The Stringer

by Jeff Somers

  When he spoke the final Word, I sagged as the universe took the last bit of me. Head spinning, I turned to check on Mags, who was marveling—as usual—at his instantly healed wound, studying it intently with a slight grin. I swallowed a smile. Mags was a moron, but he was my moron.

  “Well?” I croaked, trying to hide how much Ketterly’s shitty spell had taken from me.

  He’d closed his eyes, feeling his way through it. When he opened his eyes, he grinned down at us. “He’s in the subway.”

  THE SUBWAYS TEEMED with Tricksters. It was an ideal breeding ground for grifts aided by a pricked thumb and some mumbling—everyone in a rush, everyone hot and tired and slightly confused. The Twenty-third Street station always seemed larger on the inside than the outside, a maze of stairs and tunnels and escalators and even the occasionally functional elevator. Every inch of the underground complex had achieved a strange status that wasn’t clean or dirty: Everything looked filthy, but there was no trash anywhere, no debris, no pools of mystery liquids or other obvious problems. The city had gotten so clean in some areas that I seriously wondered where they were putting all the shit. It had to go somewhere. Following magical intuition, Ketterly moved with purpose, and we just kept pace as he led us down into the ever hotter lower levels of subway hell. On the N train platform, he stopped at the bottom of the stairs and surveyed the scene. The platform stretched out in front of us and behind us; it wasn’t overly crowded, just a few dozen tired people headed to Brooklyn for who knew what reason, most of them gathered at the edges, toeing the yellow safety line that you weren’t ever supposed to cross.

  “He’s coming,” Ketterly said.

  I perked up and looked at Mags, who smiled brightly. This might be the easiest money we ever made, I thought. A good dinner, some sleep, and I’d be right as rain by the morning, assuming Ketterly was good for it.

  A moment later we saw Landry, recognizable from the photos his wife had shown us, a tall man with snow-white hair and the loping, lanky gait of someone who’d been born big and never quite got used to it. He had an enormous belly and was in a state of disarray, his hair wild, his clothes mismatched—he wasn’t wearing shoes, and his coat looked like something he’d picked up off the street.

  The train started pulling into the station. People began to gather themselves, moving closer to the edge. It was instinctive and natural, and no one ever thought about it until an old man began shoving people off the platform.

  He did it casually and so quickly that he’d knocked five people onto the tracks before anyone even reacted. He just sailed down the platform, and as he passed a plump Latino woman wrapped in an overlarge winter coat, he reached out with one long arm and shoved her. She didn’t cry out; she staggered forward with a pop-eyed expression and fell hard as Mr. Landry was on to the next person.

  Mags took off, putting some leg into it, shouting,

  “Hey!” I didn’t know much about Pitr, but he’d demonstrated a shocking lack of basic knowledge, which made me think he was mostly feral. And Hiram had declared him the dumbest person he’d ever met, a man so dumb that Hiram refused to bond him urtuku.

  “Hey!” Mags shouted again as old man Landry hip-checked a tired-looking black guy in a snazzy fedora-style hat onto the tracks.

  My switchblade was in my hand. I didn’t have the gas for anything huge, and I only knew one huge spell anyway—and it would have to be fucking useful, but if I bled for it I would certainly pass out before finishing. And dying in the subway system was not a particular life goal of mine.

  Mind racing, I ran through my slim repertoire of mu, the tiny Cantrips that didn’t cost much in blood—the spells I made my living with, such as it was. There were an infinite number of dirty tricks you could play when you had the gas and knew the Words, but none seemed likely to save five people from being run over by a train in the next five seconds.

  Except one. I slashed my palm, deeper than I should have, and as the gas sizzled into the air, Mags crashed into Landry, knocking him down right before the man managed to shove two young kids wearing backpacks larger than they were. I spoke six Words, two of which served to invert the spell so it would affect everyone but me.

