“The anti-native sentiment got fanned during that time and never went back down. That’s one of the reasons the pawnshop is boarded up. Some brats went and threw rocks through the windows. The neighborhood had to crack down on security for a while to scare them off.”
“That’s awful. Is the owner all right?”
“She wasn’t there at the time. Clae and I came running out when we heard it, so we chased them off.” She scowled. The memory still left a bad taste in her mouth. “Come to think of it, I think that’s where Clae learned that language.”
“The brats?”
“The pawnshop owner. I’ve never actually gotten her name. Where did you learn it, though? Was somebody in the Sullivan mansion fluent? Was there actually a mobster?”
“My mother spoke it sometimes.”
“Your mother?” Laura’s interest was piqued. “Where is she—”
The door clattered open, interrupting her as Clae struggled in, attempting to balance two more briefcases in one hand and a strange assembly of large metal parts in the other. He cursed as the door threatened to close on him, and Okane leapt up to hold it. Clae gave him a funny look, but his cussing died down and he stormed farther into the room.
“Where have --- been, sir?” Okane asked, tagging after him and ignoring Laura completely.
“Factories. I’ve gotten more supplies,” Clae answered grudgingly. “What were you up to?”
“Nothing.”
Nothing indeed. Laura had lost that conversation. She slumped over the map with some bitterness, watching as Clae deposited the equipment and opened a case. This was the first time Okane had mentioned actual family, and his mother must’ve been one of those magic people. She would’ve liked to know a little more about that. Then again, if he had to talk about parents, he’d probably expect Laura to reciprocate, wouldn’t he? The thought made her sulk lower. She had her aunt Morgan looking out for her, but her parents had essentially left the picture long ago. Both of them chose to work on long contracts, outside the walls or in the deepest bowels of Amicae, rarely visiting. Her parental plight didn’t seem near as bad as his could be, but she hated thinking about it. Ergo, she would not pester him on this subject. Best move on so it could be left forever in the dust.
“Sir, I wanted to ask … are those regular bullets?” Okane was looking over Clae’s shoulder at the contents of a case; it must have contained supplies for his gun.
“They’ve got kin in them,” Laura supplied loudly.
“Of course they’re not regular bullets,” Clae scoffed. “If regular bullets had any effect, do you think the military and police would be sitting on their asses?”
Okane ducked his head and muttered something that sounded like “Yes, of course.”
Heaving a loud, irritated sigh (someone must’ve gotten on his bad side at the factory), Clae gestured for them both to move closer. “Here, this is how it works. There are a number of Sweeper weapons that work on a similar principle.”
Laura circled around the counter to join them as Clae held up a single bullet, right in front of Okane’s face so he could get a good look at it. The object looked like a regular bullet, if rather pale.
“These are specially constructed by a guild of gunsmiths. Their location in Amicae is Cherry Co. You’ve probably heard of it. They have a specific line in their factory creating these every other month. These bullets are essentially capsules, containing a small amount of kin liquid inside.”
“And they get the kin from Sweepers?” said Laura.
“Yes.” He gestured at the mess of tubes and bottles on the countertop. “We’re the only ones in the city capable of producing this. We pull magic from Gin into liquid form and send it through here to refine it to the point it’s useful for weapons. The longer kin stays in this, the stronger it is. Likewise, the longer this equipment sits around, the stronger it becomes. Take this bullet for example. With such a tiny amount of magic inside, normally it wouldn’t do much good. We have to store them and let them fester for a year before they’re capable of serious damage to an infestation.”
“A whole year?” Okane frowned.
“At minimum.”
“Is there a big store of them somewhere?” Laura asked.
“Of course. These cases are from a cache we stored away two … three years ago?” He mused on that for a while before shrugging. “We have more powerful backups hidden away in case of major problems.”
“How old are those?”
“Some of them were stored before I was born.”
“Thirty years?” she guessed. He didn’t dignify her with an answer.
