by Adrian
“You’re boring,” she taunted me. “And of all of them, you had the most potential to
stay interesting. You’re becoming like Lorne. Set in your ways.”
I remembered our liaison. The memories had lost none of their power to thrill. A year
of my life given over, five years before the War, to Tessa. The heights of ecstasy and the
depths of anguish, and the loss of control of my mind and feelings that I could never again
allow myself. Especially not now, not if They had found a way to follow us, after all.
She saw the thought on my face. “You don’t think that… The Traveller said there was
no way…”
I looked across the room at Trevor who was standing beside Sarah’s chair, neither of
them speaking. “And he knows?”
“Well what do we do then? Do we run? Can we stand?” She put a hand on my arm.
“Tyrant, many of us will look to you. I will look to you. You will protect me, surely.”
Her old strategy, in time of danger. When the Other had come, it had been Lorne’s
arm she had clung to, I remembered that well enough. My own strategy in such times is not to
encumber myself. I forced myself to look her in the face, beyond the magic.
“You would inflame the passions of a priest,” I told her, “But not mine. Not any
more.”
She pouted, still not giving up, and I frowned.
“You’re wearing make-up,” I noticed. She hadn’t been sparing with it, either.
“So?” she asked. “It’s done, here. It’s the done thing.”
“You’re wearing make-up,” I repeated. She stared at me, and I thought I saw her lip
tremble.
“So?” she repeated, but I said nothing. The Breaker of Hearts, the Temptress,
perfection of woman, driver of a thousand jealousies, and she had caked it on like an old
woman.
Plastering over the cracks.
I left soon after. Lorne had got rowdy, drunk on grief and scotch. He was calling for
vengeance. “My brother lies slain!” he cried. “The Wishbringer, the greatest of us, lies slain!
Treachery! Some ill hand has struck him down!” I knew it was time to go. I had no worries.
He would not turn the rabble onto me. When I got out into the cold air I realised how thick
with fear the atmosphere inside had been. Fear in sixteen hearts, fear that the Other had found
us at last: that those who had torn our halls down and slain our people and driven us from our
world were coming to finish the job.
A busy few days. I’d not been to the office in two weeks now, what with business,
and then Winston. I couldn’t concentrate with all the family in town. I’d taken a holiday from
it all, left it with the lads to handle the money and the beatings. They knew the trade.
7
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
I knew there was something wrong as I stepped through the door. It was a pokey little
place, fourth floor of an old tenement. I only used it to have somewhere to send the
paperwork. Three rooms: office, bathroom, storage. The office was mostly my desk and
chair. When I walked in the lights were out, only the flicking red of the answerphone flashing
a dim beat in the gloom, that landline I didn’t even use any more. The blinds were down but
the breeze rattled them. I never opened the window. Someone else had done me the favour.
That someone was still in the room. I could sense him. I singled out their breathing,
felt my fists clenching. “Come out,” I snapped, using all my voice. I heard movement,
slapped at the lightswitch.
“Tyrant.” Trevor stood there, in all his shabbiness. Locked doors and closed windows
would not stop the Walker of Worlds.
“Traveller,” I got out. “Explain yourself.”
“We need to talk.”
“Do we? This is about Winston?” I could never bring myself to call the man by his
proper title. It felt too twee on the tongue.
“In part. But more than that.”
“They find out who killed him yet?”
He looked from me to the dingy office walls. “Let’s go somewhere, to talk. Please,
Tyrant.”
People said ‘please’ to me a lot and I’m seldom feeling generous, but recent days had
been anything but typical, so I led him to a little restaurant that owed me. Never pay for
anything, that’s the key to a good life. I had steak, rare. Trevor had a salad, to my disgust. It looked like his first chance for a good meal in months, from his thin face and ragged clothes,
and he had a salad.
“So talk,” I said. The waiter brought some halfway decent wine, compliments of the
house.
For a long time he stared at me, searching for something, and then he said, “No.”
“Don’t play games.”
“No. You must have seen it for yourself at the wake. All of us together, and what?
What were we? Shadows.”
Now it was my turn to be silent.
“We’re losing it, Tyrant. We’re losing what makes us who we are. Our heritage.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“When did you last use your magic?”
“All the time,” I told him flatly.
“For real? For life and death? When did you last trust everything to your title and your
power? Last year? Five years ago?”
