Serving Swill (H 1.1)

You slam the heavy glass pitcher down hard onto the skinny fingers of Karo, the Sippian who pinched your zok.

He screeches in pain and snatches his hand to his chest, rolling away from you and falling off his chair. He mutters through hot tears how you've ruined his hand amid simpering whines and plaintive whimpers.

The entire Sippian section falls silent, their sudden quiescence rippling across the Belly. All of the Sippians turn their attention to Lucky Strike when he stands up. You catch a bit of movement from Regal as he slides out a revolver, but he doesn't bring it up, doesn't aim. You know Regal, Helix. He owes you, big time. Why does Regal owe you his life?

Nobody else seems to know about you and Regal, and even if they did, they're far too interested in Lucky Strike and what he's going to do to you.

The regret I experience the second Karo screams is a wave rising up against the side of a building, wet, dark, and heavy, swelling and consuming. The silence from the Sippians and the way it seeps across the bar is even worse than what happens when one of us drops a big tray. The feeling of spotlight is the same, but instead of breaking glass, I may have broken bones, and instead of Blackjack balking at backfill, the Sippians simmer at this sacrilege.

My heart is a drum in my ears, as the wave subsides and leaves Lucky Strike standing in its wake. He pulls out the chair for me, and I don't think I have any choice but to sit, perching on the edge like a baby bird prone to fall from her nest. My fist still grips the handle of the pitcher that sits in my lap uselessly. I can't seem to let go.

I don't think I blink as Lucky Strike speaks, spinning a story of revenge and respect, actions and reactions. For once, I wish the Whispers would murmur to me again, so I wouldn't be alone under the Sippian's stares. Instead, their silence turns my skin to stone. My eyes seem the only part left free, taking in the Sippians when they laugh or grumble or jeer. Noticing Mikkie watching, probably eager to see a little bloodshed that doesn't involve him, some of the sport he creates, and I see Regal too, sliding that revolver free.

In many ways, Regal and I couldn't be more different. He a man, me a woman. His blond hair, my dark locks. He in a gang, me an island in this ocean. But for all our differences, we have one important commonality--we were both Ivies, one of the kids who climb rickety buildings and skyscrapers to scavenge whatever the wind has deposited among the skeletal remains. As kids, we were light enough to scale where full-grown adults dare not. I still see Ivies up there today, different kids from the ones I knew of course, but completing the same task that we did for the Gardeners who sell their treasures for profit.

Once, when we were climbing, one of the kids unhooked Regal's safety anchor - a mechanism not all Ivies even had access to. I hooked it back in and when I caught up to him a few floors up, I told him as much. He scoffed, telling me that he never falls anyway.

He fell that day, and that safety anchor saved his life, breaking a few of his ribs in the process, but Regal knows he owes me, especially because the imps who had unhooked his anchor in the first place beat me up after they realized what I'd done. But is something that happened so long ago worth him taking lead to his own gang? His own leader?

Not wanting to give him away, I bring my eyes back to Lucky Strike and his story. Every time Lucky says my name, my stomach lurches. It's like he's reminding me he knows exactly who I am, and that he won't soon forget.

Finally he stops and looks at me like he expects something from me - doesn't everyone? - but this time, I'm not sure what it is. My breath is shallow in my chest and my lips part softly, my tongue touching the hard line of my lip ring like it is the anchor attaching me to this world.

"I...guess..." I swallow, then manage, "I'm lucky then. That your mother didn't see this." My wrist twitches to the left, indicating the pitcher I hold, but I don't have the strength to actually lift it.

It would take a feather to push me over as Lucky Strike leans into my face, and something unnamably light when he tosses that nail onto the table and asks me for restitution.

I have no marketable skills apart from delivering drinks and food to tables and running empty dishes back. I'm not a skilled fighter and sometimes it's as if I'm the only person in the whole world who hasn't fired a gun before. I tried once to join Canary out on the water - a failure when there's little else to drown out the Whispers.

The Whispers. They're back, with me, urging me out of this, and so I need them to save me - and Regal. I've scarcely stopped studying Lucky Strike since his story began.

To him, I tell the Whispers. Go to him. Ferry his mind to me.

Benson and Hedges, brothers and influential Sippians, don't buy Lucky's story about someone murdering his mother. They think he did it. Lucky knows they suspect and he's going to have to deal with them. Either by convincing them (which he doesn't think he can do) or offing them (which is his unfinished business).Lucky wants you to pledge yourself to the Sipps for a month to make up for the loss of Karo. He knows you've got some power of your own - maybe you can fix the Benson and Hedges thing, or maybe you'll just help him in other ways to secure his leadership and find the murderer of his mother.His deepest secret fear is the gang believing he killed Hard Strike, which, since you're in his head you can see he didn't do. If the Sipps thought like Benson and Hedges, they would kill him very slowly. But then they would curse his name and remove him from "the books", which is his greatest fear.

The Whispers are a barrage returning to me, a dozen tiny bullets burrowing into my brain, each one humming a different resonance. My neck tenses under their attack, eyes closing as sensations and images invade. I see Benson, Hedges. Hard Strike. Karo. The name of Lucky Strike written in smoke and erased with the swipe of a hand. His fear is a dark pit in my own heart, a void that yawns before me as if I've lived with it every day. With one false step, I will be nothing.

I open my eyes again, back to the world I know with that bloody nail staring at me from the table, Lucky looming over me, Sippians all around. My breath trembles as I exhale.

"I can't drive a boat or fire a gun either," I say softly, looking up at Lucky Strike with wide eyes. "I can't replace him directly." My gaze flicks to the nail, then back to him. " But I can..." I swallow, "help you out..." I remember that this is a gang, functioning as a group, so I amend, to, "...help you all out, until he's back."

The Sippians cheer and resume their usual cacophony of conversation while I am left with a fettered future. I find some solace in Regal's retreat and Mikkie's exit, paltry bandages for a longer-lasting wound. I sigh, about to stand when Karo speaks. My lips twitch as words hit the back of them, restrained only by my recently returned common sense. Just because you like it doesn't mean you can grab it, you hazmot.

I do stand now, my knees soft paper under my body. "Let me bring you some ice," I say, ducking my head and heading for the bar to do just that.

End Scene