“There are Eggs and other kin containers stored longer, but bullets we tend to run through fast when guns are in use, so those aren’t allowed to age very long. To use them, we have a special gun.”
He pulled one of his guns from its holster and held it up for them to examine. It looked like a strange combo of a flare gun and a military-issued pistol, leaning more toward the pistol side. All along the barrel were more pictorial letters, complex but similar to the ones marking Kuro no Oukoku on the map. Clae spun the cylinder, creating a grating, clacking sound, then pulled back the hammer. This time it produced a low hum that Laura had never noticed before, and the symbols on the barrel began to glow faintly.
“When I pull the trigger, the hammer hits the bullet and it flies,” he explained, “but on its way out, it passes this.” He ran a finger over a small bump halfway down the barrel, what looked like a thin, silvery ring running around the outside. “This here is Gin. Do you know what Gin is?”
Laura knew, of course, but after the explanation earlier Okane was able to nod along too. Clae seemed vaguely impressed and carried on, “When the hammer is pulled back and these light up, it means the Gin here has activated like an amulet. And just like our regular amulets, it serves the purpose of lighting a fuse. When the bullet passes this, its kin becomes active, and will explode on impact.”
“So it’s something like Eggs. I thought it would be more complicated,” said Laura.
“If it were too complicated it would be too difficult to use. Better to keep it simple so we can utilize it under pressure.”
“But isn’t that like the military was trying to do earlier?” said Okane. “When you were on the phone and they wanted a ‘bigger boom’?”
“They weren’t planning to use kin capsules, they wanted to use actual amulets. Kin and magic aren’t the same. Kin is liquid; magic is more like altered air in a pocket. The liquid is potent and weaponized for our purposes, but aside from burning, the amount in a bullet won’t do much damage to anything beyond an infestation. Even the bullet shell itself only does the minimum. Amulets can be commanded to do a lot more on impact that could cause that burning, but it could also have a secondary reaction, a larger explosion, shrapnel, change the properties of its casing, things that would work on human forces or the beasts in the wilds. The problem is, while Sweeper bullets are entirely saturated in kin and made of the wrong material to host regular magic, an amulet shot in the wilds is broken, abandoned, or both—almost guaranteed to be a new host for a new infestation. Even if the Council can pull off their ‘Amicae is immune’ bull inside the walls, the story doesn’t account for the outside. That was easy to shoot down once they actually understood the consequences.”
“They realized they needed to protect the satellite towns?” Okane guessed.
“Exactly,” said Clae.
“What other weapons were you talking about, that work on the same system?” said Laura.
“The most common form like this is bow and arrows, long-range weapons.”
“There are short-range ones?”
“Of course. The Sweepers here used to specialize in short range, but that died out not too long ago.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I got to be the only one left, and I like keeping a distance.” He spoke without bitterness, more the resigned drawl of one who’d been over this so many times it seem
ed nothing more than dry fact.
Laura pondered a moment before speaking again. “Do we get to pick out weapons at some point?”
“Apprentices have to stick with Eggs, it’s a requirement. It gives you the needed basics. Once you move up you’ll be able to pick something else if you want to. Just keep in mind it has to be something I’m able to coach you in. We don’t have other teachers for you, and as much of a prodigy as I’m supposed to be I’m terrible when it comes to close combat with these things. May as well ask me to tap-dance.”
Considering the woeful number of Sweepers and the limited space, Laura doubted there would be much variety of weapons to choose from anyway. Her eyes trailed over to the open briefcase, the absurd number of bullets lined up inside. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was stocking up for a garrison’s worth of guns.
“You’re storing most of these, right?”
Clae made a noncommittal noise, and she frowned. He caught her look, then returned his attention to the gun, clicking the hammer back so the glow of the letters faded.
“There are more signs popping up,” he said, shoving the gun back into its holster. “Bad ones. We may have to use some of the older stock. Deplete our supplies.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a spike coming. I’ve seen warning signs in the past, but these? These are different, and they’re occurring all over the island. I have contacts with other Sweepers and they’ve confirmed it. I don’t know what to expect, beyond downright nasty.”
