The Price of Royalty by Aleks Canard

Author:Aleks Canard [Canard, Aleks]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780244304386
Publisher: Aleks Canard
Published: 2017-05-13T22:00:00+00:00

Family Lies (II)

1

It was only a short walk to the train station.

Bullet trains were the only kind still used anymore. Since the technology was relatively old, tickets were dirt cheap. Good news for Thyrian residents who worked long hours for shit pay. Most of the people waiting always found that there were too many days in a month, and not enough orits.

Neither Dai nor Yvach sat down. They stood next to the tracks. Graffiti covered the tunnel’s opposite wall. Someone named Randal was accused of being a dwarf fucker, a less than affectionate term for a human who preferred the sexual company of corrachs. Corrach-Human birth rates were higher than other breeds like psygotas and djurels, but they were a risky business. Best not attempted unless you had the money to pay for plentiful hospital bills.

‘I used to come here as a child,’ Dai said, looking around the platform.

‘Changed much?’ said Yvach. He wasn’t warming to the spectre. Well maybe a little. Dai had saved his life after all. First the Valkyrie, now him. Machinas saving his life was becoming something of a habit. And he’d hated Trix just as much during his first encounter.

‘A corpse left to rot seldom improves with time.’

‘Jata, good fertiliser though.’

‘Indeed.’

Dai looked at the neon boards displaying train times. His HUD showed that the train was over five minutes late. Since most lines were automated, delays hardly ever happened, unless someone fucked with the tracks. Dai had been guilty of such vandalism when he was younger. Being a kid with a super soldier’s lethality and the ability to teleport meant that trouble sought you out like a bloodhound. It was no way to repay the family who’d taken him in. Maybe that was why he was never formally adopted. No, the reason was that they were poor. It had to be.

Besides, machinas with last names were usually thought of as frauds. First names people could understand. Everyone had a name. But last names, they implied family. And no one could stomach a machina having family. Nikkers were monsters that stole children. They could have no family.

Trix had a last name, though she never used it. Just like her proper first name it was reserved for close friends, and her parents. Titles: the Valkyrie, the huntress, of Zilvia, and tochion nes’Sliberg Konrith (Daughter of the Mountain Kings, Yvach’s clan) were normally all people knew. Then there were the rumours. And even more mystical than those was the name bestowed upon her by the dryads in Xifaw Forest. But that was a tale for another time.

When Trix radioed in for an update, Dai informed her that the train would be arriving in fifteen minutes according to the boards.

‘Trains normally late here?’ said Yvach.

‘Changes by the hour. Normally no longer than a minute.’

The train rolled into the station exactly fifteen minutes later. Yvach and Dai scanned their gauntlets onto the pay machine. A measly five orits was all it cost to go from their location to Woert Tower. The carriage they chose was mostly empty.

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