“Fu Fu Duck Yo Yo,” she chuckled over her shoulder. My view from the ground was . . . rather nice.
“You speak English.”
She laughed again. “Much more fun to see you imagine what I say.”
“Quit talking and do something!” Miranda hissed, hopping side to side, both her glasses and plump tumbling dangerously.
“Nah . . . think I’ll just sit here and watch. This is pretty much over.”
Sabine skipped to the pace, not showing any fear. “You think that you have anima and I do not, so you win. If this was true then there would still be five of you.”
“True that . . . who taught you the moves?”
“My papa was a dangerous man.”
“Guess it would be nice to always know your daughter can protect herself . . . fathers worry about that crap.”
“Anima is useless if not used correctly,” Sabine said like she was quoting someone. “Worse than useless . . . goes to opponent’s advantage. Freeze a pond . . . make your enemy a bomb.”
“I’m sure Raj regrets his creativity.”
“Aeromancer not willing to cut. Pyromancer scared of burning her friends. Geomancer only interested in punching.” She shook her head. “I am not scared a bit of you. Just playing with you. Waiting for my classmates to finish your classmates. Long as you are here then you cannot press the button, yes?”
“King Henry, do something!” Miranda yelled.
Val said nothing. She was too busy concentrating. Sweat rolled down her brow despite a day growing more chill with each passing minute.
“Why?” I asked.
“She’s right about keeping us here!” Miranda huffed. The longer it went on the slower she moved and the more silly it looked.
“But . . . we’re not all here.”
“What?”
I showed my teeth, chuckling good and long. Might have got beat by a girl. Might have got dunked in ice water. But . . . use what you got. Take what you can get. Exalt in the little victories. “Where’s Pocket?”
Three pairs of eyes, each of them caught up in the moment so deep they’d forgotten the pathetic, no-kills floromancer, went wide. Val took her eyes off Sabine for a split second. Miranda stopped moving. Sabine . . . Sabine shifted immediately from passive-aggressive to straight up going-to kick-your-assive.
She slid forward so fast she was even with Miranda in a blink. Around came a knife-edge-chop into Miranda’s red vest. A flash and a buzz but not enough. This was okay for Sabine, since she’d already thrown her whole momentum around in a whip-kick that knocked Miranda the same way Raj had fallen, with the exact same results.
Val gasped, trying to back up and bring her glove even, get that killshot now that nothing was between them. Sabine dropped to a knee, rolled, came up with a muddy shoulder and skipped to the side; moving, always moving and dodging until . . .
Mock my ass, will you?
Think I’m only punches?
Sometimes it’s nice to have a reputation. Then people don’t expect you’re capable of the opposite. For example: ice plus water plus hydromancer equals explosion. Water plus ice plus a dirt Mound equals mud. Mud plus geomancer equals . . . mud shackles.
Movement from Sabine, heading to take out Val and then be off after Pocket until . . . no movement. Just a hot French girl in a swimsuit with mud wrapping all the way to her knees, struggling to get nowhere. Feel like I just described some specific Japanese sexual fetish but we’ll ignore that one . . .
Sabine kept struggling, kept going nowhere. She grunted, clawed some of the mud from her legs, but nothing. Val stared, shaking every inch of her, that gloved hand pointed right at Sabine’s red vest.
“It’s not real fire, Boomworm,” I reminded her.
Something clicked behind her iris-less eyes and that glove beeped.
Sabine’s vest did the same.
“Dear Mancy,” Val whispered. “We did it . . .”
Yeah . . . fuck yeah, we did it!
Not a minute later the speakers came to life in a blare. “This is Gamemaster Root. Class ’09 wins the game by fifth button depression. Class ’09 wins the match two games to one.”
Pocket came through.
Hell of an audible, Fernthrower.
Session 124
Someone must have called Peter Ward, since he wasn’t surprised to see me sipping at my third mug of coffee. At least . . . he wasn’t surprised to have a guest. His eyes got a little big at my appearance. Even having taken the opportunity to change into my second, cleaner geomancer’s coat—King Henry Price don’t do cleaned up and well-groomed in Fresno, sure as fuck don’t do it in Palo Alto.
