Foreign Devils

by John Hornor Jacobs

  ‘Why doesn’t this ward dispel Hellfire Imps?’ I asked. ‘Shouldn’t my ammo be duds now?’

  ‘You are a perceptive man, Mr Ilys.’ She looked at me closely. ‘But mistaken. Each round is protected and whole so that its warding is inviolate even if within another ward.’ She thought for a moment. ‘These pellum wards are strictly for daemons who find corporeal vestments. More, I cannot say.’

  I nodded. Engineers will discuss theory, but dig too far and they will begin speaking in generalities. I thanked her for her time.

  ‘Do please let me know what you find out. I will render any assistance I can,’ she said.

  ‘Well, we’re working on something,’ I replied. ‘Something that might draw him out.’

  ‘What might that be?’

  I told her about the infernograph, and as I did, her expression brightened. ‘Extraordinary! That’s a device I’d like to examine!’

  ‘We can probably arrange that.’

  ‘It is something that would, most assuredly, be of interest to Beleth. I think the idea has merit.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’

  ‘Afraid?’

  ‘Most traps need bait.’

  ‘Ah, I understand your reticence.’ She took my hand in hers. It was warm and strong. ‘It has been a pleasure, Mr Ilys. Do stay in touch,’ she said, giving a rather impish smile and then turning to walk back into the interior of the building.

  The sun was high in the sky when I stumbled into the bright air of the mountain side and Distrito Artisan. I realized I hadn’t eaten in hours so I stopped at a small open-air restaurant near the Plaza Cordova and had some coffee and some buttered corncakes and sausage. The name of the place reminded me of a girl, then, the girl that started all this. The White Rose of Cordova, Isabella, who died at the hands of stretchers. The food was good but a strange mood settled on me and I felt as though I was being watched. There was no one at the cafe except for a fresh-faced young matron in an expensive-looking dress with her nose in this week’s copy of The Passasuego Gazetá. The headline read ‘Talavera Silverload to See Arrival of Mechanized Drill.’ Engrossed in the story, she paid no apparent attention to me. I paid my bill and wandered back down the Calle Llázaron toward the northern side of Passasuego. There was no sign of the tail and since he or she already knew where I went, it was reasonable to assume they knew where I came from. Stopping in the Icehouse’s stables, I checked on Bess, and Fisk’s black, and waited for a while, tossing the stablehand a couple of coins to keep him quiet as I climbed into the hay-loft to settle down with a view of the open door.

  The stable boy piddled about below – feeding horses, shovelling shit – and no other soul entered, no shadow crossed the threshold. After an hour, I clambered down the loft’s ladder and toddled back into the hotel proper and our room. There was a note on the floor by the door. It read: Checked into the Pynchon. Tipping heavily. No one knows of U. Will continue making inquiries. – WL. I left the note on Fisk’s bed.

  With the afternoon growing long, I set myself up in an out of the way corner of the bar and occupied my mouth with a glass of cacique.

  Fisk strolled in a little while later, spotted me, and sat down.

  ‘A man’s gone missing. His name is Buster Brell,’ he said. ‘Family man, three or four kids. Good fellow, apparently. Big guy, worked as muscle for one of the wealthier tradesmen in town. He stopped coming home, the family reported him missing to the vigiles.’

  ‘Big guy, then?’

  ‘A bruiser. Hiramis – the chief of vigiles – said that Buster’s kid came by the other morning and reported seeing him. Called out to him. Buster didn’t respond. The boy said that he “looked funny”.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  I filled in Fisk on what I learned from Sapientia about Beleth’s history, his penchant for daemonic investment.

  ‘Figures,’ Fisk said, frowning either with the memory of the Crimson Man who rode him so hard, or Beleth himself. ‘Seems like he leaves a world of shit behind him wherever he goes.’

  ‘Seems so,’ I said. I thought about it for a while and said, ‘I might’ve been followed.’

  ‘Followed?’

  I told him about the shadow and the sense of being watched at the cafe.

  ‘You ever had a feeling like this go wrong?’

