Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 3

by Jim Baen's Universe! staff

  "Yes, Miss Kobayashi." Easier said than done, he imagined.

  She gave him a sort of a smile. "Don't forget your spectacles. I'll see you next week, Matthew."

  * * *

  When Matty staggered out of the tattoo parlor—there was a closed sign hung on the door, but it wasn't like Kelly had forgotten how to find the place in two years—he looked just about as white and exhausted as Kelly had expected. And he walked right past Kelly, inward-turned, focused on his pain, on trying to move normally.

  Kelly had been listening to Yngvie Malmsteen on his Walkman, half-tranced by the soar and the grind of the hard-driving sound. That was real magic. Matt's fairy-tale crap, the Prometheus Club's manipulations—those could not compete. Bards had always been the real mages.

  Reluctantly, Kelly flipped the music off with his thumb.

  "Hey, Matty," he said, and Matt spun around, as light on the balls his feet as he was on the basketball court. Matt had gotten all the athleticism. Well, most of it. Some.

  And then he saw Kelly and let the exhaustion show, and also his pleasure. "Oh, you came."

  "Sure," Kelly said. "The guys were pissing me off anyway. They don't really give a shit about playing, they just want to coast and pick up chicks. You want to get something to eat?"

  "I could kill," Matt said, after a delay as if he checked systems and was surprised to find himself hungry. "You got a place in mind?"

  "Jane said we should come over." Kelly indicated his wristwatch.

  Matt nodded. "I don't know that I'm up for a long visit, though."

  They walked side by side, Kelly limiting his stride out of consideration. "It went okay?"

  He didn't need to turn to see Matt blush. Scarlet, from the dimple of his collarbones all the way up. "Yeah," he said. "Not too bad."

  "Well, all right then," Kelly said. And stepped into the street to hail a cab. "Screw this. It's your birthday. Let's go in style."

  Matt paid for the cab, but it didn't actually matter. It was all Jane's money anyway. When he dug in his pockets, he unearthed the clutter that collected there—a matchbook, some steel washers and ball bearings, a packet of sesame seeds. Kelly more or less pretended not to know him until he sorted it out, which was a good trick when Matt kept handing him things.

  She had said to come to her private apartment on the Upper East Side rather than the Prometheus Club ritual space on the Upper West. They walked in past the doorman—he gave them a little wink; they were regulars—but Matt hesitated and didn't quite push the elevator button. "What's that?"

  Kelly squinted. He didn't see anything unusual. But there was the usual susurrus of soft voices, the stones of the building awakened by a Mage's residence and presence. They liked having someone to talk to. "You hear that? Already? It's the apartment building. Talking to itself." He cocked an ear. "Somebody on the third floor just brought home a new baby."

  "Is this normal?"

  Of course Matt knew it was. But it was weird, Kelly remembered, suddenly hearing the city grumbling to itself when it turned over in its sleep.

  "It's just a little . . . early," Kelly said, hoping Matt wouldn't notice the hesitation. Damn, he thought. He's going to be better at this than me, too.

  Not that it really mattered. All Kelly cared about was the music, and Matt didn't want anything to do with that.

  "You know," Matt said, as if he knew what Kelly was thinking, "there's a version of Red Riding Hood where the wolf asks her if she'll be traveling via the road of pins, or the road of needles."

  "So what's that got to do with anything?"

  "That's us. Pins and needles. Music and stories. Two different ways to get there. Both of them involve things that can stab you through the heart."

  Kelly stared at Matt for a minute, and then leaned on the button again. "It ain't magic if you don't bleed," he said, so softly he didn't think his brother heard him.

  * * *

  Jane Andraste was slender, fiftyish, and lucent. Her iron rings were plated with gold and set with diamonds. She held herself like her spine was a string of pearls dangled in a casual hand. She opened the door for Matt and Kelly, releasing the smell of good cooking into the hall. "Boys!" she said, and tugged them down so she could kiss them both in turn, Kelly and then Matt.