“Val’s . . . friend?” he hesitantly asked.
At a nod from Ronnie, I got a handshake and an apology that he needed to freshen up before dinner.
“No problem,” I said.
Christmas Ward came in from the garage next, eyes only for a smartphone, fingers hitting a text message out on a keyboard as fast as lightning. “Valentine has another stupid friend over to bug me about her stupid school?” she asked without looking up.
Christmas was shorter than Val. She was only fourteen-going-on-fifteen, so she wasn’t there yet, but she’d end up fuller breasted and curvier than Val when she was fully grown up. She had brown hair as common as dirt and along with the big funbags she’d probably have to work hard to keep her ass in check later in life. Guessing she took after the Ward side, not whatever cooked up Ronnie and Val. Kind people could call her cute, but it was all from youth. As the years piled on she would look plainer and plainer.
Her only crowning glory was a pair of hazel eyes with green like jade and brown like amber. Striking even staring down at a phone screen, straight on they’d be mesmerizing.
That’s geo-anima for you. Like’s the common ones, the steady ones, the ones that will blend into a crowd. All the things I’m not . . . but then, I came to the Mancy from the other side. From the earthquake, going-to-tear-down-your-castle side.
“Yes, sweetie,” Ronnie said. “Go put your backpack away and get ready for dinner in ten minutes, please.”
Christmas still didn’t look up, but did smile. “Good luck, buddy. I’ve heard it all and seen it all. Val can light candles as many times as she wants; I’m going to real college and becoming a lawyer and then I’m becoming attorney general and then I’m going to sit on the Supreme Court.”
Yeah.
Maybe I’d been wrong.
Maybe Christmas Ward does have a little earthquake in her.
I stared at the smartphone, still flashing a conversation in text. Somewhere in my head I could see Ceinwyn Dale’s cutting smile over the role reversal. Worked on me, didn’t it? Reaching into my jean pocket, I pulled out my wallet, counted out three-hundred in cash, and handed it over to a puzzled Ronnie.
She looked at the bills like she hadn’t seen anything like them before and wondered over their usefulness and why they sat in her hand.
My answer was quick: I snapped the smartphone in half with a precision blast of geo-anima split three ways at one target, one after another. Glass, shell, core. Snap, snap, snap, like a samurai sword cut from top to bottom.
Christmas gave a little scream as the two separate pieces dropped to the ground. Ronnie gasped. Val had a look on her face that said, ‘so this is how you’re playing it?’
Christmas Ward finally raised her head to get a look at me. She flinched back to huddle near a wall, like I was some stray pitbull.
I grinned at her, showing my teeth. “Seen that one before?”
“What . . . what?”
“You ignored me, so I got your attention.”
“What the hell!?! You broke my phone, you freak!”
“Yeah. What’s your point?”
“Mom!”
Ronnie ran her fingers over the wad of cash in her hands, pausing. I could almost hear her thoughts, ‘it wasn’t an accident, he knew in advance.’ She turned to me with a questioning expression. I gave her a nod. “I’l
l go get the food plated. You three go ahead and . . . talk.”
“Mom!”
“You said you didn’t want me involved in your decision, sweetheart.”
“My phone!”
Ronnie handed her the cash. “If you need more, then tell me.”
“Mom! Don’t leave me with these freaks!”
“They aren’t freaks, sweetheart; they’re your sister and her . . . good friend.”
Some kind of grunt-pout noise escaped Christmas before she kicked at the two pieces of her broken phone and then ran away towards her room.
Val watched her go. “That helped.”
“Yup.”
“I’m being facetious.”
“I know. I get it now. Why this is so hard on you. You’re not in the maze. You’re part of the maze.”
Val blinked over this for a minute. “How does this help then?”
“Same way Ceinwyn played it with me. I just made myself the enemy.”
