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I’m scared They cannot kill me, I cannot kill them Not here Not now All of us kno this dance will end But dance we do

Karnus snaps his fingers and they rush toward oes down I rush at Karnus, howling like a e a flurry of strikes into his nerve centers, drivingtissue He rocks back, and I press into hi his bulk to shield me from the others and their sticks I strip a stick away fro her with an elbow to her te the stick toward Karnus’s face But it’s blocked So into the scalp I don’t stumble Not until Karnus hits me so hard with his elbow inone by one They surround me and they punish me with the efficiency of their deadly art, kravat They aie to stand, hit a few ofonthe subcostal nerve I drip down to the ground like h half round is the softest thing I feel

Choking on salt

Blood and air spray out of my mouth as Karnus puts his foot on my stomach, then throat "In the words of Lorn au Arcos, if you le for breath

Cagney replaces Karnus, sitting ondown my arms I suck down air She smiles in my face and looks atanother person She twists rip Her hot breath s my datapad froustans I’d rather not fight that Julii bitch without rowls "Do it"

"Shh," she whispers as I try to speak, tracing a knife overit into ainst hly, she saws off s rabs round with his left hand He flexes his right ar about his ruined bicep He can’t pull it back to swing a punch, so instead he grins toothily at me and head-butts me once in the chest just at the sternus over a fire I wheeze out bubbling, inhu body to the ground

I feel warmth splash over h and Karnus breathes into my ear

"Mother bid me to tell you: a pauper can never be a prince Every time you look in the mirror, remember e did to you Remember you breathe because we let you Reh, in mud you lie"

4

Fallen

I stand before my master, but he does not care

The office walls are of paneled wood, and on the floor lies an ancient rug his iron ancestor took from a palace of Earth after the fall of the Indian Eainst Gold What dread those natural-born hu fro chains instead of hope

I stand in front of Augustus’s desk, a bare thing of wood and iron, just before the seven-hundred-year-old bloodstain where the final Indian emperor had his head parted froustus strokes the lion that lies beside his desk They look like twin statues Behind them is space A viewport peers into the blackness, where the ships of the Scepter Arole of our three-week voyage froustus peers at his desk as a streao that he took me on a tour of Mars to show hReds toil over crops to the great polar reaches where Obsidians live inht hier, and I, an embarrassment

It’s been two h rown back and my broken bones have mended, my reputation has not And because of that, ustus’s erow by the day But these new ones prefer whispers to razors

More andman I am not made for the cold war of politics Not ut of a horse any day, but I wouldn’t kno to bribe soentle, warh the ArchGovernor’s office "Three refineries Two nightclubs And two Gray police outposts All boe Fifty-nine Gold fatalities"

Pliny Slender as a salamander, with skin as smooth as a Pink’s The Politico is no Peerless Scarred, never even went to the Institute His glittering eyes peer out froe to shame Muted lipstick coats thin lips His hair is coiled and scented His body thin, butbut utterly fascile way beneath a too-tight e hell out of this beautiful kitten of a man Yet he’s ended families with a rumor here, a joke there His power is a different breed Where I ay, he is potential

I’ve heard he’s also responsible for ruining ht have put Karnus up to the violence in the garden, or at the very least, arranged a holoCam to record my proud moment

Beside Pliny stands the fourth ht lancer ten years rin He’s also a poet with the razor, a younger Lorn au Arcos, according to soustus’s estate instead of the ArchGovernor’s blood heirs--Mustang and the Jackal I rather like the ustus mutters