Noir Fatale

by Larry Correia

  I quickly lit the lamps in the entry, and then those in the corners of the small sitting room. Light revealed my recently acquired home. I ushered Helena to a chair in the corner, by which stood a diminutive bookshelf that held all twelve of the books I owned. She all but fell into the chair. I pulled off my coat and held it in the light. The front was covered in blood. I sighed. My laundress, Ms. Alsteder, would be furious when she saw it.

  I left Helena in the front room and went through my room into the lavatory. I lit another lamp there and looked at myself in the mirror. I had blood on my face and a wicked bruise where the man headbutted me, but I was otherwise no worse for wear. I turned the knob on the sink and waited for the water to arrive. The pipes groaned, but finally water trickled out. I rubbed at my face and neck, then scrubbed my hair as quickly as I could. I pulled a towel from where it hung next to the mirror and dried myself off as I returned to the sitting room.

  Helena was still in the chair, eyes wandering around the room, taking in the details. Truth be told, there wasn’t much to take in. A small desk with a chair. A threadbare rug in the middle of the floor. An artist’s rendition of my mother’s portrait on the wall. Of course, the chair she sat in and the nearby bookshelf. That was it.

  “You have a nice home, Mr. Vals.”

  “Please, call me Kristoph. I think after what happened tonight, we are beyond the point of formalities.” I smiled in an attempt to make light of her near tragedy. “And thank you. I was recently assigned these quarters. They are bigger than my prior lodgings, and I’m afraid I don’t have the furnishings to actually fill the space.

  “Now, Helena,” I said, pulling the desk chair over to sit beside her, “I know you are tired, but I think it’s time you told me your story. What were you doing out so late? This isn’t the military quarter. Surely you are aware of the civilian curfew?”

  “I am aware,” she said. “But I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Why is that?”

  “People have been following me since I entered the city a few days ago. I returned to my room at the boardinghouse two blocks south of here and found it a wreck.”

  “It had been searched?”

  “Yes,” she said. “My mattress and pillows ripped open. The drawers of the dresser pulled out and emptied. There were even holes in the walls.”

  I leaned forward in my chair. “Helena, what were they looking for?”

  She hesitated. “You say you work for the Directorate?”

  I nodded.

  “I know this is horribly rude of me. After all, you just saved my life. But…but…can I see your identification papers?”

  A moment passed without my moving. It wasn’t the strangest of requests, but neither was it normal. I had to admit I was curious. I got up and crossed the room to where I’d hung my coat, and pulled my papers from the inside pocket. I handed them over to her and sat back down, waiting for her to be satisfied.

  She opened the small packet, and she gave a slight nod when her eyes reached the sigil of Directorate S; a twelve-pointed star with an open eye at its center. She handed the papers back, then reached down the front of her blouse and pulled out a folded document. She hesitated a moment, then handed it to me.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  I took the paper, unfolded it, and found myself looking at a drawing. Maybe “drawing” wasn’t the best word. Scrawled across the paper in precise, neat script were a series of old Prajan runes. Every man in my profession knew what they were, what they symbolized.

  This series of runes had caused incredible levels of death.

  It was the phrase that brought a golem to life.

  “I know what it is,” I said, “but why should I care? It’s no good to anyone. You can’t just draw this in some mud, or scrape it into stone and hope to have a killing machine at your command. It takes a dozen priests who have trained in those magics for decades.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Are you?” I couldn’t say why, but I was getting angry. Maybe because it was late, or because I’d had to stab a man in the face less than an hour ago. I held up the paper so the writing faced her. “This phrase is why we’ve been at war with Almacia for the better part of fifty years. This phrase is why the Tsar and Chancellor want us to invade Praja.”

  “I know,” Helena said quietly. “I’m from Belgracia.”

