by Anthology
She blinked at that. “We’re not all bad.”
“You are.” I snarled. “But that’s beside the point. I’m just making a living, and killing people beats the hell out of eating garbage.”
“That can’t be the only reason.”
I laughed in her face. When Yvret got back on deck, I used the comm to confirm the money had been wired to my account, and then ordered the ship to dock at the nearest side cavern. I left without saying goodbye or giving anybody any advice—not my problem. I slunk off into the shadows, reverted to a faceless blob that nobody would give a second glance, and oozed towards home.
I thought about what the third slave had said, but only much later. I was taking the form of a Dryth Diplomat, House Ghaisi colors braided into my uniform, at a private table at the Zaltarrie. There was food—better food than I’d eaten in ages—piled high on warm plates, a Quinixi server hovering over my left shoulder, his palps quivering at the prospect of the tip I’d promised him. I was comfortable, respected, left alone.
I held out a plate of algae noodles. “This food is terrible.”
The Qunixi bobbed and swizzled something in its language that translated as, “I’m terribly sorry sir! I shall take it away!”
I deposited the plate in the arachnid’s fuzzy limbs. “I want you to throw it in the dumpster. Out the service entrance—to the left.”
“Sir?”
“Just do it.”
The server left. I wondered if the Tohrroid would be there or not; I wondered if it mattered one way or the other.
How many reasons does a creature need to do what it does, anyway? I made my body shrug, just for practice. I ate well.
A Revolutionary's Guide to Practical Conjuration(Novelette)
by Auston Habershaw
Galaxy Press in the Writers of the Future Anthology, Volume 31
The man with the crystal eye could peel the skin off a camel with his glare, and Abe struggled to meet it. He did his best to meet the man’s gaze, but couldn’t determine which eye to look at. The crystal one was alien, yes—it glowed with a sort of half-light, as though a candle flickered somewhere in its glassy depths—but for all that it was inanimate. Looking at it felt like gazing at a lantern, and the idea that it peered back was unsettling. The other eye—the man’s human eye—was dark and sharp, like a bird’s, and it didn’t blink as it darted up and down Abe’s body. It wasn’t an improvement over the crystal eye at all. Abe tried to hold still.
“You are not a practitioner of the High Arts.” The man announced finally. He took up the mouthpiece to a water pipe and took several introspective puffs.
Abe glanced over his shoulder reflexively. Nobody in the tooka-den seemed to have noticed the man’s comment. It was late, and the evening shadows were deepened by the sweet, heady smoke that bunched around the ceiling lamps. The other patrons, scattered about on deep pillows and separated by muslin curtains, were too deep into their own smoking to even look up.
“Relax, boy. I would not have chosen this place if it were dangerous.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” Abe asked, hands balled into fists.
The man laughed, his bird eye never wavering from Abe. “You do not. You cannot know—this is life. Please sit…or run. Whatever you do, stop standing like a spooked rabbit.”
The man motioned to a chartreuse cushion across from him, and Abe sat. The cushion practically swallowed his bony frame, pulling his feet off the floor. A sickly sweet perfume—a mixture of tooka smoke and stale sweat—puffed up around him. Abe gagged.
The man with the crystal eye nodded. “Much better. Now for introductions: I am Carlo diCarlo, and you are?”
Abe tried to prop himself upright in the huge cushion, but couldn’t quite manage. “I’d rather not tell you my name.”
Carlo sighed. “Obviously not, but you could make one up. I just did, after all.”
“You did?”
“You didn’t seriously think my name was Carlo diCarlo, did you? Come now, I need something to call you besides ‘boy’. Spit it out.”
Abe spat the first thing that came to mind. “Oz—call me Oz.”
Carlo nodded. “So far, so good. Now, Oz, would you like any refreshment? They don’t serve drinks here, but perhaps some food? Tooka? Ink?”
Abe pulled himself to the edge of the cushion. “I’m no ink-thrall.” He growled.
Carlo puffed his pipe and shrugged. “You didn’t have the look, but you never can tell. It’s only polite to ask.”
