[HEART OF JANUS] OF MUTUAL BENEFIT: SUCCESS

Your arrangement with Asa… though you’re not telling him everything, you really can solve one of his problems. Asa recognises that.

‘Aite, agreed,’ Asa said, pushing his hand forward to shake Sham’s own.

Sham noted that Asa hadn’t done that before, and wondered what had happened in this particular Loop to change that. Had Kryl, or Riot, or the Target done something differently this time around to change Asa’s temperament? Or was it Sham’s own slight changes in action, in wording? Not that it mattered.

‘And a Magnetism vial in return?’ Sham asked.

‘You make the deal, and I’ll sort you out. I keep my word.’

The guard who’d let Sham in seemed to finally relax, her shoulders slumping, a long breath inaudible escaping her mouth. She knew, now, that letting Sham in here wasn’t a mistake; a knowledge reaffirmed by the wide, part-toothy grin on her employer’s face.

. . .

‘I know your boss,’ Sham said to the large, towering bouncer who guarded the back rooms of Harcourt’s casino.

‘I don’t know you,’ the large man replied.

‘I was here two days ago! Don’t you remember? Got chased down by you lot. Dragged me out from under a blackjack table, if I remember correctly.’

‘Roulette,’ Recollection reminded him. ‘A roulette table.’

‘I wasn’t in that day.’

‘Off sick?’

‘I have my daughter that day,’ the man answered.

‘Oh. Well, can’t you just… ask someone else?’ Sham looked around the casino floor, already getting busy even at this early-ish hour. He spotted another bouncer across the room and began waving him over.

In reply, the other guard shot the first a question in the form of a raised eyebrow, and then the man that Sham had been speaking to finally relented by nodding.

. . .

‘You return so soon,’ Kryl said. The three of them—Kryl, Sham and Harcourt—were sat around the brilliant gold crown in the “safe” room.

‘Well you did ask me to,’ Sham retorted. ‘I’m on board your little scheme now, aren’t I? Might as well make use of me.’

‘I don’t have anything for you,’ Kryl replied. ‘Not yet.’

‘Not yet? In only another six days we’ll be back at the start again. It’s not like you have much—’

‘What?’ Harcourt interrupted. ‘Six days? What is he talking about, Kryl?’

Kryl shook his head, waved Harcourt away. ‘Leave us,’ he said to the gentleman. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

Kryl and Sham watched Harcourt go in silence, then turned back to one another as the door closed behind their host.

‘I would rather you restrained from mentioning the Loop in Harcourt’s presence,’ Kryl said.

‘You haven’t told him about it?’

‘Oh, I think you know how that goes, don’t you? Results only in others thinking you mad.’

Sham raised his eyebrows; on this point he didn’t disagree. ‘So what’s the plan here, Kryl? What are you thinking of doing to get your queen back here?’

‘All in good time, Mr Tilner.’

‘In good time? As I just said, we only got six days until—’

‘Six days in this Loop, yes. But we have an eternity in which to act.’

Sham gulped. ‘I don’t know if I can do this for an eternity.’

‘I don’t believe that is my problem.’

Sham shook his head, and then stood to leave. ‘Fine, if you don’t have—’

‘There is one last thing,’ Kryl said.

Sham shrugged his palms upwards into the air to ask Kryl to continue.

‘Acquaintances of mine reported Riot’s presence at The Heavens last night. From the description of her dining partner, it sounded as though she was with you.’

Sham suppressed a grimace. ‘Is that a problem?’

Kryl ignored the question. ‘What is there between the two of you?’

‘I don’t believe…’ Sham started, then melodramatically searched his pockets for an imaginary notebook. He pulled “it” out, licked his finger tip, and then pretended to leaf through it. ‘No, that’s right. I’ve just checked: I ain’t believe it’s any of your business.’

