Void Lord: My Revenge Is My Harem

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Students poured out. Some laughed. Some looked down and remembered their question paper, already re – answering questions in their heads as if the paper would change if they thought of a better answer. Some walked like men who had lost a small war with themselves and were trying not to show it. Fizz's little fan club of first year students passed in a small wave, heads up, eyes searching the air for a glow that was not there. One of them said, "Where did he go?" Another said, "He said he is a mystery now," and they all took that as a reasonable thing for a small glowing being to say.

"Where is the boy and the orange spirit," Edda murmured. Her mouth did not move much. "The boy. The ball. I can't see them."

"Maybe Inside," Brann said. "Somewhere doing something." He did not look at her. He kept his eyes on the gate. "The old ones must have held him. Or he had gone there for his protection." He meant teachers. He meant trouble. He meant clients.

Rusk laughed once, short and ugly. "Maybe the old ones sent a report. Maybe they sent him home to his village with a broom for failure." His laugh died fast when Edda did not join it.

"Do not think," Brann said. "Watch the gate. We all know how things work in the capital. He will come out sooner or later."

They watched the gate. The crowd thinned. The lamps near the gate burned steady and made the stone look like cake. A boy with a straight nose and a crooked fringe came through with an older girl holding his elbow; he looked sick and grateful. A pair of boys argued about a question and bumped into a guard who did not move; they apologized and fled in a hurry. A woman in a gray robe came out, looked up at the sky, and smiled like a person who had earned her place.

The last cluster left and the gate crew shifted their weight in that way. That meant the day shift had become the night shift and the list of worries had changed shape.

Edda clicked her tongue softly. "Do we wait longer?" she asked.

"We wait," Brann said. "He is in there. He will have to leave. Food lives out here. Air lives out here. Pockets live out here."

Rusk pulled at his rope belt again. "I will shave the fur off that orange thing," he said, not because it was a plan but because it felt good to say. "Make a scarf out of it. Wear it in winter. Lord Fuzz, keep my body warm."

Edda rolled her eyes without moving them. "Do not say Lord anything," she said. "He will make a roasting out of it. I can still hear him laughing at your legs and your small ding dong."

Rusk's ears went hot. He hated that they went hot. He looked at the ground because the ground had never laughed at him. "I will cut a finger off the boy," he muttered. "Feed it to a dog. Wash my shame with it."

Brann did not turn. "You will do what the job says," he said softly, the way a knife speaks when it reminds you it is a knife. "Breathing cargo. No broken parts. No killed parts. Do not say cut again." His face had a cut mark. He felt insecure when someone said something about cutting. It was his childhood trauma.

Silence came back. It stayed long enough to make a point.

Edda broke it with a sigh. "Fine," she said. "No cuts. But I am bringing leeches." She smiled to herself, a sharp, private little curve. "Good leeches. Hungry leeches. If we handle him quietly, there is time to teach him manners. I will put leeches on his naked chest and watch how he reacts. It will give me extreme pleasure… I am feeling wet thinking about it."

Rusk made a face. "You are sick."

"You wanted to wear spirit fur," she said without heat. "Do not judge my hobbies."

Brann's chin lifted half a finger. "There," he said. "They are coming out. Look."

Two small shapes at the gate. A boy with a plain coat and a small bag. A bright orange flicker at his shoulder that made doormen remember prayer for a breath and then remember their work. John and Fizz stepped out into the last thin light of the day and paused.

Rusk's hands closed and opened. Edda's grin narrowed. Brann did not move at all, except his breath grew smaller and steadier.

The boy and the small orange fluff ball spoke to each other in short lines. They looked at the street like men who had learned the city in a week. They turned left, not right. They did not hurry, which was smart. They did not stop, which was smarter.

"Now," Edda breathed. "Let's catch him again."

"No," Brann said at once. "Not at the gate. Not with guards. We follow them. We wait for a quiet road."

They slid out of their gully pocket and became part of the street again. No one turned to look. No one saw three shadows lengthen and shorten with the lamps and the corners. Cities do not notice their own seams.

John did not look back. He did not need to. He could feel it: the way a street behind you collects the same three scuffs with the same rhythm; the way air seems to lean toward your back; the way your field hums like a wire when someone mean is staring at it. He kept his breath even. He kept his eyes working: window, alley mouth, cart wheel, hand on a shutter, man on a stool, cat on a barrel, the string of wet shirts that had not been there an hour ago, the patch of street where the stone rose the width of a fingernail and would trip a tired foot.

Fizz drifted to his ear. He did not joke now. He did not sing. He made the smallest sound a throat can make when it wants to be ready without making anyone else ready. "Three people are following us," he whispered.

"Yes, I noticed." John breathed.

"Same three kidnappers," Fizz said. "Same smells. Rope. Smoke. Soap that does not like water."

"Left," John said under his breath, and turned left at a lane where the lamps were late and the stones were old. The city there was a little quieter. It was not silence. A woman sang to a child behind a shutter. A pot lid clicked once and then settled. A rat made a plan and then decided he would be braver tomorrow.

The sun had found its last thin edge on the roofline. The sky was the color of old copper. Shadows were honest now. They said what they were and stayed where they were put.

Brann let them pass three doorways. He stands behind the two followers. He did not take the next step. He kept his people tucked behind a cart piled with ladder rungs. He could feel the itch in Edda's fingers from where he stood. He could hear Rusk swallow the way men swallow when their mind and their pride are having a small fight.

"Quiet street next turn," he said. "There we will grab them."

Ahead, the lane narrowed. It turned away from the market sounds and toward a run of old walls with blind windows. Laundry did not hang here. Cats did not nap here. The ground was swept too clean because no one had anything to spill and no one had anything to sell. Two houses' back walls face each other across a space that had forgotten laughter for a long time and did not miss it.

John stepped into it without changing step. Fizz slid higher. They did not look like men who had walked into a trap. They looked like men who had found the road they needed to finish this cat and mouse game.

Behind them, Brann lifted a hand. Edda dipped her head, grinning again. Rusk pulled his rope belt once more in a nervous ritual and then set his jaw. They spread without talking. Brann took the middle, quiet and clean. Edda angled to the left where the shadows were. Rusk went right where the wall had lost a plaster tooth; he would come up fast from that bite.

The lamps behind them put slow gold on the stones. The far end of the lane was already night. The place between —the place where three men become bigger than three, where one boy and one small bright cute fur become smaller than two— held its breath like a door before it swung.

Fizz's ears tipped back. "Here," he whispered.

"Yes," John said, and did not turn.

The city, huge and ordinary and full of dinners and songs and homework and broken brooms and boys trying to be men and men trying to be better than they were yesterday, went on breathing around this thin little place where a choice would be made. A bell far away rang one slow note without meaning to; maybe the man who pulled the rope sneezed and tugged it wrongly. The note walked down roofs and rested on the lane like a hand on a shoulder.

Brann's finger moved a half inch. Edda's breath came in through her teeth. Rusk's foot left the ground.

The sun, at last, slid off the roof and let the sky be dark. They were ready to attack.