I thought of the junkie’s knife frozen before my face. Six, six years.
“You saw them all,” Trevor’s mournful voice droned on. “The Warrior could rend
steel and slay armies bare-handed. Now he wears body armour and carries a gun. The
Huntress still talks to animals, but do they talk back? Sarah’s second sight is blinder than her first.
Tessa paints her face, I thought, but I said nothing.
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Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
“It’s this place,” Trevor said. “This place I led us to. We’re not meant to be here. It’s
poisoning us. We’re losing it all. Eventually we’ll be just like them. We won’t even
remember the Old Country. This dead place, this soulless, godless world.”
“Not that I believe you,” I told him slowly, “but what do you propose to do about it?”
He stared at his plate as though salad leaves had just got interesting and mumbled
something.
“Speak,” I commanded. He looked up at me sadly.
“I’m going back.”
I was speechless. I’d been living with the memories at arm’s length since Winston
died but they forced themselves on me then: that last frantic flight, the Other tearing down
the walls of our palaces, so many of us lost to its cruel oblivion. The loss of all my dominion, my slaves and servants and power. All of us, we family, enemies and friends together,
running for the door that the Traveller held open, and many there were who did not make it in
time.
“If there’s a cure, it will be back in the Old Country,” Trevor went on.
“The Other holds the Old Country,” I pointed out.
“We don’t know even if it’s still there.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I’m going back,” he said again. “While I still can. I will bring help, if help is to be
brought. If the Other catches me, I’ll be gone.”
“Leaving us trapped here.”
He stared at me, suddenly angry, in his miniscule way. “Much longer and everyone’s
trapped here. This is our only chance.”
“And if the Other killed Winston, if it’s hunting u
s here already?”
“I don’t believe that. Neither do you.” And he was right. I didn’t.
“You haven’t thought this through,” I said.
“Haven’t I?”
“No, because even if the Other hasn’t found us, if you go back that may be all the trail
They need, and then what do we do?”
“I’ll be careful.”
“No, you won’t, because it’s the Other and there is no being careful,” I snapped.
People were looking at us now. I stood up and shouted, “Mind your own business!”, and they
did, just like magic. It’s amazing how magical a huge shouting man can be.
Trevor was standing, his salad half-finished. “I’m going,” he said. “I thought you’d
understand. Goodbye, Tyrant.”
He turned his back on me and walked out. In my throat rose the words to bring him
back, the commands that would bind even family.
I left them unsaid, and told myself it was not because I was unsure whether they
would still work.
I had little time, then. On my way back to the office I called up all my lieutenants. By the
time I stepped out of the lift they were waiting for me.
“What’s the deal boss?” asked Larry, the best and brightest of them. “Making
omelettes?” because you can’t, you know, without breaking things.
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Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
“A special hit,” I told him. Lorne would try to kill me, after this, but I was ready for
him. I’d cut that crown off his head with a bandsaw before I was done. I’d had time to plan.
“I can give you a description, but not where he’ll be.” Anywhere, he could be anywhere, but I
knew somehow that he would not have gone far, would not have gone yet. “Larry, trust me
on everything I’m about to tell you.” I pushed my way into the office and through to the
storeroom, Larry and his goons crowding behind.
From the bottom draw of the back filing cabinet I took them: the lodestone and the
clay ball. The clay was crumbling slightly, revealing the texture of what was beneath, fibrous
like coconut husk. I stared Larry down, fixed him with all my presence. “Listen,” I
commanded. “Ask no questions. This stone on a string, just follow the pointed end. Take a
car, he travels fast, but there’s nowhere he can go that this won’t find him out.” Except one
place, which is why there’s no time to lose. Larry was looking as if the world had slipped a
gear, but he was nodding. Good lad.
“He’s a skinny guy, thinning hair, wears camos, looks like a tramp. I want him dead.
Really dead. He’ll be tough as hell, but no fighter,” I said. “When you’ve got him down,
break his head open with this.” I passed over the clay ball. Larry was easier with that. He was
used to killing people in odd ways. It was part of the trade. He wasn’t to know that in that ball was the minced up skull and brains and hair of one of our own. Only we could kill each other.
Larry on his own wouldn’t have had a chance.
Unless Trevor was right. I thought of Warren, in his bullet-proof vest. How much had
we lost?