  Levitation was the oldest trick in the book, and trivial in terms of gas, really. It impressed the rubes, so if you were pulling a Guru or implying you were divine or something like that, it was indispensable. Everyone on the platform started to float, and a wave of horrified screams filled the thick air. The train crashed into Landry’s airborne victims as it slowed down—painful, probably, but not a body-sawing impact under the steel wheels.

  A wave of exhausted nausea swept through me as the train stopped, brakes screeching. A moment later, everyone fell back to the ground.

  This was frowned upon. Ustari had spent the entire history of the world staying off the radar, and casting like this in a public place, in a way that would be remembered—that had potentially been recorded—got you into trouble. There was no central committee, but if enough ustari around the world frowned at you, someone would come knocking, and there would be discipline. Discipline, for mages, generally meant execution.

  We weren’t good people.

  “Come on,” I slurred, heading for Mags, who was struggling with our quarry. Calls were being made, cops would be coming. We needed to get Landry out of here before I saw my payday melt away. When I was a few steps away, Mags—the strongest man I’d ever met—was shoved violently toward me, windmilling his massive arms and squeaking like a baby bird. I dodged and let Ketterly take the hit, and for a moment I was face-to-face with Mr. Landry.

  He grinned at me. His face was oval, deeply lined, and his teeth were the bright squares of dentures. There was something off about him—something in the eyes, which were flat and lifeless, and the skin, which was yellowed and slack.

  “Balahul,” he said.

  Behind me, I heard Ketterly say, “Oh, fuck me.”

  The Word meant, literally, evil change, more popularly translated as chaos. It wasn’t a Word that a lot of ustari tossed about, since most of us—at least people at my level, the idimustari—were practically illiterate, knowing just enough vocabulary to get by. It was definitely not a Word you’d hear from a non-mage.

  “Balahul!” Landry shrieked, leaning forward and shoving me back with both hands. Then he surged forward and took hold of my jacket and, with surprising strength, spun and slammed me against a column, knocking my head back and causing my vision to swim. A second after that, he was torn away from me as Mags crashed into him, roaring, and I slid down to the platform, my legs going rubbery.

  Mags was struggling with the old man. I’d never seen Mags struggle with a human being. I doubted he’d get much struggle from a bus. Mags routinely broke things by touching them gently, and we had a long-standing rule regarding kittens and puppies. But this old man, who looked like he weighed about fifty pounds, was giving Mags a run for his money, shouting the one Word he seemed to know over and over, grinning his yellow grin.

  I could taste a little gas in the air and realized my head was bleeding. Since I had gas to use, I croaked out three Words of my own. When I opened my eyes, the old man lay prone. Mags twisted around, seams splitting. His face was horrified.

  “Don’t worry, Magsie,” I said, ignoring the people who were grouping around me, concerned. “I just put him to sleep.”

  Mags shook his head. “Dead.”

  I POUNDED ON the door again, making the plate glass rattle. “Come on, Ketterly!” I shouted. “For fuck’s sake, I can see you in there, you cowardly piece of shit!”

  Mags stood next to me with the old man draped over his shoulders like a shawl, but thanks to a little spell that made Mags and me the least interesting thing in anyone’s field of vision, no one paid us any attention. It was handy for hiding from the cops, and it was handy for wandering the streets with a corpse.

  “I swear to fucking God, Ketter
ly, if you don’t open this door, you will never have another peaceful day in your life!”

  Our world was pretty small. There were mages everywhere, but in this city, the band of idimustari pulling short cons and little jobs here and there was tight and intimate. Ketterly would never be able to avoid us, and if we complained loudly enough, he’d start to get the cold shoulder. Tricksters didn’t have many rules, but one we all stuck to was You don’t fuck each other. At least not unless it was absolutely necessary.

  He opened the door, the bell tinkling, and stepped back. “In!” he hissed. “Quick, before someone sees you.”

  We went in. Mags shrugged the old man off his shoulders and set him gently on the floor.

  I pointed at Ketterly. “You fucking left us there.”

  He nodded, putting his hands up. “Look, I panicked, okay? You know what he said?”

  I nodded. “Balahul. Chaos.”

