by Jeff Somers
“Little birds!”
Cal Amir’s voice rang out, clearly, as if from every direction at once. He sounded so fucking cheerful, I wanted to set the whole place on fire just to change his tone. Instead, I chose a doorway at random and dragged Bella through it. I wanted to drop her, just leave her to her own devices. To her doom, her certain death. It wasn’t like one person would make any real difference—there were hundreds down below, hanging from the rafters, being slowly bled dry. Saving Bella, assuming I could, wouldn’t matter much.
But I dragged her. Breathing hard, sweating freely, I pulled her doggedly behind me. Because she was a Trickster, and I hoped like hell someone would do the same for me.
“There is no out of this house,” Cal Amir said, his voice in my ear as if he were standing right next to me. “Every step takes you deeper in.”
I believed him. The next room was even bigger, and was filled with giant bird cages made of a lightweight, blond wood. The cages were all empty, and I was momentarily grateful for this tiny blessing. I set Bella down and looked around, breathing hard.
The door set into one wall caught my eye. It looked almost like it was made from leather, with a stitched pattern of squares on it. There was no obvious handle or latch, so odds were good it was magicked, sealed with Wards, the sort of Wards that only an Archmage could possibly open, but I dragged Bella over to it anyway. Doors led to hiding places. You learned not to turn those down when they presented themselves.
To my surprise, though, the door sagged open as I approached. My right arm was on fire, burning with pain, but it responded to my commands now, although I didn’t have any fine touch. I hooked one foot under the door and pulled it open, dragged Bella in, and then had to get down on my hands and knees to slide my hands under the door and pull it shut. It wouldn’t latch. I glanced at Bella; she continued to stare up sightlessly, stiff as a board.
“Shut up,” I whispered. “You’re the loudest person in the universe.”
“LITTLE BIRDS!”
We were in a study or office, claustrophobic because of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A small wooden desk, elegant, with delicate carvings up and down the legs, sat against the back wall. A small green banker’s lamp was lit up, bathing the pile of grimoires in a rich, golden light.
Grimoires. They were more rare than people thought. Mages tended to be paranoid, and writing spells down seemed like an invitation to steal their ideas. The ones you did find were all written in different alphabets so you couldn’t read most of them. By the looks of it, Mika Renar had collected just about every grimoire that had ever existed.
I paused to look around. It wasn’t every day that you found yourself surrounded by hundreds, thousands, of spells. Surrounded by the collective power of centuries. I knew from my long, dry years with Hiram as my gasam that learning spells from other mages was like pulling teeth. Here were several lifetimes of education for the taking.
As I leaned over the desk, my sweat dripped down onto the ancient, yellowed pages of the grimoire spread open on the surface. I knew the script used, although the hand was old-fashioned and unsteady. It appeared to be written in blood. It appeared to be bound in human skin. The title was written out phonetically at the top of the first page: Biludha-tah-namus. The Ritual of Death.
Licking my lips, I touched the pages. They seemed to squirm under my fingers.
Ritual of Death sounded kind of useful in my present situation, so I began turning the pages, quickly, scanning the slanted lines for ideas. For tricks. Every spell was just a series of tricks.
The silence suddenly struck me as terrifying. Amir was undoubtedly casting something, and it was going to be powerful, and terrible.
I flipped to the last page of the biludha. My eyes skipped over the Words, unable to really take them in, but there was something there . . . something registered subliminally in my brain, some pattern that seemed promising. Without thinking, hands shaking, I tore the page from the grimoire and stuffed it into my pocket.
I felt the unmistakable sense of a spell hitting its cadence, the rush of energy into the tireless maw of the universe. The volume was considerable, and I figured more than a few poor assholes had just died down below.
I looked down at Bella. “Brace your—”
She turned her head slightly and looked right at me. “I see you, little bird.”
11.
