Chapter 7 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 7 — Duendes

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: Havana · Previous: Chapter 6 — Monk seals · Next: Chapter 8 — The Bedlam Bride · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

After we collected that second card, adding Geraldo the monk seal as our first squad membe

Summary

Geraldo the monk seal is the squad's first member. Through a wrecked intersection into a neighbourhood of homes, Zev messages: Odette is travelling to the system's orbit for Faction Wars, so the interview moves; instead, tomorrow after the recap, Shadow Boxer — a documentary interview about Carl at fifteen to eighteen, without a guardian until he joined the Coast Guard ('nobody's goddamned business'), and Donut on the television that shaped her — made by the Open Intellect Pacifist Network, so a liaison will attend; Carl, remembering Orren's warning, agrees. And a preproduction meeting for the ninth floor with reps of all nine teams, virtual, catered. A pile of wrecked cars turns out to be the work of duendes: a hundred foot-tall hairy homeless men in rags, level 20, tackling ghost cyclists for their shoes; the AI's card for one of them reads Mordecai, Duende, level 20: 'Screw these guys. Kill them.' Mongo eats Mordecai first. Ten kills fill Carl's essence bar with something the colour of sewage; a new voice: 'The Scavenger's Daughter has been fed. Unleash her wrath'; the patch's fibre stitches glow brown into a shape Donut calls an aardvark. The Daughter's Kiss: a stomp that vaporises a fleeing duende, powders the sidewalk, throws every duende flat and breaks a window — and leaves an aftershock in Carl that he was not expecting to feel. Donut spits poison like Ghostbusters slime. Cards: two Time Extend and a Stout for the Royal Court, and a Flee special for Team Sister Ines. The saferoom is a coffee shop, Cuba Libro; the three decline the guild (Team Flamenco asked too), sleep in one small room, and Sister Ines does not use a litterbox — 'IT'S HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS.'

Characters

• Carl — Feels the souls leave; agrees to a pacifists' documentary.
• Princess Donut — Wants a duende named Mordecai in the squad; poison spit at level five.
• Zev — Shadow Boxer; a liaison; a catered preproduction meeting.
• Sister Ines — Declines the guild; 'I don't use a litterbox, Donut.'
• Mongo — Eats Mordecai the duende first, another on a bus roof.
• Tran — Learning the floating chair.

Locations

• Havana — A wrecked intersection; Cuba Libro, a coffee-shop saferoom; a park of human-sized mobs.

Motifs

• The Scavenger's Daughter — 'The Scavenger's Daughter has been fed'; the first Kiss and its aftershock.
• The show — A sponsor's documentary about Carl's teens; the nine-team meeting.
• T'Ghee totems — Time Extend, Stout, Flee; a deck that will not summon yet.
• The ghosts of Earth — Duendes are why the cars crash.