The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan

  “I broke the cart.”

  “You passed through the cart,” he said. “Like you did with the wall. That’s a common thing with novices, they don’t quite know when to stop.”

  I wasn’t having that. A man is entitled to lie in furtherance of his fraud, but not to the extent of playing serious games with someone’s head. “Come on,” I told him, as I jumped up and grabbed his arm. He didn’t resist. We went all the way back down again. The cart was still there.

  Its plank floor was, of course, intact.

  fOR OUR NEXT session, he’d said, meet me under the clock at noon.

  I was there, bang on time. No sign of him. As I stood there, leaning against one of the columns of the New Revelation temple – I still wasn’t happy with walls, but I figured columns were probably all right – part of me was thinking, one hundred and ninety thalers. The other part was thinking: I can pass through walls.

  Qualify that. I had passed through a wall, and a plank floor; accidentally, not deliberately. I didn’t know if I could do it again. I hadn’t tried. I didn’t want to try – or at least, not on my own and unsupervised. I can only teach you what you already know. Yes, well. Con artists’ mysticism; I’m quite good at it myself, when I’m on form. But novices don’t quite know when to stop. Suppose I tried it on my own and I couldn’t stop. Suppose I started sinking down through the earth. No, thank you very much. Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I have to do it.

  Ten minutes past the hour, he eventually turned up. He came out of the saloon bar of the Veracity & Trust. He was eating an apple. “You’re late,” he said.

  I glanced up at the clock. “I’ve been here all the –”

  “Noon precisely,” he said. “Follow me.”

  He moved fast for a small, fat man. “If it’s dead on noon,” I said, jogging to keep up with him “how can I be...?”

  “So,” he said, without looking round, “have you been practicing?”

  “No.”

  He made a tsk noise. “Poor show,” he said. “You really do have to practice, you know. Innate ability is all very well, but you have to learn how to use it. Ah, here we are.”

  I wanted to ask him about a number of things, starting with innate ability, but he darted into a doorway, one I happened to know quite well.

  “We can’t go in there,” I said.

  I couldn’t, anyway. I’d been left in no doubt on that score the last time I tried, about eighteen months earlier. “You can’t come in here,” the man on the door had told me, and since he was six feet eight with a chest like an ox, I believed him.

  One of those ridiculous misunderstandings, of course. I’d gone in fully intending to pay the asking price, not to mention a generous tip. It was only when I put my hand in my pocket and found it empty that I realised there was a hole in the lining, through which my twelve thalers forty must have fallen. I explained. I turned the pocket inside out and showed them the hole. They threw me out.

  “Now, then,” he said. We were in the front parlour, or waiting room, or whatever you choose to call it. Nobody about. “We’ve done walking through walls and freezing the passage of time. That only leaves –”

  “What are we doing in here?” I asked him in a loud, hoarse whisper. “You do realise this is a –”

  He smiled at me. “Last time you were here,” he said.

  I caught my breath; and then I thought, well, he’s been making enquiries, hasn’t he? I suppose I’m reasonably well known in some quarters in this town. He’s found out about my embarrassing history in this place, and he’s using it to try and make me think he’s a mind-reader or something. Sort of thing I’d do.

  I smiled. “They threw me out,” I said.

  He nodded. “There was a hole in your pocket,” he said.

  “That’s right. Expensive hole. Twelve thalers forty.”

  “No.” He gave me a mild frown. “You made the hole yourself, with a very sharp knife. You made the hole just slightly smaller than a sixthaler coin. The idea is that the coin gradually works its way through the hole. That way, when you come in through the door, you make a show of jingling the coins in your pocket, to let everyone know you have money. Later, when it’s time to pay, you turn your pocket out and show them the hole. But the coins have slipped through, into the little trap you’ve sewn into the lining.”

  I looked at him very hard. He didn’t drop dead. I don’t know. Maybe he’d worked it out from first principles, or maybe someone else had done that, and told him. “I make no admissions on that score,” I said.

