We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle)

by Jeff Somers

  “To earn a punishment from Renar. What did you do?”

  He smiled and looked over my shoulder. His eyes were shining with something I was terrified would turn into tears. “I refused to . . . perform a sacrifice.”

  “You wouldn’t bleed someone?” For the first time in a while, I pictured the girl I’d refused to cut: shivering, her sneakers with all the marker, her snotty nose. Hiram telling me she would be compensated. I’d thought of her so often. She’d been part of my life every day. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought of her, that unnamed girl I’d refused to bleed. “That’s it?”

  He grimaced. “Not just someone, Mr. Vonnegan.” He looked past me, staring into nothing. “Not just . . . Mika needed servants, you see. She had forgotten she would be marooned in this future with no one. But she did not wish to use up blood. She was afraid to reduce the amount of blood in the world too greatly, lest her Ritual fail. So she got creative. And she instructed me to create the first few. She said they were so small, their contribution would be so small . . .” He swallowed and looked back at me. “And I refused.”

  A shot of horror lanced through my chest. “The gidim,” I said, my voice low.

  He nodded, and I saw in his face something bottomless. “I have seen much and been punished for it, Mr. Vonnegan. Oh, how I have been punished.” Then he looked over my shoulder again. “Your Mr. Fallon is here.”

  I froze. Fallon. I didn’t know how it was possible that I remembered who knew how many alternate time lines simultaneously. Fallon had been with me in this room and then he hadn’t. Having him back didn’t fill me up with hope and cheer.

  I turned myself around slowly. He looked good. He looked fantastic. Under an immense fur coat, he was still wearing the cream-colored suit I’d last seen him in. He wore black leather gloves and looked young, well preserved, like the last few years of living in a dead world had been good to him.

  I wondered if it was my absence from his life these last few years that had been a tonic for him. For one second I felt the gulf of time between us—Ev Fallon hadn’t been in this room with me just hours ago, hadn’t accompanied me to Alaska, to Shanghai. He’d been somewhere else, being someone else. And I found I could tell. I could see it in his face.

  “Mr. Vonnegan,” he said crisply. “Mr. Mageshkumar.” He looked past me. “Mr. Harrows. We have never met.”

  “Have we not?”

  I heard Billington’s voice, a ghost of a memory: You sure?

  Fallon shook his head. “No, we have not.” He returned his gaze to me. “Mr. Vonnegan, I am surprised to find you here. But having found you, I am glad. I would have spared you if it were in my power to do so. I am glad you were spared in the event.”

  I felt the old, familiar buzzing sense of trouble coming. A fight. A challenge.

  So I stepped forward and held up the bottle. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  He glanced around the room and nodded. Mags was staring up at him like he was seeing a ghost.

  Up close, Fallon looked even better. Clean. Groomed. He pulled his gloves off and accepted the bottle from me. Sniffed it with an arched eyebrow and took a sip. Nothing adventurous or enthusiastic. Just polite.

  I waited him out. I wanted to hear what he’d been up to. What he remembered. He hadn’t been there at the end, and I didn’t know what that meant, how that affected his . . . his what? Time line? Existence? Jesus, my head was pounding. I’d spent my life giving a clinic on how to fuck up in slow motion. I had slow-motion-fuckup whiplash.

  “You should not stay here,” he said, looking around. “It is depressing.”

  I nodded, cocking my head. “Why are you here, Ev?”

  I felt a pinprick of gas in the air, and my skin crawled. Mags, I figured. Giving voice to the weird anxiety I felt. Fallon hesitated, glancing upward, sensing it as well. He seemed amused. I thought of the Token in my pocket. Wondered if he remembered me taking it, if he imagined I still had it. My glancing touch had told me that whatever else had happened in this new future, the reservoir of blood still existed, and my Token still connected to it. I wondered if I would survive were I to try and cast from it.

  “I am to give you a message.”

  An awful prickling made its way up my spine. I heard dimly, in a memory of something that hadn’t actually happened, the Little General saying, Del Traje Blanco informed us of their guilt. The Man in the White Suit.

  “From who?”

