Set'em Up

by A N G Reynolds

  “Pay up,” Ariadne demanded. Aether grimaced like he’d just choked down a live squid and it was still wriggling.

  “I don’t think so; your friend here wasn’t part of the original fight. I’m not paying anyone,” the suited man said with some measure of disgust.

  “Listen here—” Ariadne stepped up to the man, obviously still on an adrenaline high from the fight. She grasped hold of Aether’s suit with gooey, grimy hands and pulled him forward.

  “Tsk, tsk,” a new, smoother voice cut in. It was as if a snake had crawled into my bed as the man’s mere presence immediately made me want to run away screaming.

  And I hadn’t even turned around to look at him.

  The air immediately around him felt like cold, rotting fish even though he smelled like roses and leather. The man rested a sizable hand on my shoulder as more of a gesture to move out of the way, with which I complied quickly. He was tall, chiseled, and handsome, no doubt, with dark, greying hair brushed neatly back and a few tasteful gold ear cuffs to declare his opulence, all of which was almost secondary to his million-or-more credit suit of fine red. He was polished, even aristocratic, although not as royal-looking as Ariadne or her brother; no, he was more of a count, a count slimier than the organic residue stuck in my hair.

  “Since you two ladies are new, you must not be acquainted with the golden rules of the fighting culture: pay up your debts, and do not rough up the bookie,” the man said in a honeyed voice. Ariadne gave him an odd look, but released Aether. The bookie kept his eyes carefully averted from the newcomer’s and I moved closer to Ariadne.

  Neither Ariadne nor I actually asked the man his name or to identify himself. In fact, the entire crowd within a ten-foot radius seemed to be carefully ignoring him. Even the everyday chatter expected around the bookie’s corner had died to whispers.

  “I am Piper,” the man said, extending a manicured but gnarled hand toward me and then to Ariadne. His gaze wasn’t necessarily pinned on either Ariadne or me, but it seemed to be roving, and judging between the two of us with a few almost angry glances at Aether and the crowd around him. I gulped loudly, feeling as though I was being punished for something by this strange and somehow horrible man.

  “You’re the boss?” I finally managed to ask. He smiled all too perfectly.

  “Only to Aether. He and I manage the betting for all of Myrkheim’s illegal fighting,” Piper said. I nodded dumbly in mute response. I wanted to drag Ariadne out of the fighting ring and go handle some sort of lost rabbit problem. Piper was making me want to react violently by either killing him or throwing up, neither of which was a good response, given the situation.

  “I’ll mind the rules, next time,” Ariadne finally said. She was avoiding Piper and his gaze as well.

  “Good,” Piper said, smiling again. This time, however, the air around him was warm and inviting. The rotting fish aura he’d produced was replaced with a sedate, friendly atmosphere that encouraged a smile out of Ariadne and let the rose-and-leather cologne dominate. Even the chatter around us returned to normal. I looked at him mostly in shock as he turned from a punishing monster to a kind father.

  Not that I could really believe any father could be kind.

  “Now, what is this problem we seem to be having, Mr. Aether?” Piper asked warmly. Aether seemed only a little less uncomfortable with his boss’s sudden change than I was, but he complied with the question.

  “They wanted to collect their money, but the bet was voided because the fight added another fighter without forewarning,” Aether said stiffly. I gave him a good hard stare, wondering if he’d noticed everything that’d just gone on or if it was me. He merely frowned and looked away as his boss handled the issue.

  “It was unavoidable,” Ariadne spoke up. “Marcie was pushed in toward the end, she didn’t mean to get involved.”

  “Well, I was delayed in arriving, so I did not see the fight,” Piper said, reaching over to Aether and pulling a metallic case out of the man’s pocket. It was locked, but Piper had the key. He began to take some money out of the case, looking over the bookie’s records. “How does your whole bet and half of the winnings sound in the interest of fair play?”

  Ariadne nodded, but Piper handed me the money. His eyes were still cold and dead, I noted, accepting the still-sizable chunk of credits.