  He gave me a doesn’t-matter shrug. “The doorman,” he said.

  “Well?”

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  I grinned. “I think he may possibly enjoy his work a little bit too much,” I said.

  “You were humiliated. People you knew saw you getting thrown out into the street. It made you ashamed, and angry. You wanted to get back at him for that. You wanted to hurt him.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked this. “Wanting’s not a crime,” I said.

  “Of course it isn’t.” His smile widened. I wanted to hit him, to make him stop grinning at me. “And, by the same token, neither is being in the same room when a man dies from a heart attack. Not even,” he went on, “if the man in question was someone you had cause to dislike.” His voice was getting softer and softer. “They’d never suspect it was you. If they did, they couldn’t prove it.”

  I did my best to give him a horrified stare. “I don’t kill people,” I said.

  “Of course you don’t. You’re afraid of getting caught, and strung up. Quite properly, you argue that it’s not worth the risk – the brief moment of satisfaction, against your life. Common sense. Like not walking straight at a wall, hoping it’ll let you through.”

  “I don’t want to kill him,” I said. “I don’t want to kill anybody.”

  He nodded; sharply, precisely. “You just want to be able to.”

  “Yes.”

  I COULD BE whoever I wanted to be, my mother told me. By the same token, presumably, I could do whatever I wanted to do – walk through walls, stop clocks, kill people. The key word, of course, is want.

  Ricimer’s paradox (that hoary old chestnut): political power should only be given to those who don’t want to exercise it. Apply that principle to – here comes the M word – magic. Behold, I give you the power to do anything, anything at all, so long as you don’t want to do it.

  Neat trick.

  At any rate, a wonderful way of gouging someone out of a hundred and ninety thalers. I had a shrewd suspicion that he’d magicked me through the wall and slowed down my descent onto the bed of the cart. Upshot: I believe I now have the power to do it, but I won’t put that belief to the test, because You Can Only Use Magic To Do Stuff You Don’t Want To Do. So, I can’t prove I’ve been cheated. So, I can’t have my money back.

  Fine. Except, why is someone who can do that sort of stuff reduced to swindling people out of relatively trivial sums? Answers, anyone?

  (Because he doesn’t want to make his living that way.) I could have been anything I wanted to be. Instead, I made my living by cheating people out of relatively trivial sums. I started out by embezzling the money I was entrusted with by my kind and generous employer in Boc. Using that as a stake, I went to the Vesani republic, where I discovered (a bit too late) that I was way out of my league. Not long afterwards, I left the republic in a tearing hurry, half a jump ahead of the law, found guilty in absentia of a crime I didn’t commit (no, really), and ended up on Scona, which is where the ship I was on happened to be going. On that ship, I’d undergone a transformation, the way caterpillars turn into butterflies. I metamorphosed from a penniless fugitive into the accredited representative of the Symmachus brothers, the biggest manufacturers of woollen goods in Boc. I got lucky. I found a sheet of paper and a pen in the captain’s cabin. I have neat handwriting. Incidentally, there’s no such firm as the Symmachus brothers. I called them into being, out of th
in air. Of course, I didn’t really want to. Still, a man has to eat.

  “YOU AGAIN,” HE said, peering at me over the top of his book. “Me again,” I said.

  He marked the place carefully and closed the book. “But we’re all done. I taught you, you learned, you’ve had your money’s worth. That’s it.”

  I’d thought long and hard about the mechanics of it all. A hundred and ninety thalers; let’s see. Average weekly wage of an ordinary working man, say, ten thalers. A man of austere habits could last out a long time on a hundred and ninety. He’d only have to pull the scam three, four times a year. The rest of the time he could devote to his own interests; scholarship, research.

  “I’m not satisfied,” I said.

