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To Sarah Prineas and her vicious goat, Nutcracker
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Acknowledgments
Other books by Greg van Eekhout
About the Author
Copyright
PROLOGUE
The golem sat on the motel bed, watching TV with the sound turned off. It was a commercial from Los Angeles, and a man in a cowboy hat was selling used boats. Even without sound, the golem could tell he was shouting. That was his memory of Los Angeles: a lot of shouting and earthquakes and landslides and things burning all around him.
When the TV went back to a news show, he picked up one of the books he’d arranged in a protective circle around him. The wizard had bought it from a thrift shop once the golem told him he knew how to read.
The wizard stood at the window, now, peering out through a crack in the avocado-green curtains. His name was Daniel Blackland, and he was always afraid. Afraid of being followed, afraid of people sneaking up. Afraid of people stealing the golem. Afraid of things he wouldn’t talk about.
Outside were a bean-shaped hotel swimming pool, the parking lot, the highway, and the endless black-night desert. The parking lot only had three cars in it, including the wizard’s. Not much traffic came down the road. Still, the wizard said it was too crowded here.
The pool glowed turquoise with lights hidden beneath the water.
“Can I go swimming?” the golem asked. He’d never gone swimming, though he felt at home in water. Most of the motels since they’d fled Los Angeles a week ago didn’t have tubs, just showers. But the place where they’d stayed last night did, and he filled it all the way up to the overflow drain and pushed his hands against the sides to keep himself below the surface. He’d been born in a tank of osteomantic fluid, just a few days before leaving LA, and he missed the way sounds seemed distant and the earth’s weight, less harsh.
This was the first motel they’d stayed at that had a pool.
Daniel turned away from the window.
“It’s nighttime,” he said. “Kids can’t swim in motel pools at night.”
“Why not?”
“Because the world is arbitrary and capricious. It’s a rule.”
Daniel had a lot of rules:
Eat when you can.
Use the bathroom when you can.
Sleep when you can.
If someone tries to take you, scream and stab them with your little pocketknife.
And now, no swimming at night.
The golem didn’t like the rules, but he liked Daniel. Daniel had saved his life, and he’d also bought him books and drawing paper and markers. And he was teaching him magic.
Daniel took another glance out the window before letting the curtain go. “Let’s try an animal,” he said.
The golem put down his book.
Daniel removed a scarred leather wallet from his duffel bag—his osteomancer’s kit. He took out a copper lighter, a small bowl made of bone, and a long, glinting needle.
“Ready?” Daniel asked.
The golem nodded.
Daniel stuck the needle deep into the tip of his own right thumb. His face didn’t change, but it must have hurt, because he took a small, quick breath. Five red drops splashed in the white bowl.
“What do you smell?” he asked.
The golem closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He smelled stale cigarette smoke and disinfectant and mildew from the bathroom. He smelled diesel fumes from the highway and chlorine from the pool and the metallic tinge of Daniel’s blood. Wizards like Daniel gained magic by consuming the remains of magical creatures, and the golem knew Daniel had eaten kraken and sint holo and griffin and Colombian dragon and the essences of dozens of other creatures. He was brimming with their osteomantic power.
But the golem was full of even more power. That’s what Daniel told him, anyway. He’d been grown from the cells of the most powerful wizard in California, the century-old Hierarch, who’d eaten entire banquets of magic. Except the golem didn’t feel that power in himself. Daniel said he had to learn to find it first. He had to learn what magic smelled like, what it felt like, so he’d come to recognize it in his own blood and bones and marrow.
Daniel worked some of the dials on the lighter. They sold cigarette lighters in the gas stations, but Daniel’s was more complicated than those, with all sorts of little controls. The flame changed color from orange, to red, to green, and then the light faded, even though the heat was still strong enough to warm the golem’s face. In the bowl, Daniel’s blood thickened and turned black as tar.
The golem shut his eyes and tried to smell magic, and when he could no longer bear to concentrate on what he smelled, he began to pay attention to the slick texture of the blanket, the hum of the alarm clock on the bedside table, the way his ear itched. All the things he was supposed to ignore.
“Okay,” Daniel said. “What’s in the crucible?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel didn’t seem upset. He seemed a little bit relieved. “You can’t expect to learn this stuff overnight. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
The golem was relieved, too. Maybe the magic inside him should stay inside.
The golem uncapped his black marker and started working on a drawing. He made an eagle’s head attached to a lion’s body. He gave it wings and he somehow knew this creature was called a griffin. He wasn’t sure exactly what a griffin was, but he understood its essence was speed and flight and rending with beak and claw. He wondered if Daniel had bled griffin osteomancy in the bowl, or if he’d drawn a griffin because there was griffin in his own body. For some reason, he didn’t want to tell Daniel about it.
“Can I go swimming tomorrow?”