SHE SURGED UP and took me by the throat as I thought, Shit shit shit he’s fucking Stringing her, and then her hand clamped down on my windpipe and I couldn’t get any air. Bella was staring down at me with her lips skinned back from her teeth, her eyes wide. Like Amir hadn’t done this in a while and didn’t have a soft touch for controlling someone else’s body.
“Do you know who I am, little idiot?” Bella growled. “Do you know who lives here?”
Cal Amir, I thought, urtuku to Mika Renar, and you and your gasam are probably the two most powerful ustari on the planet, and now you’re going to strangle me to death by proxy. I wondered if there would be a lingering fame for me, if my name would ring out in Rue’s Morgue for centuries to come. Lem Vonnegan, the stupid motherfucker who almost escaped from Mika Renar’s murder machinery.
My chest heaved. Spots appeared in front of my eyes. I almost imagined I could hear the bones in my neck cracking, or maybe it was Bella’s fingers being pushed past their rated tolerances.
I threw my arms around her, pulling her in close, and rolled us until I was on top. My right arm felt weak and unreliable, but it worked well enough; I took her head in my hands and smashed it down onto the floor as hard as I could. Her grip loosened as her eyes fluttered from the impact, and I leaped up and backward, stumbling and dragging air in through my aching throat.
As I landed on my ass, teeth chattering, I scratched desperately at the wound on my right arm until I got it bleeding again—too much, a gusher—and as Bella leaped up, Cal Amir snarling through her face, I threw out my left hand in a uselessly theatrical gesture I’d never quite been able to grow out of and shouted a single Word that came to mind.
“Iginudu!”
She flinched, then stumbled backward, hitting the desk and half sprawling onto it, knocking everything onto the floor. The lamp landed sideways, dimming the room and making the shadows strange and oddly angled.
She righted herself and looked around, blinking, blind as a bat. Griefing wasn’t elegant. It was shouting a single Word and getting a blunt action from it. But it was useful in a fight.
“Clever,” Amir said through Bella, her voice familiar but the pronunciation all his, round and careful, an actor’s diction. “But I have already seen where you are hiding, little idiot.”
I glanced at the door. He knew where we were. As I looked, Bella launched herself at me, and I just managed to dive out of the way. She crashed into one of the bookshelves, grimoires raining down on her.
I moved to the wall next to the door and pressed myself against it, trying to control my breathing. Bella leaped up, then paused, turning her head and trying to listen for me, like a bat. It would only be a moment before Amir switched tactics and tried a different spell, drawing on the cloud of gas at his disposal.
It was fun to imagine Renar’s Glamour, somewhere out in the world, flickering like a weak signal, as Amir drained her source of blood trying to stomp on me like a bug.
Fun. But not that much fun.
Bella suddenly grew very calm. She centered herself, putting her hands together in a prayer pose, her mouth moving as Amir whispered a spell through her, and I knew I was in for some serious shit. My mind raced, running through a decision tree of his possible choices and then I just gave up, instinct swamping me. I tore at my wound and hissed out another single Word.
“Suhgiri!”
Bella thrust her hands out and a fountain of white, hot energy slammed into the wall just as I slid away at high speed, rocketing across the room
and slamming into the bookshelf on the opposite side. I felt the drain of the spell, my vision dimming, my hearing acquiring an echo as I sank to the floor.
Bella turned and roared with anger, her face twisted as it tried to conform to Amir’s bone structure, her smooth, tan skin wrinkling in unfamiliar ways. I wasn’t sure I had much more left in me. I tried to think of something brilliant that would make a difference, a mu that would somehow shut down Amir and let me just slip into unconsciousness and sleep for a while, but I couldn’t get my thoughts in order. I knew Amir was going to burst into the room at any moment, too, and wouldn’t need Bella as a puppet once he did.
Bella did the pose again, bringing her hands together. Her mouth moved. I wondered if I’d be able to pass out before she hit me, before I had to feel the pain.
You and me, Lemmy! Headin’ out for the hills, where the boom bands play!
