Archive of Our Own

1. Straight razor

“Full fade,” Reno says. “High and tight. Loose on top.”

“What, kind of a faux-hawk?”

“A fucking what?”

Reno decides he likes this little barber shop in the hazy, gentrifying zone between Sector 6 and Sector 7. He likes the model helicopter hanging from the ceiling fan, the cracked tile floor with its zigzag designs that looks like it went in right as they were building the Plate underneath it. That bitter, woody, leathery note in the shaving lotion—vetiver, according to Sally—is something Tseng wears sometimes. Of course, unlikely that Tseng would ever, Reno thinks, be caught dead in a joint like this.

Sally, the barber, in T-shirt and narrow black jeans, has some beautiful art on her arms: full sleeves, all crisp abstract patterns in an ink bluer than his suit. This is the third time Reno’s been to see Sally, and she is officially still on probation: he’s not sure he likes her ideas about his hair as much as he likes her executions, and the effortless, competent way she handles her scissors.

“What about this shit?” she asks, holding up Reno’s ponytail so Reno can see it in the mirror.

“What about it? Leave it.”

“Because that’s stylish,” Sally says, shaking her head and making eye contact in the mirror.

Reno points to the back of his head.

“Nice high fade,” he says, “up to here. Where the ponytail starts.” He gestures to the top of his head. “Here.”

“Front’s still growing out,” Sally says by way of warning. “It’s all different lengths. You can’t catch it all in that ponytail. It’s gonna look… weird.”

Reno smiles.

“Use the straight razor,” he says.

—

The truth is, he has Tseng to thank for this, a signature style if there ever was one. He’d been aiming to get Tseng’s goat, that first time he’d stood in that office, with a deliberate, targeted disregard not only of Tseng’s friendly advice but his direct orders about Reno’s long hair. But when he’d showed up, head shaved down to bare scalp, red ponytail spilling across his shoulder, Tseng had looked up from his desk and said,

“On the edge of the Western Continent, where the Straits of Wutai are thin, the mountain people call that style ‘novice lock.’ It’s reserved for apprentice monks who have not yet been initiated,” Tseng’s mouth crooked upwards, “into the Mystery.” Reno blinked, stunned. “Personally, I wasn’t going to, you know, rub it in, but…” Tseng shrugged. “If it makes you more comfortable, by all means, Reno. You do you.”

It may have been sheer stubbornness that kept him from cutting it clean off, that first month or so. After he crossed the six-month mark, he started tweaking the look, growing a little out on top, spiking it up with glue or playing with random bits of braid that Rude said made him look homeless.

He’s been a Turk for two years now. The ponytail’s halfway down his back.

2. Zeio special

“Well, what word you got in that mental dictionary for, I don’t know, Heidegger?” Reno asks. Tseng purses his lips, like he’s trying to keep himself from smiling.

When Tseng had texted, suggesting dinner at Café Zeio, Reno’d stopped by his apartment to change clothes: something about the timing and the studied carelessness of Tseng’s invitation had given Reno the feeling that this meeting was strictly off the clock. Now he’s wearing a black hoodie with the word “tongue” written across the front in glittery silver calligraphy. When the server had swung by their booth, Reno’d ordered the Zeio Special, a burger slathered in sour cream and topped with fiery peppers; Tseng had ordered spice-rubbed pork chops.

“Turgid,” Tseng says. Reno takes a bite out of his burger to hide his confusion. “Overblown, trying too hard,” Tseng adds casually, like it’s an afterthought. “Taking himself too seriously.”

“Ah,” Reno says around his burger. “Right. Turgid. Shit. That even sounds right.” He stops chewing for a second. “Hey. You don’t—you realize—I’m not gonna pass that along, you know that, right?”

Tseng tilts his head to one side.

“If I follow you,” he says, “you are pointing out that I’ve just said something that could get me in trouble, if it got back to the Shinra brass.”

“I, ah,” Reno says.

Tseng’s fork slices neatly through his grilled pork chop.

“You wouldn’t be sitting here now if I thought you were going to sell me out, Reno.”

Reno thinks this over. His sense that something unusual is up with his ops supervisor is beginning to ring bells in his ears.

“That’s good,” Reno says, carefully and deliberately. “You’re reading me right. That’s good.”

“Truth is,” Tseng says, “I didn’t just bring you here to listen as I trash-talk Heidegger.”

“Thought,” Reno says with a half-grin, “you brought me here to improve my vocabulary.”

“Vocabulary lessons are helpful, but not necessary,” Tseng says. “There’s nothing wrong with your communication. Or your understanding.”

Reno, suddenly abashed, turns his attention to his plate of fries.

“I need you to retrieve a body,” Tseng says.

3. War crime

Reno takes a long swig of his mint chip milkshake, studying his ops supervisor over the rim of the glass. Tseng, eating pork chops with methodical precision, seems outwardly calm. There’s just something in the way he’s holding his knife that reinforces Reno’s suspicions. This is not Turks business. This is something entirely else.

“A body,” Reno says, and takes another swallow. “You said retrieve? Not hide?”

Tseng looks startled for a second. His eyes grow warm.

“Definitely not ‘hide,’ Reno,” he says. “But you’re right, this is personal.”

Reno’s attacking his shake with his spoon.

“I thought so,” he says.

“The body is in Wutai.”

Reno pauses, stirring his shake, turning this over. The Wutai War has recently dragged to a violent and miserable close. Scattered pockets of resistance throughout the Archipelago are being busily subdued by the armies of Shinra. Is it family, he wonders, then dismisses the thought; he’d hardly need Reno’s help to bury a relative. It’ll have to be someone Tseng is not supposed to aid—someone whose death matters enough that if Tseng is seen to be involved, it will pose a problem. It’s someone on the other side, he thinks. Has to be.

“Engetsu Corps?” Reno asks, after a long silence. Tseng shakes his head.

“Not a fighter. He was a priest. A scholar. But… you’re not far wrong. He taught at Kelenteng.”

