by Sam Hooker
“Are you still there, Sloot? Can you hear me?”
“I am, and I can! What’s the matter? Look, if you’d just walk—”
“It must’ve got him,” said another of the corpses, a big one that had started to bloat.
“What must’ve got him?” asked Barry.
“Dunno,” said big-and-bloaty. “Whatever’s on the other side of nothing.”
“Can’t you hear me?” asked Sloot. No reaction. He walked back over to them, and as soon as he got close, they all shambled back a bit.
“You’re alive!” shouted Barry.
“Am not.”
“Well, I mean, you’re not—you’re still dead!”
That much was true.
“You couldn’t hear me when I was standing over there?”
“You disappeared when you walked through the shimmering wall.”
Sloot turned to look behind him. No shimmer, just dirt and scraggly Carpathian brush.
“You can’t see past the border,” said Sloot.
“There’s nothing there.”
“Yes, there is! It’s Carpathia!”
Try as they might, none of the undead were able to shamble their way across the border. They just sort of stood there, right at the edge, as though taking a single step forward were as mind-boggling as differential equations; or, rather, something that Sloot would find difficult. Like tennis.
He hopped back and forth across the border a few times for their benefit, hoping to convince them that reality hadn’t abruptly decided to stop at the Carpathian border. In the end, he was unable to make them see beyond the border by any means available to him. Despite his utter aversion to the thought of helping Roman’s plan come to fruition, he bid the border corpses farewell and continued north into Carpathia. He made it a few feet before he felt an uncomfortable tug behind his ear, and suddenly found himself in a familiar elsewhere.
The Handler
“Sloot! How long has it been?” Flavia was as radiant as the first time he’d met her, when she’d compelled him into service as a double agent for Uncle.
Actually, she was more than just radiant as ever. She didn’t appear to have changed in the slightest since the last time he saw her. She was wearing the same white dress and sitting in the same chair. Sloot was sure that she’d have had to leave the room from time to time to deal with the standard labors of eating, sleeping, reciting the Loyalist Oath before the Old Country flag—compulsory human behaviors. Then again, when compared with all of the other oddities he’d experienced in the latter part of his life—and since—would it really be so odd to learn that Flavia was some sort of automaton in service to Uncle?
Sloot had never had a proper uncle, so when the Ministry of Propaganda had rebranded the Ministry of Truth as “Uncle,” he’d been eager to go along with it. It was only now that he started to question who might have been sending him birthday cards “from Uncle.” Had the other children been getting them as well?
“I have no idea,” Sloot replied. He put a mental pin in his reverie, promising himself that he’d come back to it just as soon as a little portion of eternity became available.
“I’d heard that the passage of time is difficult for the dead,” said Flavia. “Probably a coping mechanism. Eternity is a very long time, you know.”
“So I’ve been told.” Threatened was more like it, but most things told to Sloot were delivered as threats these days. That’s how it seemed to him, anyway.
“Well then,” said Flavia, leaning forward across the table in a way that made her seem genuinely interested in whatever he had to say, “what can I do for you?”
“Sorry?”
“For what?”
“Oh, sorry,” said Sloot, “that wasn’t an apology. That was, I suppose. For the confusion.”
“Are you confused?”
“Usually.”
“No need to apologize for that,” said Flavia. “The intelligence business can be confusing.”
“Right. Sorry. Er.”
Flavia smiled at Sloot, who was starting to float a bit off-kilter to the left. He hadn’t realized that he’d been concentrating, ever so slightly, on keeping himself upright ever since he’d become a ghost. He suddenly became very disconcerted that she could put him so at ease that he’d start to fail at the basic tenets of apparition. She couldn’t have drugged him, could she? If anyone had such a thing as ghost drugs, it would be Uncle.
“By the first ‘sorry,’ I meant ‘what?’”
“Oh, I see! Although now I’m confused.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Do you mean to say that you don’t know why you came to see me?”
“I do.”
“Oh, good.”
“No,” said Sloot, “I do mean to say that I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Just a moment,” said Flavia. She snapped her fingers and a hairy pile of muscles in a guard uniform entered the room. It handed Flavia a piece of paper and left.
“Oh, dear,” said Flavia, reading over the paper.
“What’s the matter?”
“Sloot,” said Flavia with the sort of “I’m not mad” softness one uses to ask a child where the cookies have gone, “is there something you’d like to tell me?”
“Nothing comes to mind,” said Sloot, who felt queasy at the lie despite his lack of guts. In truth, his mind was reeling with heresies he’d been party to, plots that had ensnared him, and terrible secrets that could bring scandal to the wealthiest of Salzstadt’s citizens, to say nothing of the fact that he hadn’t brushed his teeth in ... well, he didn’t know how long it had been, but he was off the state-mandated schedule, that was certain.
