The Inquisitor's Apprentice

by Chris Moriarty

  "Mine. I don't have the stomach for politics."

  Morgaunt chuckled. "What real man does? Politics is just lies, bribes, and flattery. There are better ways for a man of action to make his mark on the world."

  "Is that why someone tried to kill you last night? Because they didn't like the mark you've made on the world?"

  Instead of answering, Morgaunt signaled to his librarian, who slithered silkily out of the room and came back a moment later with fresh ice for his ankle. When she had tended to him, Morgaunt began speaking in clear, efficient sentences that seemed to Sacha like they could have been stamped out by the hydraulic presses in one of his steel mills.

  "The assassin struck here in my house last night, after a private dinner party. But I wasn't the target. The target was Thomas Alva Edison. And the assassin was no ordinary killer. It was a dybbuk."

  Sacha's blood ran cold in his veins at the sound of the word dybbuk. What madman would set a dybbuk loose in New York? A dybbuk was the most terrifying creature in all of Jewish magic. It was hunger incarnate. It devoured souls and grew fat on shadows. The crowded warrens of New York's tenements harbored more souls—and more shadows—than any place on earth. Worst of all, a dybbuk could only be summoned by a Kabbalist. And that meant that Morgaunt was accusing a rabbi of the crime.

  Sacha glanced sideways at Wolf, trying to gauge his reaction. But Wolf seemed more struck by Morgaunt's other piece of news. "Thomas Edison?" he asked. "The inventor? The Wizard of Luna Park?"

  Morgaunt snorted. "A silly name for a gullible public. He's no more a wizard than Commissioner Keegan here. He's a man of science. A man for a new country and a new century. A man who puts the spellmongers out of business by turning magic into machinery. That's the way of the future, Wolf. No more of your quaint European superstitions and your mom-and-pop spell shops. The age of magic is over. This is the age of machines. And the future will belong to the men who have the machines."

  "And what's your interest in Mr. Edison's machines?"

  "Money, Wolf. Money and power."

  Wolf gazed impassively at Morgaunt. Since arriving in Morgaunt's house, Wolf had risen to new heights of blandness. Was it possible to be this dull by accident? Or was boring people to death part of Wolf's famous investigative method?

  "Oh," Morgaunt said, picking up his glass of Scotch and swirling it so that the golden liquid flashed and glimmered in the firelight. "You think I should beat around the bush a bit more? Spin you some idealistic little fairy tale about how I'm really in it for the good of the common man? Well, I don't beat around the bush, Wolf. And I don't lie either. I can't be bothered to." His steely eyes sparked with amusement. "Sometimes I think I'm the last honest man left in New York."

  "You mean, now that you've gotten rid of Roosevelt."

  "Yes. I suppose that is what I mean. But you're still here, aren't you, Wolf? And I'm starting to think you might be an honest man too. That would be a pity. Honesty isn't a very healthy hobby for a policeman." He smiled his terrifying smile. "Not in New York, anyway."

  "Thanks for the warning," Wolf said, as calmly as if they were discussing the chances of rain showers that afternoon instead of the chances that he'd get shot in the back if he got in Morgaunt's way. "I'll bear it in mind next time I get the urge to commit a reckless act of honesty while on duty. Meanwhile, do you have any thoughts about who might have wanted to kill Mr. Edison?"

  But Morgaunt wasn't ready to tell him that. He turned away from Wolf and shot a canny look at Sacha from under his steel-wool eyebrows. "Is that your new apprentice? The one who sees magic?"

  "So they say." Wolf sounded like a reluctant witness repeating inadmissible evidence acquired by hearsay.

  Morgaunt looked Sacha up and down. "I'm about to render you obsolete, young man. Edison's just invented a machine for me that will do what you do—and most likely do it better and cheaper. What do you say to that?"

  Something curious happened to Wolf as Morgaunt spoke these words. He didn't move a muscle, and yet a sort of current rippled through his body. Not witchcraft, exactly. But some kind of energy that crackled just on the edge of Sacha's second sight. Could Wolf have honed the simple art of paying attention to such a height that it had become its own form of magic?

  "Edison's reinvented Benjamin Franklin's etherograph," Wolf murmured in a voice even more expressionless than usual.

