The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  “How do I know you aren’t faking your zop?” Harric said.

  “How could I?”

  “I don’t know. That’s my biggest problem. I don’t know how these things work, but you do.”

  “You saw it for yourself; I’m inside the geas as much as you. If I lie, I get stung.”

  Harric maintained his poker face, but inwardly he chafed. The fact that Fink was inside the geas bubble didn’t necessarily mean it affected him as it did Harric. This was where his utter and complete ignorance of the Unseen hobbled him. He didn’t even know enough about Fink to set a trap for him and test whether the geas worked on the imp. Still, to have any chance of using the geas to his benefit, he’d need to know the rules. “How long’s the geas last?” he asked.

  “Sixty-six questions. We’ve used eight already.”

  “What? You mean—?”

  “Nine, and ten.” Fink’s grin glittered in the red light. “Might want to conserve.”

  Harric bit back a curse. Fink had let him use up eight questions before he even knew how the geas worked. He ran a hand down his face, trying to clear the fog from his light-washed brain. Pull yourself together. You can do this. Just like counting cards in tarot-poker. Instead of wasting another question, he made a statement. “If we need another geas, I assume we’ll do another later.”

  A grin spread across Fink’s face. “You learn fast. But I must correct your assumption. A geas is a one-time event. To weave a geas, I have to trick your strands into serving as a truth net. It isn’t natural for them. They won’t cooperate next time.”

  “Why only sixty-six questions?”

  “That’s the number of your strands.”

  Harric raised an eyebrow. This was an aspect of Unseen lore he hadn’t imagined. “Do all people have sixty-six?”

  Fink shook his head slowly, eyes on Harric. “You’re a sixty-six.”

  A shiver rippled up Harric’s spine. Something in the imp’s manner felt ominous.

  “That was twelve,” said Fink.

  Harric took a deep breath. The more he learned, the more questions popped into his brain. He needed to resist every single little question he could ask, and focus on the big questions that dogged his every waking and dreaming hour. Things like: What have I gotten into? Though he was pretty sure that was so broad that it would be a wasted question too. He decided to keep track of the number of questions the way he did with cards. With his left, he’d count up to ten and then start over. With his right, he’d record each time his left hand reached ten. That would take him up to fifty, anyway.

  “My turn,” said Fink. “Question thirteen. You any good?”

  Harric swallowed his frustration with himself, and almost asked, What do you mean? At what? but caught himself. Was the imp trying to bait him into wasting questions by asking vague ones himself? “Explain what you mean,” he said.

  “Are you any good at…whatever it is you do best?” A knowing leer from the imp; his hairless eyebrows jumped up and down mockingly, as if on strings.

  No sense in Harric hiding what he was. The imp had seen him in action. “Damned good,” Harric said. “And I want to be the best.”

  Fink nodded. “Fifteen. I’ve seen you pick locks. Seen you pick pockets. What are you?”

  Harric paused. The imp didn’t know everything. Fink actually had questions. On the one hand, that came as a relief. On the other hand, the truth of Harric’s training was something he’d never shared with anyone. He tried to say, “I don’t know what you mean,” but the geas zopped him with a full-body slap that made him jump and curse.

  Fink’s eyes narrowed. “You’re holding out on me.”

  Harric tried to speak again, but zop! it slapped him again. “Cobbing moons!” He laughed. “I was going to say, ‘If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,’ but apparently the geas has no sense of humor.”

  Fink did not smile. “You want me to trust you, you’ll answer the question.”

  “I’m a jack,” Harric said, settling in on a partial truth. “A gentleman thief. A swindler. A trickster. A spy.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “My mother.”

  Fink studied his face, white eyes glinting pink in the red moonlight. “You said spy. Is that what she was? One of your queen’s fancy lady spies?”

  Harric cringed inwardly. That was a secret he’d sworn never to reveal. Technically, he hadn’t revealed it, but he’d been careless. Fink knew more about Arkendian politics than Harric had guessed—enough to catch the larger implication of the word “spy”—and now the imp had sniffed out his mother’s training without even needing the geas.

