The Magos

by Dan Abnett

  His drink arrived, served on a paper mat. The joiliq was substandard, and too warm. The ice had melted prematurely, and left the citrus wind adrift in a disappointing floe.

  He drank it anyway, and ordered another. His headache had eased.

  The room was full of loud voices and busy discussion. He thought about calling Liebstrum, but didn’t want to endure the impotence of another recorded message.

  He ordered a third drink, and sat back on his stool to survey the room. Almost everyone was male, dressed in dapper evening wear. There was something rambunctious and fraternal about the gathering, like a coterie of men drawn together in some exclusive club. They roared at one another’s jokes, and slapped one another’s backs. The few women present were wives or courtesans, and acted like magnets, pulling crowds of attentive males in around them.

  Karoscura needs women, he had noted in his copy book. He had underlined it, and given the note two exclamation points. Like many colony worlds building their economies on mineral wealth, Karoscura had advertised for specialist workers, promising to pay travel costs and set up expenses, in order to attract a professional labour force. Men had flooded in from all parts of the sector, drawn by the attractive salary dividends. The womenfolk of Karoscura had been eclipsed. It was reckoned that males now outnumbered females ten to one in the cities of the oily coast.

  Endor missed female company. He’d never had any trouble in that department. In the past, his charisma, his looks and his professional status had all combined to win him the attention of any woman that took his eye. Karoscura was like a siege. There weren’t enough supplies to go around.

  He went back to his lodgings. Liebstrum was not there, and hadn’t called. It seemed to Endor that his piles of copy books had been disturbed, and rearranged. He started to sort through them. Had someone been in his room?

  He woke late, bathed and shaved. He saw his reflection in the mirror. We all grow older, he told himself. His face seemed drawn and lined, and there was a sickly pallor to it. Too much winter light, Titus Endor told himself.

  His hair had been grey for a while now. He tied it back, out of convenience. There were distinguished scars on his face, the footnotes of a lifetime of battles. The biggest scar was on his leg, out of sight. Endor still wore the jagged saurapt tooth on a black cord around his neck. Gregor had dug it out of him, just after Endor had driven the beast off. Brontotaph, that had been the place, Brontotaph. How long ago now?

  They’d been good friends, the best, close like brothers, until the unfortunate business some years before, a misunderstanding that Gregor had not seen fit to overlook. None of it had been Endor’s fault, just circumstances.

  It was sad. Endor missed his old friend. He wondered what had become of Gregor. Nothing much, he doubted, Gregor had never promised to anything.

  Looking in the mirror, Endor toyed with the tooth. According to the lore on Brontotaph, he was damned. Even after death, a saurapt continued to stalk its prey, so the legend went, especially a prey item that had escaped or evaded its jaws. The spirit of the saurapt was out there, tracking him. One day it would find him at last, and strike, and balance the books.

  Titus Endor laughed out loud. He saw himself laughing back at him. Plenty of ghosts stalked him, and a bestial reptilian predator was the least of them.

  An inquisitor had to be rational about such things.

  He wondered where Liebstrum was.

  The tooth hung around his neck like a penance.

  Titus Endor paid a man to let him into the Theatricala during the day. He prowled the upper galleries, looking for the door to box 435. There was no box 435. The gallery halls were dressed in red velvet carpet and scarlet wallpaper, like aortal tubes. The air smelled of stale lho-sticks. There was a 434 and a 436. His lingering fingers traced the soft red wall, hunting for a secret or concealed door.

  Liebstrum had not returned. Annoyed, his mood made worse by a nagging headache, Endor sent a damning report via courier to the ordos. In his lodgings, a glass of joiliq in his hand, he leafed back through his copy books, trying to build some kind of pattern.

  Box 435. Gonrad Maliko. The reflected flash of opera glasses in the shadows. The girl. The girl, the slender dancer.

  He thought about Gregor from time to time. Endor had always been the bright one, handsome, cunning, bound for glory. Gregor had been a dutiful type, a hard worker, stolid and solid.

  ‘I wonder where you are now, my old friend?’ Endor asked the empty room. ‘I was always Hapshant’s favourite, and look at the career I’ve built. What have you ever done?’

