Dorian was at the open market, a smattering of stalls in a marble-floored plaza which seemed to stretch endlessly, its loose rows wrapping around itself like the lively intestines of some massive beast. Its stalls were all strung with white-cloth tarps more specialized than any Dorian had seen in the Festival’s market; he passed a rolling food-stall hawking twenty flavors of custard, with more cooking in a tiny artifact oven bolted on its side. He passed an ornate-looking stall selling only nose-rings—big green knobby diamonds, small dewdrops of aquamarine. Nothing like in the Outskirts, where the streets resembled a clogged latrine and the markets were bare, lean places, with hired guards at each stall.

They’ve set up a clever social construct here—retaining all the strongest, most useful members of society to themselves. Even if there was simmering popular dissent in the Outskirts, there’s no-one of worth to lead an uprising.

No doubt any Outskirter with promise was swiftly gobbled up by Oasis-folk. The powerful always had an array of tricks to neuter the weak. One trick, Dorian suspected, was the gangs themselves—he wouldn’t have been surprised of the Rat-King was paid off by the Oasis brass. The gangs sure seemed like useful tools to suppress dissent. They did a great job intimidating the populace as it was.

Turn them against each other, keep them split, weak, easily moved…Dorian approved.

Enough dallying. He was here for Alchemy ingredients. He stumbled on the relevant section: a row crowded with what produce stalls. He stopped at the first stall, which was scarcely more than a bundle of carts laden with multicolored fruit, put up near a sign. ‘Old Pu’s Rare Fruits & Plants’ was scrawled on the wood placard.

“‘Morning!” An old man whose eyes were hidden beneath a bushy unibrow tottered up to him “Might I interest you in any of our fresh Sinkhole herbs, good sir? Our salted seaweeds are most popular among the youths—“

“Give me all of your ginsengs aged past a hundred and fifty years, all the spirit Bamboo-leaf you have in stock, and three stones’s worth of Spirit gingers.”

He plopped down cloth bag full of Lira of the counter which was so full it vomited golden Lira. The old man looked at it, swallowed once. “Right away, good sir!” He waddled off to a back shelf.

Ahh… This was Dorian’s sort of society, alright—where strength and influence spoke loudest and the weak were given a judicious boot. Every so often Dorian was reborn in a bummer society, his least favorite kind of society: filled with kill-joys cropping up, bandying about plans to sink their grubby hands into his wealth and spread it out to the poor.

“Here you are!” The old grocer soon returned, one low-grade Interspatial Ring in hand. “Thirty ginsengs, five stones’ worth of spirit Bamboo-leaf, and three stones of Spirit gingers. The Ring is free—a gift from this humble store. Please come again, dear sir! Old Pu’s the name. The P’s engraved on the Ring to help your remembering—“

“Yes, yes,” said Dorian, waving a dismissive hand. “Hand it over, if you please?”

“One moment!” The grocer rummaged beneath the counter and pulled out a strange engraved stone. “Kindly press your IT Token here, good sir,” he said with a wrinkly smile.

Dorian frowned. “What for?”

The grocer waved a hand. “Nonsense rules, nothing to concern your honorable self with! I am of course affiliated with the Merchant’s Guild, the Farmer’s Guild, and the Alchemist’s Guild. They require that I vet each customer.”

“Vet me? For what?” Dorian had a sinking feeling he knew where this was going. Nevertheless he fished out his IT token—his Tournament identifier.

The grocer licked his gums. “I’m not privy to that, good sir! They never tell us shop-owners anything.” He pressed the token onto the stone. “Between you and me, I think they’ve got heads full of dullwater—“

He stopped.

The stone was flared up crimson.

Shit.

“Ah,” said the grocer, paling. He swallowed, retracting the Ring of herbs. “Well. I’m afraid I can’t sell to you. I’m afraid—I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”

What, no ‘good sir’?

“I see…”

Frowning, Dorian took his coin-bag and stalked over to the next stall.

Same vetting stone. Same crimson light. Same refusal.

At the next store, history, horrid bitch that she was, repeated herself.

I’ve been put on some kind of blacklist. Dorian was unamused. The Alchemists must’ve done it. They sure work quickly.

In my defense, this was a very low-probability event. Who could’ve guessed that kid had such deep connections? He was grumbling all the way back down the street. A totally wasted morning. Well, shit on it.

He was both annoyed and amused. This was his sort of society, alright: but it was he who’d been made into the weakling given a judicious boot. After that cosmic joke it seemed the multiverse was back for an encore.

Once he pal’d up with the Rat-King, he had little doubt the gang-boss could smuggle him the ingredients he needed. If the man kept a leash on a creature like Pebble, it was well in his powers to snag a few herbs for Dorian.

But this was yet another reminder that unnecessarily pissing people off could bite him in the ass.

The consequences of my own actions, come to foil me yet again…

He’d really have to make sure that did not become a recurring theme this run. Next time he had the sudden impulse to lick toes, he’d have to restrain himself. Or at least make a good effort to.

I seem to have a bad habit of making more enemies than friends. Maybe I should try reversing that trend. He could do with some friends in high places.

***

Eudora Azcan admired herself in a body-length, ruby-studded mirror as her handmaid Yi brushed at her hair. It was a gift from her father for her eighteenth birthday; it threw back her reflection as though she stared into a rippleless pool of quicksilver.

Soft, auburn tresses framed a strikingly pretty face—heart-shaped and angular, full lips, large, blue-gray eyes the color of a thundercloud, always half-lidded by default. It gave her a look of aloof disinterest. It was the only flaw she could find, if it was a flaw at all; it made her seem like she was looking down at everyone she met. Which, to be fair, was most often the case.

