May I Enjoy My Life: The New Covenant, P1 (Patreon)

20-23/8/1100

There was so much that happened these past days, and I don’t know where to start.

I mean, we did save the world, probably, but somehow that doesn’t feel like the important part. Not even making computer dad come out and be a real boy feels like the biggest thing, which is probably silly.

I guess I should start with when Lem and I staggered out of the Simulated Universe, Fia pushing me from behind as I gave my big sis a piggyback ride. The walls had started going melty, and I was smelling error codes as the air turned into sand and static. There wasn’t an exit so much as one moment we were slogging through what felt like the world getting an End of Service announcement, and the next I was tripping down the stairs of the Basilica.

“Exu! I got you!”

Strong arms wrapped around us, catching me before I sent my poor sister tumbling onto the marble paving stones. My head was spinning from all the ups becoming downs and the sideways becoming backways, so it took me a second to reorient myself once gravity started following the rules again.

So when I blinked up and saw Odda, I couldn’t help it. I started crying.

His horns were back. No more halo, no more wings. My sexy Sarkaz boy was himself again. The man I was falling in love with, not someone the Law had twisted into a pretzel.

I reached up, grabbed his collar with one hand while trying not to drop my sister, and blurted, “I’m pregnant!”

Lem, Law bless her, was still clinging to my back. She started laughing.

Odda’s mouth flopped open. He just stared at me as we stood there at the foot of the Basilica stairs, the rest of Strike Package Alpha sprawled around us. Lem’s laughter became nearly hysterical.

“Odda, she was that way before we went into the Simulated Universe,” Lemuen gasped as Odda lowered us.

She let go of my shoulders and slid off my back onto the stairs, where she lay against the next step and kept giggling.

“Oh. Um, yes,” I said, blushing as I held on to Odda for support. My legs had gone all noodly for some reason. “I, uh, didn’t want to tell you because I was worried you’d go all, ‘Grrr, my woman isn’t going into danger when she’s got our baby in her,’ and seriously, I’m only a few weeks along or something, so-”

Then Odda kissed me.

It was a hungry, desperate kiss, and I discovered I was starving too.

It probably wasn’t the sort of kiss you were supposed to give your baby daddy on the steps of the holiest place in Laterano while your sister and all your friends watched. But I had just flipped reality off and told at least two gods to go fuck themselves, so I gave myself a pass.

Once you max out your blasphemy for the day, the rest doesn’t count, right?

“Marry me,” Odda gasped, his hand halfway up my shirt.

“Ok,” I said, grinning stupidly. “When can we start?”

“While I am still in your debt, my daughter, I will have to ask that you at least fill out the proper forms and fill them with Notarial Hall before I can grant this union my blessing.”

I jumped away from Odda so fast I think probably offended him. I turned to find the Holy Law itself peering at us over his spectacles. 

“Um, Odda! This is…uh- Pater! Yes, um, this is Pater, and he’s like…sort of my dad?” I babbled.

“It thought your parents were dead? Or do you mean like, he’s your Priest? He’s got the robes,” Odda said, frowning at the Law.

I almost told him right then and there that Pater was more my dad in the sense that he had created the Sankta, but for once my mind caught up to my mouth before I started talking. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to start announcing that God was a person now. At the very least, I needed to talk to Lemuen before we started blabbing about it.

As for the consequences of what we’d done in there? I had no idea. Still don’t! And that’s not really likely to change anytime soon.

“Uh, yes! He’s the one who listened to my prayers when I was a little girl! We found him in the Simulated Universe and, er, we rescued him! Right, Pater?”

“Designation accepted,” the Law said, nodding to me. “Yes. I am Pater.”

“Uh, hello, sir. Um…Father?” Odda said, rubbing the back of his head.

Then he sighed and grimaced. “We should probably run. Just about everyone else has evacuated, but when they told me I had to leave too, I told them to pound sand. It’s been…weird. Arturia and Skalter stopped playing a minute ago. Skalter went up the stairs, then you guys came out, and now…”

He pointed past us. “Uh, it’s doing that. So we should probably run.”

I glanced up and immediately wished I hadn’t.

The mild distortion around the heart of the Simulated Universe had become just as wild as the inside. It looked like the air was growing mold and developing bruises. Patches of color blurred, spread, and faded, while the whole Basilica kept snapping between different angles like someone was clicking through every CCTV camera in the building.

I planted my feet and looked around.

