by Andy Havens
She walked up through the bush and Wallace stayed right behind her, shotgun held awkwardly at his side, pointed at the ground.
This was not on my calendar, he thought. Turning his head back and forth to catch a glimpse of the devil dogs, he began casting a Way that would let him accurately predict movements and trajectories.
He remembered the words of Herr Goerlich: “It doesn’t matter if something misses you by a hair or a hogshead. As long as it misses.”
“It’s just me, Jimson! Keep your dogs in the hole!” Hieretha called out. Her voice was much stronger than Wallace had ever heard it within the walls of the Library. He’d always considered her voice commanding; but here it seemed to carry more muscle.
“Helen? Helen McKey? Is that you?”
They were over the final rise of the hill and Wallace could see a large, somewhat dilapidated house. Like something from the pre-Civil War South. Pillars in front. Three stories tall. Shutters missing or crooked. A cattle fence running around one side and into the back. A large yard in front, cleared of all the bracken and weeds, with several cars and motorcycles parked in a clump near an empty flag pole.
“It’s me, Jimson. No need for trouble. I’m just here to collect for Solomon.”
“Figured that was it.”
A second man stepped out on the front porch from behind the left corner of the house and Wallace could see that there were others back there, too. Not invisible, but indistinct under the branches and in the shadow of a big willow tree. His Way picked up movement around the other side, too, and he could sense at least two more looking out of windows in the house.
“At least seven of them, ma’am,” Wallace whispered.
“Thank you, Wallace,” she whispered back, not turning her head as they walked forward slowly, casually.
“I told your magpie, Helen. We don’t have ‘em. Haven’t in years.”
Hieretha nodded and called back, “I got the message. But you know I have to come and see for myself. Because even if you had them, you wouldn’t turn them in.”
“Maybe not.”
She kept walking slowly, steadily and Wallace followed. He could now see that the man was a tag: a Mundane marked as an ally to a House. Essentially under the personal protection of a Reckoner, though not really covered by Law. Grievance against a tag was something individuals could settle in a variety of ways. No need to resort to kanli, the only kind of legal vendetta allowed between Houses—the kind that was always fatal to one or more of the participants.
They were all tags, Wallace’s Way now told him. From Earth. Low-level gang members, essentially, gathered to perform onerous or tedious tasks. Or to guard something, he thought. Though unable to create Ways, tags could often be taught to utilize simple, direct ones. Dangerous ones, even.
Jimson looked like a Mundane man in his early thirties, but exposure to the Ways often gave prolonged life and youth. He was handsome, in a direct and physical way, Wallace supposed. Strong body, attractive face. Blonde hair cut close but not cropped. A tidy moustache and a single, silver earring in the shape of an ouroboros. He was wearing a light blue t-shirt with a white Nike logo and faded black jeans. A leash dangled from his right hand. A leash that trailed off behind the corner of the house, laying in wide, loose loops.
He looked Hieretha up and down and said, “You look good, Helen.”
“You look good, too, Jimson. How’s your uncle?”
The man shrugged and looked a bit peeved. “He’s late with the trades. As usual.”
Hieretha nodded. “Stone Tribe aren’t known for punctuality. Not on a scale that’s any help to us.”
Stone Tribe? Wallace thought. That’s a Blood clan… But these are marked as Earth tags. Odd.
Jimson chuckled. “Yeah. He once told me he’d drop by ‘in the morning.’ He meant ‘in the morning about a year from now.’ It’s OK. We don’t rely on his largesse. Not for our everyday.”
“That’s between you and them,” Hieretha said, finally coming to a stop about twenty feet away from the house and the man. “You know Sight.”
He nodded. “Watchers don’t judge.”
“That’s it, Jimson. But we do insist on contracts being kept.”
Wallace could sense movement in the house and around the sides. One more man, hidden deep in shadow behind Jimson, peeked out from behind the corner of the house. Another one that he hadn’t sensed before was now visible, too, behind the curtains in the third floor loft.
