The Stringer (7 page)

III.

9.

“DESCRIBE HER,” FALLON SAID
intensely, leaning over the table. “Describe
everything
.”

The golden shit sensation of gas in the air was overpowering, making me dizzy. I'd never sensed so much blood in my life; every single
enustari
in the place—and I had the firm sense that everyone here (aside from Hiram, Mags, and me) was Archmage and their
urtuku
(who would be considered
saganustari
even if their own skill level were just as high)—seemed to have a fat, bloated Bleeder standing around, leeching an open wound just in case a war broke out.

We were in Jersey, which right there made this a red-letter day, because no one went to Jersey unless they absolutely had to.

AS THE TOWN
Car cruised the streets, we passed buildings on fire, crowds battling cops in riot gear, and the odd neighborhood where absolutely nothing was happening, everything peace and calm, the only sign of trouble the orange glow in the sky. The Old Bat's Stringers were busy little bastards.

As we approached the first police barricade diverting traffic away from the bridges and tunnels, which the city had closed, Fallon reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small green bendy Gumby doll, the kind you gave to kids so they could pose them any way they wanted.

“All right, Dalhamun,” the old man said, setting Gumby on the seat between us, “cloud some minds for us.”

Gumby animated, looking up at Fallon and saluting with one tiny green hand. It then crouched down and put its hands to its head in the classic mind-reader pose. The car cruised past a few cops, then slowly maneuvered around the barriers while the police all acted like they couldn't see us.

“How old
are
you?” I asked. “Gumby?”

“Useful, no?”

I glanced at the little figure. “I've had enough demons, thanks,” I said. “Even ones trapped inside Gumby.”

Fallon snorted. “You did well with Lugal,” he said. “You should reconsider your prejudices. You appear to have a talent for Summoning. That talent is often paired with a commiserate ability in Fabrication.”

I stared out the window.

The tunnel was deserted, closed off on the New York side, and we cruised through without incident, the tiny toy remaining in its pose of concentration as the driver took us wordlessly into Jersey City, which started off looking like a mall, then slowly fell apart before our eyes, souring into a shithole. When the car pulled up outside a sad-looking brick building, I thought for a moment it was a mistake, but Fallon scooped up tiny Dalhamun, who offered me a sardonic salute as it was slipped back into Fallon's pocket.

“Come,” said the Archmage, comfortable giving orders.

The street was deserted, but an old-school movie theater was burning brightly up the block, and cop helicopters crowded the air, searchlights stabbing at the ground. The Old Bat was busy.

Hiram and Mags emerged from the second car. I wasn't used to seeing Hiram so subdued, so clearly out of his element. Instead of looking at my
gasam
and being disturbed, I looked at the building. It was only four floors high to my eye, but the ancient elevator we entered had seventeen buttons, and Fallon pressed number 17 without hesitation. It opened into an ornate restaurant, red carpeting and old-school everything, wooden booths and paper lanterns.

Fallon gestured at the coatrack to one side. “Bosch, Mr. Mageshkumar, stay here. Do not
wander
.”

Hiram put his hands up, his expression easily translatable as
no problem
. Hiram, I realized, was terrified. Mags looked at me, alarmed, but I waved him back and he settled.

The bar dominated the center of the dining room, lit up in a rainbow of colors, a row of unhappy-looking Chinese waiters in sadly frayed black uniforms standing at attention. Right in front of the bar was a huge circular table with a dozen
enustari
already seated. A beautiful red-haired woman in a black dress, her white skin making her seem almost monochromatic, stood behind an empty chair.

My eyes locked on her, the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. Her hair spilled around her creamy shoulders, framing an expressionless face that regarded us with a disinterest that was erotic in its totality. As I stared, the smell of cherries swallowed me, warm and lush, and I realized with a start that the
enustari
was floating a fraction of an inch off the floor.

I knew these were
enustari
because of the stink of gas in the air, and the long line of heavy men and women lining the walls, silent, some with black hoods on their heads, some wearing nice suits, all of them nursing open wounds, most on their arms, a few on their heads.

A few other men and women, younger than the mages at the table, stood around in the shadows. Well-dressed, blank-faced, they were all
saganustari
, I figured. Apprentices to the bigwigs,
ustari
who were waiting patiently for their
gasams
to die so they would be free, so they could ascend. One guy was a good-looking dark-skinned man in a beautiful overcoat and gorgeous leather gloves that looked like they'd grown on his hands, supple and perfect. He stood in the shadows by the Bleeders, next to an ancient woman in a wheelchair. My eyes caught hers, and a feeling of dread, black and heavy, settled on me. I looked away as fast as I could.

Fallon walked briskly toward them. A few stood up as he approached, a soft rustle of expensive suits and shimmering dresses. Fallon paused next to the floating red-haired woman, who turned her head regally to look at him, her face amused. Instead of looking at her, Fallon turned toward the old woman in the wheelchair.