  "Better than that," Morgaunt said. There was a grim rumble of satisfaction in his voice. You couldn't really call it a purr. It was more like the sound a lion might make when it glimpsed a particularly tender-looking gazelle. Sacha told himself that this was probably as close as the man ever got to sounding happy. "Come take a look."

  Morgaunt hobbled over to a tall mahogany cabinet behind his desk. Wolf didn't offer Morgaunt his arm, and Sacha couldn't blame him. The mere thought of touching the man made you feel like you were freezing to death from the inside out.

  Morgaunt unlocked the cabinet with a key that he pulled from his own vest pocket, and opened it to reveal row upon row upon row of tightly packed white and gold cylinders. At first Sacha thought they were bobbins of thread. But then he realized that he'd seen these little cylinders before: They were phonograph recordings.

  "This is my little library of souls," Morgaunt told them. "It might not look like much, but I daresay there's more information in this little cabinet than in all the rest of my library. Imagine, Wolf. Edison can take everything that's in a man's soul and record it on a few ounces of wax and gold foil and play it back to you as easily as if it were just the latest Bowery-dance-hall song."

  "And how will this help you find witches?" Wolf asked.

  "Because when you hear a man's soul, you hear everything he is. Magic included. Magic most of all." Morgaunt's eyes glittered like whetted knife blades. "How about it, Wolf? Would you like to sit for the recorder? I'm told it's a remarkable experience. You might learn something. You might surprise yourself."

  "I surprise myself plenty already," Wolf said laconically. "I think I'll pass."

  Suddenly Morgaunt pulled out one of the cylinders and tossed it to Sacha, who barely managed to avoid dropping it. It was surprisingly light: a delicate confection of wax and gold leaf that felt like it might crumple at the slightest pressure. Sacha turned it over. He noticed how the gold glinted in the firelight. He felt the odd pattern of grooves and ridges that swirled around it like the whorls of a fingerprint.

  "Whose ... uh ... soul is this?" he asked.

  "I could tell you," Morgaunt said with a mocking grin, "but then I'd have to kill you."

  "Can we listen to it?" Lily asked. "I'd like to hear what a soul sounds like."

  "What an excellent idea, Miss Astral." The smile that spread over Morgaunt's face as he spoke was even worse than his normal one. It was sly and disdainful. He seemed to be making fun of them to their faces—and enjoying the fact that they were too stupid to see it. "Miss da Serpa, would you do the honors?"

  The librarian undulated over to Sacha and took the cylinder from his unresisting hands. She stared hard at Sacha while she did this, and he found it utterly impossible to breathe while her dark eyes were locked on his.

  By the time he could move again, Miss da Serpa had loaded the cylinder into a machine that looked for all the world like an Edison Portable Home Phonograph, cranked the machine into life, and stepped back to listen.

  What came out was ... music. But it was like no music Sacha had ever heard. It made him feel naked. Worse than naked. It laid bare every secret shame, fear, and desire he'd ever had. It cut into him like a surgeon's scalpel and yanked his guts out into broad daylight for everyone to see. And short of stopping his ears with his fingers, there was nothing he could do about it.

  Finally the music faded. Sacha brushed a hand across his brow and realized he'd broken out in a cold sweat. What a horrible invention! It was indecent. Shameful. Imagine taking a person's deepest feelings and playing them as if they were the latest show tune! Even Uncle Mordechai wouldn't expo
se himself like that. And Sacha didn't have to wonder for a second what his father would think about it.

  He glanced furtively at the others to see if they were as shattered by the strange music as he was. But Wolf and Morgaunt both seemed as cool as ever. And Lily seemed to have enjoyed it. In fact she was so enthralled that for a minute Sacha was afraid she was going to ask Miss da Serpa to play the awful thing again.

  "That's the most astounding thing I've ever heard!" she gushed. "It makes the best opera ever written sound trite and artificial and ... and obvious. Such passion! I mean, there's no other word for it, is there? And yet, so contained. As if whoever it is has a job to do that's so important he can't afford to think about what he wants—or even who he really is inside—until it's done."

