The Skill of Our Hands--A Novel

by Steven Brust

  Ren got out, wrapped herself up in a towel, and brushed her teeth. She looked no different as a widow than she had yesterday morning as a fiancée, but she understood why Oskar had counseled against mirrors. It was going to be a day full of things she wasn’t ready to face, and didn’t want to see, and the unreality of how unchanged she looked didn’t help.

  Dressed and ready for her next chore, she marched herself into the kitchen to find it full of flowers. “Fucking Irina,” she muttered.

  “What?” Jane appeared from behind the refrigerator door.

  “Nothing,” Ren said. “The flowers.”

  “They came yesterday, after you were asleep,” Jane told her. “I signed for them. They’re from someone named Liam.”

  “My boss.” Ren pushed tears away.

  “You should eat something,” Jane said. “I know you don’t want to, but you know it will help.”

  Ren put water on for tea and poured Frosted Flakes into a bowl. When she dumped unsweetened yogurt on top, Jane raised her eyebrows. She didn’t say anything though, and Ren didn’t feel like explaining her compromises with adulthood and with Phil, so she just carried her bowl to the kitchen table. She ate dutifully for several bites. Jane was right, it did help. “You were so great yesterday,” Ren told her. “Thank you.”

  “Of course.” Jane took the kettle off the burner and shrugged, but something in the hitch of her shoulders caught Ren’s attention.

  “I promise I’m okay now, Jane. Jimmy will have gotten in overnight, and I already have more help than I can use. I’ll run you home after breakfast.”

  Jane’s eyes darted toward the living room where Oskar lay like a collapsed tent over Phil’s favorite chair. She opened a cabinet.

  “I fell asleep and left you in the company of some very intense people,” Ren said, choosing her words carefully. “I hope it wasn’t unpleasant.”

  Jane’s eyes drifted toward Oskar again. “Not unpleasant,” she said. “No.”

  Ren went back to her breakfast. If Jane and Oskar had started something last night, Ren couldn’t blame Jane. But she couldn’t help her either.

  “What do you know about my husband?” Jane was in front of the pantry, holding its door open, and Ren couldn’t see her face.

  “You told me yesterday he taught high school.”

  “Do you know about his high school prom?”

  “No,” Ren said with great care.

  “But you know about mine.”

  “Jane?”

  “You know I didn’t go. And why I didn’t, don’t you?”

  Ren stood up and walked into the kitchen.

  “You know what my favorite dessert is, and about Satha.”

  Ren took Jane’s hand off the pantry doorknob and closed the door. “Satha?”

  “My cat!”

  “Right. Jane—”

  “How the fuck do you know about my dead fucking cat?” Jane looked about as willing to be touched as a cornered hedgehog.

  Ren kept her distance, but she held her ground. “Come sit down and tell me what happened last night. I’ll explain.”

  Jane glanced Oskar’s direction again. “He explained.”

  “I’ll do better.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  Ren didn’t smile. “No.”

  Jane looked around the kitchen like she’d lost something. “What about your tea?”

  “It’ll wait.” Ren risked a gentle tug on Jane’s wrist, and Jane seated herself across the table from Ren’s breakfast. “You need to finish this mess,” she decreed, then her shoulders collapsed. “Is he in trouble?”

  “Oskar?”

  Jane delivered a withering glare. “Sam.”

  “I don’t know,” Ren said. If Jane didn’t look so ready to either cry or punch her, Ren would have walked into the other room and wakened Oskar to find out what the hell he’d said. Oskar called the Garden “the original commons” and believed it should be as available as the Incrementalists could make it to as many non-Incrementalists as possible, but Ren didn’t think he walked around spontaneously telling every nemone he met about it. If he did, they were going to have words.

  * * *

  I don’t, and we didn’t. Although maybe here I am, and we will.

  —Oskar

  * * *

  “He’s not a bad guy,” Jane mumbled.

  Unwilling to guess guys again, Ren stayed quiet.

