by Paula Guran
Together they drifted back to the main gate. It had stood propped open years before the Dancing Mistress had come to Copper Downs, but no one ever passed through it. The squatters who lived within used the servants’ gate beside the main gate, and so observed the blackletter law of the city even as they had built their illegal homes upon the grounds. The trail of their passing back and forth glowed in the eyes of the hunt. It was human, but there was something of the people mixed in with it.
The hunt slipped through the narrow door one by one, their steps like mist on the furze within. The path followed the old carriage drive through a stand of drooping willows now rotten and overgrown with wisteria. Trails led off between the curtains of leaves and vines toward the hidden homes beyond.
There was no scent to follow here. The shaman might as well have been made of fog.
A thought passed between the hunt like breeze bending the flowers of a meadow: An herbalist lives here, a woman of their people.
She felt her claws stiffen. The wisdom of the hunt stirred, the mesh-mind reading clues where ordinary eyes saw only shadow.
Is the Duke in fact still dead?
It was the same question she’d almost asked herself on her way to this place the first time.
Sage-man twitched aside a mat of ivy and stepped into the darker shadows. A brighter trail well marked with the traces of one of her people led within. Of course, cloaked in the magic of her people the shaman could also have left his tracks so.
The Dancing Mistress nodded the rest of her hunt through—cinnamon-woman and the glumper—and followed last.
The hut was a shambles. Jars shattered, sheaves scattered, what little furniture there had been now smashed to splinters. While there didn’t seem to be any quantity of blood, the stink of fear hung heavy in the close air, overlaying even the intense jumble of odors from scattered herbs and salves.
The glumper trailed his fingers through the leaves and powders and shattered ceramic fragments on the floor. He sniffed, sending a tingle through the Dancing Mistress’ nose. “I might have thought one of us had done this thing.” He had yet to speak a word of Petraean within her hearing. “But knowing to search, I find there has been a human here as well. Wearing leather and animal fat. He first took her unawares, then he took her away.”
The shaman, the Dancing Mistress thought. Inside the mesh-mind, they shared her next question. What path did he follow now?
The hunt had the shaman’s scent, and the herbalist’s besides. It was enough.
A warm, damp wind blew off the water to carry the reek of tide rot and the distant echo of bells. Even the rogue squads of the Ducal guard seemed to be lying low, doubtless surrounded by wine butts, and hired boys wearing slitted skirts and long wigs. The city was deserted, waiting under the smell of old fires and dark magic.
That was well enough, the Dancing Mistress thought with the independent fragment of herself that still held its own amid the flow of the mesh-mind. It would not do for her people to be seen gliding over the cobbles at preternatural speed, moving silent as winter snowfall.
The hunt’s grip on shaman’s scent and herbalist’s soul path was sufficient, even when running through fire-reek and the alley-mouth stench of dead dogs. They moved together, heeding the Dancing Mistress’ will, following the glumper’s trace on the scent, using cinnamon-woman’s eyes, sage-man’s hearing. Most of all they pursued the dread that stalked the night, the banked fires of the hunt flaring only to seek a single hearth within Copper Downs.
They followed a dark river of fear and purpose into the Temple Quarter. That had long been the quietest section of the city. Once it must have brawled and boiled with worshippers, for the buildings there were as great as any save the Ducal Palace. In the centuries of the Duke’s rule, the gods of the city had grown withered and sour as winter fruit. People left their coppers in prayer boxes near the edges of the district and walked quickly past.
Even with the gods fallen on hard times, locked in the embrace of neglect and refusal, no one had ever found the nerve to tear down those decaying walls and replace the old houses of worship with anything newer and more mundane.
The hunt pursued the scent down Divas Street, along the edge of the Temple Quarter, before leading into the leaf-strewn cobwebs of Mithrail Street. They bounded into those deeper shadows where the air curdled to black water and the dead eyes of the Duke seemed to glitter within every stygian crevice.
