Mindripper

by Baron Blackwell

Kalum yanked his hand back, but she refused to let him go. His arm itched, crawling as the horror inked into his skin stirred. A billowing heat climbed from his pith, blacker than pitch, hotter than a low-banked fire. His eyes narrowed.

  “I understand what it means to be beset by desire,” Fana whispered.

  He focused on his rage, used it like another might a whip, blotted out all element of swelling shame. Sympathy! Sympathy for him, from her? His fingers thrummed the armrest. This close, he could wring her neck before she got the chance to utter a single accursed word. Could she still use Mada’s Voice without the ability to speak? Questions. Always these morbid fucking questions.

  “We’re nothing alike, Sister,” he said, almost growling. “You know nothing of what I suffer. Between us lies a gap. And as small as it may seem, it is unbridgeable.”

  Fana released him, and he returned the vial back to its leather slot within his coat with a casualness belied only by the thumbing of his heart. Conscious of the Sophic Nun’s gaze, he made a spectacle of checking the rest of the bottles, making certain that each was secured tightly within its specially designed holster. So much of what Lord-Inquisitors did depended on them and what they held.

  “Have you ever contemplated remarrying, Lord-Inquisitor?” Fana asked.

  Kalum’s questing hand stilled, but he kept his gaze lowered. Why ask such a question? Here? Now? Could she be. . . ? No! He refused to ponder such fantasies even within his own mind. Her scent had once again changed, he realized, she now smelled of lavender and myrrh.

  “Sister, if I didn’t know better I would think you mooning over some man.” He met her eyes then, eyes like emerald skies.

  She cocked an eyebrow. “And pray tell, Lord-Inquisitor, what manner of man do you think capable enough to seduce a Sophic Nun away from God?”

  “That’s why I was confounded for a moment there, Sister, when you mentioned marriage. I can scarcely conjure up any image at all. But. . . .” He touched his nose, as if he was hesitant to continue, yet he was anything but.

  “Go on,” Fana said, resting her rump on the edge of the table. Her eyes left him and scanned the dreary world outside the window. “But what?”

  “But there was a flash of horns and . . . and hooves. A goat, Sister! It would take a goat-man to woo you away from the divine.”

  A moment of heart thudding stillness.

  “Hmm. . . .” She touched the prayer beads looped about her hand. “Implications heaped on implications. But let us leave those alone for the moment and return to my original question. Remarrying, Lord-Inquisitor. Have you contemplated it?”

  “No, Sister. Never.” The lie came out smoothly, but something about the quiet that followed made him think she did not believe him. “Like you, I’m wedded to my task. Duty is my bride as much as she is yours.”

  “Have you ever wondered from where the Dust comes?”

  The question was asked so softly—so calmly that it took Kalum a full second to process it. He studied her. As always, there was only absence where another’s passion might be revealed. He looked deeper. Still nothing. No subtle dance of facial muscles. No information to be gleaned at all. And yet—always and yet. Lies told to appease. Lies told to conceal the void in what could not be perceived.

  “Like all the Empire’s great secrets,” she continued in a tone that struck the breath from his breast, “their genesis lie with us, the—”

  “Enough.” A whisper. Welling horror.

  “I know your fate better than most, Lord-Inquisitor, I’ve studied the Archives of—”

  “Enough!” A roar like rumbling thunder.

  Kalum found himself rising to his feet, and suddenly he yearned to smash the remoteness from her manner—yearned to lash tears from her green-fire eyes. The sound of an overturned chair rattled the air behind him, brittle and clanging. Breaths, like wind whistling through a hole in an empty grain silo.

  Then a weight pushing Kalum back, invisible to his eyes but no less real, separating him from the one that tormented. Crackling, like electric eels feeding within a shimmering medium. The memory of something once spoken made palpable. The manifestation of an unfathomable word.

  “There is a reason those above you allow your pride to go unbridled,” she whispered, almost tragically—if a winter breeze could be said to be forlorn. “No matter how brilliant, yours is a cold light. Like fireflies at twilight, the higher the frequencies, the quicker you dim.” A shadow of what one might consider a slight smile. “There are no old Lord-Inquisitors, Inquisitor.”