Even Reno has heard of the Kelenteng Uprising, more than three years old and still attracting navel-gazing think-pieces in the Shinra News Herald and angry denials from the Shinra military talking heads. Shinra, aware that Wutai’s military presence was thin in the south, had tried to take the island of Kelenteng and make the school, or monastery—Reno’s not clear on what Kelenteng actually was—into a military outpost. It was supposed to be Shinra’s foot in the door, enabling them to take control of a strategically important harbor in the region. Instead, the entire school—even the kids—

“That was bad,” Reno says.

“They held off Shinra for seven weeks,” Tseng says. “When it was done, when the buildings were rubble and ash, the Army left. Today they refuse to set foot on the island.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to read the incident reports and decide for yourself what they saw, Reno. Maybe,” and Tseng’s face is expressionless, “they just had guilty consciences.”

“So this guy was from the school?”

“One of the preceptors. He managed to escape the slaughter, and remained hidden for years, writing under the pen name “Shi Hong.” Tseng half-smiles. “'Liberating from the Red', depending on how you read his name characters. He wrote prolifically for a little while, including an unsparing account of what happened at Kelenteng. Without his words, nobody outside of the region would even know what took place there. What Shinra did.”

"And he survived all this time?"

"He galvanized the south, Reno," Tseng says. "People hid him, protected him. Shinra had a much harder time than they would have putting down the insurgency. "

“So that’s why…” Reno says.

“That’s why,” Tseng answers. “And now that he’s dead, his body isn’t just a trophy for the Shinra Army. It’s a reminder. A warning to the whole region.”

“It’s terrorism,” Reno whispers.

Tseng doesn’t say anything to this.

Reno keeps his eyes on his plate, turning this information over in his mind.

“This guy they killed…” he says finally. “You…” But Reno, feeling Tseng’s eyes on his face, finds that he can’t put any of his surmises into words.

“Will you help me?” Tseng asks.

Reno rubs his eyes, looks out the window at Midgar traffic, Plateside, the wind sweeping dirty papers down the green-lit sidewalks. It’s late. There’s a version of this, he thinks, where I turn him down, we finish our food, and go off into the night in opposite directions. I see him the next day at the office, Tseng gives me my next assignment, and we…just go on, like nothing happened, just supervisor and Turk, with nothing else to say.

“I’ll help you,” he says. “Of course, man. No sweat.”

Tseng laughs silently, an out-breath almost like a sigh. He sounds, Reno realizes to his shock, just a little shaky.

“To be honest, I wasn’t sure what you’d say,” Tseng says.

“Thing is,” Reno says. “What you need…look, no matter what, I…” He trails off. When he steals a glance at Tseng, he finds Tseng’s gaze is directed inward, his expression somber. Then he meets Reno’s eyes, and Reno has to catch his breath.

“Thank you,” Tseng says at last, in a muted voice.

“Well,” Reno says, feeling shaky himself. He drains his milkshake. “Okay. Well. Lay it out for me.”

Tseng calls up a topo map of Wutai on his phone. “You’ll have a little cover, a reason to be in Wutai,” he says. “Surveillance project for Heidegger. That’ll get you past the initial red tape and onto the mainland. But instead of going north and west to Loulan, you’ll be going south and east, to Jugang. The locals call it Palambang.” Tseng spreads his thumb and forefinger and zooms in on Jugang Harbor. “In the jungle, a few clicks outside of town, here. Forward Operating Base Strom.” Tseng pulls up a camera feed; Reno sees banyan trees, ATVs covered in baffle webbing, a glimpse of a compound surrounded with razor wire.

“That’s where they have the body,” Tseng says. “Once you’ve extracted it, there’s someone in Palambang who may be able to help you. He goes by Lao Shi now; once upon a time, though, he was called Dao Zhi. I’ll send you the details before you leave. He’ll want to know who sent you. Give him this.” Tseng slides a length of looped and braided silk cord, gleaming indigo blue, across the table. It looks like a piece of regalia that’s been cut from a dress uniform.

Reno, eyes wide, pockets it without a word.

Then Tseng sets a shiny, coal-black credit card beside Reno’s plate.

“You’ll probably need this too,” he says. Reno looks at the name on the card, looks at his ops supervisor.

“You sure?”

Tseng’s smile is a little grim as he puts his wallet away.

“Don’t blow it all on the chocobos,” he says.

“How’d you guess?” Reno asks. “Actually, nah: gonna save this and stock up on chocolate milk later.”

“Because this operation has nothing whatsoever to do with Shinra,” Tseng says, his voice even, “there’s very little I can do to help you, once you’re there. And if you get made and drop my name…” Tseng folds his paper napkin, and lays it beside his plate. “It won’t go well for me.”

Reno’s grin vanishes.

“In other words you’re putting your life in my hands with this thing,” he says.

“When it’s done, send a text,” Tseng says. “I’ll meet you in Wutai Village.”

4. A businessman

Reno’s drinking bubble tea at the Item Shop, watching a surprisingly well-heeled customer—by Wall Market standards, at least—browse the potions. Frankie Manuflect hasn’t opened his place yet. Reno’s not worried; he has good sight lines and plenty of time. Brancusi will be a while yet with his fake ID, and Tseng’s still arranging transport out of Costa Del Sol.

Meanwhile, Itsy in Records had done him a solid, passwording him deep into the Shinra military personnel archives, where he’d spent a little time over breakfast perusing the dossier of one Commander Hurt, FOB Strom’s CO, a man with some unusual interests, even for a career military guy. As Reno slurps tapioca through a hot-pink straw and turns over some of the more peculiar details in his mind, a plan is starting to form.

He’s not sure it’s a good plan.

It’s another fifteen minutes before Frankie, in unusually wide pleather pants, emerges from his shop and begins hauling on the chain hanging beside his steel security gate. As it slowly rolls up, Reno saunters across from the Item Shop, right hand holding aloft his bubble tea, left hand resting easily on the butt of his mag-rod.

“My man,” he says, and Frankie stiffens at the sound.

“I paid Shinra last week,” Frankie says.

“Not collecting today, Frankie. Not money, anyway. You’re not gonna invite me inside?”

Frankie, his shoulders drooping, lets Reno elbow his way into his shop. Once they’re both inside, Reno shuts and locks the door.

“What’s this about?” Frankie asks, his eyes darting to the locked door. “What—what do you need?”

