We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle)

by Jeff Somers

  Then her Glamour was right in front of me. I drafted it as it glided forward, slightly faster than I was walking. Tricks on tricks on tricks. We were a few feet away from the mummy in the chair. Tension built inside me, and I couldn’t believe I was this close to Mika Renar.

  The Glamour suddenly reached out one hand and pointed. The mummy’s white lips moved. One of the Melanies exploded into bone and blood, and a hard consonant sound, the beginnings of a scream, cut off. The other Melanies disappeared, just gone, in an instant. I froze. I was two feet away. The Glamour, Renar’s eyes and ears, was turned away from me.

  I held my breath. The Glamour surveyed the remains of Melanie Billington calmly. The quiet was once again complete. I’d gotten one more person killed, inching towards my perfect record of killing everyone I came in contact with.

  I felt Pitr’s heart beating. I thought of Claire. And I launched myself forward.

  I passed through the Glamour, like flying through dry clouds, red and black and pink. The mummy’s slitted eyes leaped to me at the last second. The rest of her tiny, puppet body remained perfectly still. I thought I could feel those eyes physically. It was like jumping on top of a sharp spike in the ground, belly-first. I stretched out my arm just as the Glamour began to shout something, as the mummy’s mouth began to twitch.

  I felt something slide around my neck, like a snake, cold and dry.

  The jeweled box, seemingly tiny and fragile, slammed into Renar’s forehead like a rock. A jolt of fire lanced up my arm, agony for one split second and then complete, buzzing numbness as the box leaped from my hand and hit the ground, thudding there like a much larger, much heavier object. I fell to my knees in front of it, my left hand going to my throat, where they found a thin silver wire, like a garrote, wrapped around my neck. It tingled at the touch.

  I looked up. Renar’s Glamour was gone.

  The mummy held the same position, but the eyes had gone flat and staring, and there was no sign of her slight, labored breathing. I looked from her to the box.

  The silver wire around my neck tightened. My right arm still hung at my side, and I couldn’t move it, so I worked the fingers of my left hand under and tugged at it. There was a jerk on the wire and I flipped over, searing pain burning into the skin of my neck as someone gave it an enthusiastic yank.

  I rolled onto my belly and lay there, panting. I looked up, following the length of the nearly invisible, thin silver wire to where Ev Fallon stood, looking dapper in a well-tailored white suit.

  “Hurry up, now,” he said with a kindly grin. “It is time.”

  56. “A VERY OLD ARTIFACT,” FALLON said conversationally as he led me on what was essentially a leash through the bone-strewed streets of Shanghai. “Perhaps two thousand years old. Amazing that such things have been preserved. I discovered it in a storage unit in Miami, Florida, seventy-odd years ago. Just coiled in an unmarked wooden box. Artifacts are always like this, mischievous. Always falling through cracks and becoming lost, always seeking to be found by those who do not know how to control them. The intelligences imprisoned within them are . . . resentful.”

  The pain was constant, a sensation of burning. My right arm was still numb and useless, and I’d found that I could only answer questions; I could not say anything else. If I tried to resist being led through the streets like a dog, the pain doubled, and tripled, and then made my vision turn red and my brain threaten to explode. So I was following the old man in silence.

  “That is the main difference between an Artifact, as we call them, and a Fabrication. Fabrications are more complex, of course, but the main difference is this intelligence. This awareness. Artifacts of the old school involved Summonings, intelligences. Fabrications usually do not. They simply manipulate energy in mechanical ways.”

  I wondered if this was a lesson he had taught Pitr.

  Fallon turned, transferring the end of the leash to his right hand and producing the jeweled box from his right pocket and holding it up. “This, not so old. In fact, I created this.”

  I stared at him.