  “I would like to see you two fight after a brief business trip I have off-colony. Do you have any scheduled in the next week?” Piper said easily.

  “Do you have any you’d like us to fight at?” Ariadne asked, and I almost punched her in the gut. Wherever this guy might want us, I wanted to be far, far away from.

  “How does Tuesday sound? There is a fight across the shelf in an abandoned barn, starting at 12:30. Be there before the starting bell and I will line up a suitable opponent for you.” Piper smiled again, oozing with civility, kindness, and an overly fatherly attitude. It was like he wanted us to think he actually cared for our wellbeing. “If you win, we might discuss a mutually beneficial sponsorship.”

  “We’ll be there,” Ariadne said with a nod, and I immediately grabbed her hand and towed her through the crowd that had decided to flood poor Aether. I shot one last look back at Piper, but he was busy being an altogether polite and well-mannered person.

  Nine

  “I’m telling you, Ariadne, he’s a whackjob,” I declared as the princess and I were cleaning the dung from some lost, mammalian pet-type thing I still couldn’t identify off our hands and clothes. With the critter delivered, we’d completed our 15-mission success streak for the animal control office, making enough money to live comfortably and visit Jones’ whenever Ariadne had a hankering for an eyeful of Leopold.

  Okay, that might’ve been unfair, but he seemed just as eager to see her, and I found the whole situation incredibly adorable.

  Even with more challenging pet problems like the generic mammalian we’d just caught and returned to a grateful socialite on the second-to-middle shelf, it would take a sizable portion of our lives to save up enough to restock the ship.

  While illegal fighting should have solved that problem, the past few fights had turned out more costly than the first few. In fact, out of three fights, we’d only managed to win one, and that was against a rookie greener than his organic face transplant. Ariadne hadn’t even needed to step in for that one, I knocked the boy out with one good hit.

  I was on the edge of willing to work with Piper.

  The edge of. He could at least arrange fights that were within our wheelhouse, rather than just having us show up and picking whoever happened to be available. Making a lot of money very quickly so that we could get on with our skiptracing and track down wherever Ottoman Lee could be hiding sounded like a fantastic idea. But all I could remember of Piper was the rotting fish aura he gave off. Apparently it had escaped Ariadne, who thought my observation was over the top. Perhaps she was right; I could be overreacting, or, at this point, misremembering the event. While I acknowledged the idea, I couldn’t get rid of the impression Piper had left on me.

  “Why? Because he was mad we roughed up his bookie?” Ariadne said, scowling as she tried to wash out her jacket in a public water spout. It was a new-fangled Centauri spigot that was part of a separate system from Myrkheim’s main water processing and storage structure. It was installed a few years ago after the colony suffered a dangerous infection that made the processed water undrinkable. While such an infection is not much of a problem in organic structures on earth, where water is bountiful, Myrkheim was on the brink of dehydration before the antibiotics finally kicked in. So the United-Consortium hired the Centauri to develop a whole new way to manufacture, distribute, and store water across the colony, all connected by a streamlined series of public water spouts that spread clean, fresh liquid life 24/7 to whomever might need it.

  “No, because…” I scowled, playing with a claw mark the critter had left in my jeans. I had a bruise but no scratches so I wasn’t worried about getting a tetanus sho
t. “He’s insane, evil. I can’t explain it, I’ve just seen people like him before,” I said half-heartedly.

  Ariadne stopped to look at me carefully. It was more curious than questioning, but I looked away as she asked that question.

  “Who?”

  Why did she always have to be so curious?

  “No,” I said simply. “Piper is just bad news. We shouldn’t get involved with him.”

  The princess sighed greatly, putting on a damp jacket with pursed lips.

  “Well, the only way we are going to make enough money to really pursue Otto-whats-his-face is by fighting. And now that Piper has marked us, we won’t be able to just waltz into any fight we want with the intention of taking money from him that he didn’t offer,” Ariadne said. I nodded solemnly.