A warm satisfaction curled up in her. She tilted her head, loving the way the noonday sun drifted down her face. As much as she loathed her father, she had to admit the man knew exactly what to give her; he had a knack for knowing just what people wanted. It was what got him rulership of all Azcan.

Then she felt a tug on her head, pin-pricks of pain.

“Ow! Be careful, klutz!” she snapped. “A lock of that hair could sell for half your salary!”

Most everyone else in the Oasis would’ve been groveling at their knees if Eudora had taken that tone with them. Not Yi. She only flushed a little, nodding. They’d been raised together half their lives; that tended to take the fear and the mystique out of things.

“Yes, mistress,” said Yi. Then, as she pulled the comb back for another brush, “If I may, mistress—you ought not to speak like that today. It lacks a certain…humility. It’s unbecoming of a lady.”

Eudora laughed, a low, breathy, throaty laugh—a laugh without restraint, a most unladylike laugh. In a few short hours she’d need to shed it and put on that fake high-pitched tinkly giggle. It was of the utmost importance that she keep up appearances today, apparently.

“There are hours yet before I must be ‘ladylike,” she mused.

Yi cringed, hurrying around and dabbing at her her hair, just as she’d done all of the past half-hour. They were in Eudora’s dressing-room, high-up in the Governor’s Palace; a crystal chandelier rose up over them, gold-plated wardrobes full of dresses stretched behind her, and to both sides were wide full-length windows which offered dizzying views of the city below.

“Mistress, if I may—you ought to take this more seriously,” Yi said with a frown. “Lord Zhang’s Midsummer Ball happens only once per year. It’s your chance to mingle with the other ladies and lords, deepen your connections to the Ruling Council. You may even find one of your suitors palatable—“

“Always the suitors with you,” sighed Eudora. “Let it lie, will you? I’m starting to think you have a vested interest in knocking me up.”

“Misstress!” said Yi, red-faced. “I only meant to suggest that yours is a ripe age to explore—instead you insist on your attitude! You worry your mother sick. When she was at your age she was already happily married, starting her own family…”

“She was married to my father. One can hardly be ‘happy’ next to that—ow! Stop that!”

Yi had moved onto tightening her corset. She was pulling on the drawstrings with fervor. “I can hardly breathe!”

That, apparently, was too much for even the demure Yi to take. Eudora caught her shaking her head in disbelief. “Please, mistress—you’re a Top 3 seed in the Tournament. Pardon me if I doubt this corset is too much a so-called ‘Young Dragon of Azcan’ to take.”

Eudora preened at the praise. “Why, I am a Top 3 seed, and a Young Dragon too—so kind of you to notice. Keep going?”

“Mistress…” Yi pinched the bridge of her nose. “Heavens knows you’re the last person who needs her ego fluffed…”

Eudora pouted. She was bored already and they’d hardly gotten half an hour into the make-up. In the next hour Yi would cover her in all kinds of perfumes and glosses, bind her this devilishly tight dress, harp onto her about all the things she ought and ought not to do, the suffocating mass of customs which hung over the Ball like a thick evening mist; four knives for desert, three spoons for each course, which dances were in vogue, and on and on… then—after a dreadful afternoon with her etiquette tutors—she’d need to go to the damned thing, smile at the most uninteresting people, put on that her fake tinkly laugh for hours on end.

Or. Or…

She could simply not do any of it.

She was Eudora Azcan, for hells’ sake. Who was anyone to tell her what to do?

She stood abruptly.

“Mistress?” Yi looked on in horror as Eudora plucked out the pins in her hair in three quick strokes. She shook her hair out, letting it fall in waves over her shoulders. Letting it breathe. Ah. Much better. “Mistress!” Yi looked heartbroken. “Th-that took me half an hour to pin in…”

“You can re-do it when I return,” she sighed, grabbing at drawstrings of her corset, loosing them all at once.

“What do you mean, when you—kyaaa!” Yi covered her eyes. Her face was redder than an apple. “MISTRESS!”

It was always so funny how Yi reacted when she saw Eudora naked. Eudora could almost believe the girl had a flame for her.

I wouldn’t blame her… She smirked, glancing at her reflection in the adjoining mirror, bathed in the light. Tall, proud, lithe, poised. I never did meet a mirror I didn’t like.

When they made a statue of her, she wanted it to look like this. Not like that crone Jane Zhang's statue—done in old age, capturing only her decrepit feebleness. No. The world deserved to see Eudora Azcan in all her glory. The plush shape of her lips, the sharp line of her jaw, her shapely curves down from her chest to her hips down to her long, supple legs… she frowned. It wasn’t quite perfect. There was the slightest start of a paunch around her midriff. She had been putting on a little weight lately—it was truly unfair how delicious those sauced oysters were. She pinched at it, feeling irked. All her weight always went straight to her hips.

Two weeks on a seaweed-only diet, she mused. Then they can call over the sculptors.

She snorted. Yi just had to put the Zhang name in her mind. She did a long, catlike, full-body stretch. What kind of blind fool would think that tiny pixie Lin Zhang could compare to this?

“PUT ON YOUR CLOTHES!” Yi shrieked.

Sighing, Eudora obliged the poor girl, sliding on her leather trousers a sleeveless silk blouse. Light and cute.

Yi was now peeking at her between her fingers, eyes popping. “Not again,” she whispered. “Not today of all days, mistress!”

“Too bad,” said Eudora, strutting over to the window. She pried it open. The wind was crisp and invigorating on her neck.

“MISS, YOU CAN’T JUST—“ Yi was stumbling after her. She wouldn’t make it in time.

“I’ll return before sundown,” she said, giving Yi a wink. “A lady must have her fun too.” Then she jumped.