Eight, his silent Way told her.
“Nothing to keep, Helen,” the tag said, shrugging. “The whole set was stolen from us. That’s what I told your bird. That’s what I’m telling you.”
Hieretha rolled her shoulders and shook her hair out a bit, the long complex braids untwisting down her back.
“There’s still a contract. You don’t return an item, you owe us the tale of it.”
Jimson shook his head. “That’s not gonna happen, Helen. Stone Tribe isn’t partial to being read.”
Hieretha sighed, scratching the back of her neck and looking mildly peeved.
“My boss is very particular about closure, Jimson,” she said. “We understand. Shit happens. Robbers. Fire. Water. Time. That’s all part and parcel of the collection. But you have to give over the story or we can’t trace the lines.”
Wallace knew what Hieretha was saying, but he didn’t understand why Jimson had gone cold and scared. His Way could feel the tag’s fear. He could sense the same from several of those watching from shadow.
Why do they care? He wondered. We’d have learned the provenance when the items were returned, anyway.
Though younger than many in the House of Sight, Wallace was by no means dim. In fact, you didn’t get any kind of job in the Library itself unless you were pretty smart to begin with. Then you got an education unlike anything available elsewhere.
His mind made the leap almost instantly, and he whispered across a Way to Hieretha so that only she would hear: How it was stolen is important. Or else they wouldn’t care. We wouldn’t have traced the lines very closely had it been returned. There’s something in the loss that they don’t want Seen.
He could feel her nod, though it was barely a visible gesture. More on the level of a microscopic tip of the chin.
She probably knew that all along, Wallace thought.
Jimson twitched the hand holding the leash and it slithered around a bit in the dirt. From the backyard, Wallace imagined he heard a low growl.
“Why now, Helen?” he asked. “It’s way past due. We figured you forgot.”
That last with a wry, almost sarcastic half-smile.
Sight never forgets.
“Wallace,” Hieretha said calmly, hands on hips. “You’re going to lay a Way of Deep Reading on Mr. Jimson here. I’m looking for any and all memories about a set of small Bloodmade paintings, each about the size of a greeting card. Everything from the first time Jimson set eyes on them until he knew they were missing.”
Jimson took a step back toward the corner of the house and held out his other hand, pointing at Wallace.
“If your friend here tries to touch me, I’ll bring out Chucky. And his friends. All my friends.”
Hieretha sighed and rolled her shoulders again, this time letting the leather jacket fall into the dry, cut grass at her feet. The pistols and blades were clearly visible.
“Your primary job, Wallace,” she said in a quiet, calm voice that sounded more like the Mrs. McKey he remembered, “Is to work the Way on him, first, then any of his pack. Before they die. Do you understand?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Your secondary job is to stay out of my way.”
“Now Helen,” Jimson said, backing up a step. One hand up, the other clutching and unclutching the handle of the leash. “You really ought to just get back in your car. I mean, come on, hon. Monday only sent the one of you.”
The woman Wallace had known for decades as Mrs. McKey put her left hand on the hilt of her knife and her r
ight on the butt of a pistol.
“He’s only ever needed the one of me.”
Jimson jerked the leash and whistled between his teeth.
Watching Hieretha, Wallace recalled one Herr Goerlick’s first lessons. About the difference between speed and efficiency. Others often believe the Sighted to be faster. We are not. Our economy of movement, however, makes us seem so.
Wallace had never seen anyone move as… economically… as his Master’s Second.
As the first dengiin came around the side of the house, someone in the attic knocked out a window, sending shards of glass to sparkle in the hot, dry air as they fell.
The beast charging across the yard at them looked like a greyhound with an enlarged, double-hung jaw and three rows of teeth… a kind of lupine shark. It’s eyes were sunk deep in its head and its legs were hinged slightly differently than a Mundane dog’s. It was sleek and gray, ropy muscles bunching as it tore around the corner from behind the house, the snarls of its pack coming just behind it.