“FOB Strom, Frankie,” Reno says. “You must know who’s supplying those guys. They can’t be getting all their happy sauce from Palambang. There’s a trade embargo, son. Wutai’s not dead yet. Shinra boys can’t get their favorite cigarettes and candy bars at the corner market, now, can they? So who’s their angel?”

“Beats me,” Frankie says, and Reno sighs.

“You gotta know by now,” he says, and swipes a thumb across the mag-rod’s activation plate. There’s a sharp smell of ozone, and an ominous crackle. Frankie Manuflect makes a move to escape, but Reno’s got him by the collar. “I don’t give up easy. And I don’t like it when you lie, Frankie.”

“Reno, for pity’s sake, I’m just a businessman—“

“You sure were a hell of a businessman,” Reno says, murder glinting in his eyes, “back then.”

“It was a mistake, Reno! It was—it was bad judgment, those guys, they were pushy, I—“

“Nearly got me killed, Frankie-o. You think I’m about to forget that—“

“Didn’t I give all those guys up, when you came back? Haven’t I been making it all up to you? Giving you the best deals—”

“Frankie,” Reno says softly, dangerously. Frankie makes a distressed noise. His nose is running a little. He wipes it on his collar.

“What, what do you want? Reno, let’s be easy—“

“A name, Frankie, and I’ll leave you in peace.”

“Lacon,” Frankie gasps. “Jackie Lacon.”

Reno knows Jackie Lacon. Somewhere north of forty, fishy handshake, a guy with his fingers in a lot of pies, but not quite as connected as he likes to pretend.

Reno puts away his mag-rod and pulls out Tseng’s credit card. “I wanna see everything he buys from you,” he tells Frankie Manuflect. “I want his discount, too. And Frankie? There’s one other thing.”

5. Applied chemistry

“What the fuck is that smell?”

Rude’s on Reno’s landing in a long winter coat, leaning against the door jamb, peering past Reno’s shoulder into his apartment.

“Applied chemistry,” Reno replies. “That the stuff? Come on in, man.”

Rude lifts an eyebrow at Reno’s butcher’s apron, dusted with orange-yellow pollen and streaks of what looks like blood. He hoists his package—wrapped in a broad square of blue ikat and suspended from a carrying stick—and steps into Reno’s kitchenette, where a thick, soporific incense smell is hanging.

Rude sets down his package, bats at the smoke.

“Fuck are you up to?”

“I’m adjusting the, ah, smell of this perfume,” Reno says, gesturing at a decanter on the counter. A saucepan on his tiny gas stove is simmering.

“I beg your fucking pardon?” Rude asks. When Reno doesn’t reply, Rude shoulders past him, and spots a heavy, cut-glass bottle sitting on the counter. He hefts the bottle, studies the label, and whistles.

“Where did you get this?”

“Frankie.”

Rude looks him up and down.

“What happens if I ask you why you are ‘adjusting’ this thousand-gil bottle of perfume?”

“Yeah, well,” Reno says, “I got it on discount. Pass me that stuff in the mortar.”

Rude picks up the mortar. It’s full of saffron threads, crystallized amber, and a greenish swirl of what looks like crushed beetles’ wings, but isn’t. He puts it down very carefully to Reno’s left.

“You oughta be wearing gloves, man, you work with this,” he tells his partner. “And that’s a waste of some very high-end saffron, by the way. Who told you to use that?”

Reno, applying the pestle to the mortar, stops to turn and stare at his partner.

“What?” Rude asks. “I cook sometimes, man. It’s not a crime.”

“Saffron a necessary ingredient,” Reno says. “Hojo explained it. Some kind of interaction with the fellwings. Should be okay until it’s extracted. Then it’s respirator time, yo. The amber’s there to mask the smell. Of course, if it works, won’t have to worry about the smell.”

“If it works,” Rude says. “If it works on who, man?”

Reno grins.

“Don’t like this,” Rude says.

“Come on,” Reno says. “It’s not all that different from making explosives, yo.”

“Something,” Rude says, “you also do in your kitchen. With no gloves.”

Reno’s stirring the fellwing concoction into the saucepan.

“Get a better connection to the timing without gloves,” he tells his partner.

Rude slowly shakes his head.

“Don’t like this,” he says again. “Don’t like this secrecy. But fuck it, man. Do what you gotta do. Just—whatever you’re doing, don’t get killed.”

“Not my plan,” Reno says. He gestures over Rude’s shoulder at the fabric-wrapped crate on the floor. “That’s really the stuff?”

“What, you mean these two cases of Yamazaki 12-year-old single malt, sitting here on your goddamn kitchen floor?” Rude says. “These bottles from Lord Godou’s own personal stash, liberated by Genesis last year at the express request of President Shinra? Doesn’t get realer than that, man.”

“Someday,” Reno says, stirring, “you gotta tell me how you get your hands on this shit.”

“Someday,” Rude says, “when you’re old enough. We square now?”

“Almost,” Reno says. “There’s one other thing. I can’t give you details, you gotta take this one on trust.”

“Oh, great,” Rude says. He looks at Reno’s too-easy grin, the lines bracketing Reno’s mouth, takes in the set of his shoulders, high and tight. “Yeah, okay, what?”

“I need you to pull in a guy named Lacon. Get him for anything, doesn’t matter what. I need him in cold storage for the next couple of weeks.”

Rude sighs heavily.

"Then we’re square?” he asks.

“Absolutely,” Reno says.

6. Super Sketch

Reno mops the sweat off his forehead. It’s the worst part of the afternoon, hot and humid as hell; sweat runs in a rivulet between his shoulder blades, and he fervently wishes he’d opted for the more classical tourist get-up of flowered shirt, linen suit and straw hat. His ruby-colored vinyl jacket sends the right signals, but it’s sticky to the touch.