“Do you have what I need?” Abe said, putting a hand on his purse.
Carlo shook his head and closed his real eye. The crystal one glowed more brightly. “You aren’t accustomed to having illegal dealings with black marketeers, are you? Never mind—a silly question—of course, you don’t. When I received your message, I assumed you were some Undercity alley wizard looking for an edge, or perhaps an alchemist or thaumaturge looking to expand his business down semi-legal avenues, but I see now that you’re just an angry young man with an axe to grind.”
Abe frowned, trying to fashion his stare into something icy. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”
Carlo tapped his crystal eye. “I see a lot more than you realize, Oz. Now, to answer your question: yes, I have what you need. To answer your second question: you cannot afford it.”
Abe tossed his purse on the carpet before Carlo’s feet. It clanked loudly. “There’s 50 marks in silver crowns. I can get more.”
Carlo sighed. “What exactly do you think this peculiar eye of mine does, anyway? I know how much silver you have in that purse—I counted it when you came in. I am telling you that you don’t have enough and that I find it unlikely that any additional amount of money you can secure will be sufficient. You’re out of luck, boy—go home. Honestly, I’m doing you a favor.”
Abe felt his face flush. “I need that book, Carlo. I’ll pay anything.”
“Go home, Oz. Get a job, if you can. I recommend thievery—you appear to be good at it, judging from that robe you are wearing that you clearly couldn’t afford, and all those coins which are not the product of your diligent scrimping. Forget you ever came here and live a much longer, happier life.”
“You don’t understand! My life…all our lives are…” Abe stopped and took a deep breath. “I will pay anything—anything, understand? I need that book.”
Carlo puffed his pipe for a few moments and began to blow smoke sculptures. Birds and serpents swirled out of his mouth and danced with each other in arabesque patterns until they vanished into the cloudy ceiling. It was a simple glamour, nothing more. He supposed Carlo was doing it to prove something, but he didn’t know what. The black marketeer, for his part, simply watched the creatures unfold from his lips in some kind of tooka-induced trance before finally speaking. “Very well, boy, I will make you a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“One you will have to accept, of course. It goes like this: I give you the book, but under a particular condition. In ten days I will find you and, at that time, you will give me two thousand marks in gold .”
Abe stiffened. “That’s impossible! I could never—”
Carlo held up his hand. “You will have the book, remember? Don’t think I am unaware what you wish to do with it; two thousand marks seems a reasonable sum. Now, if you do not have the money in ten days, I will reclaim the book and go on my way. This is the deal.”
“What makes you think you’ll be able to get the book back from me?”
Carlo shrugged. “I strongly believe that you will be dead in ten days, so it should be a relatively simple matter. Do we have a deal?”
“I have a counteroffer.”
“Not interested. This is the deal, take it or leave it.”
“But—”
Carlo’s face narrowed into a glare. “If you are as desperate and angry as you appear, you know as well as I do that you are going to say yes, so stop wasting my time, please. I am running out of patience.”
Carlo pointed at the floor. “Spit.”
Abe spat.
The black marketer spat as well, then sighed. “There—was that so hard?”
“The book, Carlo.”
Carlo diCarlo shook his head, muttering about Illini manners, and produced a large, leather-bound book wrapped in string from a belt pouch obviously too small to contain it without sorcerous interference. He extended it towards Abe and Abe snatched it. It was heavy and smelled like mildew and stale air.
Abe fiddled with the knots holding the string around it until Carlo slapped his hand away.
“Fool, boy! Don’t open that here! Do you want the mirror men on us? Go, go—begone! Back to the wretched Undercity with you, understand?”
Abe snatched his hands away from the string and nodded. “Thank you.”
Carlo snorted. “Don’t thank me, Oz. I’ve just killed you.”
“See you in ten days.” Abe shot back. Taking the rejected bag of silver and tucking the book under one arm, he walked into the smoky recesses of the tooka den. When he glanced back, he saw no sign that anyone had been there, let alone anyone named Carlo diCarlo.
