by Jeff Deck
“I’ll take that under consideration,” she says with wintry courtesy.
I settle down in her guest chair and rest the Relic against her solid wooden desk. “I need your help. I’m in over my head with a—a place beyond a quintessence Port. But you know that already, don’t you?”
Nadia raises an eyebrow. She sits on the edge of the desk and waits for me to continue.
“I expect that Sol’s given you the full report by now,” I go on.
“Are you accusing me of spying on you?”
“Not accusing. Just stating a fact. There’s only one way he could have known to be at the Salter Street dock to meet me. You sent him there, after you got the tip I’d be heading to Round Island from Natalie Drouin.”
“Why would she tip me off about that?”
I take one of Nadia’s pens and roll it in my fingers. As expected, the small theft visibly bothers her, but she does try to hide it. Type A’s are so predictable. “You’re her new source of income,” I say. “When Shaughnessy fired her, you must have hired her on. Which means you’ve had your eye on Round Island for some time.”
Nadia gives me a sneaky smile. “I have a document from early last century that tells a kind of urban legend, one most people have forgotten by now. The ‘Haunted Whorehouse of Little Island,’ which many a man entered but from which not a soul returned. Little Island is what Round Island used to be called. I’d show you the document, but it’s a historical artifact—wouldn’t want to get your grubby fingerprints on it.”
“It sounded like a potential Port to you,” I say.
She nods. “One of our members attempted to check out the island a while ago. Hector Ferreira; I’ve mentioned the name. Very eager to stake out new territory. But he never came back.”
I think I know what happened to poor Hector. The tied-up cultist that Shaughnessy made Ilana shoot to trap us in the City of Games. Man, Nadia could have mentioned what Hector Ferreira was up to when she told me he was missing. Would have saved me a headache or two.
“When you heard I was headed out to the island,” I say, “you figured it’d be an opportunity to send another cultist there, even get inside access this time. That’s why you sent Sol.”
“Sol did want to serve as backup for you, too. He’s a good kid.”
“Kid, hmm,” I say, but I refrain from pointing out they’re only a couple of years apart. In terms of maturity, Nadia is leaps and bounds ahead of him. Even accounting for the male handicap in that department.
“Milly is still being held captive in Avariccia,” I go on. “I need to go back, but this time I need bigger guns on my side.”
She leans back in her chair and taps her lip thoughtfully. “So… are you finally admitting you can’t do this alone?”
I frown at her. “I—well, I wasn’t alone the first time. Sol and Ulrich were with me.”
“That’s only a single step up from alone, isn’t it? Sol is delightful, but… I can’t imagine him being much help in a crisis. And Ben Ulrich is—was—not much more than a bundle of muscles behind a badge, am I correct?”
Fury flares in me. Hello anger, my old friend. I don’t have any violent fantasies I’d like to inflict on Nadia, but I would like to shake some sense into her.
“Watch it,” I say. “You have no fucking idea who Ben Ulrich was.”
“Still have the thin blue line marching in your veins, I see.”
“I still have compassion, you mean,” I snarl. “I know what Portsmouth cops did to your friends—but that doesn’t mean every single one is a monster. Just like not every one of you cultists is a god-bothering danger to yourselves and others, no matter how much it might seem that way.”
Nadia blinks at me, taken aback. Finally, she says, “I’m sorry about Ulrich. But I also know that Milly is another cop. Even if she’s ‘one of the good ones,’ I don’t see why I should risk myself to help you save her.”
“Dammit,” I say, “I’m not asking you to join me on my suicide mission!”
Her intense green eyes regard me as my last two words hang in the air. “It’d be a shame to lose you to such a mission, Divya. Well… what can I do to take the suicide out of the mission?”
“You can tell me how to use this,” I say, lifting the Relic. Nadia clears the junk off her desk and pulls it onto the surface.
She taps it gingerly with her fingernail, then says, “You’ll have to give me a hint.”
“The Relics that the Avariccian Lords used to enable Wagers—surely Sol told you that part.”
“So… this is what the Priest Lord gave you before it had you kill it.”