  Now that was interesting. Belgracia didn’t even exist anymore as an independent country. Kolakolvia and Almacia had traded off occupation of the tiny city-state for hundreds of years. It was now in our control. Belgracia was barely worthy of historical text, except for the time they’d risen up in an attempted revolution. Prajan priests had summoned a dozen golems, which massacred the Almacian occupiers. Fortunately, our own army had been stationed nearby. We stormed in, ravaged the city, and managed to kill off the remaining golems.

  It cost us thousands of soldiers.

  And it had been worth it. From those dead golems, we’d harvested enough pieces of the summoning phrases to double the size of our armored infantry known simply as “The Wall.”

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to kill a golem? Have you ever seen one in action?”

  Helena shook her head.

  “Imagine a creature of stone, earth, wood, or some combination of the three,” I said. “More than twice the height of the tallest man. It can run faster than a horse, and it never tires. It can effortlessly rip a man in half. Guns barely touch it. Heavy artillery is the only way to stop it, and that’s no sure thing. They are the most terrifying thing in existence—I imagine even fae things would hesitate to come up against a golem.”

  “Surely you don’t believe in those wives’ tales? Fae don’t exist. That’s just old superstition.”

  “You keep on thinking that,” I said. “You don’t need to believe in them. When you see your first corpse-eater, you’ll become a believer real fast. But that’s not what we are talking about.” I pointed at the first rune. “When we manage to kill a golem, the full summoning phrase breaks apart. Usually it crumbles into dust. Sometimes, though, a letter or two will survive. The Chancellor embeds them into the armored suits members of the Wall wear.

  “Just one letter turns that armor into a piece of mobile artillery. Imagine, nearly indestructible armor made from the latent magic from one piece of a phrase from a dead golem.” I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “Why were you bringing this drawing of the summoning phrase to the Directorate headquarters? We’re just the police.”

  “My father is—was—a farmer.” Her voice trembled a little. I was willing to bet her father was recently deceased, and that I was about to find out why. For some reason, a shiver crawled up my spine. “Like I said, we are from Belgracia. Well, what’s left of it. A few weeks ago, he was plowing a new field he’d recently cleared of trees. His plow got stuck. He called out to me and my five brothers to help him free the plow, and to dig up whatever it had gotten stuck on. We figured it was some leftover tree roots.

  “Took most of the day,” Helena continued. She rubbed her hands together and looked down at them. “I can still feel the blisters. Anyway, we ended up pulling up a whole bunch of stone and wood, all twisted together. Ended up having to hook our horses to it to pull it out of the ground.”

  I leaned forward again. I knew where this was going, but I needed to hear her say the impossible. “What was it?”

  “The thing was shaped like a man, but missing a leg and an arm,” Helena said. “You asked if I’d ever been witness to a live golem. I haven’t. But I’ve seen a dead one. And on its head was carved that full ‘phrase’ you hold in your hand. If you look closely, you can see it isn’t a drawing. It’s a rub that I inked in.”

  I looked closer at the drawing in my hand. It was true. My mouth had gone dry.

  “How was it dead if it had the full phrase?”

  “We don’t know. But the stone around it flaked away without too much effort. My father chipped away at it for a whole night until he was le
ft with a small piece of stone engraved with the phrase.”

  “You have a full, intact golem-summoning phrase?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s why I’m here. It was stolen. Men broke into the house, killed my father and brothers, and ran off with it. I followed them here, to Cobetsnya.”

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  I didn’t sleep that night. Helena took my bed while I tried sleeping in the chair. My mind turned her story over and over, looking for flaws. It was incredible. A full phrase. If a single rune could power a walking suit of armor, what would the full phrase do?

  If I could find the stolen carved phrase and give it to the Chancellor, surely I’d earn my place among the rumored secret police. How could I be denied? A full phrase could be the key to unlocking the magic, the key to magical progress everyone knew the Chancellor was searching for. I would be a national hero.

  I would also need to tread cautiously.

  If anyone else in Directorate S found out about this, they would do their best to find the phrase themselves. Take the glory. My glory. They wouldn’t hesitate to put me in the ground and leave me for the corpse-eaters. I couldn’t tell anyone. Not even my partner. Especially not my partner. He’d break Helena in half to get the information from her.