  He sighed. “Sue me,” he said. “Oh, sorry, I forgot, you can’t. The law wouldn’t recognise a contract to teach magic, since there’s no such thing. A contract to perform an impossible act is no contract. Look it up,” he added kindly.

  I stayed where I was. “You didn’t teach me anything,” I said. I could see I was turning into a nuisance. Good. “Strictly speaking, no,” he said, “since I can’t teach you anything you don’t already know. But I made that clear from the outset, so it’s effectively an essential term of the agreement. You have absolutely no legitimate grounds for complaint. Please go away.”

  I smiled at him. “No,” I said.

  I knew that look. I’m used to it. “All right,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “To annoy you,” I said. “So you’ll make the floor disappear from under my feet. Like you did with the cart I fell on.”

  He looked confused. “I didn’t do that. I couldn’t.”

  “Because you want to?”

  “No, because I can’t.”

  I believed him. He was annoyed enough to be credible. “So it wasn’t you,” I said. “You didn’t make me fall through the wall.”

  “That would be impossible.”

  “So the magic –”

  The word made him wince. “You did it all by yourself.” He gave me a pained look; why are you doing this to me? “I thought you’d understood all that. I can’t teach you what you don’t already know, remember?”

  I gave him my special smile. “You’re under arrest,” I said.

  IT’S NOT SOMETHING I like to talk about.

  It was my own stupid fault, needless to say. Sooner or later, everyone in this line of work gets careless. One little slip is all it takes. Sometimes I wonder where the hell we get the courage from. It’s like being a soldier, except that every day we’re on the front line, that one little slip away from disaster. If I thought about it, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

  Anyway, they got me. It was, what, ten years ago now. I remember sitting in a cell about a mile down under the Prefecture, telling myself that if ever I got out of there, that was it, the end, no more bad behaviour from me; but I couldn’t conceive of a way out, even with my amazingly active imagination. And then the prefect came in – the man himself, not a deputy – and he offered me this deal. Get out there, he said, and scam the scammers. You know how they think, where to find them, how they operate. In return, you get a pardon, immunity, we may even pay you. Of course, we’ll be watching you like hawks, and the very first hint that you’re playing us for fools, you’ll wish you’d never been born. But –

  Time stood still. And then I said, yes, please, and the most amazing thing happened. I got out. It was like magic, as though I’d simply stood up and walked through the cell wall like it wasn’t there.

  Since then, I’ve been such a good little soldier. Seventy-six convictions. Jail for most of them, and twelve got the rope, due to aggravating circumstances. Quite right, too. If there’s one thing I can’t be doing with, it’s deliberate dishonesty.

  I WENT TO see him in his cell. It might just possibly have been the one I was in, all those years ago.

  “Still here, then,” I said.

  He gave me a sort of sad smile. “Of course,” he said. “The door’s locked.”

  “Ah,” I replied. “But you can walk through walls.”

  He sighed. “If I could do that,” he said, “which I don’t admit, naturally, then it would prove that I am indeed a sorcerer. I believe that’s illegal.”

  True. Although the official position these days is that magic doesn’t exist, there’s a fistful of silly old laws on the statute-book prescribing the death sentence for witchcraft. Nobody can be bothered to repeal them; after all, the argument runs, a person can’t be convicted of witchcraft unless he’s proven to have performed magic. Magic doesn’t exist. Therefore, it’s impossible that anyone could be convicted.

  I beamed at him. I can be horrible sometimes. “Nobody takes that stuff seriously anymore,” I said. “What you’re in here for is fraud. To be exact, fraudulently professing to be able to walk through walls. If you demonstrated you could walk through walls, you’d prove you’re innocent.”

  “And then they’d hang me.”

  “And then we’d hang you, yes. In theory,” I added. “Unless we could do a deal.”

  If looks could kill. “Go on,” he said.

  “Quite simple,” I replied. “Plead guilty to the fraud, and we’ll forget about the witchcraft.”