  Through the sting of his squinted eyes, Kalum could see the air before him ripple, fevered like the area before a lit forage. Rage shuddered through him. He raised his hand and pushed against what hindered. Forces multiplied, then reversed in the direction they were applied. He lurched back, then stopped.

  “You’ve mistaken me, Sister.” He snarled the way an animal might before its rival. “I’m not like the others. Where they fall, I stand unbent. The world has never known my like. I’m without measure. Without equal!”

  Silence, filled by the fury of an all to different kind of storm. Outside the world groaned and whistled under the bombardment of the dark yawning. Rain, like snow pellets striking glass paneled windows.

  “Perhaps you will thrive were all others have not,” she said, but her expressionless face held more than was spoken.

  Kalum whirled away from her, his head ringing with the words that went unsaid. But perhaps not, Lord-Inquisitor. Perhaps not. He strode toward the door, doing his best not to run, though all he wanted to do was to flee from the stain—from the shame.

  “Believe it or not, Lord-Inquisitor,” Fana said, “I came here for a reason other than conflict with you.”

  “Oh?” Kalum opened the door, wiped the heat from his eyes and paused half out of the threshold.

  “Her Worship sent me to gather you. A group of Peacebringers were drugged then robbed of their uniforms and muskets.”

  “And you’re only telling me. . . .” He exhaled slowly, still not turning to face her. “Where? Where did this happen?”

  “A tavern in the Shade.”

  Kalum spun around, his eyes leaping to the sprawling map of the city opened on the table. He approached it and traced a finger along the boundary of the area marked as the Shade, a rectangle reaching almost to the city’s heart. The place where the shadow of the Cobalt Gate fell heaviest every morning.

  “Yes. . . .” He nodded, scratching at his brow. “That may work.”

  “Is this connected to the Mindripper?” Fana asked from beside him.

  “What. . . ? He blinked at her, unnerved to find her so close. How had she. . . ? He shook his head. “I doubt it, but it doesn’t matter. Either way, we can use it to our advantage.”

  “How so?”

  His thoughts spiraling inward, Kalum hesitated, his eyes unfocused. There was so much yet to do, did he really have the time to waste explaining the obvious? And when had his humors become this capricious? Was he not just steeped and crowded with wild and ugly passions only moments before?

  “Lord-Inquisitor?” she pressed.

  “What is our greatest advantage?” he asked, broaching her question the way he despised above all others, with one of his own.

  Fana probed the map with a finger. “Our . . . anonymity.”

  “Exactly. My—our task is made a hundred times simpler because of this simple fact. There may be rumors, but no one knows what Lord-Inquisitors do, what it is we hunt. Yet if soon after entering a new city we immediately began blockading whole districts—”

  “We might spook. . . .” Fana said. “Ah, I see. Truly, you are a wonder, Lord-Inquisitor.”

  “This you’ve said before.” Kalum shrugged, giving an impression of nonchalance he was nowhere near feeling.

  “You’re going to use the robbery as an excuse,” she went on, ignoring his comment, “to conduct large scale searches—no to establish a blockade. The Shade. You’re going to blockade the Shade.”


  “To start,” he said, rolling up the map.

  She nodded. “If the Mindripper uses his power to get past the blockade, the Worship will sense it. Then—”

  “Then, Sister, I will come for it with sword and musket in hand,” he said. But as they left the chamber to inform the Worship of the plan, it was not thoughts of battle that engulfed his horizons.

  He thumbed his breast, feeling the glass bottles that lay beneath.

  Soon, my sweets. Soon.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kriegshra

  Enk peered out of the carriage window, glanced up at the thunderclouds that plumed the skyline in every direction, but where the Cobalt Gate seemed to meet the eastern horizon. And for the first time in years he felt it move through him—the muted excitement that preceded the rattling of dice. The city had become his kriegshra map, and the next roll could prove auspicious, though all appeared hopelessly jumbled. He looked at Tizkar with mild disquiet when the young man repeated himself for the third time:

  “He’s the only one with the means or the ability to do something like this. The knife gangs wouldn’t dare,” Tizkar said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Don’t we already have enough to occupy us without the worry that the city might go the way of a lit powder keg? If he’s responsible, I swear. . . .” A deep breath.

