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Sixty-forty, Greed says. That’s my final offer. It’s generous, and you know it.
From her horse all the way at the head of the little caravan, Lan Fan turns around and eyes them.
Ling is working on a theory about how the way automail stimulates the nerves in the brain differently than incorporated limbs has the unintended side effect of making the wearer slightly psychic, but that makes it hard to explain why Ed is such a blockhead. Maybe there’s an optimal amount of automail feedback, and too much fries your brain for everything but alchemy.
The first rule of negotiation, Ling says, is to recognize one’s own leverage.
Greed can’t force Ling’s hand. So little of Greed’s essence survived the last battle that his soul-fueled powers persist, but his will can muster only a fraction of its previous fortitude. He can tussle for control, but it isn’t much of a fight. There simply isn’t enough of him left to win.
Ling can voluntarily grant him command of their shared corporeal vessel.
But Greed isn’t capable of taking it anymore.
Five percent is the best you’re going to get, Ling says. Night hours only. And I want the shield.
Greed has developed a considerable talent for intimating physical sensations in a nothing-space. He isn’t actually gritting his teeth, but the thought-sound is unmistakable, and the tendons in Ling’s neck tighten in response to the intention.
Fifteen, Greed says. And I want concubines.
No, you don’t, Ling says. They’re not a team. They might try to kill each other. Or you.
This time, Greed scoffs so expertly that Ling feels it in his—their?—vocal chords. What the hell is the point of being emperor of a goddamn world-power nation-state if you can’t have any fucking concubines? This is a scam. Isn’t it? You’ve been running a long con on my poor, sweet, angelic ass this entire time. I bet you’re not even a real prince, you little shit.
Ling laughs.
Lan Fan sighs.
To be perfectly honest—which is something of a dangerous prospect when Ling doesn’t know exactly how permeable the barrier between his consciousness and Greed’s might be now—he doesn’t know if this is going to work. As far as he can tell, Bradley is the only other human being who has ever absorbed a Homunculus, and that was designed to result in a hostile takeover, rather than a symbiosis. It’s not the prospect of being unique in the universe that preoccupies him—he’s known he was doomed to be extraordinary since he was four, when he first realized that other people were satisfied with letting things happen to them—but the downside of being unprecedented is that there’s no guarantee you’ll survive.
Then again, there was also no guarantee he would survive it the first time. Or the second, when he twisted his own qi into what should have been an impossible shape to fuse the fading remnants of Greed’s manufactured soul to his. He hadn’t had the slightest concrete assurance that he could even use himself as a scaffold to bind a fragment of a being to himself and try to help it heal, whether or not there was an empty channel carved into the perfect shape from the first time he’d accepted Greed.
He’d done it anyway. He would do it again.
In any case, there’s no sense belaboring an unknowable. He’s alive so far, and life is much more fun when you’re not afraid of losing it.
Besides, he has a feeling that the best is yet to come.
Emerging from the desert into the fringes of his country proper feels like gasping in the first breath of unimpeded air after forging through a sandstorm. Ling would know. Greed does, now, too.
There’s a sense of renewal to it—a moisture seeping back in after the desiccating aridity of existing so far from all the things that he belongs to, and that belong to him. Xing is not an oasis: it’s the center of the universe. The whole rest of the world is a desert.
Even sun-scorched and filthy, caked in sweat crusted with sand, just laying eyes on the roads he used to run—with his arms out on either side, barefoot and fearless, dreaming of how far his legs could carry him if he simply didn’t waver—lifts his heart until he swears he can taste it in the back of his throat. He only barely manages to resist the urge to wave delightedly at the weary, wary rice farmers who glance up from their work as the horses clop their way past.
I’m not seeing enough genuflection, Greed says. Don’t these people know who we are?
Right now? Ling says. Are you kidding? Have you seen us?
We look imperial, Greed says, by definition.
We look like scrappy nomads who barely survived the crossing, Ling says. Questionable merchants at best.
I think you mean “the best questionable merchants,” Greed says. We’re high-quality. Let me at ’em. I’ll remind them they should be groveling at our feet. No problem.
Why? Ling says.
Greed implies scratching his head. Why what?
Why should they grovel? Ling says. What have they done? What have we done that they haven’t, other than happen to have been born with a kind of power that can’t be bought?
