Foreign Devils

by John Hornor Jacobs

  ‘No,’ Winfried lied. She took a step toward the infernograph, as if to keep something between her and the Grantham woman. ‘If you’ll take your position I will be there momentarily to take the necessary blood.’

  Servillia turned, her dress swinging like a bell, and went back to the couch. She sat down, crossed her legs almost as a man might, and said, ‘Why don’t you have Fisk and the dwarf come and join us here?’

  Fisk’s gun was free of its holster and he was moving into the parlour area before Winfried had time to even open her mouth. I had my guns out and was right on his back.

  ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ Fisk said, his pistol pointed directly at the woman’s heart. His hand did not waver. His voice was calm.

  The woman laughed again, a deep, rich laugh. ‘You don’t recognize me. We have shared meals, pistolero.’

  Fisk’s eyes narrowed. ‘Beleth.’

  She laughed again. ‘You don’t seem happy to see me.’ She looked around the hotel suite. ‘And where is your blushing bride?’ she asked, showing white teeth. ‘Is Livia here as well?’

  Fisk closed the distance between himself and the woman and pressed the barrel of his six gun into her chest.

  ‘Don’t say her name,’ Fisk growled. ‘I don’t know how you’re doing this, you old devil, but I will kill you.’

  ‘Beleth?’ Winfried asked. ‘This is the he who killed Wasler?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, putting up my hand to indicate silence. ‘Quiet now. Don’t say anything.’

  ‘How can he be in … her?’ Winfried asked.

  Servillia – or Beleth inhabiting her body – began to chuckle. She waggled her fingers at Winfried’s face. ‘Ooooh! Magic!’

  This did not sit well with Winfried who, placing her hand in the satchel that held the sheaves of parchment, withdrew a revolver.

  ‘Oh my,’ the woman said. ‘How frightening! So many pistols and not a single one of them can harm me.’

  Fisk withdrew his gun, lowered it.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I wanted to make sure I knew what bumblers were on my trail.’ She smiled. ‘I thought it might be you two. I take it the little playmate I left for you in Hot Springs was at least an evening’s diversion?’ she asked.

  A small, strangled sound came from Winfried and she drew back the hammer on the revolver.

  ‘Who is this slattern?’ the possessed woman asked. ‘And why does she glare at me with such hate?’

  ‘You killed my—’

  ‘Quiet,’ Fisk said, making a chopping motion with his free hand. ‘Tell him nothing.’ Fisk turned back to the woman. ‘I’m going to ask one last time: Why are you here?’

  ‘I wanted to witness the wonders of the infernograph, of course.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  Servillia laughed again. ‘I wanted to play.’ Then her face lost its jovial aspect and became very serious. ‘Thanks to you two, I’ve had a very uncomfortable year.’ The expression on the woman’s face was awful. ‘Very uncomfortable. At one point I was hiding in Ia-damned barns.’ Spittle flew. The anger was becoming titanic. Monumental. ‘And you are going to pay for that.’ She looked from Fisk to me and back again. ‘You all are going to pay for it.’ She paused, thinking. ‘I wanted to start the game with you two halfwits. But now I am done playing.’

  Servillia Grantham stood. Winfried answered by raising her gun.

  ‘If you shoot me, madame, you’ll be killing this woman. By now, my body is miles away from here.’

  Winfried’s jaw clenched. Her hand gripped the pistol until her knuckles were white. She put her finger in the trigger guard.

  Fisk turned to Winfried. ‘Forget it. It’s not him. This is just his puppet. He’s pulling the strings elsewhere.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said. She stepped forward and placed the pistol’s bore on the woman’s cheek. ‘He’s in there,’ Winfried said. ‘And he will feel it when I shoot.’

  There was an instant of stunned silence. Servillia’s eyes went wide in surprise and she muttered something, tulu ondu girum diavolo ondu, or so it sounded and then her eyes rolled back into her head. Her breath became foul like carrion and the Grantham woman’s skin began to pale, as if leeched of colour. She shut her eyelids and canted back against the cushions of the couch so that her whole body became rigid. A sound – a terrible sound – issued from her mouth. It was ancient and its tone hinted toward hideous glee and abominable horrors. When her eyes snapped open again they were so bloodshot as to be totally red. Winfried began backing away from the transformed woman.

