by Myke Cole
“What?” Therese asked.
“You know. When you’re a kid, you read stories about it, and you’re told that magic is this wild, kick-ass, amazing thing. It’s unicorns and flying carpets and adventure. But then you actually come face-to-face with magic, and it—”
“It’s deadly,” she finished for him.
“More than that,” he added. “It’s boring. It’s hyperregulated and bound up in red tape. It’s every bit as controlled and locked down as a missile arsenal. There’s nothing adventurous about it. Or, at least, not the kind of adventure anyone would want to have.”
Peapod continued after Swift, who danced lightly out of reach, floating through the air. She lunged, slid on her forearms in the hardened mud, cursed, and rolled over on her back. She gestured toward Swift, and a small lip of earth rose in front of his foot, tripping him. He went down hard, the ball spiraling out of his grasp. Downer caught it, pushing hard in the other direction. Her face was ferocious, the concentration intense.
“Go go go!” Britton cheered, clapping.
He laughed, and Therese laughed with him, putting her head on his shoulder. God, it feels so good to laugh, almost normal. He put his arm around Therese, savoring the smell of her hair, feeling for all the world like a regular guy watching a game of pickup ball with his girl under his arm. Except she’s not my girlfriend, and I’m on a secret military base in a magical parallel world, and I have a radio transmitter packed with explosives implanted in my heart. There was nothing regular guy about that at all.
Pyre charged Downer, and Peapod blocked him with equal ferocity, upending him and sending him over her shoulder. Downer crossed into the end zone with a shout and spiked the ball, dancing for a moment before Peapod vaulted her onto her shoulders, carrying her above the shouts of her teammates. Downer’s face was a study in adolescent joy.
Salamander was doubled over with laughter. Swift got to his feet, grinning and dusting himself off. “All right! All right!” he shouted. “Huddle!” He stripped off his shirt and jogged toward Pyre, sweating freely despite the cold air. His chest was dominated by a broad tattoo of a scissor-tailed bird, pointed wings spread, black beak pointing skyward.
Wavesign sulked on the sidelines, squatting on his haunches. Tsunami jogged past him on the way to the field, motioning him to join. He ignored her, and she shrugged, charging out on to the grass. He scowled for a moment, then looked up at Britton, and they held one another’s eyes. Britton jerked his head toward the game and nodded. Get in there, he mouthed.
Wavesign looked away, pretending he hadn’t seen. Britton reached down and picked up a small chunk of earth, hardened by the cold. He chucked it at Wavesign, striking his shoulder.
The young Hydromancer looked back at him and frowned, then broke into a smile when Britton made a face at him.
“Come on, what’s wrong with you?” Britton asked. “You never played football?”
Wavesign looked at the ground and shrugged. “Pretty decent hands, actually. But I was too small to block.”
“So? Get in there! I can’t understand why you extricate yourself from everything.”
“Come on, Wavesign!” Tsunami shouted.
“You think those guys are a bad influence anyway,” Wavesign said to Britton.
“Only sometimes. What are they going to do now? Influence you to be better at football? Besides, Tsunami’s not one of the jackass crew.”
Wavesign looked annoyed. “You don’t get it.”
“Maybe you don’t get it,” Britton said. “You had decent hands. That doesn’t change.”
Wavesign snorted, holding up his hands, so slick with moisture that they looked greasy. “I don’t know if you noticed, but they’re not exactly sticky fingers anymore.”
Britton paused, then jerked his head at Wavesign’s hands. “Kind of makes you tough to tackle, though, doesn’t it?”
Now it was Wavesign’s turn to pause. After a moment, he shrugged and joined the game.
Swift made a face, but after a failed pass to Pyre, he handed the ball off to Wavesign, who ran hard for the end zone, showing surprising agility. Downer and Peapod both ran to block him with all the single-mindedness of runaway trains. Wavesign paused, ducked, then pushed left. Downer threw herself at him and fell short, giving Peapod the chance to make the tackle as Wavesign backpedaled. The Hydromancer spun as Peapod tried to grapple him, her arms sliding on the greasy seaweed surface of his skin. She slid in the dirt again, and Wavesign gave a victory cry as he hurtled toward the improvised end zone.
