Slumrat Rising

Truth hadn’t eaten all day and resolved to fix that problem. Rather than raiding his hosts’ weirdly sparse fridge, he decided to eat out. There was ample food available from street vendors, and in Jeon, the street food was good. The penthouse had a private elevator, of course. It had been depressingly trivial to defeat the security and, once he was in the apartment, to clone the control amulet.

It was quietly astounding to him. If you didn’t know how the systems worked, they seemed utterly impenetrable. Once you were trained on them, once you understood what all those mysterious parts did and how they worked together? It was trivial to crack them. At most, it was a bit fiddly or time-consuming. The dirty secret of physical security- half bluff, a quarter reassurance, and a quarter sheer waste of time. And it was the waste of time that would actually hold off the attacker. It was their time you were wasting, after all.

Onto the street and into a rolling wave of heat and humidity. Summer was coming on in fits and starts, and it had decided to blast the late afternoon with a sneak peek of the coming weather. It was the kind of sun that promised sunburns and headaches. Smart beachside kiosks already had aloe salves set out for sale.

He had a late lunch of cold noodles with lots of vegetables and bean curd. A bit oily, but satisfying. A lesser stomach might groan later, but Truth was literally made of sterner stuff. It was all good. From there, he walked up to the shopping district. The usual controls on who was permitted to enter that part of the city were in place; the floating identity scanners networked into security golems and the police to remove any undesirable elements. Like him.

Truth grinned up at the plank-shaped flying talismans. It was a crime for him to be here. It was a crime before he joined Starbrite, and it was a crime again once he had been terminated. The scanner wasn’t very smart. It read Truth’s identity by checking the theoretically unfalsifiable sigil on his forearm. It concluded that he was a high citizen. There was no visible indication that he was permitted in. He just walked right past the scanners and went about his shopping. Truth Medici had returned to Jeon, and he would walk where he pleased.

Right now, it pleased him to walk around looking at the high-end jewelry stores. He knew damn well none of these places had more than a token amount of cash on hand. Everything would be done by credits or by bank relay amulets- invisibly shifting wealth from one account to another. Money reduced to bookkeeping. How did that square with the Praegerite notion of prosperity, Truth wondered. What happened when the money had never existed in a tangible form but had always been a fiction on paper?

He looked over the rings selection at Forquard’s. His personal feeling was that bigger was better when it came to jewelry. It was all about showing off, right? So big stones, surrounded by lots of smaller shinies, lodged into big chunks of gold or orichalcum, or something truly precious like Mythril or frozen quicksilver. Could you make a ring from prismatic iridium? Presumably, but the important thing is that people should know it was very expensive from across the room. Brooches and necklaces seemed to fulfill his requirements even better in that regard. More surface area to work with.

Truth briefly imagined himself decked out in rings, necklaces, earrings and pretty much every sort of decoration. He would have to do the piercing himself, normal needles couldn’t handle it. Would Etenesh like the look? More to the point, did he like the look?

He thought about it. While he appreciated how much it showed off, it didn’t really go with his low-key approach, right now. Besides, people had to be able to see him before they could appreciate the conspicuous wealth. He wasn’t prepared to let himself be seen in Jeon. Ah well. Time for the old Smash-And-Grab.

“Yes, the earrings. Actually, do you sell cut stones without having them set in rings and things?”

“Loose? Madam, all of our pieces are crafted by the most famous brands and the very best jewelry designers in Jeon!”

“Yes, yes. I’m buying the earrings, aren’t I? It’s just, what with everything…”

The clerk’s demeanor changed at once. “Ah, yes, sometimes a portable means of preserving value is needed. May I suggest our Romanov Line? Each piece of that exquisite collection uses one hundred percent pure rare metals, studded with quite striking, beautifully cut and quite large gems. Available with and without enchantments, should you wish it.”

“Do you have a brochure?”

“Better. I have the report from the bonded assayer.”

Truth nodded slowly at that. He would have gone for steel knives and preserved food, but for a certain sort of person, a person with a limited amount of booth information and imagination, hoarding non-cash wealth was pure prudence. And of course, if they were shifting their money into gold, orichalcum and gems, they weren’t spending it on other things. For example, a new Starbrite brand sofa, or a new scryball. Or elixirs.

Not that Starbrite didn’t own jewelry stores or control a big piece of the precious metals market too, but you had to figure this was taking a lot of money out of the economy.

Truth grinned. Time for the sinister mastermind to reappear. Not like the other spiders casting their webs around Buran. Here was a real villain. He stepped out of the jewelry store and looked around the shopping street. His grin deepened. He was a firm believer in prudential planning for the wealthy.

He started with a rather portly man, blankly staring into space while his wife tried on extraordinarily large and massively enchanted hats. Little illusions of birds flew over and around the brim. She seemed to like it.

“She’s wasting your money on hats. Hats. But what’s a hat worth when creditssteal all your money? Gold and gems. Gold and gems hold their worth. And you will need that wealth when the Tiger rises, and the Star falls.”