Wallace, of course, could observe everything happening at a level far beyond that of the tags, maybe even beyond that of the dengiin. But even he could barely follow or understand the ways and Ways in which Hieretha moved.
She pushed off with her right foot, flipping a small stone in the air. The stone struck and shattered one of the larger panes of glass as it fell, showering Jimson with bright, broken splinters. As his hands came up to protect his eyes, the tension on the leash caused the dengiin to swerve toward him, putting the dog-thing off balance a bit as it lunged at Hieretha. With that extra half-second she dropped to one knee and drew her pistol.
The air above her head –where her torso had been a moment before—hissed as some kind of Blood projectile flew by. Wallace saw that it left a trail of red smoke behind it.
In his peripheral vision to the right, he saw two tags coming around the far side of the house, one of them carrying the stick-thing that had almost shot Hieretha. He didn’t really know how to use the shotgun as a gun, but it was shiny and metal and the sun was bright. A quick Way of calculation, and he was able to turn it in such a way as to catch the sun and blind both of them momentarily.
The dengiin had corrected course, but his pulling had wrenched Jimson off balance, still distracted by the falling glass.
In rapid succession, Hieretha fired three shots toward the dengiin as it leaped onto her.
Correction: tried to leap onto her.
The first bullet tore a chunk out its shoulder and spun it back toward Jimson. The second hit it in the rump, the momentum pushing it even closer to the startled, blonde tag, now trying to get the leash untangled from his wrist.
The third shot pierced the dengiin’s ear, passing through flesh and continuing on to tear open the right, front pocket of Jimson’s jeans, shredding an unopened pack of cigarettes which exploded in a cloud of tobacco.
Jimson screamed as both the wounded dengiin and its two now-visible pack-mates rushed toward him, mad with hunger for the cigarette fragments spilling out of his pocket and all over him. In their frantic rush to find and gorge on the tobacco, they were tearing out chunks of Jimson, too.
Three more tags ran out the front door, all fit men in casual work clothes. Two were holding rifles, one had another ritual stick of some kind. They looked quickly at Jimson, who was screaming higher and louder now, and then back at the two Reckoners of Sight.
”Wallace,” Hieretha said calmly, “Put the Way on Jimson before he’s dead.”
“What about the…” Wallace managed to get out, but she was lunging past him toward the tags coming out of the house.
When in doubt, his father had always said, stick to what you know.
Assuming that Hieretha would handle all the other Mundanes, Wallace cast a Way of Palpable Observation on the three dengiin. They both looked up as if sensing that something or someone was watching them. The first, the one Hieretha had shot, didn’t look like he’d live much longer anyway. The second and third became distracted and sought the source of the strange feeling that a predator was nearby and stalking them.
Without a lot of hope of doing much damage, Wallace fired the shotgun in the general direction of the unwounded beasts.
He missed entirely, and the creatures turned their paranoid attention toward him.
Like dad said…
Wallace cast another Way, one of Precise Scent, on the dengiin. Already gifted with a very powerful sense of smell, the increased sensory load—especially near so much open tobacco—was too much for the simple killers. They howled like wolves, scraping their snouts on the dusty grass, trying to rid themselves of the overpowering odor. After a few moments they gave up, mad with overwhelming sensation, and raced off across the grass toward the woods behind the house.
The first beast was still trying to eat tobacco while bleeding to death.
Jimson was bleeding to death as well. Much of his right hip, thigh and leg a bloody mess of torn denim and fang marks.
Walking up onto the porch, Wallace finished the wounded dengiin off with a blast from the shotgun at point-blank range. He could hear other shots from behind him—some from guns, some from Blood staves. And the shouts of men in pain and confusion.
Before kneeling by Jimson, Wallace chanced a look over his right shoulder and saw Hieretha moving in a complex, running dance of blades, guns and blood. Every time it seemed like something was on a path to intercept her, she shifted balance slightly and continued on, unscathed. The last thing he saw before turning his attention to his own task was her long, thick hair spinning in the bright sun. There was something shiny and sharp woven into the braids.
