“You can take the front door, Trip. You’ll find it an easier egress than the window.”
We both stand, where he spends a heartbeat or two searching my face, but I give him nothing a stone wall wouldn’t.
“Watch yourself, Giddy,” he warns. “Make sure you keep a level head in all this.”
I could say the same to him.
I don’t.
8
IMPARTIAL MEMORIES
My office is quiet after Trip makes his exit and I take the opportunity to run through the implications of my old partner’s visit, to seek the meaning behind words spoken and those left unsaid that linger in the air like the stench of a dead rat somewhere in the walls.
Trip knows something; of that I am sure. I’m just not sure if he has facts or just suppositions and suspicions. Which makes me consider what Trip said about me being able to go places the Watch couldn’t. Again, I get the feeling he wasn’t being completely open and honest with me. Of course, I couldn’t claim different regarding what I’d told him, or didn’t tell him.
He said the two thugs I left in the street were unarmed, that they didn’t find the wand. That’s because the magistrates had it. Which meant the magistrates got there and left before the Watch showed up and failed to inform Trip of their activities. If I take Trip’s word for it, I have to assume he’s unaware the magistrates were involved.
So we both kept something back. I’m fine with that. Either he doesn’t trust me completely or Trip feels his hands are tied. I doubt he’ll ever trust me like back in our younger years, but the fact that he came here is testament to how much he needs help. And what help can a wash-out like me offer?
Deniability.
I can go places Trip can’t, can break a few bones and rattle some heads without fear of losing my job. I’ve got a few people who still owe me favors, but they’re people someone as stiff-backed as Trip can’t be seen dealing with.
I know where I need to go, where Trip wants me to go, though I’m not overly excited about the prospect. I bolster my resolve by taking another sip of brew, only to find that my cup’s already empty. Irritated, I slam it down onto the desk and glance around my silent office.
“Durmet,” I hiss.
Nothing.
“Durmet!” My voice shatters the silence like a hammer against glass.
Nothing. Cursed morph-imp. The one time I want him to go out and about with me and he’s nowhere to be seen. A glance out the window at the dark, dismal atmosphere sends a shiver down my spine. It’s not the fact that it’s getting late into the evening that chills me. It’s the destination I have in mind.
If this pans out, Trip’s going to owe me, and big.
—-
The narrow alleys between chipped stone and rotting planks of wood in this section of the Levee are awash in trash, and most of it is of the human kind. No amount of downpour and flooding can rid the city of what rots and clings to the stones more pervasively than mold.
I step over the legs of someone who’s groaning in ignorant bliss, my hand on my six-spell just in case. I can’t tell if it’s a man or woman as the body is covered fully under a filthy blanket, with their back propped up against the side of a building, chin on their chest. The hooded head lolls about, groans interspersing with bouts of discordant laughter, and I can only assume that the source of that current state of mind has only recently departed.
The effects of a mind flayer can linger, and some people pay extra for that extended effect. As I leave the groaning body behind, I wonder how much they paid to be left in whatever memory or falsehood they currently found their mind trapped in.
I shake that thought away as I turn a corner and realize that one of the predators in question is coming straight toward me. We both freeze in our tracks and give each other a slow once-over in the spare light spilling from an overhead window.
Dressed in a dark vest over a darker tunic, the mind flayer looks like a waking nightmare. Its lanky limbs, stretched body, and bulbous head declare what it is. The four tentacles around its lamprey mouth, twitching in the fetid air like reptilian tongues, declare what it can do. This creature is a master of falsehoods, a manipulator of minds and dreams.
Thankfully, my hand has mind enough to settle on my six-spell. I’ve dealt with these creatures before, even had one inside my head to remove a memory. But that was years ago. Today, either I’m friend or foe, depending which way the wind is blowing, and I like to err on the side of caution.
I can’t rightfully tell the gender between one and the next, at least not without considerable close inspection that I don’t have the fortitude for, so I dispense with the niceties and simply say, “I need to speak with Maanzethelin.”