Amiya, Wiš'adel , Fred, and Fia were picking themselves up with Gavial’s help. Or what passed for help from Gavial, which mostly involved doing her usual “I’ll beat the shit out of you for getting hurt” schtick while dragging them to their feet.

A few others were still there, including Andoain and Patia. The rest of the square had cleared.

Then the music started again.

Trust Arturia to decide it would be funny to play “Nearer, My Law, to Thee” while the universe experienced a 404 error and crashed.

Don’t tell her, but I agreed. Her head was already big enough. Especially with those new finny bits.

“Excuse me, it seems I have left something behind, my children. I will return in a moment,” the Law said, and stepped back up and through the barrier, vanishing into the Simulated Universe.

“Wait, fuck!” Wiš'adel  snarled, jumping up. “What the fuck, Red!? Why didn’t you stop it, or him, or whatever that thing is!”

“Ix-nay on the aw-Lay,” I hissed at her. She gave me a weird look, and I sighed. Apparently, she doesn’t speak swine-lateran. I made a “zip it” gesture. She flipped me off, but then shrugged and zipped her lips, so I guess it worked. 

“Hey, what’s this about you being pregnant, Exu?” Gavial demanded, stomping over and glaring at me.

I gave her a weak smile. “Um, well, I mean…I haven’t known for very long, but I feel fine, so…”

I trailed off as her nostrils flared and her tail lashed back and forth. Then she cracked her knuckles. I cringed. I knew exactly what was coming.

The lecture I received was short, brutal, and highly evocative of things about my anatomy that I don’t think I ever really wanted to know. Gavial intimated that I was receiving a complete examination from her, the second reality stopped melting, and that if I participated in another combat op without her approval, she would personally find me and sit on me.

Once I reached the second trimester, she said I shouldn’t even bother asking.

And if sitting on me didn’t work, I feared for my kneecaps.

I heard she once dangled Director Warfarin out of a window. I wasn’t sure I believed that…but I decided I should probably follow her medical advice.

“Hey, something’s happening!” Lemuen called.

Gavial had produced a spare wheelchair and stuck her in it, and I felt slightly better knowing my sister had received her own lecture laced with threats of violence.

I looked up, and my heart did a flip-flop.

I raised Victor toward the Simulated Universe. The barrier was ripping itself apart, distorting and giving off a smell like stale gun oil that someone had set on fire. My pulse hammered as I waited for Priestess to step back out, probably transformed into some giant kaiju like the final stage of a really cheesy boss fight.

Instead, the distortion spat out Mon3tr, carrying Texas and Lucia in her pincers. Skalter followed, holding Leader in a bridal carry.

I immediately lowered Victor. Then I looked around for James. He wasn’t there. My stomach dropped. Wait, where was Pater? I hadn’t just put my baby at risk for that old fart to get himself deleted while reality was having a seizure!

“Put me down! I can walk!” an angry little voice yowled.

I frowned as a young Feline girl wriggled out from under Leader’s coat. She dropped onto the steps and glared furiously up at Skalter. I figured she was another stray who had gotten herself trapped in the Simulated Universe. At least she was back to being herself instead of stuck as a Sankta.

I had no more attention for them, though, because the Simulated Universe was collapsing completely.

I started running up the steps before it had even finished, but caught a glimpse of two Sankta emerging through the distortion.

Neither of them looked like Bones.

My heart sank, and I just about started crying right there. They’d left him behind. Then I got a better look.

One was Pater. In his arms was a young guy about my age, a little scruffy, with three days of stubble across his gaunt face and dark circles beneath his eyes. He wore a lab coat over a Rhodes Island medical operator uniform.

It took me a second. I wasn’t used to seeing him with a night-light over his head and wings on his back.

Then I knew.

“BONES!”

I flew up the steps and practically tackled the big lug in a hug, laughing and crying at the same time.

Whoa! Normally, James was about as strong as a ten-year-old girl, but he caught me! I’d always figured he was weak because he had noodly arms and thought he’d catch something if he went to the gym for anything more strenuous than light cardio.

I thought about it later and decided Earthlings were just wimps for some reason. I’m sure James or Lucia could give you a full breakdown of their biology or whatever, but all I knew then was that I had my friend back.

That was all I cared about. I stepped aside to let Lucia hug her man, wiping the tears from my eyes and grinning. We’d won. Everyone I’d been waiting for had come back.