It’s taken three days, a helicopter to Rocket Town, a shitty rented car and a very stinky ferry to get him from Costa across the Western Continent to the Wutai mainland, and then a spooky flight in a two-engine to get him to the Lower Archipelago—everything capped off by the trip from Palambang to the outskirts of FOB Strom, a six-hour spell past three separate Shinra checkpoints on a no-fooling three-wheeled pedal-powered cargo transporter which he bought off the original owner for a handsome fucking sum and which stands, a little off to the side of the road, with its cargo compartment full of booze, hash, chocolate bars, and cartons of cigarettes, everything tarped over and covered in camo netting. Just up ahead the road, hemmed in close by dripping banyan trees, is off-limits to civilian traffic. The cordon is overlooked by a scrubby-looking guardhouse that lists to the right. It all looks rickety and second-rate, but Reno’s eyes have picked out six more guys positioned in the surrounding jungle. They’re all packing Benders.

Reno, for strategic reasons, is currently unarmed. He’s even left his mag-rod behind.

He pushes scraggly white-blond bangs off his forehead, and sighs. Sally’d been shocked to see him back in her shop, and had clucked her tongue during the whole procedure. “You have such good hair, and the things you do to it. It’s criminal.”

“So’m I,” Reno said simply.

“You really wanna look different,” Sally said, holding up her scissors and making snipping sounds.

“Over my dead body,” Reno said. “Bleach it out. As close to white as you can.”

—

At three-thirty sharp, Reno wheels his cargo bike up to the cordon.

“This where the party is?” he calls to the sergeant who’s emerging from the guardhouse. The sergeant, his side-arm drawn, rolls his eyes. He gestures to a couple of heavily-armed grunts, who circle around behind Reno. He hears the hum of their Benders charging.

“Biggest party in town,” the sergeant says. “Invitation only. So who the fuck are you, Super Sketch?”

“I work with Lacon, gentlemen.” Reno holds his hands steady above his head, and keeps his smile friendly and even. “Lacon’s got the flu, so he sent me here instead.”

“Did he now,” the sergeant says.

“Sure did. My name’s Scully. What I am is the bringer of all good things. Who I am’s there in my coat, along with some very fine Costan cigars, procured,” Reno says, enunciating, “at great expense, just for you and these guys standing right here, Sergeant.”

“Against the rules to take any kind of bribe, Super Sketch,” the sergeant says.

“What about a gift? No strings. We are transparent, sir. The cigars are just an added perquisite, Lacon’s way of saying thank you for your business.”

The grunt frisking him cracks a smile, holding up a well-wrapped and entirely authentic cigar.

“Check this out, Sarge,” he says.

Vocabulary lessons with Tseng sure paying off, Reno thinks, as they walk him in.

—

“You, what, Sector 6?”

The grunt glances at Reno over his shoulder as they cross the camp, headed for the CO’s tent.

“Born and bred,” the grunt says.

FOB Strom is small and shabby inside the perimeter, low on the totem pole of Shinra’s Wutai firebases as far as Reno can tell. He’s counting heads as he walks, pushing the bicycle cart; maybe twenty guys are visible this afternoon. Based on the number of tents and the size of the quonset mess hall, Reno reckons there are another thirty or so guys in the jungle or patrolling the perimeter.

“Fuck me, know that accent anywhere,” Reno says. He gestures at himself. “Sector 4, yo.”

“Pssht, I knew that soon as you opened your mouth,” the grunt says.

“The hell you doing all the way out here, Sixer?”

“Watching this shit,” the grunt says, waving vaguely in the direction of the ocean. “Being completely fucking forgotten by the brass. We fucking win yet? Who can fucking tell? We been here since we burned that shit down on Kelenteng. This posting’s crazy, man. Not a soul man or beast left on that island, know what I’m saying?”

“Worried about the town, monsters in the jungle, what?” Reno asks. The Sixer shakes his head.

“CO seems to think some kind of ghost planning to come over the water and get us in our sleep.”

“Paranoid CO,” Reno observes, unwrapping a cigar and passing it to the grunt.

“Superstitious is the word you’re looking for, bro,” the Sixer says, lighting up. “Got this—this fucking dead guy, hanging up—“

“You’re shitting me,” Reno says.

“You’ll see,” the Sixer says darkly. “Some old guy. Don’t know what his deal was, wasn’t armed or anything, he was like a poet or something? CO had him killed dead and brought here about a week ago. Body’s tied to a post next to his tent, where he’s growing plants or some shit. Calls him his garden gnome.”

“Angels,” Reno says despite himself, his skin crawling.

“Ain’t no angels out here, bro,” the Sixer says.

7. Prime Mover

“Straight out of Godou’s private stash. See the seal? And you see this note on the crate, here? That’s Genesis’s own handwriting.” The note, signed with a flourish and pasted on the side of the crate, reads Only the best for the best. Reno’s glad it’s not any more specific than that.

“How the hell did you get this, son?” Commander Hurt, short, greedy-eyed, surveys Reno and his goods; he’d demanded everything be brought inside his tent, piled on the fancy carpets covering its floor. He’s sitting behind a highly polished campaign table inlaid with chips of ivory. He makes a halfhearted gesture at a camp chair, and Reno sits down.

“Lacon works closely with SOLDIER,” Reno improvises. “He and Genesis go way, way back.”

Hurt gives Reno a sharp look. “Lacon never mentioned it to me.”

“A guy like Lacon,” Reno says, “needs to be discreet about his friends. Anyway, I got clearance to let you in on that little secret, because he trusts you. So check this out. I don’t think we’re ever gonna see something like this again.”

Reno unties Rude’s ikat bundle on the CO’s campaign table. Hurt begins drawing bottles out of the wooden crate, standing them up next to each other like ranked soldiers. Reno’s grinning. He’s got his hands shoved deep in his pockets so Hurt won’t notice them shaking.

He’s never had to run a con quite this elaborate before, all by himself. He’d gotten up to some funny business before he became a Turk, all of it small potatoes. Turk ops could be complicated, but the truth was, he’d always had back-up, and there weren’t any flies on his co-workers. Rude in particular had proven to be a solid and sensible ally, the kind of guy you could count on to be where he said he’d be. And Tseng—

Reno takes a deep breath, and says,

“Me, I think you should hand some of these bottles out to your men. Not all of them! Hell no. But some of them. You think I’m crazy? I’m serious. This is legendary shit. You share it around, your men’ll follow you to hell, know what I’m saying?”

Hurt is wiping dust off the label on one of the bottles. His lips twitch, and his green eyes cut to Reno.