  “He’s just frustrated. You have to understand the pressure he’s under. Well over half his students are minorities, he’s underpaid and overqualified, and the kids who aren’t already inured to it all, or dropping out to have babies, or only coming to school to mule drugs, are asking questions he’d be fired for answering honestly. He teaches civics and current events, for god’s sake! What’s he supposed to tell them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why are you trying to get him in trouble?”

  “We’re not. Wait. What do you mean ‘you’? What did Oskar say?”

  “That you are all part of some secret spy organization. And your boyfriend was shot in the line of duty.”

  “Oskar said ‘spy’?”

  “Has my husband gotten involved in something dangerous? Some militia or something? I know he’s been upset recently. Angry. But he’s not a bad guy, I swear, Ren. I’ll talk to him. I can get him to stop.”

  “Hang on.” Ren pushed her pulverized breakfast away. “Oskar said we were spies?”

  Jane’s eyes went sideways, re-playing the conversation in her mind. “He said you were a small, secret organization trying to make things better, that Phil was shot because he was working on SB 1070, and that you knew pretty much everything about everyone. Or could find it out.”

  “Did he say how?”

  “It’s all NSA stuff, right? Honestly, Sam doesn’t know anything important.”

  “Jane.” Ren waited until Jane looked at her. “That’s not who we are. We’re more like secret whistleblowers. If Sam were one, we’d be helping him.”

  Jane shook her head vigorously. “He’s not.”

  “Okay,” Ren said. “We aren’t spies, and we aren’t trying to get Sam in trouble. We have no idea what he’s up to.”

  “But he’s up to something?”

  “I have no idea,” Ren repeated, but she was watching Jane closely, and saw Jane knew Sam was, in fact, up to something. Ren filed that tidbit away and went back to being reassuring. “We know almost nothing about your husband,” she said truthfully. Sam didn’t seem to write much down.

  Jane blanched. “Is it me? It’s me, isn’t it? You’re investigating me. I’m the one Oskar had all the information about. Oh my god. It’s because I’m Wiccan, isn’t it?”

  “Jane.”

  “You’re going to get me fired.”

  “No, we’re not. We’re…” Ren reached around for something that wouldn’t keep making things worse. “We’re closer to witches ourselves than anything else.”

  “What do you mean?” Jane looked leery, which was a step better than panicked.

  “Remember at the hospital I said I could do something that was like praying?”

  Jane nodded.

  “We call it grazing. That’s how we learn about people. We close our eyes and look inside ourselves.”

  “I saw them do that, but I thought it was like Tony Stark’s suit.”

  “No, it’s not a technology. Or it is, but more like the wheel than a computer,” Ren said. “It’s made out of symbols and rituals and imagination. And we’re on your side anyway. We’re trying to make things better. Not report anyone, or get anyone in trouble.”

  “Unless they’re doing things you don’t like.”

  “Not even then.”

  Jane looked right at Ren.

  “Okay,” Ren said. “Look. If, for example, we thought it was bad for a Wiccan to teach school—and please understand we don’t, this is just an example because I’m too tired to come up with a better one—if we thought it was bad, we wouldn’
t report you. We’d suggest, very gently, and only to you, that maybe there’s a better way to do things and nudge you in that direction.”

  “What better way?”

  Ren sighed and got ready to try again, but Jane put it together on her own. “Oh, right.” She nodded. “That was an example.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So it’s magic?”

  “Not really.”

  “But there are symbols and rituals.”

  The weight of Jane’s anxiety and relief, and of all the truth Ren had told and hidden, settled over her like a granny’s shawl. “Yeah.” Ren dragged her smashed breakfast back and forced in a mouthful.

  “Tell me about one of them,” Jane said.

  “Well, there’s the dust ritual we do when one of us dies. Someone, usually the living Incrementalist closest to the dead one, picks a seed—that’s what we called a saved memory—from the dead guy’s life, and we all graze it. It’s the only time we can actually relive another person’s memory.”