Well, okay. Not everyone. We had lost friends along the way, and Laterano was going to feel awfully empty in the days to come. But my family was safe, and we’d canceled the apocalypse, at least for that day.

Sometimes, that’s enough. So we did what any sensible person would do.

We threw the biggest damn party in the history of Laterano!

I remember the rest of that day and night very clearly, mostly because I was worried Gavial would suplex me through a table if she caught me getting tanked.

Also, Odda watched me like an errant fowlbeast even when we weren’t both naked. I’m pretty sure learning about the baby activated some kind of ancient Sarkaz warrior instinct involving guarding his family from all threats, including alcohol, stairs, and me.

But there was plenty of other stuff to do!

First of all: Patrons.

Almost everyone got theirs back.

A handful had been destroyed, and we would hold proper funerals for them later, but the sheer joy of watching most of the Sankta reunite with the other halves of their souls was something I’ll never forget.

“You know, before all this, I would’ve said they were just weapons,” Odda commented.

We were watching an old man sob as he cradled the Model 700 Patron he had named Remmy. The codger kissed Remmy’s stock and promised never to let him leave his side again. Then he loaded the rifle with blanks and fired into the air with everyone else, working the bolt between shots while tears streamed down his face.

“And now?” I asked.

Odda lifted his hammer and studied it. 

“Now I wonder if Candy Strike still has a soul,” he said quietly. “Or if he lost it when I went back to being a proper Sarkaz.”

He lowered the hammer, took my hand, and squeezed it. “I…I’m sorry about Victor. Can you still…?”

“No,” I said, gently stroking Victor’s stock. “I can’t feel him anymore.”

Odda’s fingers tightened around mine.

“But he’s still alive,” I whispered. “I know it.”

Odda gave me a hug, and let me grieve quietly.

Five minutes, max, though. They had free ice cream and apple pie! 

And we BURNED that stupid sugar free ice cream cart and chucked the abominable concoction in the sewers! I’m not religious, but that’s HERESY. 

The party went on all night, and a bunch of the other Rhodes Island operators joined in, along with the army that had been waiting as Plan B. I even saw Empress Hildegard in a conga line with Vina Victoria, Leader, and Skalter!

Even that poor little Feline girl was grinning and having fun. Though something really bad must have happened to her, because every once in a while she’d start scowling and pouting, like she had suddenly remembered she wasn’t supposed to be enjoying herself.

But kids bounce back fast, and it seemed like Skalter and Leader had adopted her.  She couldn’t have picked weirder parents, but I’m sure her childhood will be great!

I woke up the next morning on Fia and Mostima’s couch, lying on top of Odda and wearing nothing but a party hat and my left sock.

Half a box of jelly doughnuts sat on the table. I reached over, shoved one into my mouth, and contemplated philosophy.

Then I suddenly regretted every decision I had ever made. I ran to the bathroom and was messily sick. I didn’t even get all of it into the toilet.

After cleaning myself up, I borrowed one of Fia’s robes and tried to decide whether that had been morning sickness or too much sugar.

Probably both, actually.

I was just tying the robe’s belt when I walked past Mostima’s bedroom. The door opened, and Wiš'adel  stepped out wearing a Notarial Hall Executor tunic and nothing else.

She froze when our eyes met. I looked past her into the bedroom. 

Fred glanced up from buttoning his trousers and waved.

“Good morning, Operator Exusiai,” he said.

Wiš'adel  kicked the door shut, pressed her back against it, and stood there panting. After a moment, she pushed herself away and stalked toward me, looking even more crazed than usual.

“You tell no one, understand!?” she hissed, jabbing a finger into my face until my eyes crossed.

I slowly raised my hands, still trying to process what the hell I had just seen. There was…there was no way, right? The crazy cockroach and FRED!?

Then came a flash and the unmistakable click of a camera shutter. Wiš'adel  and I both spun around. Arturia stood at the end of the hallway, grinning as she held up her phone.

“…and sent,” she announced. “Mmm. I shall compose a special tune to commemorate this day. What shall I call it, I wonder?” Her smile widened. “‘The Taming of the Sarkaz,’ perhaps?”

I think Wiš'adel ’s scream could be heard all the way back in Lungmen.

After the party, Laterano was properly messy again, with scorch marks on the cobblestones and traffic cones on the heads of all the statues of the Saints in San Bartolo, as the Law intended. We cleaned up our mess, of course, and there wasn’t much actual damage to the city.

