Chapter Twelve

 

The blood was fresh. Pandora pulled a blade from her duffle bag, edging towards the counter in the back of the store looking for signs of her mother. The equipment was a mix of old and new, which made it hard to feel with her sapphire. The click of a gun made her freeze.

"Oh, it's you."

The disappointment felt like hot ash across her skin. Pandora turned to find a hooded figure pointing a large handgun in her direction. The weapon dropped to their side and they pulled away their hood, revealing a person who'd been mangled and put back together more than once.

"Hello, Mother."

"Don't say that here."

The woman standing at the back of the shop had one real eye while the other was a faintly glowing amber globe in her socket. Scar tissue radiated down her neck, and the right side of her mouth was pulled into a permanent grimace. The half of her head that had the missing eye was shaved to the skin, revealing lines of knotted tissue where her skull had nearly been torn in half.

"You have a new eye."

Her mother threw the gun into a drawer, slamming it shut while the scowl never left her lips.

"What are you doing here?"

Pandora gestured behind her. "There's blood on the floor."

"Fuck," said her mother, a quick glance to the back room betraying some foul deed. She grabbed a rag and threw it to Pandora. "Make yourself useful."

The blood left a stain on the wood, but she soaked up the liquid, handing it to her mother, who dropped it in a metal trash bin. Pandora caught the flash of her mother's left hand beneath the cloak. It looked like steel and bone and gold.

"A new arm too."

Her mother pulled her left arm to her chest, sucking the artificial hand out of sight.

"I wasn't presentable last time."

"I don't care what you look like," said Pandora.

"And I don't want your pity."

"But you want my obedience. I got the message."

Her mother looked up from her desk, a mixture of anger and devastation.

"You're running out of time to be useful."

Pandora ran her fingertips across the front of the desk. "They asked me to infiltrate the clans. I did that. They wanted me to get a stone. I've done that. I have their trust too. What else do they want?"

"War. Between Razor and the Drops. Once they've destroyed each other's strength they'll be easy to eliminate."

"That might be happening already," said Pandora.

She gave a brief explanation of the earlier raid on the Black Crows. Her mother gave no hint of her impression, and not for the first time did Pandora wish she hadn't failed attunement to an amber. Being able to read people would help her navigate the treacherous waters ahead.

"Aren't you going to say anything?"

"What are you doing to bring this about? All I heard was a successful mission for the Drops. You should have let the boy kill the warleader. There would have been no peace then."

Pandora listed about. She couldn't tell if she wanted to please her mother, or the demands of her spying. At least there was no clicker on the desk, threatening the horrors of the past. A benefit of surprising her mother.

"It's not that simple."

"Then make it so."

Pandora pulled her hand into a fist, not in anger, but to exert control over her life. She stared into the curled fingers, the white knuckles, and tried not to imagine what it would have been like to have a mother like Choo-Choo's.

"I'm working on it," she said absently.

Her mother disappeared into the back, returning with a small satchel in her artificial hand. The pale bone fingers flexed as she held the bag out, revealing gilded tendons and steel interiors. Pandora couldn't take her eyes off the arm.

"It was a gift."

"That's not a gift."

Her mother touched the strange eye with her good hand. "This allows me to see things others can't, and this hand is stronger than one of your topaz. I'm better now, more useful."

"You don't need to be useful to me. You just need to be my mother."

"Silence, girl. You'll get us both killed."

The strange eye strengthened in its amber glow then reduced as she turned her head slightly.

"No one's about. You're lucky." She shook the bag. "Take it."

Pandora held out her hand, but hesitated over the strap. "What's in it?"

"An acceleration to war. Place this near the processing building. Give yourself enough time to get away from the blast radius."

"The processing building? It's nothing but old men and women and kids in there."

"Their rage will be unquenchable. After what you told me about the raid, they'll have no choice but to believe it was Razor." Her mother grunted. "Take it, girl."

