by Steve Wands
Cairo reached behind, opened a drawer and retrieved two small glass panes. He was beholden to friends at Scotland Yard.
“Run your hands through your hair. Press down upon these plates. Press very firmly so that your palms are flat.”
“What is this?”
“We have made images of your palms. You cannot see them well, but I have a dust to bring them out. I will prepare a report and send my assistant to your accommodations in the morning.”
The Tsar stared across the small table.
“Is this often required?” he asked.
“Yes. I must also confess that I keep a collection. These are clearly the most distinguished palms of the lot.”
Nicholas laughed. He stood, stumbled to the window and shouted. The coachmen and attendants snapped to attention, jumped out of slouching and gambling. The Tsar continued to laugh, bent down and slammed the brandy glass onto the table. Cairo was surprised that it did not break.
“This is a good brandy,” he declared. Then, with sudden severity: “Tomorrow morning. The Crowne Saint James.”
“By all means, sire. My assistant will deliver the report personally.”
Nicholas stared for one second.
“Good,” he said. “Very good.”
*
A ribbon of milk swirled in a cup of cold tea, not yet stirred by the cinnamon that had come from a box of sticks arranged like cigarettes. The spice had been an expensive and posthumous gift delivered by a pretty young woman, an acquaintance of a generous earl. The earl and his wife had caught the sleeping sickness in Zanzibar. She succumbed in the wilderness. He died on the steamer and was buried at sea by a crew frightened of his disease. Only the cinnamon made it to England.
Cairo stared into the liquid. It had fallen asleep in the cup. For London’s foremost metaphysical authority, however, it was shaping up to be another sleepless night. Questions tugged at his mind, particularly the question of whether a person was able to stray from destiny.
He had been having more and more such nights.
The palmist always avoided the temptation to make too much of his palms, to read too deeply into his own lines. Flippant, easy responses—you will have this number of children, you will live that long—were made to clients. When a palmist looked at his own palms, all objectivity was lost. Children. Cairo was destined to have two children, but he had none.
“Mister Cairo.” Another Russian.
Cairo turned to see a bearded fat man standing in an ill-fitting suit as if he were not used to wearing them. He had entered the room and something had come in with him. Something wrapped around the room, clinging to the paneling and books. It darkened the windows. The skull of Hintsa, if it was indeed Hintsa, took notice. There was almost an expression of alarm to its empty sockets. The pages of books seemed to flutter, as if the tomes would launch up like butterflies and hover about the visitor. For a brief moment, Cairo wondered if the man had come to reclaim all of the relics and idols. He had no explanation for this thought, or why it had come to him.
“I am not taking visitors,” Cairo said. “If you call again tomorrow, you may make an appointment with my assistant.”
“I am not here for a reading,” the man said. He walked toward Cairo. The clumsiness of his gait did not detract from the power that preceded him. “I am here, rather, about a reading.”
“You are with Tsar Nicholas at the Crowne Saint James.”
“Not exactly,” he replied, smiling. “I have not yet met the man, thought I will save his child.”
Cairo shuddered.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said.
“Ah, yes. Mister Cairo, you are well known. I … not yet. My name is Novykh.” The man bowed. “Grigory Yefimovich Novykh. Many, and you may, call me Rasputin.”
“A strange word in your language, if I am not mistaken. ‘Rasputin’ carries connotations of debauchery.”
Cairo struggled to keep a solid front, to claim something over this man, but the grave feeling that had filled the room now swelled from the walls, toward the table at which Cairo sat.
“I do not wear the name with shame,” Rasputin said. “One is closest to God when he is in the throes of passion, no? May I sit?”
“Sir, I am not taking visitors.”
Rasputin smiled as he entered the light of the lamp, which dispelled some of the darkness about him. As he sat, his foppery disappeared. Rasputin was young, with tight skin and not a single trace of gray in his bushy black beard. His eyes pierced and seemed to see all things at once. They reminded Cairo of The Mona Lisa.
“I am here,” Rasputin said, “because of what you will tell the Tsar.”
