ONE HUNDRED ONE: Anesidora Time, 07:15 PM

101

In F-city, there was a neighborhood where apartment blocks and towers gave way to rolling lawns, miniature patches of forest, and sporting fields. The mansions—decadent odes to magical architecture—nestled around the curves of artificial hills or in groves of trees, strategically planted to give the owners the illusion of space and nature in a city-state where those two things were precious commodities.

The boy found the address he’d been looking for in a thatch of bottlebrush-shaped trees that backed up to the largest racetrack on the island. He walked along the edge of a paved driveway that was crammed with parked luxury cars and motorcycles. One of his hands clenched the handle of a heavy metal cooler; the other worked nervously on the edge of his jacket.

He flinched as a drone sailed over his head. And again as one of the rocks lining the drive—apparently an artificial one—suddenly played birdsong through a hidden speaker as he passed.

Private property warnings flashed on his interface, and he checked the address in his messages again.

This was it. This was the spot.

He drew in a breath and knocked on a tall, smooth bronze door with no apparent handle. It opened, and a woman with cat-eye contact lenses blinked at him. She was wearing a leopard print bra and jeans. He didn’t know where to put his eyes.

“I’m here to see Orpheus,” he said.

She leaned forward and looked at his cooler. <<Hey! That’s great!>>

She almost stumbled over her own high heeled boots as she stepped aside to let him in. <<Orpheeeeee!!! There’s a guy here for you.>>

There were people moving through the house behind her. Walking up a floating staircase, pressing each other against a railing, laughing at nothing in the floor beside a four-foot tall antique vase.

<<He’s not coming. Go to him. Go. He’s on the verandah. Take your shirt off. Get comfy with us!>>

She hugged him as he passed, and he blushed. He didn’t take his shirt off.

It took the boy a long while to find who he’d come to see. The man wasn’t on the verandah but outside floating on an inflatable chair in a pool that had been heated hot enough to steam. He was completely naked, which was less of a shock after the amount of nudity the boy had encountered on his search through the house. The drone he had seen earlier hovered over the man, drizzling his forehead with something that looked like honey.

“Orpheus,” said one of the women in the pool. “Orpheus, I think the presents you promised are here.”

She took a swig from a bottle that didn’t look like it had originated on Earth. The float Orpheus was on rotated slowly. He drifted over to the side.

He blinked up with blown pupils at the boy with the cooler. The pool lights in the water below him suddenly cut on and glowed an eerie green. The sun hadn’t set yet. It was probably on a timer. Just a coincidence.

“You bring the drugs?” Orpheus asked.

Were they just going to talk about it casually like this? Out in the open?

“I brought you…some snacks.”

“Haha! All right! Jacob, wasn’t it? How did someone your age get your hands on the good stuff? Hand them over! Your half of the deal is in the cabana over there. Good luck hauling it out of here. It’s heavy.”

Jacob leaned over and held out the cooler. Orpheus took it in both hands.

A brown-haired girl, remarkable mostly for the fact that she was fully clothed in slacks and a polka-dotted blouse, was sitting on the edge of a teak lounge chair. She glanced over at Orpheus and raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you even going to check to make sure your snacks are there so you can destroy your organs properly this time? For all you know, he brought you takeout.”

Orpheus ignored her.

He set the cooler in the water. “Hey it floats!”

Eager to take his earnings and leave, Jacob hurried over to the cabana. There was a padded duffel bag on the pavement beside some kind of alien hookah.

He squatted and unzipped it. The thing inside looked like an aquarium full of yellow oil and clear water. A small silver ball floated in the precise center, in the place where the two substances met and refused to mix.

There were less parts than he was expecting. No mechanicalness to it.

Jacob preferred the open complexity of wires, pipes, and circuits to something so obviously not of this world. Because the complexity was still there. It had to be, for this thing to do what it was supposed to do. But it was all hidden. All magic.

It made it feel not quite real.

He pointed at the object to target it, and then said the name of one of his talents—“Device Identification.”

His interface responded.

[Device: Submerger

Device Status: Complete]

That was less information than he was hoping for. But it was enough.

The Submerger would help him, and then it would help the people who were helping him, and then—

“You have to shout the name of your talents to use them?” asked a voice from behind him.

Jacob looked over his shoulder to see the girl standing in the entrance of the cabana. One of the canvas curtains was almost brushing her hair.

“You might want to work on actually learning how to use your powers without the Contract holding your hand…instead of doing whatever it is you plan to do with that.”

“I don’t see how my life is any of your business,” said Jacob.

She shrugged. A mini drone appeared behind her head and made a cute, cartoonish snapping sound.

He stood up. “Did you just take my picture?”

“Yes.”

“Why?!”

“Because my brother is giving you extremely rare magical equipment in exchange for a few illegal potions and snorts he could have gotten in other ways. Stolen equipment…it’s not his, you know. He’s a brat in his thirties, so you’re getting something extraordinary practically for free. I dislike that.”