Just the people.

I hadn’t really thought about what it meant to have a Seaborn Firstborn “save” us.

I mean, I knew Amiya had put something into the water when we snuck through that treatment plant, but I hadn’t really thought about it. She’s Amiya. She knows what she’s doing, right?

Well, it turned out what she had been doing was putting Seaborn cells into the water.

Despite how unsanitary that probably was, I think I understand the logic.

The plan had hinged on me, actually—or at least on what had happened to me back on the Stultifera Navis. When the Seaborn touched Arturia, they had used Empathy to amplify her Arts and put the whammy on not just Fred and me, but everyone around us.

I had shot Arturia and Fallen, which disrupted the Song, but I don’t understand much about Arts that don’t involve finding better ways to shoot people.

Amiya, however, is the Lord of Fiends.

And she had been paying attention.

Priestess had transformed everyone into Sankta so she could use the imprisoned Law to control the entire population at once. Amiya’s plan was to turn that same connection against her, using Skalter’s command of her kin, and Arturia’s Arts. 

Instead of carrying Priestess’s commands, the Sankta network carried the Song. Empathy mirrored and amplified it, while the Seaborn cells spread it through their hive-mind thingy.

And Seaborn evolve fast. So fast that Priestess couldn’t go all Hackerman on us and update the Law’s antivirus quickly enough to break the Song’s hold. There was one problem, though. For any of that to work, Seaborn had needed to be seeded throughout Laterano. And not just a few of them.

Tens of thousands of people had drunk the contaminated water. By the time everything was over, they had enough Seaborn cells inside them that they looked less like ordinary Sankta and more like someone had crossed Aegir with angels.

“The Many no longer compel,” Skalter told us at a big meeting the next morning. “Those who wish to leave us and become the One may do so.”

Everyone important was there, and me too for some reason. I was sitting with Sussurro near the door, commiserating with her about having to go pee every five minutes.

“But that’s the problem!” complained some asshole in cardinal’s robes whose name I couldn’t remember. “Half of them don’t want to leave, and now we have thousands of Sankta and Liberi asking to join your little cult because Empathy has changed!”

That was another problem, one I had experienced the side effects of myself when I’d Fallen.

Empathy was gone.

Or at least, it had changed.

As best I could understand it, Sankta no longer automatically mirrored the emotions of every other Sankta nearby. Instead, they had become more like Amiya when she had a cold: empaths who could detect what other people were feeling without being forced to feel it themselves.

What they did about those feelings was up to them. They could even turn the ability off, although it seemed to be switched on by default. 

Weirder still, Empathy now worked on EVERYONE. It wasn’t limited to other Sankta anymore. They could sense the emotions of Sarkaz, Liberi, Felines, Zalak, anyone. Some of the Cardinals said it was disorienting and even painful. They had spent their entire lives understanding emotion by sharing it. If another Sankta was sad, you felt sad with them.

Now you only knew that someone was sad, and roughly how much. What you did about it was up to you. 

“If I may,” Andoain said, looking around at the other red robes. “The Law did give us a revelation concerning this. Did you not see the words when you first opened your eyes this morning?”

Andoain paused, then recited as though he were performing Shakespeare in the Park.

“My children, your childhood has ended. No longer shall ye be conformed by your Empathy, for your feelings are now your own.

“I leave ye a New Covenant, so that my children need not sorrow overmuch—but it shall remain a gift, and never again become a curse.

“Let your Empathy open your eyes, rather than close your hearts against those unlike yourselves.

“Become now what ye were always meant to be: a light unto the world, and brother to all who dwell there.”

I wondered if Pater had spoken in Ye Olde Butcherede Lanterane to everyone, or just stuck up pricks like Andoain. Patia should get that idiot laid. Or at least help him pull out the rifle he’d had up his ass for the past decade. 

“Yes, we all saw the words of the Holy Law,” another red robe said, waving her hand dismissively. “But that does not change that the Seaborne Witch has corrupted many of our citizens!”

“Or that half the Liberi are becoming depressed now that they’ve lost the Empathy they had for only a week,” Fia said, glaring around the table.

She wore the uniform of a Sister-Captain of the Apostolic Knights, with Patia seated on her left and old man Pazzo on her right. Patia had on a Sister-Sergeant’s uniform, but Pazzo was dressed casually.

