Sara King

A Taste of the upcoming Daytona Dae, really rough:

Daytona

Daytona just couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.  It wasn’t unusual, considering that she was traveling with one of the prettiest whores in Ne’vanth City, but it had just gone on for too long to be happenstance.  As many times as she had checked their backtrail as the fancy harlot led them through the open gardens and scattered high-class street stalls of the sunny, breezy rim-level of Emir’s Market, however, she hadn’t seen a single suspicious glance, not a single person who stared at them any longer than it took to get an eyeful of Bacon before finding something else to do.  Daytona was, after all, posing as Bacon’s escort, and this was supposedly a place for the upper-levelers and their guests, which thwarted most unsolicited contact.

One word out of Bacon’s mouth, however, would have been enough to sink them.  While Daytona actually managed to carry the uppers’ stilted lisp easily enough, Bacon’s Third Level slur rang out loud and clear no matter how many times Daytona tried to correct her.  It made Daytona tense to travel with the whore, because Bacon simply could not keep her mouth shut, and they were about twenty-five city levels out of their league.

Neither of them were lasham, despite the fine darkness to their skin—Daytona’s was darker than Bacon’s, which she took particular pride in—or their height—again, Daytona was taller, which more closely mirrored the gene-modded rich—which made things tricky if they got caught.  Without a birthright to travel the Emir’s Market or any of the upper XXXX forty XXXX levels of the city reserved for the elite of Ne’vanth and their servants, both Daytona and Bacon could be sent to the forges or fed to the Emir’s beasts for the offense.

Today, they were meeting with one of Kali’s upper buyers.  Kali himself was too notorious to set foot in the city itself, so he always sent his whore, or, if the buyer was a wealthy lasham who refused to dirty himself by leaving the upper levels, Daytona had to tag along.

Daytona hated tagging along.  She hated seeing the lasham rodents lazing around in their water gardens, sipping drinks from glasses, tittering over gossip as their colorful, gauzy clothes drifted in the upper-level breeze.  She hated all the empty, open space while the lower levels forced people to sleep atop each other just to survive.  She hated the fact that the Emir had reserved the entire top three levels of the ancient Aashaanti hive for himself and his family—over a square mile of space for one man, since his brother and niece were now dead or political prisoners.  She hated the lack of Home Guard watching everyone’s every move.  She hated the sense of freedom she got in this place.  And she especially hated Bacon.

Bacon was a bitch.  An osmium-mining, finery-loving, lasham wannabe bitch who would have ditched Daytona, Kali, and the rest of the crew in an instant if she thought it meant she could stay in the upper levels long-term.  Daytona and everyone else thought Kali was stupid for trusting the whore, but Bacon had Kali wrapped up so tightly in her expensive gauze and bedazzled by her fancy jewels that he stopped thinking when she was around.  All Bacon had to do was whisper some suggestion and the very next day Kali made it law aboard his ship.  Daytona had time and again watched their captain’s breath catch at Bacon’s fluttered lashes, sultry smile, or light touches, and it disgusted her, for she had seen the greedy, backstabbing skeenk lurking under the surface.

On escort missions to the upper levels, however, Daytona wasn’t given much choice.  Bacon, as pretty as she was, marked herself as a knasham the moment she opened her foul, street-dust mouth.  That, unfortunately, was why Daytona had to escort her into places like this—Daytona, unlike Bacon, could pretend to be something she wasn’t.

“You feel like we’re being watched?” Daytona asked quietly out of the corner of her mouth, still glancing behind them.  “I’ve had that feeling since we got to forty-sixth level.”

“Don’t be a sanded twat,” Bacon said, smiling brightly.  “We’re in the uppers.  Nobody gets checked in the uppers.”  Like it was paradise, and Daytona was the corruptive worm in its midst. 

Daytona, who infuriated Bacon by insisting on wearing the dusty leather-and-linen clothes of a professional scavenger to these meetings because it would be easier to escape the Home Guard if they ever got busted mid-deal, ignored her.  Lasham weren’t banned from scavenging the Emir’s properties, and, in fact, many of the rich enjoyed it as a fun diversion from counting their coin and managing spreadsheets of their various investments.  A gentleman’s game, something to pass the time.  In Daytona’s eyes, anyone who proudly wore scavenger clothes into the upper levels was going to be, in the Home Guard’s eyes, authorized to wear them.  After all, any knasham trying actively to hide would doll themselves up in the gaudiest, most see-through silken abomination they could convince their besotted benefactor to buy her, paid for, of course, by cutting back on the salaries of everyone else on his ship.

That still dusted her cracks.  Daytona only made fifty coin a trip, with all the good artifacts she found going straight to Kali’s quarters to be sold to the highest bidder.  He’d allowed her to keep a few trinkets, but nothing worth more than a good glass of water.  She, like most of the crew, still had to save her pee to recycle for drinking water.  Bacon, on the other hand, drank from Kali’s tap and complained that it wasn’t cold.  It was like the pretty whore secretly thought she was lasham, and that everyone else on the ship, including Kali, were scabs beneath her slippered foot.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” Daytona said, keeping her voice low and her face neutral.  She was getting that itching feeling she always got right before a big find…or before the Home Guard made an unexpected appearance.  “We should get out of here.”

 Bacon laughed, an airheaded little titter that was remarkable in that it wasn’t even fake.  “You’re so stupid, Daytona.  The Home Guard aren’t allowed up here.  Nobody goes to jail in the uppers.  Nobody’s arrested.”  She snorted with such scorn that she obviously believed it.  “Anyone here could be friend or family of the Emir.  The Guard wouldn’t risk insulting a friend of the Emir.”  Again, Daytona couldn’t help but note the admiration in Bacon’s voice, the naked longing.  Sure enough, even as they walked, Bacon scanned the men lounging beside the water gardens with open desire, obviously looking for prospective clients.

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