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Razor-Edged Queen

Written by: Oxxidation8



They were in one of Jolt City’s sleaziest bars, the kind where you could barely make out faces for the cigarette smoke and the lights flickered like they were deciding whether or not to die. The liquor tasted like dirty water and the air burned your throat, but anyone could go into places like these unnoticed and stay there until last call. And as far as Monica Rosewood was concerned, that was a blessing anyone could appreciate.

She fingered a shotglass of anonymous brown booze and chewed her lower lip, her cropped black hair hanging in dirty strings. Vague talk carried on the smoke.

“So why’d you show up, anyway?”

Monica looked up and didn’t say anything. The other woman was in her early thirties – about Monica’s age – but, unlike Monica, exhaustion hadn’t tacked on another decade. She had a sardonic smile and red hair that could make a stoplight wink out in shame.

“Didn’t you say my kind of work wasn’t worth doing?” she persisted.

“Not now,” Monica said. “Do I look like I’m in a good mood?”

“Nope,” Jazz said brightly. “You look like you got hit by a truck. As usual.”

As usual, Monica thought. Sure. People like Jazz Riley never looked tired; their bodies were always gleaming with vitality, their muscles coiled under their skin. And Jolt City was always worn-down, washed-out, under gray skies that never cleared. There was probably some sort of correlation. But Jazz had given her money in the harder times and so they were forced to be friends,

“You know, when I said I’d show you the ropes of merc work,” Jazz said, snapping off the rhyme with a grin, “I wasn’t actually serious. You put me in a bind, Monica.”

Monica went back to staring at her glass. Jazz’s was already empty – she had downed it the moment she sat down. And she wasn’t even wobbling.

“But, just between you and me, I think you’ve got what it takes to make it.” Jazz leaned forward in her seat. A keen listener would have heard a number of small clinking sounds in the imitation-leather jacket she was wearing. A keen listener who was familiar with Jazz’s company would have then wondered just how many weapons she had concealed on her person at any given time. Mercenaries always had to be prepared.

“And what’s that?” Monica asked, pushing her glass to the side. “I’ve seen the people you work with. Either they’re drunk and terrifying everyone by acting so lively all the time – don’t give me that look, you know it’s true – or they’re sober and killing people for money. I don’t know what’s odd about seeing something wrong with that.”

Jazz shrugged. “Work’s work, Monica. And it helps to like what you do.”

“Sure,” she said. “Sure.”

“And it’s not like you’ve got much of a right to act so innocent. Did you know that there’re stories about you now? Lady on the street’s always a target for petty crooks, but I heard some of the things you did to ‘em when they got too close…”

“Rumors get around,” Monica muttered. “It was self-defense.”

“Oh, is that what it was?” Jazz’s eyebrows waggled. “Now, if you ask me, that thing two weeks ago could’ve been called self-defense for the first five minutes or so. But when you took that nail file-”

“They were freebies at a street stall. How could I refuse?”

“How about the gravel?”

“It was hardly more than a handful. Doing things like that keeps the same one from coming for more.”

“Yeah, and it works. You hear things a lot in my business, Monica. These are horror stories we’re talking about.”

“But you wouldn’t know which ones were exaggerated.” Monica looked up again, and this time her flat stare held more weight. “On the other hand, it’s common knowledge that you go around slitting throats for the same people who’re running this city into the ground.”

Jazz laughed, making Monica flinch – anyone who talked above a murmur in a dive like this became an instant target.

“Jolt’s always existed an inch away from the brink,” she said. “It’s more than rumor or common knowledge; it’s a fact of life. You can’t do any damage to this place that wouldn’t just be incentive for it to limp along a little longer.”

“I’ve never accepted that, Jazz, and you know it,” Monica said sullenly. “This city’s got a heartbeat. Sometimes it keeps me up at night.”

“Yeah, the sounds of traffic and people getting shot’d do that.”

Monica shook her head and ran a finger over the rim of her glass. You wouldn’t understand, she thought. Maybe I’ve just gone crazy; maybe Jolt really did die a while ago, but a corpse still has blood in it. And there are words for people who suck blood to get strong.

She flicked the glass over the edge of the table, and Jazz’s hand moved, catching the liquor with her own glass before Monica’s smashed on the floor.