  The unfortunate business still nagged at him. Endor had been put in a tough position, a damn tough position. Several of his prior cases had been placed in review. Details had been distorted and accusations trumped up, all of it so petty-minded and political. He’d had no choice, in the end. When the Ordo Malleus had suggested his transfer, he’d taken it. They’d told him Gregor had been up to no good, and that if Endor helped to set his old friend back on the straight and narrow, the case reviews would be dropped. Endor hadn’t been spying. He had just been keeping an eye on his old friend. None of it had been his fault, just circumstances.

  He went to the next show at the Theatricala, and then to a club, and then became mixed up in a group of Navy noncoms on shore leave. He’d followed them to the next bar, an off-street den, a dance parlour. There were women there, in an abundance at odds with the global statistics, women a man could dance with.

  The dance was called the zendov, and it was as erotic as it was formal. The dance had evolved, Endor was told, because of the imbalance of men and women, a street dance of the lower classes originally popular in bordellos. Zendov allowed a man the opportunity of spending five or ten minutes with a woman, intimately. Zendov clubs were the most popular dives on Karoscura.

  He took another few drinks, and then he saw her, the girl, the slender dancer. She was standing at the mirror-plated bar, smoking a lho-stick and contemplating her dance card. He hadn’t recognised her at first, because she was wearing a leopardskin cloche and cape, and a gold dress, and had changed her makeup from the fierce white of the ballet. But her posture took his eye, the balance of her legs, the confidence in the set of her head, and he realised who he was looking at.

  He introduced himself, and offered to buy her a drink. She regarded him distantly, and then asked his name. Her accent was thick.

  ‘Titus,’ he replied.

  She marked it on her card. ‘The fifth tune from now, Master Titus,’ she said, adding, ‘amasec on ice.’ Then she walked away, and took the embrace of a noncom for the next dance.

  He was perplexed, until he saw the way of it. Most of the women in the bar were dancers from the Theatricala. They supplemented their wages by partner-dancing at the zendov bars, efficiently exploiting Karoscura’s paucity of female companionship. No wonder the clubs were popular. No wonder the clubs paid the girls well for after-hours dancing. They brought the men in, men so hungry for a five-minute intimacy with a woman while the music played, they’d stay all night, waiting their turn, and drink well in the meantime.

  When his turn came, she found him at the bar.

  ‘Master Titus?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked as she led him onto the dance floor.

  She seemed surprised that he should care.

  ‘Mira,’ she replied.

  The music began. Endor had watched the dancers closely, and had learned the steps. His mind worked that way. He took her in a close hold, and turned her about the floor, between other dancing couples. Glittering glow-globes rotated above them, casting down a blizzard of light like snowflakes.

  She was close to him, taut, radiating heat. He felt how hard and sinewy her body was, how rigid. She was tiny, but all muscle. She smelled of cologne, but it did not mask the heat of her, or the residue of old ballet makeup, hastily removed, or the slight odour of sweat. She had come straight from the Theatricala, probably changing in a backroom in a hurry.

&nb
sp; Sweat, hard limbs, the stale aroma of lho-sticks. He found it intoxicating. Pulled close to her, he noticed she had an old scar along the nape of her neck, just below the hairline.

  The tune ended.

  ‘Thank you, Mira,’ he bowed. ‘Your amasec awaits at the bar.’

  ‘My card is full. I will come over later.’

  He looked disappointed.

  ‘Where did you learn to dance?’ she asked.

  ‘Tonight. Here.’

  She scowled. ‘I don’t like liars. No one learns to zendov in an evening.’

  ‘I’m not lying. I watched and learned.’

  She narrowed her eyes. They were hard eyes, in a hard face.

  ‘You’re not very good,’ she said, ‘but you know the steps. Perfectly, in fact. You’re too rigid, though. Your shoulders are too tight.’

  He bowed again. ‘I’ll remember that. Perhaps you might educate me in the finer points of the dance?’

  ‘Sorry, my card is full.’

  ‘No room, not even at the end of the night?’

  The music had begun again. A Navy officer was waiting for her, impatient anger in his face.

