After Kest and I split ways for the night, I interrogated Hungry Ghost about how he was getting through Jealous as the Grave, but the ancient khan wouldn’t say a word unless I released him. That wasn’t an option. Not unless I wanted to turn Pearl City into another mass grave. So I told Hungry Ghost what he could do instead in language that would’ve had Gramps washing my mouth out with soap.

  I showered and got in bed, but sleep didn’t come. I tossed and turned until the covers were tangled and one of the pillows flopped onto the floor.

  If Sushi had been there, she would have yelled at me and swam off in a huff to sleep in my shoe or on the pile of clothes on the floor. She’d been gone long enough that I was used to her not taking up half my pillow anymore, but I still missed the dorky little fish. I hoped Rali was taking care of her. Letting her hunt and play and do her weird fish stuff. He probably was. He might hate me now, but he’d always treated Sushi like one of the gang.

  As long as I wasn’t sleeping, I figured I might as well cultivate. The Spirit in the hotel was mostly stuff like Electrical Spirit, Organic Spirit, and Manufactured Fiber Spirit. A strangely low amount of Pollution Spirit for being in the middle of a huge city, maybe due to the lack of motor vehicles crowding the streets.

  I could have practiced pulling in those Spirit types and converting them, but I could feel tons of Miasma off in the distance.

  The image of that underwater temple popped into my head.

  I considered getting dressed and following the feeling to the edge of Pearl City’s dome, but the cracked doors on either side of my room reminded me that I was technically on duty in case of a midnight attack.

  So instead, I dragged the couch over to look out the big picture windows and sat facing the direction I felt the Death Spirit radiating from.

  I shut my eyes, breathed out, and searched for the vein like Rali had taught me. That wasn’t too hard. Everywhere life flourished, death did too. Life was the beginning, and death was the end, a perfect, inevitable circle.

  Creatures fought to survive down here in lightless dark, beneath crushing fathoms of cold and wet. They built these bubbles of air, illumination, and habitation thinking they were creating a safe haven from the deadly waters outside, but in reality all they were building was an illusion. Every one of them would eventually close their eyes, feel their last heartbeat, and succumb to their own whale fall. Down through the fathoms to lie in peaceful rest at the bottom of the ocean. Scavengers, currents, and silt would eat away their flesh and carve their bones into a beautiful, elaborate scrimshaw with no memory of what it had once been.

  That was the vein down here. Peaceful, heavy, layered.

  At the edge of my focus, I shivered. Sweat drenched me and turned cold in the freezing grasp of Death Spirit. Even in the vein, dragging the Miasma over such a huge distance felt like wrestling a single strand of fishing line bare-handed through cold sorghum with that underwater temple on the hook. If my Spirit sea had had fingers, they would’ve been sliced to pieces in the first couple minutes.

  Hungry Ghost could pull Miasma for Death cultivator. Hungry Ghost feels Death spirit within his grasp. So close.

  Yeah, not gonna happen.

  Death cultivator could instead retire to Crucible Casket. Inside, he will be linked to the oceanic temple of Death.

  That surprised me. Seriously? How?

  Hungry Ghost sent me the feeling of starvation and the scent of food within reach. All he needed was for me to let him out.

  I’ll ask the Casket, I told him.

  Death cultivator prefers to fight the inevitable, he sneered, sending me the feeling of a bomb clock ticking down.

  Burying him wasn’t working, so I switched back to the ignoring method and opened the Crucible Casket.

  Snug inside, I asked the Spirit apparatus, Are you linked to the death temple a couple miles away from here?

  All places where death gathers reach out to Crucible Casket, the Casket replied.

  Can you pull the Miasma from out there in the ocean to me?

  Searching…

  Altar of Death found at location described.

  Linking…

  A wave of that ancient Miasma rushed into the void with me, icy and intense. Before it could drown me, I started Reclaiming the Dead Breathing.

  Although, I guess it wasn’t technically Reclaiming. Just Claiming.

  ***

  At what the Selkens called gray tide—probably about five a.m. Earth time—I had cultivated enough to add six new spiral galaxies to my Spirit sea. Unbelievable how powerful that pure ancient Miasma was. Even though I’d been up all night, I felt charged up and ready to rock.

