Foreign Devils

by John Hornor Jacobs

  It was still light and I found myself walking down the mountainside, through the cobbled pink travertine streets. Matrons bustled their wards and called wayward children to dinner, shopkeeps swept storefronts while waiters at cafes set up lanterns and daemonlights in hopes of drawing evening crowds. I stopped in a tavern in the Distrito Centro, off the Calle Cuélebre, and had a few beers as the light outside went from pink to dusky blue to a deep azure as I listened to the constant, low-pitched mutterings of a team of waggoneers having just delivered a cargo of wool from Covenant. Afterward, I left with the rolling gait of someone who had drunk a good amount of alcohol but not nearly enough.

  I can’t say if I was headed there all the while or if my feet had a mind of their own, but I turned off the street I walked onto a side street, followed it downhill aways through the Distrito Centro until I came to the Calle Reyes Basoalto and then from there into the western neighbourhoods of The Slough.

  Shitsville.

  Along the Calle Lurbira, I found the building I wanted, the one with the sign of a dagger half-out of its scabbard upon a pillow with the word ‘Welcome’ in common tongue written at the bottom and ‘Kvinthé’ below it, indicating dvergar, too, were welcome. Red daemonlight filtered onto the stone street below. From inside there was laughter, the squeals of female voices and rumbling sounds of men. I entered and there spent an expensive long time in the pleasures of the flesh.

  It is very easy to judge one on what acts they commit of necessity. At that time it had been over four years since I had indulged in the labours of the flesh. I am old, and I was old by human reckoning then due to that blood that set me apart from all society of man, and all society of dvergar. Except that society I paid for. But physical desire works differently in dvergar. As we age, our body-lust occurs with less frequency, but when it occurs, it’s every bit as powerful and pressing as the young might experience. Moreso, truly, because we have the desperation of those who know and have known death.

  When I left, night was fully upon the mountainside. I followed the Calle Lurbira out and took a wide stone-walled passage until I came to the Calle Tartaló which I thought might bring me back near the Icehouse Hotel but instead ended up leading me into a warren of tenements. There was a hushed stillness to the air, everything was quiet, and I found myself on a dimly lit street walking along with a group of indistinct labourers who seemed to accept me as one of their own. We came into a wide-open plaza dominated by a statue, this one out of place because it was carved out of dark basalt. In a rough hand, not as refined as you’d find in Dvergar or Rume, a large vaettir male was sculpted from the basalt in a fierce visage. A fourteen-foot-tall stretcher, its hair messy and its eyes intense and rapacious, holding a longknife in one clawed hand. The rows of sharp teeth were visible beneath its sneering stone lip. At its feet lay a huddled figure curled in a foetal position, with a single word chiselled into the basalt base: Monstruó. My gaze was immediately drawn to the leering face of the vaettir and for a moment I thought of Agrippina. Her razored teeth. The sulphurous taste of her mouth when she kissed me.

  The intensity of the statue’s expression caught me so that for an instant, I didn’t perceive the crowd gathered around it, or the man standing in the statue’s shadow on an overturned wooden potato crate.

  The crowd was strangely quiet, listening intently, and as I moved through them, I recognized the garb of labourers and miners, horsemen and tanners and laundresses, of alewives and pointmakers, leathercutters and dyers, knackers and kedgers. There were Medieran faces, and some dvergar too.

  As I approached I was able to see the softly speaking man standing on the crate. He was as I am, part dvergar. Between us, we had enough dvergar blood to make one whole dwarf. Or one whole man.

  He wore a strange high collared suit, discoloured with white or pink dust, and there was a dark smudge of dirt on his chin. He had a thick, compact build and though his suit hid some of his form, from his ropey, gnarled hands I could tell he was possessed of an almost unimaginable strength. He had a wide face with a long nose and a thick expressive mouth full of irregular teeth. As I drew nearer, his wide set brown eyes seemed to recognize me and there was a moment he paused in his speaking and inclined his head, acknowledging my presence, or acknowledging our brotherhood. Afterwards, I could feel the eyes of some of the crowd upon me.

