Nor Nursery, who stood in the background with the other soldiers. She stared at us from behind the holes in her cloth mask, and the music box plinked the most intense tune I’d heard of it, the dusky rose gas filling our neighborhood.

Blinding 11.7

“Make you a deal,” I said.

Lord of Loss shook his head, his ‘face’ a smiling collection of metal strips. It was overlarge, looming as much as the rest of him.

“We’ve got a big, big bag of money,” I said. “We want to buy your services. You’ll get more than you will working for Love Lost, you get to keep your hands clean, and you can steer clear of the clusterfuck surrounding that group.”

“No,” Lord of Loss said. “That’s not how we operate.”

“You’re mercenaries,” Chastity said.

“We are.”

“That’s the number one thing about mercenaries, you’ll do anything for money!”

“We work for money. Rules are necessary.”

“Being able to switch sides and do the crazy betrayal thing while getting paid for it has got to be the best part of being a mercenary, and you’re giving that up!?” Chastity asked, aghast, the tension of the small army that was lined up against us adding to the extremes and modulation of her voice.

All around us, the landscape was changing. Snow was melting, heaps of it by the sides of the road that had been cleared for construction toppling and folding into itself. The wind continued to whip around us, and the air that carried that air to us made me aware of how stale it was, with something mixed into it, like an oppressive haze of baby powder or shampoos.

“We get hired, we do the job, we do it well. Rinse, repeat,” Lord of Loss intoned the words, his voice low in the way only brutes could manage. “We keep up the rules of the game, we don’t make enemies we don’t have to.”

Others in that mob were looking ready to throw themselves at us. Nursery in particular looked ready to draw blood.

To stall, I decided to try something. “I’ll make you another deal. Talk with us. Let’s make sure we’re on the same page. If you still think that this is okay when we’re done, then we pick up where we left off. In—”

“No,” Lord of Loss said.

“In exchange,” I said. “We pay you for your time. We pass you money hand over fist to buy your time. Nursery gets more control over her area, we get nothing except your consideration.”

“Not your money to give away,” Aroa said, under her breath.

“I’m guessing it’s not yours either,” Lord of Loss said, talking past me to address Aroa. He chuckled as much as anything as he uttered, “No.”