He had officially retired, and one purpose of the meeting was to determine who would become the new Father- or Mother-General of the Holy Order of Apostolic Knights.

“And what right do you have to sit here, Liberi?” demanded an old fuck who needed his head checked. “Who gave you that uniform!?”

Pater was sitting in a far corner of the room, taking notes like he was just some ordinary cleric.

He glanced up and made a small sign with his fingers.

A flaming halo appeared over Fia’s head. Then letters like fireflies wrote themselves in the air above her:

This is my beloved Daughter, with whom I am well pleased.

Fuck yeah!

Pater might be old and look like a boring fuddy-duddy, but my man had already learned the most important lesson about being a Sankta: Be extra as fuck at all times.

“We will take the Liberi’s situation into account, especially as they have not the balm of ordinary Empathy,” Andoain said once everyone picked their jaws up off the floor and the fire faded. “I think this makes something even clearer: A New Covenant with the Law has been created. One that does not just include the Liberi, but all the races of Terra. No longer can the Sankta be a people apart! We must change our ways, as our sacred gift of Empathy has been changed.”

“And we must acknowledge something else.”

Several Cardinals turned to look at the other red robe in a wheelchair. Most, however, couldn’t bring themselves to look at my sister. Lem was still Fallen, just like me. I’d gone to Pater before the meeting and talked with him about that.

“Hey, um, pops?” I said, edging nervously up to the old guy as he picked out the worst seat in the house.

“Yes, my child?” Pater said, adjusting his glasses and smiling at me.

“So, um…I kinda wanna keep my tail and horns,” I told him. “I’m Sarkaz now, and I didn’t mean that as a joke. Plus, I mean, I’m marrying Odda, and Amiya made me some sort of noble or something, so…”

Pater nodded, looking pained. “Yes, Lemuel Exusiai. Despite all that has happened, you did break the First Commandment: Thou shalt not use thy Patron against thy brother. Even though I have been changed, I cannot go against my very nature.”

“Yeah, but Lem was like, mind controlled and stuff!” I burst out. “You, you can roll her back, right!? Like you did everyone else!” I calmed myself and lowered my voice. “You know, you turned the Liberi back, and the others, so…”

But Pater was shaking his head. “No. I knew Lemuen’s mind when she pulled her trigger. She was fully in control of her faculties, even if she had to resist the Abomination to do so. Her act was one of love and self sacrifice…but the Commandment was broken. She will remain Fallen. I cannot change this.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. “But…but she’s a hero…”

“Yes. And I will do all I can to ensure she is remembered as such.” Pater put his hand on my arm and gave a gentle squeeze. “The Sankta are now under Grace…but the Law itself remains inviolable. The Old Covenant has not passed away, merely been fulfilled into a new form.”

“Wait, so, people won’t fall from now on!? If she’d done that a day later, she’d be fine?!” I hissed.

Again, Pater shook his head. “No, my daughter. If today a man uses his Patron or another firearm to wound or slay his brother, his halo shall crack, and his wings shatter and darken. What has changed is not the Commandment. Only that one who Falls shall still be loved.”

“I…I guess I get it,” I sniffed.

I did not get it. I still don’t. I want to hate the Law and declare the whole thing stupid and pointless…but I can’t. I know Pater still loves me and my sister. Not from what he says, but what he does. He touches us. He’s shared meals with us. Welcomes us into the little hidey hole he calls an apartment sometimes. 

The Old Law could never have done that. You didn’t touch a Fallen, you didn’t eat with a Fallen, and you sure as heck didn’t let one into your home. There is Grace now. It just still feels like the universe hates me and my sister in particular sometimes. 

“And that consideration…Cardinal Lemuen?” Andoain asked, meeting my sister’s eyes.

He’s a bastard, but at least he’s got balls. More than most of those oldheads.

“We now know beyond any doubt that the Sankta descend from the Sarkaz,” Lemuen said.

She nodded to me, and I stepped forward to help her rise from her wheelchair. Her leg braces held her upright as she began to speak, even while I helped slide the Cardinal’s robes from her shoulders.

“The Sankta were shaped by the Law to be slaves. You may attempt to deny this truth, but the actions of Priestess, the woman you once called the Holy Mother and now name the Abomination, have laid bare the purpose for which we were created.”

Her eyes swept across the red-robed figures around the table.

“Empathy was fashioned as a yoke. It bound our thoughts and feelings together so that our people might be governed as easily as cystbeasts by the Precursors.”