  He nodded. “Yes! Elsa liked to take credit for things. Elsa is not nearly so old as I am, and not nearly as talented, despite what others—quoting Elsa herself—may have told you. I am the Fabricator, Mr. Vonnegan. When you encounter a beautiful Fabrication, a Fabrication that works and is clever, you have found some of my work.” He laughed. “I am, I believe, the oldest man in history. And now, thanks to dear Mika, I will always be. Elsa was talented, yes. She had the ability to see something, once, and then replicate it, perfectly. Extraordinary, in her way . . .” Trailing off, he studied me for a moment as he walked backwards and I followed, limping slightly, and then he sighed and turned away. “You have questions. Ask them.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I could still feel Pitr somewhere, and I hoped he wasn’t panicked or scared or just failing. I didn’t know where Fallon was taking me, or what he planned to do to me.

  “It was you all along,” I said at last. “Wasn’t it? Behind everything.”

  He laughed. Fallon had laughed so infrequently in my experience that it sounded bizarre and disconcerting. “No! No, Mr. Vonnegan, that is the fun of it. I remember our previous existences, as you do. I was not aware of Mika’s plans when I originally designed her custom work. And I did not know what it was intended for. I have lived for centuries using the barna like this one. I have been here a long time, Mr. Vonnegan. I was content to work and study and use only the occasional body to perpetuate myself. I am of the old school. You do not leave marks. You stay hidden, you do not discuss certain lore. You control the situation.” He sighed. “I was content. I worked, and when my body became too old to function, or when it become ill, I borrowed another. But only then. Not as Elsa did, reckless, ruthless. Cruel. In this way I did intend to live forever, Mr. Vonnegan, and for that you may judge me. But Mika’s plan was her own.”

  He walked a few steps in silence.

  “But your visit shocked me. Because I had never considered the possibility of another enustari ending me. Almost as an afterthought. As if I did not matter—me, who had lived so long. So when you had thrown your wrench into the plan, I approached Mika, and made terms, and worked with her to solve the problem you had created. I held no harsh feelings towards you, Mr. Vonnegan. I would have been happy for you to survive. However, Mika was no fool, and when she accepted me into her camp, I was forced to agree to terms.”

  I nodded to myself. Tried speaking again and found I could. “The Negotiator.”

  There was no gas in the air, so I pulled the tired old trick of biting my tongue. The tongue bleeds. It’s filled with vessels, and it bleeds. Iron and salt filled my mouth and the gas hit the air, and I didn’t waste a second: I pulled on it hard and tried whispering my new favorite word: gulla. My throat locked, and I choked. I tried again and made a gagging noise, the silver leash seeming to tighten around my neck.

  “Mr. Harrows, yes,” Fallon said without acknowledging my attempt to cast. “I pledged not to harm Mika directly. This became problematic when we found ourselves both on the other side of the tah-namus, yes? Like we were an old married couple. Marriage always ends in divorce, you know. Among our kind, divorce can be quite final. And Mika thought she was clever: She was not bound by the same restriction to respect the existence of her colleagues. One by one, she isolated them and destroyed them. They all had their pride and attempted to take her on, directly, without tricks, without guile. And they were destroyed. And then only I remained.”

  I nodded. It was funny, I thought, how it all became clear when someone was explaining it to you. “You let me live so I could kill her for you.” I had a slight lisp from my bitten tongue.

  “Oh, Mr. Vonnegan, I let you live so you could try.” He laughed and spun around again. “And look at you! You have succeeded! It was a dirty trick, especially against an enustari of such history and reputation. But certainly I do not blame you.”

  I swallowed. I was sweating. “What happens to me?” />
  He turned again. “And Mr. Mageshkumar? Do not worry, Mr. Vonnegan, you will not die. You will bleed, for I find myself in need of blood. The reserves I have so carefully maintained will last some time. But not forever. It is good to have some living stock to work with, so you will join the others I have acquired, rather painstakingly.” His free hand went up in a classic rhetoric gesture. “I will observe the ancient traditions of ustari and siskur.”

  Siskur. I’d heard the Word. I wasn’t sure where. I’d never heard anyone else use it, but then I didn’t spend a lot of time hanging around with Archmages. If I had to guess—and I did—I would guess it meant Bleeder.

  The silver leash squirmed on my neck like a living thing.

  “And right now?” I asked. It was a big world. A big empty world. I tried to comprehend the three of us being the last people in the world. It was impossible. The Biludha-tah-namus wouldn’t have killed everyone. Someone had survived, maybe even hundreds, thousands of people. A tiny amount, but still—someone.