“So people say I’m ruthless,” Monica said, reaching for something on her belt. “I’ll admit that ruthless people can change into something big in this city. But curious people get changed, too.”

“That’s new to me,” Jazz said, knocking back the drink. “Lots of our targets are curious. Or were.”

“That’s my point,” she retorted, and smacked something on the table. “They get changed into dead people.”

Jazz blinked, and looked at what was under Monica’s hand. Then she snorted.

“You’re still messing around with those things?” she asked as Monica divided the deck of cards into halves. “Have you tried to gamble with them a little yet? Make some extra money?”

“That’s right,” Monica said. She started to shuffle with absent ease, throwing cards from one half into the other. “But I won’t turn into one of those cheats who palms the right card. I just need to get better, is all.”

“So you lose a lot.”

“Right again.” She put the halves together again and stood them up on the table so that the bottom card faced Jazz. It was the queen of spades.

“Which is why you’re asking me for a job.”

“Wrong. I just wanted to talk.” The deck started to move with rhythmic clacking sounds, Monica’s slim hand rearranging while the bottom card continued to stare. Every one was a queen; their shapes and colors blurred as Monica sped up.

“That’s precision,” said Jazz, impressed. “Amazing that you’re broke.”

“It’s always a one in three chance.” Monica’s eyes didn’t leave Jazz’s. “Sometimes luck goes against you.”

The queens appeared and reappeared– hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs, spades, hearts…

“Hold on,” Jazz said. “You’ve got a trick card after all, huh?” She smirked. “Just goes to show.”

“That one’s my favorite,” Monica replied, and stopped shuffling. She took the top card off the deck and threw it to her. “Thought it’d be nice to keep a spare.”

Jazz looked at it. The extra queen of spades looked cleaner than the rest, its white background shining even in the dank light of the bar.

“You ever wonder where these cards come from?”

She looked back at Monica, and her grip on the card tightened a little. The woman usually looked tired, but now the lines and creases of her face were fainter, and her eyes glittered.

“The city’s got a heartbeat,” Monica said, “so where the hell’s the heart? Jolt’s huge, but there’s nothing outside it. You have any idea if there’s anything else?”

Jazz laughed again, but this time it wasn’t as convincing. “Not unless you’d like to head east and see if the Nirvana’s got any answers. And I don’t think grass talks.”

Monica smiled at that. Her smile widened when she saw that Jazz had become uncomfortable; any talk of the Nirvana tended to do that. The mere thought of all those miles of plains, land full of vibrant grass that waved in a perpetual breeze, stirred up some deep-rooted fear in the mind. And the world as anyone knew it just dropped off to the west – disappeared in the stretches of smug, silent plains.

“I’ve always had these little personalities for the cards,” Monica went on. “Diamonds is two-faced – I mean, they’re all two-faced, literally, but Diamonds is the same shape doubled, so it works. Clubs just annoys me, because those things don’t look anything like a club, and Hearts is a slut. Far as I’m concerned, only Spades is worth anything.”

Jazz clicked her tongue, still daintily holding the card between thumb and forefinger. “I think all those months of being unemployed’s messed with your head a little, Monica. You’re sympathizing with paper.”

“But where’d this paper come from?” Monica snapped, and Jazz drew back a little. “The businesses you work for buy and they sell, fine, and that keeps Jolt running, that’s good, but who the hell makes it?” She slammed the deck on the table – but lightly, because too much attention was never a good thing. “You’ve got all of these people who work for a living – who scam each other out of their money and then get killed for the scamming by some merc for more money – and they’re so damn busy with it that they manage to ignore all this. I don’t get it. I just don’t.” She shook her head, looking tired again. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. How can they ignore it? Who makes anything?” She put her face in her hands.

“Well,” Jazz said slowly, “we’ve definitely got plenty of people who like to make new weapons. You heard of those new Hybrid pistols? Huge things that fire these fragile little bullets that dissolve in the blood, putting all sorts of interesting poison into people. It’s going to change the way mercenary work’s done, if it gets off the ground.”

“I’m proud for you,” she said, muffled by her palms.

“There’s also someone putting out this invention for cardsharps that like a little extra security.” She turned the card back and forth. “You take a chunk of metal and hammer it really thin, as thin as it’ll go, and then print normal playing card designs on it and reinforce the edges. How they pull it off, I dunno, but voila – you’ve got a perfectly ordinary-looking card with an edge that’ll cut through fingers like a knife through butter. They’d be a pain to use, but it’s a neat idea.”

