Hale, Ginn

by Wicked Gentleman (lit)

  "Are you still drunk from last night?" I asked.

  "No." Harper smiled. "Having my life threatened always makes me a little giddy."

  "Giddy?"

  "I have to find my pleasures where I can."

  "I'd be hesitant to call that exchange with Mica pleasant." I scraped at a droplet of wax on the arm of my chair.

  "You ought to allow a man to retain his conceits, Mr. Sykes."

  The slight smile on Harper's lips sank back to a flat line. "It wasn't pleasant. It shouldn't have been. I gave her my word that Roffcale would be safe in my care... He should have been safe."

  "Yes, he should have been."

  Both Harper and I looked up at the man who stepped through the doorway. I stared at him for several moments longer than his sudden entry deserved. It was strange to be startled, not by his silent appearance, but by the familiarity of his face and voice. He, too, seemed taken off guard by the sight of me.

  I should have known from the moment I tasted the air in the room. The scent of conjuring melted with the musk of his sweat and the camphor oil he rubbed into his skin to give it a golden sheen. It was the singular essence of Nickolas Sariel.

  He had hardly changed, despite the years. His eyes were still the color of opium poppies. His hair was like fire, winding through streaks of smoky red, yellow, and white. His black nails had grown longer, but they still gleamed with the same carefully filed edges.

  I saw him take in a quick breath of the air as he stared at me. He would have expected to smell fresh ink and the must of old books lingering on me. But I was no longer the man he had known, and the scents of my body had become far more bitter.

  "Belimai?" He whispered my name as he came closer.

  There was an instant when I wanted to say yes. But a stinging pain flared through the prayers engraved into my skin.

  "No." I glanced down at the wax spattered arm of my chair. "I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone else. I'm sorry."

  That was all I had to say. Sariel would not allow himself to ask a second time. He immediately turned to Harper.

  "So, Captain, Mica tells me you want my help."

  Harper paused for a moment, looking between Sariel and myself. We said nothing. Harper shook his head and pressed on.

  "I need you to reach Joan if you can."

  "Are you asking me to use my powers as the presiding officer of Good Commons? Or were you thinking of something less in keeping with the law?" Sariel crossed his arms over his chest. "Because if it's the latter, I want you to understand that the price runs very high. I won't work for free, not for you."

  "You're not the first devil I've dealt with." Harper gestured to me but Sariel didn't look. "I'm aware of the going rates." Harper reached into his jacket and dropped several gold coins into Sariel's hand.

  I couldn't help but wonder where Harper was coming up with all the money. Perhaps Talbott was financing him. That, or he was bankrupting himself. It bothered me that I didn't know his nature well enough to decide if he would use another man's money or only his own.

  Sariel studied the coins in his hand, then shook his head. "I was thinking of a little more, Captain Harper."

  Harper handed Sariel more fistfuls of coins. Harper went through every one of the pockets of his coat and even gave Sariel his watch and chain. He did it in a matter of a fact manner. If there was any expression on his face, it might have been that look of slight amusement that seemed to pass over his lips at the strangest times.

  "That's all I have," Harper said at last. "If you want more, you'll have to wait until I'm paid at the end of the month."

  "All I wanted was everything you had." Sariel piled the coins on the table without even counting them. I counted them. He had taken almost ten times what Harper had paid me.

  "I'll hold the summons here." Sariel pushed the door shut.

  He walked around the table twice, moving the candles until they formed a series of circles within each other. He whispered softly to himself as he walked. I recognized some of the words from the curses he used to spit out behind teachers' backs at St. Augustine's reform school.

  "...Ashmedai, your flame." He swept his hands over the outer ring of candles and the wicks lit up. The flames skipped like stones across water, lighting circle after circle of candles. "Sariel, father of my bloodline, your power..." Sariel went on.

  The flames of the candles began to burst up into geysers of fire. Sariel continued circling. His eyes were open but not focused.

  He whispered words so quickly that I could hardly catch more than hisses of his breath. Each time Sariel let out another string of incantations, the flames surged up, forming a rolling mass of blazing fire.