“Go,” I said. “Call me when it’s done. Don’t screw this up, Larry.”
Larry was reliable. In twenty seconds he and his boys were legging it for the stairs.
I sat at the desk and thought, and thought, and the tenor of my thoughts was not
pleasant. At last the blinking eye of the answerphone recalled me to myself. I didn’t even
give that number out, these days, mobiles being as handy as they are. Frowning, I pushed the
button, took the message.
A minute later I got on the phone to Larry again.
“Not found him yet, boss,” was his terse report.
“Give up,” I told him. “Come back.” I felt utterly empty, sick at heart, and some of it
came through in my voice.
“Everything ok, boss?” asked Larry.
“It’s fine, Larry. Just testing you, you know how it is. Congratulations, you pass.
Have a drink on the way back. Take your time.”
“Right boss.” The relief in his voice showed just how mad he’d thought I’d gone.
I sat there in my office and stared at my hands, thinking many things. I was thinking
of all the times I’d let my magic off the leash, the last five years. How many times? How
many times had I given the command, and had it obeyed not from any power of my own, but
because of my reputation, because of mere fear, because of the mundane authority I could put
into my voice. I thought of all the times I’d faced down someone who wanted to kill me,
because I knew no mortal hand could strike my death-blow.
The bitter thoughts: What have I got left, and do I dare put it to the test? And when
did I lose it? And, like poor relations at a will-reading they flocked in: Did I ever have the
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Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
magic? Was there ever such a place as the Old Country, really? I wondered for a moment
whether Larry would have followed the lodestone in circles through London forever.
Mostly I thought of that message, that last message that had been sitting patiently in
my answerphone for over a week: Winston’s last words, his last day, probably his last minute
judging from the sounds in the background, the traffic and the noise of the river. I had no idea who he thought he was calling.
“I can’t cope,” he had said. His voice had been ragged, raised above the cars. “I can’t
live like this any more. It’s gone, all of it.” The Bringer of Wishes had been weeping into his
phone. “I can’t do it any more. I can’t make people happy any more. I can’t even help
myself.” I remembered how starved he had looked, even after they cleaned him up. “Help
me,” he had said, and his voice would have echoed in my empty office. Then, quiet but
unbearably clear, like a child’s voice: “Was it ever real? This game we played? I used to be
able to grant wishes. I used to be able to...” And the traffic receding, and then static and the call’s end as Winston’s last wish was denied him. Or, perhaps, was granted.
Let Trevor go. And if he brought back the Other, into this dead place, then perhaps
even the Other would regret it, would dwindle and pine and find a job serving hamburgers. If
the Other consumed this place and tore down its high halls of glass in a hail of splinters, I
could not bring myself to feel sorry for it. Not now.
And if Trevor brought back the Other to destroy all the rags that were left of our
family, it would still be better than one day seeing the Traveller, the Walker of Worlds,
hailing a taxi, or crowding into a commuter train, or waiting and waiting for a bus that would
never come.
11
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Care
When I picked Dad up from the hospital he had only a glower for me.
“What took you? Been waiting ages.”
I checked with the staff. Had there been any problems? There had not. He’d had his
telly and his private room, his meals brought to him. He’d been able to shuffle about the
garden and complain to the nurses. They’d even let him smoke outside. It was a very obliging
private hospital and I’d paid them a lot of money for the three weeks they’d had Dad, in order
to make things as smooth as possible for everyone involved. Even so, I got the distinct
; impression that a fourth week might have seen things begin to fray. Dad could be like that.
When I told Hannah what I was going to do she said I was mad. This was good of her,
really. She’d moved to Australia, after all: nobody would be expecting her to look after Dad.
She could have just told me what a good boy I was and let me get on with it. Instead of
which, she did her damnedest to dissuade me.
“Don’t you remember what it was like?” she demanded, over the phone. “I mean,
why’d you think I moved out here, if not to get away from him? And you’re just the same.
Think how it is at Christmas. None of us can be in a house with each other for more than
three days without putting each others’ backs up.”
Last Christmas she hadn’t come. There had been some work-related excuse. And
when Dad had his attack, and we thought he wasn’t going to make it, well, she was pregnant,
after all. She couldn’t be expected to subject herself to the stress.
“Steve, seriously.” I could hear the sincerity there – what she said, she said for me,