  It’s true that dvergar have some senses keener than most humans – we can see well in the dark, we have a great affinity for stone and mountains and finding paths, we take to crafting things with our hands. Once I had to find a dead man in a bear cave and felt something then I thought was vaettir coming for me in the night as I stood taintless, without weapon, in the mouth of a cave. I was wrong then. But, on the other hand, it could’ve just been the damned stretchers fucking with me.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I told Winfried I would look into getting her a piece.’ He said this rather sheepishly.

  ‘What was that about me picking up strays?’

  ‘Ia-dammit, Shoe, her husband died.’

  ‘Yes. And now you’re going to arm her and get her close to the man she wants to kill.’

  ‘Beleth’s stuffing daemons inside people now. And they’re damned deadly. She has to be able to protect herself.’

  ‘That’s true. But she’s bloodthirsty. She can keep it tamped down – hell, we all keep it tamped down – but she’s like to do something stupid.’

  ‘I’ll watch her.’

  ‘You’ll have to.’

  Fisk grew quiet, raised a hand to beckon a waiter over. The bar had only a few patrons; the card sharps and hustlers who usually ensconced themselves at the tables as the night grew old, the whores and sweetboys that worked the crowd, none had made their appearance yet.

  ‘We’ll go ahead with Winfried’s plan.’

  ‘You’ve got your legate pin. Andrae said that Beleth had been seen with the ambassador’s son. We could go get twenty legionnaires and just raid the embassy. Go in, swords and guns out. Surprise him.’

  ‘And if he’s not there, then what?’ Fisk said, scowling. ‘Tell Ambassador Quintana, ‘Sorry, mister, just looking for a traitor to Rume and we suspected you might be harbouring him’?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘“Ah” is right. We go ahead with Winfried’s plan.’

  I drank my cacique, called the waiter back over and asked him if he could fetch a small piece of parchment from the main desk and a writing utensil. He returned with a writing tray with pen, inkwell, blotter, and a single piece of paper. I jotted a note to Winfried – three little words Proceed with plan and took it to the main desk and asked to have a boy run it to the Pynchon.

  We arrived at the Pynchon the next morning at the first hour and inquired after Winfried at the front desk. The fussy man with an inkstroke-thin moustache looked at our clothes – his upper lip curling into an oily sneer – and asked our business with her. His stare lingered on me for a while. When you’re dvergar amongst wealth and not serving, toting, or building, you get some looks.

  You get used to it but it never gets easier. Thing about being half-dvergar is that wherever you go, surrounded by human and dvergar alike, you’re always on the outside looking in.

  Fisk placed both of his large hands on the desk and very quietly said, ‘Our business is our own, mister,’ and I thought he was going to threaten the integrity of the man’s skin in some way but when he drew back his hand, there was a coin laying on the wood where one of his hands once had been. The fussy man smiled then and was far more accommodating. He nodded his head at the far end of the desk. A small card stood on a stand at the end of the expanse of desk indicating that the Lomaxes would be taking appointments for infernographs throughout the day in suite 215.

  ‘You can see there her suite number,’ he said. ‘Would you like me to have a porter announce your arrival?’

  ‘No sir,’ I said.

  ‘We’re just a bit of muscle to make sure everything goes smoothly,�
� Fisk added and tipped the brim of his hat.

  The lobby of the Pynchon hotel was a study in degrees of red. From the polished pink travertine floor to the rose drapes, from the carmine carpeting to the burnished amber of wood. It was as if we had stepped inside a titan’s asshole and found it well appointed. Expensively accoutred guests in fine suits and custom dresses took coffee and tea in the restaurant, smoked Medieran tabac and chatted in the lobby. Some, even at this early hour, drank claret from crystal glasses and cold beer drawn in tankards from a cold room.

  ‘Cornelius would fit in just fine, here,’ I said out of the corner of my mouth.

  Fisk didn’t respond. He walked past the concierge and receptionist’s desks and took the stairs. Some heads turned to watch us, many of them with blank expressions. If Beleth had set a watcher here, we would know it soon.

  Winfried answered our knock, quickly. I had grown accustomed to seeing her in a more rough and tumble garb on the trail – her dusty suit and britches, the bowler hat – so seeing her now in a more professional outfit was slightly alarming. She was dressed in an exquisitely cut suit, black, and had pulled back her hair in a way that made her face seem much more severe and delicate. She was an attractive woman physically and in some ways, her habit of dressing like a man – which I have heard is an affectation of those Malfenian women who have endured the sterilization process – did nothing to allay the fact that she was well-formed, and might even have exaggerated it by contrast. If she could survive her time in the Hardscrabble Territories and this lust for revenge, she would have her pick of willing men and women suitors and would find any suit she might make welcome.

