The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (31 page)

They talked over me. “But Welf already has
Hope and they would never break up,” Raj pointed out.

“Well, yeah, but he might drop her for a
chance at Boomworm,” Pocket decided. “And what better chance does
he have than rebound sex?”

Jesus didn’t agree. “I don’t think anyone’s
making a move after she lit
El Rey’s
ass on fire . . . is
that the ‘
light up
’ you were talking about, Raj?”

“Leave . . . me . . . alone,” I growled to
them. “Go to the Jobs Fair without me, it’s not like I can do
anything but become an Artificer for the Guild anyway.”

“Come, guys,” Raj took the lead, “Leave the
man alone. He’ll be back to normal and creating havoc in a few
days.”

“Only if he tells me who got him the booze,”
Jesus said, punching me in the shoulder.

“Jethro Smith,” I told him, mouth moving
into pillow, face starting to get hot from the CO2 build up.

“You shitting me,
El Rey
?”

“I was walking through the Park trying to
find a place to chill when he came across me and asked if I wanted
to go drown my sorrows,” I explained in a muffled tone. “No hidden
stash for graduation, sorry.”

“Why were you in the Park?” Pocket
asked.

“I didn’t want to run into Val.”

“Good thing he didn’t or the Park would have
burned down,” Raj joked.

“Not funny, dude,” Pocket, the floromancer
as always protecting his trees and flowers.

“Well then, I’m content with my gleaned
wisdom from
El Rey
: go to Smith for booze. Let’s take off,”
Jesus decided. “Fair’s supposed to have real-world food from
outside the Asylum.”

After three butts getting off my bed and a
round of three goodbyes, I was alone to the sorrow only a man who
screwed up with a woman he loved could feel. My final chance with
Valentine Ward . . .
over
. One little hand under her skirt
after we’d humped and grunted on and off for almost three years . .
. you’d think I’m an asshole.

[CLICK]

I’d lied to Jesus, which I guess puts me in
the company of that pussy St. Peter. Four gospels had been a Tri
Languages
assignment . . .

I’d nicked a bottle of rum from Jethro
Smith’s liquor cabinet, not that he’d ever miss it among so much
booze, really makes you wonder about the standards the Asylum has
for teachers. The bottle was about a third full after the night
before, so I rummaged through my closet stash of goodies and filled
it to the top by mixing in three cans of coke. Sitting on the edge
of my bed in that big dorm room all alone, I took my first sip and
smacked my lips in appreciation.

Oh, no, drinking!

Shut the fuck up, it happens all the time in
this world. I was eighteen by then, in Europe that’s legal, and in
that moment, Europe was good enough.

I suppose I could have shared it with my
friends . . . would have been a bonding experience. But we’d bonded
plenty by then and when I get really hurt I’m not the kind to turn
to people, I’m the kind that wants to be alone. It probably stems
from not having anyone as a kid and it’s stuck with me to this day.
Makes it hard to trust, even Pocket, Jesus, or Raj. There’s really
only one person I did trust . . .
still
trust, to this
day.

Ceinwyn Dale.

She’s not the type to go to about girl
trouble, but then it’s not girl trouble that really had me bummed
out and pissed off. Sure, Val giving my head a nice mindfuck ain’t
enjoyable. I’d have killed for that girl and she just kept making
me feel like a retard. Like we were in two different worlds with
two different memories of what had happened between us. I still
have feelings for her to this day . . . but . . . well . . . not
like she’ll let me do anything about it. She might have talked to
me again after our brief time together in Quad, might have even
been friends, but never much more than that. King Henry’s love
life—good and messed up as usual.

What really bummed me out and pissed me off
was the Jobs Fair. My friends didn’t get it. Jesus as a Beasttalker
could be a vet or work in animal testing or ride as a cowboy for
all I know. Raj, Winterwardens get to do icebreaking on ships,
create ice sculptures, save the planet from Global Warming, tons of
stuff. Pocket, Forestplanter, what the fuck
couldn’t
Pocket
do? Everyone wanted Forestplanters: farms, lumber companies, zoos,
gardens, carpenters. Plus all the other options open: working as a
teacher at the Asylum, as a Recruiter, as part of the Learning
Council’s police force, or just being a normal person with a normal
job.