The thing’s tentacles twitch once more before settling down to drape over its chest. In the right light, those tentacles could appear to be a heavily-braided beard.
“Why would you ssseek an audience with our brood massster?” Its breathy voice sounds like it has just swallowed a tall glass of steam.
“I hope to find some answers.”
My spine stiffens as two of the tentacles rise, tasting the air between us. “I can help you find the answers if they are in your mind.” Always on the job, this one. “Or, for a higher price, I can fabricate any answers you desire.”
I shake my head even as my soul shivers. “I’m not here for a flaying,” I say. “Can’t afford the price.”
“We can strike a bargain, perhaps,” it rasps as it spreads its hands. “One hour of bliss for only ten minutes of your future.”
“Trust me,” I say, “the way things are going, I don’t know if I’ll have much of a future to sell you. Please, I need to speak with Maanzethelin. It’s urgent.”
After a moment, the thing drops its hands to its side. “Very well.” It turns and motions to me with its tentacles. “Follow, but do not come any closer to me than you are now.”
I have every intention of keeping my distance from it, but I play the congenial human and say, “As you wish.”
It leads me through alley and street, ever winding, but with each turn, the way becomes brighter as more telektric lamps mark our progression into better neighborhoods. Soon enough, my guide brings me to stand before a well-lit residential house nestled among the neighboring warehouses.
Both flame and telektric lamp reveal a three-storied wood-and-stone structure set back a ways from the street. The lawn out front is shaggy and wet, and the causeway cutting through to the house is old cobblestone.
“I have announced your presence,” my guide says, and I flinch at how close he’s ghosted up to me while I surveyed the place. I can’t read his alien features, but a feeling of haughtiness practically radiates from him.
“How—” I begin to ask then think better of it. It wouldn’t tell me anything. “Thank you,” I wind up saying.
It dips its head, lifts two tentacles, and gestures for me to head inside unaccompanied. I decide here and now that this one is a man, because it’s got to have stones down there to treat me in such a way.
A mouthful of steam escapes in what amounts to be laughter and I repress the urge to use some good old detective work—meaning my boot—to find out if he truly is a male. Before I can test my theory, he glides back the way we came, fading out into the night to find another poor fool willing to give up a slice of his essence, his future soul, for an instant dose of blissful falsehood.
I make my way to the front door as sounds of men and women inside reach out to me in the night. Laughter, groans of ecstasy, incoherent words and mumbling—they all grow louder as I step up onto the front patio. I hesitate with my hand raised just inches from the door, debating whether or not I want to go through with this.
I think of Vayvanette, of her bright smile and of the warmth of her body, of Anderest, and the support he’d given me when I need it the most. It’s enough of a reminder of why I am here to send my knuckles rapping against the door.
After a moment, the door swings inward on well-oiled h
inges to reveal a young woman with disheveled hair and a sloppy, unfocused grin on her face. Behind her, the house is all shadows and pockets of low flame, and the sounds of men and women lost in their thoughts and memories wash over me.
“Evening, miss,” I say in as cordial a tone as I can muster.
“Hifumph,” she responds. I’ll assume it was cordial as well, and ignore the fact that her glazed eyes don’t even register my presence. I wonder why she even bothered opening the door in the first place.
I push past the mind-flayed woman and stand inside the foyer. I try not to look around, but, devil’s balls, my eyes won’t listen. Everywhere I look they’re there, like two-headed nightmares. Couches, chairs, littering the floor and stairs—anywhere a body can sit is taken. And behind each body is a mind flayer, its bulbous head peaking over, tentacles wrapped around the human’s head as if trying to eat its victim from the top down.
I’ve never seen an octopus attempt to shuck a snail from its shell, but I gather it must look like this, except, perhaps not as intimately repulsive. I shudder at the thought of having some other being tooling around in my mind, creating false dreamscapes or reproducing certain memories of joy or pleasure from my past.