I nod impatiently. “Milly’s life is at stake—so tell me everything you know about the Hand That Never Closes. The name was familiar to Sol before he ever crossed into the City of Games; I assume, then, that the worship of this Hand factors into multiple worlds. Maybe all the ones that have a ‘Q’ next to them on that chart of yours?”
Nadia gives me a sad shrug. “You know, Divya, I’m under the same… restrictions Sol is. The geas severely limits how much I can tell you about the Hand, or about quintessence worlds. I’d rather not choke myself blue if at all possible.”
I struggle to think of ways around her self-imposed limitation. Cultists can be so frustrating. “How about we start with this. You lied to me when you told me the statue in the temple at Stroyer’s Axle simply represented ‘a spirit of water.’ You didn’t tell me it had a name—the Bloody Swarm—and that people would believe in it more than abstractly.”
“Again, please keep in mind my personal distaste for self-strangulation,” Nadia replies. “The less I told you, the less chance that my censoring geas would kick in. Not that you were even in a mind to listen to me then, not about anything but Hannah Ryder.”
“But these… the fact that people believe gods like the Hand and the Swarm are real tells me these things play a significant role in understanding how the Ports work,” I go on.
Nadia holds up a hand. “If I help you, Divya, will you promise me one thing?”
“Depends,” I reply, instantly distrustful.
“Will you finally let me give you a tour of Stroyer’s Axle when you come back?”
I blink at her, surprised. I had no idea she still cared about that. “Sure. Whatever.”
“All right. Good.” Nadia clears her throat. “Maybe the first step for you to understand… is to ask yourself: do you believe that they exist?”
“No,” is my automatic, gut answer. I don’t know if it’s what she was looking for, but I feel compelled to defend myself: “Gods and magic are not my bag. Usually they’re shorthand for a refusal of science, and science is what puts the bad guys away. Religion, on the other hand, tends to make bad guys, in my experience.”
I’m thinking of the more horrendous cases that I encountered during my brief career with the PD. The child bride given to a forty-one-year-old man. The guy who murdered a doctor from Planned Parenthood. The opioid addict who died because her family refused modern medicine. Brutal religious beliefs play a part in more of the cases around here than one might assume, despite Portsmouth belonging to the supposedly secular, liberal Northeast.
“Not all gods exist,” says Nadia, “but that doesn’t mean that some don’t.”
“I—” Then I stop, reconfigure my thoughts. “I believe this thing is a powerful device. I’ve seen it operate. I know it has to do with enabling Wagers in the City of Games. But… a piece of technology too advanced for us to understand does not equate to, like, a vessel for holy miracles.”
Nadia runs her long fingers over the Relic’s surface, occasionally shivering as if either chilled or excited by the rough texture. “Nobody’s forcing you to believe in the Hand. Just consider that, if you continue to disbelieve in it, you may not be able to use this Relic for yourself.”
I stare at her. “Do you mean… belief is the energy that powers this Relic? Only true believers get to use it?”
“Well, consider that it was entrusted to t
he care of a priest.”
Hmm. “But how am I supposed to make myself believe in the existence of an imaginary god?”
“Consider,” says Nadia, using the word for a third time, as if shielding herself with implications and hypotheses, “consider the possibility this god is not imaginary, Allard! Take a few steps back and look at the Relic—does it remind you of anything?!”
Annoyed, I get up and shove myself away from the desk, turning my back on the Relic and Nadia as I walk to the far wall. There, I turn around, my eyes fall on the slightly curved, chitinous, roundish object on her desk, and it’s not the right color, but oh my god—
“It’s a fingernail,” I whisper.
Nadia gives me a wolfish smile. Her eyes glitter.
Five Relics guarded by the five caste lords. One for each finger of the Hand That Never Closes…
“No,” I snap. “No. I refuse to believe that the Hand is an actual hand—one that’d have to be twenty or thirty feet high, by the way, based on the size of this ‘fingernail’—with rotten grey nails and… no, Nadia, come on.”