  She blinked, obviously struck by a thought that surprised her. "Do all the cylinders sound like that?" she asked Morgaunt. "All those people I pass by in the street without a second glance every day—do they all have that going on inside their souls?"

  "No." Morgaunt smiled that sly smile that set Sacha's teeth on edge. "This one's rather special."

  "Yes, I suppose it must be." Lily sighed a little regretfully. "I'm sure my soul wouldn't sound nearly so interesting. I don't think English governesses and Newport beach parties are the sort of life experience that creates passionate intensity."

  Wolf coughed politely, as if to suggest that maybe it was time to get back to the main point of their visit. "There are a lot of cylinders in that cabinet," he observed. "Edison's been a busy boy."

  "Haven't you been reading the papers? We plan to put a witch detector in every police station in the city by this time next year."

  Wolf pushed his glasses up on his nose and peered myopically at Morgaunt through the smudges and fingerprints. "If you do that, you'll unleash a witch-hunt the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the Salem Witch Trials."

  "Witch-hunt is such a melodramatic word!" Morgaunt's smile broadened. "I prefer to call it a registry. A magician's etheric emanations are every bit as unique as his fingerprints. Edison's etherograph will generate magical fingerprints of every man, woman, and child in New York. Once we have those on file, we'll be able to identify the author of any magical crime—or, for that matter, any unauthorized use of magic whatsoever. What's more, we'll have a registry of every potential magical criminal in the city. We can make it illegal to employ them. Or rent an apartment to them. Or let their children go to school. We can wash the streets clean of conjure men and soothsayers and fortunetellers. We can clean up this city once and for all and make it safe for respectable nonmagical people." He grinned. "And, naturally, we can make sure that people do it all with our patented etherographs, sold through our dealerships, serviced by our repairmen, and rendered obsolete by our new models."

  "Brilliant," Wolf said listlessly.

  "No, Wolf. The brilliant part is what happens later, after we've made it impossible for any law-abiding citizen to employ witches or use magic. There'll be no magic left to do all the vital things ordinary Americans depend on witches to do. No magic to wash their dishes. No magic to cook the food in their restaurants. No magic to make their clothes and books and toys and candy"—here his gaze slid toward Sacha and Lily. "In a little while your average American will go from one year to the next without witnessing a single act of real magic. A little longer, and they'll forget whatever magic they used to know. A little longer still, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as magic."

  "And then they'll depend on your machines for everything."

  "Precisely."

  "And you?" Wolf asked in the dull tones of an accountant trying to make sure he'd gotten his numbers right. "Will people like you and the Astrals and the Vanderbilks stop using magic too?"

  "Why should we?" Morgaunt asked boldly. "Magic is only dangerous in the hands of little people. It's perfectly safe in the hands of men with the strength and foresight to guide America into the future."

  "That's not what the law says," Wolf pointed out, still in the same dogged monotone.

  "Law!" Morgaunt scoffed. "Law is for drunks and weaklings. The only law that applies to superior men is the law of power. You should know that, Wolf. You're no ordinary plodder."

  "Oh, I'm quite ordinary," Wolf protested.

  "You just pretend to be," Morgaunt snapped, "because of some half-baked romantic notion of democracy and equality. But how deep would I have to scratch before you showed your true colors?"

  And then Morgaunt began to work magic.

  It was so subtle that at first Sacha didn't even see it. Morgaunt still had that coldly mocking smile on his face. He lounged in his wing chair swirling his Scotch lazily in one hand. But somehow it felt like he had reached out and grasped Wolf by the throat and was slowly strangling him.

  Before Sacha knew what was happening, the entire room was thick with magic. And this was nothing like the ordinary everyday magic Sacha knew from Hester Street. This magic was larger than mere human beings. It gave him the same unnerving feeling he always got when he looked into the open pits that workmen were digging all over town for the new subway lines. You walked around the city all your life thinking that you were standing on solid ground. But then they brought in the steam shovels and ripped up the cobblestones, and you realized that the earth—the real, living, breathing earth—was still alive down there in the dark beneath the city. And if it ever woke up, it would shake off New York and all its teeming millions like a dog shaking off a flea.

