Ink & Sigil

by Kevin Hearne

  With Nadia gone, I had only the computer, phone, and papers to take with me, which were easy enough to sling over my shoulder. But there were two cages as well, which I might be able to use to track either the pixie or the hobgoblin. I couldn’t take both and I highly doubted I’d have the chance for another plunder before the police returned, so I chose the hobgoblin’s cage, since I knew he was still alive as of a few minutes ago. The pixie’s fate was more doubtful.

  I paused before leaving, considering Gordie’s still form, and spoke aloud to him, since it didn’t matter anymore.

  “Well, I’m off tae find out just how giant a turd ye were behind ma back. I’ll no doubt have plenty of cause tae curse yer name soon enough. But I’ll say this now, Gordie, if yer ghost is lurking around: I wouldnae have wished yer death for anything. Chokin’ on a raisin scone, all alone and knowing there’s no helping it, ye’re gonnay die in the next minute—well, it’s horrific. I’m more sorry than I can say. I might wish for ye tae be roastin’ in hell once I figure out what ye were up to, but for now I hope ye’re at peace.”

  The door to his flat shut with a final click that echoed in the hallway, and I paused to wipe at my bloody eyes again. Moments like that—the smothering, quiet aftermath of deaths, when I’m intensely aware of being a little bit more alone in the world than I was before—always hit me harder than the moment when I first hear the news.

  Seven apprentices, damn it.

  Hamlet was right when he told Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than he dreamt of in his philosophy. There are far more planes than heaven and earth, for one thing. There are the Fae planes, the Norse planes, the planes of any pantheon ye care to name, all teeming with creatures and spirits and deities who need to work out their rights regarding visitation to earth. The general rule is that the humans in charge don’t want them coming to earth at all, because that would sort of ruin the idea that the humans are in charge. We don’t have to consult every new administration that comes along; that’s been the position for centuries. Any visits extraplanar entities do make are supposed to be shepherded, or at least monitored.

  But the reverse holds doubly true. Humans who just wander into other planes by accident or by really screwing up their arcane rituals rarely come back. They need a guide and permission. I look at the Internet as a sort of plane in the sense that it has plenty of rules and one shouldn’t be mucking about there without some expertise. Even if you only shop there or post selfies, you’re being traced, and your personal data is being mined and sold. If you want to walk into the hell of protected data, you’re absolutely going to need a hacker, the way Dante needed Virgil.

  When I informed Nadia about my need for a hacker several years ago, she took a few days to get back to me but eventually gave me a name, a time, and a rendezvous point.

  “Saxon Codpiece, noon, at Tchai Ovna.”

  [His name is…]

  “Saxon Codpiece. He likes it if ye kind of half-shout each name as an exclamation, like he’s a superhero or sumhin in the cartoons. Like, Saxonnn! Codpiece! Do it like that and he’ll take a shine tae ye.”

  [Is he undergoing treatment for anything?]

  “I dunno. I’ve never met him. But I think he’s doing one of those absurdist bits where ye make people think ye can’t exist because it’s too ridiculous.”

  [Right. I thought that hackers had numbers in their names or some rubbish like that.]

  “That sort of thing is like buying a fast red car and daring the polis tae catch ye. This guy is in it for the long haul. Just go. He’s no supposed tae be dangerous.”

  The man who loomed across from me at Tchai Ovna—a Czech teahouse near the university that was always in danger of being demolished and redeveloped—was fully two meters tall. Wiry and dark-haired with hazel eyes, he wore what the kids called vintage and I called clothes. By that I mean it was seventies punk, the sort of thing I was into when I was young: ripped jeans and safety pins and lots of zippers and buttons on his leather jacket. Judging by his pallor, he lived with a perpetual vitamin D deficiency, which he attempted to disguise with some lurid sleeve tattoos on his arms that began at his wrists. The bottom of his nose was red and he sniffled, wiping at it with a handkerchief.