“How could you know? I do not yet know what I will tell him.”
“But I know what you will tell him. You will tell him nothing.”
Rasputin tapped the table to punctuate his point.
“I am a proud man,” Cairo replied. “I do not take well to threats.”
“Those are his palms?” Rasputin gestured toward to the glass panes that sat before Cairo.
“Sir—”
“The man will die. His own people will kill him. But you do not see everything.”
“You are a palmist?”
“No, Mister Cairo. I find the lines of the palm to be inaccurate. Now, lines in the air. Lines in the sky.” He spread his hands above his head and smiled. “Lines on the ground. That is what I read.”
“Lines in the sky, sir?” Cairo’s voice cracked at the end of the question. He took a deep, quiet breath to compose himself. A chill was rising up his spine. It had begun in the balls of his feet. Rasputin’s power was now above and below. “His destiny is not what it should be.”
“Should? What is this word? There is no ‘should,’ Mister Cairo. Plans can be rewritten to accommodate the ambitions of powerful men.”
“You fancy yourself such a man?”
Rasputin leaned closer.
“You know that I am,” he said. It was a growl. “You are a dabbler, Mister Cairo. You play now with forces beyond your understanding. Your shop, your fancy sign on the street. The eye of Horus, the sphinx and the pyramid—all of that. You are just a dabbler, soaking the wealthy. In the end, your insight is but a taste of what there is. You are a charlatan.”
“But you are here to threaten me.”
“Look. Look at this globe.” It had been a gift and had always stood beside the table. “Read Europe’s palm, Mister Cairo. Read Russia’s palm. The life line. It is so short, now. It draws to an end. It is time for her to die. It is time for powerful men to take control of her, and all of the dying empires.”
“Powerful men like yourself?”
“Powerful men. Austria-Hungary, Germany—read their palms. Powerful men must give … life. They must give life back to belief. Back to magic, Mister Cairo.”
“To what end?” Cairo asked.
“To its end.”
“To make it a slave?”
Rasputin laughed.
“It is like electricity, Mister Cairo. It serves he who commands it. Palmists can squander it. It can be dribbled out to the sick and the weak. Or it can be used to bring the fury and the command of God to this world.”
Cairo challenged his growing fear and stared into the man’s eyes. The future played, there. Cairo could see it. Armies marched across the continent. Arcane powers that had been just a trickle to men like Cairo became a flood, drowning them. Cities exploded and disappeared. The innocent, the unknowing died by the millions. The fury and command of God—Cairo saw Rasputin in the next century, dealing death and destruction like cards across a table.
“You will kill the Tsar,” Cairo said.
“No. He will die without me. Perhaps even violently. The circumstances of his death, the world after his death—these are open.”
“And if I tell the Tsar what I see? The fate you write for him?”
Rasputin smiled, revealing crooked and dirty teeth.
“You will only inconvenience me.
” Rasputin stood. The air seemed to flee from him. The building creaked as if it struggled to contain him. “I am not kind to men who inconvenience me, Mister Cairo.”
The bearded Russian turned and departed.
*
The sun was already reaching above the Anglican chapel, the ministers of which were Cairo’s landlords though he had been meaning for months to broach the subject of buying the property. Vicar Hawke had never been in just the right mood to hear the proposal whenever their paths had crossed. The sun cast a shadow of the chapel’s intricate roofing on the upper reaches of Cairo’s wall, and this projection sank toward the floor. The light hit Levi’s Famous Hands, which was splayed open to Robert the Bruce. Two palms pressed flat against the page, as if the rebel king of Scotland were trying to push from beneath the table.
Many were born to be such great resistors and rescuers, but many more were destined to be victims. It was unlikely that they could ever escape that. Carnarvon was a strange mix of the two. The lines on his palms seemed to say that his greatest achievement would also cause his death. Only turbulent times decreed such a fate as that, as they decreed the violent death of monarchs.