“Mika, if you think I will speak to your Glamour, you are sadly mistaken,” he said. “When will you tire of these games?”

“Evelyn,” said the beautiful, floating woman, her voice like soft chimes, musical, the sort of voice you wanted to hear forever. My heart was pounding in my chest. I wanted to turn and run and find a dark space to hide in, and I wanted to record her voice and edit it so that she was phonetically sounding out my name. “You are fortunate to be here under truce.”

Fallon snorted, still addressing the old mummy. “Do not threaten
me
, Mika, or who will craft your toys for you?”

“Enough,” snapped a broad-chested, purple-faced man in a well-cut shiny suit, his jowls quivering. “We have
business
.”

Fallon turned and smiled at him. “Alfonse, a pleasure as always,” he said in a way that strongly implied the exact opposite. Fallon then beckoned me forward before sliding into the chair in front of the beautiful red-haired woman as if she weren't there. Her smirk came a second too late and looked a trifle too forced. Fallon reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a small green plastic army man, the kind I'd played with as a kid whenever my father wasn't kidnapping me, when my mother wasn't throwing away all my toys in a fit of fresh rage. Fallon set it on the table in front of him, and the rest of them visibly shifted in discomfort.

“Come, Mr. Vonnegan. Sit. Describe her. Describe
everything
.”

I DESCRIBED THE
Old Bat, the house, the crawl space, the girl. I described the route that Lugal had taken while using me as a puppet, everything I could remember.

“Lurida,” said a surprisingly young girl, swirling whiskey in a glass. She was a skinny brunette and she was too confident, seated with people three, four times her age, no hint of nerves.

“Almost certainly.” Fallon nodded. “Lurida Moret, the crazy old bitch.”

The brunette grinned, her face red; she was pretty drunk. “Evvy, you
agreed
with me!”

Fallon's eyes tightened. “Elsa, we are not
friends
.”

“Who's Lurida Moret?” I asked.

For a moment there was silence. Then the girl named Elsa hooted, banging her glass on the table. “Aw, shit, kid, you stepped in it
now
. You ain't s'posed to fucking
talk
! Some o' these creeps haven't been spoken to by a human being who couldn't set them on fire with a spell in
decades
.”

“Mr. Vonnegan is here under my protection,” Fallon said.

I thought of Hiram, the stink of fear on him, the humiliation of it. I stirred myself. “Who says I can't set you all on fire with a spell?”

Silence again. A tall black man with snow-white hair and a close-shaved beard leaped up, hissing out Words, too low for me to catch, and his hands began to glow an ominous yellow, the light like a tiny sun. Heat radiated from his hands, making me sweat.

“You will be silent,” he said, his voice accented, lilting.

“Sit down, Mycroft,” Fallon said, sounding irritated. “We are under truce, and he is under my protection, as I
just said
. Shall we attend to the matter at hand?”

Mycroft glared at Fallon, and the yellow glow brightened, the heat becoming intense. “You have no Bleeders, old man.”

Fallon nodded. “You know who I am. I do not need Bleeders.”

Mycroft looked around, then glanced at the tiny green toy on the table in front of Fallon. The confidence drained away with an almost audible hissing sound. When no one said anything else, the yellow glow faded away, and he resumed his seat with a scowl.

In the shadows behind him, a fat man in a baggy suit crumpled silently to the floor.

“So,” Fallon said. “If we are done prosecuting war crimes, if we are done sharpening personal vendettas, Lurida is the matter at hand.” He glanced at me. “Lurida Moret is of our order. A skilled
enustari
with particular skill in Summoning, in controlling and embedding intelligences. We studied together, for a time.”

“She's batshit, kid,” Elsa said to me, cackling. “Thinks we never should have let y'all monkeys invent things. Wants the world back the way it used to be, you in the fucking mud, confused all the time, us ringing a bell and having Bleeders served up.” She drained her glass, winked at me, and held it up over her head, shaking it until one of the Chinese waiters scampered over to refill it.

“A century too late for
that
,” a fat Indian man with a huge nose like a potato said. “
Two
centuries too late.”

“Call the vote,” the fat, jowly man named Alfonse said. “That's why we're
here
.”

“The vote is called,” Fallon said immediately to forestall any discussion. “I vote action. Lurida will do nothing but rouse the entire world against us, reveal us to them, make them afraid. She overestimates her legion of Stringers. She must be put down.”

Put down
. I jumped a little. His voice was cold and dispassionate. I never wanted an Archmage of Fallon's level to say those words in my general direction.

Silence, and one by one they put up a hand, looking to the next person as they did so. The only one to vote against was the red-haired woman, who merely smirked again, studying her nails.