“My men,” he says, “will already follow me to hell.”

“Sure, maybe, okay. Still, you oughta celebrate—the whole camp oughta celebrate,” Reno says. “You got that insurgent asshole. You subdued the whole—Shinra controls the whole harbor now. And that was you. That was all you.”

Hurt’s eyes flick up to Reno again.

“You know about that?” he asks, his tone deliberately light.

“Heard from your boys,” Reno says. “I guess you got balls the size of boulders, if you don’t mind my saying so, Commander.”

“Barker,” Hurt calls. A soldier with a Bender on his back and a clipboard beneath his arm enters the tent and salutes. “Take these,” Hurt says, gesturing at the bottles on his desk. “Dole ‘em out. Chasers for the kegs Mister Scully here brought in.”

“To everyone, sir? The whole camp?”

“Tell them it’s a present. Tell them,” and Hurt is opening one of the bottles, “our boy Genesis got these off none other than Godou himself. Tell them this is what victory tastes like.”

—

By 7 PM, evening has come up, cloudy and humid. The camp reverberates with the noises of partying soldiers. Reno and Hurt are strolling in what Hurt calls his personal retreat, a fenced-off square of silvery camomile he harvests himself for tea. “So my boys know we’re civilized here,” Hurt explains.

Reno doesn’t look at the back end of Hurt’s little garden, where a limp body in a long, round-collared jacket is lashed to a post.

Eventually Hurt leads them to a wooden bench, carrying a bottle; Reno joins him with shot glasses. They’ve been drinking steadily. Hurt’s had a generous amount of the hash, and his eyes are gleaming in the evening light.

“This,” he says, gesturing around him, “is my domain. My world. Beauty and terror: it’s all mine. If you try to take my victory from me, I’ll hunt you down like a dog. That’s the message of this garden, Scully.”

“He tried and failed to fuck you, didn’t he,” Reno says. He doesn’t need to pretend to slur his words. The Yamazaki going down his throat all too easily, he thinks. Better watch that.

“Well said, Scully, well said,” Hurt tells him, lifting his shot glass. “He kept my victory from me for three years. Three… years.” Hurt breathes the words. “But he made a mistake. He thought I'd give in, relent. He didn't understand. This is my show, son!”

“Sir, yessir,” Reno says, and takes a shot. Hurt shoots him an approving look, and drinks.

"They all underestimated me," he confides to Reno. "They left me out here like they were ashamed of me! Well, I’m drinking Godou’s whiskey under that bastard’s carcass, now,” he says. “And HQ knows exactly who I am.”

Reno, feeling a little bleary-eyed, figures Hurt is about as ripe as he’s going to be.

“You know, I almost forgot. There’s this one other thing Lacon wanted you to have,” he tells him. “This doesn’t go on the ledger, right? You don’t owe me shit for this one.”

Hurt raises his eyebrows.

“It’s just a gift, perk for a good customer,” Reno says, unzipping his inner jacket pocket. He pulls out the little leather box, undoes the ribbon tie, and hands it over. Hurt pauses for a moment, hefting the box in one hand.

“I know what this is,” he says. “I just can’t… fucking… believe it.”

“Open it.”

Hurt lifts the lid, slips the bottle out of its velvet bag. It’s immaculate. No traces of Reno’s kitchen practices remain available to the eye.

"Prime Mover,” Hurt whispers.

Reno smiles.

“You realize they can’t make this anymore,” Hurt says, cradling the bottle. “The trade embargo put an end to its run five years ago. They can’t source the oakmoss, the oppoponax. The iris-fields burned in the war. No one gets this. President Shinra couldn’t get this!”

“We have our ways,” Reno says. “You gonna try it, or what?”

If Field Commander Hurt wasn’t drunk and high, he’d probably tuck the bottle back into its purple bag, place it back inside its little silk-upholstered box, and call it a night. Instead, he uncaps the bottle, holds it up to his neck, and sprays. Reno, sitting companionably beside him on the bench, realizes his error too late.

The world slides sideways.

Reno launches himself up from the bench as Hurt slumps to the ground, unconscious. He staggers backwards and loses his balance, dropping into the sweet-smelling chamomile plants and cracking his head on the stones at the base of the post where Shi Hong’s body hangs.

—

When Reno finally opens his eyes, the moon’s changed position. He hears singing, a radio blasting: FOB Strom, carousing. Hurt’s lying on his face a few feet away. A soldier, wasted, staggers by.

“Best plan ever,” Reno whispers.

After he can’t hear the footsteps of the soldier anymore, Reno opens his little pocket knife and hastily cuts down Shi Hong’s body from the pole. Working by moonlight, his head spinning from the fall and the effects of the Prime Mover, he takes off Shi Hong’s bloodstained jacket and trousers. Then he strips Hurt’s unconscious body, putting the bloody jacket on Hurt and dressing Shi Hong in his uniform.

Reno fumbles his way around the side of Hurt's tent, where he'd parked the cart. As he wheels it around, he hears a loud hum and a terrific crash. Some idiot, Reno realizes, is shooting at the trees with his Bender. Then there's a whooping cheer, and what sounds like the whole camp breaking into "Fuck You Up," a cute little piece of pro-Shinra propaganda that was popular on the radio a few years back, authored by a guy Reno knows personally over in HR. As the sound from the center of camp crescendoes, Reno settles Shi Hong’s body into the cargo hold of the cart and covers it with the tarp.

“You are going to have the worst headache in creation,” he tells the unconscious Hurt as he ties him to the post.

8. The braided cord

Walking out of FOB Strom turns out to be lot easier than he expected. Within camp, he’s greeted with friendly shouts as he walks past; he keeps an open bottle in one hand, ready for pouring, and no one questions his cart or his staggering gait. At the perimeter, gradually recovering from the effects of the doctored Prime Mover, he explains to the grunts—pouring them shots of the Yamazaki and lighting their cigars—that he’s got a very important client waiting for him in Palambang without any clothes on.

“Gotta hustle before they change their mind, yo,” he says, and gets a slap on the ass for his trouble.