  Enk held his tongue. There was nothing to say, the theft of muskets or gunpowder was a hanging offense. Only those with a special writ were allowed to own either outside of government officials, and not even the Second Estate was exempt from this law.

  Tizkar slapped his own thigh. “Finally, we’re here.”

  The carriage slowed before stopping in front of a domed building. The Pit. It looked more vibrant by the light of day, faint though the light was; its yellow painted walls were more vivid, shimmering with a flair that went unmatched by the surrounding architecture.

  Arrayed in a long looping line, a group of hard-faced men leaned against the building’s exterior, protected from the hissing elements by overhead eaves. A sampling of the Third Estate’s most degenerated, one churning with unhealthy pallors and dull-colored breeches and coats—and yet there was something about their manner that spoke of bristling pride. It was in the way they passed around wooden pipes stuffed with nala, in the way they watched passersby with an arrogant swagger.

  Enk stared back at them pensively, chewed his lower lip. The rattling of unseen dice increased. Though seemingly unconnected, he could not shake the sense that the murders and this crime were somehow linked. Yet the pattern eluded him.

  “Come on, Enk.” Tizkar exited the carriage with a swagger all of his own. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Enk obliged, raising a hand over his eyes as he stepped down. Above, a hazy ball, shrouded by curtains of gray, gleamed where the sheets grew thin, bejeweling those rare raindrops that fell along enlightened tracks.

  Horse hooves clattered past Enk, drenching him anew. He jerked back and eyed the carriage that pulled alongside their own, fighting back a grimace. Lulu’s amused aspect peered down at him from the depths of the other carriage.

  “What are you doing here?” Tizkar yelled up at her. “I told you to wait at the factory.”

  Her good humor was subsumed by annoyance. “You didn’t think I would let you go here by yourself, do you? Suni is a snake, well you know. You need someone to watch your back.”

  “I have Enk,” he began before falling into a moment of stunned silence as Cat poked her head out of the window. “You brought Cat with you? Here? What—”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” Lulu said, cutting him off before his reproach began in full. “She hid herself in the boot. I didn’t know she was there until we were almost here.”

  “Don’t worry, Tizkar.” Cat tucked a wet curl from her eye, then brandished a cavalry pistol. “We will protect you.”

  Enk’s heart quickened with a world thudding roar. Hands pressed outward in self-defense, he shifted out of the line of sight of the gun barrel, ducking out of the way.

  “Shaitan’s cock, girl!” Tizkar tore the weapon from Cat’s grasp, looked right and left, then stuffed it into his waistband.

  “Where did you—you could have killed someone,” Lulu hissed, grabbing her startled niece by the shoulders.

  Tizkar yanked Cat from Lulu’s arms, dragging her halfway out of the window. “What in the Hundred Fucking Hells were you thinking?” he shouted, shaking her. “Huh? Huh? Answer me damn it!”

  Cat clutched at Tizkar’s forearms, chirped in pain. Tears welled from her round eyes. Trembling, she stammered with her mouth open wide.

  “Tizkar, stop!” Enk shouted.

  “She’s just a child,” Lulu added, bracing the little girl’s lower half. “She’s sorry. Cat, tell him.”

  Tizkar gazed up at Cat’s fear etched expression. “You could have hurt yourself,” he whispered, his fury spent.

  “I-I’m sorry, Tizkar,” she said in a small voice, then rubbed at her runny nose. “All I wanted was to protect you. I didn’t mean no harm. Honest.”

  “Oh, my sweet.” Tizkar kissed her forehead. “I’m the one that’s sorry. I didn’t mean to yell like that. Sometimes I get all knotted up inside and my rage gets the. . . . Just don’t do it again, all right?”

  Lulu reeled her niece back into the carriage.

  “I promise. I won’t.” Enveloped in Lulu’s arms, Cat smacked her right fist against her left breast. “On my honor.”

  Wracked by coughs, Tizkar stumbled away from the carriages, his gray eyes distant, his rain-soaked guise haunted. His lurching steps took him closer to the Pit and its pipe puffing guardians.

