all's unfair
Dec. 16th, 2015 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysTitle: All's Unfair
Rating: PG
Series: Fallout New Vegas ('courier faction' original characters)
Wordcount: 2800
Remarks: From the same little 'verse as Any Port in the Storm. EG and his powerfist belong to another member. I had a lot of fun when I wrote this one back in 2013.
“I’m telling you,” Chops told them, “I’m telling you, we gotta run.”
They didn’t listen. They never listened, he thought, scrubbing his nose along the underside of his sleeve; never, no matter how right he was. Primo had sometimes gotten them to listen, but Primo was dead now, along with Burke and Golly, his face mushed in so far one of his eyes had fallen out.
It wasn’t fair. Primo had been the one to give Chops an extra scoop of stew, and show him the best way to clean rust off, and only ever hit him a couple of times. Primo shouldn’t have been the one to get punched. Especially since Ophelia had gotten to his axe first.
She looked about ready to start using her new weapon now, close as she was to Yam’s face, her neck bulging the way it always did when she was mad. Yam didn’t budge though, even when flecks of spit landed on his face as Ophelia’s voice grew even louder and harsher.
“You don’t know shit!” she was saying. “You don’t fucking know shit about how they work, you stupid fuck, so don’t act like you’ve got some kind of fucking-”
“Some kind of fucking what!” Yam said explosively, and Chops cringed back against the outer wall of the shack. “Some kind of common sense that says we don’t want to start this fight? ‘Cause yeah, I got that!”
“Didja miss the fact the fucking fight’s already started? Fuck, Yam, you’ve got Primo’s fucking brains on your face.”
“So I’m fixing to make sure it’s not my brains going places,” he said, but he lifted a jerky hand to wipe at his cheek. “That’s all I’ve been saying.”
Ophelia seemed to sense how close his nerve was to cracking, and she dragged her tone back down to something closer to crooning. “And that’s what I’m fucking saying too. I’m saying how we fix this, okay—we kill ‘em. We kill ‘em, and bury ‘em or chop ‘em up and stick what’s left in the gecko nest yonder and we shut the fuck up about it.” Yam was shaking his head, but slowly, uncertainly, and Chops flicked his eyes between them as Ophelia pushed to win, said more insistently, “No one saw it. No one saw a fucking thing except us and them. And if we do it quick and we do it fucking right, no one’s got to know.” A second later, she said, “They got it fucking coming anyway, Yam, come on. Blood for blood.”
It was the wrong road to take. Yam shook his head again, harder this time. “No. No, goddammit, that’s not how it works. Not when it comes to couriers.”
Chops whined wordlessly into his sleeve. This was where they’d been before, and again, and a dozen times over and he could already see Ophelia’s temper snapping and the yelling starting back up, and all the while anyone could walk by and see them here, half a gang, and wonder what had done this to them. Wonder what they had tied up in the shack.
“We gotta run,” he said. “Guys…Yam, you gotta tell her, they’ll come looking, we gotta get away-”
“Shut up,” Yam said. “Look, we kill couriers and we’re fucked, okay. You understand that? Nobody’ll help or hide us.”
“Fuck’s sake, you’re not listening!”
“You’re the one who needs to open your ears, you mad bitch, before you get the rest of us killed!”
Chops said pleadingly, “Ophelia. Philly, please, we gotta-”
He regretted it the second she swung around, fists clenched, teeth bared. “Shut the fuck up, you little pissant!” she said, and he scuttled back hastily to avoid the slap.
Yam said, “Oh for- Chops just, just go around the back, okay? Go and guard the back.”
“But-”
Ophelia made a snarling noise like a coyote, and Chops was around the side of the shack before he even thought to move his legs. He paused there, snuffling miserably, listening to the threads of the argument pick up again behind him. It just wasn’t fair. Of all the people who should have been punched, Ophelia was the one.