“Who are you to—?”

“I’ll keep this.” She shooed the drone away. “Maybe one day you’ll be something other than a drug dealer. And I’ll ask you to pay off your debt.”

“I don’t owe you anything. I made a deal with Orpheus Velra, not whoever you are! And I’m not a drug dealer!”

She arched a perfectly plucked brow. “Did you not just deal drugs?”

He stared at her.

She smiled, waved, and left.

In F-city, there was a neighborhood where the skyscrapers seemed to grow taller by the year. Nautilus Needle crowned the district. Its silver spire glimmered like a Christmas tree topper, and the protective helix shields wrapping it were visible from every exterior angle.

If you could afford Wrightmade shielding devices for an entire skyscraper, you wanted people to know it.

At 7:15, the karaage restaurant at the base of the Needle was in the middle of its dinner rush. The doors barely had time to close before they opened once more to let customers in and out. A woman in a caramel-colored pantsuit stepped inside, and an employee hurried over at her wave.

The girl smiled. <<Hello! Do you need help with your order toda—?>>

“Someone took the calligraphy menu out of the window,” said the woman. “Why?”

“Ma’am?” the girl asked in an uncertain voice.

The woman tucked a strand of graying brown hair behind her ear and sighed. “It goes there. It’s the perfect piece for that spot. Put it back.”

<<I think a customer complained about it blocking the view…>>

“Don’t cater to outliers. This is a business.”

<<I don’t under—>>

“Ah! Ms. Barre. Ms. Manon Barre! You’ve come back after only a week this time! I’m flattered!” The owner of the restaurant trotted over and took her hand in both of his. Shaking it, he said, “The usual?”

“Yes. And have someone find the big menu. Your exterior is out of balance without it.”

“Mo, go find the menu!” he said to the girl. “Make sure you put it back exactly where it was.”

<<All right?>>

“She’s new,” he explained to Manon. “She doesn’t know what your advice does for us.”

As the girl headed toward the back of the restaurant, he called, “And keep venting the scent onto the sidewalk! That’s what I hired a Sky Shaper for!”

A few minutes later, the menu was back in place, and Manon was crossing the street, one hand gripping a paper bag already flecked with grease and the other wrapped around a cherry lemonade.

She sipped it, her eyes fixed on the words floating in front of her eyes instead of the people, shops, and cars around her.

[Of course there’s nothing to worry about, dear. It’s only a hiccup. I always pay my debts.]

That. And only that.

To make matters worse, Manon couldn’t risk bothering the sender more than she already had.

Even after all this time, she had so little power in this relationship. So little ability to make sure she wasn’t cheated out of what she’d been promised all those years ago. Some people were just too high above her for her to even bother trying.

“Fucking S-ranks,” she whispered.

It had been months since she’d sworn. That bitch of a university student…Bti-qwol. She had interfered in a system of carefully orchestrated relationships that had been running smoothly for years, just because she was eager to impress her instructors.

Wizards grew more tedious the older Manon got. Everything grew more tedious the older Manon got.

Like the personal rule about swearing.

She’d decided thirty years ago that it didn’t fit her image. Image mattered. Everything mattered for a C.

They were the most common rank. Most people were comforted by it. A C-rank was never alone. Never the weakest. Never the strongest. Anesidora’s everyman.

She couldn’t understand how everyone around her could be so content with their own mediocrity. But they were.

Most humans didn’t really want glory, despite what they said. They wanted comfort, and they wanted to fit in. Not that she would complain about that. Fitting people into places that made them feel so comfortable they never wanted to leave was her specialty.

On the way up to her apartment, she scanned her contact list. It was different than most. She used it for brainstorming. Hundreds of groups were listed, each of them combinations of personalities she thought could be managed in specific ways. These were her pride and joy. They were what made Manon Barre more than a C-rank interior decorator.

They were the proof that she was not content with mediocrity. Every personality group was a custom, moldable piece that would make it easier to complete large puzzles.

The boater alone was divided into dozens of possible arrangements. Naya and Chris—the youngest, most attractive member of the boater and the sweet, awkward man who couldn’t help but notice those things. If she invited just the two of them over, said the right things, served the right amount of wine, reprioritized their thoughts just a little…they would almost definitely go to Chris’s apartment after they left and have sex.

Naya would be embarrassed and confide in Manon. Chris would be smitten and confide in Manon.

Afterward, they would both become even more subject to influence.

She wasn’t a Sway. She couldn’t create ideas for people. She could only arrange what already existed in their minds—a little clumsily, a little blindly, using a skill that was best at making sure people positioned their sofas correctly. In-group passions were powerful and easy to understand, but Chris would be hard to patch up afterward. It was the only reason she hadn’t molded that piece yet.

Her thoughts hovered over the Karl/Chris/Laura group. She could always put them together and take them somewhere that would allow Karl to play at his version of manly posturing. Maybe the golf course next time. He liked the game.