  Then Harric smiled. “I cannot discuss former…contracts.” He hesitated on the word contracts, because his mother had made no formal “contract” with him, but he’d sworn never to betray the existence and nature of her profession.

  To Harric’s surprise, Fink made no objection. The imp’s sly grin only widened. “We’ve heard tales of your queen’s lady spies. Didn’t know they were real. What are they called?”

  “We have tales about them here, too. The balladeers call them courtistes. They’re supposed to be a kind of courtesan, spy, and lady jack, all in one.”

  Fink bobbed his bald head. “Are you a courtiste?”

  “I’m not a woman, and I’ve never been to court, so no. Plus, the one who trained me was as mad as a cat on fire.”

  Fink made a gurgling sound that—judging by his grin and the way he bounced on the wire—might have been a giggle. “So you’re a gentleman jack that may or may not have been trained by a full-fledged courtiste?”

  Harric nodded. That was a satisfactory compromise. For all intents and purposes, his deluded mother had raised him in secret to replace her in court, and since she was mad, perhaps his oath to her was meaningless. But he was beginning to feel very strongly that Fink didn’t need to see any more of his cards. The imp already knew too much. And despite the point of the geas being to build trust, it felt to Harric like the more he could keep hidden, the better. For instance, his brush with the goddess in the tower, which he’d intended to bring up to Fink, he now resolved to keep to himself. Until he had answers to his own questions, he’d keep these cards close to his vest.

  “My turn.” Harric consulted his fingers. “Question twenty-three. Why did you ask me to put something about feeding you in the pact?”

  Fink scowled. “What do you think? I want you to feed me. I’m sick of starving.”

  A chill of dread crept up Harric’s neck. “Feed you. So I save part of my meals each day and bring them at night—”

  “You think I eat sandwiches?”

  “Stop asking empty questions. You’re using them up.”

  Fink leered. His bald head bobbed below his shoulders and peaked wings. “I answered your question. It isn’t my fault you weren’t specific.”

  “If you want me to trust you, explain.”

  Fink’s grin widened, flesh drawing back from his jaws to expose warty black gums. “I’m a spirit, kid. I eat souls.”

  The stone in Harric’s chest sank into his gut. His stomach gave a nauseated twist. “So, rabbit souls would do?” he asked. “Chicken souls?”

  Fink’s bulbous nose wrinkled. “In a pinch. Like you’d eat rat if you had to.”

  “So, this is kind of important, Fink. You need people souls?”

  “Yes. It’s easy, kid. You kill someone, then you twirl up their soul on a fork and stick it in my mouth.”

  Harric stared.

  “Kidding. Not so much the fork part. But how else am I going to eat? You have to kill somebody! But before you get too high and mighty about this, let me take this opportunity to remind you that you sent a fair few souls into the Black Moon just yesterday without any urging from me, though I had the misfortune of arriving too late to that feast due to my taking your mother back to her grave. Scavengers, once they arrive in numbers, don’t share.”

  “How often?”

  “My meals? Depends. Alternati
vely, I could nurse off your spirit. Talk about high-quality soul—”

  “No.”

  “Why not? The strands grow back over time, and—”

  “No.”

  “Just saying it to be clear.”

  Harric turned away. He felt his heart drumming in his chest.

  “Kid. Relax. I’m fatter now than I’ve been in years. See there?” Harric turned his head to see Fink raise a bony arm and indicate his ribs. His ribs did seem less pronounced than they had when Harric first met the imp. He’d almost been skeletal then. Now he seemed merely skinny. “Souls seem to pile up behind you and your friends like shit behind horses. I’ve never seen so many liberated spirits since I started following you and What’s-His-Bucket. Tonight I found three more down in that fort in the stables where I’d last seen you.”

  Visions of the dead men swam before Harric’s eyes. Lane. The dove master. The sunken-eyed man. He swallowed. “You ate their souls?”

  “They were wicked. What do you care?”

  “Answer my question.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “And they’re gone forever?

