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“All right, kids” I open the canister of custoo”
THE MORNING AFTER THE HEIST, on lass, waiting for the arbiter to finish his inspection “So, is there a verdict yet?” I ask without bothering to hidesilent at the desk over which he has been hunched for the better part of an hour It’s overdran an air of aloofness, hiding behind contracts and commerce the way spiders hide and wait behind their webs Two hundred were sentenced to life in Deepgrave during the Hyperion Trials for their part in the Gold judicial system Should have been ten thousand Rest were saved by the An
Bored, I survey the rest of the penthouse It is painfully tasteful, done up in the restrained ostentation popular in Luna’s upper circles—e s that look out over the glowing nightscape On a moon where three billion souls clamor atop each other to breathe, only the offensively rich can afford to waste space
It reminds h-end clai Back when I was the help
HighColors looked down on Grays because we took out the trash LowColors hated us because they were the trash Everyone else feared us, because for seven hundred years we have been the all-purpose knife of the state Obsidians? Circus freaks, the lot of ’em Grays do work We are adaptable, efficient, and bred for systeed for most of them: new masters, same collar
I yawn I’ain, so I pop a zoladone, stand and pace as the drug leads hts back to my employer with a cold, distant hand
Oslo, if that is in fact his name, is an inoffensive, impossibly meticulous creature with a dreadful sense of calm that borderlines on the robotic Slender, and professional in his white business tunic with a starched high collar and sleeves to his knuckles His skin is squid ink black His head bald and the irises of his eyes an unsettling white He adjusts the digital ht eye
“I do believe this is the item my clients requested,” he says in a harmonic baritone
“As I said Can rap this up?” He leans closer to the blade one last ti it very carefully into a gel-insulated metal briefcase
“Citizen Horn, as ever, you delivered the requested ite into his datapad “You will note that the agreed-upon sum has been deposited into your Echo City account”
I pull up oes up “I trust everything is satisfactory”
“Yut,” I mutter
“Yut?” he says in curiosity “Oh yes, legion speak Denoting an affirmation, usually done to convey affirmative sarcasm to a disliked officer”
“It’s called dog tongue,” I say “Not ‘legion speak’?”
“Of course” He touches his chest “In fact I studied it extensively I suppose you could say I’anization ‘Merrywater ad portas,’?” he says with a sionnaires have shouted in memory of John Merrywater, the A by invading Luna—a reate