  ‘Why are you staring so, Mr Ilys?’

  ‘You look different,’ I said.

  ‘Is there something wrong with how I look?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  She appeared as if she was going to smile.

  ‘If I need to be aware of some flaw in my appearance—’

  ‘Nope. You’re just all fancy,’ I said, waving my hand at her get-up. I looked around. Whistled. ‘This place is cush.’

  Indeed, the suite she’d taken was quite opulent. We were in the parlour, where thick, ornately woven Parsuan rugs centred the room, and the walls were lined with expensive teak and mahogany furniture – a burnished credenza, a dry bar with an army of leaded cut-glass tumblers and three decanters of various liquor, a ceramic bowl of crushed ice, a platter of pomegranates and blood-oranges, two massive sprays of fragrant apple blossom branches, a red-velvet couch with arms ending in artfully carved oliphant heads, paintings of whimsical monkeys dressed in formal wear with oculars, tinted glass daemonlights, an ornate ablution-bowl and three lavishly framed mirrors. In addition to all of this, there was the blood bowl and a gleaming steel knife along with a good amount of folded cotton bandages.

  The infernograph was set up in the centre of the room, pointed at a divan and a nearby chair.

  ‘Wasler was always the one who could arrange the portrait space,’ she said, softly, looking at the chair and divan. ‘He had the artistic eye.’

  ‘How many portraits do you have scheduled for the day?’

  ‘Five.’

  Fisk walked around the room, opened the door to the bedroom. ‘Shoe and I will wait back here,’ he said. ‘Listening.’

  ‘Can I look at the names of the folks who’ve scheduled portraits?’

  She handed me a small, leather-bound book, marked at a page. I opened it. It had five names written in a neat, tiny hand.

  Bestus 2 hora, Houszmein 3 hora, Sacedón 5 hora, Raüm 6 hora, Sullust 7 hora.

  ‘No Beleth or Unchleigh, then,’ I said.

  ‘Apparently not,’ she agreed.

  ‘He’s no fool. Hoping he’d sign up using his own name – or one of his aliases – was foolish. But he still might show. Not being able to help himself.’

  ‘Do any of those names sound—’ I paused, thinking. ‘Suspicious?’

  ‘None,’ Winfried replied. ‘Er. All of them.’

  I laughed. ‘We’ll be here. Right behind the door.’

  ‘It won’t be closed, will it?’

  ‘No,’ Fisk said. He moved inside the bedroom, banked the daemonlights, and began swinging the door shut. ‘If we keep it open, just so,’ he said, stopping when there was just a hand’s span before the door was fully shut, ‘we’ll be able to see almost all of the room in the mirror, there. Go to the door.’

  She moved to the entrance.

  ‘Can you see me here?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘The door is obviously slightly ajar, but with the lights banked in there, everything’s cast in shadow.’

  ‘Good. We’ll set up a couple of chairs.’

  While Fisk moved about in the bedroom, I stood near Winfried.

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Though there is a bit of an excitement I’ve never felt upon me.’

  ‘Fear?’

  ‘Anticipation.’

  ‘I imagine you’ve got the piece Fisk got for you secured around here,’ I said, and her eyes flicked to where the infernograph stood. ‘Fine. That’s fine. You need to protect yourself.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Beleth is smart. But he’s no brawler. He lets other folk do that for him. If he comes in, we’ll see. Move to the infernograph and get your piece,’ I said. ‘We’ll take care of the rest.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said. Her face remained blank.

  ‘Don’t make me say it.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Say what, Mr Ilys?’

  ‘If he comes in, let us know and we’ll take care of things. If he – or one of his minions – gets rough, don’t hesitate to draw and shoot. Put one in his heart. I imagine you’ve thought about it, before now, anyway,’ I said. ‘That’s how pain works on a person. It festers and you don’t even know it’s there. It grows and grows silently until it can’t be contained.’

  ‘You sound like you know from experience.’