  “Can nonmembers attend?”

  “Yeah, actually. Sometimes Incrementalists marry nemones, er, non-members. But if they know about us and they’re willing to sign up for a nasty hangover, we can share the ritual with them. Very occasionally, especially if the person goes into—” Ren stopped herself. She wasn’t sure why she wasn’t able to tell Jane about the coming back out of stub, but she wasn’t. “If the person dies very shortly after joining us and they were still very close to family members from before, we get those people drunk on purpose and include them without their really knowing.”

  “Will you have one for Phil?”

  Ren had to force herself to swallow again.

  “No.” Oskar’s voice came from behind her, and Ren nearly toppled her chair, turning around. Oskar walked through the kitchen toward the bathroom, shucking out of his shirt, and even Ren, hungry, tea-less, and grief-riddled, had to take a moment to appreciate the sight. “The dust ritual is a formality, not a requirement,” Oskar said. “It doesn’t have actual utility, and we don’t have time.”

  “Bullshit.” Ren was on her feet. “We are not cutting any corners with Phil’s transition, Oskar. We’re going to follow every tradition, meet every criterion, double-check our work, and get second opinions on every last detail until Phil’s out of stub and integrated in his new Second.”

  Oskar stopped in the doorway, looking as surprised as Ren felt by her own certainty and determination.

  “We’ll do all that, Oskar, and wear our goddamn lucky socks too until Phil’s back here to make fun of them.”

  Oskar turned and walked into the bathroom.

  * * *

  Irina left her condo with only an untraceable, prepaid cell phone, a single car key, and the small folded emergency contact sheet no Incrementalist went anywhere without. You don’t die without one more than once to get good about keeping it about.

  Irina had had lifetimes of practice facing facts, and on the drive downtown, she faced the truth that she might have really fucked up. It had been known to happen. You can’t run with the big dogs if you don’t leave the yard, and God knows Irina had done her share of jumping fences. Well, she’d mend any she could. The only fuckup worse than the mistake she wasn’t yet sure she’d made would be not finding out, and leaving Ren to suffer for it.

  Irina drove down to the hospital, and left her car in the parking lot, slamming the door too hard, and took a bus to the south side. The first thing was to learn the territory, start wide and zoom in. Arizona’s shitty economy, distrust in the feds’ ability to secure the national border, and ancient, simple racism had colluded to give the state the broadest and most brutal anti-immigration law in the nation, Senate Bill 1070, and cops all too happy to enforce it. It was a gaping sore of a human rights breach, and closely tied to the increasing militarization of the civilian police, which was the biggest threat any of them had seen in a long time. It made sense for Phil to have gotten involved. It was only his methods that had surprised Irina. And impressed her, if she were being honest.

  The bus smelled like ammonia—either pee or the stuff they used to clean it—and the driver felt obliged to mash either the brake or gas pedal at all times, but it was more pleasant than going back to Ren’s. Irina couldn’t face Oskar just yet. She should have kissed him. She could survive—hell, flourish—fed only on the kisses of men and women who wanted her. And Oskar did. Just not how Irina wanted him to.

  She wanted him on her side. She wanted all the Incrementalists on the same side. She wanted Ren and Phil over their obsessions with Celeste, and she wanted Ren integrated with the group and relying on Incrementalists beyond Phil. Phil’s wrongful arrest might have accomplished all that and more.

  * * *

  And that was the countermeddle. That’s what started the whole mess.

  —Oskar

  * * *

  Tucson wasn’t Phoenix, where the oppressive law was most abusively enforced, but here it had sparked something that reminded Irina of the forests of Hispaniola. She saw it in how kids watched the bus going by, in the alertness of the old man at the taco truck, in the tense shoulders of the mother and daughter carrying their groceries home. Most of them wouldn’t know what was going on, exactly, or even that it had anything to do with what was happening in Phoenix. But there was a righteous, subversive violence waiting at the margins, and the people felt its promise. Phil’s arrest, as reported by Menzie Pulu with help from unnamed sources named Irina, could have brought it out on the streets.