  “Do you ever wish you hadn’t paid for my radiation treatment?” I asked.

  “Nah, you’re cute.” Ariadne crinkled her nose irritatingly. I rolled my eyes carefully, since one was still fairly swollen from last night’s fight.

  • • •

  We made it to the old barn at 12:15, each step causing me more and more regret. At least we made it in plenty of time to scope out the place and visit our new lord and master. My pulse quickened, and not in a good way, as Piper spotted us and moved closer. I held close to Ariadne, but let her do most of the talking and interaction.

  Unlike his first entrance into my sphere of influence, Piper was altogether charming, commanding, and every bit a polite and necessary member of society. As he pulled cash by the handfuls from hapless bettors and the unrich, I felt uncomfortable with the contrast between his attitude and his actions. But since I was here, at the fight, I may as well get in on the action.

  “My newest fighters,” Piper said smoothly, tipping the brim of his hat before gently kissing Ariadne’s hand. He scooped up my hand with a great deal of force, pinching my knuckles together painfully and giving me a good, long and loveless glare. He then walked between Ariadne and me and placed a hand around each of our shoulders and lead us from group to group. I mostly scowled, to which nobody protested; it was probably a good image for a fighter to be angry and sullen all the time. Even Ariadne wasn’t bouncing around like she had been at last morning’s match. After a few minutes of being Piper’s new chew toy, I excused myself to scope out the area.

  “I’ll come with—” Ariadne began, but Piper stopped her.

  “Actually, m’lady, I need you to stay here to straighten out some official rules for tonight,” Piper said, and smiled grandly at the princess.

  “Oh, okay,” Ariadne said, more confused than concerned. She turned back to me. “You go on without me.”

  I thought about that for a second. The less suspicious, more compliant course of action would be for me to go off, by myself, leaving Ariadne at Piper’s mercy. The safer, more comfortable course of action was to stay and show Piper that I would be his newest challenger.

  I looked at Ariadne.

  “Nah,” I said, flashing her a casual smile. “It’s just a big barn in the middle of nowhere. Plus Piper already has our match lined up. I’m sure he chose well.”

  “Matches. After you win your first one, I have two more lined up,” Piper almost growled the word out. I shrugged and sat down on the nearest chair. I could scout well enough from here.

  For the most part, the crowd was unchanged from the other morning. Still rowdy with the usual mix of families and individuals of all walks of life, all of which shared the same annoyance at having to weave their way through the old lichen lumps. The chest-high lumps were essentially that, round and elongated hills of calloused, bark-like epidermis that stretched out about a hundred feet in length. They were laid out in neat rows with narrow spaces between, making it difficult for more than one person to walk between. Their purpose was simply to provide a place for lichen to latch on to and grow.

  Although wheats and barleys were just as popular here as they were on Earth, it was easier to grow things like lichens, mosses, and mushrooms on the organic Myrkheim. This was largely due to the fact that no one really wanted to ship hundreds of tons of dirt to the colony, upset the ecosystem, and make Myrkheim self-sustaining. Once you introduce dirt, you have to introduce bacteria for the dirt, and once you do that, you have to introduce all kinds of critters for the management and care of the crops like pollinators. All of which has to learn to cooperate and agree with the fauna and flora already maintained by Myrkheim anyway.

  While it was an expensive set up, no doubt, with the slim-but-possible potential of completely killing Myrkheim’s main organic structure, in the long run it was much cheaper than shipping the necessary grains across the entire system and through the nebula.

  Who was I to argue with overgrown monopolies who weren’t making enough money pilfering every nook and cranny of the market to let the biggest shipping port in the system be completely self-sustaining?

  The barn for this particular farm was a run-down and greying falsebone structure that was less part of Myrkheim and more tacked together with spare bone. Whether that was the reason the farm was being left unused, the farmers couldn’t afford the fines that go with building a structure that was attached to the colony biologically, or if they’d simply gone out of business, it was the perfect place for a fight. Even better than the old metallic silo.

