Bandit, Reaper, Yours
One hardly expects to be bested by a boutique. Especially not by some spongy wooden hovel, swollen from storms pummeling the Citadel’s bay. Yet, the reaper Retwa is unmade, stripped like fresh carrion, every time she spots it.
Ahead, Haroux’s House of Celestial Fashion sits, gauzed by gas lamps streaking the dawn. A frequent customer, Retwa has visited for all manner of delights: gallant gowns, fashionable robes, her lover’s kiss.
But nothing good ever lasts.
I’ll break her quickly, she thinks; Retwa shoves its loamy door open with broad shoulders, blinking back tears. It gives easily, unaware of the carnage she’s come to commit, and Retwa stumbles—heart pounding—into the abyss.
Darkness shrouds the shop.
Were she a fool, or an optimist, she’d hope, she’d pray, that her mark had fled. Instead, she peers past Haroux’s overly frilled blouses, past colorless trousers and dour hats to find her target—smirking at her, no less!—amid the shadows.
“Morning, Bandit.”
Y’andi, Haroux’s talented apprentice, whose every garment screams Out of my way, I’ve bones to break and souls to sever, regards her from the tailor’s platform, voice warm around Retwa’s codename.
“Why are you still here?” Despite her training, Retwa approaches, trembling from lace gloves to sandaled feet. “You knew I was coming.”
“Oh, Bandit. Like you, I’ve a job to finish.” Brazen, Y’andi meets her halfway. “Where else would I be?”
Telling Haroux that Citadel reapers are onto him; telling him that his secrets threaten your life. Instead, she rasps: “Running.”
Y’andi crowds her, purring. “And give your Cadre, or Archlorist, or whoever paid you, the satisfaction?” Stretching, she kisses Retwa, flutter-soft, then harder, pulling groans from them both. “Never.”
Retwa saw this coming. A spy and an assassin, with competing employers, each fevered touch enjoyed only on stolen time. They’d burned bright and hard; why gawk at the cinders now?
Still, she reels and painstakingly bolts the door.
“By order of the Imperial Reaper Cadre, I’m bone-bound to hold you accountable.” Feeling stripped from her skin, Retwa continues, monotone. “Do you deny stealing our cull-cards for Haroux’s underground gossip trade? Selling them to our targets, and thus impeding our work?”
“No.”
“Did you pay another reaper to bone-bury knowledge of Haroux’s whereabouts within yourself?”
“Maybe.”
Retwa frowns. “If you didn’t—will you just tell me where he is?”
“Ask nicely, and I might.”
“…Please.”
Twisting brown lips, Y’andi pantomimes thinking. “Nah. I’d rather steal the cull-cards you’re carrying now—and fit you for that suit you ordered.” She winks. “Shall we?”
Dread-filled, Retwa follows Y’andi to the tailor’s stand, exchanging her reaper’s robes for an ebon suit of Y’andi’s making—glamorous tulle trousers, and a shimmering blazer. In the dressing mirrors, she watches Y’andi’s reflection, wiry and wry-mouthed, pin and prod at her.
“If you’ve buried memories pertaining to Haroux, I’ve been ordered to shatter bones.” Retwa pauses, throat thick. “I’ll have to break you for them, Y’an.”
Y’andi claps. “Oh, I’ve outdone myself, Bandit. Everything fits you perfectly.” She searches Retwa’s discarded robes like old times. “Don’t reapers put bones back together, once they’re done? Unless you’re here to completely sever me, in which case, break away. Apparently, soul-stuff dribbles right out.”
“I’m not here for that,” Retwa says. “Are you even listening?”
“Mm…” Y’andi withdraws the cull-cards naming Retwa’s latest targets—a vastmage spy, close to the Emperor; a Lorist, embezzling constellation tithes—and studies them, nose wrinkled. “Hasn’t been much worth listening to, yet.”
“For fuck’s sake, Y’an—” Retwa snarls. “Haroux made you steal excessively, while I kept them off your trail. Then, he left the moment my Cadre grew suspicious—exposing you both! Why shield him now?”