The region is clear of insurgents now. The tiny villages he passes in the darkness are eerily silent, threads of smoke rising from closed houses, the occasional goat tethered outside, standing knee-deep in the mud. Reno, brandishing different ID this time, passes through the Shinra checkpoints with ease, and otherwise encounters no obstacles on the long ride back to town, although he does attract a few angry stares from the locals, and wishes he’d opted to dye his hair black instead of white. Around dawn, as the steeply canted thatched roofs of Palambang take shape in the distance, he ties Rude’s furoshiki around his head, and drops his goggles over his eyes.

Tseng’s message has directed him to a food vendor on Celebration Street. He hasn’t eaten for close to a day, so before he does anything else, he uses his broken Wutainese to order tea with condensed milk and thick rice noodles pan-fried in spicy peanut sauce. Taking his cup and bowl, he parks himself on one of the battered teak benches that line the courtyard surrounding an open kitchen space, where a handful of cooks are using tongs to spread rice, noodles and bamboo shoots across flat, sizzling grills. Even this early, the benches are full of customers; none of the Shinra soldiers he’s seen loitering on the streets outside are eating here. Reno keeps his goggles on and his head down.

As he’s stuffing his face, he notices one of the cooks observing him through the steam rising off his grill. He doesn’t look too dangerous at first glance—he must be pushing sixty, and his steps are heavy as he carries plastic bowls of congee to the payment counter—but there’s something about the way he stands, the way he maintains open space around him, the way he’s relating to the morning crowd that reminds Reno distinctly of Veld. He studies the cook’s hands, noting the calluses. Dao Zhi, he thinks.

He finishes his breakfast and approaches the grill.

“Lao Shi?” he asks. The cook, scraping a fried egg onto a bowl of reddish rice flecked with diced green onion, only grunts in response.

Reno tries again.

“Uh, Mister Shi, sir, I’ve, uh, I’ve got…”

The cook lifts his head, jerking his chin toward the street.

“The other entrance,” he says. “Wait.”

Reno wheels the cart around to the other side of the open-air shop, and parks it next to a small wicket gate. There’s a kid, naked, playing in the grass with a tortoise the size of his palm. Reno perches himself at the pedals, and watches steam and smoke rise from the shop’s stove vents, watches old ladies with string bags argue with each other over their congee.

After about an hour, the cook appears at the wicket gate, wiping his hands on a rag. Reno climbs off the rig, and approaches him.

“Thanks,” he says. “So, I guess you, ah, speak Common?”

Lao Shi leans back a little and lifts an eyebrow.

“The Easterners’ language,” he asks, “all that common around here in your opinion?”

“Ah, well, no.”

“Your accent is weird,” Lao Shi says, “but I can understand.”

“Weird?” Reno asks.

“You sound like you’re gargling,” Lao Shi says.

I do? Reno thinks, pushing his hand into his jacket pocket. Lao Shi, clocking his movement, watches him with narrowed eyes.

“You maybe…” Reno’s fingering the braid in his pocket. “I get the feeling you know who I am and what this is about.” Lao Shi spreads his fingers in a dismissive gesture.

“What I know is you smell like Shinra,” he says. “Not a good way to smell here.”

“No shit,” Reno says.

“What I think is, I might know why you’ve come. Let’s see if I’m right.”

“It’s about Shi Hong,” Reno says. “Shi Hong’s body.”

“Right,” Lao Shi says. His hands are loose at his sides, his weight’s on the balls of his feet. He doesn’t feel like a cook anymore. Reno decides to move very slowly. Telegraphing his motion in advance, Reno pulls the braided cord out of his pocket, and extends his open hand to Lao Shi, who makes a face like he’s in pain.

“Does he live?” he asks quietly. Reno nods, eyes wide. “I’d heard rumors,” Lao Shi says. “Both ways.”

“He sent me to you because—he said you’d give us a hand. With—is there somewhere private we can go?”

Lao Shi, scowling, is turning the braided cord over in his fingers. Finally, he pushes it back at Reno.

“I’ll show you,” he says.

—

Lao Shi lives on a narrow, untrafficked street a few minutes’ hard pedaling away from the noodle shop. From the front it’s a skinny little building of three stories; there’s a façade, all perforated concrete blocks painted pale blue, screened by broad-leafed plants and shaded by a thatched awning; behind it, wooden steps ascend steeply to an entrance high off the ground, ancient pilings supporting the house on either side. Reno pushes the cart against the wall, next to a water spigot with a hose attached, and hesitates. A ways down the street, a little girl is sweeping a stoop. Above her head, striding back and forth on a roofbeam, a magpie—bright green, with orange beak and feet—is muttering to itself in a voice that sounds almost human.

No one else is around.

“It’s, I’m sorry about this,” Reno says. He walks Lao Shi around his cart to the back, and lifts up the edge of the tarp.

“Bianhong ah,” the man says, looking down into the cart. “I told him many times,” he tells Reno, tears in his eyes. “Told him it would end like this.”

“Sir,” Reno says, “I was told to look for Lao Shi. But I was told to ask for Dao Zhi. Is that you? Can you help me?”

Lao Shi rests his hand on the dead body’s shoulder, his head bowed.

“I’m Dao Zhi,” he says finally. “Come inside.”

They wheel the cart through the front gate, past the pilings, into the tiny open-air courtyard at the heart of Dao Zhi’s house. Young gingko and ficus trees are growing here, their leaves damp and shivering. Reno smells incipient rain.

“I’d plant you here, with these trees you loved,” Dao Zhi says softly to the cart. “But it would not satisfy you.”

“What do we do now?” Reno asks.

“Take your shoes off, Shinra,” Dao Zhi says.

9. Deep water

They put Shi Hong’s body in Dao Zhi’s back room. Then they sit on the narrow veranda, with a view of the cart in the courtyard below.

“When he disappeared, I thought he’d finally decided to listen to me,” Dao Zhi says. “He stayed in Palambang for more than a month, hiding in the rafters, endangering every place he found refuge. Then he ferried himself to the out islands, on the eastern edge of Nusantara; he hid there for a long time. There were months I thought he must have died; then letters would come, essays, poems.” Dao Zhi scratches the side of his face. “I knew it couldn’t last. I knew they’d catch him in the end. You know, Shinra, they paraded his body through town before they took it off to that camp? For everyone to see. For children…” In an abrupt motion, Dao Zhi gets to his feet, stalking towards a tiny kitchenette.