“I bet.”

Jazz smiled and threw the card down, edge-first. It bounced off the table. Monica’s hand shot out and caught it before it fell flat.

“But not really my thing,” Monica said, replacing the queen and then putting the deck back into her belt – she kept a little holster-like attachment just for that purpose. “I want to be honest, you know. Honest people shouldn’t have to kill. But it’s so damn hard to find anything good here.”

Jazz reclined again. “That mean you won’t be taking up my offer after all?”

“No. I’ll just have to count on luck, for now.” She got up, wincing a bit at the soreness in her muscles. “Was nice talking to you, anyway.”

She took two steps, and then Jazz said, “Hold on.”

Monica turned to her. “What?”

“You never told me why you liked spades so much.” She was watching the table, arms crossed.

Monica blinked, then smiled.

“There aren’t a whole lot of gardens in Jolt,” she said to Jazz. “The Nirvana makes everyone scared of plants, seems like. But I’ve seen one or two, and for the bigger plants they break the dirt with spades. They’re like shovels made just for the occasion. Shovels made for digging holes and planting something new.”

She turned back to the exit.

“That’s about as honest as you can get,” she said, and half-walked, half-lurched to the exit.

Jazz rolled her eyes. She waited a little while after Monica left, then walked out without bothering to pay.

* * *

Night had already fallen, and now Jolt City’s roads were awash in the streetlights’ witchlike orange glow, every pothole in painful detail. Monica stuck to the sidewalk, rubbing her arms and grimacing at how little skin was standing between the air and her bones.

She had spent years bumping along from one job to the other, taking work where she could find it and taking beds that no one else would touch, until the gray days had run into each other and started to blur like her cards in mid-shuffle. But now work had dried up; no one had anything left to do. The city stewed under its polluted atmosphere, its pulse slow but still clear in Monica’s head. She always thought she could feel the force of Jolt’s routine – a thick, heavy backbeat to her thoughts.

These winding-down periods came often, but Jolt City’s most prominent classes, the mercenaries and the business moguls who hired them, would always have something to do. Because everyone knew the place was in a state of constant corruption, corruption that had gone so deep that it had somehow come out the other end as order. So people like Jazz and her clients, who kept the rot alive, would never be out of a job.

Just thinking about it made Monica feel dirty.

Slack faces went in and out of the lights, occasionally frowning at the disheveled woman staggering past. There weren’t many places for the penniless to sleep, but penniless or not, women in Monica’s condition always had something worth stealing. Her lack of food and rest hadn’t contributed to her state as much as having to beat back Jolt’s limitless supply of small-time thugs. Anybody with her inquisitive nature had to abandon a sense of compassion. In this city, kindness could drive you insane.

She leaned against a bus stop, taking a glance at the sky. The smog obscured any stars, but she had heard about them from a few people who had taken a look at the Nirvana – at night, the haze broke up to reveal bright, hateful chips of light in the sky. That’s how she had heard them described. Monica had been left wondering how light could look hateful.

“Miss?”

Monica turned at that cracked and quavering voice. A bag lady was sitting under a thriftshop’s plate-glass window, buried under stained clothing. Her face looked shriveled and sagging, like a wad of wet paper.

“Can you spare any money, miss?” she asked. The look in her eyes wasn’t hopeful.

Monica shook her head. “Sorry. I’m broke, too.”

“It’s a hard world, miss.”

“Yes. It is.”

The bag lady sighed and sank into her rags. When her head was lowered, the folds of her clothing made her look like some monstrous fungus.

Monica bit her lip and went to the curb, dashing across before any cars came. On the other side, steam trickled through a sewer grate. She stared into it, the wet and fetid air inside coming at her like a slap.

The city had a heartbeat, so it had to have a heart. But what’s more, it had to have a brain – otherwise, there’d be nothing to keep the heart pumping. But Jolt was brainless; it ran on its own set of pre-conceived reactions, a clockwork toy clicking and grinning endlessly even as its cogs turned to rust. So where were the people who kept it wound tight? Where they underground? Or maybe in the Nirvana, somewhere in that lifeless green waste?

Monica put a hand to her temple. She could almost hear it now, the sounds that formed the pulse:

What are you selling?