“YOU CANNOT PROVE THAT!” someone shouted.

The chamber erupted.

I folded the red robe while my sister lowered herself back into her chair. She was dressed now not in the scarlet of a Prince of the Church, but in plain work clothes. Not a dress, of course. Lem hates dresses. You can’t move quietly in a dress.

Fia finally shouted down the idiots and restored something resembling order.

Lemuen raised the folded Cardinal’s robes in both hands. “Today, I resign my office as Cardinal.”

The room went silent.

“My sister, Lemuel Exusiai, has been named Chief of the Tribe of the Returned by King Amiya of Kazdel. I will go to join her there.”

She placed the robes on the table.

“And I extend that same offer to every Sankta. Your brothers and sisters will welcome you when you return to the home of our people.”

“BLASPHEMY!”

“HERESY!”

“LIES!”

I wheeled her out as the meeting descended into something more like a schoolyard brawl than a refined theological discussion between the wisest minds in Laterano.

“El, I know you can’t join me, but take me to Lock, Stock and Barrel,” Lemuen rasped. Her voice was raw with pain, and tears trickled down her cheeks. “I intend to drink until I can’t see straight.”

“You got it.” I squeezed her shoulder. “I’m proud of you, sis.”

She rested her hand over mine but didn’t speak.

She didn’t need to.

To my surprise, Mostima, Odda, and Gavial were waiting for us at the bar. Odda and Gavial had apparently already gotten started on the drinking.

Mostima was in a wheelchair of her own. Left to her own devices, she would probably have been two beers down already, but Gavial was brooding like a cluckfowl. Gavial could drink with the best of them, but she had funny ideas about her patients becoming boozehounds.

“Hey, hey! It’s the lady of the hour!” Mostima said, raising her Sirelia Templar up as we rolled in. “So, how’d it go?”

“My only regret is I can only Fall once, and not shoot each and every one of those miserable old bastards,” Lemuen growled, and slapped her palm on the table. “Dart! A Hillock Pale to start, and something salty to eat! You got any of those Leitanian beer nuts left?”

“Sure thing, Lem,” the bartender agreed, and brought it over. “Hey, long time no see, El! Last you was here, you were stuck drinking a Roi Rogellus! What’ll it be?”

“Another one, if she knows what’s good for her,” Gavial growled.

I flushed. “Um, I’m, er, knocked up so…uh, milk, actually. My stomach’s been giving me fits.”

“Hey, congrats! Who’s the lucky guy?” Dart asked, grinning at me and showing off his two chipped front teeth.

“This handsome man right here! We’re getting hitched!” I said, throwing an arm around Odda.

Dart’s face went blank for a moment, and I felt that hot stab of Sarkaz anger.

Odda stiffened beside me. For one awful second, I wondered if both of us were about to get thrown out for beating the shit out of old man Dart.

“Uh…congratulations,” Dart said at last, bowing his head.

He looked away and scratched at his bald scalp.

“Things are different now. Even here in Old San Bartolo. Never thought I’d be serving a Sarkaz, but…well, shit. We know the score now, even if the red robes are still arguing about it.”

Then he frowned at Lemuen. “Hey, speaking of red robes, where’s yours, Lem? Shouldn’t you be at that big meeting?”

“I retired,” Lemuen said. “Hence, drinks.”

“Say no more, I’ll keep ‘em coming,” Dart vowed. He nodded again. “Thought they might kick you out for crackin' your halo. Heard you shot Andoain. Fuck that guy.”

“Fuck that guy,” we echoed, and raised our glasses.

“That Guy” was announced as the new pope two days later. It’s a good thing Lem had already packed her bags to move to Lungmen with me, or I think she’d have started plotting the first Papal Assassination since old Basil IV in 663. 

Oh, right. Lungmen.

Well, you see…uh, it turns out being a Sarkaz Chief doesn’t come with a stipend. So I had to go ask Boss for my old job back.

“You get a year’s maternity leave. Company policy,” the old penguin said, puffing on a cigar and glaring up at me.

We were sitting on the balcony of the best hotel in Laterano, where Boss had encamped himself for the duration.

“Really?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t remember that being in the Penguin Logistics handbook.”

“Exu, you cannot seriously expect me to believe you ever read the handbook Yith wrote,” Boss wheezed once he stopped laughing at me. “Shit, girl, I just bought the company back from Sora, and I haven’t read the damn thing!”