"Girl? Do I have no name anymore?"

"Stop playing games, Pandora. Does that make you feel better?"

A knot welled up in her throat. She felt sick as she squeezed her hand around the strap, taking the load from her mother.

"Go on, get out of here. I wasn't expecting you. There are others stirring outside. Leave before they pass."

Like an automaton, Pandora turned and shuffled towards the door with visions of the Pajot whirling through her mind. The harvest building was a place of laughter. Choo-Choo's mom, Triana, worked there sometimes along with Vasy. She wouldn't be surprised if Duro's mother spent time there as well. Hitting it would trigger a war with no chance of ending until one side was eliminated.

She made it to the door near a wall of blue oxygen bottles, chained and locked into place. Pandora stared at a patch of rust around the neck of the nearest bottle, smelled the dust in the air, felt the warmth of the Terreno pressing against her flesh.

"No."

Pandora turned back, striding quickly to the desk and setting the bag of explosives on top where her mother had been reviewing inventory sheets.

"I'm not doing that."

The tilt of her mother's head, the pulsing of her eye, they made Pandora want to curl into a ball.

"This isn't a choice. Take the bag and leave," she said as she reached towards a drawer. Pandora knew what was inside. Just the threat brought visions of the box and the sharp feet that flayed skin.

"I will find another way. But I won't do that."

"This is your human weakness speaking. When they let you leave, you promised that it was gone, that you'd buried it along with your father. Don’t be backsliding now. It won't end well."

The drawer slid open slowly, the wood on wood sending Pandora's heart rate into the stratosphere. Using her good hand, her mother scooped up the clicker. Pandora could see nothing but the way her mother's thumb caressed the brass dome, threatening the reminder.

"Go on, Pan. Take the bag and leave. Do your duty. The rewards will come later and you can forget about these people. They don't love you. The only reason they took you in was because you were useful to them."

"Like you?" asked Pandora, nostrils flaring.

"Come now, Pan. You know I love you unconditionally. But you and I are a part of something greater than us. We have to push aside our own wants and needs."

"I'm not taking the explosives."

Click. Click.

The sound was a thunderclap in her ears. Sweat rolled down her spine. Pandora swallowed, bared her teeth in a grimace. Horrors in the darkness assaulted the edges of her mind.

"No. Not that way. I'll find my own. But not that."

She turned. Taking the first step towards the door felt like stepping out of an airplane without a parachute. Every fiber of her being was screaming not to go.

"Pan. Pandora. Don't you dare leave without this bag."

The second step was easier than the first, and before she knew it she was outside, leaning against the wooden building, hyperventilating on the fresh air as if she'd been underwater for ten minutes.

She assumed her mother could see her through the wall, but didn't care. There were a lot of things she would do, but not that. Pandora stumbled away from the shop, wandering aimlessly while trying to calm the beating of her heart. She found herself outside the Onyx.

As she pushed inside, she couldn't help but hope that Kuma would be there with his friends in one of the booths, laughing with the redheaded hostess, drinking a bottle of champagne. In her mind, she'd walk over to the booth and sit down with them, ignoring the animosity between their clans. A pleasing fiction that helped the quivers of her hands finally stop.

But when she went inside, the place was nearly empty. An older man with long gray hair and a scar bisecting his cheek was drunkenly singing a ballad on the stage while one of the hostesses was clapping and whistling for him. The little lights from the chandelier cast glittering shadows across the carpet.

"Pandora?"

The soft voice had her heart jumping. She found Leesa sitting in a booth by herself, sipping from a glass. Pandora joined the hostess. Her mane of red hair was swooped on top of her head, revealing her slender neck.

"What are you doing here?" asked Leesa, forehead hunched.

"Passing through."

Leesa held out her drink. "You look like you could use this."

Pandora was about to say no, but Leesa shook it at her. She took the glass and downed the clear alcohol, which burned the whole way down. Leesa leaned over the edge of the seat and waved two fingers at the bartender.