“Sol described to me,” says Nadia patiently, “the race you all took part in, involving a unicorn, a griffin, a snail with boundless water in its shell, a dragon… you’re telling me you can’t make yourself believe in this?”
“Not the same. Not the same! Those were basically animals I’ve never seen before. Not all-powerful gods with magic imbued in their cast-off fingernails.”
She holds out the Relic to me. “Okay. Like I said, it’s up to you. You don’t have to use the potent holy weapon if you don’t want to. What else have you got? A nightstick?”
I collapse into the chair, unwilling to reclaim the Relic yet. I’m thinking now of the whispering voice in my head, which became a roar when I drew on its power to drive the soldiers from the temple entrance. Can I now still assume this object is just a device that talks to my brain? Or am I ready to consider that the voice is coming from outside the Relic—that it’s a means of divine transmission?
“The word ‘relic’ has a more specific meaning than just ‘an old, valuable thing,’” Nadia points out.
Right. That little factoid I picked up from my Roman Catholic adoptive parents. I’ve never been to Europe, but my mom told me stories about the glittering “reliquaries” in the churches of the old cities. Brother Hemmelfart’s toe bones in a gold case. The supposed ribs of apostles and bishops on display. Saint Catherine’s head…
“Fine,” I say slowly. “I’ll believe in whatever I need to believe in, if it’ll save Milly, for real this time. But I—”
Then I remember the little gore-flaked instrument in my pocket. “Oh. I wanted to show you this, too. I’m going to need all the advantages I can, so maybe you can also help me figure out how to…”
As soon as her eyes land on the bronze device I’ve dug out, Nadia flinches and wheels her chair back. “Jesus Christ, Divya. Put that thing away. Now.”
Startled by her reaction, I say, “Wait, you don’t even—”
“Now,” Nadia commands. I have no choice but to obey. Once it’s out of sight, she relaxes and explains:
“You can’t wave the Mesmerist’s trephine in my face and not expect me to freak out. That thing, and the other little nightmares in his toolset, nearly ruined my organization. It was… before I was in charge, but I still heard the stories in vivid detail. You can try to figure out how to use the trephine, if you like. But if you do, don’t count on my help at all.”
“All right,” I concede. “I guess I don’t want to resort to the same methods Shaughnessy used to control Chaum and Ilana. It’s pretty awful to contemplate. Don’t know that the Relic will be enough on its own, though.”
“Believe in it enough, and it will,” Nadia says. “But… maybe take along a friend or two, just in case. If Shaughnessy comes crashing into the City of Games too, it could ruin your day.”
Now it definitely seems like the Relic—the nail—is whispering to me, as if Nadia triggered a weakening in mental defenses against the new influx of sounds and strange voices. I thank her for her help and depart the Tenacious Trainers gym.
Outside, Ethan Jeong leans against his car, waiting for me. He nods at the Relic in my hands. “You know how to use that thing now?”
“I believe so,” I say. “But I’m still probably going to die. Be my witness, Ethan. You’ll know why I went back. You’ll know I tried my damnedest to save her.”
“It’s funny,” Jeong replies. “You make it sound like I’m not coming with you. Let me correct you on that point.”
13
I’d love to argue with Jeong. But ever since I stepped outside the gym, the din of Portsmouth has crept up on me and won’t leave me alone. It’s voices from far away. It’s scrapings and scrabblings, in the earth, where Sol claims to hear the voice of the city. The voice of Portsmouth sounds to me like a bubbling nightmare, where no one can ever be alone and things that should not be move underground. I hear millions of blaring TVs and computers and phones and a hundred thousand tapping feet, stray sighs, banal work conversations, and the unrestrained snores of midday naps.
I’m going to go insane unless I regain control.
“Divya, what’s wrong?” Agent Jeong asks.
“The damn sounds,” I groan. “Sounds are everywhere.”
Portsmouth is a small city, barely bigger than a town; I can’t imagine what would happen if I, say, stepped into New York with this aural amplification. Still, the weight of all the city’s sounds and noises presses down on me, and I stumble. Jeong catches me before I fall.
Underneath everything else, a whisper grows stronger. The whisper of a god, a Hand:
Punish my wayward children.