What the hell are you? Greed says. A communist? You convinced my poor, innocent ass that we’re trekking all the way out to this weird swamp full of—whatever that is—
Rice, Ling says, helpfully.
—this weird swamp full of rice specifically to become the damn emperor, Greed says, and then you want to liberate the masses and redistribute wealth and try to force the world to be fair or something? What are you, five? The rich get richer, the strong get stronger, and the shitty accident of existence is what deals your hand. If you don’t like it, get out.
Of my own head, Ling says.
I’ll take good care of it, Greed says. Loan me a hand, and I’ll pinky swear.
Ling smiles at the next farmer who looks up at him, pushing her hat back, swiping sweat off her brow.
She doesn’t smile back.
The rice fields melt into foothills. The foothills usher up fields of flowers and tracts where livestock graze and, increasingly, homesteads that tighten into houses. Next come the taller buildings, the finer fences, and increasingly manicured trees and hedgerows.
And then the walls of the imperial city rise sharp and stark dark gray, jutting up from the colors of the landscape like a flintstone on the horizon. Ling has seen it from a distance on a hundred-thousand different occasions, but this is the first time it’s reminded him of his own hand encased in the Ultimate Shield—slate-gray, unrelenting, the towers like clawed fingers outstretched towards the sky. Grasping. Greedy.
Lan Fan has started looking back at him more frequently, likely trying to gauge his mood. Her feelings must be mixed up, too. It’s strange to come back to a place that you now know better than you know yourself, because it hasn’t changed in the slightest, but you have.
Strange, too, how the small fortunes aligned: it’s a sunny day, but cool enough to be comfortable, with a silvery slithering breeze. It pulls at the pennants on the towers and ripples the banners on the walls.
For the first time, Ling wonders who laid the stones.
As they approach the gates, Lan Fan keeps close.
“Does your father know?” she mutters.
Ling shakes his head. It’s a nervous question—she would have known if he’d sent messengers ahead with news of their imminent return.
And she knows that he would rather slip through the streets unnoticed than arrive to a celebration that would distract them and the royal guards alike, inviting their shrewder adversaries to attack them while they’re travel-worn and weak.
They’ll go to Ling’s apartments. She’ll assess them thoroughly. He’ll clean up. He’ll see the emperor. He’ll make the arrangements for Fu’s burial. And then they can worry about a party.
The horses’ hooves ring on the cobblestones and then thunk on the wood of the drawbridge.
It seems that Greed hasn’t put it together yet that it’s Ling’s apparent unremarkableness—the fact that he is one of so many, ostensibly so similar to all of his half-brothers, outwardly so unassuming—has always been what kept him safe. The moment that they really come to know him, he and the ones he trusts are in greater danger than ever before. He has only made it this far unimpeded because no one thought he was a threat.
As they come up to the gate, Ling dismounts from his horse, and Lan Fan slips smoothly down from hers behind him. She keeps her left arm tucked halfway behind her even though her metal hand is wrapped in fake bandages to hide the shine.
A guard halts them, holding one hand up and the other out. It looks nice and ceremonious but seems tremendously unwise. Ling could have a blade in his chest before he’d had a chance to reach for his.
“Identification and trade logs,” he says. “Quickly, now.”
You were serious, Greed says, sounding resigned with the slightest touch of awe. Questionable merchants. Can you believe this shit?
Ling opens his palm towards Lan Fan, who is already extracting his seal from her innermost pocket to deposit it in his hand. He offers it out for the guard to inspect but obviously doesn’t let go of it for an instant.
The guard’s eyes narrow as part of a scowl.
Then they widen in amazement with a hint of horror.
“My Lord!” he says, faintly. “I—I’m so sorry, I didn’t—forgive me, my Lord!”
He’s on his knees before Ling can even withdraw the seal, and then he’s kissing Ling’s sand-scuffed, sun-bleached, mud-splattered shoes. Which is honestly kind of gross.
All right, Greed says, warming up. That’s more like it!
More like how plagues get started, maybe.
“Stand,” Ling says. The military-trained ones don’t respond well to ‘please’. “Let us through.” The guard scrambles upright, starting to bow. “Don’t,” Ling says, hearing his voice sharpen with the urgency.
The guard stares for a second, but then the revelation dawns, and he straightens up and steps back out of their way.