  The chair was beginning to hurt my back, so I stood and walked to the window. In the moonlight I looked at my pocket watch. Dawn was still a few hours away.

  A sound from my bedroom arrested my attention. On quiet feet I moved to the doorway, where I saw Helena tossing and turning. Some sort of nightmare. Doubtless the memories of her experience in the alley invading her sleep.

  How much could I trust her? How much could I trust anyone, really? Training for Directorate S officers is brutal, violent, and filled with paranoia. My own kill test—the final portion of my training—had been a suspected traitor to the Tsar. I’ve killed many since. Just the nature of the job…but…

  …but…

  I wanted to trust Helena. It wasn’t her fragility. I didn’t think she was fragile. To come all this way by herself, after her family had been killed, in search of a stolen phrase. That was strength. She could be lying to me. She was almost certainly not telling me the whole truth. But I didn’t care.

  A squeak outside my door.

  The floorboards had been stable when I’d moved in. Most people would have been overjoyed by that small miracle in Cobetsnya. The entities responsible for construction and maintenance weren’t known for their attention to detail, nor exquisite craftsmanship. They were known for cutting corners and working the bare minimum to collect their allotted basic income. Working hard never got any of them anywhere, so why bother? I’d been overjoyed to be selected for the Directorate. Paranoia aside, it was one of the few professions where the Tsar and Chancellor allowed for hard work that led to a certain amount of advancement. Violence had its privileges.

  My first night in this new housing block, I’d loosened the floorboard—an old trick I’d learned in training.

  The floorboard squeaked again.

  I smiled.

  There’s very little as satisfying as knowing you are about to be ambushed or attacked, and being able to flip it on your attacker.

  I didn’t have time to wake and warn Helena. There was a risk involved in her not knowing what was coming. I didn’t know how she would react when things got messy, especially so close after her prior incident. She could turn to hysteria, or be as calm as a veteran soldier.

  How many were outside? I had to assume multiple. I grabbed my coat and wrapped it around my left arm. The folds and layers of thick fabric would help just enough if my soon-to-be assailants were the slashing types with knives. I pulled my long knife free, stood against the wall behind where the door would open.

  The light scraping of tools being inserted into the lock reached my ears. Pseudo professionals. My heart began hammering, not in fear but excitement.

  The lock clicked, and the door pushed slowly inward.

  I hid in the shadow of the opening door, using the door as cover, waiting to see the first person enter. A figure clad in black passed into the open space of my home. Through the crack in the hinged side of the door to my right, I saw another shadow pass by, then nothing. Two of them then.

  Around the edge of the open door, I saw the first figure walk toward Helena’s sleeping form. The second took ahold of the door and began closing it behind him. Neither bothered to check around the door. They obviously hadn’t cleared rooms before. Always have to watch doors and corners. I smiled again and stepped out from concealment.

  Too late, the trailing figure thought to look behind him. He turned—and received the edge of my blade across his throat. He made the smallest of noises before blood arced out over me. The lead figure spun around in time to see his companion drop to the floor. He rushed me with a shout, and just beyond him, I saw Helena jerk awake.

  The man facing me was far bigger, and his reach, therefore, longer. He held the blade well. No matter how skilled I was, one tiny mistake could determine which of us joined his companion in jerking on the ground, trying to hold his throat closed.

  My attacker swung at me, keeping me from getting in too close. His knife hand was quick, and he looked to be strong. I could dart in and hope to block his swing with my arm. Stab him a few times. Or I could—

  A pillowcase, as if by magic, enveloped his head from behind.

  I didn’t waste the opportunity. I rushed in, blocked a wild slash from his knife with my coat-wrapped arm, and stabbed him through the temple. He dropped like a child’s rag doll. I kicked the knife from his hand, and let the life spasm out of him. I looked back behind me and saw the other man still stubbornly clinging to life. I walked over, bent down, and pushed my blade into his chest. He convulsed once, then went still.

