Prosper's Demon

by K. J. Parker

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  After many unhappy experiments in the direction of an ideal Republic, it was found that what may be described as Despotism tempered by Dynamite provides the most satisfactory description of ruler. . . .

  —W. S. Gilbert

  I WOKE TO FIND her lying next to me, quite dead, with her throat torn out. The pillow was shiny and sodden with blood, like low-lying pasture after a week of heavy rain. The taste in my mouth was familiar, revolting, and unmistakable. I spat into my cupped hand: bright red. Oh, for crying out loud, I thought. Here we go again.

  I crawled out of bed and tried to get my sleepy brain working. Some people are galvanized into decisive action by a crisis. I get all fogged up, like a cart stuck in soft ground; the wheels turn and turn, but no traction.

  Blood spreads; you can’t seem to confine it, no matter how you try. So I took a leaf out of the First Emperor’s book and built a huge circumvallatory wall, out of fabric—sheets, curtains, the hangings off the walls, all my shirts except the one I was wearing (which was ruined, too, of course)—practically every fiber in the house. By gradually closing this cloth embankment in around the bed, I managed to keep the blood from getting on the walls and the doors, where it’d be sure to leave an indelible mark. Trust me, I know all about blood; every time a sheet or a curtain got soaked through, I wrapped it in something else and shifted it to the upper layer of the heap. The body itself went on the very top, like a beacon on a mountain peak. Luckily the floor was marble, about the only substance on earth blood doesn’t soak into permanently. I wrapped the body up in a beautiful and rather expensive Aelian rug I’d bought only a week earlier, then tied it tight with string.

  To get the whole horrible mess out of the door, I used a modification of the travois principle: a heavy-duty coir mat, which I happened to have by me for some reason or other, with two holes stabbed in two corners to pass a rope through. It slid along quite nicely across the smooth marble floor and left only a few rusty brown streaks, which were no bother at all to wipe up afterwards. Out the side door, then just a matter of lifting the ghastly bale of ruined textiles and the rolled-up rug into my eight-hundred-gulden fancy chaise (served me right for indulging myself; I make a lot of money, and I’m always broke), harnessing up the horse, and off we went. There’s a worked-out quarry two miles or so from where I was living at the time. Sheer sides, deep, and the bottom is grown over with briars and withies and rubbish. I got the horse out of the shafts, put my shoulder to the back wheel, and sent my lovely expensive chaise tumbling over the edge. It disappeared into the tangle like a stone sinking in a pond. Job done.

  On the ride home, I looked down at my hands, and I thought: It’s a bit much. If you can’t trust your own hands, what can you trust? Except I can’t, not after the last time, or the time before that. One of Them had crept inside me while I was asleep and taken control of my hands away from me, used them to murder a young woman, practically a stranger, whose only crime was a little commercialized affection. In this jurisdiction, the worst you get for that is a two-thaler fine and a morning in the stocks (and that’s excessive, if you ask me). Instead, a savage and violent death, at my hands. My hands, you bastard. I’ll have you for that.

  My fault, for thinking I could get away with even a cash-down travesty of ordinary human feeling; my fault for involving a civilian. I thought about that and looked at my short, stubby fingers, used against me like a club snatched from a watchman’s belt by a violent drunk. Not my fault, I decided. Never mine. Always His.

  * * *

  I have an idea you aren’t going to like me very much.

  That may prove to be the only thing we’ll have in common, so let’s make the most of it. I do terrible things. I do them to my enemies, to my own side, to myself. In the process, I save a large number of strangers (on average, between five and ten a week) from the worst thing that can happen to a human being. I’d like to say I do it because I’m one of the good guys, but if I did that, you’d see right through me. And then you’d quote scripture at me: Render to no one evil for evil.

  Really? Even if they’re the enemy? Even if They’re not human?

  You decide. Not sure I can be bothered with it anymore.

  * * *

  I have one thing in common with the Emperor: I was born into a certain line of work, without the faintest possibility of choice. A blacksmith’s son might just possibly decide to run away and enlist or join a troupe of traveling actors or pick cotton or beg on street corners. Not me. Like the heir apparent, I can’t just melt away into the crowd. I’d be recognized, found out, forced back to my honors and obligations. And as for not doing the work I was born to do; inconceivable. Might as well say, it’s entirely up to me whether I breathe or not.

  It’s a commonplace in the trade that ours is a lonely existence; perfectly true. The first thing you do, on discovering that you have the gift (the word gift here used in its technical sense, meaning the ability, as opposed to something anyone in his right mind might conceivably want to be given), is to run away from home, severing all ties with your previous life. This is, it goes without saying, absolutely essential. When I left home, I stole my father’s gold signet ring, all my mother’s jewelry, and my sister’s silk shawl, which she loved more than anything else in the world. I had to. As a family we were comfortable but hardly well-off, and I needed small, portable items that could be turned into money quickly and without fuss. With the proceeds I booked a passage on a lumber barge. Didn’t bother asking where it was going. The point being: They can go anywhere on land, but They can’t cross salt water. Small mercies.