‘She’s too good for you, Mr Tilner,’ Kryl replied without a beat of hesitation. ‘You’re—’

‘From the Harbour District,’ Sham interrupted. ‘I know. But we’ll let her decide what’s good enough for her, shall we?’

Sham accompanied this retort with a confident smile, but inside, his stomach was twisting. He wasn’t sure he was fully on board with this cross-class interaction either, though not for the same reasons as Kryl.

‘Yeah,’ Recollection muttered. ‘Thought you hated the posh.’

But here Sham was, with feelings growing for Riot that he couldn’t really any longer deny. If there was anyone of the upper class he wanted to be with, it was Riot. He didn’t think being working class would be a problem, but—truth be told—he couldn’t say for sure that Riot wouldn’t.

‘Yes,’ Kryl replied, ‘let’s let her decide.’

. . .

‘Riot!’ Sham shouted up at her apartment building. ‘Riot, you up there?’

He’d come straight here after his interaction with her brother at the casino, Kryl’s words having got under his skin. But he’d pressed at the electronic doorbell for the penthouse apartment over and over, and nobody had arrived to let him in. At this point, his shouting was starting to attract attention.

Finally, the doorman—yes, this building had a doorman—who had been watching Sham all this time relented and approached the front door. The man unlocked the latch, and Sham meant to step inside, but the doorman blocked him.

‘And who is it you are here to visit, sir?’ the doorman asked.

‘Riot.’

‘Yes, sir. I did hear that part. Do you have a surname?’

‘How many Riots live here, then?’

‘Do you have a surname, sir?’ the doorman asked again.

‘Resnuc. Riot Resnuc.’

‘I don’t think so, sir.’

‘No,’ Sham replied, ‘I know she lives here. I’ve been here.’

‘I don’t think you will be visiting her, sir.’

It took a second for the penny to drop. It was the twang in Sham’s accent, the shabbiness of his grooming, the roughness of his clothes. It was Sham’s position in society that was giving the doorman pause. It was that he was from the Harbour District that the doorman didn’t believe he could have any business here.

‘Oh, fuck off,’ Sham muttered, then moved to barge through.

‘If you attempt to force entry then I will be compelled to signal for the police.’

‘Yeah? Try it.’

. . .

The jail cell was just as Sham remembered.

There was no reason it wouldn’t be, of course. Though for Sham it had been a few weeks since he was last here, from everyone else’s point of view he was actually there a day earlier than before. Though maybe that wasn’t a great way to look at it.

Sham had been kept on the uppermost level of the Tower’s dungeons, reserved for petty thieves and people who didn’t pay fines, and the like. And there was no real evidence he had done anything wrong—at least not on the attempted breaking and entering charge that he’d been brought in for. So when Sham was let go, he’d thought it had been a by-product of bureaucracy rather than having been bailed out. And then he’d assumed it was Riot who had bailed him out, just like before.

But it was Ariel, of all people, who stood waiting for him.

‘Sham,’ she greeted him with a smile. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘You?’

‘Me, yes,’ Ariel replied. ‘Were you expecting someone else?’

‘Wasn’t expecting anyone, if I’m honest.’

Ariel shrugged as she led Sham out of the jailhouse. ‘Yes, well… We don’t abandon our brothers and sisters, in the church. Speaking of—I haven’t seen you at a service in a while. I hope that doesn’t mean you’re continuing your foolish efforts to break the Loop.’

‘I think you must know the answer to that,’ Sham retorted.

‘Yes, well… quite. But please, Sham, I do ask that you reconsider. Your actions don’t reflect well on the rest of us.’

‘No?’ Sham replied, following Ariel over to a bench he’d once sat upon with Riot. ‘And how’s that?’

Ariel sighed. ‘It would seem some twist of fate has put you outside the Legion’s gaze; one that I don’t quite understand myself. But when the Loop doesn’t progress as it should, then there are those who assume that we are to blame. There are those who would… do harm to us. Those who would make us pay for others’ mistakes.’