  ‘… Something began growing in my soul then, and no simple thing, no shoe, no sock, no drink of cacique, no freshly laundered shirt, no kiss, no bite of the flesh-apple, no full woman’s womb could deny that growth. I was lost in some wood and the recognition of being lost was growing.’

  He paused, and a murmur swelled in the crowd and then died away.

  ‘We have come to this garden,’ he said, raising his hands in a manner to indicate that he did not mean this plaza, or Passasuego itself, or even the Talaveran Mountain on which Passasuego sat. He meant here, the Hardscrabble territories. And maybe even all of Occidentalia itself. ‘Some of us,’ he said, looking at me, ‘are born of it of old. Our bones are the bones of the earth, our breath the wind, our blood and ejaculate the molten sap. We are of this place.’

  Someone in the crowd yelped, ‘We are of this place!’ and another in the crowd echoed, ‘Of this place!’

  ‘And yet. They would war over it. They would plumb its depths and cut down the mountains with their infernal machines to harvest every last bit of silver to bind their daemons.’

  Of course, they were the Rumans. But he never said it.

  ‘And before them, it was your ancestors, who built this town and carved the stone from quarries, who first tarnished their hands with silver, who first tainted themselves with the notion to possess this land.’ He bowed his head. ‘It is hard, yes, to look at this, that we are part of the evil wrought upon this place. Yet we are still of this place.’

  A woman cried, ‘I claim no mastery!’ to a great chorus of agreement.

  The man – the torta vendor had named him Neruda – bowed his head as if overcome with emotion. ‘I claim no mastery,’ he said, quietly. ‘I claim no mastery,’ he said again. ‘No mastery over this land. I claim no mastery over any of you. I own no slaves. Where I see injustice, I do what I may to counter it. Is this not so?’

  ‘Yes!’ came from many mouths, both men and women.

  ‘As you should do.’ He stopped, turned to face the statue behind him. ‘We are not vaettir!’ he cried. ‘We do not predate on our people. We do not claim what is not ours. I created this statue,’ he said, placing a powerful hand on the basalt surface of the stretcher. His voice rose and fell, projecting out over the crowd, ‘To remind us! In the vaettir’s face you can see the faces of those who would claim mastery over us!’

  Something was wrong here. At the edges of my awareness, I could hear a rattling and some muted voices raised in outrage.

  Neruda went on. ‘In the supplicant body, you can see the aspect of all who have borne subjugation. But some day, we will have to be both! The supplicant and the vaettir! For they are of this place! We shall take back our heritage!’

  Exclamations, now, of fear and alarm. A groan came from the crowd, swelling. There was the synchronized exhortation of a cohort of Ruman legionnaires in formation. Hup hup hup hup. The rattle of carbines and the clatter of gladii in their sheaths. For now. A cornicen blew his horn, piercing the night, and optios bellowed ‘Disperse! Disperse or you will be shot!’ while the crowd that had been gathered before the statue began to scatter with bleats and desperate shrieks of panic and alarm.

  I glanced back at Neruda and for one instant, his face contorted in a private fury, he clutched his hands into fists. Then he hopped off his wooden crate and dashed down the open mouth of an alleyway.

  The legionnaires were coming closer and, all in all, if flight was good enough for Neruda, it was good enough for me. They would make no distinction among dvergar, I was sure. I ran north, angling away from the approaching legionnaires, and into an entryway and down a close cobbled passage until I was on the
next calle and running north and west.

  The city was quiet and my heaving breaths came in plumes by the time I reached the Icehouse and stumbled up to my room.

  TWELVE

  8 Kalends, Quintilius, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis

  I was groggy the next morning – and my legs ached from the running – but Fisk and I were at the Pynchon before the first hour. Winfried greeted us, looking much the same as she had the day before, clad in her glossy black suit, hair drawn back, and her face looking severe and a little wan.

  ‘Sleep okay?’

  She glanced at me. Surprised, maybe, I would ask such a familiar thing. But we’d been on the trail together.

  ‘No,’ she said and no more. Two bellhops maneuvered the copper bucket of chipped ice while a third bustled about placing a magnificent potted hothouse orchid in the spot where the apple blossom had stood, unboxing some small loaves of dried bread on a cutting board with cheese and putting a ceramic bowl full of nuts and dried fruit next to it. Winfried tipped them and they left.