But me? Artificer? You work for the Guild
and that’s that. If you didn’t . . . shit-storm, epic shit-storm.
Surprise
—but I’m not the kind of guy that likes to be boxed
in, paying my dues, designing by the Guild’s laws, not
experimenting for myself. I hadn’t even been trained beyond normal
geomancer by then and I already dreaded my fate. Any machine that
tried to make me a cog was going to be stripped and flaming.

A bottle of rum and coke. Good enough for
Mom, good enough for me. The bottle was about half-empty again by
the time I decided to man up and see the Jobs Fair for myself.
Great idea, King Henry, great idea.

I took the bottle with me.

Better
fucking idea.

[CLICK]

There were four-hundred and one students set
to graduate as mancers in two weeks time, so there were
four-hundred and one, seventeen and eighteen-year-olds pushed in
among the stalls that had been mounted over the Field. Asylum
bylaws state that the maximum capacity per class year is no more
than four-hundred. The one left over ain’t me actually. It’s a
corpusmancer girl I’ve never met, but was set to be kicked from the
rolls the moment I arrived the last day before class to replace
her. Ultras are more valuable than Intras. Everything is more
valuable than an Intra corpusmancer, especially an Artificer.

I’m told the Lady called it a ‘
regretful
situation
’ and that it was only after Ceinwyn threatened to
resign when the girl was allowed to stay on instead of facing an
early death to insanity. A onetime deal for one very lucky
girl.

I don’t know her name, I don’t know what she
looks like, or what she did with her life, but I’m glad I didn’t
force another mancer into ‘Good Days’ and ‘Bad Days’. I don’t know
if I could have lived with that, especially it being a corpusmancer
like Mom . . . which is probably why Ceinwyn insisted . . . she’s
good at looking out for me even when I don’t realize it.

So the Jobs Fair was crowded. An easy place
to disappear, even for King Henry Price, the living fucking legend.
I wore my colors like a good boy that day, tucked in, just one of
many geomancers. My emblem designating me an Ultra stayed off, safe
in my pocket. Just a normal geomancer, looking for a job at some
earthquake relief center or something equally boring that had
nothing to do with the Guild of Cocksucking Artificers.

I was drunk.

Not totally out of it, not even walking in a
zig-zag, but I definitely had a buzz going. That bottle might have
been mostly coke, but the proof on that bitch was pretty good. Good
enough to make me forget about Val. My lovely Boomworm. Those
cheeks that could cut. Those dark eyes that were a void without
iris. That long blond hair I’d grab onto as I wrapped my other arm
around her waist and . . . well . . . let’s say I miss her now. But
back then . . . forget about her. Rum and coke, that’s my lover of
choice.

I couldn’t forget about the Guild though.
They had one of the biggest booths. As big as the Asylum did. It’s
a serious operation: clerks, assistants, mancers willing to supply
anima, accountants, sellers, and of course: the Artificers
themselves. I was the only geomancer in Quad who walked far around
the thing the first time by. The rest of them would have given
anything to be an Artificer. Even Robin White, Sandra Kemp, Tamiko
Lewis, and Naomi Gullick were inside, playing with the anima toys
the Artificers had provided to entice applicants.

Later
, I told myself, and walked a
circuit around the stalls. Just another geomancer . . .

[CLICK]

One horrible fact about this world is that
there is only so much booze in any bottle.

I’d walked two circuits through the maze of
stalls and tents by the time I ran out. Not one teacher noticed me,
or at least bothered to say something about it. None of my
classmates either. Though I did get a rude glare from a pair of
floromancer girls when I threw the bottle away in the trashcan
instead of the specially marked recycling bin. Take that,
environmentalist hippie-commies, one glass bottle at a time. I’d
have clubbed a polar bear to death with it if one had been on hand
too!

I saw stalls for everything. Fire Department
Consulting, Algae Regulating Assistance for the green power push
the United States government is working on as our way to escape
shithole status, Psychotherapists looking for mentimancers as
understudies for mental wards—already in one, bitches—even the US
Marines and the other armed forces hitting up corpusmancers. Super
soldier alright, Cap.