  Which was lucky, because two seconds after I got out of the Crucible Casket, Warcry hammered on the door between our rooms.

  “Oi, grav. If you ain’t ready to stroll in ten minutes, I’m leaving without me bodyguard.”

  Turned out Warcry had a whole pre-weigh-in routine. He didn’t eat or drink the morning of, but I snagged a Coffee Drank from the vending machine in the hall outside the hotel spa and chugged it on our way to the sauna. Then it was intervals switching between the steam room and the snow room.

  “Tourney like this, cutting weight is mostly pointless.” On match days, Warcry was the scary kind of quiet. Today, since he didn’t have a fight, he was in a talkative mood. “They only use the numbers for promos and the commentators. There’s mental game in it, too. If your first-round opponent thinks he’s fighting some skinny ponser like you, a hundred twenty pounds soaking wet—”

  “Try one sixty-three.”

  “Like bollix you are.” Without missing a beat he went back to his lecture about weight-cutting. “—and then a beast like me saunters in packing a hundred sixty of pure muscle, it messes with their heads, yeah?”

  He poured a ladleful of water that smelled like herbs over the stones. They sizzled and sent up a cloud of intense smelling steam. With the first breath, the tension I didn’t realize I’d been feeling from the caffeine eased out of my shoulders and uncoiled my stomach.

  “I’ve had cuts that took me down ten pounds or more,” Warcry said, leaning back against the driftwood-planked wall and shutting his eyes. “Could barely stand up in the cage and still thrashed me opponent in under four minutes. You gotta know when it’s worth the trade-off.”

  I swiped dripping hair off my forehead. “So if you don’t need to make a make a weight class, why bother cooking in here?”

  “We’re getting that healthy glow for the cameras. I ain’t recording my big comeback promos looking like I been languishin’ on a prison planet, grav.”

  The interval timer on Warcry’s loaner HUD went off. Holding his towel in place, he popped to his feet.

  “Time for a refreshing snow bath.”

  Going from suffocatingly hot to scrubbing your sweaty skin with teeny ice chips sounds like the worst thing ever. And it mostly is. But it’s also kind of electrifying. That plus the Coffee Drank had my heart trying to kick open my rib cage even with whatever soothing herbs the sauna steam was infused with.

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  After the hot and cold treatment, it was straight to the hotel barber. There was only one lady working there at that hour, a sophisticated-looking Selken with her hair twisted up around mother-of-pearl inlaid chopsticks and a short-skirted kimono.

  “Clean me up, lovey,” Warcry told her. “Hairless as a heat shield, everywhere but up on top and under me shorts.”

  She gave him a look that reflected how early it still was and directed him to her chair. Shaving down a mouthy redhead couldn’t have been the morning she’d been looking forward to.

  While she laid out her kit and got the shaving cream and towels heating up, Warcry stripped down to the aforementioned shorts. I paced around the half-wall dividing the chairs from the glassed-in lobby, idly patrolling for attackers I didn’t expect to show up.

  My reflection caught my eye in the mirrors as I meandered down the aisle of chairs. Thorn whip scars on one cheek, wet hair. So much for that healthy glow. I looked like a drowned starving rat and didn’t smell much better. Hopefully showers were part of this routine.

  “I can’t believe you shave your legs,” I said, wandering down the deserted chairs. “And your arms.”

  Warcry’s metal foot clinked on the spotless tile as he crossed the floor to the barber’s chair and hopped up.

  “Me pretty face, too.” He rasped a thumb across the brownish whiskers on his jaw. “Most IFC lads do. It cuts down on friction for grappling. Stops hair-pulling, too. Hurts like bleed all when some cove gets a fistful of leg hair while he’s locking you out.” He grinned his ugly grin at the mirror. “And the ladies love it.”

  I snorted.

  The windchimes over the barber shop door tinkled, and another Selken woman in the same chopsticks-and-kimono uniform hurried in, apologizing to the first one for being late.

  “I’ll make up for it, Suyin,” she said, tucking her purse under the hostess stand. Lowering her voice until she must’ve thought we couldn’t hear, she said, “I’ll take the meat roach clients.”

  “It’s only the red one,” Suyin said.

  “Please? I’ll feel bad about it all day if I don’t.”

