauge into the High zone.

  He was the only person I’d seen on a HUD since we walked into the Park of the Tranquil Eye. Everybody else was too consumed by the quiet and clean air to think about their electronics.

  I reinforced Dead Reckoning to make sure he didn’t follow us.

  The darkness of the tunnel swallowed Warcry and me. The safety strips to either side of the walkway cast an eerie blacklight glow. I craned my neck to look behind us, checked the low ceiling, and scoured the brightly lit opposite end of the tunnel. All empty except us. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

  “Something’s wrong here,” I told Warcry in a low voice.

  His eyes darted around. “Where’s it coming from?”

  “Could be another candidate making their move. There was a guy back in the park messing around on his HUD. He might’ve—”

  Dead Reckoning pinged, warnings coming in from in front, behind, and overhead all at the same time.

  I threw up a Death Metal shield over our heads and hooked the second behind us.

  “Incoming in front,” I yelled.

  Warcry blasted out an inferno of Burning Hatred down the city side of the tunnel.

  The fire roared over a bulky void.

  A musclebound humanoid gecko in black shinobi shozoku appeared where the void had been, a jetpack strapped to his back. The muscles in his arms and legs were so huge that it looked like his shozoku was fighting for its life to hold them in. Even his fat gecko tail bulged with sinew. Thick, ugly veins pulsed in his exposed skin like they were trying to tear their way out.

  Eight beefed-up ninjas dropped from the tunnel’s low ceiling to surround us, all of them at various levels of Unsafely Ripped. All of them wore a jetpack, except for one jacked hawk guy sporting more muscle than any ten other bird guys I’d seen put together.

  The gecko’s thick tongue poked out of his hood and licked his eye.

  “Heavenly Contrails send regards, Dragon scum,” he barked. “You die now.”