“Because it challenges you.” Y’andi says, spittle and fear hissing her words. “To choose us over your Cadre.”
Us. The word hangs there, assaulting Retwa’s dry mouth. Then, in a motion that’s so her it makes Retwa snort, Y’andi pockets the cull-cards.
“I’m done making Haroux rich. I want my own fashion house—my own gossip networks—far from here.” She grins, stretching the mole atop her lips. “And I want you with me.”
Retwa staggers, hands sweating. “You’re mad.”
“I’m insistent. You know what else I want? Your real name, Bandit. Not that moniker you wall yourself behind.”
“I-I’d be a fool to—”
“True fools would leave. This morning. Right now.” Removing her apron, Y’andi discards fabric shears and pincushions, stripping herself of station and store. “Come away with me.”
Forty-seven seconds elapse—almost silent, if it weren’t for clanging streetcars bearing denizens to portside dock jobs and vastmages toward hillside shrines. Forty-seven numb footed, gape-mouthed seconds, wherein Retwa toes a tantalizing precipice.
A chasm for fools.
She grimaces. “You want all of me, Y’an? I’m no pious figure, like vastmages from old starlore. I’d leave broken sternums and severed souls wherever we went. We’d always be running.”
“And fucking.” Y’andi laughs, sauntering close. “Thieving for coin. Reaping whenever we damn well please—well, you’d reap, anyway. We’d be living, Bandit.” She seizes Retwa, infectiously giddy, making Retwa shiver in return. “We’d make our own way, Haroux and your cadre be damned.”
Outside, footsteps pad. Muffled, but close. Pulling away, Retwa sighs, readying herself for a different problem looming just out of sight. “Perhaps…after I’ve dealt with my colleagues.”
Behind them, the door rattles without wind to speak of.
“Get back.”
Y’andi retreats, moments before an imperial reaper, black-masked and grim-mouthed, barrels inside. Interesting. She’d counted two tailing her here.
“Reaper!” The unfamiliar figure challenges, High Imperium pristine. “We were right to doubt your loyalties.”
Retwa blinks, unspooling herself, a reaper’s cleaving between mind and body. She draws tendrils of soul, opaque and onyx, from her phalanxes until her fingers are cloudy with pitch.
“Spot on,” Retwa slurs, unable to feel her teeth. “Now, shall we?”
Her colleague unfurls, too. They clash and dodge and topple Haroux’s poor mannequins. Striking out, gloves abandoned, souls seeking skin.
They could shoot one another—most reapers carry stilettos for botched culls. But the cadre has standards. Retwa refuses to shirk them now. The rules demand she cling to her body, sidestepping their sloppy blows, and wrap sweating palms around her colleague’s eyes.
That she surge her soul beneath skin and sclera, spider their frontal bone, soul crystallizing between its collagen—and shatter it.
Gurgling, her colleague thuds, feathery soul drifting up and through the rafters. Retwa sways into waiting arms.
“That was too easy,” Y’andi says, cradling her. “They’ll send others.”
“Oh yes. There’s one outside, watching now.” Retwa smiles. “But we’ll be long gone before they’ve reported us…living, and, hm—fucking by then?”
Y’andi responds with a kiss, teeth-heavy and laugh-tinged, smoothing Retwa’s now-mussed suit. “Obviously. But first, what do I call the Bandit who beguiled me this year?”
Sunlight streams through the streaked storefront, highlighting the maelstrom: mannequins, upended; a body, splayed and husked. Centering it, Retwa sprawls, unscathed and unbroken.
“Retwa, for every day. Reaper, sometimes. Bandit, if you’re feeling frisky.” She smiles. “But whatever I am, I’m yours, Y’an. I’m all yours.”
© 2021 Jen Brown
About the Author
Jen Brown is a Black, queer SFF writer & librarian. An Ignyte Award finalist, she has works published or forthcoming in FIYAH Literary Magazine, Tor.com, and Anathema: Spec from the Margins. She tweets at @jeninthelib, and you can read more about her work at jencbrown.com.