  Actually, now I think about it, I have something else in common with His Serenity. I have absolute authority. Lucky, lucky me.

  * * *

  I knew He couldn’t have gone far. They can’t; They get hungry as soon as They leave a human host, and hunger makes Them weak. He wouldn’t be hard to find, and after pulling off a prank like that, He’d be relatively quiet and peaceful for a day or so. So I went home, had a good wash, brushed my teeth thoroughly (first with soot, then with myrrh and peppermint); packed up my remaining possessions and loaded them into the donkey cart—it was only then that it occurred to me that I could have sacrificed the donkey cart instead of the chaise and it’d have done just as well. His fault, of course. All His fault.

  I’m used to moving on at short notice. Plenty of practice, over the years, and I’m uniquely adapted to a life without roots and connections, although wherever I go, I know exactly whom I’m going to meet, sooner or later. Objectively speaking, needless to say, it’s a wonderful thing that there are so few of Them—otherwise, the human race would be over and done with, finished. But for me, it means I have to deal with the same old faces (so to speak) over and over and over again, until They’re sick of me and I’m sick of Them. And believe me, I’m sick to death of Them, especially when They pull stunts like that.

  My luck was in. The first small town I came to, it was market day. I sold the donkey cart, the donkey, and all my worldly goods at not too unbearable a loss, leaving me with sixteen gulden for
ty-seven, plus the value of one bloodstained shirt, one coarse brown ecclesiastical gown, and a pair of army boots. When you think what I charge for even a run - of - the - mill, in - and - out - in - five - minutes, everyday kind of job, it’d reduce some men to floods of tears, but fortunately I’m not really bothered. Money, things have never really mattered to me very much. Incredibly difficult come, easy go—so what? It’s a bit like being the biggest landowner on an island dominated by an active volcano. You know it’s always just a matter of time.

  When I arrive in a new place, I try really hard not to notice Them, but it’s impossible. I can’t help it, like a dog in a field of sheep. Actually, make that a dog in an alleyful of cats, and it’s not a bad analogy. It’s the same unthinking, instinctive, bred-in-the-bone antipathy, and They don’t like me much either. I catch sight of Them in the farthest corner of my peripheral vision, and I can’t help it; I point, people tell me, like a hunting dog.

  Note peripheral vision. They know when I’m coming, and They freeze, dead still, not a flicker. Sure, I know They’re in the neighborhood, I can smell Them. I can track Them down by smell alone, if I have to, though it very rarely comes to that, obviously. But when I walk down the street, the most I ever see is that tiny flicker of movement right on the extreme edge. And that’s all I need.

  But the hell with it. It’s all about being professional, and not being on duty. Poets don’t write hexameters on their day off, whores don’t make love, soldiers don’t kill people; I can’t help noticing, but I’m under no obligation to do anything about it, particularly when I’m not getting paid. Not unless—

  I heard a woman scream. Reluctantly, I turned my head. A man was lying on the ground, his back arched, his heels dragging furrows in the mud. His face was just starting to turn blue, and the crotch of his trousers was sodden wet. A dozen or so people were forming a loose ring around him, backing away. He made that unmistakable noise. It’s not an actual shout or yell; it’s purely mechanical, the muscles in spasm forcing air out of the lungs through a tightly constricted throat. Another unique sound: the sharp dry-stick crack of a bone, broken by the monstrous contraction of its own muscles and sinews.

  Hence, I guess, the dog-and-cat reaction. Possibly it’s just that I find it offensive when one of Them dares do Its stuff when I’m there, as though I’m nobody, don’t count for anything, chopped liver. I prefer to put it down to compassion, and an undying hostility toward the Common Enemy of Man. But I would say that, wouldn’t I?

  Five long strides brought me up close enough. I looked in through the sides of the poor devil’s head and caught Its eye. It stared back at me; always the same expression, like a bad boy in your apple tree with half of one of your apples in his mouth.

  You again, It said.

  Me, I replied.

  That’s the thing about our line of work. Some monk with far too little to do once calculated it exactly, using the very finest scriptural materials; there are 72,936 of Them. Sounds a lot, except that’s all. That’s to cover, or service, or garrison—choose your inadequate and inappropriate verb—the entire human race, all fifteen million of us. And, of course, They have Their territories, as all predators do; like my fellow practitioners; like me. And, of course, They can’t be killed or die—They just get moved on, like the poor—so, of course, I keep meeting Them, over and over and over again. And moving Them on. I have, after all, the authority.

  * * *

  It looked so sad and wistful. Give me a break, It said.

  Out, I said.

  I just got here.

  Tough.

  Five minutes, all right? Just give me five minutes and then I’ll be on my way.

  Out, I said.

  I have the authority. Out, I say, and out They have to go. They go because They know that if They don’t, I can haul Them out, I can reach in, inside, grab hold of Them by—God only knows what, let’s just say They aren’t put together quite the same as you and me—and drag Them out of there. When I do that, it hurts, rather a lot to judge by Their reaction, though for all I know They may have really low pain thresholds, or They may just make a lot of fuss about the littlest thing, like pigs.