They came to a quivering halt with claws spread wide before a narrow door of burnt oak bound with iron and ebony laths. Darkness leaked from behind it, along with a fire scent and the tang of burning fat.
The man-smell was strong here. They were obviously close to the shaman’s lair, where the cloak of the people’s power grew thin over his layered traces of daily use—sweat and speech and the stink of human urine. The doorway reeked of magic, inimical purpose and the thin, screaming souls of animals slit from weasand to wodge for their particles of wisdom.
That was his weakness, the Dancing mistress realized, surfacing farther from the hunt for a moment even as those around her growled. He used the people’s power only as a cover, nothing more. The shaman could build a vision of the world from a thousand bright, tiny eyes, but animals never saw more than they understood. Her people knew that to be a fool’s path to wisdom.
Now he worked his blood magic on the herbalist, summoning the Dancing Mistress. He had drawn her here to cut her secrets from her. The mesh-mind overtook her once more in the rush of angry passion at that thought, and together the hunt brushed someone’s claw-tipped hand on the cool wooden planks of the door.
“Come,” the shaman called. His voice held confident expectation of her.
The hunt burst in.
The four of them were a surprise to the shaman. They could see that in his face. But his power was great as well. The ancient stone walls of this abandoned temple kitchen were crusted with ice. The herbalist hung by ropes from a high ceiling beam, her body shorn and torn as he’d bled her wisdom cut by cut, the way he’d bled it from a thousand tiny beasts of the field.
He rose from his fire, kicked a brazier and coals toward them, and gathered the air into daggers of ice even as the claws of the hunt spread across the room.
Though they called the old powers of their people, none of them had ever trained to stand in open battle. Their purpose was strong, but only the Dancing Mistress could move below a slicing blade or land a strike upon a briefly unprotected neck.
If not for their number they would have been cut down without thought. If not for the shaman’s need to capture an essence from the Dancing Mistress he might have blown them out like candles. She knew then that he had set the thugs upon her that day so he could render aid, only to draw her in to him now, when suasion had failed him.
The fight came to fast-moving claws against restrained purpose. His ice made glittering edges that bent the vision of the mesh-mind. The blood of his sacrifices confused their scent. He moved, as he had on the street that day, with the brutal grace of one raised to war, working his magic even as he wielded his yatagan. The glumper’s chest was laid open. Cinnamon-woman had her ear shorn off. Sage-man’s thought were flayed by a dream of mountain fire that slipped through the mesh-mind.
But for every round of blows the hunt took, they landed at least one in return. Claws raked the shaman’s cheek with the sound of roses blooming. A kick traced its arc in blurred colors on their sight to snap bones in his left hand. A brand was shoved still burning brightly sour into his hair, so the grease there smoldered and his spells began to crack with the distraction of the pain.
The hunt moved in for the kill.
The Dancing Mistress once more emerged from the blurred glow of the hunt to find herself with claws set against the shaman’s face. The cinnamon-woman twisted his right arm from his shoulder. She looked up at the herbalist, who dangled bleeding like so much meat in the slaughterhouse, and thought, What are we now? “Wait,” she shouted, and with the pain of forests dy
ing tore herself free from the mesh-mind.
Cinnamon-woman stared, blood streaming from the stump of her ear. The look sage-man gave the Dancing Mistress from his place bending back the shaman’s legs would have burned iron. Their mouths moved in unison, the mesh-mind croaking out the words, “He does not deserve to live!”
“He does not have a right to our power,” she countered. “But we cannot judge who should live and who should die.”
The shaman bit the palm of her hand, his tongue darting to lick the blood, to suck her down to some last, desperate magic.
Steeling herself, the Dancing Mistress leaned close. Her claws were still set in his face. “I will take your wisdom as you have taken the wisdom of so many others. But I shall let you live to know what comes of such a price.”