‘Look, I—’

‘Do me a favour, brother. You still have your robes?’

Sham nodded; they were bunched in a ball on his apartment floor.

‘Wear them. For a day. See what its like to have society look down their nose at you.’

Sham couldn’t help but snicker. ‘Honestly, Ariel? I know what that’s like already. I’m from the Harbour District! I’ve had that every single day of my life.’

Ariel replied first with a polite smile, and then, ‘Just try it, Sham. Please.’

. . .

Sham didn’t quite know why, but he did as Ariel suggested. He returned to his flat, he pulled the crumpled robes from the floor, and then he put them on. It was, maybe, from a sense of morbid curiosity that he did so—the gods knew that he was always a little self-destructive.

‘Yes, do mind the bottles on the floor on your way out,’ Recollection chided him.

He strolled out of his apartment building, down the external staircase, all the while keeping his head held high, as though his wearing green robes was nothing to be ashamed of. And it wasn’t, really, of course. They hadn’t done anything wrong, even if society was being trained to think so. All they were guilty of was being a little weird, and of being a little too rigid in their beliefs.

But that didn’t stop almost everyone that Sham passed from staring at him. This was how he felt in the Sunrise District, of course; someone like him stood out there like a sore thumb. He wore the wrong clothes for the Sunrise District, the wrong hair, the wrong lack of arrogant posture. But he’d never felt like an outcast in the Harbour District before.

‘Go back to Crater,’ one passer-by spat at him, accompanying the order with actual saliva.

Sham came to a stop and glared after the man who’d said this to him, his manic eyes apparently making the man turn sheepish—slinking away without another word said. Ariel really had a point, then: her “brothers and sisters” did suffer more hardship that Sham really knew. All they had to do to avoid it was to take off the robes, but they didn’t. They didn’t because their beliefs were more important to them than their avoiding insult.

With a sigh, Sham turned and ambled over to somewhere to sit, to think, and to drink caffeine.

. . .

Sham sat and drunk a tea made far too weak at a cafe he hadn’t been before. It wasn’t located far from the coastline; so far had he walked from his apartment that the roads were a little less familiar to him. Only a little, though, of course. The Harbour District was still his home, even if those who snarled at his new green robes didn’t seem to think so.

The server had been short with him, too; and that was something he didn’t expect in this part of town. Cafes and tea rooms were a sacred place, where there’s smiles all round and friendly banter for days. He did not expect his cup of tea placed down on his table with such force that some of it spilled over the lip.

There were far worse injustices in the world, but this was the point at which Sham decided he could take the robes no longer. He pulled them off—he had his regular clothes underneath, of course—and stuffed them back into a bag. He understood more where Ariel was coming from, now. Those Loopkeepers had a rough deal, and any more attention put upon them by messing with the Loop was extra pressure.

That didn’t mean he was going to stop, though. That didn’t mean he wasn’t still going to try to break it. He could live with the Loop just as much as—

Sham’s line of thought was broken when he realised he was absent-mindedly staring at a familiar face.

At the entrance to the cafe, standing with one hand clasped around a young girl’s, was Asa. They stared at one another, unspeaking, for a few moments.

‘Hi,’ Sham eventually ventured. ‘Didn’t expect to see you here.’

Asa gulped softly, then crouched and turned to the young girl at his side. ‘Why don’t you go pick out a sandwich at the counter, yeah?’

‘OK daddy!’ the girl announced a tad too loudly, and then ran off towards the rear of the cafe with the too-heavy steps of young children. Partway, she stopped, turned to her father, and called out, ‘What do you want, daddy?’

‘The usual,’ he replied. ‘Cheers, darling.’

Asa sat down at Sham’s table, opposite him. ‘Didn’t expect to see me here, yeah? Didn’t think I drink? Didn’t think I eat?’

‘No, course not,’ Sham said. ‘Just… I dunno. Figured you were busy down at End Street, was all.’