  But—you have to be careful. I can pull Them out; a bit like when you’ve got toothache so bad, you go to the blacksmith. And if he’s a gentle, sensible man, he’ll get a firm grip on it with his tongs and just turn his wrist, this way then that, then one quick, strong, controlled flick and it’s all done and no bother. Or he could break your jaw, and still leave splinters of crushed tooth in there.

  Makes you shudder just to think of it. Well, that’s mouths. These things live in minds. So, as I said, you have to be careful.

  Give me five minutes, It said.

  At which point, you have to make a decision. You consider the amount of damage It’s already done—in this case, a broken leg, because I’d heard it break, and almost certainly a rib or two, high chance of internal bleeding, the little bastards never can resist playing—and then you weigh the harm It’ll do if you leave It in there a moment longer against the havoc It could cause if you have to yank It out. Factor against all that the pain and trauma It’ll feel being extracted, of which It’s so very, very scared; and then you ask yourself, is It really so tired and hungry that It’ll risk being manhandled, or is It simply trying it on, the way They all do, 999 times in 1,000?

  Which is why, in actual appalling fact, it’s a good thing that we have our territories and They have Theirs and we all get to know each other so terribly, terribly well—

  No, I said. Count of three. One—

  Not going.

  Two.

  The man—I think he was some sort of merchant, by his clothes and the fact I didn’t know him—sprang to his feet. No, he was lifted to his feet, for the split second in question he was actually standing on his broken leg, it folded and he collapsed, and by the time he hit the ground it was all over, nobody in there who shouldn’t be, no longer any business or interest of mine. I looked away and walked on.

  And there’s the thing. Anybody who happened to be watching me and not the motionless twisted wreck of a human being on the ground would have seen a man in a shabby priest’s robe stop, gawp, and then pass on by—callous, unfeeling bastard, he’d say to himself; and who am I to contradict? I’d done my professional duty, and there my involvement ended. Sometimes I wonder if it’s more that I hate Them than that I love my fellow humans. But nobody pays me to think that, so I don’t do it often.

  * * *

  Scripture, about which I’m vaguely skeptical, tells us that when the Invincible Sun rose for the very first time, He drew up out of the marshes and swamps that covered the face of the Earth all the noxious, foul damps and vapors in which our universal Mother had been quietly marinating since the beginning of time; these vapors were promptly carried away on the breeze, and according to the highly respected authority I quoted just now, there are 72,936 of Them.

  People ask me, I really wish they wouldn’t, but they do: What do They look like? To which I give various replies, all untrue. Fact is, I don’t know. When I ask the same annoying question of my professional peers, on the rare occasion that I meet one and we’re on speaking terms, I get an answer, and I try and give an honest answer in return. To one practitioner They look like horrible insects; to another, ghastly, unnatural fish or rats, or disgusting birds, or shrunken, desiccated children. To me They look like shellfish. And all that proves is, beauty isn’t the only mote in the beholder’s eye.

  More interesting is when you ask one of Them what we look like. But I digress.

  Seventy-two thousand nine hundred thirty-six, of which 109 operate in my jurisdiction, which extends from the Charyabda Mountains to the Friendly Sea, mercifully excluding the cities of Bomyra, Euxis, and Bine Seauton. Within that area, which comprises three temporal nation-states, at least two of which are at war with at least two of the others at any given time, I’m licensed by His Holiness to expel demons for money. To prove my bona fides, I have a cert
ificate with illuminated capitals and a lead seal, which at least one in a thousand people can read, and a gold ring with a white stone given to me by the Metropolitan Cardinal. Correction, I have a piss-poor imitation of same, a pebble set in brass, which I had made for me when I lost the original. Thus my credentials, and it’s a funny thing. People never seem to ask to see them before I operate; only afterwards, when they’re called upon to pay the bill.

  Mostly, though, I don’t bother, just as the dog doesn’t look round for someone to recompense him for chasing the cat. Why should they believe it was me; and even if they did, what can I do to them if they don’t pay? Put the bloody thing back where I found It? Actually, I have made the empty threat before now, and it works like a charm, but you can’t always rely on people being deplorably ignorant.

  So, having saved the merchant’s soul and sanity and probably his life, too, I passed by on the other side, with nothing to show for it but the splitting headache They always give me afterwards. I went up the street to Haymarket, and looked in at the Harmony & Grace.

  “Oh,” they said. “You again.”

  Inhospitable but fair enough: last time there had been an unfortunate incident, and the time before that, though not of my making. But they respect the gown and they know what the stupid brass ring stands for, and there’s always the lurking fear at the back of their minds: better not to piss off this loathsome and troublesome man, just in case we need him one day. Which is why nobody is ever pleased to see me, and why I never have to buy my own drinks.

  I told them I’d be staying for a while. How long, they asked sadly, is a while? I smiled and said I didn’t know. Would that be a problem? No, they told me, no problem at all.

  You have to learn to think like Them, they told me when I was just starting out in the business; only, don’t get too good at it. They say that to all the students, and none of us really understand what it means at the time.