When he returns with a laden tray, his mood’s calmer. Reno smells coconut milk. Dao Zhi hands him a glazed earthenware cup; the lip shines faintly, celadon. The liquid inside is cold, creamy pale. Reno recognizes grass jelly, tastes brown sugar.

“Good,” he tells Dao Zhi.

“Shows you have some sense, anyway,” Dao Zhi says. “Xiao Hong was right to send you.” Xiao Hong? Reno thinks.

“You, ah, knew him well?” he asks.

Dao Zhi sips his drink, his face grim.

“Xiao Hong? I’m not sure even his parents knew him well. Not sure anyone did, except Bianhong-ge, maybe. He… he was like deep water. So clear… and somehow you couldn’t see the bottom. It’s hard to trust such an individual.”

“Glad you’re trusting us now,” Reno finds himself saying.

“‘Us,’” Dao Zhi muses. “Are you so much a part of him?”

Reno feels an unexpected breeze cross the veranda, and shivers a little. Am I part of him? he wonders. He thinks of the braid in his pocket, the faint mark, indigo blue, on the dead man’s face.

“Yeah. Maybe? Yeah,” he says.

They sit in silence, watching as a light rain begins to fall. Clouds scud overhead, and the cart is dappled in moving shadows.

“There’s something else,” Dao Zhi says finally. “I’m not strong enough to do it by myself.”

Reno lifts his cup to his lips. He is almost completely sure he knows what’s coming. He thinks of Tseng.

“Ask away,” he says.

“Shi Hong's remains belong on Kelenteng,” Dao Zhi says. “They shouldn’t rest here, in Palambang. Shinra’s taken the town. Whatever small freedoms we have will be gone soon, and besides, someone may well trace your movements here. You must have realized you'll be remembered everywhere you go, Shinra."

"Ah," Reno says, unconsciously touching the scarf on his head.

"Rumors follow such actions, no matter how secret we try to be. If the folks here find out, we won't be able to keep them away. They’ll want to pay their respects. And your people…”

“Shinra,” Reno says, “would use that as an excuse to put the whole town under martial law.”

“My cousin has a boat he rents as a ferry, sometimes,” Dao Zhi says. “He won’t come with us—he’s afraid of Kelenteng, now—but we can use his boat to cross the strait.”

“Sounds good,” Reno says. Dao Zhi gives him a long look.

“In order to get past the harbor inspection detail, you’ll have to stay in the hold. It’s close quarters, Shinra. You won’t like it.”

“I won’t give you away,” Reno says.

“I’m thinking maybe you don’t understand,” Dao Zhi says. “We may have to lie at harbor for hours. You can’t make a sound. You need to stay down there. With him.”

10. The Way

It was the first thing he noticed about Shi Hong when he put him in the cart, back at FOB Strom. This body, for some reason, doesn’t smell any of the ways he expects.

In the old Sector Four days, Reno’s nose was acclimated to death. Reno the kid played dead plenty. Moreover, Reno the kid knew from personal experience exactly what dead bodies smell like, especially after a few days. Nowadays new volumes have been added to Reno’s mental library of smells related to death: the sweet-acridity of helo fuel, the methol-tang of mako, the oiled leather of his wristlets. But here, packed in tight next to this cast skin, this leftover shell of a man, Reno isn’t sure what he’s smelling.

There’s a dark, close smell that reminds him of the inside of Tseng’s liquor cabinet, and a leafy, golden note, dry as a bone, that reminds him of tea. Permeating it all the dizzying smell of incense, richer and stranger than any perfume or explosive he’s ever cooked up in his kitchen.

“You should stink,” he whispers to the body before he remembers Dao Zhi’s command. As the boat creaks and rocks, Reno closes his eyes and listens for noise topside.

Dao Zhi has been in discussions with the Shinra soldiers who control the harbor for more than an hour. Reno can’t make out the words, but Dao Zhi’s tone is flat, constrained. There seems to be something wrong with the name on the boat’s paperwork, or with the itinerary he’s shown them, some trifling cargo to collect in Nusantara on the other side of the water.

Reno, lying beside Shi Hong’s dead body, feels more relaxed than he’s been in days. He knows that at any moment the cargo hatch could open, and troubles, lying in wait for him like stacked dominoes, could combine and fall on his head in a dreadful and ineluctable sequence. Even with the knife-edge so close, he can’t raise any concern inside himself. He knows what can happen, what will happen, and he’s content. One thing’s for certain, he thinks dreamily, as the boat is shaken by footsteps, even if all hell breaks loose, I won’t give you up. You’re safe with me. He’s not quite sure if he’s talking to Tseng in his head, or to Shi Hong.

He’s got his pocket knife in his hand, one arm protectively slung around Shi Hong’s corpse, when Dao Zhi opens the hatch.

“We’re leaving soon,” he says.

—

They climb up from the tiny, sheltered harbor on the far side of Kelenteng, following a winding stairway cut into the cliff and faced with weathered grey volcanic stone. Plants have pushed through the cracks, crumbling entire steps away. Reno, the body on his back, has to jump gaps in the stairs, some of them opening onto empty space. Dao Zhi follows behind, bowed beneath a bundle of sticks and kindling.

As they climb, the ruins of Kelenteng slowly emerge from the mist. When the sun comes through the cloud, Reno sees stark squared-off doorframes at the top of the cliff, standing empty and alone against the sky.

Slowly they make their way through the rubbled buildings. Reno sees the half-buried remnants of a gigantic incense burner, grass growing through the ornamental holes in the jade. He feels the burden of Shi Hong's body, light and strangely fragrant, on his back.

“What… what kinds of things did they teach, here?” Reno asks.

“The Way,” Dao Zhi says.

—

They walk past shattered roofs, remnants of walls choked with vines, charcoal and ashes and fragments of white bone. The wind is sharp on the clifftop.

“And no one ever came back? Not even you?” Reno asks. Dao Zhi pauses to adjust his load, and sighs.

