And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed

Author:Premee Mohamed [Mohamed, Premee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781952086250
Google: 8ZVozgEACAAJ
Amazon: 1952086256
Publisher: Neon Hemlock Press
Published: 2021-07-19T23:00:00+00:00

9

For the dead travel fast, she says, but we have taken too long on our mission of justice, heading to Draavik's, doing what she declared needed to be done, returning. It is twelve-fifteen, I am late, I am filthy, I am wild and roaring with exhilaration, I am much changed in ways I have not even realized, I do not wish to think of them, my hair is disarrayed from the getaway flight in our stolen hover (a fizzing heap of rubble now being disassembled by an industrious hive of pickers and their kids, the rest in a canal over in Upper Yarlen), it will take an hour to make me presentable, two to make me worth my fee, and of course I have been noticed, and Serpentine and Jasper do not even bother calling me into their office to reprimand me; they simply have one of the maids bring me a letter on a brass tray engraved with skulls and flowers.

Yesterday, I think, such an envelope would have killed me. Before even opening it I would have sobbed, pleaded innocence, found excuses, sickened myself with guilt and worry, and started planning an elaborate compensation to the client I had failed...today, I tear it open and suffer the slow revolution of my stomach, once, twice, because you do not abandon the habits of obedience and self-umbrage so easily, the owners of the House of Bicchieri are disappointed, they are hurt, they are trying to understand that perhaps I did not feel well after my friend was taken for medical care (there's that passive voice again), but the client comes first, always, the client always comes first (yes, and usually only, thank you), so they have no choice but to take a fine from the account that pays my wages, room, and board, because it's not about you, do you see, and it's not about him, it is about our reputation, which we need in order to keep operating, but since it is only your first major offense, we are being lenient, because we do care about you, we care about all our employees.

Bastards.

The actual number is on the back of the letter, and for a moment through my shocked and ringing ears I feel a neutral curiosity about this. I have been here for eleven years and never heard the precise amounts, we do not usually talk money, it is seen as crass, something only poor people do, won't Winfield laugh when I tell her what they have docked me...

But the number winds me like a punch and I have to look at it again when my vision returns, see where the decimal point falls.

For several minutes there is no sound anywhere but the noise of my heart, gulping and palpitating as it falls into my guts. Stop it, I say faintly. Be reasonable. Stop overreacting.

What have you done, I say, as if I have left my body, as if I am addressing this slumped sallow dirty thing clutching the pristine paper from several feet away.

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