She was the one who had spotted them in the first place; two figures coming up along the road, moving slow. They hadn’t been burdened by caravan or heavy bags, but the smaller of the pair had been limping slightly and the other was matching their pace. The still, hot air had failed to carry any clear conversation to the gang crouched behind the rocks, but it had been clear enough the pair were familiar with each other. That was good, though. People didn’t think properly when they were trying to think for more than themselves.
The limp had decided them. Six on two was usually good pickings, even against the one rifle they could see and the broad set of the man’s shoulders. They hadn’t known the pair could fight so well. They hadn’t known they were couriers.
Yam wanted to tell them that and let them go. Apologise, even. He said couriers weren’t like the other gangs, or the NCR or Legion. They’d understand it was a mistake so long as they didn’t do them any further harm. Ophelia thought that was the dumbest fucking thing she’d ever fucking heard and Yam was dumber than a fucking one-headed brahmin if he thought that was going to work. The shouting had started soon after that, and kept going, and wasn’t stopping even as Primo’s brains started to dry and shrivel on Yam’s cheek.
They just wouldn’t listen, Chops thought morosely. Not to each other but especially not to him, even when his idea was the best of all. It wasn’t like it was the first time they’d had to move to a different place, and it had worked well enough each time before. They could go up around Black Mountain for a bit—not a lot of people liked it there, so they couldn’t stay for long, but they could stay long enough for everyone to forget which faces had been on that route at that time. It was a big wasteland, after all.
The couriers were keeping the others from going, though. Yam and Ophelia wouldn’t leave until they’d decided, one way or the other, what to do with them; the only thing they seemed to be able to agree on was that they weren’t going to walk away with the couriers still tied up in the shack.
Chops gave a thoughtful sniff, and trailed his fingers over the blunt edge of the cleaver tied tight to his waist with a strip of grubby cloth, a solution at last starting to flicker to life inside his mind. If the couriers were gone, the others couldn’t keep arguing over them. Ophelia didn’t want to leave, but if he killed the couriers, she’d be pleased with him and she’d listen. And if the couriers were dead, then Yam would be afraid and want to leave as well, and he’d help argue against Ophelia if she still tried to stay. That this course of action meant he could drop his blade down on the couriers’ heads just made it all the sweeter. He hadn’t been able to get much of a swing in during the fight.
It would fix everything.
Ophelia’s voice shrieked louder than a broken-winged crow behind him, and Chops slipped along the wall and around to the back of the shack. They had made it so the shack could be barred from both inside and out, and they’d dragged the plank of wood across the back door bracket since there weren’t enough of them to stand proper guard any more. With a last, careful glance over his shoulder, he tugged his cleaver free of his makeshift belt and stepped up to the door. It felt good to have made a decision; even better to know what that decision was. He hooked his hands under the plank, braced to heave—and then a muffled voice spoke from within the shack.
Chops froze, not certain he had heard what he had heard, not with the argument still railing distantly at the front of the shack. Before he had time to dismiss it as nervous imagination, though, there was the sound of words again, and then a reply from someone else, and with that there was no pretending he couldn’t hear a conversation going on just behind the door. A deeper voice and a lighter one—it had turned out the smaller of the two couriers was a woman, he remembered, though her hair was cut shorter than even Golly’s had been. It had to be the couriers.
He wavered a moment, his brief happiness disappearing under sudden hesitation. The couriers weren’t supposed to be talking. They were supposed to be out cold, or sitting quietly, and not aware that he was coming with a cleaver in his hand. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t fair.
Huffing his agitation under his breath, Chops pressed his ear closer, straining for the words.
“-saying I’m lying?” said the deeper voice.
“No, I’m just saying maybe you’re misremembering,” said the other. “Bound to happen around your age.”
“I thought you were born around ’57.”
“Around, I said. And you got the little beard thing. Kinda makes you look older.”
“That’s the first time someone’s said that to me.”
“Not in a bad way, mind.”
“Well, it wouldn’t matter if I were your grandfather. There’s no misremembering a moment like that. It’s not just a sighting; it’s a discovery.”
