Free Elephants and Corpses by Kameron Hurley Page B

in violet and black lunged forward. She wielded a shimmering straight sword with crimson tassels, like something a general on the field would carry.
    â€œGrab the body,” the woman said. Her eyes were hard and black. There were two armed women behind her, and a spotty boy about twelve with a crossbow.
    Nev held up his hands. Sometimes his tongue was faster than his reflexes, and with the face he had on this particular form, it had been known to work wonders. “I’m happy to sell it to you. Paid a warthing for it, though. I’d appreciate—”
    â€œKill these other two,” she said.
    â€œNow, that’s not—” Nev began, but the women were advancing. He really did hate it when he couldn’t talk his way out. Killing was work, and he didn’t like doing work he wasn’t paid for.
    He backed up against the far wall with Tera as the gang came at them. Tera, too, was unarmed. She shifted into a brawler’s stance. He was all right at unarmed combat, but surviving it required a fairer fight than this one. Four trained fighters with weapons against two without only ended in the unarmed’s favor in carnival theater and quarter-warthing stories.
    Nev looked for a weapon in reach—a hack saw, a fluid needle, anything—and came up empty. His scimitar was halfway across the room.
    If they wanted the body, then, he’d give it to them.
    He whistled at Tera. She glanced over at him, grimaced, tightened her fists.
    Nev pulled the utility dagger at his belt and sliced his own forearm from wrist to elbow. Blood gushed. He said a little prayer to God’s eye, more out of tradition than necessity, and abandoned his mortally wounded body.
    There was a blink of darkness. Softness at the edges of his consciousness.
    Then a burst of awareness.
    Nev came awake inside the body on the slab. He couldn’t breathe. He rolled off the slab and hit the floor hard, vomiting bloody water, a small fish, and something that looked like a cork. His limbs were sluggish. His bowels let loose, covering the floor in bloody shit, piss, and something ranker, darker: death.
    He gripped the edge of the slab and pulled himself up. His limbs felt like sodden bread. Putting on a new, dead skin of the wrong gender often resulted in a profound dysphoria, long-term. But he didn’t intend to stay here long.
    The attackers were yelling. The kid got down on his knees and started babbling a prayer to the Helix Sun god. Nev had his bearings now. He flailed his arms at them and roared, “Catch me, then!” but it came out a mush in the ruined mouth of the dead woman whose body he now occupied.
    He waited until he saw Tera kick open the latch to the safe room and drag his bleeding former body into it. The one with such a pretty face. Then he turned and stumbled into the courtyard.
    A dozen steps. He just needed to make it a dozen steps, until his spirit had full control of the body. Second wind, second wind—it was coming. Hopefully before he lost his head. If he didn’t get them out far enough, they’d just run back in and finish off Tera and what was left of his old body. He really liked that body. He didn’t want to lose it.
    The gang scrambled after him. He felt a heavy thump and blaring pain in his left shoulder. Someone had struck him with an ax. He stumbled forward. Falid trumpeted as he slipped past. He considered putting Falid between him and the attackers—maybe some better body merc would have—but his heart clenched at the idea. He loved that stupid elephant.
    He felt hot blood on his shoulder. A good sign. It meant the blood was flowing again. Second wind, second wind …
    Nev burst out of the courtyard and into the street. The piercing light of the setting suns blinded him. He gasped. His body filled with cramping, searing pain, like birth. He’d been reborn a thousand times in just this way; a mercenary who could never die, leaping from host to host as