  “After you eat a chicken, is it gone forever? Of course it is.”

  “I eat a chicken’s meat. Not its soul.”

  “But if an eternal soul is wicked, why should you care if I eat it? You want it floating around doing wickedness?”

  Harric tried in vain to read the blank white eyes staring back at him. He smelled a note of mockery in the way the imp said wickedness. “So you only eat wicked souls. Who decides if a soul is wicked or not?”

  Fink’s grin became strained, as if Harric had asked for a shameful admission. “I’m on probation. I’m only allowed degenerate spirits.”

  “And you get to decide if a soul is degenerate or not?”

  A hiss bubbled from Fink’s throat. “No. A degenerate spirit is obvious. It does not rise.”

  “So a good soul rises to the moon, and a degenerate one doesn’t. That’s the judgment.”

  Fink nodded. “Souls judge themselves.”

  Harric began to pace. So many things warred in his mind for his attention and warred in his heart for his conscience, but not so much that he didn’t realize he’d just uncovered something crucial to his understanding of his own spirit.

  Spook looked up from his grooming to watch Harric walk back and forth.

  “But I didn’t kill those men last night,” he said. “You can still eat them?”

  “You, your friends, that monster horse. It makes no difference. I have first claim.”

  Harric imagined a feeding frenzy of Unseen spirits with Fink at the head of the line. “Just to be clear, Fink: I said I’d feed you. I didn’t say I’d go kill someone every time you’re hungry.”

  Fink scowled. “I remember the terms.”

  “And my soul? If we’re together when I die, what happens to my soul?”

  Another wicked grin spread across Fink’s face. “Assuming it isn’t degenerate?”

  A spear of doubt lanced through Harric. “Of course.”

  Fink coughed out something like a laugh. “Can’t you ask something original, kid? Everyone has to ask, ‘What happens to my immortal soul when I die?’ And I always have to say, ‘It depends, and anyway, I can’t—’” Zop! “Ow! All right, I can tell! But I won’t because I’ll get in trouble!”

  This time, Fink remained on the wire through the shock, but it left him bristling, his wings and tail at full extension. Harric compressed his smile between his lips.

  “All right, laughing boy,” said Fink, “you tell me. What do you think happens when you die?”

  Harric frowned. That wasn’t what he’d meant by the question. He suspected the imp knew it and lied on purpose to distract him with a humorous zop. Still, he let the larger question stand—he had to hand it to Fink, it was a very diverting question—but when he went to answer it, he found himself blushing. “Well,” he began, “I believe my soul goes to the Hall of Ancestors in the Bright Mother Moon, where maidens…” Harric stopped.

  Fink was making a honking sound through his nose.

  “How close was I?” said Harric.

  Fink gave an apologetic shrug. “All you need to know is this, kid: when you die, I’ll take care of you.”

  Harric raised one eyebrow. “Take care of me? That could mean anything. What I meant was if you’ll eat my soul when I die or feed it to someone else.”

  “You are my partner.” Fink whispered the last word. “When you die, I will do my best to make sure you come to no harm. That better?”

  Harric nodded. “What did you do with your former master’s soul when he died?”

  Fink’s gaze didn’t waver. “Nothing. Arrogant bastard forbade me to touch him when he died. I couldn’t do anything. So I let him float away unescorted. Real bad move on his part. Oh, he commanded me to help when they came for him, but it was too late by then.”

  Harric blinked in surprise. Fink’s former magus had known enough to manipulate Fink, to play different angles and rules, and still ended up dead. Worse than dead. Harric swallowed a lump in his throat. His relationship with Fink was different, though. He’d done the right thing insisting they be equals. Like all slaves, Fink had chafed under his bondage, and retaliated against his master whenever possible. Toward Harric, there would be gratitude.

  He hoped. At least he now knew Fink’s intention for Harric. That was one worry answered.

  “Question forty-nine,” Fink began.