  Fallon stopped suddenly. I stopped too, curiously. Forced by the leash. For a second I thought I was still moving, my brain sending the signals to my legs, but they wouldn’t obey.

  He turned slowly, almost posing, like he was in a photo shoot for a fashion magazine. Old Coots Who Dress Better or something.

  He looked at me with a sort of wry half-smile. “Where is Mr. Mageshkumar?”

  We stared at each other. My mind was blank. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I had nothing smart to say.

  He wrapped the silver leash around his hand two, three times, then slowly tugged it closer to him. The leash tightened around my neck, making my eyes bulge and my face turn hot red. I tried to stagger towards him but couldn’t.

  “Mr. Vonnegan, where is Mr. Mageshkumar? Exactly?”

  I remembered Pitr grabbing me by the shoulders in another time line, telling me I couldn’t tell them where Claire was. I clamped my teeth together and hoped I had some tricks left.

  Fallon sighed, conveying the irritated affection of a man whose patience was tried by fools. “I can, if need be, Compel you, Mr. Vonnegan.”

  I nodded. “You’re . . . going to . . . have to,” I ground out, my voice thick and ragged as the silver leash squeezed.

  My mind raced over ideas. I could gas up a little, and either Fallon couldn’t sense it in the air like a squirming cloud of energy anymore or he didn’t care, because the other side of it was, I couldn’t cast. The Words got stuck in my throat. And soon Fallon was going to cut himself—or me—and cast a Charm or a Compulsion, or he was going to pull another fucking gadget from his pockets that he would insert into my ear and it would wriggle in and turn me into a fucking zombie slave and that would be that.

  “He’s in the apartment,” I managed to squeeze out, my own pulse pounding in my head. “I told him to hide. In . . . the . . . closet.”

  The silver leash tightened until I couldn’t breathe as Fallon studied me with that half-smile.

  “No, he is not,” he finally said, sighing heavily. He began walking back towards me. “Now I will have to bleed you, and Compel you, and then I will be forced to punish both you and Mr. Mageshkumar. Which is unfortunate. I like Mr. Mageshkumar. He is rather like a trained dog, yes? I recall our teaching sessions. Very pleasant. He is a man who has no deceit in him, which is refreshing. And he was so conscientious about his lessons! I recall when we were studying the Binding Ritual, he almost had it! And almost, I suspect, is—”

  He stopped, and as my consciousness began to recede in strangled waves, red pulses in my eyes, he stared at me again.

  He chuckled. “Oh, Mr. Vonnegan, don’t tell me—”

  Dying twice and coming back, I thought grimly, seemed to improve a man, and Pitr was better with the Words than he had been.

  Except, Fallon didn’t know that.

  Beneath us, there was a deep, shaking rumble. It went on and on, second after second, mutating rapidly into a high-pitched grinding noise that kept getting higher- and higher-pitched until it seemed to fade away. But I had a feeling it was still there, fluttering my heart valves and lungs, just too high up on the register for me to hear.

  My vision had pinned down to a hazy tunnel. I couldn’t breathe. Fallon just stood there, suddenly blackly austere, chewing his lip and watching me suffocate.

  “Fekete kutya,” he said, grimacing. Then he pushed his free hand into his coat pocket and a second later, without transition, we were in the parking garage under Elsa’s building.

  I stared around, smiling. A warm bloom of pride, maybe, spread through my chest.

  Pitr Mageshkumar, I thought, today you are a man.

  I wanted to jump and shout for him. I wanted to let the stupid bastard give me one of his patented bone-crushing hugs. It wasn’t right, that Pitr would pull something like this off and not be able to give me that aw-shucks grin while dancing on his tiny feet like an embarrassed schoolboy.

  The kurre-nikas had come to life. I dropped to my knees and put my left hand uselessly up to the silver wire, tugging feebly at it. Through the pinhole, I could see a faint blue glow suffusing all the cables, similar to the faerie light I’d summoned to reveal runes and other hidden things. Runes covered the walls, flickering in and out of solidity as if they existed in more than one plane, as if they were slipping back and forth, first in one time line, then another, or maybe all time lines at once.