Laura’s knee was fully healed, and her spirits were finally up again. She had a damsel fantasy that got worse when Chris was around. Careful placement and suggestions would have her pretending to be hopeless, in an effort to make Chris notice her. Manon would prevent Chris from doing that. Instead, Karl would get to be an expert on the use of a putter or a driver or…were there more types? Some kind of ball hitter anyway.

Manon didn’t actually play golf, she played people.

Karl probably does require the boost.

If Laura had damsel fantasies, then he had dominance fantasies. It was a painful character trait for a low-rank living on Anesidora, but it made him useful. He could easily be persuaded to take risks the others would have to be ever so gently steered toward.

He could also become easily enraged about things that less chronically frustrated people would ignore, which was more troublesome.

The memory of the last time she’d almost lost control of him made her glance at another trio.

Naya/Alden/Karl.

A piece she’d imagined at LeafSong. It was more of a half-baked, last-ditch emergency scheme than a real plan. The boy was a terrible target for her powers. He’d been doing private work for an unusually invested professor, and apart from that, teenagers changed all the time. Their bodies flooded them with hormones. Their immature brains gave them unpredictable notions. Every day they encountered ideas and experiences that were completely novel to them simply because they hadn’t lived long enough to notice them before.

She could shove them in one direction, but they might turn around and run in the opposite ten minutes later because they’d suddenly discovered butterflies, French kissing, or communism.

Most adults were more…finished. But the piece hadn’t relied on Alden anyway. Naya would have spent time with him with little prompting. She wouldn’t have been interested in a fifteen-year-old, but she would have jokingly flirted if given enough of a push. It could all be tailored so that, at a particularly bad moment, Karl would see a woman who never gave him the time of day batting her eyes at a higher ranking boy who was making more than twice his salary.

It would be a knife plunged into his insecurities about himself.

Manon couldn’t really plan it out beyond that. But if the pieces around that moment were all correctly placed, she thought it would have ended with Karl starting the fight away from the rest of the boater. He would be fired. The boy wouldn’t be invited back to LeafSong either. The Artonans wouldn’t have been perfectly sure who was at fault for the quarrel, and in the absence of perfect surety they’d simply blacklist both of them from working there again.

Pineda’s job for next year would likely be re-secured. But much more importantly, Bti-qwol would have been blamed for mismanaging the Avowed on campus. Manon couldn’t afford for her to have the position again.

And she won’t be there now. I’m glad it worked out without me having to create such a sloppy three-person puzzle piece on the fly, she thought as she stepped out of the elevator into her apartment. And cutting Karl loose would have been a shame.

She kicked off her high heels and walked across the cold marble in her hose. The apartment had been Hollywood Glam for a couple of years now. Manon—who could find styles to suit anyone—could never seem to find one that suited herself for longer than that.

Most adults were finished. Most C-ranks were content.

She was different. Even the part of her that chose textiles for her own enjoyment refused to be satisfied.

She stepped over to the window to look down on the people below her.

It was lonely, at times. But it was better to be lonely than to be average, wasn’t it?

She shoved a nugget of the fried chicken into her mouth and looked around. She had a team of Rabbit maids clean the place twice a week. It was so flawless she’d probably need to scuff it up a little if she ever tried to sell it. People thought they wanted perfection, but true perfection made them feel their own flaws more.

But Manon liked true perfection. The one object that didn’t fit in with the rest of the place stood out like a sore thumb to her eyes.

It always stood out, no matter how she changed the style of her home.

That was the way it should be. An eyesore. A thorn she refused to stop pressing her thumb against, for fear she’d forget it and enjoy the rose.

She stepped over to the bookcase. The device was on the second shelf. She’d found it in a shop long ago. It had been ugly then and it was now, too. Some Wright’s project, no doubt. It was a fifteen year timer. The sand in the left side of the horizontal hourglass shape slid over to the right, one grain per minute. More than half a million grains per year.

So many individual moments that added up to a pathetic handful of dirt.

The left side of the glass was nearly empty.

Manon stared at it. She ate the chicken. She shoved the pieces into her mouth faster as she watched another grain of sand disappear. She thought of LeafSong. She wished, pointlessly, that the Artonan year could be shorter. It was close to fifteen Earth months.

[Of course there’s nothing to worry about, dear. It’s only a hiccup. I always pay my debts.]

She thrust two pieces into her mouth at once, barely chewing the meat before she swallowed. Her oily fingers dove into the bag again and scrabbled against the crumbs at the bottom.

Blinking, she looked down into it.

It was empty.

Twenty pieces gone just like that. She told herself she’d been planning to save some for later. But she wondered if that was true.

She’d eaten all twenty last time, too.

She felt stuffed. The heartburn would hit soon.

Manon had never had heartburn until she hit fifty. She’d never had a gray hair. She refused to fix either problem.

More thorns to remind herself of what really mattered.

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