  Suyin shrugged. “Knock yourself out, Chibi.”

  Chibi waved at me on her way to Warcry’s chair. “Hey, I recognize you! You’re the Death cultivator who got arrested last night, aren’t you? It’s all over the hyperweb.”

  “Great.”

  “You and your girlfriend make such a cute couple.” She stepped on a pedal at the base of the chair to tip Warcry back almost flat, then started draping hot towels over the ginger’s face, arms, chest, and leg. “Tell her she totally has my vote. I love her industrial grunge style. So fashionable.”

  I smiled. “I don’t think Kest knows that’s a style. It’s just practical for working in the metal shop.”

  She laughed one of those Bless your poor stupid heart laughs.

  “Every girl knows she’s got a style.” Chibi pulled the towel off Warcry’s steamed-lobster face. “And don’t think I forgot about you, Burning Hatred cultivator. What are we doing for you today?”

  While Warcry repeated his order, Chibi filled a cup with the warmed-up foam and grabbed one of those old-fashioned shaving brushes.

  “Let’s do this.” She dipped the brush and started painting over his stubble. “So, you’re here for the tournament? I read on the gossip boards that you used to be an IFC champ. Warcry Thompson.”

  “That’s right, lovey. Took the championship in two age divisions. I went undefeated in me Under-18 run. First competitor since the introduction of the division to pull it off.”

  She dug a razor out of her kit and stropped it a couple times on a strap hanging from the counter.

  “I saw some pictures and clips of you from back then,” she gushed. “You were in such incredible shape in those days!”

  Up at the hostess stand, Suyin stopped flipping through fashion shots on her HUD and covered a snicker with her hand.

  It took me a second to realize why. I snorted.

  Warcry got the insult at the same time I did. His shaving-cream-covered face twisted into a scowl.

  “Oi, I’m in peak fighting condition. That was a boy what won the Under-18 championship. You’re looking at a man now.”

  “I could not agree more.” Chibi held his forehead so he’d stop moving and carefully stroked the razor along his jaw, from ear to chin. “You were so defined back then. You could see every muscle. Now that you’re so much thicker, I bet the punches and kicks won’t hurt half as bad as they used to.”

  I busted up laughing. I couldn’t tell if Chibi was doing it on purpose or not, but she was dropping one vicious slow-burn insult after another.

  Orange flames flickered around Warcry’s ears, but he extinguished them before they interfered with Chibi’s work.

  “Just keep your gob shut and focus on getting me a smooth shave, yeah?”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Chibi said cheerfully. “I’d better pay attention. I just got so caught up fawning over your fame. But with a face as uniquely shaped as yours, I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

  By then, I had circled back to the front of the shop, up by the hostess stand.

  Suyin was crying from trying so hard to hold back the giggles.

  “That’s why we keep Chibi on despite the fact that she can’t make it to work on time to save her life,” Suyin told me in a confidential voice, dabbing at the corner of one watery eye. “She’s like this all day long. I swear she’s going to specialize in something like Toxic Love or Backhanded Love if she ever advances.”

  I leaned crossed arms on the low wall, watching Chibi finish up Warcry’s face and switch to the opposite end, stretching over his prosthetic to get to his real leg.

  “And you’ve only got the one leg?” She shook her head. “Amazing! I bet the prosthetic really gives you the advantage over all those non-upgraded losers.”

  Warcry flared up again. “Chop off your leg and find out how much easier it is stumpin’ around on one, ya dim— Ah!”

  Flames whooshed up all over his body. He lurched up on the barber chair, grabbing for his good knee. Blood turned the shaving cream there pink.

  More dripped from the end of Chibi’s straight razor.

  I vaulted over the low wall, hitting the Ki-speed and sprinting for Warcry. I couldn’t just tear out Chibi’s life point. Judgment Beyond the Veil had declared her not-evil.

  “Rigor mortis!” I yelled, shoving my hand at her.

  “Turn Aside Anger!” She waved her off-hand, making a rainbow parabola in the air.

  My paralyzing attack crashed harmlessly off the curve of her deflection technique.

  Lightning fast, she cocked back her razor to jam it into Warcry’s knee.

  Seeing the attack coming, Warcry braced himself by grabbing the arms of the chair and flung his prosthetic up to meet the strike.