***
The strangest thing to Abe about Illin’s Upper City was the streetlamps. They were ten feet tall and made of iron, their heads glowing with sun-bright crystals the size of large melons. Even now, in the dead of night, they cast sufficient light on the broad, white streets that Abe could read the numbers on the houses from twenty paces away. One of those crystals would fetch enough money to buy a large house in Abe’s neighborhood, yet none of them had been stolen or damaged. Abe found himself glaring at them as he made his way to the public lift terminal. “Lousy toppers.”
As Abe got close to the edge of the Upper City, the houses and businesses gave way to defensive structures—minarets and parapets, trapezoidal barracks, and huge, black war-orbs hovering over pyramidal control loci. A patrol of ten mirror men, their mageglass armor gleaming beneath sunny streetlights, marched toward Abe in perfect formation, their firepikes bobbing and flickering as they reflected their bearer’s even gait.
Clutching the book tightly to his chest, Abe looked at his feet as he shuffled to one side, letting them pass. He felt as if he were glowing somehow—as though their foreign faces were studying him as they went by. He tried to keep his breathing even, but his heart wouldn’t cooperate. It pounded like a war drum, announcing to every part of his body that it could all end here. The mirror men just needed to ask “Say, what’s a scrawny teen doing out alone at this time of night?” He’d be whisked into one of those trapezoid barracks in an instant; no one would ever see him again.
The men didn’t stop, though—just marched past. They were just common soldiers, their sergeant more interested in keeping security than recovering contraband.
Heart still racing, Abe made it to the terminal—a small, colonnaded dome perched on the very edge of the Upper City, overlooking the Undercity beneath and the ocean beyond. A few mirror men gave him a cursory glance before letting him aboard the night lift. The basket, made of wicker, was large enough to carry perhaps four people—much smaller than the daytime gondolas that could haul dozens of people and livestock. Abe tipped the lift man at his winch for a speedy descent, then said goodbye to the white paved streets and well-lit avenues of the toppers’ domain.
The basket plummeted from the edge of the terminal, causing Abe’s stomach to flutter. His tip had been appreciated.
Almost immediately the darkness that blanketed the rest of Illin for most hours of the day swallowed the light of the Upper City. The Undercity was named so literally: it rested directly beneath the Upper City on a flat pan of dry ground in the midst of an endless maze of marshy reeds and slow-flowing estuaries that brought trade and disease from the troubled regions to the south. Though it was twice as large as the Upper City and was home to four times as many people, the Undercity was dark and seemingly deserted. Abe could see only a few fires from his basket—bonfires lit by gangs or religious fanatics or worse, all of whom used the night to gather numbers and strength.
The public lift terminal at the bottom was the vandalized, scorched mirror-image of its wealthier sibling. A group of cheap sellswords in worn black leather and rusty studs were employed to stand guard here, but really spent most of their time dicing and boasting in the guttering candlelight. They didn’t even look up as Abe’s basket landed, which was good. He didn’t have any money to bribe them.
“Did you get it?” Krim’s bony frame separated from a shadow and she fell into step beside Abe. She lit a candle with a match. “Let me see!”
“Not here.” Abe hissed. “I’ll open it at home.”
Krim cuffed him. “Dummy! How’d you know you weren’t cheated if you didn’t open it, eh? You lost our money for nothing, betcha!”
“I’ve got it, don’t worry—see?” Abe held the book up to the candlelight. It looked older and blacker than it had in the tooka den. Though without design or device, something about the cover made his skin crawl.
It seemed to have the same effect on Krim. In the dim light, Abe saw her dark eyes widen. She stepped back and made the sign of Hann on her heart. “I’ll tell the others.”
“Don’t tell them yet. I still don’t know if I can use it.”
Krim scowled. “Don’t give me that! You can read, can’t you? Isn’t that all it takes for books? Monda will bust your ankles if he gave up his purse for nothing.”