  It happened quickly then. The Grantham woman scrabbled backwards on all fours, over the back of the couch and up the wall where she launched herself across the parlour area at Fisk, who moved neatly aside. He was still quick. The woman – now fully possessed by something other than Beleth – hissed in ferocious anger, flexing her fingers like claws, whirling in the enclosed space. She opened her mouth to bellow, hellishly, and her black tongue wormed in the discoloured confines of her mouth.

  ‘A pellum ward would dispel it!’ I yelled. I had my guns out but the daemon-possessed thing had maneuvered Winfried between us.

  Fisk glanced at me, an irritated look on his face. That was a mistake. The daemonic thing pounced the moment Fisk’s gaze was drawn away. She slammed into him, sending his revolver spinning, and drove him across the parlour, knocking over tables and chairs, sending watery cracked ice and fruit spilling. The infernograph tumbled and fell.

  When they came to a rest, the woman was on top of Fisk, tearing at him with her claws and he drew his arms up and crossed in front of his face. ‘Shoe!’ he bellowed.

  Winfried came forward, her gun extended, but the Grantham woman’s head pivoted about on a gimballed neck, lightning fast, to peer at her with wide red eyes, her mouth open, panting and dribbling blood. The smile that came then was slow, like a rift in the world growing, and it spread across her face like oil spilled from a cracked amphorae.

  Caught in the hellish thing’s gaze, Winfried seemed paralyzed with inaction, her gun held to the side.

  The sound coming from the thing’s mouth was hideous. A song maybe. Words sung to some infernal tune. Her thick tongue stirred the air, her throat worked up and down. Like a large puma or Nemean lion, the daemon possessing the woman’s body tensed as if to leap. Fisk bellowed again.

  The gun barrel, when it fell with all the force I could give on her cranium, sent her tumbling to the side. She did not rise.

  Fisk moaned. I offered him a hand and pulled him up. A long furrow traced its way down his cheek and across his neck.

  ‘Thanks, pard,’ he said. He looked at the woman lying on the ground. ‘Damn thing was strong.’

  I looked to Winfried, who had a shocked expression on her face. ‘Rope. We need some.’

  She looked at me as if she didn’t understand what I was saying.

  ‘Rope. We have to tie up …’ I waved my hand at the Grantham woman’s body. ‘Her. She’ll come to in a minute.’

  Fisk, wincing in pain, said, ‘Damn, Shoe. I meant for you to shoot the blasted thing. You’re too kind-hearted.’

  ‘Don’t know if that’s a weakness,’ I said. ‘Or a strength.’

  Winfried, seeming to come to her senses, dug about in some of the jaunting-hearse’s compartments and produced a length of thick hemp rope, suitable for our needs. I trussed the Grantham woman like a hog and stuffed a handkerchief half-way down her throat so we wouldn’t have to listen to her infernal vocalizations.

  ‘Well,’ Fisk said. ‘What in Ia’s name are we going to do with her now, Shoe?’ He shook his head and gingerly touched his face. The wound there welled blood. ‘Another one of your strays?’

  I ignored that. ‘You ever hear of anyone doing something like this? A person, I mean, not a devil? Possessing someone?’

  ‘No,’ Fisk said.

  ‘You, Winfried?’ I said, turning to the woman who stood looking at the destruction of the parlour.


  ‘What?’ she replied. ‘Oh. No, I have not. Help me with this.’

  We righted a table and began picking up the spilled fruit and foodstuff. The hotel maids would need to be called to clean the carpet and sop up the ever-growing pool of water emanating from the melting pile of ice. Winfried began scooping up the frozen stuff with her hands and returning it into the copper bowl.

  ‘Why do you ask that, pard?’ Fisk said, looking at me.

  ‘Because Beleth seems to be doing stuff normal folks shouldn’t be able to do.’

  ‘He’s an engineer,’ Fisk replied.

  ‘That’s true. But he was kinda … I don’t know. Glib, I guess, when he called it “magic”. You ever hear an engineer call what he does “magic”?’

  ‘’Course not. It’s always science to them. Engineering.’

  I pulled a Medieran machine-rolled cigarette from my pocket and matched its tip, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs. ‘Got me wondering.’

  ‘Wondering what?’

  ‘Maybe we can find out what he’s doing.’

  ‘How we going to do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Sapientia,’ I said. ‘If there’s a match for Beleth’s “magic”, I imagine she’ll know it.’