It could not have been clearer than on the Tsar’s hands. Cairo was not sure when it would occur. A Tsar lived a full life, in many ways, by a young age. This distorted any map of the life line. But Nicholas was to have several children, though one would be ill. Nicholas had none yet, so he would live at least several years into the next century. Rasputin would fail in the short term—good news for a report in need of good news, if Cairo chose to write the truth of what he saw.
The night had given way to earliest morning without revealing any answers to countless questions. Rasputin dripped with power and could make good on his threat. The Tsar might not have been able to change his destiny, but Rasputin was in a position to capitalize upon it. Cairo wondered, then, on a question that had never occurred to him. Was there that much power in the knowledge? Could a man such as Rasputin, such as himself, use knowledge of the destiny of others to gain such enormous power, to make such ambitious plans? Perhaps anything was possible when one was given such knowledge about powerful men. Rasputin knew the Tsar’s fate and would use it to control the fate of an entire nation, perhaps the world.
Unless it were all wrong—Cairo had spent hours seeking a technique to the palms of high nobility, some set of exceptions that might prove the reading to be incorrect. The hands’ lack of work might have meant that neither hand was favored. A king’s destiny might also have been his own to make. His palms might therefore have been meaningless. Perhaps his destiny could be changed on a whim. A Tsar could forbid magic. But not all of it—Rasputin remained.
Pages of old text, brittle and broken edges of paper, Ancient Egypt up through the modern French thinkers—Cairo had in fact proven that men in power were more beholden to destiny than most. One Ancient Egyptian wrote that he lied to each and every Pharaoh but told the truth to the favorite wives, so that at least they might be prepared. Otherwise, the Pharaohs would make fools of themselves, would purge all of those around them in an attempt to stave off the unpreventable end.
Cairo sat and turned his head from the intense sunlight. The fog had lifted as he had paced the night away, mulling over the Tsar. He knew the books to be right. If it were possible for men such as Tsar’s to change their destinies, then why did they not will themselves away from death, as easily as they had willed themselves into power? The only answer was that perhaps an assassin was born for every king. Cairo wanted to own that book, if such a book existed. Infamous Hands.
An assassin for every king, but not a Rasputin.
“Mister Cairo?” It was his assistant. Zeno stood at the top of the stairs and leaned his thin face into the doorway. “Mister Cairo? Have you been here all night?”
Cairo wiped his brow and shook his head clear.
“Zeno. Zeno, I did not hear you come up. You are a quiet, sneaky old Italian.”
Zeno did not smile, but remained expressionless.
“Are you feeling ill? I can make you some fresh tea, Mister Cairo.”
“No. I am fine, though puzzled by two strange visitors in the night.”
“Well, take comfort. You have a light day. Carnarvon is coming in at noon, and a new client, a man from Sussex, at two. He sits in the House of Commons. But that is all. The sun may stay out today, they are saying.”
Zeno stepped into the room stood, his head bowed, though he was a full twenty years older than Cairo.
“They know nothing, Zeno.” He paused, staring into air. “My friend, I have a report to prepare. I will send you at … ten. Yes. You will deliver it to the Russian mission at the Crowne Saint James.”
“The Tsar, Mister Cairo? You met with the Tsar?”
Cairo seemed not to hear him.
“Tell me, Zeno. Do you think a man is born to be king? Do you think a man is ever born to be a ruler of men? Or is such a thing unnatural?”
Zeno paused and bit his lip in thought.
“A man seizes that power, even if it is given to him. He seizes it, even if only in his heart. That act changes him. He becomes cruel. He becomes corrupt. Even if he does good, he makes enemies.”
“Spoken like a true Roman.”
“And you, Mister Cairo? English and Egyptian blood in your body—they both agree. Monarchs become tyrants and are killed.”
“Monarchs are killed.”
“So often, Mister Cairo, that we celebrate when they are not. We call it glorious when one outlives his reign, when one leaves peacefully.”
Cairo nodded.
“Zeno, would you say that to the Tsar of Russia?”