  Harric consulted his fingers again. “Fifty,” he said, and a wave of anxiety played across his heart. I’ve only put one worry put to rest, and it took fifty questions. He clenched his jaw and took a deep breath through his nose. “Fink, I still have some important questions. Please don’t waste any.”

  “Question fifty.” Fink’s eyes narrowed as he spoke. “Arkendians are supposed to be afraid of magic. But when your Kwendi friend killed my former master, you grabbed his nexus, and instead of throwing it into the river, you kept it. Why?”

  Harric nodded. The imp wanted to know his motives. That was good. It meant Fink couldn’t read Harric’s heart. “It happened so fast, I didn’t really have time to think about it.”

  “But you kept it.”

  “I had seen the witch—your former master, I mean—turn invisible. That’s… I’d never imagined that before. It didn’t take much to realize how useful it would be for me as a jack.”

  Fink’s needle teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “Power.”

  “You make it sound dirty. I want the power to do good. To protect what’s good.”

  “An idealist! Heh. You’re going to be disappointed every day, kid. That what your mad-brained, murdering mother trained you for? Protecting the good?”

  “Stop wasting questions!”

  Fink made an apologetic bow. “I get excited. Now, answer the question.”

  “Yes, for good. She wasn’t always like that. She had good days.”

  “Oh, sure. I guess I must have caught her on a bad day.”

  Harric smiled. “The worst possible bad day, to be sure. But she wasn’t always like that. It got worse as she aged. But even then, she wanted me to serve the Queen.”

  “The greater good again. That is touching.”

  “No. She was always an egotistical fanatic. She wanted to protect the Queen, but just as much, she wanted me to redeem her own name in court. So she took my childhood and…” Bile welled in Harric’s throat, choking him off. It hurt to swallow it. It was only with effort that he managed to keep his lip from curling in an involuntary snarl. “Sorry. I get angry about it sometimes.”

  Fink’s hairless eyebrows had climbed his forehead, pushing rows of rumples upward.

  “But she was right about the Queen,” Harric said. “Queen Chasia freed bastards like me from slavery. She freed women from their slavery. We both owed her everything. And in spite of how much I hate my mother, I devote my life to my queen.”

  “So you’re a patriot. And you
decided to play with magic. Wanted to become invisible. A gentleman jack’s dream. That the only reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?” Fink’s tone was sly.

  “Stop burning questions. You know I’m under a truth spell.”

  “Maybe you want to be a big man. Maybe you want everyone to respect you. All these knights and warriors around—even your girlfriend—they don’t respect a gentleman jack. Maybe you’re ashamed of this manservant role while she waxes knightly. Maybe, with magic, you hope to shine as bright as she. You think with magic they’ll finally respect you?”

  “Magic would make them respect me less.” That was a stinging truth. But the imp’s point had hit its mark. Of course Harric wanted Caris’s respect. Of course he wanted Willard to recognize his value in their quest. But even vanquishing Sir Bannus’s army hadn’t proven enough to do that with Willard. Harric paused for a moment, thinking of Caris. “I’d like Caris to accept it. Not just accept it. See how it could help the Queen. I don’t know if she ever will.”

  Fink’s eyes glinted red in a sliver of moonlight.

  “That was fifty-five,” said Harric. “My turn.” He crafted the question carefully. “Power. Respect. That’s what I get from this partnership. What do you hope to get out of it?” There it was, the last of his big worries. He watched the imp intently.

  Fink stared back. His grin seemed wider than ever, as if he’d been expecting this question. “You know what I want, kid. I want to survive.”

  “And that means you need to prove yourself to your sisters, so you will be taken off probation?”

  Fink’s grin faded a little. It became strained. He nodded.

  “Speak the answer, just to be sure.”

  “Yes.” He hissed. “I must prove myself to my sisters if I am to survive.”

  “And once you prove yourself, what use will you have for our partnership?”

  Fink rocked on the wire, shifting his feet. Mention of his sisters had changed him. His gaze slid to the side. “I don’t know.”

  Harric waited for the geas to jolt the imp from the wire, but nothing happened. “You don’t know?”