  Under his blood-soaked hands, I spotted the same tattoo.

  When I got back up to go check the other dead man’s neck, I found Helena suddenly in my arms. She was sobbing. “I’m sorry,” she said into my chest. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You did fine, Helena,” I said, smoothing her hair. “More than fine. You have nothing to be sorry for. You are alive. I’m alive. Had you been anywhere else, those results may have been different for you. Had you not helped me, I may not have lived either.”

  “They were after me.”

  “Indeed. And the information they think you have. They obviously think you have the summoning phrase. Or they are sure you know where it is.”

  “But I don’t. I’m looking for it too.”

  “They obviously don’t believe that. These aren’t the men who killed your family?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well,” I said, “then we only have one option. We need to find the phrase and get it to the Chancellor before either of us gets killed. I’m going to need your help. Can you do that for me?”

  She looked up into my eyes and smiled.

  That smile was the kind that could keep a man warm in the coldest winter. It wasn’t broad, nor was it even. The right side of her mouth looked happy, the left a little shy. I knew I was in serious trouble. She was serious trouble.

  I couldn’t have been happier.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  Not everyone in Directorate S goes about the Tsar’s business dealing death or acquiring information. Some recruits just aren’t cut out for that sort of work. We also employ individuals who have a talent for cleaning up messes. I’m decent at it. Others in the organization must be touched by the fae because they can make bodies and blood disappear like magic.

  I left Helena in the room, had her wedge a chair under the door, and went to get my favorite cleaner. Her name was Petra.

  As beautiful as Helena was, Petra made the other woman look completely average. Her dark hair and almond-shaped eyes marked her as one with blood from the southern, conquered provinces. The Tsar didn’t care. Neither did the Chancellor. If you had talents, you were put to use.

  When I first met Petra, she was neatly dismember
ing a corpse. She’d stood up, held out a bloody hand, and introduced herself. For a moment, I thought I was in love. But behind those eyes, something darker seemed to coil and uncoil. I shook her hand, suddenly worried that I would offend her, and I’d end up disappeared. I never once made a pass at her. We’d become, well, not exactly friends…I don’t think she understood the meaning of that word. There wasn’t really a word for what we were. More than professionals with mutual respect. Could you be lovers without any sex or romance? Could you be close to a person just to make sure you stayed alive? Somewhere in there, Petra and I existed.

  She came to the door in a thin robe that hid almost nothing. Her home was north of Alexandr Prospekt, where electricity was available, if rationed. She had earned this home, the type of home I hoped to have—if not better—once I found the summoning phrase.

  “Darling Kristoph,” she said with a yawn and breathtaking stretch. “Why are you here before dawn? Do you have any idea how tiring it is cleaning up after all of you?”

  “Petra,” I said. I took her hand and kissed it. Again, this wasn’t a gesture of romance, but of self-preservation. “I am in need of your services.”

  She winked at me. “I bet you are. Give me a moment.” She closed the door in my face, and I was left waiting on her.

  In spite of everything, I was energized. I felt…happy. The men attacking my home—they must have followed us from the alley—had all but confirmed the veracity of Helena’s story. She’d been, perhaps, too free with her inquiries. Whoever these men were, they thought Helena had information. Their tattoos weren’t familiar, which bothered me. I thought I knew the signs of all the local gangs.

  The door opened again and Petra came out, looking like she was on her way to a ball. She carried a large canvas bag. Tools of her trade.

  “Would you like me to carry that for you?” I asked.

  “Ever the gentleman, my Kristoph. But no. I never let men touch my valuables.” After we’d walked for several minutes, she sniffed. “You have a woman. I smell her on you.”

  “I saved her from a mugging,” I said, skirting around the truth. No matter the relationship between Petra and me, sharing the full story with her wasn’t a good idea. But the best lies are the ones that don’t stray too far from the truths they twist. “Then two more members of the same…gang, I suppose…followed me home to seek some sort of revenge. I dispatched them as well.”