“And you fight the enemy,” Val pointed out, “you don’t do as the enemy suggests.”
“And you fight the enemy,” I agreed.
“So?”
“She’s been ignoring you all, pretending she’s above it. Going to be a lawyer. Now . . . she’s fighting the enemy.”
Realization flooded Val’s face. “You’re saying you put her on the field.”
“Now we’re gonna play us a game.” I learned close to her so I could whisper, “I remember you being good at games, Boomworm.”
“And you always made sure we picked the most foolish move possible,” Val said, leaning in close to me as well. “So what’s the most foolish move possible this time?”
“Foolish? Ain’t foolish. Just got the most flair.”
“Flair?”
“Motherfucking gumption, sister.”
“Try not to break anything of mine or my parents, please.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not me that will win her over, it’s you.”
Val pulled back to study me, trying to decide if I was teasing. “How so?”
“Just have a pool ready.”
“King Henry . . .”
“Can’t hear you,” I mouthed, already walking for the kitchen.
“King Henry . . . it’s a wooden house!”
“Good thing I trust you with my life,” I said, serious, “and you trust me with yours, don’t you?”
Val took a deep calming breath and then followed me into the dining room.
[CLICK]
I didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything besides eat the food Ronnie had cooked for a long while. Zucchini, salmon, whatever the rest of it was. Can’t say it tasted like anything besides olive-scented and lemon-scented cardboard. Which was the point of it. Fucking health freaks. Too scared to admit they’re eating another living creature, so they punish themselves with bland shit. Ever tasted turkey-bacon? Might as well be into self-flagellation.
They didn’t even put salt and pepper on the table.
Pepper . . . love me some pepper.
Pepper might have saved the fish.
Fish . . . don’t like fish at all.
Never have.
Geomancer in me? Maybe. Plenty of earthquaking but no swimming upstream.
Not doing a thing but eating and sipping at a glass of water takes a certain kind of willpower I usually don’t have. My mouth, always ready to tear someone a new asshole, to say, ‘mine, don’t cross, don’t touch’, Ceinwyn says it’s going to get me killed one day.
Truth is . . . I talk a good game about not caring, about sitting back on my own, but I always get dragged out, don’t I? Very American of me. We don’t want to bomb the brown sandy bitches, promise! Very Imperial of me. Carthage is full of elephant cocksuckers, they asked for it!
Just like Rome I get dragged into the fight, into the argument, into situations like this one with Val and Christmas. Ain’t going nowhere with you, vampire bitch. Ends in an earthquake. Fucking punch me, I dare ya, bullies. Almost starts a war. I broke your smartphone, what’s your next move, little girl?
I tell myself lies about how I don’t like to talk, don’t like to be foul and dirty and get a reaction. Just want to be left alone. Not a showboater at all, just all serious with myself. But the truth . . . only time I’m not a showboater, only time I’m not asking for it is: when I’m already fighting.
If I talk when I’m fighting, it’s only to make a bigger fight.
So I looked down at my plate, viewed all that healthy food as an enemy to be beaten. One bite at a time. I will overcome your firm but disgustingly veggie taste, zucchini! I will punish you, oily egg noodles! You’re my bitch, pink bony fish!
Around me, family night started like normal I guess. Peter Ward showed up, greeted us, told the wife how his day was. Christmas sulked into her seat, glaring at me or her plate. Ronnie mentioned some bit about politics. Val asked her dad how the new upgrade patch was going. Peter asked her what she’d been doing the last two weeks since he’d last seen her. She told a story about going to Brazil for a tour of the new Elementalist school they’ve built there.
Zucchini, egg noodles, salmon.
Chomp, fucking chomp.
Eventually, Peter Ward included me into the dinner, asking, “What is it you do, King Henry? I don’t think Val mentioned it.”
Ronnie had sat us across the table from each other as far as she could. Val was on my right and her dad was across from her. Ronnie was on the end and Christmas was directly across from me. Big wooden table, plenty of room for twice as many people, plenty of distance separating the two men in the room.