It wasn’t what he had expected. Of course, he hadn’t expected any words at all, but this did nothing to ease his confusion and with no better grasp of what was going on, Chops found himself with little choice but to keep listening.
“They’re both reptilian, aren’t they?”
“True enough, but-”
“It’s not as though I’m saying it was brahmin.”
“Elbow Grease,” the woman’s voice said, filled with wry amusement, “unless you plan on bringing me back a head, I ain’t gonna believe there’s geckos out there breeding with deathclaws.”
“I would have brought the head,” the other said mournfully, “but there wasn’t enough left.”
Chops thought of Burke, his arm spinning through the air and his chest caved in, and swiped his nose roughly along his sleeve.
Got you anyway, he thought. We got you anyway. Yam had stepped in just after that, swinging hard and desperate with his bat, and somehow he’d landed a lucky blow against the powerfist. There’d been a yell, sparks, and all of a sudden the battle turned in their favour. It still hadn’t been easy, but between the three of them they’d brought the man down to the ground. Things had been going alright again, with two people to take their anger out on for the trouble they’d caused—until Yam had noticed the courier badges sewn to the sleeves.
“So if I brought back a head…”
“Well, can’t say I wouldn’t be interested in having a look. Pro’ly have to get Wyn on board, though, make sure it’s not just an over-irradiated golden gecko.”
“I could tell the difference!” the man protested.
“Second opinion, then. Fleshy bits ain’t really my speciality- shit.”
The man’s voice was suddenly alert as he said, “Larkin?”
“Fingers slipped. Gimme a sec…”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Just stay real still for a bit. Can’t see a damn thing from this angle or it wouldn’t be half the trouble. Naturally they bruised up this eye.”
There was a stretch of silence, and Chops scratched his fingernails along the wooden plank in bewildered uncertainty.
“Wait, wait, this bit feels familiar- aha!”
“I take it you’ve found your place.”
“Good as. Alright, not going to be much longer. Twist your hand a little to the left, would you? Your left, that is.”
Chops’ fingers dug hard into the wood. This was wrong. This wasn’t the kind of talk people had when they were planning to stay safe and contained and unable to fight back. Panic surged through him, feet to head, and Chops heaved at the plank, pulling it up and throwing it aside, and slammed the door back on his hinges to storm through with cleaver raised. The talking had stopped, and as he glared around with narrowed eyes that struggled to adjust to the dim lighting he spotted the two forms seated against the wall, suddenly as quiet as they should have always been.
“Hey!” he said, and then flinched as he remembered who else was in the vicinity. The muffled sounds of yelling continued unabated from out the front, though, so he dropped his voice down to a harsh half-snarl and said, “What’re you doing there? What’re you doing with your hands?”
He couldn’t see properly. The shack didn’t catch the afternoon light well, and in any case they were tied back to back, hands knotted between them. When he stepped a little closer the courier facing him shifted slightly; the limping one, the woman, with one eye swelled and darkened like she’d told the other. Her movement meant he still couldn’t see their hands closely, and his grip tightened on his cleaver.
The woman blinked at him once, and then said, “Palm-reading.”
“Palm-reading?” both he and the other courier said simultaneously, but it was the courier who continued with, “I didn’t know you knew about- wait, you read my book?”
“’Course I did,” the woman said. “After your stellar recommendation, how could I resist? Gotta say, you were right about the ending, I was on my toes the whole time.”
“That final speech!” he enthused. “O’Hannon could light a fire in a coward’s heart.”
“Stop!” Chops said, and the two gazes swivelled back towards him. “What…what are you talking- what’s palm-reading? What are you doing?”
“Nothin’ dramatic, honest,” the woman said soothingly. “Palm-reading’s just a, ah, pre-war technique for telling the future.”
“Divining the threads of fate,” the man chipped in wistfully.
“And since we couldn’t help but overhear your dilemma as to our futures, seemed a fine idea to take a glance at what lay in store.”