I could almost hear him. The cigarette rasp, the way he used to drop his consonants. So happy, in the beginning. Hilly was always cheerful and clowning when he picked me up, arriving from out of nowhere to drive me off without Mom’s permission. He grew increasingly quiet and angry as time went on, but in the beginning he was always smiles and songs, singing along to the radio, teaching me lyrics, a cigarette burning between two fingers as he steered with what seemed like awesome adult competence, his free hand wrapped around a tallboy.
He always promised adventure, magic, boom bands. I imagined the boom bands, as a kid; tiny people in colorful uniforms, playing brass instruments. One had a huge drum. They would march around and play, smiling, delighted.
Dad never showed me anything more than a few dim highway bars, though. The occasional fleabag motel. The backseat of his Malibu. I never got to see any fucking boom bands. But now I thought I could almost hear it, music, light and beautiful. As I peered at poor Bella and struggled to keep my eyes open, I thought maybe I was dying and Dad was waiting for me, boom bands arranged behind him, playing my favorite song even though I didn’t really know what my favorite song was.
I stared at Bella, eyelids drooping. Someone else I’d fucked over, I thought. Someone else I’d tried to help and wound up ruining. Behind her, through the gap of the door, something bright and fluid. For a second I stared dumbly over her shoulder and wondered at it. Had Amir cast something else? I didn’t doubt an Archmage of his experience and skill could simultaneously cast through his Stringer and on his own.
The tinkling, fluid sound grew in volume and then it was the stupid fucking bird cantrip, shining like white, cold fire as it flapped around the office.
Mags, I thought. It’s Mags.
My head cleared, some final exhausted supply of adrenaline dumping into my thin blood and sending my empty, shriveled heart into overdrive. As Bella/Amir hit the cadence again and the beam of fire shot out, I leaped up and to my right, stumbling just out of its path as it hit the bookshelf behind me, sending it splintering in every direction. The smell of burning flesh filled the room as I scrabbled away on my ass, mouth open as I sucked in air.
Bella whirled, following me, then stiffened, cocking her head. I imagined Amir was in the same pose out in the hall, unconsciously forcing his Stringer to emulate his every move. And then there were multiple spells being cast. Nothing big. Tiny things. Cantrips, but dozens of them, most feeding off the cloud of gas Renar had going in her Warehouse of the Damned.
There was a popping noise, and suddenly Mags was in the room.
He stumbled a little, then caught himself. He was wearing his usual suit—old and ragged, worn down to a molecular level and barely large enough for him to begin with. His long black hair was sweaty and in his eyes. One sleeve was rolled up, a fresh red scar among the field of pink and gray ones. He still held his penknife in his hand.
His face lit up in a smile. “Lem! I saw! I saw the bird!” he shouted, delighted with himself. Delighted, I thought stupidly, to see me.
Bella assumed her pose again. I started to warn him, but I felt like I was underwater, everything weighted down, all my synapses firing through jelly. Mags saw her and whirled. After a moment’s hesitation, he shouted something incoherent and launched himself at her. He knocked her down and wrestled with her, coming up with one huge arm wrapped around her torso, one huge hand clamped over her mouth, his legs straddling her as they sat in an almost comically intimate pose.
She struggled feebly against him. Amir might be able to take control and String her as a puppet, but she was still a woman who weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, who’d been bled for days on end. Against Mags she was like a fart in a hurricane.
He grinned at me as if holding Bella took about one percent of his strength. “I saw the bird, Lem!”
Weakly, I offered him a thumbs-up.
“I brought help, too! I was at Rue’s when the bird came, and I said Lem needs help. And people said they’d had people go missing. Tricksters are getting snatched off the street. And everyone got angry, talking about it. And I said I was following the bird to help Lem, and everyone said they were, too! There’s an army out there!”
I nodded. Bella suddenly went limp. Mags didn’t notice.