  He shrugged, looking away suddenly, as if finding one of the skeletons unexpectedly fascinating. “From Mika, Lemuel.”

  Mika. I pushed my hand into my pocket and touched the Token. Instantly, my arm went numb, the buzzing power bridged through that tiny humanoid slamming into it. Nothing else happened. Fallon showed no sign of sensing it. Feeling it, I questioned whether I had the skill to control it, to bring through just what I needed. I wished Hiram were alive to explain things to me. In the most painful, awful way possible, but still.

  I stared at Fallon’s suit. A light cream, almost white. Certainly it would be considered white against a dark canopy of jungle. “You,” I said, my voice thick with failure and anger. “It was you in Colombia. You overseeing the . . . harvesting.”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “How long—?”

  “Almost immediately after her first failure,” he said simply. “I was not part of the original group. I was shocked when you came to me, revealed her plans to me. I’ll admit I felt foolish. For being deceived . . . and for being left out. So, when we parted company, I went to make amends.”

  I remembered Fallon on Mad Day, saying, I have not been particularly smart or heroic today. I thought perhaps I could at least still be useful? And I’d thought he was talking to me.

  “And here you are,” I croaked.

  “And here I am. As are you!”

  “Immortal.”

  He nodded gravely. “And free from the burdens of staying that way. Although I don’t share Mika’s rather epic distaste for such work, I will admit the freedom is exhilarating. But not for you.” He smiled slightly. “I am glad to see you, Lemuel. As I said, I would have spared you, had it been in my power. It was not, yet you have been spared. And I am glad for that.”

  Cons, all the way down.

  There was a roar, and a flood of gas in the air, hot and vibrant. You never knew how much Pitr understood. Sometimes he was like a child, or perhaps a really smart bear, blinking in confusion and perpetually assuming you were making fun of him in some subtle way. Other times he was a fucking genius. I spun and he was standing there, five feet away, his hands on fire. It was Hiram’s old fireball spell, and I spent a second marveling that he’d memorized it all those years ago, having heard it once, and in a reality that had no longer ever existed.

  “Mr. Mageshkumar,” Fallon said with a heavy sigh, “you will hurt yourself.”

  He whispered five quick syllables, two of which, I was pretty sure, were hokum. Pitr continued to stand there. His hands continued to be on fire. A tendril of flame caught on to his jacket sleeve and licked it.

  My arm buzzed with the energy of thousands, tens of thousands, stolen and trapped.

  “Mika does not know you, Lemuel,” Fallon said, eyes on Pitr, “in this reality. The universe has been reset, and in this time line your paths never crossed. She will not remember you, and she will not molest you. She did not spend enough time with you, as I had—yes, I recall our time that never was. That universe exists, separate from us. Split off. But Mika is unconnected to it.” He looked back at me. Pitr’s arm was completely on fire. “And she will not hear of you. For that, you can thank me. Most of her comrades, or fellow conspirators, as you would know them, have not been so lucky.”

  My arm buzzed, but I couldn’t think of a single spell. I’d thought I was doing something. Billington, with all her hunting and her Drum Trials. We’d just wasted our time, misdirected.

  “Live out your life,” Fallon said. “You are no longer our concern.” He glanced at P
itr. “Better put him out before he burns to death.”

  He turned to go. He would be Fallon, forever. He would be eternal, with an ocean of stored blood hidden away somewhere. Plenty to cast from.

  “You’ll end up destroying each other,” I said, the words bubbling up from somewhere deep and bitter inside me. I’d saved myself. I’d saved Pitr. I’d let everyone else die. Hiram was dead. Claire and Daryl. Mel. Everyone. “You know that. Whatever peace you have now between you, it’s going to go to hell.”

  He didn’t stop walking. “Of course.”

  My hand was clasped around the Token so tightly it hurt. Something fast. Dirty and painful. Something that would incapacitate him, shut him up. Then what? I couldn’t go up against all of those enustari. Even with the Token, it was me and Pitr, who, even if we assumed he had a few other useful spells finally memorized, was unreliable at best. And the Negotiator. Who was a strong mage, I knew, but not enustari. Saganustari, probably. The sort who ended up a servant, who sold his life for knowledge and then got screwed.

