“This one’s pretty old, but it’s pretty good,” Garvesh said as he plucked a memslate from somewhere under the counter. Its edges were worn. After skipping well past the halfway point, he let it play. The clashing of swords and din of gunshots spilled out as a meticulously choreographed battle between two thaumaturges ensued, one a saurian and the other an Inax. They seemed to be fighting atop a great spire, in the middle of a gigantic metropolis that almost seemed like something plucked straight from the world she was familiar with. They both stood there, just watching the film for some time. It was a straightforward action thriller, set in a fictitious Inax moving island, one that had been brought online before its full completion out of necessity due to the Twin Churches’ sinking of another island-ship. The plot centered around a means that could permanently reset the island’s racial lockouts, with the saurian protagonist on the side of the Inax monarchy while the two-eyed, Falseborn Inax antagonist sought to set himself as the island’s ruler and use it to wage war against Inax society. The camera kept switching between them until they eventually crossed paths and fought, with the briefcase that contained the macguffin switching hands at least four times throughout the nearly two-hour runtime.

  There was, of course, nearly as much violence as there was drama, with the Inax and the Saurian dishing out and weathering absurd amounts of punishment, seemingly invincible to all but one another. Most of the fights between the two main characters were both physical and vocal, with the two of them constantly arguing about ideology and the ramifications of one another’s actions as they pummeled one another and spat out thaumaturgy after thaumaturgy, demolishing multiple buildings with floor counts in the two digits in the process.

  In the end, the two of them joined forces against the Saurian’s employer, a Trueborn Inax, who attempted to betray the Saurian at the last moment. Afterwards, they agreed to modify the island’s control lockouts to be tied to specific markers that could be passed down either through blood or intentionally, and to simply make of the city a sort of wandering, truly independent city-state. The film ended with a sequelbait timeskip of the two protagonists looking over the now-thriving metropolis, while a deep-voiced narrator spoke over the scene: “...such a place, affiliated with neither the Inax nor any mainland polity, would always have to fight for its existence.“

  The camera panned to a fleet of hovering ships on the horizon, and then the credits rolled. By that point, Garvesh was nodding approvingly. She could imagine him muttering “Now that’s cinema.” under his breath. He popped the memslate out of the eyebox, stowing it away as he offered: “Tell you what, I’ll sell you some of my collection for cheap. I think I have some copies of the full trilogy somewhere.”

  “How much?” she asked.

  Murmuring to himself, Garvesh picked out eleven memslates.

  “Hundred-fifty apiece. New ones usually go for twice that much. Y’know what, just give me a thousand for the whole lot, it’s not like these will sell otherwise. I’ll go through the rest once I got the time.”

  “Do you just spend all day watching dramas down here?” she prodded as she handed over a solid-state DD vessel.

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  The old lizard huffed, “Long as there’s nothin’ better to do.”

  While Garvesh processed the transaction, Krahe collected her memslates, then placed the lidless box of pills on the counter.

  “Ah. Business, then. This from Yao?” he gestured with her dreg vessel before he slid it across the counter.

  “You met?”

  He nodded.

  “She do the corpse puppet ambush?”

  Another nod.

  “You can tell she makes ‘em flimsy on purpose,” he said.

  “And? How’d it go? I assume fine at worst, given the pills.”

  “We have… Some things in common,” he said, clearly weighing his words so as to not give away too much, even by association with Yao. After some thought, he added, ”Biggest tits I’ve ever seen on a human. Grafting aside.”

  “Seen bigger,” Krahe remarked. “Not natural, but seen ‘em. Grotesque past a certain point. Speaking of grafting—”

  “Yeah yeah, I was gettin’ to it. Here. The tracker wants to meet you soon. How ‘bout tomorrow? I can send him to your office or have him come here.”

  “Think it’s safe to have him come to my office?”

  “For the best. He gets distracted by the stuff I’ve got on display. Keeps remembering he’s short on this or that.”

  “Have him come sometime in the evening. Eight or nine. You see Casus around?”

  “Not much, but I have,” Garvesh nodded. “He figured you’d look for him. Told me to tell you that, if he isn’t knee-deep in some hazard zone, then he’ll be at the duplex you got shot at. Not exactly in those words, but more or less what he said. Lotsa of crusade this crusade that. Odds’re you’ll meet Favonia there, too. She’s been putting him through the wringer since she came back, tryin’ to get him in shape to use that evolved mamon knight form of his. Eisenretter, I think.”

  “Favonia’s finally back?” Krahe asked.

  “Not too soon,” he said with some distaste. “He’s told you what she’s like, hasn’t he? Brick shithouse, taller and heavier than me. All piety and magnanimity ‘til she decides to go apeshit. Miracle she hasn’t had an aneurysm by now with all the screaming. Hell, she could fight me to a standstill in my prime, even if not for long…”

  Garvesh almost froze at the last sentence, once more catching himself a step too deep into revealing his past. But that was as far as it went. Krahe pretended to not have heard it.

  “So I’ve been told, so I’ve been told. That all makes sense to me, to be honest. More than Casus does, that’s for sure,” Krahe nodded. “I still don’t understand in what way the Red Hoods are hers.”

  “She created ‘em. Simple as,” he shrugged. “It was a big hubbub ‘cause she made ‘em independent enough to pass for people sometimes. Casus used to pass on her rants every once in a while — nobody knows how to build more, but she won’t take an apprentice. Church doesn’t like it, but they just keep asking every once in a while. And so the wheel keeps turnin’, same as it ever was. Might stop for a bit, but it always starts back up again.”

  Furrowing her brows, Krahe gave Garvesh a squinted look.

  “I might be finding patterns in the place of coincidence, but you’re the second person who has recently mentioned the wheel stopping to me.”

  “Yeah, it stops sometimes. Maintenance or somesuch. Always a big lightshow ‘cause the church mobilizes to shore up the banishment veil and kill any critters that come through. I figure it’s time for another one someday soon, just a gut feeling.”

  “It’s random?” she asked.

  “More or less. I’ve never taken interest, so I can’t tell you much, but you’ll hear about it a week or so before it happens. Now ‘less you’re gonna buy something, shoo. I’ve gotta figure out this stupid box.”

  It was abundantly clear that Garvesh was once again intentionally withholding information, not because he didn’t want her to know, but because he was afraid that he would divulge too much. He knew that she knew, and she knew that he wouldn’t budge, so she dropped the matter and left him be.