“I don’t know what you need.”

Okay, it’s a deal.

“So where are the strings?”

Hey, lady – your money or your life.

“Wait,” she muttered. “I’ll think about it. Let me think about it.”

The streets had emptied out, and the smell from the grate was making her head spin. She turned and went into a garbage-strewn alley, holding herself up by sheer force of will.

Honest work, she thought. Something good. Something that isn’t stained with so much blood that the smell gets into you and keeps you up nights…

She slipped on the concrete and swore, catching herself on a trashcan. She groped for the lid’s handle for a better grip and winced at the slimy feel of it.

Behind her, just perceptible, there was a clink.

Monica’s eyes widened, then narrowed.

“s**t,” she said.

She spun around, wrenching the trashcan lid off as she went, and heard a chunk sound as Jazz’s knife punched through. Monica saw her outline move and maneuvered the lid to catch a second knife, then twisted it and turned it around, ripping the weapon out of Jazz’s grip. She seized the handle of one knife, pulled it out and threw away the lid as Jazz got a third out of the dark spaces under her jacket.

They were staring each other down just as the lid clanged to the ground below.

Monica was hunched over, breathing heavily, the knife held tight to her side. In the light from outside the alley she could see Jazz standing at ease, her hair a bundle of fire. The knives were smooth-handled and had long, thin blades, and Monica guessed that the hilts were weighted, partially because the careless way Jazz held hers suggested that she was ready to throw it into Monica’s back should she try to run. She had always seemed to be the type to appreciate that sort of gesture.

Jazz smiled.

“You saw this coming, right?” she asked. “That’s why you invited me.”

“I never trusted you for a second,” Monica shot back, twitching at Jazz’s slightest movement. “You never deserved it.”

“Even after all those little payments? The few dollars that kept you alive?”

She bared her teeth. “People like you turn anything good into a weapon. You just make everyone dirty along with you.”

Jazz’s smile just got wider. She took a step to the side and laughed as Monica leapt back.

“So who was it?” Monica asked. “Did I make one of the muggers just mad enough to put out a hit?”

“Nah. This is strictly for my sake. Like you said, curious people are trouble in this town. And you can be so persistent, you know that? I’m just keeping my bases covered.” She pursed her lips. “I don’t think you know just how dangerous you are, Monica. Jolt can live forever if things go the way they are, but all that’s holding it up is suspension of disbelief. People have to ignore the wrong kinds of questions. So if someone’s asks nothing but those questions, and doesn’t stop…”
She shrugged. “It’s just business, hon. Nothing personal.”

“You b***h,” Monica snarled, and leapt at her.

To anyone else, this would have been a suicidal move. But Monica was a veteran of fights in back alleys and deserted streets, and the great truth of such places was that if you couldn’t run fast then you got in close. Don’t give them time to think, or room to move – or aim, because there was nothing you could do against a gun. This held doubly true for people like Jazz, who was probably a deadeye with her knives. And there was no telling if she didn’t have a firearm stashed away, just in case.

So she closed the distance, her tired muscles standing at full attention, darting in and out of Jazz’s reach, making futile stabs and pulling back before her throat could get cut. Nevertheless, lines of heat could be felt on Monica’s arms, face and chest as the knives flashed – Jazz did this for a living, and the odds looked very bad.

A sharp pain rang out on Monica’s wrist and she cried out, dropping the knife. Jazz grinned and brandished her own, the blade shining in the distant lights.

Looking at the shine, Monica thought, So that’s what they meant by hateful. I never knew.

“Sorry about this,” Jazz said. “Really.”

The knife came in and Monica twisted out of the way, sustaining another cut along her side. But when she faced Jazz again her face was set, and her wounded arm was reaching for her deck.

Jazz’s smile disappeared. Monica withdrew a card, slowly.

“I’m not,” Monica said, and lunged, holding out the card.

Jazz’s knife swept up and pierced it, pulling it out of her fingers. The queen of spades was just visible before Jazz ripped it off the blade, snorting at the decoy.

But then she saw Monica drawing two more cards, fanning them out and then snatching one with her other hand. Monica got in close, reeking of sweat and cigarette smoke, and brought her uninjured arm around.

