Chapter 37 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 37 — The eye of the Bedlam Bride

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: Havana · Previous: Chapter 36 — Nekhebit · Next: Chapter 38 — Monroe County · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

“Okay, here we go,” Odette said.

Summary

Donut headbutts Odette's breastplate goodbye. A twist: only squad leaders transfer to the choosing room and fight first, alone, against an easy opponent with junk cards. Donut and Quasar vanish; Zev is pulled to an all-hands, an unmanned liaison spy ship having been shot out of orbit. Odette takes off her helmet and breastplate: fifteen minutes off the record. On the silent screen Donut, leaning on Mongo, chooses among four lit spots and picks Miami, the choice Rosetta's show had hidden for her.

Odette's advice: Huanxin will want Katia below more than ever; if not, Katia should eat the orchid now and force her hand. Carl erupts that there is no we, that every corner brings someone new waiting to use them, Odette included.

Then Odette, old and tired: 'It's about Mordecai. It always has been.' Her cousin Pieter was a friendless boy; her friend was Armita; in the dungeon she was forced to choose between them and picked her friend, and the dungeon broke Pieter into pieces that were wrong. Her exit was to become a game guide, not a Celestial Attendant like Armita, and a manager to Mordecai, who looked up to his brother as Pieter had. The Bedlam Bride is from her own mythology: never stare into her blinding eye, the obsession that blinds you to everything else.

Near the end of her contract she stared. Through Armita she made an illegal deal with Huanxin to rig the game for part of her bonus; when Huanxin, driving the goddess Dodola, asked for more, Odette broke the deal and trapped the goddess, and Chaco killed her — Huanxin out of the Ascendency before it began, Mordecai to the next floor, Uzzi dead. Huanxin's first act the next season was to have Armita killed, legally; she lost Dodola and took a token ban, and Odette was arrested and tried on a warrant bought by the man who became her husband. Odette has watched Mordecai drink and weep for years.

Huanxin wanted Odette on the field as an adjutant so she could kill her legally; Odette is planning something more extreme that will most likely kill them both. Carl asks how he can trust the highest paid cheerleader for all this: 'If it wasn't me, it would be someone worse.' Then, wild-eyed, she explains the mantises' purpose: the mantises graft resurrected AIs into planetary engines, and every crawl, Battle Royale and Land War planet is used to collect fuel, the elements; entertainment came later, and the crawl must be shut down responsibly lest half the known universe die. It is all coming together this season. On screen Mongo tears out the throat of Donut's first opponent. 'See you on the inside, Carl.'

Characters

• Shi Maria — Odette's own proverb about the Bedlam Bride: the blinding eye of obsession.
• Odette — Confesses Pieter, Armita, Dodola and Uzzi; sees only one thing; plans to die.
• Carl — Rages, then listens; still cannot tell truth from performance.
• Princess Donut — Alone, she picks Miami; her first real fight ends with Mongo.
• Mongo — Kills Robert the Human in one bite.
• Lexis — Counts the minutes; gasps once.
• Huanxin Jinx — Drove Dodola; killed Armita; wanted Odette legally within reach.
• Mordecai — Odette's whole purpose; Uzzi's brother; a trust waiting.
• Armita — The friend chosen over the cousin; brokered the deal; killed next season.
• Pieter — Odette's cousin, thirteen, broken into wrong pieces.
• Chaco — Killed Dodola in the containment.
• Zev — Pulled away by a shot-down probe.
• Robert the Human — Level 40, seventy, a sailor suit reading 'Gene'.

Locations

• Production trailers — The set with the mask off; fifteen minutes.
• The choosing room — A globe with four lit spots; Miami.

Motifs

• Odette and Mordecai — The prologue explained: the deal, the goddess, the brother, the guilt.
• The Celestial Ascendency — Dodola then; Nekhebit now; a plan to kill Huanxin and herself.
• Primal engines — Fuel collection: the elements, the planetary engines, the seeded systems.
• The ghosts of Earth — 'The byproduct of the biological overgrowth.'
• This is what we lost — 'Everyone this cruelty touches, it shatters.'
• Secrets — A confession no one else has heard; trusts for Mordecai and Chaco.
• T'Ghee totems — The squad leader fights alone; Robert the Doll and Dog.