  He frowned. “You want me to lie. On oath.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s perjury.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll throw in a free pardon on the perjury.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Let’s not forget,” he said, “you can do magic too.”

  I laughed. “They’d never believe you.”

  I could read his mind (which was my mind, essentially, from the time when it was me sitting on the bed hearing the terms of the deal). “You’ll drop the sorcery charges.”

  “If you plead to the fraud, yes.”

  “What will I get?”

  “For the fraud? Two years in the galleys. I’ll put in a good word for you. Say you co-operated.”

  “That’s a good deal?”

  “Yes.”

  AFTER THAT, i managed to put him out of my mind. I have that gift; I can forget about people sitting hopelessly in jail cells, because I put them there, because I tricked them. Now that’s magic.

  I forgot all about him, until a captain of the watch came to see me. No cause for alarm, he said, thereby scaring me to death. One of yours has escaped.

  They’re required to tell you, so you can be on your guard, in case the fugitive comes after you with a knife or something. As soon as he said it, I knew. “Little short guy.”

  “That’s the one.”

  I felt that twitch in the stomach. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “The prison authorities are baffled.”

  He looked surprised. “Yes, actually. One minute he was in his cell, the next he wasn’t. Door still locked on the outside, no hole in the wall, nothing. Not a clue how he got out. But he did.”

  “Maybe he walked through the wall,” I suggested. The fool laughed.

  UNDER THE TERMS of my parole, I can’t leave town without permission from the prefect. I made an appointment.

  “No,” he said.

  “Oh, go on,” I said. “I haven’t left the city for ten years, and I’ve been good as gold.”

  “Quite.” He gave me a big smile. “You’re the best thief-taker I’ve ever had. I’m so proud of you. Which is why you can’t leave town. Sorry.” He actually looked sorry, the liar. “I’m afraid I don’t trust you to come back.”

  “There’s an escaped convict on the loose. I have reason to believe he wants to kill me.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “That’s different. In that case, I definitely don’t trust you to come back.”

  “But if he –”

  “Rest assured,” he said, and gave me that sincere, reliable look that the voters keep on falling for. “We’ll catch him and we’ll string him up, and that’s a promise. Even if I have to put the noose round his neck personally.”

  I sighed. “You don’t understand,” I said. “He’s
a sorcerer. He can walk through walls. He can stop clocks. He can kill you just by staring at you.”

  The prefect looked at me. “Now that’s just silly,” he said.

  HE CAME TO see me.

  He came in through the wall, though the door wasn’t locked – why bother?

  I was sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, which was empty apart from one other chair, which I’d left for him when I cleared out all the rest of the furniture. I’d also taken down the wall-hangings, exposing the bare red brick. The room looked like a cell.

  “I love what you’ve done with the place,” he said.

  I looked at him. It didn’t work.

  “Sit down,” I said. “Please.”

  He glanced up at the ceiling, then sat down. “I’m assuming there’s no hidden trapdoor,” he said.

  I had actually considered that; even went so far as to get a quote from a carpenter. Seventeen thalers forty, just for cutting a simple hidden trapdoor in a floor. For that money he can damn well kill me, I said. “What can I do for you?”

  That seemed to amuse him. “You could beg for mercy.”

  “Would that do me any good?”

  “No.”

  I nodded. “Would it help if I apologised? I really am very sorry for the way I treated you.”

  He sighed. “All this,” he said, “the melodrama. It really isn’t me, you know. All my life, all I’ve ever been is a scholar, a researcher, a scientist. Do you really think I’ve come here for revenge?” He made it sound so utterly absurd.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, I’m not. I’m here to conclude my experiment, that’s all. Once I’ve done that, we’re finished. Over, the end. Really.”

  In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I persist in thinking I’m smart. Just shows how dumb I am really. “Experiment,” I said. “Quite so.” He smiled at me. “An experiment to ascertain whether paranormal powers can be acquired and exercised by someone with no innate paranormal ability.”