  Ketterly shook his head. “It’s a name. An intelligence.”

  A demon. Udug was the Word. I frowned, glancing at the old man, who now looked like he’d been dead for days. “That doesn’t make any sense, Digs,” I said. “You summon a demon, you trap it in something. That’s what a Fabricator does. Little machines or pieces of jewelry. To do things for you, you get something that can think. They don’t possess people.”

  Ketterly shrugged. “Balahul wasn’t possessing that old man—it was animating him.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry I left you, I am. But this shit is above my pay grade.”

  I looked at the old man again. He’d been dead before we got there, so I hadn’t accidentally killed him, which was good for my sleep patterns. But the idea that Landry was a meat puppet—that was some deep magic. And deep magic meant an Archmage, and that meant I suddenly understood perfectly why Ketterly had run. I swallowed and looked back at him, suddenly nervous being near the body. “So what do we do?”

  Ketterly shrugged again, regaining some of his bluster now that it seemed unlikely Mags was going to hit him on the head or Mr. Landry was going to spring up and start singing and dancing or something. “Do? Shit, dump the body. Bring it back to the old lady; it’s hers, right? Or call your gasam, kid. Kick this up the chain of command.”

  I looked at the body. My education hadn’t progressed very far, but I knew that demons, once trapped in something by a skilled saganustari or enustari, didn’t just disappear. They had to be released. Which meant that when my knockout spell faded, old Mr. Landry would be back on his feet, terrifying the commuters of the world.

  The thought of contacting Hiram made me feel sick. Or maybe that was the blood loss. But Ketterly was useless, I knew that. He was a lazy, small-time mage who scraped by just like the rest of us. We needed someone with real knowledge, real connections. That wasn’t Hiram, either, really, but the fat old bastard was at least adjacent to real magic.

  I looked at Ketterly. “Fine. But we bled. You owe us fifty each.”

  WE HAD A hundred bucks, but we walked to Hiram’s. Carrying a corpse onto the subway would strain my little spell, and I didn’t have the gas for anything else, which left out a Charm to get a free ride from someone. Other ustari with less conscience might have bled someone else to get the job done. But me and Mags, we didn’t bleed anyone except ourselves. It was how we kept from drowning in the sewers we swam in, but it was exhausting.

  I kept a fresh wound on my hand to fuel the cloaking spell; between the blood loss and the walk, I was dizzy and unsteady, but I was eager to unload the body—specifically, the demon within—on someone else and start working on turning Ketterly’s hundred dollars into a slightly larger pile of money. It was getting cold, and the idea of spooning Mags on the street during the winter nights was unappealing.

  Hiram’s townhouse was a block away from Prospect Park, a crumbling little place that gave every impression he’d lived there since it had been built, that perhaps it had even been built around him, like a pyramid around a pharaoh. The block was sleepy, and Hiram kept his house Warded so the occasional explosion or scream emanating from his rooms wouldn’t cause any unnecessary worry.

  The Wards also meant that the moment Mags and I climbed the stairs, he knew we were there. The front door opened when we were halfway up, and Hiram emerged, hair as white as his crisp dress shirt, red suspenders straining against his round belly, beard perfectly groomed, as always.

  “Masters Vonnegan and Mageshkumar,” he boomed, slipping his thumbs under his suspenders and rocking on his heels. “As you are here, by definition you are in trouble, so I am excited to hear your tale of new woe and how I might assist you with no hope of compensation.” Raising his eyebrows, he snapped his suspenders back against his chest. “Also, you have brought me a corpse. How thoughtful.”

  I swallowed bile and forced myself to be polite. When I’d actively been Hiram’s apprentice he’d been a miserable pain in the ass, telling me how stupid I was, perpetually unhappy with my memory, my comportment, my choice of vocabulary. When he’d grudgingly admitted I had a talent for the Words, he followed it up with a lengthy complaint about my pronunciation. And when I’d refused to bleed the shivering, terrified girl, her sneakers drawn up with pink marker, a twenty-dollar bill folded neatly and secured in the pocket of her torn jeans, Hiram had yelled at me for three straight days before kicking me out onto the street, assigning Mags to me as an additional punishment.

