"Ah, yes, totally legitimate reasons.  Definitely."  She nods.  "Depending on the wall, I bet there's people who could've climbed it when you were about to catch them necking even without augs.

"Surprised you're enough of a charitable sort; I saw someone just bleeding out on a couch with nobody helping."

"Takes all kinds, head. Triumphs, tribulations, jobs, kids, love, parties, drugs, death, hopes and dreams. The wheel turns. Cinci grinds on. Cynically speaking, a certain reputation makes some things easier, less hassle. Makes other things more hasslesome, whatever. And there's no more real a test of your med-techie chops than a guy bleeding out in a filthy alley, and besides that grateful chicks put out easy. Those the lies I tell myself sometimes. But I find that what goes around tends to come around. Then again, weed always did turn me into a sentimental bastard."

"What goes around comes around indeed, and the wheel of fate keeps on turning."

She hums softly.  "People aren't nice to the whores 'round here, I gather."

He snorts. "Yeah, it's real bad. The violence inherent in the system and all."

"The what.  Or, no, I understood you, I think, but -

"How dare they.

"That's not sex work anymore, it's rape, enforced by those in power, plain and simple!  A profession you can't leave...that is then repaid with violence by those whose utmost duty is to protect?  How dare they!  I've never been in that line of work myself, but at least the brothels back home let you quit!"

"Ha. You must be European then? I hear it's nice there. Not that I disagree."

"I'm not from around here, certainly.  Where I was from...

"It had its good parts, and its bad parts, like any place does - I'm sure you'd say it was cripplingly poor, for one - but while I can most definitely say there were some policies I disagreed with, it was, at least, from the top on down, trying.  'In times of lean, you will be fed; in times of wealth, you will feed others'.  That was one of the first laws my training as an adjudicator had me memorizing, right along with 'Loyalty is freedom from hunger, hostility, and hopelessness'.  That's not to say that - political realities didn't leave some asshats where they should not have been, or that I necessarily believed that this was the truth of things - but I was entrusted with the power and right to change that, delegated to me two steps from the highest power we had.  And I wasn't, I think, alone in trying.

"I've honestly lived rather a privileged life, I think.  This is going to be - an adjustment."

"It's pretty hard to believe that you used to be important, gotta be honest? That there's any place on the globe that's not dominated by avarice. Maybe you were a big fish in a tiny pond. Cinci's an ocean, mon. And yeah, the people at the top are not even really trying anymore. The thin veneer of civility, peeled back to reveal the cruel animal within. And even if you want to help, to get power, to keep power, you have to play the same game. The resource wars didn't help, of course."

He pulls on the joint again.

"I think my pond must be - an ocean the size of the stars away, if it's here at all."

She looks up into the ceiling, storm rattling away.

She flicks her fingers through a practiced symbol, and unfamiliar stars paint a sky upon the roof.

"After all, I'm the only person I know of on this planet that can do this."

"And there's not a single Spire, not the sort the Ancients built, that draw magic to and through them as they pierce the sky.

"And no-one's heard of Kyros.  Nor even the concept of an Archon.

"You really would have heard of Kyros.  Trust me, he's, she's - they're impossible to miss.  I've felt their voice scour through me as I spoke their words and a province quaked; I've proclaimed an Edict of Execution and I felt their axe loom.

"Not to mention that neither has Kyros heard of you.

"Nor did the people who taught me how to care for knives, know the secret to having so much metal you can leave burnt-out hulks of it just sitting in the wastes.

"No, I rather think I'm quite far from home.

"But that doesn't mean I can't keep to my duties.

"This place...

"The first posting I undertook as a Fatebinder, beyond - the routine of day-to-day justice - was service as a coordinator, adjudicator, and combatant as Kyros's armies marched upon the Bastard City.

"The Bastard City had its merchant houses cast unto the depths, quite literally, and its people rejoiced.

"And I'm not Tunon the Adjudicator, Archon of Justice of the Empire of Kyros the Overlord -

"But the thing you wouldn't believe about how I got here, is that I was facing down an Archon, the Archon of Secrets, who had made of his army a force as despicable as any gang but much more organized -

"And I had outmaneuvered him.

"So he escaped, I tried to keep that from happening, and the teleportation I didn't know he could do, landed me here."

He peers at the stars.

"That could be a projector in your retinas or skin, or any number of other hidden tricks. I know memories are not necessarily reliable and that's all I'll say about that for now. You should not trust me, head. I certainly don't trust you, for all that I hear something genuine in your words, head. Maybe we can get to know each other, though. Over time. Nothing too rushed."

"That sounds like a plan.

"You know, I never did ask your name?"

"I go by Roland. If you need a way into the city, I can get you sorted for two hundred fifty and a name and fake history to go with."

"Pleasure to meet you, Roland.  I think I may take you up on that when I have two hundred fifty dollars, or if you're willing to gamble on there being a market for scrolls of genuine vellum amongst the moneyed folks inside."

He perks up and puts out the remains of his blunt, smiling wide.

"Oh, I'll take vellum scrolls off you, kinda niche, but I buy and keep lots of niche stuff 'till I find a buyer. Won't even rip you off much. People know the name Roland means that. Weird obscure stuff is just fun, too. Let's see them?"

She can indeed show him a few scrolls!  "Handcrafted, too."

He takes off his gloves and handles them carefully for a minute, feeling them and rolling them open slowly before carefully closing them up again.

"Preem stuff. Seems to be real, adds to your mystery. I'll probably be able to sell these for close to a grand, eventually. Raising real animals is expensive compared to synthetics. But I do take on a lot of opportunity cost and burden of risk doing this kind of stuff, and have to let it go for less in the end. So it's only natural I need to make a profit. How does two forty per sound?"