  Matt set her at arm's length and grinned at her. "Could have been worse," he said before she could ask, and blew her a kiss.

  She blushed and waved him off. "Come in and eat."

  Jane was powerful in more ways than one, and as wounded as Kelly and Matt. Matt came into her apartment past framed photos of her husband and daughter, as lost to her as Matt and Kelly's parents were lost to them.

  Her husband was just dead—a heart attack, or some other peril of middle age. She didn't talk about him much. Matt's mom and dad were also dead, beyond recall, beyond reparation, casualties of the endless centuries of conflict between the Prometheus Club and the Fae.

  But the Fae craved those with talent, and what they wanted, they took. And Elaine had been taken. Elaine was alive, a changeling in Faerie. And there was always the hope that they could win her back. Her, and all the others.

  "Come in," Jane said belatedly. "Sit, be well. How was your day, Kelly?"

  He startled. He'd been focused on the middle distance, fingers moving idly on imagined chords. "Fine. We practiced. Wicked good."

  Her mouth thinned as she turned away. Matt heard clinking; she fussed in the kitchen and brought them Cokes in crystal tumblers. Matt toyed with his, amused; his-and-Kelly's kitchenware ran more to McDonald's Miss Piggy glasses. "You should come to Tuesday night circle," she said. "We're going to be starting a seminar on bardic traditions. It'll be more use to you than rock songs."

  Matt ducked into the living room, looking for a little distance, but Kelly followed, and perched one ass-cheek on the arm of the sofa. Matt, hands folded around the glass to hide how they were shaking, chose a more sedate position.

  "Shakespeare was an actor," Kelly said, mouthing the words of the argument more to demonstrate his obduracy than because he had any illusions that he could convert Jane. "The bardic tradition is popular song, Jane. I can be useful to Prometheus on stage."

  Jane looked across Kelly, appealing to Matt for help. Matt ducked the gaze. He knew how much Kelly wanted that success, how badly he craved it.

  The rotten thing was, Kelly didn't have the gifts to be more than a mediocre musician.

  "I'm starving," Matt said, unsubtle. "What's to eat?"

  Jane hadn't ever formally adopted Matt and Kelly, but she'd found out about them somehow. Through the Promethean grapevine, no doubt. Matt's mother had been a Maga. And Jane had made sure they never wanted, and that there was always a foster home in some Promethean's family. It had meant a lot of moving, but Matt didn't mind—and when Kelly was old enough to live on his own, she'd found the two of them an apartment, which she paid for. Jane had always been there, constant.

  Matt couldn't stand to watch them fight.

  His question broke them up, thank God. And she'd made roast beef and asparagus. And a birthday cake. And if Matt spent the entire meal shifting uncomfortably in his chair, she could think that it was because he was sore, and not because he couldn't stop thinking, with squirrelly obsession, of the thunder of the needles against taut flesh.

  * * *

  A year and a day after Matty's eighteenth birthday, Kelly sprawled on Matt's bed, smoking an unfiltered Camel, watching his little brother dress. They were nearly twins—well, Kelly was taller and better looking, though Matty spent every minute when he wasn't cramming for his classes or in circle at the gym, taking out his sex drive at the weight pile—but the light slid up and down the thumb-thick black bands on Kelly's arm as he smoked, and one of Matt's still showed bare, prickled from the elbow to the wrist only with fine sunlit hairs.

  As promised, it was the only unmarked skin remaining between Matt's collarbones and ankles, excluding his hands. Everything else was covered with dully glossy lines of black iron
ink that reflected moving highlights as he pulled shirts out of the closet and piled them on the bedroom chair.

  "You don't have to be such a goddamned cram," Kelly said, staring at the ceiling. A spider spun in the corner. He blew a smoke ring at her, but it faded before it went that high. "Semester's over, man. Time to party a little. Even if you don't screw around, you can still, you know, drink."