“Not fair, you slippery fuck!” Peapod groused.
“What do you want?” Wavesign called back. “I’ve got control issues!”
Salamander chuckled, and Britton smirked. It was good to see Wavesign make light of his issues for even a brief moment.
Pyre jogged over to Britton and Therese. “Come on, big man. Might as well get out here and give us a chance to pound on you.”
Britton grinned. “You sure you want to take that on? It’s your funeral.”
Pyre gestured to Therese. “Unless you think you can do a better job. Now that I think about it, she might be a better linebacker than you.”
“You calling me fat?” Therese groused.
“Heck no,” Pyre said archly. “Just calling you tougher than Mr. Candypants here.”
Britton laughed and Therese grinned.
A shot rang out from the fence line, and they all crouched instinctively. Britton stared through the line of chain link that separated them from the Source beyond the FOB. Two small black dots had surfaced in the waving surface of the saw-toothed grasses and were moving quickly.
“Goblin spotters,” Pyre said. “They’re always out there watching the FOB.”
“FO’s.” Britton nodded. Another shot sounded from one of the SASS guard towers, and one of the dots disappeared into the grass.
“FOs?” Pyre asked.
“Sorry, I keep thinking everybody is in the army out here. Forward observers. They call in fire. You know, for artillery.”
“Oh, right. Well, yeah. We call them spotters. They sight in for the magical attacks,” Pyre said.
Another shot, the second dot vanished.
“Looks like they got them both,” Therese said.
“There’ll be more,” Pyre said. “There always are.”
The group stood in silence, the jovial mood suddenly turned sober. That’s war. You kill, then you try to pretend that everything’s as it was. After a moment, the football players returned to their huddle, the chatter breaking the tension.
“So?” Pyre said. “Coming?”
“I should get in there,” Britton said, trying to shrug off the sound of the gunshots, the drifting odor of cordite. “I can be anywhere on the field that I want.” He stood, dusting himself off.
Salamander abruptly stopped laughing and shook his head. “Not you,” he said.
“But…”
“I didn’t stutter, did I?” the major said. Noting Britton’s crestfallen look, his voice softened. “I’m sorry, Novice. You want to get out there, fine, but no magic.”
“That’s bullshit,” Britton began.
“No, it’s common sense, something you apparently lack. If Swift is momentarily indiscreet, then maybe there’s an unfair touchdown. If you leave the FOB in an effort to get around a blocker, then I’ve got a huge mess on my hands and the SOC is down one Portamancer. They’re not fucking around about the ATTD, Oscar. Don’t you risk it. Not ever.”
Britton knew Salamander was right, but the surly anger wouldn’t leave him. He turned to Pyre, “I guess that’s an order,” and sat back down.
“Not an order,” Salamander said, “just friendly advice.
“Of course, it just so happens if you elect not to follow it, you die.”
“Fine,” Britton said, standing and rubbing his hands together. “No magic, I get it. But you can’t stop me from playing.”
“I can do whatever the hell I want with you,” Salamander said.
“But so long as you don’t use magic, I wouldn’t dream of interfering with your getting embarrassed out on the field.”
Britton cocked an eyebrow at Pyre. “So? Candypants, huh?”
Pyre shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“Oh,” said Britton, jogging out to the field. “I do believe you will.”
CHAPTER XVII: RESEARCH
The Qu’ran is very clear on this. It says, “And they followed what the devils gave out falsely of magic of the reign of Solomon; for Solomon did not disbelieve, but the devils disbelieved, teaching men magic and such things that came down at Babylon…” There is no argument among any of the schools on this matter. For once, all from Maliki to Hanafi are united. Even the Shi’a forbid magic. All praises to Allah the merciful, the compassionate, who has shown us the Djinn in our midst, that we may drive them out.