“Not even me,” he says. “That life is over. I’m Lao Shi, now.”

The wind whips at Reno's uncovered hair.

“Are they afraid?” he asks. “Afraid to come back? Afraid to try?”

“Shinra’s armies have made reopening the school an impossibility,” Dao Zhi says. “I could stay here alone. But I won’t abandon the people of Palambang to occupation.”

Dao Zhi leads him past a vast, crumbling structure of mud brick. Bits of the stone facing remain, intricately carved with birds. In little alcoves built into its walls, Reno spots images of lotuses, some of them still marked with traces of gold leaf. As they draw alongside a half-wrecked stone gateway, Dao Zhi sinks to his knees, and with great difficulty prostrates himself. As he struggles to rise, bent nearly double by the kindling on his back, Reno grasps his arm, bringing him to his feet.

“Show respect,” Dao Zhi gasps. “For the sake of what’s on your back.”

Reno looks through the gateway at the blackened remains of the temple, and closes his eyes. The wind’s loud in his ears. He kneels, the body precarious on his back, and puts his forehead on the ground.

The wind batters him, soughing in his ears.

“I brought him back,” Reno tells the temple, the wind.

“Rattle the trees,” says Dao Zhi. “Tell them he is home.”

—

On the other side of the temple, at the edge of the cliff, they come to an open platform of bare, exposed rock, surrounded by the skeletons of burned trees.

“Here,” Dao Zhi tells Reno.

Reno gently lets down the load on his back as Dao Zhi arranges the kindling.

“I’m sorry about the soldier clothes,” Reno says, speaking as much to Shi Hong as Dao Zhi. “I had to—“

“Be quiet, Shinra,” Dao Zhi says, not unkindly. “Be quiet for this part.”

—

Shi Hong’s body takes a long time to burn.

Reno’s sitting a ways back, leaning against piled slabs of stone. He watches as Dao Zhi tends the pyre, says some words he can’t hear, and then sits silently, his back very straight, as the fire rises.

What would you say? he wonders, watching the flames. What goodbye would you give?

Reno feels a strange pressure, then, a vast, ocean-like knowing that visits him in the wind, in the smell of the fire, in the smoke that’s blown into his face. He feels, with a weird clarity, that he and the smoke are not separate things. He gropes for words, names, but they are no more substantial than the smoke. He feels the impacted ground underneath him, the smoke bringing stinging tears to his cheeks. He closes his eyes and drops his head against the stone slabs, overcome.

He knows, all at once, exactly what the Shinra soldiers felt in their hearts when their work here was done, and why they ran away, abandoning their victory.

At length, Dao Zhi turns his back on the smoking pyre, and begins to retrace his steps toward the temple. Reno moves to follow him, then pauses, rummaging in his jacket until he finds his tin of licorice mints.

He crouches in front of the pyre, empties the mints out into his pants pocket—he will regret this move later—and gently taps some of the crumbled ash into the container.

11. Epilogue: Ashes in a tin box

Reno, leaning against the wall with his goggles over his eyes, is watching his ops supervisor weave through milling crowds to take a seat at an outside table at Turtle’s Paradise. He calls over a server; Reno can’t hear what he orders. His hair is loose. As Reno draws near, he sees that Tseng is tieless, wearing a light, almost transparent linen shirt, open at the neck.

As Reno approaches, Tseng looks up, the morning light on his face.

“Your hair,” he says.

Self-conscious, Reno runs his fingers through his bangs. Then he shoves his goggles onto his forehead, hooks his foot around one of the little cast-iron chairs, and joins Tseng at his table.

“Here to let you know,” he tells Tseng, “blondes do not have more fun.”

“You all right?”

“Intact,” Reno says. “A few things to give you.”

“Oh?”

Reno hands Tseng his credit card.

“Not too badly damaged,” Reno says. “I saved you some for, like, food money.”

“Very generous,” Tseng observes.

“And, uh…” Reno’s holding the braided cord out to Tseng, who takes it slowly. “He knew who you were,” Reno says. “Dao Zhi. He… he’s a good guy.”

Tseng’s smiling faintly.

“Is he?” he asks.

Then Reno pulls the tin of mints from his pocket, and puts it down in front of Tseng.

“I… you didn’t ask for this,” he says. “I thought maybe you’d want them. I’m sorry they’re… I didn’t have anything else to carry them in.” Tseng’s staring at the tin; his face is impossible to read. Reno is suddenly certain he’s made a mistake. “Shit,” he says.

Tseng closes his eyes. He lifts the tin briefly to his forehead, then tucks it away in his pants pocket. Then he raises his teacup to Da Chao, barely visible in the haze, and drinks.

“Ashes, in a tin box,” he murmurs. “So he’s at rest?”

“We took his body to Kelenteng,” Reno says, and watches Tseng’s eyes change.

The wind picks up, causing the bells on the eaves above their heads to chatter and sing. Tseng is perfectly still, his face shadowed by his long hair.

“I’ll never go back there, Reno,” he says, after a long silence. “But I’m glad it’s where… I’m glad you…”

He pauses, scowls at his tea. His eyes beneath his lashes are wet.

“I’m glad it was you,” he says.

—

It’s past noon. It’s technically a work day, and technically there is an assignment—Heidegger’s surveillance project in Loulan. But the two of them still haven’t left their table. They sit, saying little, drinking cold sake, watching the turbulent cloud stacking on the horizon to the east.

Reno’s sifting through fragments of Wutainese in his mind.

“Little Hong,” he says finally. “Were… were you guys related?”

“No,” Tseng says. “I… his name is written with a different character. The meaning’s not the same.”

“Sounds the same, though.”

Tseng’s face, stern and distant, softens.

“That was… I think… that name was Shi Hong’s little joke,” Tseng says. “Like and not like. Family and not family.”

“Dao Zhi called you ‘deep water.’ Like…” Reno, keenly struck both by the aptness and by the unexpected, awkward intimacy of saying the words right to Tseng’s face, falls silent.

“Well. Yes. That’s what ‘Hong’ means,” Tseng says. “In certain cases.”

They sit side by side, unmoving, as tourists from the Eastern Continent flow and eddy around their table, steady, inexhaustible, relentless.