"Seen a ghost?"

Pandora stared into the empty glass. "Something like that." She looked up. "Pretty empty."

"Hasn't been the same since Shade's End," said Leesa with a raised eyebrow.

"No, it hasn't."

"Have you?" she asked.

"No. Not sure we will again."

Leesa smiled wistfully. "The shadows are like that. Make you see things that aren't really there, or hide the dangers you wish weren't actually about to leap out."

While they listened to the old man on the stage sing a song about love and loss, she heard a familiar voice. Pandora ducked down as Garret, the kid from the maintenance shop, came out of the back room with one of the other hostesses, a beautiful woman with thick black hair and ruby red lips. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and stuffed a couple of bills in her hand as he headed out of the Onyx.

"He come here often?" asked Pandora.

"Whenever he's in town, which is a couple times a month. Elani keeps him busy."

"Yeah, she does," said Pandora, staring after the young man. Questions about where he was getting the money for a hostess club as a maintenance worker were lost when the bartender brought two glasses. Leesa thanked him and he returned to the bar. She held out her glass, which Pandora reluctantly clinked against.

"To hope."

"Hope?" asked Pandora. "Wasn't what I was expecting you to say."

"Why not? Why shouldn't I hope?" asked Leesa.

Pandora thought about the bag of explosives that her mother had wanted to give her, the brass clicker in her hand, and the strange eye and arm that hadn't been there before.

"I'm finding it hard to these days."

"I'm surprised. You went from waitress to waku in a few months, fought a duel that's still being talked about, and are hanging around with the most famous of all the waku. If anyone's a symbol of hope in this dark place, it's you."

"You know I'm here with Duro?"

Leesa cocked a grin. "It's my job to know these things."

"What else do you know?" asked Pandora harshly.

Leesa held her hands back. "Nothing important. I deal in people. My job is to make people forget about their troubles for a short time, help them believe they have a friend in this unforgiving place. So it's important for me to know who hangs out with who." She winked. "I saw you two enter the Terreno when I came in for my shift. Nothing more."

"Do you ever miss the light?"

Leesa glanced upward. "I go up now and then to satisfy my curiosity, but honestly, I like it here. I make good money, great money. And I enjoy the job. It feels good to make people happy, even if it’s fleeting."

"I wish I could say the same." Pandora took a drink, being careful not to chug the second glass. "I'm surprised you're not asking me to buy you a bottle."

"It's my job to read people, and I can say without a doubt that asking that question is the last thing you want to hear. You want to forget about something that you recently learned and you're unhappy about."

"Does it ruin the mystique, you telling me how you're manipulating me?" asked Pandora.

"I don't know," said Leesa. "Does it?"

"Not really."

"See. We want to believe in the illusions that life presents us, even when we know they're not real, because the alternative is much worse."

"That no one cares?"

"No," said Leesa. "That they do care, but we're not worthy of their feelings."

Pandora sat in the booth with Leesa for a few hours. Neither said another word and occasionally they shared a creasing of the eyes. She had two more drinks during that period, but never felt more sober in her life. When she realized she needed to be leaving, she tried to pay, but Leesa wouldn't accept it. They hugged briefly, and Pandora couldn't figure out if the redhead was actually her friend or was playing the part of the hostess.

Outside the Onyx, the glittering lights of the Terreno and the noisy clinking of pachinko balls felt distant. Pandora wandered around, avoiding others until she spotted a fruit and vegetable vendor. She took the money that Duro had given her and bought as many bags of food as she could carry.

When it was time, she found Duro at the Poinsettia. He was sitting at the bar drinking a beer and eating gyoza. He raised an eyebrow at her overstuffed bags.

"Hungry?"

"For Triana."

The corners of his lips curled slightly as he pushed away his plate and empty beer, tossing a few bills on the counter. "Let me help carry them."

She handed them over and the two of them headed back to the Pajot in comfortable silence.