Daniel went back to the window. “Sorry, buddy. We’re getting an early start. I want to be in the Sierras by sundown. But we might end up camping near a lake, so maybe there’ll be some splashing. No promises.”
There was only one thing Daniel had promised him, when they were heading away from the city. He promised the golem he’d protect him to his last breath.
That’s what the magic lessons were about. Daniel was a thief, and he’d stolen the golem, and people from Los Angeles would come for him, to take him back. They might not take him back alive, but instead they’d cut him into pieces and press his body to get all the osteomantic oils out and remove his bones and grind them to powder. Daniel promised to protect him, but in case he couldn’t, the golem had to learn how to protect himself.
“Do you want to see my drawing?” He got up to show
Daniel.
“No,” Daniel said. He didn’t shout, but his tone was sharp, and the golem felt as if he’d been shoved back into the pillows. “Stay away from the windows. Lock yourself in the bathroom. Don’t come out unless I tell you to.”
“Why?”
“Visitors,” Daniel said.
The golem backed toward the bathroom, and Daniel went out to meet whoever was there.
As soon as the flimsy door shut, the little motel room closed in on him like a jail cell.
The golem went to the window.
A single lamp from the motel office cast a yellow glow over the parking lot. At the edge of the light, three men came charging out of the back of a white van. The driver remained behind the wheel with the motor idling.
There wasn’t anything remarkable about the way the men looked. One was maybe a little bit tall. Another, a little bit fat. But the way they sped across the parking lot wasn’t human. They took long, bounding strides, and they curled their fingers into claws, and their scents pushed through the thin windows. The golem smelled things that reminded him of his drawing. He smelled their speed and their ability to rip flesh with their fingernails. He smelled cold air rushing past sleek fur in flight.
Daniel headed them off before they reached the door.
The golem knew he should do what Daniel told him. He should run into the bathroom, lock the door, hide. But his feet were glued to the floor, and he couldn’t remove his hand from the curtain. He didn’t want to take his eyes off Daniel, because he was afraid for him, and he was afraid to be without him.
That was only part of the reason.
He also wanted to see wizards fight.
New and more powerful smells washed away the griffin scents as if they were just a few drops of milk in the ocean. There was a deep, muddy, rotten odor of the sea floor. The smell of darkness and crushing pressure. The smell of lightning lacerating the sky. The golem recognized the smells. They were kraken.
Daniel extended his hand. Blinding forks of electricity shot out and struck the three men in their hearts. The men collapsed, twists of smoke rising from charred and bloody flesh.
Another smell blended into the others, but this one wasn’t osteomantic. It was just burning meat.
With a squeal of rubber, the van backed onto the highway. Daniel ran after it, but by the time he reached the edge of the parking lot, it was too late, and the van was too far gone. He spent a long time staring after it.
He returned to the dead men and bent over them, smelling them and nudging their pockets with the toe of his boot.
The golem came out to see.
Daniel turned on him. “I told you to hide.” From the window, he’d seemed calm, even with lightning crackling over his body. But his face was red and shiny with sweat. His chest heaved.
“I wanted to see,” the golem said. It was an honest answer.
Daniel rubbed his face and pushed damp hair off his forehead. Scanning the road, he regained control of his breathing.
“I guess it’s for the best,” he said after a while. “You should know what you’re facing.”
The men still smelled of griffin, and the golem had a thought. “Are you going to eat them?” he asked Daniel.
Daniel didn’t answer. He knelt before the golem and stared into his eyes, searching for something.
“Do you want to eat them?”
“Yes,” the golem said.
“How old are you?”
“I don’t know.”
He’d become alive inside a tank in the attic of a sprawling house on the side of a hill. He didn’t know how long he’d spent in that tank. He didn’t know how long it had taken to become him.
“Seven or eight, I’d guess,” Daniel said. “I don’t know. I’m not really experienced with kids. But you’re old enough to hear this.” He paused, as if he were about to leap and wasn’t sure about the landing. “You’re the creation of the worst man I ever met. Maybe one of the worst people who ever was. The Hierarch was powerful, and he got that way by consuming power. He ate the remains of more osteomantic creatures than anyone I’ve ever heard of. He ate mammoths and dragons and griffins and eocorns. He ate basilisks and seps serpents and hydras. And he ate people. He ate other sorcerers. He ate my own father.”
“And then you killed the Hierarch and ate his heart,” the golem said.
Daniel seemed very tired. The golem knew he’d barely slept for a week.
“I’ve had to do things that I wish I didn’t,” he said. “I’ll probably have to do more things like that, to keep you safe. But I don’t want to be like the Hierarch. And you don’t have to be. You can be your own person. You can be whatever you want to be.”
“I don’t even have a name,” the golem said.
Daniel smiled. He did so rarely, and it looked painful, like he was wincing into harsh sunlight.
“You should have a name, shouldn’t you? How about Jehosephat?”
“That’s not a name.”