Chops squinted uncertainly at them. It sounded wrong. It wasn’t anything like the things people usually said when he was standing over them with his cleaver in hand. Crying, yes, cursing, yes. This…
“Do you want to know how it works?” the woman said.
“No,” he said. “No. You have to stay tied up.”
“'Course, of course,” she said immediately. “Not what I meant. Just figured you might want me to tell you about it, since it’s new to you. No untying needed.”
“I don’t care,” he said, resentful at her insistent picking at his ignorance. “Stop doing it.”
“It ain’t tricky-”
“I said stop!”
“Larkin,” the man said.
“Alright,” she said, though Chops couldn’t tell which one of them she was talking to. “Alright. I promise I’m not doing anything. We just wanted to find out, you know? And it’s really simple, finding the lifeline.”
“I don’t care about your lifeline,” he said, feeling a bubble of desperation starting to swell.
“No one ever does,” she sighed. “It’s EG’s I’m after in any case, because everyone’s got a lifeline, across their palm. Reading the palm, palm-reading, right? It’s the length that matters. Longer the line, longer the life, and if you can get a decent measure of it you can work out just how many years that comes down to. Or so they say.”
Was she moving? Had her hands been moving this whole time? Chops said, “Stop-”
“So it’s simple you see,” the woman said, and she was twisting, she was moving, and he took a step forward because she needed to stop. “You find where it ends, you do a little counting, and then you know just how long you’ve got left- ah.”
There was an audible click, and then a short, piercing whine.
“And I reckon,” the woman said, and Chops started as he realised something about her voice had changed in that one moment, slid neither higher nor lower but sideways into a whole new person, languid and smiling, “I reckon we’ve got a few years yet.”
It happened fast. The man seemed to hunch over, muscles straining, and then one arm shot upwards and the woman was rolling away, faster than Chops could chase her with the point of his cleaver, especially since his view was rapidly being obscured by the broad form lunging towards him, the raised edge of the glove glinting with a flicker of afternoon sun-
The last plaintive thought Chops offered to the world was, it’s not fair.
Rating: PG
Series: Fallout New Vegas ('courier faction' original characters)
Wordcount: 2800
Remarks: From the same little 'verse as Any Port in the Storm. EG and his powerfist belong to another member. I had a lot of fun when I wrote this one back in 2013.
“I’m telling you,” Chops told them, “I’m telling you, we gotta run.”
They didn’t listen. They never listened, he thought, scrubbing his nose along the underside of his sleeve; never, no matter how right he was. Primo had sometimes gotten them to listen, but Primo was dead now, along with Burke and Golly, his face mushed in so far one of his eyes had fallen out.
It wasn’t fair. Primo had been the one to give Chops an extra scoop of stew, and show him the best way to clean rust off, and only ever hit him a couple of times. Primo shouldn’t have been the one to get punched. Especially since Ophelia had gotten to his axe first.
She looked about ready to start using her new weapon now, close as she was to Yam’s face, her neck bulging the way it always did when she was mad. Yam didn’t budge though, even when flecks of spit landed on his face as Ophelia’s voice grew even louder and harsher.
“You don’t know shit!” she was saying. “You don’t fucking know shit about how they work, you stupid fuck, so don’t act like you’ve got some kind of fucking-”
“Some kind of fucking what!” Yam said explosively, and Chops cringed back against the outer wall of the shack. “Some kind of common sense that says we don’t want to start this fight? ‘Cause yeah, I got that!”
“Didja miss the fact the fucking fight’s already started? Fuck, Yam, you’ve got Primo’s fucking brains on your face.”
“So I’m fixing to make sure it’s not my brains going places,” he said, but he lifted a jerky hand to wipe at his cheek. “That’s all I’ve been saying.”