It’s already too late—several of the citizens just inside the gates who have put up rickety booths and kiosks to sell goods to the actual questionable merchants already saw the show of reverence. In the Imperial City, whispers move far faster than the wind.
It’s still marginally safer than an official announcement, but they need to move quickly.
Ling hauls himself back up into the saddle. Lan Fan is already in hers. He knees his horse, not too gently.
The words surged on ahead of them. People pause in the streets, glancing up at them; people open the windows and peer out. Mothers hush their children. Their faces pinch, their eyes narrow, their mouths tighten. The silence roars.
Strangely, Greed doesn’t seem to feel it.
What gives? he asks. Despite not having the remotest semblance of corporeal hands, he conveys the distinct impression of rubbing them together. Amestris really does produce the weirdest people in the world. This triumphant return thing needs a parade. I demand a parade.
You can’t demand a parade, Ling says.
I can demand anything I want, Greed fires back. We’re the goddamn motherfucking emperor, pal.
Not yet, Ling says.
There is a long, heavy, pointed pause.
Run that by me one more time? Greed says.
Ling keeps his internal voice as cheerful as possible. It’s an inherited position. The immortality makes us the best candidate for succession by several orders of magnitude, given that my father’s paramount objective is to secure the longevity of his bloodline, but we won’t ascend to the throne until he dies.
Hold the fucking phone, Greed says. He’s not dead?
He is not, Ling says.
Greed makes a thought-noise not too distant from a sob. Is he sick?
I’m told that his health has substantially improved since my departure, Ling says.
Is he old? There is a laborious breath. Please, please tell me that at least he’s a goddamn geezer creaking his way towards oblivion. He’s gotta be old. Right?
Not especially, Ling says. But it’s okay.
Oh, my sweet summer fake-ass prince, Greed says, this is going to be good. Please do tell me exactly how any of this absolute bullshit you’ve somehow been feeding me while I am inside your head is anything remotely close to ‘okay’. I’m all ears. Figuratively. Hit me. Figuratively. Make my fucking day.
Look at the people around us, Ling says. Does anything strike you as odd?
There’s a pause while Greed considers it, and Ling makes sure to turn his head slowly both ways, offering the silent, staring citizens a subtle, thin, ominously mild little smile.
They aren’t celebrating, Greed says. Shouldn’t they be throwing themselves at our feet? Shit, you had me believing this place was paradise, and everybody was going to be shoving each other into the river for the chance to kowtow to us first.
It’s not them, Ling says. It’s us.
Greed makes a snarling noise. Beg your damn pardon?
My qi is unbalanced, Ling says. Two souls—maybe more, depending on how you manifest now. I should be on the ground, writhing in agony. But I’m fine. I’m better than fine. It’s impossible. It’s inhuman. It goes against everything they’ve ever been taught is right and safe and good. He lets himself smile, sincerely this time. They’re scared out of their minds.
There’s a long pause.
And then Greed starts smiling, too.
As they should be, he says, Emperor Yao.
Let’s not get hasty, Ling says. Life isn’t short anymore.
So what? Greed says. Wasted time’s still wasted. Doesn’t matter how much you have.
It is very strange, Ling says, that you’re in such a hurry when your near-immortality grants you more chances than anyone. Isn’t it said in your country that good things come to those who wait?
If the things are good, Greed says, I want them now. I want them for as long as possible. Waiting is for suckers. Just take it.
Hmm, Ling says.
One little girl—four, maybe five, with a round face and enormous eyes—gazes up at him as they pass. She has her thumb in her mouth and her other arm wrapped around a small stuffed toy of a monkey.
It isn’t just citizens whom he unnerves. The stares as they’re admitted to the palace don’t concern him. The fingers of Lan Fan’s left hand clench and release over and over, but otherwise she gives no sign of her readiness to leap to his defense.
When Ling steps over the threshold and looks ahead at the throne set high on a dias at the end of the long, long hall, the Emperor looks back.
And then recoils.
It really shouldn’t have taken that much, but it serves its purpose: the guards immediately close in, swords slicing through the air to cross in front of Ling’s chest, barring his entry.
Lan Fan’s right hand grasps the handle of one of her knives, and the left jerks back in preparation to slot the blade out of her forearm—but she stays completely still when Ling holds his open hand out towards her.
Not now.
Not yet.
The silence feels much too heavy. Ling is good at shrugging off that sort of thing.
“Hello, Father,” he says.