I’ve done it once before and thank the gods I don’t remember it. But still, the repugnance of what had been done to me, what I allowed to be done to me, lingers deep inside me, as if my very soul recalls what my mind will not.
Now that I’m here, I’m at a loss as to where to go. Maanzethelin had a different place last time I met with him personally. The last place was a bit swankier, less destitute. This place looks as if, well, as if my own office would fit in perfectly with the décor.
Where the in the hells was Durmet? He could have made this smoother.
“Mister Knell?”
I turn at the voice, relieved that it springs from human vocal chords.
The owner of the voice is a pleasant enough looking gentleman, made even more welcoming by the fact that he’s got but one head sitting atop his straight shoulders. His paunchy body is stuffed into a dark red jerkin and woolen leggings, and his hands are hidden in expensive leather gloves. I step closer to him and get a closer look at his features.
Evidence of laugh lines tell me this gentleman once lived a better life, making me wonder what brought him to this place. He offers me a parting of his lips—let’s call it a smile—and I return the favor. But not for long. Maybe it’s a trick of the sparse lighting, but I catch a certain harshness in his eyes. I don’t find it offensive, though it does dampen my mood considerably.
“The master wishes you to join him in his study,” the gentleman says.
I follow him through halls and over prone bodies, doing my best to keep my eyes trained straight ahead. We eventually come to a solid oak door leading to the nethers of this flayers’ den. As my guide swings the door wide and steps aside, I look at him questioningly.
“Trust me that you step into better accommodations, Mister Knell.” He gestures to the bright light at the bottom of the steep staircase and he grants me a brief, sincere smile.
I smile back at him, trusting his word, and trundle downstairs. Before I reach the last step, the door back atop the staircase closes. The hallway I step down into is well-lit by telektric lamps in wall sconces, and as I glance at the colorful pieces of framed artwork on the walls, a mind flayer in a blood-red suit whispers up from down the hall.
“This way, please,” it says, words reaching out to me like vapor, and I walk past several closed doors to join it.
We walk into an open room and the first thing that I notice, other than the bright décor, is the lack of sound. No mindless gibbering, no laughing or moaning. If I forget the reason I’d come, I could easily pretend I was in some College sitting room. All that’s missing is a crackling fireplace and a hunting dog curled up before it.
“Master will be with you shortly,” the mind flayer says. He gestures to a plush couch then to the crystal bottle of expensive liquid sitting on the table next to it. I find that I could use a drink or two so I take a seat, adjust my six-spell so it can be pulled free it need be, and fill a matching crystal goblet with the dark, syrupy liquor.
It burns in just the right way, and I’m on to my second refill when Maanzethelin glides in from the door across from me. He’s taller than most other mind flayers, with his dark and splotchy plate topping at least seven feet. I stand but he gestures for me to settle back, politely and with his hands, not his tentacles.
“Allow me a moment, Gideon,” he says, voice light and airy and slightly less grating than most other mind flayers.
“Of course, Thelin,” I say with respect, my throat feeling raw from the liquor.
He walks around his polished desk, papers and books neatly stacked in piles among glittering pens and baubles, and opens a cupboard high upon the back wall. He peruses tiny vials filled with luminescent liquid, and settles his long, graceful fingers on a specific one. Vial in hand, Maanzethelin closes the cupboard, and instead of seating himself behind his officiating desk, comes around my side. He pulls the chair in front of his desk around and angles it so when he sits we are face to face, knees nearly touching.
“To health,” he says, his vial lifted high. “And to whatever gods play that role these days.”
Crystal goblet and vial clink melodically and we both take a moment to drain them.
I wince at the fire seeping down my throat, taking root in my innards, and Maanzethelin wisps out a sound of delight. This form of feeding, that vial of life essence he’s drained down his lamprey gullet, I can live with. I just have to forget how that vial had been filled.