  “Sorry about the cold,” he said, folding himself into a chair without invitation but thankfully neglecting to offer a handshake. “All systems are susceptible tae viruses, eh?” He peered at me and a corner of his mouth turned upward. “Fantastic mustache, mate. Al, is it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Gaun yersel’! Right, well, here’s ma card.”

  He placed a maroon-colored card on the table in front of me and tapped it a couple of times for emphasis. There were just two lines of text, centered in an all-caps, sans serif font, the first line significantly larger than the other:

  SAXON! CODPIECE!

  PROFESSIONAL WANKER

  I scoffed. “What, then, the rest of us are just amateurs?”

  “Unless ye’re getting paid for it like me, yes, ye’re an amateur.”

  “Ye must hang out in the darkest places of the Internet.”

  “I do, on occasion. But I spend a good deal of time in the lighter places too. Cat videos, ye know. Full-grown screaming goats, dancing baby goats, or any goats, really, are endlessly entertaining. Rejuvenates the soul.”

  “Fine. But are ye discreet?”

  “About ma wanking? No, in fact I’m anything but discreet. I film it and make a sizable income from it, because I have a sizable—”

  “No, no, no. Shut yer gob. I’m no here for that. I mean about your other clients and the information ye come across.”

  “Oh, yes. Absolutely. Congratulations, ye passed the test.”

  I hadn’t known there was a test at all, but if someone says ye passed it already, no need to bother. We turned to the business I needed done at that time. He did it quickly and well and I paid him the same way, but I offered him alternative payment the second time we met over tea at Tchai Ovna, because he asked me what I did for a living and I told him.

  “Officially I own a printshop on High Street. But truly I’m a sigil agent.”

  “Whit?”

  “It’s like yer own business. Officially ye’re a professional wanker on the Internet. But truly ye’re a hacker.”

  “Right, but I meant whit’s a sigil agent?”

  “I write and enforce magical contracts using sigils, which are symbols infused with power that can do some remarkable stuff. The enforcement part’s where all the fun is. Would ye like a demonstration?”

  “Ye mean like card tricks?”

  “No, I mean like this.” I pulled a prepared Sigil of Certain Authority out of my coat and popped the seal in front of him, lifting the flap to reveal the sigil underneath. He flinched, gulped, and then I demanded that he give me all the money in his wallet. He had about five hundred quid. Impressive. I left it on the table.

  “Thank ye.”

  “Of course, sir,” he said. I waited, and then after about ten seconds, Saxon blinked rapidly. “Hey. Why did I call ye sir? I haven’t called anyone that since childhood.”

  “I used a sigil on ye tae make ye obey a single command. There are many sigils with different kinds of effects. That particular one is not open for discussion, because as ye have just learned, it can too easily be abused. It does, however, prove that I have something tae offer ye besides money. Please, take yours back. It’s all there.”

  He snatched it up and returned it to his wallet, shaking his head with a smile. “Christ, that’s stonkin’. I’d say I didnae believe it, but it just happened. I never call people sir, much less give them money for nothing. This is wild. I always wanted tae meet a wizard.”

  “I’m not a wizard. Common misperception, though. I get called that a lot.”

  “How come I’ve never heard of this sigil bus
iness before?”

  “There are only five of us in the world, and we don’t advertise. If ye would like tae be paid in sigils—ones that ye can use yourself or on others—I’m open tae that, if ye can keep secrets.”

  After that meeting, I stopped talking and used my app, since I’d established that magic and therefore curses were real. We have worked well together ever since and do our best to avoid mentioning our official jobs to each other. It was true that Saxon usually requested to be paid in Sigils of Sexual Vigor, but I steadfastly refused to inquire what use he made of them.

  Saxon’s place was hidden underneath Tartan Greenhouses, a twenty-four-hour industrial operation based in a warehouse in the shadow of the necropolis, growing all sorts of organic vegetables in hydroponic beds. He owned it through various shell corporations and used it, along with similar operations scattered around the country, to launder his various streams of illicit income. I was one of the few people he trusted enough to enter his work space, an underground lair of crisps and beer, Faraday cages and an old Dig Dug video game from the eighties that he admired because Dig Dug “blew up bullies and got paid.”