“Your—what are you?” the Emperor says.
Not exactly a jubilant reunion, but he hadn’t been holding his breath.
Ling tips his head—slowly, but he can’t exactly be subtle when the man’s at such a distance—towards the guards. “May I show you?”
The Emperor leans forward slightly and gestures dismissively at the guards. They each take only one stride back.
Ling smiles sweetly at the closest one, extending his hand. “Your weapon?”
The guard eyes him—less with suspicion than with wariness. There’s no disdain beneath it, only fear. Ling has learned the difference.
But Ling is still a prince, and the man is still a subject, and the world is still the world.
He flips the sword smoothly and elegantly to offer Ling the handle.
“Thank you,” Ling says.
Ling takes one step forward. The guards’ armor rattles as they all instinctively move to follow.
Ling raises his left hand high enough for the Emperor to see from his tower of a throne. With the right, Ling swipes the impeccably-honed edge of the blade across his open palm.
The blood doesn’t spill far enough to drip onto the ornate rug.
Before it’s even crested the sides of Ling’s hand, the Philosopher’s Stone awakens.
Stark magenta lightning crackles off the wound, spitting far enough that the guards lean away—still too dumbstruck even to gasp aloud.
Under the auspices of the seething red light, the wide gash knits itself neatly back up, and Ling’s skin seals itself perfectly, as if it was never tormented.
Just in case, he curls and uncurls his fingers and turns his hand to show his palm to the Emperor.
“I was successful,” Ling says. “Our family line can rule over Xing forever.”
The Emperor isn’t pressed back to the red velvet cushions of the throne anymore.
He’s on the edge of it, leaning so far forward that he’s barely still seated at all.
Ling’s not sure he would call it a smile so much as a smirk. He’s probably made the same expression—it’s thin and almost cold. The eyes don’t shine with it; they only glint.
He doesn’t like it.
But it doesn’t matter what he likes.
The Emperor stands. Grandly, ceremoniously, he thrusts out both arms.
“Welcome home, my son,” the Emperor says.
Okay, Greed says—amusingly, he’s muttering inside their shared head as they’re escorted back to Ling’s apartments, as if he has to keep his voice down even here. I’m trying to wrap my puny loser brain around your stupid royal machinations. You didn’t show him the shield because anything that the guards see would make its way directly to our enemies, right?
Ling smiles. He hopes it’s a little nicer than the one he received. You catch on quickly.
As opposed to what? Greed says. Whether or not that ‘good things come to those who wait’ line is bullshit, everybody knows that ass-kickings come to the unprepared.
You should take up poetry, Ling says. It’s very popular here. One of the things you want is to be popular, right?
I don’t give half a damn about being popular, Greed says, and Ling can feel the lie. It slithers. It twists. I want to be powerful. Some asshole promised me that much.
Interesting, Ling says.
Greed seethes. I am not going to give you what you want and ask you what the hell that means. I can’t freakin’ believe people think that I’m the monster here.
It means that I’m interested, Ling says, cheerfully, but turning the last corner through the halls puts him in a generous mood. He missed this place—his home, his bed, the dreams that he had in it. It’s intriguing that you don’t consider it powerful to walk in unannounced to meet the ruler of three hundred million people and impress his—what did you say before?
Impress his puffy pants off, Greed says. There’s a pause. Three hundred million?
A conservative estimate, Ling says, from an old census.
There’s another pause.
That’s a lot of subjects, Greed says.
It’s a lot of responsibility, Ling says.
Meh, Greed says.
They’ve reached the door.
They stop.
The guards look at Ling. Ling looks back.
No one moves.
Is there something—
Lan Fan mutters an indistinguishable vituperation and throws open the door, a knife already in her other hand.
The foyer is empty—not a whisper of a foreign breath; not a ripple of the Dragon’s Pulse.
The second room, the third room, his bedroom—Lan Fan prowls into each one first, sweeping curtains aside and opening armoires, peering through windows and dropping to the floor to check beneath the bed. She’s terrifically efficient. She should write a guide.
But there’s nothing amiss.
Not tonight, anyway.
So at long, long, long last—once the guards shuffle off looking slightly disappointed, once the servants filter in already wide-eyed from the distorted hints of gossip that have wended their way here—they clean up, settle in, and settle down.
