Holly Black (9 page)

No way would I fall asleep on the way down to Florida.

Our roomette aboard the Silver Star was not Amtrak’s finest. The size of two London phone booths stuck together, it smelled bluely antiseptic, like the water in an airplane toilet.

We settled into the two seats, facing each other, our ankles almost touching. Lexia instantly rebelled against the small space, flicking on and off the lights, discovering cup holders and coat hangers concealed in the walls. She fiddled with the small table beside her until it unfolded, astonishingly, into a toilet. Hence the blue smell.

I set the briefcase on the floor and rested my feet on it. When the station outside began to slide away I relaxed a little, feeling safer in motion. But Lexia was hovering now, fussing with her backpack up on the luggage rack.

“Sit down,” I said.

“And fasten my seatbelt? This isn’t a plane, T-Moon.”

“Lucky thing, too.” I breathed deep to feel the reassuring pressure of the PPK’s holster against my chest, the Taurus strapped to my ankle. Guns and planes don’t mix, so when carrying briefcases full of cash, slow and steady wins the race.

As long as slow and steady stays locked and loaded.

The conductor knocked on the door, asking for our tickets, and Lexia started fucking with him. She asked how long till New York City, and he sputtered until she laughed and admitted we were on the right train, headed down to Miami. She chattered as he punched and tore along perforations: asking questions about the “sleeping arrangements,” half-flirting, pretending she and I were lovers who’d just been in a fight, sowing confusion.

Once he was gone, Lexia slid the roomette’s door shut, locked it, and drew the blind that hid us from the corridor. She finally settled in the seat across from me, staring out the window.

But twenty seconds later she was bored, nudging the briefcase with one foot. “Maybe we should look inside.”

“Forget it.”

“Don’t you want to see what fifty-seven thousand dollars looks like?”

“Eighty-four.”

“Whoa, that’s a lot. Thanks for telling me.”

I cleared my throat. Score one for Lexia.

“What if it’s not all there?” she said. “What if one of the ConCom borrowed some? Shouldn’t we count it?”

She reached for the case, and I lashed out with one steel-toed boot. She jerked back her hand, nursing two fingers between her lips. “Ow.”

“I didn’t touch you.”

“It’s the thought that counts.” She played dejected for another moment, then her eyes brightened again. “Seriously, though, the case felt too light. It made a clunking noise, like there’s a brick inside. Pick it up yourself.”

“We’re not. Opening. The briefcase.”

“They didn’t say we couldn’t. So why not?”

“Because I can’t imagine anything worse than being stuck in a tiny roomette with you and piles of
someone else’s cash
!”

I shouted the last three words, which seemed to still the train noise for a moment, and her eyes grew manga-sized. Tears flickered with the shadows of passing trees. “You don’t trust me, Temptress Moon?”

“Well spotted. You are, in fact, the last person I’d trust.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because you’re vain and self-centered and you do pointless, destructive things for fun. You’re chaos personified.”

She smiled. “Flattery
this
early in the journey, Temptress Moon?”

“Quit calling me that.”

Lexia leaned back, propping her feet up on the briefcase. “Oh, so that’s what this is about? You miss your little paladin girl?”

“
Miss
her? It took me two years to level her up, then gather all the artifacts I needed for that life-link!”

“But immortal is boring, T-Moon, and anyway, you enjoy grinding.” She nudged the briefcase again. “Did you hear that? There’s a brick in there, I swear.”

“Quit fucking with the case. Quit
looking
at it. I’m not letting you do to the ConCom what you did to me, okay?”

“A blatantly false comparison,” she said. “I quite like the ConCom, and I
hated
little miss Temptress Moon.”

I turned away and stared out the window. The backyards of people poor enough to live next to train tracks flashed past—weedy lawns and broken cars. “It was the Voice of Barding, right? Because it gave her a higher charisma than you?”

“I didn’t give a shit about that crappy Voice of Barding,” Lexia said. “It was your tepid alignment.”

I hissed out a slow breath through clenched teeth, feeling the dull twinge of old wounds. Here it was, said aloud at last: the underlying conflict of those last months of our relationship, in game and out.

“Neutral good is not tepid,” I said. “It’s the only real good, beyond the rigidity of law or the self-indulgence of chaos.”

She rolled her eyes. “Beyond relevance, you mean. Goodness all alone is just an abstraction. Where’s the
story
in neutral good?”

“Ever heard of Robin Hood? There’s a story for you.”

“Not this farko again.” She sighed. “Dude steals from the rich and gives to the poor. That’s
definitional
chaotic good.”

I shook my head, the old arguments rising inside me, one hand scrawling on an invisible whiteboard as I spoke, drawing an alignment matrix in the air….

“Robin Hood isn’t chaotic at all,” I said. “The Merry Men aren’t a bunch of fuckwits—they’re an organized group with a strict internal code. And when King Richard, the
lawful
frickin’ leader, comes back from the Crusades, Robin Hood restates his loyalty to the crown! He’s for the greater social good, whether achieved lawfully or chaotically. That’s
definitional
neutrality.”

Lexia leaned forward, crashing through the invisible whiteboard. “But when King Richard comes back, the story
ends
! Robin Hood becomes just another monarchist suck-up. It’s only when he’s embracing his inner chaos that he’s worth putting in a story. He’s probably waiting for the next evil sheriff to take over so he can start up another guerilla campaign.”