  To access it, I entered the office that functioned as a lobby, strode through the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, skipped the locker room, and headed to the toolshed, wherein a pegboard waited on the back wall with assorted tools mounted on it. By lifting a saw blade, I revealed a small intercom speaker with a call button. I pressed it and a voice demanded a password, which changed weekly and Saxon sent to me via Signal’s encrypted text.

  It was always some combination of an adjective followed by a food noun. Last week it was Languid Eggplant, and the week before it was Complacent Taco.

  [Urgent Cake,] I had my phone say, and the pegboard slid aside to reveal a narrow staircase descending into the earth. With my cane and bag clutched awkwardly in one hand and the hobgoblin’s cage in the other, I took it slow.

  “Awright, Al?” Saxon rose from a chair behind a semicircle of monitors and keyboards, crumpling up a bag of haggis-and-pepper crisps and tossing it into a nearby bin. He had black jeans on and a T-shirt with a portrait of Margaret Thatcher crossed out by a red no symbol—those circles with a backslash through them. He’d grown a small field of black whiskers on his chin since last I’d seen him, like angry iron shavings. I simply nodded my greeting, which he was used to by now.

  “Can I get ye sumhin to drink? I have most of the basics, ye know.” He gestured grandly toward the bar, which was fully stocked and far beyond basic. He even had a couple of local craft kegs on tap, the Black Star Teleporter from Shilling Brewing and Bearface Lager from Drygate Brewing.

  [Maybe just an Irn-Bru,] I typed, already shuddering at the thought of the sugary, caffeinated stuff, but pretty sure Saxon would have some on hand. [We have work to do.]

  “Excellent!” He clapped his hands together once and rubbed them with glee. “Irn-Bru and work. I like it. Ye just made my day, Al.”

  He scurried to the bar—as much as a two-meter giant can scurry—and poured us drinks while I began unloading the bags. I left the cage at the bottom of the stairs, then put the laptop, phone, and flash drives on his crowded desk. I took the papers over to the bar and dumped them out on the cherrywood while Saxon bizarrely garnished my Irn-Bru with a grapefruit wedge.

  “There we are. So! What are we daein’?”

  [Breaking into a laptop and phone. The owner was trafficking Fae, and we need to know who was buying, or who was selling, or both.]

  “Yes!” He executed a lanky fist pump before pointing at me. “That is wild. I knew it was gonnay be. I love yer weird shite, man.” He grinned and slurped his soda noisily while I composed a reply.

  [My weird shite keeps people worrying about economics and politics instead of the possibility that trolls might steal their children for breakfast, so I think we should accord it a smidgen of gravitas.]

  “Awright, I can pull a smidge of gravitas from somewhere. Ye have any passwords at all?”

  [Not yet. Maybe something in this rubbish here. I’ll go through it.]

  “Right. I’ll proceed without them until ye say different.”

  He went digging around for gadgets to help crack the devices, while I sifted through the papers on the bar. Lots of it was bills, but there were a couple of old-fashioned letters, a mess of receipts, some small yellow squares with to-do lists on them like get milk and scones, and a half-sheet concert flyer for a punk band called Dildo Shaggins. There were several blank-papered journals, sadly left uninked except for one, which was about half filled.

  That contained all sorts of scribblings, notably Al is a clueless git and MacB has the brain capacity of a nuthatch.

  Some other notes, like must find nautilus ganglions, had obviously been reminders that he had followed through on, and the observation that pixies are nothing like the cartoon ones must have come after he’d caught one. Much of the rest were practice sketches of sigils made with normal inks. He’d been having trouble remembering the Sigil of Dampening Magic, which was not surprising since I hadn’t taught him that one. But on page ten, near the bottom, I found something potentially useful: the heading VAULT and then what must clearly be a randomly generated password, thirty-two characters long and composed of numbers, letters, and punctuation marks.

  “Oh, aye, that’ll be helpful once I get in,” Saxon said, busy clipping something with wires and lights to the laptop. “But if it says VAULT, that’s no the password tae unlock his computer.”

  [How long until you can get in?]

