Chapter 28 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 28 — Toyotomi; Agatha is looking for Carl

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ramp-Up · Previous: Chapter 27 — Gavrilo Princip · Next: Chapter 29 — The Bamboozle · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

“Well, don’t get used to it,” Donut grumbled as we stepped out of the throne room.

Summary

Rend has eaten one of the rhino's boots. Toyotomi, level-70 Sai Outpost Guard Mercenary Leader, Sergeant now, contract inherited: once an honourable leader whose whole squad died to Minge in the Desperado Club — a thing Carl may have been partly responsible for — sold to the mercenary markets in the club's reorganisation, refusing to lead men, 'a broken creature' whose confidence was just returning when a man in his underwear and a talking cat tied him up and killed his charge. His Edifice Shield is meant for outposts; D'Nadia made him cast it over a castle too big for him, in spurts, and he was resting. Carl sends him to Shanty Town, which he takes for exile. Li Jun: no enemy activity, the Dragons stretched thin, and a very strange visitor — a crazy old white lady with a shopping cart, level 23, no class, who could not be recruited, could not enter Larracos, and went to the bar where Lucia Mar is camped. Agatha. Then Zev, with a direct order from Prime Minister Glory himself: do not interact with Agatha. Zev does not know why; the residuals are in every season and harmless; the AI has withdrawn its protections from them and they are all dead but this one, for whom it has a soft spot 'kinda like it has for you'. Lucia Mar does not answer messages; one of her dogs ate Mukta. The roundtable is not optional. Carl thinks it through while laying traps: residuals are hyperspatial lifeforms in a host body; two kinds; Paulie's kind wants the crawl ended by turning the AI on its captors, and since the mantises can now make more controllable AIs this old kind is their last chance, so both sides are moving now; nobody knows the why, or how the two kinds differ; and the Syndicate's own leader minding a homeless woman means their understanding changed at the end of the last floor. The parties: the council, two kinds of residual, the Apothecary, the Plenty, the Open Intellect, the Nebulars, Odette. A blank puzzle with decoy pieces. Traps everywhere but the throne room; a warning that Madness forces occupy it and the land goes to the Dream in six hours — because Carl has left Lockjaw the Madness gnoll in there on a chair with snacks and sent the Dream's man walking home, so that the Bloc's warlords must fall out over who takes it. Two down. 'It's blob-hunting season.'

Characters

• Toyotomi — An outpost guard who wants to die defending a building; sent to Shanty Town instead.
• Agatha — Level 23, no class, with a cart, asking for Carl by name.
• Zev — Passes on the Prime Minister's order and a memory of Mukta screaming.
• Lucia Mar — Still at the bar; her dog ate a kua-tin once.
• Li Jun and Zhang — Li Jun near the orc border, short of soldiers.
• Carl — Lays traps and a political one: Lockjaw on a chair in the throne room.

Locations

• The Prism headquarters — Looted, trapped, and left to the Bloc to quarrel over.
• Shanty Town — Where a broken rhino is sent, and where Agatha wandered.

Motifs

• The Residuals — Two kinds, one last chance, an order from the top of the Syndicate.
• The Syndicate — Prime Minister Glory, via Zev: do not talk to her.
• The Desperado Club — Its dead guards, one of them here.
• Faction Wars — A throne room left occupied by one enemy to divide the rest.