  The work was immense. The runes were precise and tiny and covered the walls and floor and all of the cable and other components, written by hand in a steady, unwavering line. I’d never seen so much written work, all of it Bound, infused into the mechanics of the Fabrication. It must have taken months. It must have taken months and endless bleeding, endless.

  Pitr Mags was nowhere to be seen.

  57. “ACH,” FALLON SPAT, A RAW sound of disgust brought up from his chest. “This, this is a waste of time.” He scanned the area. “Mr. Mageshkumar!” he shouted. “I commend you on your first successful Binding! I must admit I am surprised. But not unpleasantly so!”

  Jesus fucking Christ, I thought dimly. This was different from Renar’s brand of evil. This was a guy who’d been devouring souls in order to survive for so long he didn’t think twice about it. He didn’t have any bad feelings towards us. He was just fucking irritated that we were complicating his merry day of genocide and revenge followed by a calming evening of tea, Fabrication, and the bleeding of acquaintances.

  “Reveal yourself, Mr. Mageshkumar. I know you are not as foolhardy as your friend here. Who is well, as you can see!” Fallon glanced back at me, and his face registered exasperation as he realized he had just contradicted himself. He muttered something, closing his eyes. A second later, the silver wire loosened, and blood rushed back to my brain as I sucked in a chestful of damp, cold air. Immediately, I began coughing.

  Fallon waited, turning slowly as his old gray eyes scanned the gloom. Then he sighed and looked down at his shiny shoes, the black leather like mirrors. “Stupid man,” he said to no one. Then he turned and looked back at me. “Mr. Vonnegan, I am afraid your new career will begin a bit earlier than expected. Attend to me, please.”

  The silver leash tugged at me gently. Still fighting for each breath, I staggered to my feet and started towards him. I wasn’t sure if I was volunteering or if I was being compelled by the Artifact. It didn’t matter much. This would be, if something creative didn’t occur to me first, the rest of my miserable existence: the leash, Fallon’s smooth politeness, the occasional choking hazard.

  “Kneel,” Fallon said absentmindedly. I recognized the tone of the in-charge, the enustari who couldn’t fathom not being obeyed. Fallon had always had an air of command about him, an air of aristocracy. It was just that he’d never had a fucking leash around my neck before. Even when he’d been playing me for a fool, working around the world to bleed the crowds for Renar’s kurre-nikas while pretending to be my reluctant Wise Man, available for counsel and advice and the occasional
murder of his fellow Archmages, he’d always had the expectation that he would be obeyed, listened to, worried over.

  I peered up at him through eyes that felt red and burst. “How old are you, then?”

  Fallon was affixing the other end of the leash to his wrist to free up both hands. He snorted. “I am six hundred and thirty-three years old. I was born a sixth daughter to a poor man and was set out in the woods to die of exposure. Or so I have been told. And here I am, six and a half centuries later.” The knot finished, he reached into his coat and extracted a straight razor. It had a pearl handle and looked strangely familiar.

  “Mika,” he said with a shake of his head. “You see how I could never take her seriously? Her power lay in her cruelty. Mika was willing to do anything. People feared her because of it. But her ideas . . . the tah-namus! So unnecessary. And all to avoid slumming, as she saw it. The wrong type of body. The wrong class. Silly woman.” He sighed. “I could not openly oppose her. She had gathered too many powerful, stupid ustari around her banner. And she was dangerous in battle, when she was prepared.”

  The world was dead, and Fallon didn’t seem to care one way or another.

  He took hold of my greasy, unkempt hair and pulled my head back to expose my neck, then laid the cold steel of the blade against it.

  “Mr. Mageshkumar!” he shouted. “The spell I will cast will bleed Mr. Vonnegan deeply. I cannot swear he will survive. If you would save him, I would reveal myself!”

  The tortured grammar, I thought, would just confuse Pitr. I was as good as dead while he puzzled out.

  “If you had the whole immortal thing solved,” I asked, my throat burning, “why let Renar do it?”