Seeing Redd

CHAPTER 25

F OR GENERATIONS, Boarderton had attracted those who felt foreign among their own kind, those wanting to escape the suffocating customs of their birth tribes to enjoy the more varied, expansive life one inevitably finds in a major metropolis. With the exception of Arch’s royal entourage, Boarderton was the only city in the kingdom that consisted of mixed tribes. While a Maldoid would never be caught

socializing with a Kalaman anywhere else, inter-tribal doings were commonplace in the capital city, where one didn’t survive long without being tolerant of otherness.

Nowhere was the array of the populace more apparent than in the Sin Bin Gaming Club, a ratty establishment usually located in a ratty quarter of laborers’ tents. On any given night in Sin Bin, a stranger could find Onu mingling with Astacans, Awr tippling with Scabbler, Gnobi engaged in philosophical debates with Sirk. Such Boarderlanders might have been born into warring tribes, but they now belonged to a single tribe: Boardertonians, foremost and above all.

When Hatter set foot in the Bin, representatives from each of the nation’s twenty-one species were there, along with several from the remote regions of Morgavia and Unterlan. Loud and raucous, four-fifths of them were drunk, the remaining one-fifth working hard to get drunk. Hatter wouldn’t have cared if there were twice as many and they were all hopped up on artificial crystal. He’d have fought the entire crowd for even the slightest chance of securing Homburg Molly’s release.

In the corner, seated on low benches and sharing a bottle of viscous liquor with a couple of Maldoids and a Scabbler: four Ganmedes.

Were they his contacts? Hatter waited but they paid him no attention, so he passed on, made his way around the drinkers packed three deep at the bar to the seating area beyond, where too many tables scarred from the bottles and goblets of former carousals were crammed into too small a space. When he reached the far end of the tent, he started back. A male from the Fel Creel tribe stepped away from the bar and faced him. Hatter had no way of knowing that the tribesman was actually a former Fel Creel who now traveled with Arch as a member of the Doomsines.

The Boarderlander stood with his arms at his sides, his palms facing out. He flexed; the serrated blades of his fingerprints pushed through the skin and caught the light. Hands moving faster than shuttering eyelids, he snatched a cap off a sullen Astacan at the bar and shredded it into countless scraps. The Astacan spun around, ready to fight, but thought better of it when he saw what had become of his cap. He turned back to his drink, and Ripkins thrust his chin at Hatter, challenging.

Fwap!

Hatter’s top hat was off his head and flattened into spinning blades, the Milliner’s arms moving like those of an Earth-ninja expertly wielding nunchucks, his blades zinging up and down and around his body in tight, artful circles, then-

Fwap!

He was again wearing his top hat.

The club’s regulars made room for the fighters, then went back to blearing their senses, accustomed to

these sorts of disturbances. “Hunh!”

Ripkins lurched forward, his right arm extended, and a pair of kill-quills arrowed toward Hatter. Flangk!

Hatter snapped open his wrist-blades and stepped aside, but the move was anticipated by Ripkins, who had already yanked on the cords attached to the kill-quill’s tail ends. The weapons were tumbling back to him as-fip fip fip fip-he fired off half a deck of razor-cards and-

Moving to avoid the kill-quills, Hatter stepped directly into the path of incoming cards. Wrist-blades or no wrist-blades, he would have been sliced to death if he hadn’t fallen flat to the ground with twice the speed of gravity.

Ripkins leaped for him, was in the air about to come down when- Shwink!

Hatter punched his belt buckle and his belt sabers sprung open. Ripkins changed direction in midair and somersaulted clear, which gave Hatter time to jump to his feet and shrug open his backpack, its corkscrews and daggers at the ready. Shielding himself with the coptering wrist-blades of one hand, he launched his backpack’s weapons at Ripkins.

“Yah! Yah! Yah!”

But Ripkins’ hands were creating a cyclone in front of him, invisible with speed, shredding air. And whether it was their centrifugal force alone or he was actually catching the incoming blades and flinging them back at Hatter, every blade and corkscrew that threatened him went hurtling back toward the mythic Milliner, who more and more found himself on the defensive until it was all Hatter could do to twirl, spin, duck, and jump to avoid being hit.

“Aaah!”