  I couldn't help but glance at Harper. He sat still, watching Sariel with his fingers steepled and pressed against his lips.

  "Lucifer, light bearer, lord of wisdom." Sariel came to a stop only a few steps in front of me. He raised his arms, then slashed the long talons of his left hand across the open palm of his right hand. A deep furrow of blood gushed up. Sariel thrust his bleeding palm into the fire. A scent of searing camphor choked the air.

  "Show me this woman," he hissed as the tongue of fire surged up over his hand. "My will is greater than even your own." Sariel grasped a single flame and lifted it up above the rest.

  "Show me," he commanded.

  Suddenly the candles dimmed to mere sparks. The single flame in Sariel's hand leapt up to a blinding white heat. It twisted and rolled, growing larger and brighter. Slowly it formed the soft curves of a woman. Smoke rolled and wound over her, adding shadows and dark hollows to her luminous flesh. She floated above Sariel's outstretched arm, gazing out at the empty corner of the room.

  "Joan." Harper came to his feet and stepped up to the edge of the table.

  As the woman turned I studied her face. She was beautiful. Her dark eyes were wide and luminous. Her black hair had been pulled down and hung in long curls around her torn clothes. Her mouth moved, but only a curl of white smoke poured out. She looked frightened.

  "Is she alive?" Harper demanded.

  Sariel said nothing. His eyes were clenched shut as he concentrated. Tremors of strain passed through his arm. Slowly he nodded his head in answer to Harper.

  "Where is she?" Harper asked.

  "There's a man...a Prodigal..." Sariel pushed the words out between tight gasps of air. "He's dead...like the others...There's blood and broken glass everywhere...Someone else..."

  Suddenly I felt the air change. An acrid bitter scent, like scorched limes, burst through the air. I knew the smell. It was demonic fury. At the same moment a ripple of darkness passed through the image of Harper's sister. Something black burst from inside her and exploded outward.

  I lunged forward, throwing my body over Sariel's. He crumpled under me as I felt dozens of tiny blades slash through the back of my coat and shirt. The razor edges knocked me forward as they drove deep through my coat and skin. I stumbled down to my knees. I smelled my own flesh searing. A breathless shout of agony escaped me. Fires burst up along the edges of my torn coat.

  Then suddenly a stinging wetness splashed across my back. The horrific burning stopped. I gasped for a breath and tasted something metallic. Liquid poured down my back, mixing with my blood. In a circle around me, glittering black slivers fizzed and melted into the pool of liquid.

  "Are you all right?" Harper knelt down beside me.

  "What did you do?" I asked, still too shocked to guess. From the stinging and the metallic smell, I should have known.

  "Silver-water," Harper said. "I always carry a few vials with me, in case things get ugly. I'm sorry if it stung you, but I thought that would be better than what seemed to be happening."

  "Yes, I think so," I said.

  Beneath me, Sariel opened his eyes and swallowed slowly. He coughed and I moved aside so he could sit up. He pulled himself up-right and then leaned back against the wall. For several minutes he simply stared up at the ceiling and took in slow steady breaths.r />
  "I believe," Sariel said at last, "that we have come to the end of this line of questioning."

  "What about Joan?" Harper asked.

  "If you had any sense at all, you'd let her go." Sariel clenched his burned, bleeding hand to his chest. "Didn't you see what just happened?"

  "But she is alive," Harper demanded.

  "Yes, for what that's worth. You have no idea of the kind of fury that gives rise to an attack like that one," Sariel said.

  "Do you know where she is?" Harper pressed.

  "No." Sariel shook his head. "But if you plan on pursuing this any further, I'd ask that you leave me out of the matter. I think that more than enough Prodigals have died for you and your sister."

  Harper frowned. Then he stood and straightened his coat.

  "Thank you for your time, Mr. Sariel," he said. Harper walked to the door and then glanced back at me.

  I could hardly think for the biting pain that lanced across my back. I started to stand but Sariel caught my hand. His touch caught my attention, for a moment overwhelming even my pain. His fingers were warm and gentle. I should have found comfort in that, but I couldn't.

  "I forgave you years ago," he whispered.