  “Depends on how long his password is. Could be a few minutes, could be hours or days.”

  [I might be needing a beer, then.]

  “Sure. Help yourself.”

  I circled around behind the bar and plucked a pint glass from a drying rack. The Black Star Teleporter, I discovered, was a delightful coconut porter without too much foam. The quantity and quality of foam becomes important when one cares for an impeccable mustache.

  The gadget attached to Gordie’s laptop bleeped after a few swallows, and Saxon yelped in surprise.

  “Ha! He only had a six-digit password! Not too bright.” He tapped a key and said, “Awright, I’m in. Here’s his vault.”

  [His vault?]

  “Password vault, mate. An app that contains all his passwords. We’ll type that thirty-two-character monstrosity into it and then we’ll own him, whoever this is.”

  I left the beer on the bar, because it was time to work again. Saxon’s eyes widened as he scanned the contents of the vault.

  “This guy has multiple offshore accounts. Account numbers and usernames and everything here in the notes. Ye don’t bother with accounts like that unless ye have a lot of scratch tae move around.”

  I typed instructions. [I want to check balances in each account, but don’t move anything. And then let’s get into his email.]

  “Right ye are. Here we go.”

  Gordie had a hundred thousand quid in each of six different accounts in various tax havens.

  “Know what’s strange? These are all recent accounts. Deposits made, but he hasn’t touched them or even had time tae earn much interest, except in one.”

  I took note of the account names and numbers and the dates they were opened, then told Saxon to move into email. He scanned the vault.

  “He’s got three accounts. Which one dae ye want tae start with?” He pointed at the screen and I recognized only one of the addresses. One was a gmail account, and I doubted he’d keep anything sensitive there, but the other was composed almost entirely of numbers.

  [Start with the dodgy numeric one.]

  “That’s where I would have started too. Okay, let’s see…yep. It’s fairly new, only ten conversations, no spam. And have a keek, man—it’s all from the same guy. This account exists solely tae communicate with whoever this is.”

  [Open the oldest
one, please.]

  I looked over his shoulder as Saxon clicked on the oldest conversation, with the subject heading ARRANGEMENTS.

  Please bring first subject to the north shore of Renfrew Ferry, 9 p.m. Friday. My representative will meet you. Upon transfer of subject, funds will be deposited into an account you name.

  —Bastille

  Gordie replied:

  Will do. Please transfer to First Cayman Bank, account number 9842987241. But I must ask: What are subjects being used for? I inquire for ethical reasons.

  I snorted and typed, [If there was anything ethical about this, he wouldn’t have had to use numbered accounts.]

  “Right? But it implies he’s got some line, at least, that he won’t cross.”

  The reply from Bastille was short:

  Science. Glorious, lifesaving science.

  “That is strange,” Codpiece murmured. “I mean the why, not the what.”

  [What are you on about?]

  “Ye said this was about the Fae, right?”

  [Aye.]

  “Well, the reason behind human trafficking is usually either the sex trade or the labor industry, like janitorial services or sumhin like that. But this looks like Bastille wants test subjects. Which means yer boy Gordie was serving up high-priced lab rats tae evil scientists.”

  [Evil scientists? Really?]

  “Sure. They happen sometimes. I mean, there’s a spectrum, in’t there? Most scientists try tae work on things tae help us understand the world, or else they shout and bawl quite rightly about how we’re all doomed and have been choking the planet tae death since the Industrial Revolution. The scientists in the moral grey area tell ye tobacco is just fine, not harmful at all, or they take money from oil companies tae tell ye climate heating is nothin’ to worry yer heid about. But occasionally ye get pure bastards who work for governments, and what kind of science do governments want, eh? Evil shite like truth serums and hallucinogens and bombs and chemical weapons tae protect their nation against whoever they think the bad guys are. They’ve got the money and the facilities and the leverage tae make it happen. So it makes me wonder, Al: Who’s this Bastille bloke that’s doin’ this? Isnae a government, ’cos they can snatch any ol’ snatch they want for experiments, right? They don’t have tae do this.”