  ‘Amasec,’ she said. ‘Perhaps, at the end of the night.’

  In the zendov clubs, the end of the night meant dawn. The queues of men danced the girls into exhaustion. Heading from the bar to find the washroom, Endor saw three or four shoeless girls in a back hall, smoking lho-sticks and dabbing at bleeding heels and swollen toes.

  He went out into the snow, and searched for a public vox-station. He called Liebstrum’s number, and got the message service.

  ‘Where are you?’ he shouted. ‘Where are you?’

  Two glasses sat on the bar. Joiliq in one, diluted with slowly melting ice, and amasec in the other. It was four-thirty.

  ‘Master Titan?’

  ‘Titus,’ he corrected, looking around. What he saw made him forget the throbbing in his temples. ‘My name is Titus.’

  The girl nodded. ‘Sorry. This for me?’

  He smiled. She took up the amasec and sipped.

  ‘A last dance, then, yes?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been waiting.’

  There was a look in her eyes that told him how much she despised the men who waited to dance with her.

  She led him to the floor. Her body was as hard as before, but now she was cold. There was no heat in her. The fragrance of lho-smoke and sweat had dulled to a thin, unhealthy smell.

  ‘Loosen your shoulders,’ she said, as the music began. ‘Turn your head. No, too much. Turn it like this. And swing out. Yes. And back and back.’

  ‘Am I getting it?’ he asked. He felt like he was dancing with a corpse.

  ‘Your footwork is fine. Excellent, actually. Your back is still a little stiff. Turn out, turn out, that’s it.’

  ‘You’re a good teacher.’

  ‘I do what I’m paid to do, sir.’

  ‘You’re tired.’

  ‘Every day is a long day,’ she whispered, her head against his chest. She looked up at him sharply. ‘Please don’t tell the bosses I said that. They’ll dock my pay.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he smiled, rotating her neatly. ‘I know how long your day’s been. I was at the Theatricala. You are a fine dancer.’

  ‘This pays better than the classical shit,’ she said. She stared up at him as they spun and re-addressed. ‘Have you been following me?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I just came here and saw you.’

  ‘And learned the zendov.’

  He chuckled. ‘Something like that. Men must follow women all the time on this world. There are so few of you.’

  ‘It does become a problem,’ she admitted.

  ‘So they follow you? Watch you?’

  ‘I suppose they do,’ said Mira.

  ‘Who watches you?’ he asked.

  ‘You do,’ she said, ‘and everyone else.’

  They swung and re-addressed, then promenaded again.

  ‘How did you get the scar?’ he asked.

  She flinched. ‘I hate it when men notice that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Will you tell me how you got it?’

  ‘I got it years ago. That’s all I want to say about it.’

  He nodded, spinning her. ‘I’m sorry I asked. We all have our scars.’

  ‘Isn’t that the truth?’ she agreed.

  The number ended. He stepped back, and looked at her.

  ‘Please, please don’t ask me for another,’ she said quietly.

  ‘A last drink, then?’

  ‘I’m dead on my feet, Master Titus.’

  ‘Might I be first on your card tomorrow, then?’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way. Come along tomorrow, and we’ll dance again.’

  She walked away. The band was packing up. Endor went to the bar, where the barman was washing the last of the glasses.

  ‘Grain joiliq, with shaved ice, and a sliver of citrus,’ Endor requested.

  The barman sighed, and fixed the drink. When Endor looked around, the girl had vanished.

  It was light when he got back to his residentiary. Snow was fluttering down out of a sky that was white and opaque. He tossed his copy book onto the desk, took off his jacket and fell down on his bed.

  He dreamt of Hapshant. There were worms coming out of his tear ducts. Endor tried to wipe them away. Gregor shouted at him, telling him he was a fool. Hapshant went into spasms, his heels kicking on the hardwood floor.

  The knocking persisted. It was suddenly late in the afternoon. Endor sat up, fully clothed. The knocking came again, not Hapshant’s heels at all.

  He went to the door, and opened it.

  Liebstrum stared at him.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, hello to you too,’ replied Endor.