Anything you could think of to do with the
Mancy—there was a stall for it. But for me . . . only the one. I
hit up the Guild tent with my feet finally starting to feel the
effects of the booze. I staggered inside . . .

And there were Boomworm and Welf, standing
together, laughing with one of the Guild of Artificers bozos. Val
never got why I hated Welf, she never saw the mean side to him,
that cruel superiority. He wanted her, so he lavished her, treated
her like a goddess, better than he even tried for Hope Hunting, his
long time girlfriend the whole time we were at the Asylum together.
Not that Val ever
liked
Welf. Poor sap got into the friend
zone and never got out no matter how hard he tried. Not that I’m
saying I did much better in the end . . . still, least I loved and
lost as some British guy once wrote.

None of the three saw me. I’d come up behind
them, but they were unmistakable. Welf’s height, Val’s hair, and
the Artificer in Guild robes of brown not unlike mine, with the
Guild skullcap sitting on his head looking like a spectacular
cocksucker. Welf had his hand at Val’s elbow, lightly touching it,
trying to make it casual, but I saw how his eyes raced to the spot
of contact. I knew the look.

Yeah . . .
fuck this shit
.

I staggered right back out, catching sight
of Hope near the exit, playing with some kind of Artificer created
game of bars and puzzles manipulated by anima control—little five
second bursts that wouldn’t have done anything in the real world. I
tapped her on the shoulder and got a pissed off look in return.

Hope is as light as Welf, blond towards the
platinum side, eyes toward gray, and skin right at home on the ice
shelf. No figure to her though, tall and thin, but that muscled and
hard kind of tall and thin that some guys can get into. Given her
attitude, her twat might have also been frozen shut, but I got no
proof on that one.

She turned, a piece of the game getting
messed up in the process. I got a glare down at me—again with the
tall women—and a, “What could
you
possibly want?”

“Little tumble back behind the tent would be
nice.” I leered at her, hazy and feeling more reckless than
usual.

“
Are you drunk
?” she asked, face
frowning at me and petite nose sniffing for liquor.

“A little . . . just like the rest of me.
Well . . . save for one part . . .” I leered again.

“Leave me alone.” She turned back to the
game.

“Sure . . . sure thing, Hope, just . . . pay
attention to your man, will ya?”

There was a turn and a glare eventually,
when she saw what I’d seen. I left the Artificer tent to yelling
and screaming. Shouldn’t have touched Val’s arm, Welf.

[CLICK]

There was only one other place I could go. I
still had three years to decide and the Guild would protest and the
Lady would have to rule on it, maybe even forcing me to join them
instead, but . . . it might be my only shot.

I headed to the Recruiters tent. A familiar
face manned the place, but not Ceinwyn Dale. “Quilt, what up!”

He still hadn’t married Audrey Foster by
then and worked the geek like a champion, despite the fact he
neared in on the top side of the 20s. Cords, t-shirt with either a
power ranger or a gay ninja on it, and his always present
glasses.

“K.H,” he greeted me. “My favorite
Artificer.”

“Your only Artificer,” I corrected, sitting
down next to him behind the counter, in what I took to be the
worker area. Only way I got my butt down in the chair was to lean
on the table for support, else it would have been right down to the
ground.

He gave me a roll of his eyes. For some
reason, we were the only ones there. Though from the small stacks
of brochures and ‘
Recruit Yourself
’ guides, many had already
come and gone. “Where’s your Ultra sigil?”

“Incognito,” I explained with a wave of my
hand at my tucked in shirt. “Like Tsar Peter in England, right? I
seem to remember that from a history exam . . . it’s a kingly thing
to do I’m told and I’m a kingly guy.”

“Eventually they found Peter out,” Quilt
reminded me.

“I’m shorter than him . . .” I mumbled,
leaning back in my chair, eyes going to the ceiling of the tent. It
was blue. That’s all I remember about it. “Odds are, right? I’m
shorter than everyone else.”

Quilt finally took a good study of me. “K.H,
are you
drunk
?”

“Reading my mind?”

“Just your breath, actually . . .”

“Okay . . . a little.”

Always an advisor more than our
student-advisors ever were to us Ultras, he pushed his glasses up
and gave me his full attention. “You break up with a girl
again?”