Ophelia seemed to sense how close his nerve was to cracking, and she dragged her tone back down to something closer to crooning. “And that’s what I’m fucking saying too. I’m saying how we fix this, okay—we kill ‘em. We kill ‘em, and bury ‘em or chop ‘em up and stick what’s left in the gecko nest yonder and we shut the fuck up about it.” Yam was shaking his head, but slowly, uncertainly, and Chops flicked his eyes between them as Ophelia pushed to win, said more insistently, “No one saw it. No one saw a fucking thing except us and them. And if we do it quick and we do it fucking right, no one’s got to know.” A second later, she said, “They got it fucking coming anyway, Yam, come on. Blood for blood.”
It was the wrong road to take. Yam shook his head again, harder this time. “No. No, goddammit, that’s not how it works. Not when it comes to couriers.”
Chops whined wordlessly into his sleeve. This was where they’d been before, and again, and a dozen times over and he could already see Ophelia’s temper snapping and the yelling starting back up, and all the while anyone could walk by and see them here, half a gang, and wonder what had done this to them. Wonder what they had tied up in the shack.
“We gotta run,” he said. “Guys…Yam, you gotta tell her, they’ll come looking, we gotta get away-”
“Shut up,” Yam said. “Look, we kill couriers and we’re fucked, okay. You understand that? Nobody’ll help or hide us.”
“Fuck’s sake, you’re not listening!”
“You’re the one who needs to open your ears, you mad bitch, before you get the rest of us killed!”
Chops said pleadingly, “Ophelia. Philly, please, we gotta-”
He regretted it the second she swung around, fists clenched, teeth bared. “Shut the fuck up, you little pissant!” she said, and he scuttled back hastily to avoid the slap.
Yam said, “Oh for- Chops just, just go around the back, okay? Go and guard the back.”
“But-”
Ophelia made a snarling noise like a coyote, and Chops was around the side of the shack before he even thought to move his legs. He paused there, snuffling miserably, listening to the threads of the argument pick up again behind him. It just wasn’t fair. Of all the people who should have been punched, Ophelia was the one.
She was the one who had spotted them in the first place; two figures coming up along the road, moving slow. They hadn’t been burdened by caravan or heavy bags, but the smaller of the pair had been limping slightly and the other was matching their pace. The still, hot air had failed to carry any clear conversation to the gang crouched behind the rocks, but it had been clear enough the pair were familiar with each other. That was good, though. People didn’t think properly when they were trying to think for more than themselves.
The limp had decided them. Six on two was usually good pickings, even against the one rifle they could see and the broad set of the man’s shoulders. They hadn’t known the pair could fight so well. They hadn’t known they were couriers.
Yam wanted to tell them that and let them go. Apologise, even. He said couriers weren’t like the other gangs, or the NCR or Legion. They’d understand it was a mistake so long as they didn’t do them any further harm. Ophelia thought that was the dumbest fucking thing she’d ever fucking heard and Yam was dumber than a fucking one-headed brahmin if he thought that was going to work. The shouting had started soon after that, and kept going, and wasn’t stopping even as Primo’s brains started to dry and shrivel on Yam’s cheek.
They just wouldn’t listen, Chops thought morosely. Not to each other but especially not to him, even when his idea was the best of all. It wasn’t like it was the first time they’d had to move to a different place, and it had worked well enough each time before. They could go up around Black Mountain for a bit—not a lot of people liked it there, so they couldn’t stay for long, but they could stay long enough for everyone to forget which faces had been on that route at that time. It was a big wasteland, after all.
The couriers were keeping the others from going, though. Yam and Ophelia wouldn’t leave until they’d decided, one way or the other, what to do with them; the only thing they seemed to be able to agree on was that they weren’t going to walk away with the couriers still tied up in the shack.
Chops gave a thoughtful sniff, and trailed his fingers over the blunt edge of the cleaver tied tight to his waist with a strip of grubby cloth, a solution at last starting to flicker to life inside his mind. If the couriers were gone, the others couldn’t keep arguing over them. Ophelia didn’t want to leave, but if he killed the couriers, she’d be pleased with him and she’d listen. And if the couriers were dead, then Yam would be afraid and want to leave as well, and he’d help argue against Ophelia if she still tried to stay. That this course of action meant he could drop his blade down on the couriers’ heads just made it all the sweeter. He hadn’t been able to get much of a swing in during the fight.