“So voted,” Fallon said. He turned to look at me. “Come, Vonnegan. You may yet learn something.”

10.

ON THE RIDE BACK
into New York, the silence got to me. I was sitting next to an
enustari
, one of the few Fabricators left alive, as far as I knew, a man skilled in imbuing objects and machines with magical energy and demonic intelligences. Somewhere in the middle of the tunnel, I stared at Gumby doing his swami pose and decided the worst-case scenario involved Fallon doing something terrible and permanent to me in a fit of irritation.

“Who's Lurida Moret?”

For a moment I didn't think he'd answer. He was staring out his tinted window, calm and still, an elegant old man in a nice suit. “An old woman,” he finally said, “whose obsessions have swallowed her.”

He turned his head to look at me. “For a very long time she was an unremarkable mage. Skilled, and thus she held rank. But not influential
.
Age is not friendly to some people. It unbalances them. For decades, you can rely on yourself. Your body, your mind. You react in predictable ways. Then—suddenly, it seems—the rules change. You can no longer do the things you once did, or not so easily. And you see it, the void, the black circle on the horizon. Some choose to look into that void and they see wisdom. Some look and they see nothing. Lurida looked and she saw the end of us, of our order, swarmed by silicon chips and robots and nuclear weapons that put power that once cost a million lives into a button. And she despaired.”

He looked away.

“Do not underestimate despair, Mr. Vonnegan. There is a forbidden
biludha
called the
Nidigir Nigal
. It does not hurl fireballs. It does not split the earth open. It does not animate the dead or make the caster a god. It simply instills despair in all who hear it recited, and they tear open their veins and bleed for the ritual, and the next people to hear it do the same. That is all it does. Despair is powerful, and it conquered Lurida. She has come to blame her failure on the modern world. She believes that once she has drained every battery, disconnected every engine, burned off every gallon of gasoline, we will be ascendant, and she will be the first of us, celebrated for the victory she has engineered.” He shook his head. “She has been a joke among us for years, always exhorting us to rise up and take our rightful place, as if the bloated insects that are the main players of our order would ever leave their comforts behind. Now it appears she has become impatient and set her
arad
against the modern world.”

I decided to press my luck. “How come you don't need Bleeders?”

He made a ticking noise in his throat. “To not need Bleeders, Mr. Vonnegan, you must bleed a
great deal
.” He turned to look at me again. “You are talented, boy, but you must choose this life or not. Your peculiar moral stance does not simply limit you, it holds you underwater, and you drown.” He sighed, looking out the window. “As the vulgar would say: Shit or get off the pot.”

I turned and stared out my own window.

Fallon knew a lot, but he was depressing as fuck.

WE DROVE UPSTATE,
into the flat darkness of the country, lit occasionally by a small town burning in the distance. Ten black cars, followed by a dozen panel trucks and Econovans larded with Bleeders, winding our way up two-lane highways. I had flashes of memory from when Lugal puppeted me back to the city, and when we turned down a dirt road in the literal middle of nowhere, I could picture the place: a charming white farmhouse, rotten and sunken, all peeling paint and leaking roof and scrawny chickens wandering around.

One by one the cars parked on the wild, overgrown grass in front of the house, random. Apprentices scrambled out to open doors, the woman in the black dress materializing next to the limousine like a hologram flickering into life. Mags leaped out of Fallon's other car and ran over to me, smiling nervously. I patted him on one massive arm and he ducked his head, happy.

Hiram sauntered behind us, hands thrust into his pockets. When I looked back at him, he just stared at me, expressionless.

“Hang back,” Fallon said easily. “If you will not bleed or be bled, you are of no use in this moment.” He glanced back at Hiram. “Bosch, you old warrior, with me.”

Hiram nodded curtly. I'd never imagined my fat little
gasam
in the company of some of the most powerful mages in the world, but he seemed right at home, even if everything he was wearing had been stolen from department stores; the rest of them—even the Bleeders—were wearing expensive tailored suits.

They gathered together on the lawn in front of the house, murmuring. Elsa, the girl, cackled every few minutes, drinking from a silver flask. The Glamour, the woman in the black dress, floated serenely; I looked around but couldn't see the old crone in the wheelchair. There was almost a party vibe until Fallon, face grim, walked briskly to the front of the crowd and held up a hand, looking elegant, ramrod-straight, competent.

Everyone fell silent.

“Lurida Moret!” he shouted, his voice carrying unnaturally, booming and reverberating. “You have been judged!”

“Lem,” Mags whispered, sounding meek and terrified, which was his fourth setting, after confused and angry and hungry. He nudged me and pointed.

There was movement out in the darkness, and a lot of it. People, dozens and dozens of them coming from every direction. They were of all ages, sizes, and colors. Some were dressed in suits, some in uniforms, some in pajamas, some naked. Some walked with the stiff gait of the recently dead, dripping bits of themselves as they shuffled.

