Ink & Sigil

by Kevin Hearne

  Gordie was just a festering pustule on the surface of a deep infection. If he hadn’t been daft enough to eat a raisin scone, who knew how long they would have gotten away with it?

  There was nothing else. Saxon had a fireplace down there, back where he had built a cozy set that weirdly resembled a hunting lodge, and there were some cameras pointed at it. He let me feed all of Gordie’s papers into the fire. I kept only the proof that someone was writing down secrets. I figured I’d show that to Coriander, at least, and maybe he’d be able to identify the handwriting before destroying it.

  It was dark when I emerged from Saxon’s seedy basement with a flash drive of Gordie’s contacts, recent calls, and the contents of his password vault. Saxon had turned up the funk and turned down the lights as I ascended the stairs, so he obviously had his evening planned.

  “Tits,” I muttered into the darkness, realizing I’d have no rest when I got home. I’d left Buck Foi alone there all day.

  I expected one of two things when I got to my flat: It would either be a bloody shambles, or it would be incredibly clean and tidy except for one glaring thing out of place, like a screaming goat shitting on my couch. Hobgoblins had to do something wrong to balance out all the right they did by you; their constitutions wouldn’t let them do otherwise. If you wanted an angel, you shouldn’t employ a hobgoblin.

  I opened the door to the flat cautiously, making sure there wasn’t a booby trap to land a bucket of goo on my heid. It looked clear. And the place itself looked spotless. So nothing obvious in the living area or kitchen. Maybe there would be a surprise in the bedroom or bathroom, then.

  “Oi! Is that you, MacBharrais?”

  I got out my phone and typed [Aye,] and Buck appeared from the hallway that led to his bedroom.

  “Welcome home. What’s new, then?”

  I closed the door and locked it before removing my coat and hat and hanging them on the pin. [I’ve got homework to do.] I explained that I might be meeting Brighid soon and maybe it wouldn’t go so well for me, considering that I’d apprenticed a bag of shite that had taken money to traffic Fae. Coriander had suggested a poem to honor the goddess of poetry. [I haven’t written a poem since I was in school.]

  “Oh, aye? What did ye write back when ye didnae have wrinkles?”

  [A terrible sonnet. Does Brighid like sonnets?]

  “Not especially.”

  [How long do I need to make it, then?]

  “Well, was there no an American poet who said, Brevity is the soul of shit, or sumhin like that?”

  [The line ends in wit, not shit. And that was Shakespeare. Polonius said that in Hamlet.]

  “I don’t care who said it, MacBharrais. I’m trying to tell ye no to make it short. She likes epic poetry.”

  [I don’t have time to write an epic! Not to mention the skill. What’s the bare minimum I can get away with?]

  “Nine lines. The Tuatha Dé Danann are obsessed with nine of this and nine of that. Nine Fae planes. Nine Druids dancing in the dark. Nine ways to Nancy.”

  [What? Who’s Nancy?]

  “I dunno, but there’s nine ways to her, so she’s probably centrally located. I bet she’s in a train station.”

  [I’m serious, now. I have to figure this out.]

  “Well, I can’t write it for ye. If you’re looking for the minimum, I told ye true: nine lines.”

  [What have you been doing all day?]

  “Toiling at domestic chores for about five minutes. Got that beer for Nadia and some more for us; it’s in the fridge. Finished that movie—that cave troll looked familiar, eh? And since then I’ve been watching a show called Avatar: The Last Airbender. Have ye heard of it?” I shook my heid, and Buck’s eyes lit with excitement to tell me about something new. “Fantastic Fae creatures in it, man! Sky bison. Platypus bears. There’s one mental bastard who’s got an obsession with cabbages. And the main character has a blue arrow tattooed on his bald heid. Thinking of getting ma self one of those on a trial basis. People will point at me and then say, Look! It’s the Avatar! And after that it’s even money whether they give me gifts or try to kill me deid. It’s an exciting life, I imagine, either gifts or death everywhere ye go.”

  [Let’s have something to nibble, and maybe I’ll watch an episode with you before getting to work on my poem?]

  “Aye, that sounds grand. What are we having, then?”

  [Halibut with a lemon butter herb sauce. Let us begin your culinary training in matters beyond whisky and sausage.]

  He required a stepladder to access the stove, but he took to the task with gusto, and after dinner he sat next to me and wrote dirty limericks as I struggled to write a poem with some true feeling behind it. I think he was far more successful than I was at getting work done.

  When I yawned hugely and checked the clock, I realized I’d stayed up past my usual retirement. It was quite fine, I realized, to have someone around at night with whom to spend the sepulchral hours. It had been a long and lonesome time.

  In the morning—refreshed and astoundingly prank-free—I taught Buck how to make tea and waffles. I told him where he could steal maple syrup when we ran out, because he felt better about things when there was theft at least tangentially involved. Stealing had been his only reason to visit the plane until now, and it was my hope that giving him some small acts of larceny to perform on my behalf would prevent him from performing larger ones for a laugh.