It would fix everything.
Ophelia’s voice shrieked louder than a broken-winged crow behind him, and Chops slipped along the wall and around to the back of the shack. They had made it so the shack could be barred from both inside and out, and they’d dragged the plank of wood across the back door bracket since there weren’t enough of them to stand proper guard any more. With a last, careful glance over his shoulder, he tugged his cleaver free of his makeshift belt and stepped up to the door. It felt good to have made a decision; even better to know what that decision was. He hooked his hands under the plank, braced to heave—and then a muffled voice spoke from within the shack.
Chops froze, not certain he had heard what he had heard, not with the argument still railing distantly at the front of the shack. Before he had time to dismiss it as nervous imagination, though, there was the sound of words again, and then a reply from someone else, and with that there was no pretending he couldn’t hear a conversation going on just behind the door. A deeper voice and a lighter one—it had turned out the smaller of the two couriers was a woman, he remembered, though her hair was cut shorter than even Golly’s had been. It had to be the couriers.
He wavered a moment, his brief happiness disappearing under sudden hesitation. The couriers weren’t supposed to be talking. They were supposed to be out cold, or sitting quietly, and not aware that he was coming with a cleaver in his hand. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t fair.
Huffing his agitation under his breath, Chops pressed his ear closer, straining for the words.
“-saying I’m lying?” said the deeper voice.
“No, I’m just saying maybe you’re misremembering,” said the other. “Bound to happen around your age.”
“I thought you were born around ’57.”
“Around, I said. And you got the little beard thing. Kinda makes you look older.”
“That’s the first time someone’s said that to me.”
“Not in a bad way, mind.”
“Well, it wouldn’t matter if I were your grandfather. There’s no misremembering a moment like that. It’s not just a sighting; it’s a discovery.”
It wasn’t what he had expected. Of course, he hadn’t expected any words at all, but this did nothing to ease his confusion and with no better grasp of what was going on, Chops found himself with little choice but to keep listening.
“They’re both reptilian, aren’t they?”
“True enough, but-”
“It’s not as though I’m saying it was brahmin.”
“Elbow Grease,” the woman’s voice said, filled with wry amusement, “unless you plan on bringing me back a head, I ain’t gonna believe there’s geckos out there breeding with deathclaws.”
“I would have brought the head,” the other said mournfully, “but there wasn’t enough left.”
Chops thought of Burke, his arm spinning through the air and his chest caved in, and swiped his nose roughly along his sleeve.
Got you anyway, he thought. We got you anyway. Yam had stepped in just after that, swinging hard and desperate with his bat, and somehow he’d landed a lucky blow against the powerfist. There’d been a yell, sparks, and all of a sudden the battle turned in their favour. It still hadn’t been easy, but between the three of them they’d brought the man down to the ground. Things had been going alright again, with two people to take their anger out on for the trouble they’d caused—until Yam had noticed the courier badges sewn to the sleeves.
“So if I brought back a head…”
“Well, can’t say I wouldn’t be interested in having a look. Pro’ly have to get Wyn on board, though, make sure it’s not just an over-irradiated golden gecko.”
“I could tell the difference!” the man protested.
“Second opinion, then. Fleshy bits ain’t really my speciality- shit.”
The man’s voice was suddenly alert as he said, “Larkin?”
“Fingers slipped. Gimme a sec…”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Just stay real still for a bit. Can’t see a damn thing from this angle or it wouldn’t be half the trouble. Naturally they bruised up this eye.”
There was a stretch of silence, and Chops scratched his fingernails along the wooden plank in bewildered uncertainty.
“Wait, wait, this bit feels familiar- aha!”
“I take it you’ve found your place.”
“Good as. Alright, not going to be much longer. Twist your hand a little to the left, would you? Your left, that is.”