“Sure it is. But maybe not for you. How about Binky?”
The golem laughed. “I know that’s not a name.”
“You’re sharp. I can’t get one past you. Maybe something from your books?”
The golem liked that idea. “Sam I am,” he said.
“Sam you are.” He ruffled the boy’s hair, and something inside Sam’s chest loosened, and he was glad to be with Daniel and hoped to be with him for a long time, wherever they went.
Daniel rose to his feet. “Pack your things and get in the car, Sam. Before anything else from Los Angeles catches up to us.”
ONE
Ten years later
The Grand Central Market was the largest floating bazaar in Los Angeles, and for Gabriel Argent, it was enemy territory. With the Hierarch gone, slain by Daniel Blackland, the realm was split up like a ten-slice pizza at a twenty-person party, and Gabriel wasn’t friends with the man who claimed the Central Market slice.
Max inched Gabriel’s motor gondola around piers, barges, boats, and suspended catwalks, past stalls fringed with looped sausages and hanging barbecued ducks. Merchants on rafts offered every kind of white and brown and speckled egg. Neon signs buzzed with fantasy Chinese scrolls, advertising chow mein and chop suey and cartoon pigs at the Pork Kitchen. The scents of onions and grilled meat and chili peppers made Gabriel wish he had time to stop for lunch.
“You should have a security detail,” Max said, maneuvering around a vendor in a flat-bottom calling out a song for boat noodles. In profile, Max’s face looked like a scientific instrument, his silver hair trimmed for aerodynamics, his brow providing a protective hood over sharp gray eyes. His nose led the way like the prow of an ice cutter.
Gabriel shot him an encouraging smile. “I have a security detail. I have you.”
Max slowed to let a duck and three brown ducklings paddle past the bow. “Everyone else will have a security detail,” he said. “Otis will bring his thugs, and Sister Tooth will have her … things. I’m not even carrying a gun.”
“Bodyguards are a sign of weakness,” Gabriel said. “The fact that I’m coming here with only you demonstrates how confident I am. It makes me look bigger.”
“That’s a lot of pressure to put on me.”
“Max, if the people I’m meeting want to kill me, you having a gun won’t help. Neither will a security detail. They’ll just kill me.”
“And this makes you feel powerful somehow?”
“Power is a complicated thing, my friend.”
“It must be.” Max turned under the arch of a six-story redbrick warehouse and steered the gondola into the waters of Otis Roth’s stronghold.
Beneath whirring ceiling fans, dockworkers unloaded goods for distribution across the realm: vegetables and spices, boxed bird’s nests for medicinal soup, crates and barrels of osteomantic preparations.
Max’s nose twitched. He’d been raised and transformed to sniff out contraband magic, and he still grew excited in the presence of osteomancy.
�
�Good stuff here?” Gabriel asked.
“Not here. Deeper in the building. Sure you won’t change your mind about bodyguards?”
“You seriously think I should?”
Max thought about it for a few seconds. “No, you’re right. Security won’t save your life. I’d be happy if you told me to turn the boat around.”
“Park the boat, Max.”
Max killed the engine and guided the gondola into a slip, where they were greeted by one of Otis’s muscle guys. He looked like a solid piece of masonry.
“Lord Argent,” he said, lowering a ladder to help Gabriel and Max up to the concrete pier. “If you’d allow me to take you—”
Max cut him off. “Who’s going to guard the boat?”
“Your gondola will be perfectly safe, sir,” the thug said, addressing Gabriel, not Max. “But if you’re concerned, I’ll be happy to summon someone to watch over it.”
“That’s not necessary,” Gabriel said. But Max wasn’t satisfied. He waved over a girl loading an aluminum dinghy with boxes of radio alarm clocks.
She came over, more curious than cautious.
“Do you have a knife?” Max asked her.
She nodded.
“Show me.”
She reached into her jacket and produced a butcher knife the length of her forearm.
Max slipped her a twenty. “Anyone comes near the boat, you cut off their thumbs for me, okay? If my boat’s still here when I get back, you get another twenty.”
She snatched the twenty and made it disappear. “And another twenty if you’re more than an hour.”
“Good kid,” Max said.
The thug squared his architecturally impressive shoulders and looked down at the top of Max’s head. “You are guests of Otis Roth. Nothing is going to happen to your boat.”
“Max has a fondness for orphans,” Gabriel said.
The thug took them deeper into the building, through warrens of wooden crates stuffed with clucking chickens and quacking ducks. Otis’s office was a modest room, small, drab, outfitted with a steel desk and battered office chair, upon which sat one of the most influential power brokers in the two Californias. Otis’s hair was still the bright orange of a campfire; his eyes, bug-zapper blue. He’d been a TV pitchman and a minor character actor in his youth, and even though he was the biggest importer of osteomantic materiel in the kingdom, he was still an actor who could play your jolly uncle or your executioner without changing costumes.
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