— Shaykh Abu Hassan al-Masri
Interviewed for Public Television series Islam and the Great Reawakening
Mornings at the SASS were followed by afternoon MAC practice, one-on-one, under the giant tent. Britton improved slowly. At times, he managed to turn some of the blows, disengage the mount, or control the battlespace for a moment, but Fitzy had years on him. The smaller man always won out in the end, and Britton spent his evenings in the OC under Marty’s care. The little Goblin never hesitated to take care of him, and Britton felt a growing sense of camaraderie. The bruises faded to mottled patches by morning most times, and the swelling had gone, though Britton still went about looking like he’d just been hit by a car most days. He counted himself lucky that he hadn’t lost a tooth.
Until he did.
Fitzy’s boot split his lip and sent one of his lower canines spinning, lost in the mud. The blood was too much, and Fitzy had gotten tired of being spattered every time he closed. At last, he’d sent Britton to the hospital in disgust. “Get that hole plugged up and get your ass back here.”
“Sir, there’s a Physiomancer in the SASS. Let me see her.”
“Negative, Novice. Your authorized hours in the SASS are over for the day, and I don’t need to be breaking protocol just to preserve your good looks. The United States government is interested in your performance, not your charisma. You will go directly to the cash, then immediately report back here, and if I find out you went anywhere else in between, there will be hell to pay.”
Britton had spun on his heel and jogged away. He had no intention of returning, no matter how long it took to get seen.
Colored canvas partitions, suspended by strong lines snaking through steel grommets, divided the massive hospital tent. Shadows played off the fabric, giving a fun-house cast to the rows of steel cots, medical electronics, and shelving. Navy corpsmen bustled back and forth between white-coated army doctors. Britton moved down a double row of makeshift beds where the more badly wounded drowsed in drug-induced slumber. Shadows writhed amid groans from behind a partition under a sign reading TRAUMA.
Other signs hung throughout the tent. BURN UNIT, SURGERY, RADIOLOGY. Britton searched until he found one that read DENTAL UNIT. He followed it out of the main cash tent and down a short track toward another one. The signs took him through the phlebotomy section, where blue-scrubbed orderlies took blood from a dozen pale-looking men. The other side of the hallway was occupied with a row of makeshift stalls rigged behind ribbons of canvas under a sign reading URINALYSIS.
The orderlies collecting the yellow vials from the occupants of the stalls were entirely Goblin contractors. Blue cloth masks designed for human faces contended with giant pointed noses and ears. A few of the Goblins had gone so far as to cut holes in them for their noses to poke through.
The sign to the dental unit directed him straight through, but Britton stopped short. Marty stood near the tent exit, a steel test-tube tray, brimming with stoppered tubes half-filled with yellow-green urine, in both hands. The two stared at one another before Marty turned to one of the other Goblin orderlies and chattered in their own language, passing him the tray. The Goblins surrounding Marty bowed in unison, deeply, backing slightly away, muttering softly in their guttural hissing tongue.
Marty reached out and touched Britton’s face, his rough hands surprisingly gentle. “Come,” he said, taking Britton’s hand and leading him the way he had come. They pushed back into the main hospital tent and out a side entrance over a makeshift wooden boardwalk that kept them out of the mud and into another tent with a sign reading RESEARCH/SPECIAL PROJECTS.
A wave of cold hit Britton as they pushed through the tent’s clear-plastic flaps. Beyond was an entry room with a beat-up but comfortable-looking couch in front of a battered desk, atop which sat a television playing a kung fu video. A doughy, forty-ish captain sprawled on the couch, his fingers bright orange from a bag of Cheese Puffs. He paused at the intrusion, scowling as he wiped his hands on his rumpled uniform and stood. His name tape, stained with food, read HAYES.
His lapel pin showed the Physiomancer’s heart and cross.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” he fumed at Marty, then stopped short at the sight of Britton’s Shadow Coven uniform.
“You fix him,” Marty said evenly, tapping Britton’s elbow. Britton’s heart sank as he realized that Marty was referring to his tooth, not his heart.
“If he needs attention, he can go back to the check-in desk and put his name on the list. He’s hardly sustained a life-threatening injury,” Hayes said, glancing nervously at Britton. “Indig aren’t supposed to be in here! You get the hell out of here right now before I call the MPs! I’m in the middle of important work!”