Chops’ fingers dug hard into the wood. This was wrong. This wasn’t the kind of talk people had when they were planning to stay safe and contained and unable to fight back. Panic surged through him, feet to head, and Chops heaved at the plank, pulling it up and throwing it aside, and slammed the door back on his hinges to storm through with cleaver raised. The talking had stopped, and as he glared around with narrowed eyes that struggled to adjust to the dim lighting he spotted the two forms seated against the wall, suddenly as quiet as they should have always been.
“Hey!” he said, and then flinched as he remembered who else was in the vicinity. The muffled sounds of yelling continued unabated from out the front, though, so he dropped his voice down to a harsh half-snarl and said, “What’re you doing there? What’re you doing with your hands?”
He couldn’t see properly. The shack didn’t catch the afternoon light well, and in any case they were tied back to back, hands knotted between them. When he stepped a little closer the courier facing him shifted slightly; the limping one, the woman, with one eye swelled and darkened like she’d told the other. Her movement meant he still couldn’t see their hands closely, and his grip tightened on his cleaver.
The woman blinked at him once, and then said, “Palm-reading.”
“Palm-reading?” both he and the other courier said simultaneously, but it was the courier who continued with, “I didn’t know you knew about- wait, you read my book?”
“’Course I did,” the woman said. “After your stellar recommendation, how could I resist? Gotta say, you were right about the ending, I was on my toes the whole time.”
“That final speech!” he enthused. “O’Hannon could light a fire in a coward’s heart.”
“Stop!” Chops said, and the two gazes swivelled back towards him. “What…what are you talking- what’s palm-reading? What are you doing?”
“Nothin’ dramatic, honest,” the woman said soothingly. “Palm-reading’s just a, ah, pre-war technique for telling the future.”
“Divining the threads of fate,” the man chipped in wistfully.
“And since we couldn’t help but overhear your dilemma as to our futures, seemed a fine idea to take a glance at what lay in store.”
Chops squinted uncertainly at them. It sounded wrong. It wasn’t anything like the things people usually said when he was standing over them with his cleaver in hand. Crying, yes, cursing, yes. This…
“Do you want to know how it works?” the woman said.
“No,” he said. “No. You have to stay tied up.”
“'Course, of course,” she said immediately. “Not what I meant. Just figured you might want me to tell you about it, since it’s new to you. No untying needed.”
“I don’t care,” he said, resentful at her insistent picking at his ignorance. “Stop doing it.”
“It ain’t tricky-”
“I said stop!”
“Larkin,” the man said.
“Alright,” she said, though Chops couldn’t tell which one of them she was talking to. “Alright. I promise I’m not doing anything. We just wanted to find out, you know? And it’s really simple, finding the lifeline.”
“I don’t care about your lifeline,” he said, feeling a bubble of desperation starting to swell.
“No one ever does,” she sighed. “It’s EG’s I’m after in any case, because everyone’s got a lifeline, across their palm. Reading the palm, palm-reading, right? It’s the length that matters. Longer the line, longer the life, and if you can get a decent measure of it you can work out just how many years that comes down to. Or so they say.”
Was she moving? Had her hands been moving this whole time? Chops said, “Stop-”
“So it’s simple you see,” the woman said, and she was twisting, she was moving, and he took a step forward because she needed to stop. “You find where it ends, you do a little counting, and then you know just how long you’ve got left- ah.”
There was an audible click, and then a short, piercing whine.
“And I reckon,” the woman said, and Chops started as he realised something about her voice had changed in that one moment, slid neither higher nor lower but sideways into a whole new person, languid and smiling, “I reckon we’ve got a few years yet.”
It happened fast. The man seemed to hunch over, muscles straining, and then one arm shot upwards and the woman was rolling away, faster than Chops could chase her with the point of his cleaver, especially since his view was rapidly being obscured by the broad form lunging towards him, the raised edge of the glove glinting with a flicker of afternoon sun-
The last plaintive thought Chops offered to the world was, it’s not fair.