I reached for the wound on my arm. The door was pulled open and suddenly Cal Amir was in the room, looking like he’d spent the last few minutes engaged in some serious massage therapy and perhaps a manicure. Not a hair was out of place, and his suit remained as unwrinkled and pristine as ever. That was power: shedding blood just to ensure that your fucking clothes didn’t stain.
I winced as the wound tore open under my numb fingers. My own weak pulse of gas filled the air and I struggled to focus my thoughts for one last Grief, one final Word to hold Amir off. Just as the enustari opened his mouth to cast, Mags surged up. Amir hadn’t seen him when he’d strolled into the room in full-on Master of the Universe mode, and Mags caught him completely by surprise. Mags slid one arm around his neck, the other wrapping around his chest and hugging him tightly to himself, forcing Amir to swallow whatever Word he was about to speak with a strangled grunt.
There was an awful snapping sound, like a semi-rotten branch out in the woods being stepped on. And then everything went quiet.
Mags beamed at me. Then, slowly, as my vision turned gray and faded, his expression changed to one I was pretty familiar with: terror.
12.
I LIT A CIGARETTE and spat tobacco, shivering. Hoboken fucking New Jersey was no place for a self-respecting idimustari to be, at least not during daylight hours. At night the place crawled with rich drunks and was a great place to make your nut. During the day the place was a wasteland of baby carriages and brunch.
Up toward the cliffs was an area of desolation, ancient old warehouses that stubbornly resisted the wave of condominiums and gentrification. The streets were empty back there, under the thick concrete and steel columns of the road soaring up toward the cliff side. Most of it was secretly owned by Evelyn Fallon, enustari, one of the only Archmage-level Fabricators left. He maintained an enormous workshop and underground complex back here, and kept everyone away with means both magical and pragmatic.
Mags trailed behind me even less enthusiastically than normal, hands stuffed into his pockets, head down. Mags was feeling guilty. He’d put us in this hole.
I exhaled smoke and looked around, trying to pick out which of the old cobwebby warehouses was Fallon’s workshop. I knew he had Glamours obscuring it from prying eyes, and Wards designed to deflect the eye and discourage curiosity. But I’d been here before, and if I’d been distracted at the time by the crisis burning all around me, I thought I should be able to pierce the illusion and find my way in. Assuming Fallon wanted to see me. If he didn’t, there wasn’t much I would be able to do to force the issue.
I touched my breast pocket, where the page I’d torn from Renar’s biludha rested, neatly folded. It was the cadence of the spell, and it was gloriously complicated and horrifyingly awful, the worst and most po
werful spell I’d ever seen—and I only had one percent of it. The rest of it, I thought, would be poetry and damnation, the sort of thing that made you tear your eyes out after reading, and then spend the rest of your life trying to cure blindness so you could read it one more time.
Sighing, I stuck the cigarette back between my lips. I was still sleeping sixteen hours a day, recovering. I was still on the move every other hour of the day, avoiding the minions I was certain Mika Renar had sent out into the world to seek me. Every hour of sleep actually seemed to make me more exhausted.
It occurred to me that getting into a battle of wits or magic with an Archmage had never gone well for me. That maybe the direct approach and abject begging was a better option.
I threw out my arms. “Mr. Fallon!” I shouted, cigarette bobbing. “A moment of your time!”
Moments passed, with just the wind blowing trash around in the street. Mags stood a few feet away, hands stuffed into his pockets. We’d had a rough few months. He was trying to make me feel sorry for him.
A rusty scraping noise made me turn around. An old metal door opened up, and Ev Fallon appeared, no jacket, blinding white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The old man was as thin and deeply wrinkled as ever. He leaned against the doorframe, eating something out of one hand, chewing with evident pleasure.
“Mr. Vonnegan,” he said, his voice magically amplified so it seemed like he was standing next to me. I could hear him chewing. “It is good to see you. Mr. Mageshkumar.”
Mags ducked his head, then looked up and pulled one hand from his pocket to wave shyly.