He followed Britton’s gaze to the kung fu flick and rolled his eyes. “I was taking a break!”
“Fix him,” Marty repeated, not moving.
“I told you to get the hell…” the Healer said, advancing on Marty, reaching out a hand.
Britton grabbed the captain’s forearm. “Don’t,” he said as well as he could through his split lip.
Hayes jerked out of Britton’s grasp with such force that he upset the TV.
“Fix him,” Marty said again, “or Goblins stop work again.”
Hayes steadied the TV and glared at Marty. “We’ll fire you and throw you out! You can try your luck with the Defender tribes! They’ll kill you for working for us.”
Marty pursed his lips and wiggled his ears in what Britton assumed was the equivalent of a human shrug. “You get more Goblins for work. Easy, yes?”
The captain paused, fat cheeks quivering, before rolling his eyes again, reaching forward and placing a thick hand on Britton’s face. The man’s skin stank of sweat and Cheese Puffs. Britton had to force himself to keep from pulling away as the magic did its work. The Healer only kept his hand there for an instant before pulling it away, but the pain was still intense. Britton touched his face. His fingertips told him the lip had been healed only partially, he could feel a notch in the flesh as it slid over the stub of a re-formed tooth.
The captain was already turning and moving behind the partition, throwing it aside as he went. “Now get the hell out of there before I call the MPs!”
He drew the partition shut, but not before Britton saw the room behind it. The cold emanated from a small industrial chiller, cooling the space enough to make the captain’s breath mist. Stretched out before him were more rows of metal hospital cots, covered with Goblin corpses in various states of dissection. A few held other creatures; Britton saw several he couldn’t recognize, but spotted two demon-horses, one missing its hooves and tail. Across from it was a smaller version of the bird he’d gated into the convenience-store lot, nailed upright to some kind of frame. Its throat was tacked open, an empty gray hole. Two tables had been pushed together to support a giant gray snake, a large portion of the scales sliced out of its back, leaving a black patch beneath. The partition fell, cutting off his vision.
He took a step, but Marty gripped his elbow with surprising strength and led him out of the tent. His face was set, but Britton could see the grief there, mingled wit
h resignation. “No anger,” Marty said.
“Christ,” Britton breathed. “What the hell are they doing in there?”
Marty made his Goblin shrug again. “Srreach,” he said. It was a moment before Britton realized he had tried to say “research.”
On Goblins? On the indigenous population? He looked again at Marty, noting his drawn brows, his half-lidded eyes. He looked exhausted. And sadly resigned, Britton thought. How the hell can he work for an army that does this to his own people?
The silence grated at him. “He didn’t even finish my lip,” Britton finally said, touching the newly uneven surface.
“Fixed okay,” Marty said. “No more trouble.” His narrow shoulders were thrown back, making him look taller, regal. He shrugged the sad look away.
They reentered the phlebotomy and urinalysis tent, and Marty collected his sample tray from one of the orderlies and turned back to Britton. He fixed his mask back over his face with his free hand, small and meek as ever.
“Fixed okay,” he repeated. “Fitzy is asshole. Sorry.”
Now that he had seen the deference with which the other Goblins treated Marty, he could no longer miss it. In tiny ways — the distance they kept from him, how they inclined their heads as they passed, he noted the difference in rank.
“You’re an important guy, aren’t you?” he asked, leaning close.
The surgical mask rose as Marty smiled, then the ear-wiggling shrug yet again.
“So,” he said. “We no work if I say.”
Britton nodded, then placed a hand on the creature’s shoulder. The other Goblin orderlies stiffened at the gesture, but when Marty put his hand on Britton’s, they relaxed.
“Thank you,” Britton said. “You’ve been better to me than any of my own people since I got here, Marty. That means a lot to me.”
“Same,” Marty hiss-whispered. “All water baby. You, me. Doctor Captain. Fitzy.”
“Fitzy is asshole.” Britton chuckled.
“Yes,” Marty said, “but water baby, too.”
Britton nodded reluctantly.