“How bad is nasty?” Okane squeaked.
Clae eyed him for a while, blank-faced and brooding. “I’ll put it this way. If you don’t take training seriously, you’re not going to last long.”
10
NUMBERFACE
“Hurry it up!”
Clae’s bark lent more speed to Laura’s flight. She sprinted across the cobblestone road and down an alley, trying to stay ahead of the pounding footsteps. Okane panted harshly just behind her, and a glance back showed his eyes wide and panicked. That same glance showed Clae gaining fast. With a squeak of fear, Laura smacked the amulet on her belt. With gravity’s hold slackened, she charged the wall to her right. The amulets in her shoes let her take three steps nearly vertical on the brick, and she launched herself up, grabbed hold of a large windowsill, and tumbled through the opening. She landed heavily on a hardwood floor and whirled about, pulling a rubber ball from her bag and tapping it against her amulet. She stood ready, waiting for Clae to appear (him being the mock monster, she needed to try to hit him with the mock Egg), but he didn’t. Instead, his voice issued from outside.
“Damn it, Okane, you’re supposed to be using your amulets!”
“I don’t know how!”
“I showed you five minutes ago!”
Laura let her arm go slack, heaving a sigh. This was the third time during the exercise that they’d had to stop. She drifted back to the window and leaned out, looking down at her coworkers. Okane cowered by the wall while Clae, sounding very much annoyed, walked him through how to work the amulets. He’d been trying to explain them for over a week, to no avail; they’d had to leave Okane locked up in the shop while they took care of other minor infestations. Why Okane hadn’t gotten the hang of it, Laura had no idea. It was easy for her to use them. Then again, she was a natural. She basked in that old praise for a while, passing the rubber ball from one hand to the other, then shouted “Think fast!” and slung the ball downward.
There was a series of snapping sounds, and the next thing she knew Okane was clambering up the fence of the dead-end alley. Here she’d thought it was impossible to climb. Clae remained unimpressed.
“Amulets, I said! You can’t rely on fear forever!”
Okane stopped, teetering on top of the wood, and peered down at him. The thin fence wavered beneath his weight.
“I don’t like amulets.”
“Obviously.”
Laura climbed back onto the windowsill and hopped down. The amulets of her shoes slowed her descent so she alighted easily beside Clae.
“Any particular reason why?” she asked.
“They feel wrong,” Okane defended. “It’s like they’re crawling into my head.”
“Get down from there before you break your neck,” Clae scoffed.
Okane wobbled precariously on his perch, trying to pick his way back down.
“So he’s not even using magic to get up there?” Laura marveled.
“Wrong kind of magic. Remember the ‘you’ phenomenon? That’s not the extent of it. His innate magic kicks in with fight-or-flight instinct, but it’s uncontrollable. He doesn’t think when he uses it, so he can’t properly utilize it. One slip in control, and he’s dead meat.” He paused, then nodded his certainty. “No. Dead. Literally dead.”
“He can’t use the innate kind at will?”
“What do you think he is, a witch?”
“You’re the one going on about magic.”
Clae folded his arms, glowered at the fence. “His understanding of magic and amulets is probably like yours. Abstracted. Doesn’t have direction. There’s nothing else to react to your thoughts, but he’s got two avenues to try and he’s so used to the natural one he can’t switch over. He’s not even trying. This is an adrenaline-fueled environment, and if he doesn’t get the hang of it soon I can’t take him anywhere.”
Okane dropped to the ground, stumbling to catch his balance. He gave them a sullen look. “Are we done now?”
“No,” Clae snapped. “We’re doing this either until you get it right or the sun goes down.”
“Really?” Laura groaned.
It was late afternoon and she was sick of being chased down the streets of the Fourth Quarter. They must’ve looked utterly ridiculous.