  ‘It’s a monster of a world,’ I said. ‘Not Ia, nor the gods, not daemons, not the old gods nor numen, none of them ease the pain of passage through life, ma’am. They are just forces to be harnessed or justifications for our actions.’

  ‘I would never have pegged you as an atheist,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not. I believe. But I do not love them. I save that for those that deserve it.’

  We were both silent then.

  Fisk came from the bedroom. ‘It’s closing in on the second hour. We should take our positions.’ He looked around the room. ‘We’ll be ready and watching.’

  With a few breaks, we spent the day sitting in the dark, peeking through the hands-breadth gap in the door at the reversed image of the sitting room in the nearby mirror. Julius Bestus was a fat butcher with enormous jowls and a florid expression who initially balked at the sacrificial cut for the portrait. Eventually, he screwed up his courage and allowed Winfried to make the wound on his palm and fill the bowl with blood. He watched, wide-eyed, as Winfried mixed the crimson stuff with ink and filled the infernograph. However, he soon calmed himself and the portrait proceeded without incident.

  Houszmein, a well-to-do Teuton physician’s widow, dressed in mourning garb and carrying the urn of her late husband’s remains, was next. She sniffled interminably during the infernograph and picked at the bandaging on her palm after her blood was taken. Willem Sacedón was a Gallic scrivener employed by the legionnaires as an intelligence man, and Raüm was a centurion from the garrison. They arrived together, heads close, either lovers or bosom friends. Their infernographs were taken separately and once Sacedón’s proof was complete, they immediately exchanged the images. And laughing, they pressed their cut palms together in imitation of a wedding ceremony’s nuptialis sectum. Lovers revealed.

  Gaius Sallust was a cadaverous civil engineer in charge of the aqueducts flowing into Passasuego and salaried by the Ruman governor, as all civil engineers were. He said barely two words during the whole process of blood tak
ing but watched avidly as the infernograph took down his likeness on parchment. When Winfried gave him the small proof as payment for his likeness, a toothy grin cracked his visage, making the crags and wrinkles of his face become almost masklike. He uttered one word, ‘Marvellous!’ and then, thanking Winfried, exited the room.

  ‘You’ll need to go to The Slough if you want to see the real grit of the occidens,’ Fisk said. ‘Or at least the Distrito Centro, where you’ll find the backus boys and baillies, the cobblers and hansars, masons and rubbishers.’

  ‘Normally, that’s where Wasler and I would be. However, I’m not so invested in the anthropological documentation at the moment, Mr Fisk.’

  ‘No, I reckon you aren’t,’ he said. He stretched and worked the kinks out of his back, shook his legs to get some circulation going. ‘I’ll find the back way out of the hotel and head to the Icehouse. Shoe, coming?’

  ‘I think I’ll take a walk, stretch my legs some,’ I said. ‘A long day hiding.’

  Fisk’s face clouded. ‘That’s the worst part of it,’ he said. ‘I’m for being on horseback, gun in hand if need be. This skulking about’s got me off my stride.’ His mouth puckered and he looked around as if he wanted to spit but finding no spittoon was forced to swallow. ‘Shitfire. I need a smoke and a drink.’

  ‘Buck up, pard,’ I said. ‘Welcome to your first honest day’s work in a long time.’

  ‘Honest? Go on with you,’ he said, and waved away my teasing. ‘If that’s honest, I’ll eat my saddle.’

  ‘And me? What should I do?’ Winfried asked.

  ‘Go to the Pynchon’s bar. Talk with people. Check the prissy gentleman at the front desk to see if anyone has left cards for a portrait,’ I said. ‘How’s the money holding out?’

  ‘There’s enough left for the next couple of days, barring any unforeseen expense.’

  ‘Send a note if you need more,’ I said. ‘I hope this won’t take days upon days.’

  ‘So do I, Mr Ilys,’ she added.

  Fisk tipped his hat to us and left while I remained in the suite for a little while, drinking some of the good whiskey from the decanters and eating a blood-orange. After performing some obscure maintenance on the infernograph and annotating and storing the large portraits she had taken during the day, Winfried bid farewell and went downstairs. I followed shortly after, found the servants’ stairs near the rear of the hotel and made my way outside.