  Wolf and Morgaunt stared at each other. The room seemed about to catch fire. The very air crackled with magic. It felt as if all the magic in the world were being sucked in around them like a great whirlpool, spiraling down into the glowing golden liquid in Morgaunt's hand.

  Morgaunt raised his glass in an ironic toast. "Here's to you and me, Wolf. The last two honest men in New York."

  Wolf didn't answer. A dark flush had spread across his usually pale features. His breath was as ragged as if he'd just run up a flight of stairs. Sacha wanted to rush to help him, and he could see that Lily felt the same. But they were both frozen to the spot.

  And then it was over.

  Morgaunt tossed back his drink with one sharp flick of his wrist and broke the spell. Wolf staggered, gasping for breath.

  "Well, what are you waiting for?" Morgaunt taunted. "Isn't it time to trot off and arrest someone like a good little policeman?"

  "I haven't seen the crime scene. I haven't interviewed witnesses. I haven't even spoken to Edison. And you want me to arrest someone? You don't need an Inquisitor on this case, Mr. Morgaunt. You need an errand boy."

  Morgaunt grinned. "You wound me. I would never turn you into an errand boy. By all means, conduct your little investigation. But the end will be the same no matter what you do. It's all just a game of chess, Wolf. Ordinary players take the board as they find it. I set the board up before the game ever starts so that no matter what moves you make, I still win."

  "And what opening moves did you have in mind for me?" Wolf asked sullenly.

  "You have a bad attitude, Wolf. I like that in a man. I think I'm going to enjoy breaking you even more than I enjoyed breaking Roosevelt. That reminds me, I have a clue for you." Morgaunt leaned over to pluck a letter off his desk. "It arrived in this morning's mail. I've been enjoying our little chat so much that I completely forgot about it."

  Wolf scanned the scrawled handwriting that slanted across the page. "A note from the Industrial Witches of the World claiming responsibility for the attack. That's awfully convenient for you. Aren't they trying to organize a strike at the Pentacle Shirtwaist Factory?"

  "Oh, yes," Morgaunt murmured. "You're going to be much more fun than Roosevelt."

  "I suppose you expect me to go down to IWW Headquarters now and arrest some poor slob for attempted murder?"

  "Would I tell you how to do your job?"

  "I guess I'll have to talk to them one way or another." Wolf looked at the letter again and sighed. "Why is it that people
who confess to crimes by mail never seem to remember to put a return address on their letters?"

  "I don't think you'll have any trouble finding them," Morgaunt said with a laugh like ball bearings rolling across an iron floor.

  And then Sacha's heart clenched in terror, because he knew exactly what Morgaunt would say next.

  "IWW Headquarters is at number eighteen Hester Street. Your new apprentice can show you the way."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Industrial Witches of the World Unite!

  THE TRIP TO Hester Street took a year off Sacha's life.

  First, Lily had to ask him what Morgaunt had meant with his last wisecrack. And Sacha had to say he had no idea. And then there was a traffic jam. And then, as if things weren't already bad enough, Wolf decided that what with all the traffic, they might as well walk the last few blocks.

  It was one of those golden fall afternoons when all of New York pours onto the sidewalks—and every out-of-work Yiddish actor and revolutionary on the Lower East Side was basking in the sun at the Café Metropole's outdoor tables.

  Sacha skulked past, doing his best to hide in Wolf's long, skinny shadow. Even so, he could hear Uncle Mordechai waxing eloquent about the vital distinction between Hamiltonian Wicco-Federalism and Jeffersonian Popular Wiccanism. He shrank into his coat collar and prayed that his uncle was having too much fun planning the revolution to notice that his favorite nephew was aiding and abetting Big Magic right under his nose.

  Wolf took forever to get there—mainly because he didn't seem to be able to pass any beggar by without stopping to talk while he fished around in his pockets for coins to give him. But finally they made it down Hester Street and into Sacha's building without anyone recognizing him.

  Their tenement was a good one—anyway, a lot better than some of the places Sacha could remember living in. The Kesslers had a third-floor front apartment, with two windows opening onto Hester Street and a fire escape big enough to sleep the whole family on stifling summer nights. But seeing the building now, with Wolf and Lily beside him, Sacha realized it was desperately shabby. Maybe even worse than shabby.