  Winfried provided me with paper and pen and I wrote a note to Sapientia and sent it by messenger to the College of Engineers.

  We waited for dark and hired a cart, rolled the Grantham woman in a canvas tarp I retrieved from our hotel and carried her out the servants’ stairwell. Passasuego was particularly quiet at this time of night. Fisk wore his legate pin to preclude interference from the vigiles and legionnaires patrolling the streets, and we slowly made our way to the Distrito Artisan and the College of Engineers.

  The building was dark but Sapientia waited for us on the front steps leading into the rotunda, holding a portable daemonlight. At our arrival, she ordered two engineer bullyboys to hoist the Grantham woman up while Drusilla took our weapons. Fisk and I gave ours up very easily. Winfried balked.

  ‘You’ll need to turn your weapons over to Drusilla,’ Sapientia said.

  ‘I don’t understand why I should relinquish my pistol,’ she asked. ‘Our cargo was exceedingly dangerous.’

  ‘You give up arms to enter,’ Drusilla said flatly. ‘That’s the way it is, lady.’

  ‘Might want to stay here, anyway,’ I said to Winfried. I am the one who picks up strays, after all, and Winfried had proven alarmingly uncontrollable, especially in respect to Beleth. It might be better for her to not enter.

  She glared at me, her lips tight with anger, and withdrew her pistol from inside her suit coat and handed it over.

  ‘I will need to frisk you,’ Drusilla said.

  ‘Why? You aren’t frisking either of them.’ Winfried gestured at Fisk and me.

  ‘They didn’t balk at giving up their guns.’

  An outraged expression settled on Winfried face, but she endured the pat-down.

  ‘You’re clear,’ Drusilla said. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

  Winfried said nothing.

  There are times you should fight. There are times you have to let go. The older I get, the easier it is to tell the difference between the two. Winfried, however, was young, and in the grip of powerful emotion. So I could forgive her her obstinacy.

  Drusilla led us through the collegium to a large sort of laboratory that stank of burning metal and sulphur. The walls and tables were covered with tools: burins of all sizes, copper plates, mountable ground glass oculars, coils of rope and stacks of unbleached parchment, miniature smelts, flasks and casks, salt and inkwells, knives and blood-bowls, pitchers and crystal glasses, titration flasks, mortars and pestles, traditional candles and daemonlight lanterns, vices, braces, gears and bins full of metal parts, clay moulds, drawn wire. If it wasn’t all so ordered and neatly stored, it would have been too much to take in all at once.

  Sapientia directed the bullyboys to place Grantham on one of the tables and hold her down. Having no fixed restraints, she sent Drusilla to find some more rope and we all waited for her to return. Servillia Grantham panted through her nose, masticating the handkerchief in her black maw as I told Sapientia what had transpired at the Pynchon.

  ‘You’re telling me Beleth inhabited this woman?’ Sapientia said, pulling back the woman’s eyelid to get a better view of the bloodshot eyes. They had darkened so now they looked nearly black and inhuman. The eyes of a shark, or large carnivorous fish; unblinking.

  ‘He spoke and acted through her,’ Fisk said. ‘It was him.’

  Sapientia looked worried. Drusilla entered with the rope and we proceeded to modify Grantham’s bindings so that she could be examined. Once her legs and arms were fixed individually to each leg of the table, Sapientia said, ‘She’ll be marked on her body somewhere. We’ll have to disrobe her.’ She looked at Fisk and me. ‘Will you two be all right with that?’

  It was a strange question but I was nervous about it. I had an instant’s remembrance of Agrippina, the captured vaettir, naked and splayed out on Beleth’s torture board. It is not a memory I cherish.

  I nodded.

  ‘Can you get the thing out of her?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll know once I can see her markings.’ She opened a nearby drawer and withdrew a gleaming pair of shears and began cutting away the woman’s clothes. Grantham was bare within moments.

  Fisk sucked air through his teeth while Winfried was noisily sick in a rubbish bin.

  The Grantham woman’s body was a cartograph of pain and injuries. A landscape of what appeared to be wardwork wrought with a scalpel or burning pin covered her body from head to toe. The time and effort it would’ve taken to inflict such detailed pain must have been extraordinary. I will describe no more of it here. It is something I’ve tried for years to forget. There were already many reasons to hate Gaius Linneus Beleth, but now there were many more.