Jazz saw that it held the other queen of spades and spun her blade down, freeing up her fingers, and then seized Monica’s arm and twisted it sharply. Monica went pale from the pain and dropped the card. Jazz’s smile reappeared, sad and sharp.

But it went away when Monica put the other card into her throat.

The grip on Monica’s arm loosened, and the knife clattered to the ground. Jazz stepped back, a low gurgle issuing from her mouth, groping for the card before she fell against the side of the alley. Her eyes grew dim.

Her breath ripping in and out of her throat, Monica limped over to the body and pulled out the queen of diamonds. Blood started to ooze from the wound, and the card was soaked with it. But it would clean off easily.

“You just can’t talk to some people,” she croaked, and the words turned into a coughing fit that made her bend over double. When she got control of herself, she looked at Jazz’s corpse. Her high color was already fading. Even her hair looked subdued.

“Diamonds was two-faced, you b***h,” she said. She started to grope around for her queen of spades, resisting the urge to start sobbing. “And honest people don’t kill. But you couldn’t have that, right? You had to bring me down.”

She found the card and pushed it back into the holster, a distant part of her mind taking inventory of her injuries. She was bleeding in at least half a dozen places, one arm badly cut, the other rendered slow and clumsy by Jazz twisting it. She needed medical attention. And she had no money.

Her thoughts turned to whether or not Jazz carried a wallet, and she crushed them without mercy.

She felt a small pain in her fingers and looked down, noticing that she still held the razor-edged queen. Dull fury started to edge out the shock.

Monica turned to the corpse and scrubbed the card on its jacket, her face flexing and clenching like something was trying to push out of her skin. When the card was clean she put it in with the rest and stood up, looking at the body.

“b***h,” she repeated. “******** b***h.” She kicked it, and the meaty thud that resulted just seemed to fan her anger.

“I gave you every ******** chance, didn’t I?” she said, kicking it again. “Now look. You’re dead. You’re dead!” Now she was almost screaming. “What was the point of it, huh? What the ******** could I have done? Now look at me. Good-for-nothing b***h!”

Then she realized how she sounded and shut up, suddenly seized by fear of someone overhearing. It wouldn’t matter anyway, but she didn’t want to be seen like this.

She looked out the mouth of the alley. The street was still empty. The only person in sight was the bag lady, who was watching impassively.

Monica breathed deep and let it out. She felt wetness on her cheek and touched it. Her hand didn’t come away bloody. She had been crying.

Jolt City had no police forcer in any official sense; the largest crimes were almost always sanctioned by the corporate element, and went away unpunished. When someone stumbled across Jazz Riley’s body, she would be cleaned up and then every business who had hired her would quash any potential investigation. The blood would be washed away, the knives would be thrown out, no questions would be asked. And life would go on.

Life, of course, would consist of an endless series of stabbed backs and shaking hands, with mercenaries wandering in and out of the mess like viruses. Stupid, violent people, who wouldn’t even bother to question how a skilled and constantly suspicious cardsharp could lose all of her money on gambling, even if she played fair. People who wouldn’t wonder if that money could have gone to a different cause.

“Suspension of disbelief,” Monica muttered as she limped back across the street. A city whose foundation was so weak that a few well-placed questions could pose a threat. If someone asked the right questions at just the right time, and make sure that every heard, then there’d be the chance that the whole structure could come crashing down…

But that wasn’t her concern. Leave it to people like Jazz and her clients.

“I can’t keep this sort of thing up,” she said to herself, and coughed again. “It’s just too damn exhausting.”

She stopped in front of the bag lady again. The clothes rustled, and the wrinkled face poked out again.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Monica said, “but do you know where I could get cleaned up?”

The bag lady didn’t say anything. Instead, she looked past Monica, into the alley.

“That young lady had a problem with you, I think,” she said.

Monica shrugged. A finger dislodged itself from the bag lady’s mass, pointing further down the street.

“There’s a shelter about two blocks down,” the she said. “I think they’ll take you in. You may be a wanted woman, miss.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“But isn’t that other one dead?”

“Yes.” Monica squeezed her cut arm as she turned away. “But I’m alive. Thank you, by the way.”

She started to walk, drops of blood pattering on the sidewalk. The city accepted it without complaint, and after she got cleaned up she would start working again. She would work her fingers to the bone. Monica imagined the queens’ cold eyes, blending into one stare under her hands, and didn’t look back as she left.