They don’t even bother hitting the light switch, which is cool, Lake decides; he can be into that. This is how he finds himself getting a clear, full-color glimpse of her tattoo.
“Whoa!” he says.
“Oh,” she laughs, up on her elbows in her underwear, “you noticed it.”
He smiles understandingly. “Woke up with that after a wild night?”
“No.”
His smile shrinks. “Lost a bet.”
She’s not smiling at all. “Chevy makes really bad cars. The kid peeing on their logo symbolizes–hey, what happened?” she asks, glancing down at his detumescing penis.
“You transmogrified it,” he sighs.
“I think that’s the last of it,” pants Silhouine.
“Wait, this one is holding the door open,” says Dulap, and picks up the barrel to carry it down. He reaches the foot of the steep ladder-steps just as the hatch swings shut with a bang, startling Yael, who drops the candle.
“Where’s the lantern?” says Silhouine, somewhere in the musty cellar-dark.
“I left it outside.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s dark.”
“I’ll just light a twist so we don’t break our necks climbing up,” says Dulap.
His knife scrapes on flint once, twice, three times.
The cellar begins to get brighter.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
At length, Hidebound retires.
Zach doesn’t actually cry until he’s alone in the darkened room. He stops crying after a while, and gets angry, as his hands and feet pulse with the maddening pain-tingle of blistered burns. He explains aloud the reasons that this whole situation is so stupid, and whose fault it is, and why, and fuck them. Then he cries some more. It’s awkward, trying to wipe his eyes and nose on his shoulders.
Zach sleeps. A woman enters, unbinds him, and mists lidocaine onto his wounds.
She is the Vulpine Phalanger.
She is going to kill someone.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Her code name was chosen to imply a bumbling sweetness that puts her employers at ease: not a complex figure, their domestic, oh no. So well-meaning. Always getting little things wrong.
She’s cost the elite of the city something in the low seven figures–just the occasional letterbox conflagration or shoe-baking incident. They can never stay mad at their underpaid simpleton, though. She means so well!
Everybody ought to have a maid, isn’t that what they say? Bedelia and her cell agree with that. They’ve got credit cards, Swiss accounts, passwords and PINs. Soon, they’ll wipe the slate clean.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
This is the ruleset for Micronomic, a game for a finite set of players coincident in time. Each sentence in the ruleset is a rule. This ruleset is subject to change; rules within its first 101 words may be changed by concurrent agreement of the entire set of players. New rules may be added after the first 101 words by concurrent agreement of more than half the set of players, and rules so added may be changed in the same way. Any player may propose adding or changing a rule by submitting the new sentence to all other players for review.
“How many barrows of this stuff are there, Dulap?” pants Silhouine, who is starting to get a bit cross.
“Just a few more!” says Dulap. “Oh, and then the barrels on the cart. Do you have a pack animal we could hitch up to–”
“No,” says Silhouine flatly.
“Um,” says Dulap.
“It’s getting dark,” says Yael. “Look, Dulap and I can pull the cart together if Silhouine can manage the barrow, but we don’t want to do it by starlight.”
“I’ve got a lantern,” says Dulap.
“Good,” says Silhouine, brushing red-brown powder off her nose. “I’ll get some candles, too.”
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Lichcraft is fraught under optimal conditions, which is to say without thralls like Scarjob and Gretch.
“I told you to watch the alembic so it didn’t boil over!” wails Karaaz the Flagrant, rushing to beat out a small but spirited fire in her phylactery lab. Scarjob and Gretch cringe.
“We did!” says Scarjob, who didn’t (they were playing a game with Gretch’s eyeball).
“What’s an alembic?” says Gretch hesitantly.
“TWO RETORTS CONNECTED BY A PIPETTE JESUS HOW MANY TIMES,” shouts Karaaz the Flagrant.
Then she’s late to the Future Liches of Morcroft meeting and everybody snickers at her under their cloaks.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Ashlock does kung fu and keyboards; Tach does unspeakable things. They’re a pretty good team, when either of them can manage to string two true words together, and when neither of them is currently mad.
Not “mad” as in “angry,” “mad” as “insane.” Hacking the Nameless is sexy and profitable, but it carries distinct risks to the welfare of one’s mind. They’ll reach right up the cable and suck the light from your eyes, the Nameless, if they catch you poking around their secrets. They’ll show you things no mortal should see.
But Ashlock never could let a sleeping god lie.
Wooden bridges, it transpires, have a pretty short lifespan when you try to march the world’s largest army across them in a storm. A thousand Persian soldiers all try to invent armored swimming. They fail.
“Christ,” says Xerxes. “Surely my invasion of Greece can suffer no more humiliating setback!”
“A floating bridge–” begins Harpalus.
“Fine, whatever!” says Xerxes. “I’m going to whip this stupid strait with a hot iron while my generals call it names!”
Then they do that. I’m serious, look it up.
The Hellespont is largely unaffected by the whipping, but some of the name-calling cuts pretty deep.