  ‘How many on the list today?’

  ‘Six,’ she said. ‘Four had left their cards with the concierge. I spent a small part of my evening scheduling and answering them, and then spoke some with the patrons of the Pynchon’s bar. I heard a very curious thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Medieran Embassy has been shuttered, and the staff dismissed.’

  ‘Has Ambassador Quintanar fled?’ Fisk looked alarmed. ‘That would mean—’

  Winfried shook her head. ‘The woman I spoke with had not heard that the Ambassador had left Passaseugo. And why would he flee?’

  ‘Because he knows something.’

  Winfried raised an eyebrow. ‘Or because he harbours the murderous traitor Beleth, as we speak. Could that be so?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘We’ll investigate,’ Fisk said. ‘But not until after these portraits. Only then we’ll pay a visit to the Ambassador. Abandoning this gambit now is foolish.’

  ‘One of us could do it,’ Winfried said.

  ‘One man against Beleth and his ilk? Leaving only one of us to protect and apprehend him if he appears for a portrait? And if we cancel portraits, and Beleth is alerted by our absence …’ Fisk chewed his lip. ‘No, I think whatever has happened, it will have to wait until this evening.’ He turned to Winfried. ‘Do you have your schedule?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and handed him the notebook the list had been written in the previous day. When he was done, he handed it to me.

  Pomponius 2 hora, Dimia 3 hora, Vorinas 4 hora, Xalvadorus 5 hora, Hafaleil 6 hora, Grantham 7 hora

  ‘Xalvadorus is a strange name.’

  ‘All their names are strange, save maybe Pomponius,’ Fisk replied. ‘Did you meet Xalvadorus? Or was he one of the ones who left his card?’

  ‘Xalvadorus is the owner of the Pynchon, I discovered. Dimia is a well-to-do trader of luxuries – saffron, spices, silk and tabac, and high-quality liquor. He is …’ She frowned. ‘Quite fond of himself.’ She paused for a moment. ‘The last, Regia Grantham, is the woman I spoke with about the Embassy.’

  ‘All right. We’re looking at Pomponius, Vorinas, this Hafaleil person. The rest, I think, we cannot worry about.’

  ‘Will we take portraits again tomorrow?’ Winfried asked.

  Fisk shook his head. ‘No. If Beleth hasn’t come out of the woodwork by now, he’s not here. And the news about the Embassy makes me think there’s a possibility they’ve pulled up stakes.’

  We spent the next little while breaking our fast. When it was time to hide in the bedroom the coverlets on top of the massive four-post in the sleeping area looked unmussed and unused. I nudged Fisk and pointed with my chin. He took in the room, looked back at me. ‘We can’t guard her all the time, especially not from herself,’ he whispered.

  ‘You gave her a gun,’ I responded, voice hushed.

  ‘Would you stop with that noise? We’ve been over this.’

  We settled down to wait and watch.

  Pomponius lived up to his name; a puffy, overfed contractor for the Ruman legions here, he insisted on his infernograph being taken with a barrel of salt-pork, emblazoned with his own name, and his prize Molossian dog that promptly shat upon the carpet. Pomponius found this extremely amusing and chortled that the dog was as vigorous indoors as out. There was a considerable wait as Winfried rang for room cleaning and a dvergar maid came and removed the stinking scat and lit some fragrant candles but the floral scent mixed with the odour of faeces caused Winfried to open both sets of Gallish doors to the balcony. Once the cold mountain breeze had swept away most of the stench, Pomponius had his infernograph taken but something during the process, most likely the daemonic sympathy between subject and inferi, caused the Molossian dog – named Kuko – to thrash wildly in his owner’s grip and bite his master on the hand, viciously. Pomponius cried out, falling to the floor in a great quivering pile of flesh as the enraged Kuko bore down on the fat man’s hand until it was a mangled mess.