  "Not when I also have to learn magic," Matt said. He gestured to a pile of books teetering perilously close to the keyboard of the TRS-80 on his desktop. "I just finished my finals, and Jane wants three pages on magia versus goeteia by Sunday. Besides, you're sliding through on technicalities. One of us ought to use school to learn something. Since Jane is being nice enough to pay for it."

  "Magic," Kelly said, "is all about the technicalities. Oh, god, Matty, don't wear that. It doesn't go."

  "This shirt?"

  "It's green," Kelly said. "The pants are olive. Don't do that."

  "Fine." Matt threw the shirt on the closet floor. "It's all gray to me." Matty was colorblind.

  "That's why you have me," Kelly said, amused, turning his head in the cradle of his arm. He drew a knee up, daring Matt to bitch at him for the Doc Marten on the chenille bedspread. But Matty just gave him that sidelong eyeroll and pulled a purple paisley long-sleeved shirt from the hanger. "How's that?"

  "Just wear the jeans, not those fucking painter's pants."

  "I wish you wouldn't smoke in my room," Matt said, unzipping his fly and letting the trousers pool around his ankles. Kelly sat up, and didn't manage to get his palm under the drooping ash before it pattered to the bedspread.

  "Sorry." But apparently it wasn't even worth a dirty look. Matt was jerking his jeans over his tattooed calves with a series of short, concentrated tugs. "I've gotta get dressed, man. I'll see you at the gig?" He held his breath, expecting the kid to blow him off. Although it wasn't like he had, you know, a date.

  "Yes," Matt told him. "I'll see you at the gig. Are you coming to my ordination?"

  To cover that he'd forgotten, Kelly brushed it aside with the back of his hand. "No shit, I'd skip out on my baby brother becoming a Mage. But you'll be too busy to notice me."

  Kelly didn't let Matt see him smile as he went to spike his hair and change into his gig clothes. And he pretended he didn't hear Matt muttering one of his ridiculous fairy tale chants under his breath as Kelly was leaving. Bluebeard, this time. Anne, sister Anne, who do you see coming?

  * * *

  Matt rested more or less at ease on Yukako's work table, his right arm comfortably supported, as she etched a broad elaborate cuff over her black guidelines. When he shifted uncomfortably it was not from the needles but because he was hard. After the first couple of sessions, he'd figured out that that was just what his body had gotten tricked into thinking it was supposed to do when somebody started sticking needles into it. More embarrassing, he had the same reaction to the smell of Yukako's shampoo and her skin, which haunted him at odd hours. He didn't care if she knew about the erection. He just hoped she didn't know that he thought of her meticulous needlework when he jacked off in the shower.

  Thick scrolls hurt when the needles passed over his wristbones. He made a little huff of protest; she bumped his knee with her hip. They were old friends, now that her needles had knocked the pride out of him.

  It was one way to study humility. It hadn't worked on Kelly, though; if anything, he was more arrogant than ever.

  "Matthew?" She was the only one who called him that. He loved it.

  "Thinking about my brother." He was well-trained now; he didn't fidget and he didn't shrug. "He's got his first gig tonight. I'm going after the ceremony."

  "Is he any good?"

  "God, no," Matt said, and laughed. "He's terrible." She steadied his arm with her hand and kept working while he leaned down to smell the soap she said was green, to smell her hair, the ink, and the blood. "It'll be weird not seeing you."

  "A year and a day. I'll be at the ordination," she said. She set the machine aside, tendons striping her narrow wrist. "Congratulations. You are done."

  The words hit him funny; he had to think them over for a minute before he understood what she saying. He felt strangely bereft.

  "You'll come back if you need touch-ups?"

  "I'll come back even if I don't," he said, and—greatly daring—touched her hair. He would have kissed her if he'd had the courage.

  She chuckled, reaching for gauze and the vitamin cream. He didn't look up, just took them and began doctoring her work.