“Wait,” he screamed through her enclosing palm. “You do not underst—”
With a great, terrible heave, she tore his tongue out with her claws. “We will not have the Duke back,” the Dancing Mistress whispered venomously. She slit into him, plucking and cutting slivers from his liver and lights. The hunt kept the shaman pinned tight until blood loss and fear erased his resolve. Then the remainder of mesh-mind collapse. The cinnamon-woman began to tend to the glumper and the herbalist. Sage-man rebuilt the fire before ungently sewing shut the slits that the Dancing Mistress had made in the shaman’s chest and belly.
Ice from the walls turned to steam as the Dancing Mistress fried the organ meats, the tongue and two glistening eyes in a tiny black iron pan graven with runes. The blinded shaman wept and gagged, spitting blood while he shivered by the fire.
When the bits were done the Dancing Mistress dumped them to the blood-slicked mess that was the floor. She ground the burnt flesh to mash beneath her feet, then kicked it into the coals. The shaman’s weeping turned to a scream as his wisdom burned away.
“Our water matter is discharged,” she whispered in his ear. “If your Duke’s ghost comes to you seeking restoration, send him to knock at my door.”
Then the Dancing Mistress gathered the herbalist into her arms. Cinnamon-woman and sage-man brought the glumper between them. The shaman they left to his fate, blind, mute and friendless among the lonely gods.
The Duke of Copper Downs was still dead, the Dancing Mistress reflected as the night faded around her. Oddly, she remained alive.
She sat at the door of the herbalist’s hut. The woman slept inside, mewing her pain even amidst the thickets of her dreams. There was a new water matter here, of course. The ties among her people ever and always were broad as the sea, swift as a river, deep as the lakes that lie beneath the mountains. She was bound for a time to the herbalist by the steam that the hunt had burned from the shaman’s icy walls.
That man did not have much of life left to him, but at least she had not claimed it herself. Her people had the right of things in centuries past, when they gave up their power. She only hoped that rumor of the hunt was small and soon forgotten by the citizens of Copper Downs.
The shadows beneath the rotten willows lightened with the day. The spiced scent of cookery rose around her, tiny boiling pots and bumptious roasts alike. The Dancing Mistress rose, stretched, and went to tend her patient.
The author of ten novels, seven collections, and over three hundred short stories, Jay Lake (1964–2014) won the 2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and garnered multiple Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominations. He also edited fifteen anthologies. In 2008, Lake was diagnosed with cancer. He acquired new fame as an outspoken cancer survivor and blogger, discussing the details of his illness and efforts to navigate the health care industry with frankness and, often, humor. His Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection, published by Tor in September 2014, won the 2015 Endeavor Award.
Harry Dresden, a private investigator of paranormal crime, walks the streets of a supernatural Chicago armed with numerous powers of wizardry. He’s also has a healthy appreciation of fermented beverages, so it is not a good idea to mess with Harry’s favorite “beeromancer.”
Last Call
Jim Butcher
All I wanted was a quiet beer.
That isn’t too much to ask, is it—one contemplative drink at the end of a hard day of professional wizarding? Maybe a steak sandwich to go with it? You wouldn’t think so. But somebody (or maybe Somebody) disagreed with me.
McAnally’s pub is a quiet little hole in the wall, like a hundred others in Chicago, in the basement of a large office building. You have to go down a few stairs to get to the door. When you come inside, you’re at eye level with the creaky old ceiling fans in the rest of the place, and you have to take a couple of more steps down from the entryway to get to the pub’s floor. It’s lit mostly by candles. The finish work is all hand-carved, richly polished wood, stained a deeper brown than most would use, and combined with the candles, it feels cozily cavelike.
I opened the door to the place and got hit in the face with something I’d never smelled in Mac’s pub before—the odor of food being burned.
It should say something about Mac’s cooking that my first instinct was to make sure the shield bracelet on my left arm was ready to go as I drew the blasting rod from inside my coat. I took careful steps forward into the pub, blasting rod held up and ready. The usual lighting was dimmed, and only a handful of candles still glimmered.