I take a moment to let the burn subside and study the Brood Master of Wrought Isles. His dark red tunic isn’t quite as blood-red as it could be, his belt is studded leather, and his pants are dark and tailored to fit his elongated legs. An imposing figure, Maanzethelin, if one ignores the bulbous head topping that figure.
Then there are his tentacles.
Only three. The fourth he’d lost some years back, sliced clean off near the base, which is why he feeds differently than other mind flayers. Without that fourth tentacle, he cannot perform his kind’s namesake trade. He can still fiddle with thoughts and memories, but he can no longer properly draw a person’s life essence, the bread-and-butter of a mind flayer’s sustenance. He must rely on his minions to secrete bargained-for essences into those vials he keeps stocked behind his desk.
He catches me glancing at the vial he quaffed. “Great vintage,” he says. “Twenty-two-year old.”
“Yeah, well, I’m satisfied with mine.”
“These days I hear you’re satisfied with quite anything fermented.”
“Like I said, I’m satisfied with mine.”
He blinks his large, glossy eyes. “If that were the case, I would assume this is nothing but a neighborly visit.”
I don’t reply.
“One does not have to be a mind flayer to know you are here for reasons other than social niceties.”
“Thelin,” I start, but pause to put my goblet down. “I need help on this one.”
Maanzethelin reaches back and puts his empty vial down on his desk before giving me his undivided attention.
“The Herchsten murder,” I say.
He nods.
“Seems everyone in the cursed city is up to their necks in it, and mine seems to be on the chopping block for some reason.”
“And you wish to know what I know.”
“Yes. You have your … hands, in everything,” I say, but we both know exactly what I meant to say.
Mind flayers will give your mind what you desire, but they take a price, a piece of your very soul. What I know, that many don’t wish to or pretend not to know, is that the flayers take a bit more. While they’re in there tooling about in your brain, they flip through your memories like so many pages in a book. Secrets, hopes, dreams—the flayers read them all.
The poor and underprivileged care not one whit abo
ut that, nor do they care if their pathetic existence in this life is cut short. It’s the highbrows of society that part with precious minutes and hours of their future souls that worry the most. And the secrets that the flayers pry from their minds? Well, if the rich and noble didn’t want their dirty laundry aired out in the open, then they should look to different vices.
Speaking of vices, I grab my goblet and refill it. No sense in letting a free drink go undrunk. I down the liquor in one pull and spill out my next words just as quickly.
“Who is involved and what do they want? Why was the old man murdered and how does his will fit into it all?”
Maanzethelin takes a minute to answer. When he does, it’s with a question of his own. “Do you wish this to be a favor repaid then?”
Maanzethelin sits as the brood master in part due to my actions during the Red Tide. Trip’s actions as well, but more so because of mine.
“I do, Thelin, but we both know this wouldn’t make us even. Not even close.”
“True, my friend, but a deep bowl laden with fruit does eventually empty,” he says. “And those last fruits may be souring by the time they are reached.”
“I know, I know.” I wave a hand, my movements unsteady from the liquor. “It’s just this one is really important to me.”
“I enjoy you, Gideon,” Maanzethelin says. “I truly do. You are an enigmatic specimen of your kind.”
That’s like me calling a pig charismatic. “Um … thank you?”
“Think nothing of it.”
“I’m trying not to.”
The laugh that escapes Maanzethelin’s mouth is like warm steam through a cold grate. “Where would you have me begin?”
I lean forward, my voice low. “Do you know who killed Anderest Herchsten?
“I do not.”
Which means none of his brood knows. It seems the killer is not one to use mind flaying as a means of escaping reality, at least not after the act in question.
“Do you have any idea about who would gain from his death?”
“He was worth more alive than in his current state,” Maanzethelin says. “Secrets or not, it was well known that Herchsten only strove to better the lives of everyone in Wrought Isles.”
The Amethyst Angle Page 8