  "You're a brave young man." And then she ducked down, so her v-neck sweater hung away from her white turtleneck, and pecked his cheek with birdy indifference. "Take an old woman's blessing, Matthew. Happy Birthday."

  "Thank you," he said. He draped the gauze loosely over his lotion-slick arm. "I will."

  He buttoned his sleeve over the bandage and went directly to the ordination. The city hummed around him, the buzz of human traffic and the quieter conversations of steel and brick and cloth and glass and stones. They were comforting now, the conversation of old friends; he listened while he walked. You could never quite make out the words, but sometimes you could get a sense of personalities, or opinions.

  Gargoyles, in particular, had opinions.

  Like most of the rituals of the Prometheus Club, the ordination would be short and uncomplicated. Matt took the subway to the Upper West Side, rode a lift to the penthouse of a stately apartment building, and let himself in by tapping the code on the access pad beside the door. He wasn't the first. A couple dozen East Coast Magi stood around the lobby, chatting amongst themselves and snacking on crudités and canapés, because everything tastes better in French.

  There were polite and quiet greetings as he made his way around the room. A couple wished him happy birthday; one other poured him a drink. No one tried to take his hand, but Matt mostly kept it tucked in his pocket or wrapped around his wine glass anyway. They must have been warned in advance, because he and Kelly were the only ones with the ink. Which was fine with him. He liked being chosen. Special.

  Eventually, Jane's second, Felix Luray, emerged from the ballroom to throw open the doors. The crowd filtered from the antechamber with its stretched stark modern canvasses and ice-pale wood, and were received into a white tall chamber with an inlaid floor. The ballroom ran almost the length of the building, uninterrupted except for a few structural pillars that had been made to look elegant. Matt moved with the Magi, not quite anonymous in their midst. Yukako was already waiting; Felix appeared at Matt's shoulder, his black, wavy hair slicked, his shoulders squared in a pinstriped suit that Matt suspected was navy, though to him it seemed charcoal gray. "It'll be over in two ticks," Felix said cheerfully, in habitually plummy tones.

  "Said the bishop to the actress," Matt answered, and smiled a little at Felix's amused snort. "Felix, take my glass?"

  Felix lifted it from his fingers and sipped what was left of the wine, while Matt made a face.

  "You're on, lad." With a duck of his head, Felix effaced himself. Matt barely noticed him going. Goeteia—illusion—rather than real magic. But kind of charming anyway.

  Matt walked forward, sidestepping between waiting Magi, and caught sight of the archmage, Jane Andraste. She wore an off-white tailored dress. She stood alone in the center of the room, her black hair piled up high, her skin powdered until it could not shine.

  He wouldn't glance over his shoulder to see if Kelly had come. He wouldn't.

  Kelly would not let him down this time. Nibble, nibble, like a mouse. "Matt," Jane said. She held up her right hand; a black iron band, slightly concave in the center and flared at the edges, was pinched between her fingers.

  Who's that gnawing at my house?

  He tried to say her name, and stammered. She grinned. "Matthew Patrick Szczegielniak, do you solemnly swear, avow, aver, and affirm that you will uphold justice in the service of humankind, that the Promethean flame of art and science may be evermore pre
served in the furtherance of that service, and the sacrifice of the fire-bringer remembered?"

  "I do," Matthew said, and held out his left hand so she could slip the ring on his finger.

  * * *

  Kelly edged inside the door just in time to see Jane thread a black iron ring on Matty's left hand, and heaved a sigh of relief. There. As good as his word, wasn't he? He even heard Jane's crisp, carrying voice pronounce his little brother Matthew Magus, and welcome him into the Prometheus Club.

  Matt just kind of stood there, shoulders hunched, his head ducked so his bangs fell down over his glasses. Somebody really needed to talk to him about that mullet. And then other Magi surrounded him, patting his shoulders, offering congratulations, and Kelly glanced at his watch. He slipped between the others and waited until Matt looked up.