  "I know." I stood. "That makes it all the worse, really."

  Sariel turned away from me. He wouldn't beg. I wouldn't have wanted him to.

  I left with Harper.

  Chapter Six

  Ophorium

  The deep cuts in my back and the bubbling corrosion of the silver-water pooled into a single unyielding pain. I could not disentangle them. I could not separate the sharp stings of my sliced skin from the memories of older wounds. Each aspect of my pain touched another and bled into it until they formed a seamless fabric that enfolded me.

  I didn't accept Harper's offer to clean me up. I turned him away at my door and stumbled up the stairs to my rooms in a daze. On the walk back from Hells Below, I had hardly seen or heard Harper. I recalled hazily that he had wiped away the foaming mass of blood that dribbled down my back. The rest of the world was lost to me.

  My own hurt wound around me, weaving past into present. The jagged memories that I had carefully cut out of my thoughts suddenly poured their fury into my torn flesh. Inside my rooms I dropped to my knees and pressed my face hard into the cool wood of the floor. My muscles were shaking too much to let me stand, but I couldn't bear to press my back into any of my chairs or pillows. I knelt on the floor as time and memories bled into each other.

  My suffering at the hands of the Inquisition had been far worse than this. But then, I had not known it could break me. I had believed in my own courage and my will. I had thought I was a strong man, incapable of betrayal. Then the prayer engines had begun their steady slicing into my flesh. Silver-water had been ignited in the bleeding furrows, searing each holy letter into my skin. Thousands of tiny white scars still traced the flesh of my arms, back, chest, and groin. They were marks of my cowardice, impressed into me like delicate watermarks.

  I had thought that I was stronger than pain. Even stretched on the table, bleeding and burning, I had believed that I would never utter Sariel's name. But I had not known myself. I had not understood the Inquisition either, but they had certainly known me. They dealt in my kind. Thousands of us had come through their doors and been worked through like bank sums. I was no new mystery to the Inquisition; they simply slipped me into their mechanisms and opened me up like an oyster.

  The prayer engines' needles had not always been packed with silver-water. Between days of burning agony they had given me sweet stinging pleasure. They had traced my body with rushes of ophorium and let me learn how deeply I loved its respite. In the end they hadn't needed to threaten me with pain; they had simply withheld my pleasure. I had given them Sariel's name.

  Now I knelt on the floor and all I could think of were those long hypodermics sliding deep into my veins. Drops of blood wound down my ribs and spattered the floorboards. My back pulsed with the ache of Harper's silver-water and the remembered pain of those months under the prayer engines.

  I hated it. I wanted away from every sensation of my body and every memory in my head. I wanted to escape, to somehow slip back into the furthest recesses of the past and forget every detail of myself. Slowly, I crawled to the desk where my needles lay waiting for me.

  Chapter Seven

  Fire

  Two hours later, the night blossomed. The sky unfolded in rich waves of purple and blue velvet. Breezes traced pale violet ribbons through the darkness. Tiny buds of glittering stars burst into brilliant illuminations.

  I pushed my window open and leaned out. The moon spread its light across my face and bare chest. Wind rolled up through my hair and stroked my skin. When I had been a child, every night had seemed as lush and wondrous as this.

  I glanced back into my room. The remains of my bloodstained shirt lay on the floor. My used hypodermic floated in an old cup of water along with a wilting dahlia. The choice between the night air and my filthy room was simple.

  I shifted sideways and pulled my legs out so that I sat on the edge of my windowsill. I glanced down at the empty street below. Even the alley cats seemed to have gone to sleep.

  Taking a deep breath, I threw myself out into the open air. Wind whipped over my bare skin and through my hair as I plunged down-ward. I smelled the filth of the ground below wafting up toward my face. A rush of terror and exhilaration shot through me.

  With a twist of my body I veered up, turning suddenly from the mucky street and arching up into the vast sky. Giddy pleasure shot through my body. I swept up over a factory roof and caught hold of one of the tin chimneys. My momentum whipped me around it twice. When I let go, I went spinning off like a top.