Ling had somehow forgotten exactly how much he loves his bed. It lacks the pristine charm of, say, collapsing on a cobblestone street in an unknown country and prevailing on the kindness of credulous strangers, but it is soft and warm and capacious and beautiful and his, and—
Okay, Greed says. Now, right? It’s my turn now.
No, Ling says, into the pillow even from within his own mind.
Come on, Greed says. What else could a bed this big possibly be for if not a couple of bodacious concubines? Let me at ’em.
Give it a rest, Ling says.
Ah.
That was funny, Ling says, very helpfully.
Does being a comedian make you powerful around here? Greed asks. No? Then shut up.
Ling smiles into the pillow. You first.
Over my dead body, Greed says. Our dead body. Whatever. You’re not the emperor, and you’re sure as hell never going to be the emperor of me.
Okay, Ling says. You can be the emperor of yourself. For now, though, let’s be co-emperors of going to sleep.
There is a long silence, although not quite long enough for Ling to sink into blessed unconsciousness.
You are something else, kid, Greed says.
I know, Ling says. That’s why this is going to work.
He knows very well that vigilance is the real ultimate shield. The line between paranoia and self-preservation is narrow and unsteady, but he’s walked it enough times to know the texture of the tightrope underneath his feet.
Reestablishing himself in court occupies most of his time. The Yao cousins are ecstatic about the new developments in his psycho- and physiological makeup regardless of how strange they might be. He’s always been good at getting people to like him, usually in spite of themselves. There’s a lot to do—keeping tabs, seeking updates, catching up on the progress of his allies and his enemies alike. Trying to make sure he still knows which are which.
It’s on the sixth night that the wealth of caution wears out.
Lan Fan scours the room as meticulously as always. Ling saunters behind her, letting his eyes fall halfway shut so that the currents of the world can wash over him without any impositions.
There’s nothing amiss.
Until there is.
He’s just started drifting into an idle dream—walking barefoot in the burning sand around and around the outermost circle of a fallen, crumbling Xerxesian array—when he feels a flicker.
As warnings go, it doesn’t grant him much.
But the twelfth son of the emperor is accustomed to making do.
He makes rolling onto his front look clumsy and somnolent, slowing his breath even as his heart starts to race.
He curls his fingers tightly around the handle of the sword tucked between the mattress and the headboard, the pillow masking the movement of his hand.
Showtime, Greed whispers.
Ling breathes in, evenly, and then out.
He can just make out the shiver of another person’s energy. He can just detect the deadening of the faint breeze from the window as it’s interrupted by a shape. He can just hear the whisper of padded footfalls on the floor.
It’s enough.
Ling rolls out of bed, slings himself upright, and slashes with the sword in one continuous motion.
The lack of contact—and, frankly, the lack of a reaction—is a very bad sign.
This is someone who knows what they’re doing.
He can’t let the faint sounds of a scuffle from Lan Fan’s direction distract him. She can handle herself, and each of them fairly literally has an ace up their respective sleeves.
Only the slightest, weakest sliver of starlight penetrates the dark of the room, cloaking the movements of the assassin right up until a faint gleam on the side of a blade.
That, too, is just enough.
Ling hurls himself sideways, and it hisses through the air that he’d occupied.
He blocks the next blow with his sword—barely.
Let me, Greed says. Come on. Trust me.
There isn’t time to think.
Ling drops the wall that cages in Greed’s consciousness.
Ling cuts him loose.
The switch is instantaneous.
If it wasn’t, they’d be dead: Greed lifts their left arm, the cool carbon of the shield still creeping up their skin—
The assassin’s blade strikes the shield, spraying sparks.
It’s a swift, vicious dance after that—instinct and impulse.
The experience is different than it was before, now that the barrier between them is so flimsy and so fluid. Ling doesn’t feel like he’s watching his own body from a distance, cocooned somewhere deep inside, too far removed to affect it.
He’s a part of this.
He’s letting Greed hold the reins, but he is definitely still on the horse.
Greed moves like molten metal, elegant and relentless, dodging blows and blocking swipes, both arms and most of their torso coated with the shield now—but in the areas most subject to tension and torque, Greed spread it in strips, so that the unaltered muscle between the lines lets them bend and twist unimpeded. At any moment, he can stretch a section to fill a gap.
It feels like a gripping parody of the theater—flitting and darting around the darkened contours of the room, choreographing as they go, every step heralded by their singing heartbeat and shadowed by the chance of death.