  The three of us up against Renar, Fallon, who knew who else. Useless. And even if we did manage to—what, I didn’t know. Could they be killed? They were immortal, but maybe only from fate. Maybe if someone slit their throats the old-fashioned way, it would work. And if it did, then what?

  I thought of Claire. In this reality, she had died at Renar’s mansion. In this reality, she had been burned up, the final link in the chain reaction. The Skinny Fuck had grabbed her up, dragged her there, and fed her into the machine. I could picture it perfectly—I’d been there, in that old, destroyed reality. I thought of a hundred other people I’d failed, fucked over, misled, conned. They would all be just as dead.

  I watched Fallon leave.

  Both of Pitr’s arms were on fire. Still clutching the Token, I whispered two Words. With a sudden breeze confined to the inch of airspace surrounding him, the flames guttered out and he animated, bringing his smoking fists up, growling. Then he froze again, his face collapsing into panic and confusion.

  I turned to the Negotiator. “We have an arrangement,” I said.

  He oriented on me slowly, as if his thoughts had been distant and muddled. He blinked. “Yes. Of course.”

  I nodded. “You owe me information. Tell me something useful.”

  50. WE COULD HEAR OUR FOOTSTEPS echoing off the cars, the canyon walls of skyscrapers. Skeletons in the cars, skeletons littering the street. A huge number of skeletons, all still dressed, lying one on top of the other. A crowd in the street, thousands upon thousands, killed instantly and simultaneously. We had to pick our way carefully, trying not to trip over them or crush their delicate skulls under our shoes.

  I paused to squint up through the dazzling sunshine up at the building, endlessly tall, slender. It looked perfect, like two years of neglect and weather hadn’t yet had any lasting effect. As if there might still be a chance to forestall its eventual destruction. If we could bring everyone back. If we could undo what had been done.

  “You sure she’s here?”

  The Negotiator answered immediately. “I’m certain. If Elsa’s alive, she’s here. She’s been here for sixty years.”

  I looked around Shanghai, dead, all the Chinese on the neon signs dark and forgotten. “In that reality,” I said sourly.

  He didn’t say anything. I started picking my way across the street again.

  “Mr. Vonnegan.”

  I glanced over at Harrows. Still tall and thin and icy, but his suit had been repaired with a roll of duct tape, and he had grown a scum of beard. It was the first time, aside from the moments when I’d been literally beating him with my fists, he didn’t appear to be perfectly coiffed. He jerked his head back across the street. I followed his chin and there was Pitr, huge, hair down past his ears, staring in horror at the yellowed skeletons littering the street. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to another.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I said. The world had fucking ended and I was standing in a field of fucking skeletons and it was still comedy. “One step at a time, Magsie. Take it slow.”

  He nodded, his eyes glued to the bones, and took one slow, careful step forward. There was an audible crunching sound, and he froze, arms out for balance, like some huge bird.

  “Ah, shit,” I muttered. “They’re already fucking dead, Magsie!”

  He nodded, staring down in horror. “I know, Lem. I just wouldn’t want someone walking on me after I was dead. You know?”

  I sighed. “Climb the cars, Pitr,” I said. “Stepping-stones.”

  He looked around at the cars that sat in the middle of the street and nodded, then kept nodding. He judged the distance to the nearest one, a black BMW with four long-dead occupants, gritty with dust, all four tires flat. He leaped for it, coat fluttering out behind him, and landed on the back bumper with a perfect stick landing, arms slapping down on the roof and grabbing hold of the bike rack perched up there.

  As Pitr leaped from car to car, landing each time with a thunderous crash that was batted back and forth by the concrete and glass, the Negotiator ambled over, hands in his pockets, and stood next to me. We watched Pitr make his painful way across the street.

  “This is pointless, of course,” the Negotiator said, sounding cheerful. For a second I thought he wanted a response, but then he went on, talking to himself. “But what can you do? You remain. You must continue in motion. You have to do something. So why not this? Something to do. Doomed. But if you admit that, you might as well just lie down, wait to be found by her.”