  BOOM! A blast of Dent-Reversal Knockback exploded from the point where razor hit metal.

  Chibi screamed. Between her momentum and Warcry’s off-balance kick, the combined impact blasted her backward across the shop. She slammed into a wall of hair products. Bottles flew everywhere, some of them cracking open and spewing pearlescent goop all over the floor. The scents of flowers, herbs, candy, and cookies battled for control of the air.

  Before she could get her bearings and defend, I hit Rigor Mortis again, freezing her in place.

  “You’re working for one of the other candidates.” I stopped just outside the spreading puddle of spilled shampoo and conditioner, and summoned the Lunar Scythe. I dropped Rigor Mortis so she could answer me when I asked, “Which one was it?”

  The lights in the barber shop buzzed and flickered on and off, and Miasma rolled around me in waves. Fear the Reaper had leveled up enough to affect the environment around me.

  Up front, Suyin screamed.

  Chibi’s mouth opened and closed, no sound coming out. The lace in her eyes thinned down to spiderweb cracks. She cringed back into the space where the lower shelves had been smashed down.

  “Talk.” I leveled the scythe blade at her.

  “It was Tatsu Shin Be,” Chibi whimpered. “He’s fighting for Candidate Djin Ara Feren, the Quiet Storm! Please don’t kill me!”

  Warcry limped over, swiping fat drops of shaving cream off his arms and leg. They hit the floor in big wet splats.

  “You all right?” I asked him, eying the pink blobs oozing down from his knee.

  “Body hardening protected the tendons. A bottle of Gash & Slice from a decent healer ought to clean up the rest.”

  Flames rolled across his skin as he loomed over Chibi. “What’d they give you to do me in? Details, or me lad takes your head off.”

  “I was only supposed to disable you. They didn’t say anything about killing. I swear I wouldn’t have done it if they’d wanted me to kill someone! I’m a Love cultivator! Tatsu said Mrs. Djin Ara would fund a shop of my own in Tsunami Tsity.”

  Suyin’s heels clicked on the tile as she joined us. She skirted way around me and stopped on Warcry’s far side, frowning down at Chibi with her arms crossed.

  “We can’t keep you on after this,” Suyin said. “And no shop’s going to hire you once they find out you attacked a client.” She sighed. “Pack up your station and get out. Your last week’s pay will be deposited in your USL account, minus any healing elixirs and prosthetic repairs Mr. Thompson requires. And be happy I’m not calling the CPA on you.”

  The Backhanded Love cultivator sobbed while she cleaned up her stuff. I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her because crying girl, but Warcry was over it in about ten seconds.

  “Pound tile,” he sneered as she carried her box of equipment to the exit.

  To make up for the trouble, Suyin comped Warcry’s shave and ordered a bottle of the healing elixir he’d mentioned to be delivered from an upscale distillery nearby.

  This time, I hung around close while Warcry got his shave. Suyin had to ask me to get out of the way a couple times, but she didn’t ask me to go wait somewhere else. Her hands shook while she skimmed the razor along Warcry’s skin.

  I got it. After completely failing my first round of protecting Warcry, I was a little on edge, too.

  If everyone knew that Death cultivator would use only lethal measures, none would dare to attack Death cultivator’s friends, Hungry Ghost croaked.

  Just because I’m a scythe doesn’t mean everybody around me is wheat, I told him. Or hay? Whatever scythes harvest.

  A purposely blunted scythe cuts nothing, the skull stone shot back. Only mercilessness can assure the safety of those whom Death cultivator seeks to protect.

  Chibi saying she’d watched the broadcast of my arrest the night before ran through my head. If I had taken out those CPA agents and Director Chillion instead of playing nice, she would have known better than to attack Warcry. She would have seen me and immediately decided the bribe wasn’t worth dying over. If I started out on every new planet killing the first person who crossed me, then only the insane or suicidal would consider coming after my friends.

  There had to be something wrong with that line of reasoning. If it was coming from Hungry Ghost, then it couldn’t be trusted.

  But I couldn’t find the trap. He was right, if I was strong enough and ruthless enough, my reputation would stand like a wall of Dead Reckoning around the people I loved, protecting them from harm.