Wallace knelt in a mess of blood, tobacco and drool. Jimson’s eyes were still bright as Wallace gently placed a hand on the man’s forehead. You could cast a Way of Deep Reading without touch, but it was less effective and slower. Contact near the brain seemed to help, though some from Sight called that a superstition.
Wallace wasn’t taking any chances.
“Don’t…” Jimson muttered, trying to push himself up.
“Peace,” Wallace said, hand on the other’s hair, the Way expanding out to envelop the dying tag. “Tell me about the paintings…”
Jimson relaxed visibly. For many people, especially Mundanes, capitulating to the Way felt like a great weight being removed. That was part of its design. Subjects often fell into a deep, pleasant sleep after releasing their tales.
Wallace didn’t think Jimson would be waking up from this sleep. But he was glad the man’s last few moments would be free of fear and pain.
As the Way caught on the memory Wallace sought, Jimson’s remaining hand patted against the clerk’s arm with a kind of jerky twitch and his mouth moved without sound.
He’s trying to tell me something, Wallace thought, and bent down close to hear.
It was hard to make out, the other’s voice was so quiet, but as the Way of Deep Reading began to spool memories into Wallace’s mind, he thought he heard the tag whisper, “Still a man. I’m… still… man.”
What a poor, sad creature, Wallace thought. But then he was within the Way himself, and only able to see and hear the story they had come to collect.
Chapter 4. Observation
Thomas Brownfield Edgington was terrified to the point of gibbering panic.
He was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming.
It didn’t help at all.
He looked down because he couldn’t help it. Because he was dreaming. Sometimes (most times) in your dreams, you’re not in control.
He saw his feet. Bare feet, toes sticking out into space. He felt breeze on the bottoms of his toes. His heels rested on a cold, stone surface that he knew (without looking) was like a curb, stretching off to infinity in both directions. Beneath his toes was nothing. Nothing but air, distance, gravity, wind, pain and death. The side of the cliff he stood atop was angled ever so slightly away from him, as if he was standing at the top of the tallest, narrowest wedge in the universe.
Not only will I fall, he thought, but I will bounce and roll as I plummet down, tearing and breaking myself against the wall.
He couldn’t see the bottom of the space beneath him. Just the gray wall, slightly darker than the gray curb.
The wind pulled at him.
How is that even possible?
His thoughts seemed somehow clearer than they had been in… in… a long time. At least in this terrifying dream place. There was no sun, no moon, no clouds, just a lot of faintly shining shapes. The sky a series of gray ribbons, moving slowly as they pulled him outward toward the fall, the scream, the breaking, the dying.
What am I doing here? Why am I even dreaming this? Dreams are supposed to mean something. This is just stupid. It’s too simple. It’s too straightforward. I shouldn’t be this scared. I know it’s a dream.
But he felt the wind. Not pushing on him, but pulling at him. Like a giant vacuum cleaner gently drawing all the air toward it. Not a breeze from behind him. Something beckoning him to lean out.
It wants me to step forward, he realized.
He’d had the dream before. The thing out there always wanted him to take the step on his own. To move forward into the vast drop and just let it claim him.
The suction picked up. He had to lean back slightly to resist it. He realized he wanted to resist it. That he didn’t want to fall. There wasn’t that kind of, “Let’s see what happens!” feeling you sometimes get in dreams when confronted with something dangerous or impossible.
“I don’t want to fall,” he said out loud into the dream sky.
The bands of gray said nothing, but the suction increased again and he felt himself being drawn forward.
There were little cues about how high up he was. The wall wasn’t smooth but covered in lots of cracks, some wider than others. The further down his gaze went, the more they seemed to blend into a spider’s web of veins. It was darker down there, too. The light from the faintly shining sky didn’t reach all the way down.
The pulling feeling increased again and Tom lost his balance, overcorrected, stepped back, choking down a scream.