“I did,” Texas said without opening her eyes.

She was stretched out in a beach chair wearing a bikini and holding hands with Sora, who was sprawled in a chair of her own beside her.

“Of course you did,” Boss muttered, rolling his eyes. Then he jabbed a flipper at me.“But I expect you back at work the minute that year is up! Assuming you’re cleared by Doctor Gavial.”

He shuddered. “She, uh…had a conversation with me. Crazy-ass swamp gator…”

“Hey, Baws, what’s this ’bout maternity leave?” Croissant asked, sticking her head out from the penthouse.

Bison was inside with Odda, the two of them swapping stories about their travels and work. It was good to see Odda relaxed, and Bison growing into a confident young man instead of the clueless kid we’d dragged around Lungmen during our little scuffle with Old Man Rat back in ’97.

“Company policy,” Texas said, her eyes still closed. “Recently changed.”

“Exu’s going on leave when she pops out her kid,” Boss explained around his cigar.

“Aw, but she needs the money, Baws! How’s she gonna take care of her kid if’n she can’t work?” Croissant asked, giving me a sympathetic look.

“It’s paid leave!” Boss snapped. “Do you think me heartless, woman!?”

A slow grin spread across Croissant’s face. I covered my mouth with both hands. Texas’s tail started wagging, and Sora let out a giggle.

“What?” Boss asked suspiciously, looking around at us. “What’s so funny?”

Then he blinked and slowly lowered his sunglasses. “Croissant. Tell me you ain’t plannin’ on starting a family.”

“Didn’t plan on nothin’, Baws, honest!” Croissant said, placing one hand over her heart and looking as innocent as possible.

Which, if you know her, probably means she has stolen goods in the trunk.

“GOD DAMMIT, WOMAN! DO NOT TELL ME YOU GOT YOURSELF KNOCKED UP TOO!” Boss crushed his cigar into the ashtray and hopped onto his chair, glaring at Croissant.

“Well, if’n I don’t tell ya, Baws, does that mean I can’t collect my leave?” Croissant asked. “’Cause I was plannin’ on savin’ my vacation days for ’bout eight months from now, but I reckon if’n I got maternity leave, I should jest use those days for me and Boo’s honeymoon!”

She beamed cherubically.

Boss began swearing in Leithanian. He’s surprisingly elegant at it, actually. I learned several very useful phrases for my next visit there.

“…When’s the wedding?” Boss finally demanded, his voice dark.

“Yesterday,” Croissant said, holding up one finger, so that the new stone on it caught the light just right. 

“I asked Boo if he wanted a big shindig with his pa there. He told me he’d rather let Lappland practice dentistry on him. Heck, I wasn’t even plannin’ on us gettin’ hitched an’ all, but he was insistent,” she drawled, admiring the ring. “So I jest let myself be persuaded.”

Boss growled, then picked up his cigar and clamped it back in his beak. He folded his flippers over his Tupac T-shirt, and glared at me. “Exusiai, if you do not have a proper wedding, you’re fired.”

“Are you paying for it?” I asked curiously.

“Fuck no, but I will DJ. And make Texas cater.”

“That makes it company time,” Sora said as she sat up and came over to admire Croissant’s new ring. 

“The hell it does!” Emperor argued.

“It’s an order. Makes it a PL op,” Texas said.

She got up too after Sora poked her in the ribs and told her to go tell Croissant how nice her ring was.

And it was! If I hadn’t known Bison bought it at Zaliel’s right here in Laterano, I would’ve assumed Croissant had either stolen it or that it was fake, because diamonds that nice on platinum bands are not cheap.

I should know, because I had to stop Odda from trying to buy ME one! I told him in no uncertain terms that the very nice silver band with a moonstone he got me was exactly what I wanted.

And also that it wouldn’t bankrupt us. I’m not exactly known for being careful with money, and neither is Odda, as it turns out.

Which, uh, is why I’m pretty sure my life is going to be one of impoverished patricianhood. That’s fine! Being a rich bitch would only be fun if I got to be the kind who went on crazy safaris and globetrotting adventures in style!

I mean, I’m still going on crazy globetrotting adventures, but Boss has to pay for them because they’re technically work!

…Huh.

Who’s gonna take care of the kid?

I’m going to need to think about that.

Either that, or Odda and me get a sidecar for our bikes.

Yeah. I like that plan better.

Problem solved!