  “You’re a fucking pleasure to be with,” I said, watching as Pitr stood on the roof of a rusting SUV, dismayed. There was about six or seven feet between him and the relatively clear sidewalk. He couldn’t make any jump that didn’t result in crunching bones. “Climb down, pick your spots,” I called out. “Come on—you want to be out here when the sun goes down?”

  That got him. He looked up sharply, the horror of that thought seeping in. Total darkness, surrounded by the skeletal remains of the whole fucking world, and every time he twitched in his sleep—and Pitr did nothing but twitch when he was asleep, pawing at the air and muttering—he would crush someone beneath him.

  “I should have died a long time ago,” the Negotiator said, and I realized he was responding to me. “In a more just world, I would have.”

  “You could have died back there.”

  He shook his head. “Not that way. Not her. Never her. I have dreamed of my own death. Imagined it. I would like it to be quick, and painless, and perhaps peaceful, looking out on something beautiful. A moment of quiet, just in case you carry with you your last thoughts. But she would never allow that. Never her.”

  I pictured her, huge and all-encompassing, beautiful, terrible. I thought I understood.

  Pitr was putting serious, sweat-inducing effort into every step. It was like watching a bear play a game of Twister. I was seized with a fierce affection for him. I had squandered an advantage to bring him back. And yet I knew I would always make that same decision, every time. The universe could be reset over and over again, and I would always use every bit of my strength and every trick up my sleeve to bring him back. Because I couldn’t stand to think of Pitr in a dark place, in the ground, alone.

  When he made the final leap for the sidewalk and landed on a clear patch of concrete, he turned to beam at me, triumphant, a perfect organism.

  In the lobby, there wasn’t a single corpse. It was stuffy and smelled like rot and mold. The humidity was intense, and I figured somewhere there was a persistent water leak. Something that had been going on for years.

  “What floor?” I asked.

  “The top.”

  Of course. We walked over to the stairs and pulled the heavy metal door open. The dark was nearly perfect, the steps disappearing into gloom just a few feet in. The smell was worse.

  “Lem—”

  I held up a hand to Pitr. “Give me some gas, Magsie.”

  I hadn’t reminded the Nego
tiator about the Token I’d taken from him. I didn’t know if he remembered it, and if I couldn’t articulate why I thought it mattered, instinct told me to hold on to every advantage I had. He knew I hadn’t just teleported us to Shanghai by pricking my finger, but that didn’t mean I was just going to make it obvious for him.

  Looking up at the ceiling of the lobby, I thought I could piece together something to put us on the top floor, but the specifics made me nervous. I’d never cast anything like that without being able to see where I was going. The Words were easy enough, but the details, I’d never been good with the details. I’d come to realize how much I didn’t know, and that was worse than anything, the sudden feeling of having nothing beneath your feet.

  I felt Pitr’s blood in the air, strong and tempting. We’d both cut ourselves so often it was easy.

  I closed my eyes and felt my way through it. The Rule of Perception: Reality was what you believed to be true. I could let the Negotiator handle it, but I hadn’t allowed him to cast and wasn’t ready to take that chance. I reminded myself that I’d cast a teleportation spell just a few hours ago. But that had been different. The spatial dynamics of steering us to the airport off the East China Sea hadn’t been so fucking complicated with all that open space. I’d been flush with success for a moment, then froze up: The thought of teleporting through the dense city scared the shit out of me. We’d all end up embedded in concrete, impaled on streetlights. As with everything in fucking magic, the huge and amazing was easier than the small and simple. It had always been that way.

  Closer in, I felt more confidence. Wishing for a flask of something to settle my nerves, I pushed my hand into my pocket and touched the Token, gas from another reality coursing up my arm and making me giddy. I strung together six syllables, half-Words molded together, forming new ones. I felt my gravity shift, and when I opened my eyes we were back in the apartment. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on the skyline of Shanghai, now lit up by the blood-orange sun and gleaming back at us, and if you squinted, it was like nothing had happened. It was a beautiful sight.