take the money and run

(originally conceived as multichapter)

Take the money and run. It was, to a certain extent, a mantra for mercenaries. Minoth always made sure not to take the dirtier jobs, the ones whose blood would stain not only his hands but also the heart that was already staining his Core Crystal. But you can't keep honest, not wholly, when you're hiding something that garish beneath the woefully thin fabric of a cloak.

Cloaks are made to hide. If you're not hiding something, you wear a coat, a jacket, something casual and civilian. And so you're hiding, Minoth, and that means you're lying. Amalthus gave you a permanent guilty conscience - and hey, ain't that pretty human to have?

Minoth didn't embrace that lying-eyes' truth, though. He stayed apart from it, stayed away from Amalthus's inauspicious auspices, and when he heard that his Driver was going to make a thieving run of his own, he turned the other cheek, the scarred one, and kept walking.

Too bad for him the lies and the truth alike had legs far less prone to stumbling than his creaky cowboyed own.

Baltrich got a hold of him, in an alley of Alba Cavanich. Magisters weren't prudent padded pockets beneath their ceremonial robes, but they had money, and money supersedes scruples every time. So Minoth was sold out and found. Huh. Nice to know I'm worth a pretty penny, fellas - and don't think I'll ever be seeing you again.

He's doing experiments again, Baltrich said, Stannif's got even more influence now, Baltrich said, you may well be the only one who can get through to him, Baltrich said, and so said Minoth: "What aren't you saying? What do you want?" Because him getting through to Amalthus was a hell of a comic proposition.

"I want you to be the scapegoat," Baltrich sneered, "and what do you think of that?"

"You liar."

"And you think yourself so lily-white?"

Back Minoth went. Core Crystals, unmounted from their ceremonial perch in the World Tree, studied and storied and picked apart at every etching's scrawl. Pneuma, said the teal miniature icon of a cross, and Minoth repeated it under his breath. It has a name. They have names. And anything that had a name should never be stolen.

"What do you plan to do with them?"

Amalthus looked down his nose, if not completely up through his eyelids, at the leg-splayed slouching figure in the laboratory doorway. "What one does with all Blades. I am going to awaken them. Is that not their purpose?"

"If it was their purpose," Minoth started, shoving himself off the jamb casing of the threshold with a purposeful nudge of the stars on his arm guards into the pulsing ether lines beneath, "then how come there's a whole sneaking shebang about it? What are you hiding?"

Why not just awaken them, if it's so straightforward? Stupid question. Why not just leave me awakened, if I'm so born? Why tamper, why fiddle, why fib, why warp with the weave of our lives? Wasn't my commitment to you enough? Won't anything ever be enough?

"They do not seem to be formatted for resonation. I see no unnecessary pretense about it. If the Architect so deigned that these Cores would be kept with him in Elysium, then it makes perfect sense for there to be...a little extra work involved in harnessing the secrets they hold."

Harnessing. Like harnessing a horse.

"You know, I took what you gave to me because I had it coming. Maybe because you made me believe it. But I won't stand by and cast your desecration of the rest of what the Architect made so complacently."

A fine speech from you, Minoth. Who's putting those words in your mouth? Like a maddeningly forgetful reiteration, what is it you're stealing now?

Amalthus finally bent all the way up. His hands were slick with siphoned ether; Minoth parsed the trace of the canister where the remaining supply rested and recognized the kindred signature of an indentured Common Blade who'd also been given a flesh transfusion. Mark one if not many for sick and disgusting activities.

"The very fact that I have been to the top of the World Tree ordains me as the only one in this world whose human body is worthy to take on and transmit the will and the word of the Architect. Do you really intend to stand in the way of that divine revelation of duty?"

Minoth didn't answer. He was preoccupied trying to fix his gaze on the contents of the operating table, now revealed to be humanoid in shape. The figure had long blond hair, armor mostly white with gold accents, and gray channels coursed all about where...where ether should flow.

"You're...making an artificial Blade?"

"Naturally."

The most irritating thing about Amalthus was his unflappable, at times almost obliging calm. He never seemed to truly care about anything, one-to-one, yet Minoth had learned to read the bubbling subtext. Not his favorite hobby. Still, he had to press on with it.

"And I suppose you made a female body for some other natural reason too." It wasn't like Amalthus to prefer femininity, not in any way, aesthetic or professional or otherwise. Minoth didn't quite want to know, didn't like hearing himself quest and question for a reason, but it was something to get purchase on, anyway.

"Women are naturally more subservient. I couldn't hardly create a male body without sufficient muscle mass. It would be unseemly and inappropriate, especially for such a perfect object of the Architect's will."

Subservient...? "Amalthus, what are you talking about?"

The Quaestor's look was phased utter boredom. "Minoth," the languid pronouncement dripped off his dry, dry lips, "you know what advantage you hold over me. I could never hope to best you in a battle of brawn. I don't intend to court such opponents, either."

The main thrust of offense was and had been thus: How dare you create a body for a Blade when everyone, everyone on every earthen inch of this world and across every fluffen span of cloud, knows that Blades have nothing if not their own corporeal forms? Then, stack another crucial, crucifixial brick: How dare you create a Blade purely to serve your own will?

"Thanks for reminding me," Minoth drawled, every step closer charged with measured force. "I forgot that you don't hold anything over me, anymore. Not even..." Oh, he had to pause for the drama of it all...

"Not even this."

Core pocketed, body lifted, boots pounding, and then the motion doubled in scale of chaos.

"You really thought I'd lie to you, Minoth?"

Baltrich. Stannif. A battalioned monkish squad.

Why is it that you only get caught in pitches unsavory when you're doing something you actually care about? Why is it that you hold things the tightest when you're about to throw them away?

"You've got a name?" Minoth asked, more cautiously than casually or even conversationally.