The regular crowd at Mac’s, members of the supernatural community of Chicago, were strewn about like broken dolls. Half a dozen people lay on the floor, limbs sprawled oddly, as if they’d dropped unconscious in the middle of calisthenics. A pair of older guys who were always playing chess at a table in the corner both lay slumped across the table. Pieces were spread everywhere around them, some of them broken, and the old chess clock they used had been smashed to bits. Three young women who had watched too many episodes of Charmed, and who always showed up at Mac’s together, were unconscious in a pile in the corner, as if they’d been huddled there in terror before they collapsed—but they were splattered with droplets of what looked like blood.
I could see several of the fallen breathing, at least. I waited for a long moment, but nothing jumped at me from the darkness, and I felt no sudden desire to start breaking things and then take a nap.
“Mac?” I called quietly.
Someone grunted.
I hurried over to the bar and found Mac on the floor beside it. He’d been badly beaten. His lips were split and puffy. His nose had been broken. Both his hands were swollen and purple—defensive wounds, probably. The baseball bat he kept behind the bar was lying next to him, smeared with blood—probably his own.
“Stars and stones,” I breathed. “Mac.”
I knelt down next to him, examining him for injuries as best I could. I didn’t have any formal medical training, but several years’ service in the Wardens in a war with the vampires of the Red Court had shown me more than my fair share of injuries. I didn’t like the look of one of the bruises on his head, and he’d broken several fingers, but I didn’t think it was anything he wouldn’t recover from.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“Went nuts,” he slurred. One of his cut lips reopened, and fresh blood appeared. “Violent.”
I winced. “No kidding.” I grabbed a clean cloth from the stack on the shelf behind the bar and ran cold water over it. I tried to clean some of the mess off his face. “They’re all down,” I told him as I did. “Alive. It’s your place. How do you want to play it?”
Even through as much pain as he was in, Mac took a moment to consider before answering. “Murphy,” he said finally.
I’d figured. Calling in the authorities would mean a lot of questions and attention, but it also meant that everyone would get medical treatment sooner. Mac tended to put the customer first. But if he’d wanted to keep it under the radar, I would have understood that, too.
“I’ll make the call,” I told him.
The authorities swooped down on the place with vigor. It was early in the evening,
and we were evidently the first customers for the night shift EMTs.
“Jesus,” Sergeant Karrin Murphy said from the doorway, looking around the interior of Mac’s place. “What a mess.”
“Tell me about it,” I said glumly. My stomach was rumbling, and I was thirsty besides, but it just didn’t seem right to help myself to any of Mac’s stuff while he was busy getting patched up by the ambulance guys.
Murphy blew out a breath. “Well, brawls in bars aren’t exactly uncommon.” She came down into the room, removed a flashlight from her jacket pocket, and shone it around. “But maybe you’ll tell me what really happened.”
“Mac said that his customers went nuts. They started acting erratic and then became violent.”
“What, all of them? At the same time?”
“That was the impression he gave me. He wasn’t overly coherent.”
Murphy frowned and slowly paced the room, sweeping the light back and forth methodically. “You get a look at the customers?”
“There wasn’t anything actively affecting them when I got here,” I said. “I’m sure of that. They were all unconscious. Minor wounds, looked like they were mostly self-inflicted. I think those girls were the ones to beat Mac.”
Murphy winced. “You think he wouldn’t defend himself against them?”
“He could have pulled a gun. Instead, he had his bat out. He was probably trying to stop someone from doing something stupid, and it went bad.”
“You know what I’m thinking?” Murphy asked. “When something odd happens to everyone in a pub?”
She had stopped at the back corner. Among the remnants of broken chessmen and scattered chairs, the circle of illumination cast by her flashlight had come to rest on a pair of dark brown beer bottles.
“Ugly thought,” I said. “Mac’s beer, in the service of darkness.”
She gave me a level look. Well. As level a look as you can give when you’re a five-foot blonde with a perky nose, glaring at a gangly wizard most of seven feet tall. “I’m serious, Harry. Could it have been something in the beer? Drugs? A poison? Something from your end of things?”