  Liebstrum pushed past him into the room. ‘Throne of Terra, Titus. Why? Why do you keep doing this?’

  ‘Doing what, exactly?’

  ‘Calling me. Calling me with these messages and–’

  ‘Where have you been?’ Endor asked.

  Liebstrum turned and looked at him. ‘You’ve forgotten again, haven’t you?’

  ‘Forgotten what? Interrogator, I believe you have been singularly derelict in your duties these last few weeks. I’m afraid I’ve been forced to send a report of admonition to the ordos and–’

  ‘Not again. Again with this,’ Liebstrum sighed.

  ‘Again with what, interrogator?’

  Liebstrum pulled out his rosette. ‘It’s inquisitor, Titus. Inquisitor.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Four years ago, on Hesperus. You elected me yourself. Don’t you remember?’

  Endor frowned. ‘No, I don’t.’

  Liebstrum sat down on the bed. ‘Throne, Titus, you have to stop doing this to me.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  Liebstrum looked up at him sadly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Hunting Gonrad Maliko. You know that. Keep up.’

  ‘We captured Gonrad Maliko five years ago. He’s serving life in the penal colony on Izzakos. Don’t you remember?’

  Endor paused. He wandered over to his desk, and poured the last dregs of a bottle of joiliq into a dirty glass. ‘No, no, I don’t remember that. Not at all.’

  ‘Oh, Titus,’ Liebstrum muttered.

  ‘Maliko is loose. He’s here, and he’s loose. I have a lead, a girl in the Theatricala, and box four-three-five–’

  ‘Stop it! Stop it now!’

  ‘Liebstrum?’

  Liebstrum rose from the bed, and approached Endor.

  ‘Show me your rosette,’ he said.

  Endor took a swig of his drink, and pulled his wallet out of his pocket.

  ‘Look. Do you see, Titus?’ Liebstrum asked, opening the leather wallet. ‘There’s no rosette in there. You were disavowed, three years ago. They took your warrant away. You’re not an inquisitor any more.’

  ‘Of
course I am,’ said Titus Endor, ignoring the bald patch in the wallet where his rosette had once been sewn in. ‘I’m operating under Special Circumstances.’

  Liebstrum shook his head sadly. ‘Titus, I’ve tried to help you, Throne knows, but you’ve got to stop calling me. You’ve got to stop pretending.’

  ‘Pretending? How dare you!’

  Liebstrum walked towards the door. ‘This is the last time I come running, you understand? The very last time.’

  ‘No, I don’t understand. I am affronted by your manner, interrogator. Maliko is still out there.’

  Liebstrum turned to look back one last time. ‘No, Titus, he really isn’t.’

  Endor went to the park in the last of the afternoon. Black trees and blacker ironwork benches stood up out of a skim of wet snow. He wondered how Maliko had got to Liebstrum. What did he have on him? He sat on a bench, and began to draft a report in his copy book, a report exposing Liebstrum’s connections to the criminal, and recommending his immediate censure and suspension. But the bench was cold and damp, and it soaked his clothes, and gave him a headache, so he walked to a local cafe, and ordered a pot of chocolate and a thimble of amasec.

  The light was going out of the sky. As the snow fell, it almost seemed as if the pale sky was shedding in little white flakes, leaving a dark undercoat behind.

  Endor went back to the zendov club early, before the Theatricala turned out, and waited for the girl, but she never showed. He hung around until it was quite late, and then started asking questions. The other dancers, the girls, were reticent. They’d learned that you didn’t give out personal details to men who loitered at the clubs.

  Finally, Endor snagged a junior barman who, for rather too many crowns, said he was prepared to slip into the manager’s office and take a look at the girl’s contact address in the club ledger.

  Endor met him out the back of the dance club just after one in the morning, and exchanged the cash for a slip of paper.

  Mira Zaleed, 870 Arbogan.

  He considered leaving it until the morning, but he was restless, so he bought a quart of amasec at a tavern on Oroshbyli Street, and rode the maglev to Corso Saint Helk in the north of the city. From the station, it was a long walk up the rockcrete walkways to the hab blocks: Solingen, Zarbos, Arbogan.