  ‘He called it Lingchi,’ I said, my voice raw. ‘He lectured me about it as he tortured a stretcher we’d captured.’

  ‘Ah. I heard about that,’ Sapientia said, looking at me critically. ‘I thought it was just rumour.’

  ‘No.’

  She turned back to the woman before her. ‘This isn’t torture, though,’ she said, bending down to examine a bloody intaglio on the woman’s breast. It was relatively fresh and oozing blood. ‘It seems a glyph-based language I cannot fathom, though I would hazard a guess it is Tchinee in origin.’

  ‘A language?’ Fisk asked.

  Winfried, wiping her mouth with a handkerchief, rejoined us. Her face was masklike.

  ‘Yes,’ Sapientia replied, her fingers lightly touching the woman’s skin. ‘I will tell you something most people don’t know, though it’s pretty obvious once you spend any time considering it – engineering is language based. The summoning, the binding, the daemonic investiture, it all occurs through ideography that represents sound and thought.’

  ‘You mean all those wards—’ Fisk patted his six-gun. ‘They’re words?’

  ‘Wards are comprised of glyphs, yes. And glyphs are symbols for thoughts, names, sounds. It’s more complicated than that, really, but that’s an easy way to understand it.’

  ‘Beleth said he’d studied in Tchinee,’ I said. ‘He seemed to have a great affection for it.’

  ‘Yes,’ the head of the College of Engineers said. ‘He was somewhat mad on the subject for a while. But it didn’t fit within our mission. To develop technology. Not daemonology.’

  Grantham thrashed, bucking and hawing and moaning through her gag.

  ‘This is interesting,’ Sapientia said. ‘It’s hard to read through the scabbing, but I will bet a silver pig that’s a corpus locus glyph.’

  ‘Corpus locus?’ Winfried asked, puzzled. ‘The location of the body?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Sapientia responded. She shook her head, looking frustrated. ‘I’m an Ia-damned engineer. I can design a turret gun, I can maintain a mechanized baggage-train.’ Her face soured. ‘But this is beyon
d my ken. Beleth is playing a very dangerous game here.’

  ‘How so?’ I asked.

  Sapientia walked over to a cupboard, withdrew a tray holding an earthen bottle, several pewter cups. Whatever she’d seen in the wardwork carved in the Grantham woman’s flesh did not sit well with her. She brought the bottle and glasses over to a nearby table and poured herself a drink, knocked it back, and then, almost as an afterthought, poured more of whatever liquor it was into the other cups and gestured that we were welcome to it.

  ‘Daemons enter our world through a rift,’ she said. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘Engineer Decius said as much,’ I said, remembering a painful conversation I’d had with Samantha once.

  ‘The rift doesn’t precisely exist in space – you couldn’t point it out on a map, per se.’

  Fisk nodded, walked over and took a cup. Winfried and I followed suit. The liquor was hot and sweet and totally foreign to me.

  ‘This tear in the fabric of the universe, it exists everywhere at once. Yet it does have a centre. Or a point of origin.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said I, thinking back. ‘Terra Umbra.’

  Sapientia nodded gravely. ‘The Shadowland, where Ia slumbers.’

  ‘Ia? You mean Ia Best and Greatest? Ia?’ Fisk asked, pointing up to the ceiling with an incredulous look on his face. ‘Him what sits at the heavenly triclinium and feasts with—’

  Sapientia raised her hand in a silencing gesture. ‘Yes.’ She looked at me. ‘It seems Mr Ilys is initiated into this knowledge. Let him explain it to you when there’s more time. Right now, you need to call the vigiles and legionnaires. Immediately.’

  ‘What?’ Winfried said. ‘Why?’

  Taking a large, exaggerated patient breath, Sapientia said, ‘Daemons, when they enter this world, can enter at any location. There is a fission that occurs when they enter the world and the incompatibility between the two realities causes them to combust. Do you understand?’

  There were general mutterings of assent, but not very assured.

  ‘Bound in warded silver is the safest way to summon the inferi. They cannot expand and the glyphs hold their combustion in check. Should they break loose, there would be a great conflagration and expenditure of exceptional force but it would soon dissipate,’ she said. She held up her hands, fingers splayed and pointing to each other. Then she jerked them apart. ‘But if you bring something over and seat it in a living host or a vestment that it can inhabit, something organic, maybe—’