Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (knowledgeable books to read .txt) 📗

back door of the saloon. Wooden floorboards creaked under our feet. I blinked, trying to get my eyes to hurry up and adjust to the sudden dimness so I could see.

The barroom was full of aliens in all kinds of weird combinations of space and cowboy gear. Leather dusters, HUDs, boots and six-shooters and ray guns, slot machines and holographic card tables. Some kind of player-piano style instrument made out of different-sized spinning glass cups cranked out your standard Earth saloon music. Almost.

Warcry was at the bar, having a drink with some of the other fighters who’d survived their fights. Ripper, the shark guy who’d been in the locker room, was pounding him on the back.

Must’ve been Warcry’s Welcome to the Gang celebration. Great. Awesome for him.

“As you’ve no doubt noticed,” the Bailiff said, obviously tired of not talking, “life out here on the Van Diemann frontier isn’t easy, but it’s got its luxuries.”

One of his ghost hands reached out as we passed and smacked a humanoid cat in a saloon gal dress on her butt. She giggled and winked at him.

“Luxuries the OSS controls very carefully.” The Bailiff took a detour across the floor, weaving through the drinkers and card players, and headed for the back wall of the saloon, near the glass cup instrument. “We own a little piece of everything west of the Shut-Ins—whores, gambling, fighting, bootlegged elixirs... You’ve got to stir a lot of pots to keep the revenue coming in when you’re unaffiliated.

“Course, we’re not going to stay unaffiliated long.” The Bailiff hooked a ghost thumb over his shoulder at Warcry, who was wiping some beer foam from his split lip. “Your old pal there’s going to help us win a Big Five affiliation at the Wilderness Territorial Tourney this year. Fighting’s what a hooligan like him’s best at, and everybody’s already heard the Under-18 Intergalactic Fighting Champ was on-planet. I imagine, when the tourney’s over, he’ll roll straight into working hooligan for us. Probably make OSS 29 or 30 by the end of the year. You, on the other hand, my lowly servant friend, your job has yet to be determined.”

As we crossed the room, I started to feel pressure in my ears like when you dive into the deep end of a pool and sink to the bottom. They were about to pop when the Bailiff stopped beside a holographic card table. He tipped his bowler hat to the players, which consisted of a few different kinds of humanoid alien cowboys and an elf-eared Ylef wearing riverboat gambler’s duds.

“Your honor, Of Smoke and Silk 1, right mighty leader Shogun Takiru.”

The Ylef looked down his long nose at us.

“This is the loser of the human fight, I take it?” he asked in this quiet, icy voice.

“Yessiree, Shogun.”

The Ylef raised an eyebrow at me.

A huge ghost hand grabbed me by the back of the neck and shoved my head down until I was bowing.

“He wants a little training in manners, I’ll grant you that,” said the Bailiff. “But we can put him in with the distillers—they always need new surrogate cultivators—and he almost gave the new hooligan a run for it in the fight. I figure half a day as a training dummy, half a day distilling, with the option to gofer as needed.”

When no one said anything for a second, I looked up from under my hair at the elf, Shogun Takiru. He picked up a deck of holographic cards and flipped the top card into his right hand with the thumb of his left, staring at me the whole time.

“What’s his Spirit type?” he asked finally.

“Unknown,” the Bailiff said. “Probably comes from some backwater on the Empties side of the galaxy.”

The Shogun nodded, still flicking cards. “Have Muta’i divine him, then put him to work. Whatever you think he can handle.”

“Consider it done, your honor.” The Bailiff tipped his hat again, then used the giant ghost hand to shove me down until my knees buckled and I was kneeling on the floor with my forehead touching the dusty floorboards. I gritted my teeth and strained my neck as hard as I could to lift my face out of the dirt, but the ghost arm was way too strong. “Now, hop to it, lad. You’ve got work to do.”

The ghost arm lifted me back to my feet and turned me toward the door. Right away, the pressure in my ears started to ease up. It got better the farther from the Shogun’s table we were.

I reached up to wipe the dirt off my face.

The Bailiff smacked my hand down.

“You’ll keep what you got genuflecting to his honor the mighty Shogun, and you’ll like it,” he said in that annoyingly cheerful voice. “It’s just one of the many glamorous prizes you won with that performance out there in the cage. But wait, there’s more.”

He shouldered his way through the swinging saloon doors and out into the bright white-blue sunlight. “You’ll also be getting room and board on the sheer generosity of the OSS. All you’ll have to do in return is a little cultivating, training, and errand running. More than fair, if you ask me.”

We crossed the street to a big building with a false front shaped like those Turkish domes. The sign said Distilling Co. in peeling gold paint.

“Welcome to your workplace for the next three sixty-six,” the Bailiff said, flashing those brush-teeth at me. “Get that door for us.”

The ghost hand shoved me to a wooden screen and held me in place until I opened it for the jerkwad. He sauntered in, then the ghost hand dragged me behind him.

The Winchester on my wrist beeped. I frowned and looked down at it.

“If you check that message while I’m talking to you, I’m likely to get a touch miffed,” the Bailiff said, bringing out that tattoo shock remote. “Let it be, or I’ll take the starch right out of your collar. Got me?”

I nodded.

His black eyes glittered. “I like to hear vocal assent. Nobody