  Of course, the barn was a whole lot more rickety.

  It creaked with the weight of fighters and spectators crammed into its rooms and structures. A few people, mostly the young and the bulletproof, climbed up onto its roof and were looking down on the rest of the crowds.

  I finally looked back toward the slimy excuse for a human being. He was, as usual, being altogether charming and friendly. As if he wasn’t the complete—

  I sighed. It really didn’t matter what name I called him.

  “Ready for hell, ma’am?” Aether came out of nowhere and whispered to me.

  “Don’t think I don’t know it,” I muttered, casting a glare toward Piper. So it appeared Aether did know who he worked for.

  “Actually, you don’t know it. Do you really think that you and your friend are truly bad at fighting? Or do you think the matches since the one against Ms. Abercrombie have not been in your favor?” Aether looked at me without lying.

  I was an idiot.

  Ariadne and I were not having a string of bad luck, we were being starved. Starved of success and money, becoming desperate enough to actually consider Piper’s offer of servitude.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I demanded.

  “Because I want your forgiveness,” Aether said earnestly.

  “It’s really not mine that you need,” I commented.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’ve already had a long conversation with God,” Aether said earnestly. “But, please.”

  I looked the man in the face. It was nothing but honest, and I realized I had nothing real to hate about him. Sure, he was Piper’s lackey, but this meeting was proof enough of Aether’s remorse.

  “I forgive you,” I said.

  “Then my suggestion is to get out of here as quickly as possible. If you think Piper is evil, you should meet his wife. She is the only person in this universe that he actually fears,” Aether said in a hushed tone before leaving as though nothing had happened.

  That’s it, I decided, standing in a hurry. There was no way I was going to actually make any sort of deal with Piper or let Ariadne do something of the kind. I could already feel the walls closing in around me as I stalked toward the princess, ready to pull her away from Piper. We’d have to find another avenue of monetary gain, it just might take longer that we’d hoped.

  A great, pinching hand grabbed hold of my elbow just before I reached her.

  “Where are you going, my dear?” Piper said easily as his grip increased, smashing my skin against my bone.

  “I was just going over to my friend. That shouldn’t bother you,” I said.

  “No. It shouldn’t, but it does,” Piper rubbed his chin thought
fully. “You don’t like me, and I’m afraid that won’t do for a mutually beneficial—”

  “Cut the crap,” I said, tired of this game we were playing. “I don’t care what mutually beneficial nonsense you think I’m going to commit to, but I don’t plan on being your puppet for any amount of time.”

  “Don’t test me, child,” Piper leaned in to whisper angrily. It was all I could do not to scratch his eyeballs from their sockets.

  “We made no arrangements beyond tonight. We made no commitments. We signed no contracts. You will not have us for your new playthings,” I sneered back at the man, refusing to back down.

  “You will regret this insult to me and my hospitality for all of eternity,” Piper said in an even tone, letting my elbow go with a shove.

  I gave the man one last, parting sneer before disappearing into the crowd. I had to arrange Ariadne and my bets for the night, hopefully with some insider help.

  The bell finally rang for the fighters to take their positions, a side at each of the barn’s massive thresholds. It was a teamed effort, with the pair of us facing off against a pair of highly unusual fighters: a tall, blonde-haired and blue-eyed lady with organic-prosthetic limbs from the elbows and knees down and a shorter maniac with a wild glint in his eyes and a white Mohawk. Together, these two had the collective fighting experience of an uncoordinated five-year-old, or so Aether had told me.

  This would probably be the easiest fight we’d had all week.

  Ariadne and I waited patiently, calmly staring across the fighting area toward the fidgeting duo. The rookie fighters pranced and tried to put on a good show, taking turns flashing rude or “I will kill you” gestures toward the princess and me. It wasn’t particularly threatening, nor did the crowd really respond to it with affirmation. The two vertically disparate rookies just didn’t know how to excite a crowd.