“You don’t understand—these things are very compli—”
Krim slapped Abe across the face. “No, you don’t understand, Abrahan Anastasis! We’re counting on you, and you don’t get to let us down, right? You read the book, you work the spells, and we change the world—that’s the deal.”
Abe nodded. “I know, I know. I’m sorry, Krim.”
“Should be. The topper take all fifty?”
“Uh…”
Krim cocked her head. “What’s it?”
Krim was lighter than Abe, but he had no doubts about the danger she posed. He’d seen her cut a throat for a copper. “Yeah, he took all fifty.”
“Somethin’ else?” Krim’s weight shifted to the balls of her feet. Abe saw a hand dart inside her tunic.
Abe shook his head. “No, just the fifty.”
Krim waited, as though sniffing for a lie, and then relaxed. “Fine. Take the book back to your Mama and read or whatever. I’ll call for you tomorrow, take you to see everybody and report, right?”
“Sure.”
Krim vanished into the shadows like a rat darting into a bolt hole. The hairs on Abe’s neck didn’t relax. She was probably still watching him. The rumor was that Krim walked around with a shard of mageglass in her tunic wrapped in leather, sharp enough to cut right through bone. Cut a man’s head open like a barrel-top once, or so Monda said. The image of her with blood on her face, her dark eyes grinning at Abe, kept him up at nights sometimes.
Still, without her and Monda and the rest, he would never have gotten the money and the book. And the book was the key.
In the pitch-black night, the Undercity changed from a confusing tangle of dead ends, alleys, and crumbled ruins into a deadly labyrinth. Abe’s mother talked about how the streets had been clean and lit in the old days, before the war, but when the Kalsaaris had invaded they hadn’t been gentle. The sewers were now filled with imps and lesser demons, the descendants of various weapons of war utilized by both sides during the Kalsaari occupation and subsequent Allied liberation of the city. Parasitic gremlins swarmed through most buildings, eating supports and ruining attempts to rebuild, while more dangerous things—unexploded brymmstones, trapped war-fiends, and worse—lay beneath every pile of rubble. All this, of course, didn’t even include the dangers posed by the desperate survivors—people like Krim, lurking in the dark with a sharp knife and a keen ear for jingling coins.
Tracing a long-memorized route through the rubble in the dark, Abe arrived home. On the front steps,
the candles in the small Hannite shrine burned low. Sighing, Abe bowed to it and slipped past to unlock the door and go in.
Before the war, the Anastasis home had been a three-story townhouse squeezed between a bakery and a church. Today the bakery was abandoned, playing home to a rotating cast of squatters and vermin; the church was merely rubble, destroyed by a brymmstone during the initial Kalsaari bombardment. The home itself was now only one story tall, the top having burned when the church was destroyed, and the second story was half collapsed. Abe and his mother used the old sitting room as a makeshift bedroom, had access to the kitchen and the front hall, and stayed out his father’s old office, just in case the ceiling finally collapsed beneath the weight of the rubble upstairs.
Abe took the book into his father’s office. The risk was there, true, but he trusted that if the ceiling hadn’t collapsed in five years, it wouldn’t likely collapse tonight. Also, there was no other place the book could feasibly avoid his mother’s notice. On a cursory glance, if she found it here, she would likely conclude it was just one of his father’s old ledgers or law books and leave it be—that, or command Abe to sell it, which put it safely back in his own hands. His mother couldn’t sell his father’s books without weeping.
Abe lit the only oil lamp his family had left and sat behind his father’s hulking desk. Even atop its broad, bare expanse, the book looked menacing—a kind of curse made thick and dark and physical, like a clot of congealed blood. Licking his lips, Abe untied the strings and pulled back the cover.
The book sprang open and flipped itself to a random page, somewhere in the middle. Every available space on the yellowed pages was filled with a cramped, meticulous handwriting in deep maroon ink. Abe tried to turn back to the beginning, but every time he flipped a page, the page flipped back. Finally, growing frustrated at the enchantment (was this some kind of security feature? Perhaps…) he settled down to read.