The complicated maneuvers of the shield have, however, siphoned Greed’s concentration away from the furious exchange of blows.
The assassin wrenches the sword out of Greed’s hand.
Greed throws their head back and laughs.
That seems to unnerve the assassin even more than their abominable qi and supernatural armor.
People are odd like that.
The assassin tries nonetheless to press the advantage, raising his sword in both hands to bring a vicious stroke down at their head.
Greed dives away.
But not far.
Just far enough to reach out and grab the blade of the sword with both hands right as it runs out of momentum, and the assassin tries to withdraw.
Greed grips the steel blade, the metal edge scraping against the barrier of the shield—more sparks spray and fizzle, illuminating just enough of a face mostly masked in black for Ling to make out the eyes.
Greed yanks the sword away, pulling inward so hard that the assassin stumbles towards them before recognizing the necessity of letting go.
Which puts Greed in the perfect position to grasp the front of the assassin’s loose black shirt, the claws bestowed by the shield ripping right through the linen, and haul their victim slightly further inward.
At which point Greed, with the shield wrapped securely across their forehead, headbutts the assassin so soundly that the would-be murderer drops like a sack of bricks and crumples to the floor.
Ling hears an answering thump from behind them—and then a whimper—and Greed turns to look.
Lan Fan has dispatched her charge as well. The blade on her automail arm gleams wet in the dimness, but since the shape on the floor is still writhing and making noises of distress, it seems she had the same thought Greed and Ling did.
Since whoever hired them is the real enemy, the lackeys are worth much more alive.
“Hell, yeah,” Greed says. “Go, team!”
He holds their right hand—still wreathed in the ultimate shield—out to Lan Fan for a high-five.
She sighs, feelingly, and then taps her automail palm against it.
The way they clink together almost sounds musical.
Excellent work, Ling says, meaning that. Now give it back.
Greed sticks his existential tongue out. Make me.
You don’t want that, Ling says. And you also don’t want to be the one trying to explain this to the palace guards in a language that you don’t speak.
Control starts streaming back. It feels like waking from a dream. The whole sensation is so invigorating that Ling barely even hears Greed muttering Fucking royals as he recedes.
It’s probably not a good thing that the palace guards are so unfazed by an assassination attempt, but it does mean that everything gets cleaned up very promptly.
As far as Ling is concerned, this is a best-case scenario. Word will travel that he and Lan Fan gained the upper hand with the aid of mysterious, possibly supernatural augmentations—but the assassins didn’t see much, and the rumor will evolve as it ripples slowly outward from the jail cells. No one will know what to believe except that the emperor’s prodigal son can only be trifled with at one’s great peril.
Which is exactly what Ling wants, of course.
All in all, a very successful evening.
Hey, Princey-Poo, Greed says, strangely quietly especially considering the atrociousness of the nickname. Not that I’m complaining—really not that I’m complaining—but I can’t get enough of information, either. Curiosity killed the Homunculus and all that.
But, Ling hears, satisfaction brought him back.
So humor me, Greed says. Why did you let me out?
Ling takes a second to take stock.
He doesn’t know the answer, which is unsettling. It could be that he remembered how much faster Greed manipulates the shield, because he was born to it and had spent several hundred years practicing with it before Ling was ever born. It could be his perpetual awareness that Greed will save their collective skin first and foremost, whereas Ling will reach out to help others, and he knew that they needed to be selfish to survive. It could be that the plea for trust just—forced something in him.
Greed is a citizen of Xing, now, too, more or less. Ling owes Greed as much strength and faith and just as he does to any other person who relies on him. Greed is one of his people, and Greed asked him to give.
But obviously Ling can’t say any of those things.
How else are you going to earn your keep? he asks instead. It’s not like you’re paying rent.
Hear me out, Greed says. We get, like, half a dozen concubines—but they’re not just concubines. They’re also badass trained warriors like your girl here, so if anybody tries to pull this shit again, they’d annihilate those dumb fucks before you could say “Damn, she looks good fighting naked.”
In the spirit of negotiation—and in the interests of encouraging the least-worst idea that Greed has had so far, although that bar would be difficult not to clear—Ling takes a deep breath and manages, I’ll think about it.
I’m telling you, Greed says. A pair of genius studs like you and me, working together? We’re going to be unstoppable.
That much Ling does believe.