Hatter charged at Ripkins, his wrist-blades pushed out in front of him. Arch’s bodyguard jerked his shoulder as if to adjust the hang of his coat: A pointed stick the length of a writing crystal slid out the end of his sleeve and into his hand. Pressing his thumb against its nub end, Ripkins extended the stick to the length of a spirit-dane. Hatter, closing the gap between them, recognized the weapon: a telescoping javelin.

“Hngh!”

Holding the javelin horizontally, gripping it with both hands near its midpoint, Ripkins pushed it into

Hatter’s wrist-blades and- Krchkkkrchk!

Both sets of blades jammed to a halt, the ends of the javelin caught within their spin. Hatter’s hands were effectively pinned to the ends of the javelin, and Ripkins held a fistful of kill-quills poised at his jugular.

Hatter nodded, impressed. Then- “Nguh!”

He shrugged hard, flapping both arms down and away as if he were shaking off water. Ripkins went staggering backward and the javelin clattered to the floor. His wrist-blades gearing back to full speed, Hatter sent his top hat flying into the hookah haze gathered thick over patrons’ heads.

Clink! Clangk! Clonk!

He and Ripkins went at each other, Ripkins starting to have trouble when-

The top hat blades came boomeranging out of the haze, spinning toward Arch’s bodyguard from behind, veering up at the last moment.

Smack!

The flat sides of the blades knocked Ripkins in the back of the head and he tumbled to the ground. Hatter caught hold of his weapon and slammed it down, two of its blades embedding in the dirt on either side of Ripkins’ neck like a pair of open scissors, pinning the bodyguard on his back.

Ripkins grunted, impressed.

Hatter clicked shut his bracelets, took up his top hat blades and, with a flick of the wrist, transformed them back into innocent headware. Ripkins stood, pocketed his weapons, and brushed himself off.

“Where’s Homburg Molly?” Hatter demanded.

Ripkins jutted his chin: Look behind you. Hatter half turned, saw another Fel Creel in elbow-length

gloves standing with his hands clasped in front of him, waiting politely. Ripkins slipped back in among the customers at the bar while Blister peeled off his gloves, held up his bare hands, both front and back, for Hatter to see. Like a magician about to perform a magic trick, he showed Hatter the inside of his shirtsleeves-Nothing up my sleeves. Without further preliminary, he pressed a finger against the neck of an unsuspecting Onu.

“Aahaahaahaaaagh!”

The Onu writhed and squirmed. Blister kept the finger pressed against the bubbling flesh of his neck. “Aaaaaahaaaaaaghrgh!”

Blister at last pulled his finger away, the Onu sopping with sweat and exhausted from pain. He flicked open a knife, lowering its point toward the balloon-skin of the Onu’s swollen neck. Pop! Pus poured out of the wound and the Onu collapsed.

Blister grinned. “For me,” he said to Hatter, “weapons like yours are unnecessary. Although I’m no mediocrity when it comes to using them.”

Hatter again had recourse to his entire arsenal. Top hat blades, wrist-blades, belt sabers, backpack weaponry-all clashed against Blister’s pikes, pickets, and swords. But after an extended combination of slashing and twisting, Hatter found himself on the ground, cornered against an overturned table, Blister’s deadly index finger a chest hair’s length from his exposed heart.

Hatter raised a respectful eyebrow. Then- Flink!

Out sliced his belt sabers. Blister jumped back, laughing even though his finger was bleeding from a deep cut.

“What do I care if you chop it off? I have thirteen others.”

Again they sparred, Blister sometimes reverting to the more traditional weapons of swords and shooters to fend off Hatter’s aggression, other times relying solely on the threat of his touch.

“Ungh! Ungh!”

Hatter sent two C-shaped blades coptering toward him. The blades caught Blister’s hands, pinioned them to two poles supporting the tent. Hatter let two more blades fly and Blister’s feet were suddenly pinioned, his four limbs extended in the form of an X like a volunteer who has risked his life as the target of a knife thrower.

“Pretty good,” the bodyguard mumbled, as effusive as he’d ever be regarding the skill of another.

Hatter flung his top hat blades. Dink, dink, dink, dink! They ricocheted off Blister’s restraints, knocking them loose, and boomeranged back to him. Blister rubbed his wrists and shoved his hands into their long gloves. His finger was still bleeding.

Ripkins stepped out of the crowd at the bar. “Come with us if you want to save your daughter’s life,” he said.