  “Not a corpse, old man,” I said. “An Udug named Balahul.”

  Hiram raised one snowy eyebrow. “I see your penchant for disaster has remained as strong as ever, Mr. Vonnegan. And you have brought me an incredibly dangerous bound intelligence because . . . ?”

  The inflection was familiar: I had thirty seconds, give or take, before Hiram exploded into a rage, possibly raining down bolts of lightning or turning me into a small lizard. I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one to put some smoke between us.

  “It tried to kill a few people in the subway yesterday,” I said, rushing to get in the explanation before he blew up. “It didn’t give a shit about being seen, and it seemed to be enjoying itself. I knocked it out, but it’s going to wake up eventually.”

  “And this is my problem why, Mr. Vonnegan?” Hiram shouted, leaning forward, his face flushing. “You refuse my counsel, my training, and my hospitality, yet you always return for my assistance. Which perhaps might indicate that you need my tutelage, yes?”

  “Hiram,” I said. “I just need help getting rid of the demon, okay? Or we can leave it sitting on your steps and walk the fuck away.” I exhaled smoke, head swimming. “Your choice, old man.”

  He seethed at me for a moment, teeth bared, then settled back and looked at Mags and the old man.

  “Balahul,” he said softly. He took a deep breath. “Very well. You’d best bring it inside. You’re not the first person to bring me an animated corpse this evening.”

  3.

  WE PUT MR. LANDRY in Hiram’s bathroom, which, as always, smelled of disinfectant and bleach and gleamed with the sort of dull, over-scrubbed cleanliness that implied no one actually used it.

  As someone who had spent several hours every week for years on his hands and knees scrubbing it, I knew it intimately. It was small. The window stuck and often took a few Words and a pricked finger to open. The old claw-foot tub was perfectly white, but the finish had worn off, making it dull. The tiled floor was white and black octagonal shapes in a simple pattern, some cracked, the grout yellowed.

  There was, as Hiram had promised, already a body in there, a skinny black kid, jeans and a black hoodie, red sneakers. I stared at the tub, doom crowding in on me like I’d seen this before, a body in a tub, and it had killed me in some other life. Mags laid Landry gently on the floor, and we stepped back into the hall. I closed the bathroom door, casting a quick Ward on it in case our new friend Balahul woke up in a frisky mood. Slicing through the skein of white scars on my hand hurt as much as the first time, every time.
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  “Mr. Mageshkumar,” Hiram called. “The kitchen, please. I’ve made you a sandwich.”

  Mags pushed past me, grinning. I’d often contemplated my eventual death via trampling by Mags in some sort of lunch-related incident. I followed, feeling hollow and unsteady and feverish.

  Hiram’s kitchen was as white and pure as I recalled. Like the bathroom, it gave no sign of having ever been used for anything more complex than tea. On the small table was a white plate with a large sandwich on it: brown bread, a thick wedge of ham, and some green and red layers that might have been vegetables if I’d seen vegetables recently enough to recognize them.

  “Mr. Vonnegan.”

  I turned, and Hiram beckoned me out of the kitchen. I followed him into his study down the hall, crowded with stolen trinkets displayed on shelves, furnished in a way that implied Hiram was actually a very old woman. When he turned to face me, I realized he was furious; I recognized his fighting posture, like that of a small, fat rooster about to lean in and peck you.

  “You have a duty of care to that boy,” he hissed. “Do you really believe you are fulfilling that duty? Look at him!”

  I blinked. Hiram had been so happy to pawn Mags off on me, it had never occurred to me that the old thief might care what happened to him.

  Hiram shook his head and deflated a little. “You cannot go on living like this. That boy has complete faith in you, the simpleton. If not for me, for him, bleed others. Bleed anyone. But living like this, bleeding yourselves and getting by on short confidence games, you are slowly killing him—and yourself.”