"Hmm."

She flips open a small - almost a little notebook, made of bronze and wax, and poises herself as if to take notes with the stylus strung onto its frame.

"If I expected this to be the only transaction I wished to undertake with you, or rather the only sort of transaction I wished to undertake, I would begin haggling, at this point.

"However, I would rather -

"Cultivate an ongoing relationship.

"So.  I propose, as an alternative structure -

"The first scroll, I trade you for your services in establishing my access to the city proper.  I assume I'm going to need them; I'm not from around here.

"You retain all profit from that sale.

"The remainder, we split; you are the agent of a recently unemployed corporate supplies middlewoman from somewhere far away, who was a bit caught out by a sudden dissolution of her division.  These scrolls were purchased as a private errand from my now-dead boss, whose tastes trend to the positively archaic, and his death left me with little better to do but sell to the highest bidder."

"I hear what you're saying, but nah. One scroll for a Cinci-standard forged border pass, sure, deal. Acting as a broker for a deal on a bunch of other copies of the same luxe curiosity? I'm not in the big money business, just the day to day, working the streets. It's not gonna be all going to one person. These are living room wall pieces, or office toys, one per head at most. I can't be keeping you looped in on a dozen different deals yet, maybe when we actually do know each other."

She nods.  "Makes sense."

"I wonder if you could get a few heads in a bidding war, if you measured out the scrolls one or two at a time.  Or rather, I imagine one might, and I expect that you've enough savvy to pull it off, so I'm raising the option, because it communicates my goals.  I'm thinking I want to maximize my gains, is the main thing, rather than go for immediate profit.  If I need immediate profit, I can turn some knives around.  ...The nerve of some people, to so ill-treat their tools - but their loss is my gain."

"We'll see what happens. Cinci's big, and everyone's a hustler, folk are mostly too wise to get drawn into that. From my point of view I don't want to spend an extra twenty hours to bump the price by a couple hundred bucks, that's not gonna happen. You'll get the best price I can fetch for a serious but measured effort, if we end up doing things that way."

He looks at the knife for a bit. "You can tell a craftsman by their tools. Once saw a head with stupid numbers of different tools, wrenches a quarter-inch apart in size, all lined up nice and neat and clean on hooks on a wall, looking like they've never actually seen work. Stupider way to show off than a fancy car or expensive augs, those are both actually useful."

He digs out from the big backpack a pair of phone-like devices and a large cylinder, the length of a forearm, but wider around. There's the medical '+' symbol on it. "Gonna need to take biometrics for your border pass. That's a blood prick, handprint, and retinal scan. It will also show me if you're a mutant, and if you are deal's off, I can't get mutants past Tower unless it's real subtle."

She nods.  "I'm certainly willing to trust your expertise on the market."

The comment about telling a craftsman by their tools prompts a sage nod, but no other comment - unlike the 'mutant' one.

"Glad I'm not Beastfolk-kin; that might've been trouble.  ...Actually I'm not sure if they can interbreed with humans, come to think of it.  Regardless - pretty sure I'm just an ordinary human, as far as there's anything ordinary about me.  How's this thing going to check, though?  If you'll humor my curiosity on the subject.  Presumably something to do with the blood sample?"

"Some corp's vat-grown soldiers? Those are usually sterile, yeah. Easier to control that way. It's just a DNA and protein expression assay, nothing fancy like you take for serious medical treatment." He shrugs and pulls out a small tube with a tiny needle at the end. "The one-shot nanites in the medchem kit are commanded into diagnostic mode and then send electrical impulses based on what codons and proteins they encounter in the blood. Encrypted coprocessor chews the math for a bit and turns it into something readable- And more importantly to Tower, consistent enough between checks to make impersonation harder. Though they don't use these kits, they have dedicated devices for it, these are first aid."

"...Wow, that is a lot of words I have never actually heard before, though for what's obviously professional language it's surprisingly understandable."

Her stylus positively zooms across one panel of her diptych as she makes notes, expanding on detectable roots.

"...Beastfolk can definitely breed, though; I've seen Beastfolk kids and they don't come out of vats.  But you're not wrong that they have the - weapon mindset - always thinking about who'd win in a fight.  Don't understand mercy whatsoever.  Or the strength of intellect, necessarily.

"Not that it matters; you won't see them here, I think.  Unless another impossible thing happens, which..."

She seems to be delving deeply into memory, as she holds up a finger for holding a thought.  "I suppose if the one assassin that tried to kill me the once manages to pull off some of the bullshit a different assassin on my employer's payroll is capable of, there might be one, if either of them can follow me here.  It depends.  Wouldn't be trouble for you, though, she'd just be mad at me for what I couldn't avoid doing to her boss.  Though now that I think about it, I wonder if making a walking avalanche scream is a show of strength enough for Beastfolk culture...

"...Doesn't matter; nobody else would know what actually happened when I declared open season on Nerat, took my shot at him, and - if not missed, still failed to land a meaningful hit - so why would they look for me?

"Anyway.

"As long as you don't do anything nefarious with the blood sample, which - well, I'm going to have to trust you a bit on that - I'm okay with giving it, if it's necessary.  And I believe you that it is.  So you stick me with the tube, then?  Anywhere in particular?"

"I can theoretically get uncomfortable levels of detail about your health, or even more theoretically use it to imitate your blood sig. No fantasy shit like curses or whatever. Who the hell would bother engineering something to target your DNA specifically when they can just shoot you, right? Fingertip or arm vein. It doesn't hurt, there's just a little puff of air. You need basic tech literacy or a better backstory, nameless head."

"Unfortunately I come by my backstory honestly.  Good news is, I've never seen blood curses either, eh?  Tech literacy sounds like a wonderful investment, though."

She'll just stick herself, then.