Breaking the Wheel

Chapter 15

Varrick paced anxiously. He'd been expecting some retaliation from the business venture- that was the nature of the business, after all- a little guy rises up and the established guys try to smack him down. But he hadn't been expecting them to go after Mako so early and so hard.

The kid was beat up, one eye bruised closed, and he hadn't let Varrick take off his shirt to check the injuries on his body, choosing instead to curl in the corner of their hut and sleep. He smelled of burning and ozone, so Varrick could only assume the other guy had come off worse, whoever that was.

"Uh, Mako?" asked Varrick, tentatively. "You didn't kill anyone, did you?"

Mako gave him one of his patented looks, about fifty percent dying embers of a housefire and fifty-one percent scorn. "I didn't exactly hang around to find out," he snapped.

Dang nabbit. This was bad. Varrick paced the length of their makeshift house. He'd hoped for a few days to get their bearings, work out who was in charge, and maybe make an alliance or two before anyone tried to make an example of them. Now, though? Reprisal was practically imminent.

"You couldn't have tried, y'know, just taking the beating?" he suggested.

"Maybe you could try that," said Mako, pointedly. "When you're the one getting beaten."

Varrick sighed, moustache drooping. "Did you at least get their names?"

"You think they'll come back." Mako said, something like surprise crossing his swollen face. He looked exhausted. "There was a guy with one eye, and a bald guy with tattoos. Thin."

Identifying marks. Varrick scratched the sparse stubble that had begun to populate his chin. That was something. At least now he could find out exactly who he'd pissed off.

"There was another guy," Mako said, after a pause.

"Another fella beating on you?"

"No," Mako frowned, giving an involuntary hiss of pain as his brow squeezed the bruise around his eye. "He was helping me. I don't know why."

"Don't suppose he left a calling card either."

Mako shook his head.

Varrick sat, chin on his knees. Their hovel, which a moment before had been colourful, a place full of possibilities and possible creations, was at once reduced to its sad reality, grey and cold in the low light. He had two, maybe three options now, and they weren't bad, per se, but they were just so damn pedestrian. Zhu Li would never have set anyone on fire during a streetfight. "You're a terrible assistant, you know that?"

The kid scowled at him through his one good eye before rolling over to face the wall. "I'm not your assistant."

"Damn right you're not," sniffed Varrick.

---

The spider spirit hadn't eaten him yet. That was something. Trapped in the web, Kai lost track of time. Perhaps that was a trait of the spirit world, that time didn't flow quite the same way. He tried counting days and nights, but too often a long shadow would pass over, making him doubt his counting. The spider spirit hummed to himself as it moved through the webs, picking up this item and that in his slender, almost-human hands.

Finally, there was a noise, footsteps in the cave below, and the spider spirit froze, the light inside its abdomen turning from yellow to a silvery white as it clambered down one of the walls.

Kai twisted in his web to get a better look. The man was short, and slight, dressed in traditional southern water tribe garb, complete with heavy black and white facepaint that was almost clownish. Kai squinted. One of Tonraq's party? No, the man was older than that, his grey hair stained yellow in Aruki's light, and wicked scars covering his exposed upper arms. Sheathed at his hips were two crude-looking bone kamas.