  “Don’t worry,” Enk told Cat, his lips fixed in what he hoped was a reassuring grin, “I’ll keep him safe.”

  “On your honor?”

  Enk pressed his hand to his heart, in the way long romanticized in plays and stories of valor. “On my honor,” he said, his tone grave.

  So like white lilacs in spring, a smile bloomed, radiant despite the barren salt streams that stained Cat’s cheeks. And suddenly, the storm cloud-piled horizons did not seem all that ominous. Scant though it was, the light that bathed the street was more than enough to illuminate the well-trodden paths to providence’s hallowed halls.

  Enk caught up with Tizkar’s still coughing form and eyed the drug-addled fiends that now watched them with even greater intensity. Yet, even so, the world felt new again, almost boundless. The dice would land as they should, and unseen avenues would open. Victory. He could sense it around the next bend. Were not the signs auspicious?

  Tizkar spat into a folded handkerchief, imprinting a crimson rose, bright and inky with wrongness, into the embroidered cloth. “Thank you,” the older boy said in a wheezing voice. “She scared me. I—”

  “We have a task to complete, don’t we?” Enk marked the descent of beguiled droplets here and there, sparing Tizkar the sting of another pair of judging eyes. More than anything, this was what true friends did; they overlooked each other’s frailties, secure in the knowledge that the same courtesy would be payed to them.

  “You’re right.” Plumb with renewed elan, Tizkar stuffed the handkerchief back into his coat pocket, puffed his chest. “We do.”

  Trading the vast gloom of sky and earth for one more contained, they strutted into the Pit, matching each other step for step. Through a din of gruff voices, Enk heard the clacking of dice tossed across stone. There hollow echos shuddered first through the chamber then his breast. He raised a hand to his damp hair, raked his moist fingers through flaxen threads.

  A large throng of men crouched within the Pit, no better dressed than those outside, fixed in a game of chance. Tendrils of diffuse vapor hiked above their bowed heads, reached for the foggy heights in azure spirals. Several gamblers spared Enk and Tizkar a quick glance before returning to their game, but most did not bother doing even that.

  Together, Enk and Tizkar worked their way around the vulgar herd and descended into the
unlit depth of the ancient staircase. Loud voices rented the air behind them as fresh bets were placed.

  Enk inhaled sharply. Whether going up or down, stairs always held the same anguish—anguish that could only be escaped through further anguish. His wet clothes seemed to worsen the usual pang, adding an icy chill to his already tormented gasps.

  Tizkar was a shadow beside him; a shadow that refused to outpace his lesser’s tortured steps. Enk gritted his teeth. Lamplight, brilliant for that which surrounded, beckoned around and blow, orange-yellow against the endless black hollow.

  A few . . . more. Just. . . .

  The sound of a palm smacking a furrowed brow.

  “Damn,” Tizkar spat in a hurried rush, “I forgot to warn you. I got so—how good are you with that sword, exactly?”

  Enk lurched to a stop, stalling a hand’s span above the twilight that straddled light and dark. He gulped at Tizkar, too breathless to speak. What need had they of swords when their very words yoked souls?

  “There are things that disrupt the effectiveness of our ability, rendering it almost useless. I had meant to broach this topic earlier but—” A sense of shifting that might have been a slight shake of a head. “What do you know of the Ancient World’s Warlocks?”

  “Warlocks in the Empire? Impossible,” Enk spat, but as he rebelled at the idea, another part of him—a cold and more logical part, almost reptilian in affectation—remembered a flare of scenes from his last and only other visit to the Pit. “Glowing tattoos,” he continued in a tight whisper. “The Black Lion and Suni had tattoos only I could see.” Louder. “Are you saying both of them are Warlocks?”

  “The savage is one for sure,” Tizkar said, “if the rumors are to be believed, and, in this instance, they are. I had an encounter with them, shortly after gaining my power, that left me certain of that fact.”

  “Go on.”

  “I thought I could change the city for the better, that if I started at the bottom and worked my way. . . .” Another shift that could have been the shake of a head. “My theory proved flawed. I barely escaped with my life when I attempted to press Suni into my service. He was completely immune to my ability—some work of his pet Warlock I assumed. Luckily, the Warlock himself wasn’t as unassailable.”