“Um,
citation needed
. In the actual, not-made-up-by-you story, Robin Hood isn’t pining for chaos at the end. He gets elevated to the nobility and lives happily ever after.” I raised my hands, balancing left palm and right. “And that’s because he’s neutral good: happy inside
or
outside the system.”

She grabbed my wrists and pulled them out of balance. “Cite this: All that Earl of Huntington crap doesn’t appear until the late fifteen hundreds, after a century of proto-Disneyfication. In the early tales, Robin Hood’s a frakking
May Day character
.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, great. Are we back to that semester you got all Marxist in AP History?”

“Not
that
May Day, the chaotic pagan one where they dance around the phallus. And however you try to neuter him, Robin Hood still robs from the rich—not the tax-hiking rich or the sheriff-aligned rich,
any
rich will do—and gives to the poor. And that is some pretty fucking chaotic social engineering.” She paused and frowned, her face only inches from mine. “Hey, are we in kissing frame?”

I pulled away from her grasp, sinking back into my seat, my gaze dropping from hers. I saw fresh Celtic squiggles on her arms, and more muscles than I remembered. But despite tattoos, workouts, and green-streaked hair, Lexia hadn’t changed much in the last year. This close, she still smelled the same.

I turned to the scenery blurring past. “Nice time to glorify stealing, when we’re babysitting eighty-four grand of someone else’s money.”

“Nice time to change the subject.” Lexia stood up, stretching. “Shit, I need a drink.”

One hand on my shoulder, she pulled her backpack down from the luggage rack, its straps flailing around my head. I heard the top of the vodka bottle spin—a sharp sweetness spread across the roomette’s antiseptic smell.

She took a long drink, then sat and offered me the bottle. The liquid sloshed languidly with the train’s motion, and the glass frosted with condensation; she must have packed it straight from the freezer. Tempting, but I shook my head.

Everything she’d said so far made me trust her even less.

“You think
you’re
Robin Hood, don’t you?”

She shrugged. “We share an alignment, him and me. Delicious chaotic goodness.”

“Hardly,” I said. “He’s neutral good. And you, my dear, are chaotic neutral.”

She turned to watch the scenery, shaking her head. “You still don’t know why I killed you, do you?”

“To bring chaos to the established order?” I said. Back then, almost unkillable, Temptress Moon had
ruled
in Mayhem. A cold, pale queen whom all had feared, even as they loved her. “And for fun, I suppose. Not much
good
came of it, certainly. From the message boards I’ve read, Mayhem’s been a slaughterfest since she died.”

“Mayhem a slaughterfest. What a tragedy.” Lexia took another drink. “Perhaps we’re laboring under different definitions of good.”

I shook my head. “Don’t take the easy way out, Lexia. Murdering your boyfriend doesn’t count as good under any moral framework. And neither does stealing this money.”

She looked down at the case, a smile forming on her lips. “Well, that’s one way to illuminate the issues under discussion.”

“What is?”

“Why not define our alignments in terms of this mission.” She kicked the briefcase. “For example, why did the ConCom call upon you, Mr. Famously Neutral Good, instead of getting someone
lawful
?”

“That’s obvious,” I said. “Lawful good also takes the money to its rightful owner, but he won’t bring a gun across state lines. He follows the laws of the land, even if that risks getting robbed.”

“Fair enough. So what does lawful evil do?”

I leaned my head against the window. The glass was cool, pulsing with the rhythm of the tracks. “That one’s trickier. If I’m lawful evil, I can’t break my word, but I don’t want any
good
to come of my actions.” I chewed my lip for a moment, in no hurry to answer—we had about twenty-six hours to go, after all. “So I promise to take the money down to Miami, but in ambiguous terms, like one of those contracts with the devil. So I steal it and use the proceeds to start an evil cabal—a well-organized one with a strict internal code.”

Lexia shook her head. “Two problems. One: eighty-four grand doesn’t buy a lot of minions these days, so your cabal is small and lame. Two: the ConCom is composed entirely of aspies with level-twenty powers of nitpicking. Before they hand over any money, they make your lawful-evil ass swear to an ironclad agreement to deliver it.”

I shrugged. “So I deliver the money, but then convince the hotel owner to use it in a scheme to foreclose on several orphanages. All very legal.”

“Much better.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, seeing the invisible whiteboard again. “Okay, Lexia, you do true neutral.”

“That’s easy: true neutral takes the money to Tijuana, has a draz of a time on someone else’s dime.” She raised a hand to ward off my protest. “Unless, of course, we’re talking
druidic
neutrality. In which case she steals the money and gives it to the Florida Marlins.” She snorted. “Because balance is everything.”

“You always did find balance boring, didn’t you?”

“Except when it’s falling apart, T-Moon. Chaotic neutral goes to you.”

“No way,” I said, “I did the first two, and you’re the chaotic neutral one in this roomette.”

“I’m chaotic good, you fuckwit.” She took a drink. “But
were
I chaotic neutral, I’d start by taking this train in the wrong direction. And when I get to New York, I take the briefcase to Grand Central Station at rush hour, pop the latches, and fling it all oh-so-high into the air.” She gestured with the vodka bottle, which sloshed with delight. “Then I watch that lovely dance ensue.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, visualizing it. The afternoon light flickered through the trees like a movie projector on my eyelids. “Wow, not bad. And you say that’s not your natural alignment?”

“Of course not.” She smiled. “I’m all about the greater good.”

“Yeah, right.” I opened my eyes and looked at the vodka bottle. “No poison in that bottle, I assume?”