  I impressed upon him the importance of staying in-house for a while, though, since it was warded against the barghests that he was worried about, and I thought it prudent for the short term to lay low. [Clíodhna or whoever’s behind this will be after you soon, so don’t open the door for anyone. You just pretend you’re not here.]

  “What am I s’posed tae do all day, then? House is already clean. And it’s Friday—all the humans are gonnay be out and ready for mischief.”

  That was when I introduced him to microwave popcorn and suggested he watch some more shows. Netflix was made for people who were shut-ins by choice or necessity.

  “Isn’t sitting around all day gonnay be bad for ma health?”

  [Yes. But not as bad as a barghest tearing you to pieces.]

  “Ye have a keen mind, ol’ man. Off ye go, then.”

  On the way from the train station to my office on High Street, Coriander found me again.

  “Brighid does wish to speak with you. At the violet hour in the usual place.”

  He waited only so long for me to nod, and then he glided away somewhere else. That meant I had until twilight to get my poem ready. Or not. Would it matter, I wondered? I was probably in trouble regardless, and if I delivered a shite piece of verse on top of my other trespasses, the goddess of poetry, fire, and the forge might decide there was nothing left to do but light me up.

  The mystery of Bastille hung over me like the sword of Damocles at work, where I retreated to my desk to work on the poem, having accomplished little the night before. Lyrics about cashmere and ascots were discarded, as were paeans to mustache wax and haggis. The brief spark of an idea about sigils winked out almost immediately, for while I knew plenty about them, they didn’t carry any emotional weight for me at the moment. They were merely tools of my trade and inspired no passion, except to find out who was sharing their secrets inappropriately.

  When I finally settled on an adequate subject, it was midafternoon, and Nadia had long given up on trying to engage me with the business of my actual business. She kept everyone out of my office, explaining that I was “in a state” and couldn’t be seen.

  Finally finished, I nipped back home to check on Buck and freshen up before my meeting with the First among the Fae.

  “How’d the poetry go, then?” Buck asked when I entered. I hung my coat and hat and typed a reply.

  [It took me all day, but I finished nine lines. How people manage to make a c
areer out of it is beyond me. It’s excruciating work.]

  “Are ye familiar with the Irish poet William Butler Yeats?”

  I nodded at him.

  “I had to memorize a bit of his stuff—well, most of it, really. Brighid requires some poetry of her Fae, ye know, if ye can believe it. Ye made me remember a passage: A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”

  [I wonder how long that took him.]

  “Pretty sure he wrote it in the loo.”

  I showed him how to bake a tray of nachos with bacon and green onions, a recipe I learned—along with waffle batter—during a trip to America. It yielded a far superior product than microwave nachos if one had the time, and I took the opportunity to wash my face and re-wax my mustache while he shredded the cheddar.

  When the nachos emerged from the oven, Buck said, “They look splendid, MacBharrais, but these will probably kill me faster than the binge-watching, eh?”

  I nodded. [But not as fast as raisins. Avoid them, you hear? Only pain and suffering follow after.]

  We devoured some melted fat and grease on chips with a sprinkling of greenery on top, and then I had time enough to brush my teeth before heading to Gin71. It would not do to meet Brighid with onion breath.

  It rained on me the whole walk there, but the coat and hat did their thing and I arrived a few minutes early, since “the violet hour” was somewhat imprecise and I didn’t want to keep Brighid waiting.

  She and Coriander arrived together via the Old Way hidden in Virginia Court. Coriander was wearing his full green-and-silver livery and wig, since he was operating in his official capacity and had just come from the Fae Court, but Brighid had dressed down to blend in. She wore blue jeans and a white top that featured enough diaphanous layers so as to appear simultaneously transparent and opaque. It was a localized fog bank, a garment of mystery.

  The goddess of poetry, fire, and the forge did not blend in, however. She was too beautiful to go unnoticed. Flame-haired, green-eyed, and toned, she would stand out in anything that didn’t hide her features.

  Coriander remained by the door so that we could have privacy, and once Brighid stepped in, Heather bowed so low behind the bar that she disappeared from view. I stood to greet Brighid and put a hand over my heart, not daring to offer any contact.

  “Brighid, it’s an honor.”

  “Aloysius,” she said, beaming at me and giving me a nod. “At last. Thank you for being here.” As if I would be anywhere else.

  “Please.” I gestured to my booth and we sat across from each other. I took out my phone and jabbed a finger at it before typing anything. “Did Coriander tell you about my curse?”

  “He did. But put aside that silicon horror for this meeting. Let us risk it and have a look at your aura. Coriander said he can tell there’s a curse but not much else. Perhaps I can perceive something beyond that.”

  I returned my phone to my coat and Brighid cocked her heid to one side and then the other, examining each of my temples.

  “Yes, you’ve certainly been cursed. It’s not Druidic, however, so you can put that out of your mind. None of the Tuatha Dé Danann were involved. It’s strange magic, and I think there’s more to it than this gradual process of your speech turning people against you.”

  “More?”

  “Yes. Let me try to figure this out. Hold still.”

  She leaned a bit closer, and deep in the pools of her irises I saw a blue-white flame kindling there. The corners of her mouth pulled down in concern.

  “Have any people close to you met with misfortune?” she asked.