“I would not. He should know it. His blood knows it, or it would not be written in his palm. And a man who knows his destiny—he cannot change it. He can be more careful and perhaps delay it, but it will catch up with him.”
Cairo smiled. Zeno was correct.
“He might even become insane,” Zeno continued. “He will be wary of people around him so much that he will trust no one, not even his family.”
Cairo stood. Not even his family. Not even wandering men arriving at the palace gate with promises of miracle cures for sick children. Cairo looked straight at Zeno and pointed.
“You will deliver a report that tells the Tsar of Russia that he will die violently by the hands of his own people.”
“Only if it is sealed, so that I have time to escape before he reads it.”
“It is not the Tsar who worries me, Zeno. You have nothing to fear from him. But I will save the verdict for the final line.”
“It might buy me a few more moments, Mister Cairo. My how your mood has changed! Such energy for man who has had no sleep!”
“Make me some tea, Zeno. Tea would be lovely.”
Zeno backed out of the room, bowing, hiding the traces of a smile. The trappings of divination—the head of Hintsa and the relics of forgotten mystics—cluttered the room with moldy, arcane magic. Vestiges of Rasputin’s power clotted in dark corners and under the furniture. The entire place was busy with secret currents and strange energies coming together to produce truths. Some were not true until they were revealed. In the end, though, all had their day.
“Monarchs are killed.”
A skull and its reflection stared at a point along the edge of a mirror. Cairo removed Chief Hintsa to a shelf, sat, took up a pen and addressed the last Tsar of Russia.
*
The Worst Part
By Blake M. Petit
Something moves in the darkness, but that isn’t the worst part. You have spent enough time in the shadows and shrubs to know that not every rustle, not every slow brushing sound is the lumbering dead, but even if it were, it wouldn’t be the worst part.
The sound grows louder, and you start to feel concerned. A quick rustle is nothing to get worked up about. When that sound sustains, when it grows closer… when the dull moans that have filled the world join the rustling, that’s when you have to c
oncern yourself. The moaning is a call, they think. An announcement that fresh flesh is nearby, filling their senses with the rudimentary awareness of prey.
On instinct, you try to retreat from the sound of the moans, even though you know it’s pointless. Sitting in the dirt, you shove and kick with your bare feet, moving all of 18 inches before the iron ring around your ankle stops you, the chain staking it to the ground tight. You kick, trying not to shout and confirm your position, but the ankle-clamp and chain, rusty as they are, hold strong. Your prison is a fifteen-foot circle worn in the grass, the extent of your reach with the chain on your leg. And for anyone – anything stepping into the circle, you will be easily overtaken.
That isn’t the worst part.
As you’ve done so many times, you grab the chain and pull, tugging harder than you ever have, but your arms don’t have the strength they once did, and the stake is set in ground solid as concrete. You struggle, and the chains rattle, and the moans grow louder.
The trees finally part and you see it – the slow, trembling figure that once had a human face, human smile, human mind. The flesh is clotted and gray now, and hangs from the skull in strips. Something ripped a huge chunk of skin and meat out of this thing’s cheek, and the tattered strings of sinew still hang across the gaping hole, yellowing skull and teeth. Its mouth and chest are covered in dried brown blood, and both arms are outstretched, the torn skin dangling from the right like some sort of obscene banner. It reaches for you.
This is the first of them.
That isn’t the worst part.
The trees and bushes part again and again, finally spilling out four of the horrors, each of them sloughing towards you, teeth gnashing, fingers grasping. They’re so slow. It still astonishes you, even now, how slow they are. You could easily outrun all of them, but you cannot run. You could kill each of them, maybe all of them, but you have no weapon.
You won’t need one.
They approach from the far side of the circle, and by the time they cross the stake that keeps you chained, you can feel the scream beginning to gurgle in your throat. You force it back, refusing to give it voice, even as the first creature steps across the halfway point of the chain. Its fingers flex and its teeth chatter, ready to begin consuming you. In its mouth, you see a dead tongue reaching out. In its head, dead eyes are rolled up in their sockets, betraying no emotion at all.