  Fisk leapt from the hidden confines of the bedroom, placing a boot into the dog’s rump and sending him rolling away to yelp madly, scramble to its feet – the poor dog’s eyes showing entirely too much white – and dash toward the balcony where it flung itself over the ornate wooden railing to crash in a bloody heap on the travertine stones of the Calle Rhiboza far below. Pomponius lurched to his feet and waddled to the railing to look down at the ruins of his pet. The blubbering sound began then. He wondered aloud, ‘Kuko? Why would you do such a thing?’ and cradled his mangled hand. Winfried rang for service and requested a physician or barber to bind the wound and there was an uncomfortable wait as Pomponius wept loudly on the divan about the loss of his Molossian.

  When Pomponius was gone, Dimia, a tidy little man in a well-tailored and stylish suit, quietly had his infernograph taken and seemed very pleased at the result; so pleased, in fact, he offered Winfried ten gold denarius for her to take a portrait of his whole family, as long as he would receive the larger archival print. Winfried responded that she would think on it and he left her with his card with the invitation to call upon him at her convenience.

  Once he was gone, Fisk whispered, ‘This next one has the ring of a devil.’

  ‘Vorinus?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fisk replied.

  ‘Or a cobbler’s son.’

  Esa Vorinus turned out to be a heavily perfumed madame – so heavily perfumed that Fisk and I could easily smell her in our hiding spot – of one the more affluent whorehouses in the Distrito Centro. Before her infernograph, she insisted upon disrobing.

  ‘That is not necessary,’ Winfried said, a bit nervously.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Madame Vorinus answered, pursing her heavily reddened lips. ‘I am still young enough to take men to my bed, my breasts do not sag. There is nothing more pathetic than an old whore lamenting the beauty of her youth. I will have proof!’ she said, and disrobed quickly. Winfried took her blood with a little explanation regarding the necessity of it and then the majority of the hour was spent in conversation with Winfried about the most artful and seductive pose Vorinus might strike on the couch (they settled for her laying demurely on her right side, her left leg brought across the knee to hide her sex, and her torso raised to best expose her breasts). The portrait proceeded quickly and once the instant of daemonic sympathy was established, the infernograph scratched and hissed frightfully.

  Xalvadorus was an older gentleman, white-haired yet still very hale, looking very dapper in an off-white suit and who, after the blood-letting and portraiture, was very interested in convincing Winfried to take drinks and dinner with him in his private suite. I was surprised at how artfully Winfried turned him down without angering or insulting him.

  After Xalvadorus left, there was a few moments of breathless waiting for Hafaleil. Since Grantham was the woman that Winfried spoke with the night before regarding the Medieran embassy, if one of those scheduled for portraitu
re was going to be Beleth, by elimination Hafaleil would be him.

  ‘Be ready,’ Fisk said, low and through his teeth. He rested his hand on his six-gun and watched the room in the mirror, hawk-like.

  But Hefeleil, when she knocked on the door, was a rich, horse-faced matron who balked at the letting of blood necessary for the infernograph and apologized profusely for wasting Winfried’s time as she quickly made her exit.

  That gave us all a moment’s respite where we enjoyed a drink, a visit to the honey-pot, and took a little food. We were back in position when the Grantham woman arrived.

  Winfried greeted her by name – Servillia – and they positioned her on the couch. I had a momentary jolt of recognition. Grantham was the woman whom I had noticed in the Medieran restaurant the day before, during my visit to the college of Engineers. I was about to bring this to Fisk’s attention when Winfried spoke.

  ‘Tell me again about the Medieran embassy,’ Winfried said as she readied the bleeding-bowl and knife for the letting. ‘Has there been any new information?’

  Servillia Grantham gave a throaty laugh. ‘No, I’m afraid not. No more information will be coming from the embassy.’

  Winfried paused, considering. Then she said, ‘At this point, I will require a small amount of your blood. You see, the daemon within the infernograph requires a sanguine link between itself and—’

  ‘Yes, yes. I am fully aware of the need,’ Servillia said. She stood, approached the device and cocked her head, observing it, her black eyes glittering. ‘It is a cunning enough device, this is true,’ she said. ‘Who did you say invented it? Ysmay?’

  ‘I did not say,’ Winfried said, taking a step back.

  ‘Do you know, perchance?’ Servillia asked.