  She had to find a way to make his death do the same.

  * * *

  I hate to say it, but Irina was right on every point here. I hate countermeddling like Louis hated Robespierre, but if I’d had known what she was up to, I might have helped her. But people can’t do any better than their circumstance allows, and Irina’s lives have left her with a tendency toward secrecy I’m still—and here—trying to remedy.

  —Oskar

  * * *

  Irina got off the bus a block before the corner where Phil had died and zipped her sunglasses into the same inside pocket of her coat that held her car key, info card, and disposable phone. The danger she was walking into felt like stepping waist deep into a very cold ocean. But Irina had lifetimes of putting her body on the line. She very much preferred its pleasures, but she had learned to endure pain if she had to.

  AUGUST, 1856

  “DON’T WASTE YOUR BREATH.”

  I left the Reverend Adair’s cabin and walked for half an hour, not paying much attention to where I was going except that it was vaguely in the direction of Lawrence. I found a reasonably sized tree on the riverbank, and sat down with my back against it. I closed my eyes and imagined the smell of cherry blossoms and the taste of chive. I checked the message wall of my Garden first. Rishabh reported mounting tensions, and asked for ideas on how to diffuse the situation; I knew nothing of conditions in India, so I stayed out of that one. Julianna reported that there’d still been no contact with Qing, but doubted he’d returned to China. I’d last run into him in South America and the memory still rankled, so I didn’t much care. Here in the U.S., Rosemary reported on some of the aftereffects of the Philadelphia Convention, and suggested a few bits of meddlework to help cement the new Party without giving in to the odious Know-Nothings who hung around it like flies after a honey pot. All of her ideas made sense, so I wrote back with my agreement and tacked the note to the door of the barn at the edge of her Garden.

  Then I seeded Fred’s death and set it as a silver bowl on the table in the triclinium. I put a marker to it on my wall and opened my eyes.

  John Brown, the father: he was the key. He was charismatic, determined, and had a following like Lane, without the limits that Lane’s egoism imposed. Winning Brown over to the cause of peaceful change would alter the entire political landscape of Kansas for the better.

  Had I tried hard enough to find Brown’s switches? The trouble was, he never wrote about himself in such a way that details like t
he ones I needed would find their way into the Garden. It was frustrating. And he was not the sort of man who could be swayed without switches.

  But now one of his sons was dead, and, I don’t know, maybe I could have prevented it if I’d done a more thorough search. I shook my head. I’d tried, dammit. And I wasn’t bad at grazing, even if I wasn’t as good as—

  Jimmy.

  I went back into the Garden. I conjured pencil and paper and wrote, “Jimmy, I’m unable to find switches for John Brown—the stack of plates next to the sink in my cucina. Can you help? Thanks—Carter.” I turned the note into a plum and set it on a glass pedestal in what my Garden saw as Jimmy’s.

  Then I left the Garden and sat against the tree and remembered Frederick. I sat there, unmoving, for a long time. I fell asleep there, and woke up with the sun, and just continued leaning against that tree for most of the day. Not all that far away, just out of earshot, there was shooting and yelling and what would become known as the Battle of Osawatomie, but I knew nothing about it.

  EIGHT

  Something to Work With

  Ren didn’t want to do yoga and Jane wasn’t ready to leave, so Ren sat on the ground while Jane folded and unbent herself. They made small talk until Oskar—showered and dressed for battle—emerged from the bathroom. He came into the living room and reinstalled himself in Phil’s chair, where he’d slept the night.

  Ren only managed a low, “Oskar,” before he raised his hand to quiet her.

  “I’m sorry, Ren,” he said, fishing his laptop out of a bag. “I was abrupt. My point was, we need to get Phil back, not mourn him. But I can understand your position, even if I don’t agree, and it’s your call. We can hold the dust ritual. I’ll put a post on the forum.”