Nope, nope, nope. If I open my mind any further to that voice, it’ll devour me. That’s the way of the Hand That Never Closes, after all. It’s reflected in the syllables of its followers’ names, and in the language that opens and closes its Ports. The Hand is hunger, and I can’t let it scent the full banquet of my mind.
“Is it the magnified hearing?” Agent Jeong mutters. His voice is unnaturally loud. “What changed? Can you fight it?”
“Keep it down, damn you,” I choke.
Guhnach tried to train me. I can only hold onto the remnants of what I learned. I summon the image of the stage curtain back into my mind—that’s it. That’s what helped before. I slam the heavy red curtain down in front of all but the nearest sounds in my environment.
Gradually, I can breathe again.
“I’m okay,” I say.
Jeong looks at the Relic tucked under my arm. “I don’t think that thing is helping. I think it’s making your condition worse. You sure you don’t want to put that away somewhere?”
“It’s one of our only advantages, so no,” I say. Then my phone rings.
“Officer Allard?” That’s Patricia’s voice.
I hold up a finger to Jeong, then I say, “Yes! Are you ready for us to move in? What’s the address?”
“Shaughnessy mind-controlled Sandy and got away!” she says frantically. “He’s headed back to Round Island alone—you have to stop him now before he hurts anyone else!”
The Round Island Ferry is gone again from the Salter Street dock when we screech to a stop. And Grieg’s car is parked there. My heart leaps into my throat.
“He beat us back here? Fuck!” Jeong swears. “At least Barnes and McGuinness will be there to stop him.”
“No, we’ve got to get moving,” I say. “Your agents may not be enough. You see a demented old man, I see a self-made sorcerer with immense destructive powers.”
At that instant, an aggrieved man comes out of the lobster pound and points a finger at me. “You! Where’s Ulrich?! My goddamn boat burned up on that island last night, and I want my reimbursement!”
It’s Sherman, of course, the late detective’s supposed buddy. I shake my head. “I’m sorry, man. Ulrich’s unavailable. In fact, we could use another favor…”
“Oh
, no! No way!” the lobsterman shouts, his spittle spraying. “No more boats for you!”
“You sure about that?” Agent Jeong says, whipping out his FBI badge.
Minutes later Jeong and I are out on the water in our commandeered rowboat, the unfortunate Sherman’s curses ringing behind us.
When we’re still some distance off, I see that Patricia’s information was incorrect. Shaughnessy is not alone; this time he has backup. There’s a beefy fellow with a gun on the Round Island dock. He’s pointing the gun right at us. He makes no attempt to wave us away. He’s simply ready to shoot.
“Jeong,” I say urgently. “That’s not one of yours, right?”
“Affirmative.” He leaves the rowing to me while he scrambles for his own gun. “FBI! Drop your weapon!” he hollers at the man on the dock over the engine noise.
“I don’t think he can hear you,” I shout. Though of course I can, perfectly.
The man fires a shot that furrows the gunwale.
“Nope, he definitely didn’t,” Jeong says. “Well, we’re not turning around, goddammit.”
“You sure? We’re in an open boat—we’re sitting—”
“Don’t say it,” Jeong interrupts. “I’m not ready to quack yet.” Then he screams across the water: “Your last warning! Drop the gun!”
The gunman answers with another bullet. This one rips open the shoulder of my jacket. I wince at the lead package passing so close to my skin.
“That’s it,” Jeong roars. He squeezes off two quick rounds.
With us in a boat experiencing motion on two axes, and our opponent’s feet planted on the stationary surface of the deck, I definitely wouldn’t have Wagered on us winning the gunfight.
But Jeong was trained at Quantico. He’s practiced shooting a weapon far more times than I ever have, and he doesn’t miss. His first shot takes the man in the leg, the second in the stomach. The man falls. His gun bounces off the dock into the harbor.
I’m not sure if Jeong meant to hit the man’s stomach, and I do him the courtesy of not asking. But when our boat arrives, the fallen man has already leaked a lot of vital stuff. His twitching suggests a short life expectancy.