–8. Exosso

exossō ~āre ~āuī ~ātum, tr.

1. to remove the bones from

Through the cacophony of dancing and inebriated laughter, a holoscreen flickers above a sofa. The dust-addled man watching it snores soundly; the face of a girl with short black hair and determined ice eyes stares out at the dust den.

Rain stops in his tracks. The lights of the den flicker, though the inebriated patrons barely move in response. The smallish man in robes leading him to meet with the proprietor stops as well, his brow shooting up.

“Is something the matter, sir? It was simply one of the usual power flickers.”

Rain can’t look away from the girl’s ice eyes. The robed man chuckles.

“Do you know her? Would you be interested in a meeting?” The vis then flickers and the camera pulls out to show the king’s banquet, and the man sighs. “Ah, she’s a noble. Apologies, sir—I must retract the offer.”

Rain catches his reflection in a bronzed mirror and pulls his cowl farther up his face. Somewhere between slitting that mother’s throat and raising the dagger to stab the daughter, he’d looked into the girl’s eyes. She had his eyes, exactly, without any surgery scars in them, and for a moment it felt as if he was meeting another Spider in the Web, another of his brothers and sisters. His instinct overrode all logic; could they be blood? The Web had raised him with loyalty to his family, to those who were bound to him in this life, and he loved them more than anything. The idea of a blood family has always haunted his dreams, and there she had been—either a supremely coincidental genetic rarity or a dear part of him he’d wondered about for so long.

She’d made it, somehow, to the Nova-King’s court. Rain was an assassin for a noble House, and she must’ve known they tried to kill her—so why return to the lion’s den? Why not simply flee or hide? She would be competing in the Supernova Cup as a rider for a noble House, but for what purpose? He could not help the worry suddenly consuming him. Riding was dangerous, but the world of the nobility more so…

Rain looks up at the man and shakes his head. “Let us continue.”

The man leads him through the room of languishing bodies and soft pillows, finally stopping to knock on a fine wooden door. There is a pause, the man bouncing on his heels anticipatorily.

“The boss is pleased you are willing to accept his proposal, sir—we’ve been forced to employ the common corporate-wetwork sorts. It’s been many months since we had a man of such…skill in our employ.”

A voice reverberates from inside the door. “Come in.”

The man leads Rain into a decadent office—fine rugs and wooden shelves and great green crystalline chunks of unground dust scattered across a metal desk. The boss sits behind it, a gruff man in silks and a mercenary-mannered smile, and his bodyguards sit behind him: two on the wall, two at the door, hard-light swords and pistols bulging beneath their tunics. They took Rain’s weapons at the entrance and yet supplied him with so many right here.

“The Spider’s Hand at last.” The proprietor motions for Rain to sit. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

And so Rain does—many times over, and with many different bloodstains, until the fine rug beneath the doorway soaks red.