I studied Peter Ward from across that distance. I’d said old school computer guy before, and yeah—glasses and grey hair and a nicely trimmed beard. But he had business man inside of him too, in those dark eyes not giving his thoughts for neither penny nor dime.
Any geek can start a company. Only takes some new look at code or how to do things and then you got yourself something. Takes a special kind of geek to keep a company for twenty years, move it from Melbourne to Silicon Valley, and still have your name as the only owner. WardWall ain’t Google or Apple, shit, I’d never heard of it before, but having a slice of that fine technological pie for twenty years . . .
Marry an opinionated and beautiful woman like Ronnie, raise a daughter like Val, raise another daughter like Christmas—who from what I’d gleaned during family catch-up hour was a little genius, with two grades skipped and college credits already collected—takes a special kind of man. He’s either got a ruthless streak buried under the geek or is the luckiest motherfucker I’ve ever met.
Strong men like that . . . they like to be impressed. But me . . . fuck if I ever cared about being recognized, right? “I own my own business.”
“Oh, what?” Peter asked.
“On-demand printed clothes.”
“Oh. That’s . . . something.”
“Keeps me busy.”
Val snorted at my side. “Really?”
“What?”
“You’re playing that card?”
“I do. Gave you a nice shirt, didn’t I? Made you laugh.”
Val shook her head at me and turned to her father. “He’s an Artificer. It’s a very big deal in the Elemental world. In fact, he runs the only freely managed Artificer design shop in the entire United States.”
“I don’t brag but, actually it’s all of North America.”
Ronnie kept us going forward. “And what does an Artificer do?”
I put down my fork, finished with dinner, but still refused to admit Christmas Ward existed. “Val’s covered the thirteen disciplines of the Mancy?”
“The Mancy?” Peter asked.
“It’s a nickname for Elementalism.”
“Another nickname . . .” Ronnie muttered under her breath. “Wine anyone?”
“So . . . thirteen disciplines of the Mancy and one mancer can only use one discipline. What an Artificer allows is a workaround. Our anima . . . did—“
“T
hey know the basics any Single would understand,” Val stopped my question.
Ronnie returned with a bottle of wine and four glasses, she placed them in front of everyone but Christmas. Christmas’ brow twitched at being left out.
“Geomancer anima is the heaviest of the anima-types, so Artificers are able to contain and manipulate the rest to create items that can use a set amount of anima outside of the mancer.”
“Anima has weight?” Peter asked, intrigued.
“For a lack of a better term.”
“What about my daughter’s type?”
Which one? But I said, “Pyro-anima is the third lightest anima type.”
“What’s below it?”
“Spectro and Scio.”
“Light and shadow,” Val filled in.
“You said Single . . .”
“Maybe first month Single.”
Peter Ward leaned forward, food and everyone else forgotten, though he occasionally sipped at his white wine. “So how do these items work?”
“Depends on your creativity and how complex you can craft the anima-channels into the items. Most of it is forethought and working schematics, a little bit is experimentation, some more is straight up power with the Mancy since more power equals stronger containment, and then . . . there’s the math and equations about how different types of anima relate and interact with each other. Artificing . . . it’s a lot harder to simplify than anima-type.”
“And you just . . . make these items and anyone can use them?”
“Some take a mancer; others can be rigged with a simple switch or button. It depends on the design too.”
“What have you specifically made? Do you have products?”
“What does it matter what he makes?!?!” Christmas Ward finally broke, screaming at the whole room.
“Christmas—“ Ronnie tried.
“No! I’m not going to the stupid school and Valentine has already graduated and leaned all about her fire stuff, so why does it matter?”
“Sweetheart, it’s your sister’s world and we—“
“It’s just stupid candle lighting! Val knew that Daddy likes scientific stuff so she had this trained Neanderthal come in here and act like it’s just so complicated, when we know it’s just little things! Tiny little tornado, who cares?!?!”
The Foul Mouth and the Troubled Boomworm (The King Henry Tapes) Page 9