  I almost said no automatically, but then considered. “Yes. Every single one of my apprentices has had a fatal accident.”

  “They weren’t accidents. Well, they were, but they only happened because that’s another curse on your head. You’ve been doubly cursed. Very subtly too, and by the same person, or at least people wielding the same sort of magic.”

  I temporarily forgot to breathe, and then when I did, it sounded unnaturally loud in my ears, as did my words. “You mean…all seven of my apprentices died because of a curse on my heid I didn’t know was there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So…it’s my fault. They died because of me.”

  “No. Scour that nonsense from your mind right now. Whoever laid this curse on you is at fault. They have committed murder as surely as if someone had left a hook binding to summon a demon here.”

  “Intellectually I understand that.” I clenched my fists, as if that would help me control the volume of my voice. “But I should have discovered this long before now, instead of letting seven apprentices enter into a relationship that would end their lives prematurely. I should have asked for your help years ago. But why didn’t—” I stopped, recalling the circumstances of how I learned about the first curse. “Yes, why didn’t the Highlands witch see this second one?”

  “I’m honestly surprised she saw the first one. These are extraordinarily subtle curses. If you hadn’t told me something was there—if I hadn’t specifically been looking for them—I wouldn’t have seen them myself. They’re blended into your aura. Allow me an analogy to help you understand. Most curses are clumsily tacked onto a person and make no attempts at disguise. They are like reading a text into which someone has pasted a passage in a different language that’s also in a different font, a larger size, and a different color. It’s ugly and glaring, it draws attention, and you know immediately that it’s wrong. But your curse is crafted well, like everything is set in the same text except that there are a few words in a smaller size than the rest of it, as in eleven-point type rather than twelve. It’s practically seamless. The curse isn’t tacked or pasted on; it’s part of who you are now, folded into your aura instead of warping it.”

  That didn’t sound good at all. I took a moment to consider a response before asking, “Can you remove either of the curses?”

  “I’m afraid not. This is some other system of magic and not one I can readily identify. Druidic bindings are obvious to me; other magics are also bindings in the sense that they bend and shape reality to their will, and while I can glean their purposes, I cannot unmake them without first knowing how they were made. You will have to review your acquaintances and speculate as to who might have done this to you.”

  I snorted. “They might be deid. My apprentices have been busily dying for many years.”

  “Whoever did this is not dead. If they were, you wouldn’t be cursed.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Some curses endure long after the deaths of the caster. The Egyptians were particularly good at that sort of craft. But most of them, like this one, last only so long as the caster remains alive. That ill will—that animosity or bad blood—is necessary to keep it going. Find them and kill them and you’ll be free of it.”

  “I…”

  “I wouldn’t take on any new apprentices until you clear that curse.”

  “No, no, of course not. I just wish I’d known earlier.”

  “And don’t take on any servants either.”

  “Hmm? What?”

  “You don’t have any servants, do you?”

  A cold fist of dread clutched my heart. “I just took one on. A hobgoblin named Buck Foi.”

  “His life is in danger, then. You have some time—years perhaps. Whoever’s done this to you wants to give you time to become attached. But eventually the curse on your head will fall on his neck.”

  “Gods below,” I said, though the goddess across from me was the first among them all. “And what about employees? Does the curse apply to them too?” I worried about Nadia. She’d been with me for a decade now. If the curse applied to her, she had to be near a fatal accident of her own. But the goddess shook her head.

  “It shouldn�
��t. That’s a different relationship than between master and apprentice or this situation with your hobgoblin, where you’re responsible for his well-being. You are merely contracting for their services and paying them. They should be safe so long as you maintain that professional distance.”

  I sighed in relief, that extra weight removed from my conscience. But then another replaced it.

  “Would these accidents that were not accidents…did they…did it kill my wife?”

  Brighid narrowed her eyes. “I doubt it. When did she pass? Before or after your first apprentice?”

  “Before.”

  “Hmm. And when did you notice people starting to hate you? Before or after her death?”

  “After. I thought at first maybe Dougal—my son—blamed me somehow for her death. I couldn’t explain his anger otherwise, until I knew about the curse.”

  “Well, the curses are intertwined. They were placed on you at the same time. If they had been in place in time to affect your wife, then it would have made her despise you first, yes? And you can deduce that the curse causing fatal accidents doesn’t target your loved ones, because they are all, save your wife, still alive after all this time. So it was truly an accident.”

  “But why target my apprentices?”

  “Perhaps someone does not wish you to have a replacement.”

  “But both Eli and Shu-hua have apprentices who can replace me. Mei-ling too, technically, though she will probably take Mei-ling’s territory when she’s achieved her mastery. And I’m sure Diego will find an apprentice eventually.”

  “I’m going to visit the other sigil agents and make sure they’re not cursed as well, but my suspicion is that only you were cursed.”

  “So I need to find and kill whoever did this to me and I’ll be free.” I said it as an affirmation as much as a confirmation.

  “Yes. Or else they must voluntarily remove the curse. But if they cursed you once, they can do so again. If I were you, I would not accept an apology for this. I would burn the responsible party to ash.”