  I was well out over the butcher district before my momentum ebbed and I began to drift on the gentle night winds. For a while I rolled onto my back and stared up at the stars and moon. They seemed close enough for me to reach out and scratch my initials into their shining surfaces.

  When I had been very young, I had snuck up from Hells Below to drift up into the open night. I had thought that it was my kingdom. For a few weeks I had thought that perhaps I was the secret child of an angel. I had floated up into the frigid mists of clouds and imagined that the moon, shining above me, was my promised halo.

  When my mother noticed my frostbitten ears, she knew exactly where I had been. She sewed lead-shot into my nightshirt and told me that the heavens were not for my kind. We Prodigals were cast from hot molten fires, far below the realms of Man. The fact that a few of us could soar into the frigid heavens was simply a joke that God played upon us, tempting us to our deaths. But I had not been able resist the skies.

  A low wind pulled me along past the window of a town-house. I peered into a dim room. There were two little white beds, and I could make out the sleeping faces of the children tucked into them. I floated past the window and up to the roof. Beneath me, the family dog barked wildly. A man shouted at the animal and then slammed his window shut.

  Once I was up on the roof, I took another dive, feeding the rush of my fear into a surge of flight. I zipped out across the White River and caught the updrafts over the water. I spread out my arms and hung above the city, just watching its dark mass. The factory district looked like an ugly rash that had spilled up from the insides of the earth. A sickly smell drifted off of it.

  But above the White River, the stars cast glittering reflections over the rolling waters. Moored fishing boats silently swayed with the currents. I drifted, riding the wind up toward the Crown Tower Bridge. I felt a strange twinge as I drew closer to the massive structure. Across the west side of that bridge, Joan Talbott had been abducted.

  I had no feeling for her. My only contact with her had come through the men around her. I had read Peter Roffcale's letters, listened to Edward Talbott's despair, and joined Harper in his search for her. I only felt her presence in the ruined wake of her disappearance. Roffcale had died. Edward Talbott had been willing to spe
nd every coin he had to see her returned. Harper had hardly eaten or slept. I wondered how she could have inspired such love. What kind of creature was she?

  I remembered her luminous eyes and long silken hair. Even conjured from wisps of smoke, she had been strikingly beautiful. I supposed that it would only be natural for men to adore such a woman.

  I felt a burst of disdain and envy. I couldn't help but think that her life must have been pleasant and easy. Recalling Peter Roffcale's gutted corpse, I supposed Joan's life wasn't all that pleasant for her now, if she were still alive. It was petty of me, but the thought made me feel better.

  Across the west side of the city, cathedral towers and ornate houses dominated the view. Suddenly I caught a flash from one of the city watchtowers. A searchlight ignited. A moment later, the piercing light swept across the cityscape. I dived quickly down, pressing my body against the supports of the Crown Tower Bridge. The last thing I needed was to end up netted by the Inquisition.

  The spotlight swept past me and shot out over St. Christopher's Park. Two more lights split the night and turned to the park also. The lights swung through each other and across the air, searching. I kicked off the iron beams and glided down to the west end of the bridge. I ducked under the eaves of a house when a light slashed through the darkness near me. I knew I should drop back to the ground and just walk home.

  Instead, I floated even closer in toward St. Christopher's. I couldn't help it. I wanted to know what other Prodigal had dared to take to the wind. Only a few Prodigals could fly. We were rare and growing more so with each generation. Sariel had been the only other Prodigal I had known who could soar into the dark sky. We had flown out of joy and instinct, believing that we were too high for any hand to reach. Neither of us had known how to evade the searchlights or nets. We had both ended up in St. Augustine's School for the Reform of Prodigal Youths.

  One of the searchlights swept across the elegant houses on the south side of the park. For a moment, a black silhouette was captured in the light. The thin figure seemed frozen, pressed against a window. Then it dived. Four more searchlights cut through the air beneath the first. The Prodigal veered between them and fled into the wooded paths of the park. Another three lights came on. They closed in over the park. Below the search-lights, I could see lines of Inquisition men working through the bushes with their lime torches. The darkness was ripped into tatters as light after light sliced between the branches of trees and across the plots of flowers.