‘Yeah, yeah I’m busy. Always busy. Still got a family to see, though. You understand how it is.’

Sham opened his mouth to correct the man. To say “actually, no, I don’t,” but the words never came. Instead, Asa stood back up from the table again and whispered down to Sham, ‘We never met. Yeah?’

Sham replied with a nod, and watch the man go to join his daughter over at the counter. ‘Just to go today, sweetheart,’ Asa said.

. . .

Sham didn’t quite remember getting thrown out of the cafe, but it had definitely happened. There were fragments of memory here and there. An argument. A fist thrown—his own, maybe? An order of whisky. A failed Hardened Liver check.

Something had happened back there to tip Sham over the edge, and this “something” was about the only part that Sham actually could remember.

Asa’s daughter had happened. Or, rather, the concept of someone as criminal and as dangerous as Asa having a family to go home to. Even Asa, with all the shit he was involved in, had managed to make a family for himself. Even Asa had that, and Sham…

Sham was alone.

That was when the drinking had begun. “Just one” whisky, Sham reckoned he had asked for—though maybe he was re-writing history a little there to shine a better light on himself.

Sham shook his head wildly, trying to rid himself of these transgressing thoughts. It was a bit refreshing, at least, that these intruding thoughts were of his own making, rather than commentary from either of the two skills living in his brain.

There was a task at hand. Sham knew that. Didn’t quite know what it was, for a moment, though. Then he remembered, finally: it was time to make the trade.

He stumbled onwards, heading for the familiar sights of Plenty Harbour.

. . .

‘Good. Identities are hidden. We do as…’ the foreign sailor trailed off, studying Sham with a curious gaze. ‘Are you well?’ he asked.

‘Just drunk,’ Recollection said.

‘Just drunk,’ Sham repeated aloud.

The captain narrowed his eyes. ‘Hm,’ he said.

‘Say,’ Sham found himself saying. ‘There’s an old man out there.’ He pointed wildly to the piers behind him. ‘He’s gonna walk in on us in a minute.’

The sailor pulled his gun from his holster. ‘What you say?’

‘No no! No no no,’ Sham said, waving at the weapon. ‘You don’t need to shoot him. He won’t remember all this next time around.’

The sailor stared at him blankly.

‘Though I suppose he won’t remember getting shot either, so…’ Sham made a wet exasperated noise. ‘Oh. Payment. Yes. That note you’re gonna give me. If you could do that, please.’

. . .

Sham found himself at home once more, the shot from the captain’s revolver still ringing in his ears. He couldn’t sleep. Or maybe he already had—it was light outside, after all. Either way, he didn’t feel rested. Either way, his head was killing him. Either way…

He lost his line of reasoning to the aether and then stood up from his ever-uncomfortable bed. He staggered over to the doorway, meaning to leave once more, but found himself gripping his doorframe for support.

Opposite, his neighbour’s door was bashed in. Sham stared at it. As terrible as his life was, at least he hadn’t been the victim of whatever had happened there.

He dwelled on this point as he vomited.

. . .

‘It was Magnetism you wanted, yeah?’ Asa was saying.

‘Yeah,’ Sham replied. ‘Magnetism. That’ll sort out all my issues, I reckon.’ It was a strange lie to come out of his mouth; he didn’t believe it, and he didn’t think anyone who heard it would believe it either.

‘I have others,’ Asa said. ‘Some I ain’t gonna part with—the Vigours of the world—but there’s some I could take or leave. Maybe… Maybe you want a Joy vial, yeah?’

‘Joy?’ Sham repeated to himself.

‘Yeah, you know: joy,’ Asa said. ‘The ability to, like, find happiness in shit. What with the state of you…’ He trailed off; nothing more needed to be said on that particular front.

When Sham remained silent, Asa pulled the vial from the crate behind him.

‘Take it,’ Asa said. ‘Take the Joy.’