Spellhacke- M. K. England Page 0,4
can’t wait to get home, even as I feel a weird sort of nostalgia for those little vials of maz we just left behind. Ten years of friendship, two years running jobs together, and now it’s over. The others are understandably ecstatic, brimming over with the thrill of getting away with one last haul and looking forward to their shiny futures. Futures that require moving away.
In seven days.
Hence our Grand Farewell Tour of Kyrkarta: seven nights, seven locations, one amazing last hurrah before we go our separate ways.
Before they all move away and abandon me here, more like.
Ania startles me out of my mood with a quick excited double clap.
“I have a surprise for you,” she says, throwing an arm around me and leaning down to rest her head against the top of mine. I cringe but endure her cuddling. Might as well take it while I can.
“I hate surprises,” I say. “What is it?”
She grins and holds up one hand, waggling her fingers as the elevator stops and the doors slide open. Her wrist and the inside of each finger are lined with thin metal, unassuming, but actually packed with bend sensors, accelerometers, and other techy bits. The tip of each finger ends in a small implanted extruder that, by her command, releases threads of whatever maz she had loaded into the chambers strapped to the underside of her wrist. She doesn’t have the natural ability to work maz with her bare hands, like Remi does, but she’s good with her hardware. She’s had her maz license since the day she turned eighteen—not that the lack of a license stopped her before. Not with me as a friend. I may not be able to work with maz myself, but I can build ware better than anything her mommy and daddy can find in an overpriced shop. Her ware is a Dizmon Hela original, and I’m proud of my work.
“This is a fun surprise, promise,” she says, flipping her hand over to glance at her nails instead. “I went in for an A-level maz certification practice test today, and I think I pushed it a little too hard. The fifth position flow was kinda weird and uneven during our job. Wanna fix it before we go out tonight?”
I perk right up, then narrow my eyes. “You know I do, but don’t think this gets you off my list. Fussy? Are you serious?”
“I love you, Dizzard Lizard,” she sings, syrupy sweet, and I fight down an unexpected surge of anger. She obviously doesn’t love me enough to not leave. None of them do. I want to sink in to that anger, to let its talons grip tight and pierce and fill my veins with heat. It’s right there under the surface, all the time, just waiting for the wrong turn of phrase, the wrong change of subject.
But if I say anything, I’ll only lose them all sooner.
My shoulders slump, and I take three long, deep breaths, one for each word.
Let. It. Go.
“Come on, then,” I say, beckoning her forward. “Let’s see what poison Jaesin has on the cooker tonight, and I’ll take a look at that mix sensor before we go out. You didn’t notice it until we were already in the middle of the job?”
She hums in agreement but doesn’t elaborate as we cross into the crowded intersection at Four Bridges, where the three rivers converge at the business sector. Too many voices clamoring for airspace, and Ania hates to shout. We pass glowing storefronts nestled in the bottom floors of bulky office buildings, offering everything from maz tech to spellweaving services, rare foods to custom aesthetic implants. We don’t need any of it, of course, and I wouldn’t be caught dead paying business-sector prices even if we did. We already have Ania for a techwitch, and Remi the spellweaving prodigy, and I have all our hardware needs covered. Jaesin rounds out the group with most of the mundie skills, like keeping us from starving to death. And hitting people. But only sometimes.
We pass into the slightly more run-down part of town I call home a few minutes later, and the Cliffs, the dorm complex I live in, comes into view. With the chaos of business behind us, Ania finally answers my question.
“Yeah, I had some magnaz loaded in fifth position, and by the time I finished setting up our wards at the draw point, it wasn’t flowing as easily as the rest. I was having to force it a