“Her Stringers,” I said quietly to Mags. “She's called them home to fight us off.”

“
Lem!
”

I nodded—I sensed the gas in the air, too. A giddy deluge of it, enough blood to fuel some
deep
magic, all for the taking. The night was suddenly filled with voices, ten spells being spun out simultaneously. There was a thrill in the ground under our feet, like something huge waking up, about to shrug off seven tons of dirt and rock and rise up to crush everyone.

“Stay near me, buddy,” I said. “We're fine.”

As I said it, I knew we weren't, because I felt a familiar presence pushing against my thoughts. It was cold and massive, a consciousness way beyond my own. Persistent and, I sensed,
angry
. It was my pal Lugal, summoned back, I suspected, by the Old Bat. I stiffened, panic sweeping through my veins, burning. There was no doubt; it was Lugal. I would know the blank feeling of its presence anywhere, for the rest of my life.

It passed me over.

I was surprised, and then I felt stupid: Of course it had. I was small potatoes. Lugal wanted spells, it wanted knowledge, it wanted the Words, arranged so it could simply compel you to cast it. It now knew that I had no spells to offer, and I was standing twenty feet from some of the most knowledgeable and skilled
ustari
in the world.

I imagined Lurida, the Old Bat, alone in her little office, knitting, whispering her Words while her hooded Bleeders dropped one by one, bleeding their last as they'd sworn to do years or weeks or moments before. I took a step forward, thinking to warn Fallon, and then froze as a blood-curdling shriek cut through the air. I felt a sudden drain of gas, someone pulling
hard
from a Bleeder—all the Bleeders, just indiscriminately summoning every drop of blood they could get their brain on.

And then Elsa, the young, cackling girl, rose into the air and began to glow, her lips moving in a constant stream of Words. She began as a silvery shimmer, like a fairy, and slowly brightened, becoming a blinding image of a girl as she hung there, still, peaceful.

Fireballs shot from the crowd at her, immense balls of orange and red and yellow flame that appeared with a pop of displaced, superheated air and rocketed up at her, four streaks that lit up the crowd like noontime. Elsa spoke—Lugal, reaching inside her and moving her lips, working her lungs like bellows—and the fireballs fizzled one by one, raining sparks down onto us.

Mags grabbed my arm and squeezed, and my hand went numb.

Elsa shimmered and whispered, and the grass around us burst into flames, a roaring wave of fire that swirled over our heads like a tornado. The heat was intense, my hair crackling like kindling. It flashed away, replaced by the cold night air, and three mages were sucked up into the air and hurled away as if an invisible giant had picked them up and thrown them afar.

I clawed my way forward, Mags acting as drag, trying to cling to me. The field had descended into chaos, the
enustari
doing their best to flee, their apprentices and Bleeders throwing blocks, the whole group of the cowardly bastards breaking immediately. Step one: Run the fuck away. Step two: Run
faster
.

Fallon swam up in front of me, and I took hold of him. He glared around.

“The
morons
!” he shouted. “The
Picsas
!”

“What do we do?”

He oriented on me with his sharp gray eyes as if he'd just realized I was there. “We are
fucked
,” he snarled. “They have
broken
, and she will tear them apart with blood and her
arad
. Without any fucking discipline, nothing we do will pierce her defenses, and she will have her way with us.” He bared his teeth. “Someone must get past her little army and slit her throat.”

“Fucking
subtle
!” I looked around.
Broken
seemed like the right word for it. I saw myself in the bar, the blade in my hand, cutting deep, the demon seeking the worst, most powerful spell it could find, seeking to do as much damage as it could. Damage without reason. Damage just for the sake of inflicting it.

I looked back at Fallon. “Fine—I'll go!” I shouted.

He oriented on me again. Flames erupted around us again, lighting us up. He nodded slowly. “Can you?”

I glanced back at Mags. He nodded, firm, convinced as ever that I could do anything. I turned back. “You lift the Wards on the front door, we'll make it. We'll get to her, we'll take her out. You keep her busy!”

He nodded, whipping out one arm and catching a fleeing Bleeder by the arm and yanking her in close. “
Ya
, I will organize these cunts. Go!”

I nodded, and turned back to Mags. I put my hands on his shoulders, and he looked at me with such intense trust and fucking
affection
that I wanted to turn and run. I'd never had anyone look at me like that.

“Get me inside that house, buddy,” I said, hoarse. “Don't let anyone stop you.”

He stared at me, then straightened up, and I realized that Mags had been stooping ever since I'd met him, and though I'd known he was huge, he was actually huger. He nodded. “Get behind me.”

The flames died off again, three more people sailed into the air, Elsa shone like the moon above us, and I pulled my switchblade from my pocket and snapped it open.