Over and over and over. He spent the rest of the day drifting around the commerce area, whispering his poison in as many ears as would listen. Planting the idea to buy as much gold and to hoard as much wealth as possible. And making very sure to plant the idea of a national uprising.

He made his way back to the jewelry store. The clerks looked exhausted but happy. They got paid on commission.

“A good day, but they know something. The rich know something. Something is coming. And they aren’t telling you. You are going to get screwed again. The rich never give an honest person a fair chance. They are blood-sucking parasites. The rich are going to eat you up!” He said, drifting among them.

Truth watched the smiles fade to grim certainty. They were all Level One. The supervisor was a measly Level Two. Maybe the manager was Level Three, but they weren’t on the floor. They didn’t stand a chance.

“The wind moves the grass. The Tiger Stalks Its Prey. It’s time to take Jeon back. Back from the parasites and thieves. Time for the Tiger To Eat The Parasites.”

The display cases were pretty empty at this point. He would bet heavily that they would be filled to bursting come tomorrow morning. He headed back to the food stalls and loaded up on some rice and stew. It was great. It was so damn good. He liked the food in Siphios, he really did, but damn, did he miss the flavors of home.

He spent the night in the guest room again. Linh and Maddie had an argument, mostly from the built-up stress. They talked it out eventually. Truth dipped into a novel for twenty minutes, then slept.

Awake and straight to work. Out for breakfast once again, and this time he got an egg sandwich. Except the Path of the Foodie would not accept a bland name like “Egg Sandwich'' for this delight. Two pieces of soft, sweet bread, toasted in butter and slathered with ketchup. Then eggs with a touch of salt and sugar, scrambled and folded into neat sheets on top of the toast. The egg was topped with shredded cabbage and scallions and yet more ketchup.

It was impossible to eat without smiling. The contrast of sweet, salty, savory, crunchy, and soft was just so, so delightful. He took his time and really savored it. He treated himself to two cups of basically okay coffee and shopped around for the right mask. A tiger mask seemed… just right. It was a nice morning as spring made its pretty turn into summer.

Truth waited until just after opening before going to Forquard’s again. It was upsettingly easy for Incisive to disguise him. There was an alarming amount of belief in this identity. Well. Whatever. He’d just take it as proof that he had been doing good work as a propagandist. He pulled down his mask and got to work.

He kicked in the door and lobbed in a couple of charms before quickly covering his ears and looking away. The BANG BANG nearly blew the glass out of the window. Even behind a wall, the light shone through his eyelids, making the dark world vivid red.

He kicked in the door again, yelling this time. “On the ground! ON THE GROUND! NOBODY LOOK AT ME!” He threw another charm at an activating golem. It froze up momentarily as the scrambler jammed its connections to the control net. Truth was moving faster than a Level One could even perceive, smashing open cases and dumping rings and necklaces into a sack.

Someone, probably more confused than rebellious, tried to stand. Truth rushed over, slapping him to the floor. “I SAID FUCKING STAY DOWN! I KILL THE NEXT ONE! I KILL THE NEXT ONE!”

He made a beeline for the Romanov collection, making sure to empty all the drawers behind the counter. At the speed he was moving, it probably looked like a series of explosions across the store- the display cases spraying glittering gems of glass as the jewelry vanished.

“WHERE IS THE MANAGER? WHERE IS THE MANAGER! I KILL SOMEONE EVERY BREATH UNTIL THE MANAGER COME OUT!” Truth yelled, yanking a socialite up by her hair. She screamed, not even able to beg in her terror.

“FIRST ONE! SHE WILL BE THE FIRST ONE! THIS IS YOUR FAULT! YOUR FAULT!”

“NO! Please! I’m the manager. I, I am the manager!” An older lady stumbled out from behind the counter. Truth dropped the socialite and grabbed the manager instead.

“Open the safe right now or I kill everyone!”

“Yes, yes, right now. This way.”

“EVERYONE STAY DOWN OR THE BOMBS GO OFF. YOU MOVE, YOU DIE!” Truth screamed. Surely security should be on the way by now, right? The air deployable golems should be seconds off at most.

“Here, here is the safe.”

“Any tricks, you die first, then I take your wallet and find your family. You understand me?”

“No, no tricks. Please, no tricks! See, I’m opening it.” Truth gave everything a quick check for tracers, dye packs, and any other little tricks that might be deployed against the careless. He dumped the jewelry in the sack, leaving the trays behind. Just in case. Did he hear sirens? Prager’s boiling balls, how bad has security gotten these days?

He gave the manager a quick slap, knocking her to the floor. “I SAID, DON’T FUCKING LOOK AT ME!” He dropped a couple more flashbangs as he ran out the door again, just to keep heads down.

Public security might have been a little slow off the mark, but the golems of the merchant’s association were coming in hard. Dozens of their smooth forms, leaping from roof to roof or scampering along the street. A blizzard of eye-spies were up too, locked on and desperately trying to make an ID.

Truth flipped them the middle finger and ran. He plunged into the sea of screaming, running shoppers, golems coming in hard behind him.

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