“An infestation’s going to run faster than me if it’s big. You planning on surviving or not?”
“Of course I am, but can’t you do individual lessons?”
“He’s already getting individual lessons.”
“Then what are we doing here?” Laura cried.
“Individual lessons are different. Those are desensitizing.”
“I don’t like it,” Okane butted in, and Clae glared at him.
“If you want to survive this job, you can’t panic every time you come across a monster. Did you even make a conscious choice how to use that magic just now?”
“No.”
“And that will get you killed.” Clae glanced over at Laura and added, “Anselm.”
“Anselm?”
“Anselm.”
Must’ve been another dead apprentice. Maybe the “horse” Clae learned all this information from.
Clae turned on his heel, gesturing for them to follow. They trailed behind him onto the main street, and Laura squinted up at the building she’d sought refuge in. It was a hotel with some front windows smashed in, patched over by patterned cloth that might’ve been old dresses. A woman scowled from the second floor—she might’ve been startled by Laura. Laura hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going, so she was lucky Clae had been so focused on Okane; otherwise she’d be chewed out.
“What exactly are you doing for this desensitizing?” she asked.
“I sit and stare at an infestation,” Okane grumbled.
“A little one. It won’t be able to do any damage for a while, and I’ve been monitoring its growth closely.” Clae didn’t look back at them, so Laura just stared incredulously at the back of his head.
“Isn’t that kind of cruel?”
“What do you think Sweepers are, picnics and butterflies? If sitting you down with the thing you hate will help you keep your wits later, I’m going to do it.”
Okane slipped further into his sulk but didn’t argue. Laura sighed and folded her arms, unable to come up with a counter. It must’ve really sucked being around Clae twenty-four/seven, especially with the amulet situation. Maybe she could offer to let Okane stay at her apartment? But then there was Morgan to deal w
ith—would she crow over Laura finally having a “beau,” or despair that she didn’t invite Charlie? Hell, that might set an awful precedent … but she was already dealing with angelina rumors. Laura’s mind was obviously running too far; no way would Morgan ever allow a male of any kind to associate so closely with poor, unmarried Laura. Might sully her for future marriage prospects.
The three of them passed by another alley, where a group of children tracked their progress eagerly. One scampered off in the direction the Sweepers came from. The kids here recognized Clae’s coat on sight and had a habit of following the Sweepers throughout the Quarter. The rubber balls used in training ended up getting lost more times than not and became little treasures for the kids here. There weren’t a lot of good toys in this Quarter, so Laura wouldn’t be surprised if these kids worshiped Sweepers like Underyear spirits.
“How do you have another infested amulet?” she sighed after a while.
“Someone turned it in for recycling, just a little late.”
One of the children ran by, holding a rubber ball above his head and cackling, a pack of others hot on his heels. Laura smiled at the sight, though Clae snorted in disgust. The laughter faded as they arrived at a low wall of rosy brick. Clae reached up, jumped slightly to catch the top, and heaved himself up. Laura copied, scowling at her arms as she did. Her arms looked pale and brittle compared to Clae’s, even if she did have some muscle. She pulled herself on top of the wall and rolled over it to drop in the space between brick and a flower bush. She batted at the bush gingerly, dislodging some thorns from her clothes.
Gardens and green spaces were sparse inside the walls of Amicae, but little oases had been scattered around, this being one of them. The garden lay between two larger brick buildings, fenced in to deter people from cutting through and crushing the vegetation. A path of scattered stone circles wound through dark soil, glittering with colored beads and glass. Laura balanced on a circle with the imprint of childish hands. The plants tended toward dark green with a smattering of lighter green and bright flowers of orange and pink and pale blue. A particularly large, bell-shaped purple blossom tilted in their direction as Clae drifted nearer, its petals curling tighter. It was a Watcher Lily; as a child, Laura had been terrified of them, and even now she gave it a wide berth.
City of Broken Magic Page 17