“This says you made at least a dozen trips across the Carpathian border in less than an hour. Is that true?”
“Oh, that!”
“So it is true.” Flavia frowned in a not-mad-just-disappointed way.
“Well, yes,” said Sloot, “but there were circumstances!”
“Oh, good,” said Flavia, leaning back in her chair and letting out a huge sigh of relief. She smiled. “For a minute there, I was worried that it had something to do with the plot to kidnap the Domnitor, long may he reign!”
“What? Oh, that’s ... what?” Sloot was as skilled at bluffing as philosophers were at earning an income.
“You’re not surprised that we know about that, are you?”
“Know about? Yes, well I ... that is to say ... you know. Of course, you know! Yes, right. I knew you would. You know?”
Flavia laughed. It was cheery and bright, shining on Sloot so that he might bask in its warmth. Had it not been so entirely captivating, Sloot might have wondered if Flavia had spent countless hours learning the craft of disarming hapless interrogation subjects with seemingly simple mannerisms, and worming her way into their confidence.
“Oh, Sloot, how I’ve missed your wit and charm. It’s a shame you’re dead.” She winked and smiled.
Flattery! And flirting, to boot! Wasn’t it? Like most men, Sloot was never sure when he was the target of a flirtation. He’d nearly botched things with Myrtle over his inability to see the roaring infernos that she’d lit to serve as subtle hints that she liked him.
Myrtle! Sloot looked down. How could he be so brazen? There he was, a ghost in love with a demon who may or may not have been his girlfriend this whole time, and what was he doing? Flirting! Well, not flirting himself, per se, but wantonly permitting another woman to ravish him with words that may or may not have the capacity to be interpreted as innuendos, or worse!
“I didn’t know ghosts could blush,” said Flavia, in a very proud-of-herself manner. “But I digress. You were just going to tell me about your little trips to Carpathia.”
“Right,” said Sloot, “those. Well, there would have just been the one, but the walking dead soldiers at the border were confused.”
“I see,” said Flavia.
“They didn’t think there was anything on the other side of the border,” Sloot continued,
“so I was trying to show them. That’s all.”
“Do we know about any border guards?” asked Flavia, apparently of the air. A moment later, the same guard walked in, handed Flavia another piece of paper, flexed its chin, and left.
“No,” said Flavia. She may have just read the entire contents of the paper. Sloot couldn’t be sure.
“Well they’re there,” said Sloot, thankful for the change of subject. “They’ve built a castle.”
“A castle? How do we not know about a castle within our borders?” Flavia’s constant cheeriness listed sharply toward irritation.
“Well, not a castle, exactly. They call it that, but it’s little more than a bunch of rocks piled up.”
“How much more?”
“Well, it’s a pile of rocks that they’ve collectively agreed to refer to as a castle. So more in name, I suppose.”
“They didn’t say who they worked for?”
Barry had told Sloot they were there on Mrs. Knife’s orders. Sloot had taken that to mean that they worked for the government, but now realized that that couldn’t have been the case. So Mrs. Knife’s takeover of the Domnitor’s palace, long may he reign, didn’t mean she was in charge of the government! A drop of good news in a bucket of feculent disaster!
Since Gregor possessed the blood star, he had dominion over the walking dead. Was it he who’d sent them to the border, then? Why? Was he expecting a war with Carpathia?
“They mentioned Mrs. Knife,” offered Sloot.
“That could mean a lot of things,” said Flavia. “Probably something to do with the Serpents of the Earth. You’re still in with them, aren’t you?”
“Not entirely,” said Sloot, trying to sound more upset about it than he was.
“Right, I suppose we’ll just have to keep an eye on it. Now then, what were you doing in Carpathia?”
“Oh, right,” said Sloot. “I was worried we’d forget to bring that up again! Well, there are plots afoot, aren’t there?”
“Always,” said Flavia. “Was it something to do with the plot to kidnap the Domnitor, long may he reign?”
“Long may he reign. Right! Yes. I was trying to sort out whether the Carpathians had wind of it.” It was close to the truth, but it earned him a spiritual ulcer nonetheless. He’d actually been on his way to give the Carpathians wind of it, truth be told, which he’d prefer it wasn’t.
“That’s probably a good idea,” said Flavia. “Good to keep up with all of the villains when heresy rears its ugly head. But is that really the truth, Sloot?”
In Sloot’s experience, questions like that weren’t asked in the absence of suspicion. This was why he didn’t like to lie! Perhaps his old friend ignorance could be of assistance.
“Of course it is,” he said, summoning all of his willpower to keep his voice from wavering.
“I want to believe you,” said Flavia, “it’s just that we know you’re still working with Carpathian Intelligence.”
“A double agent! That was always my value to Uncle, wasn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but you haven’t disclosed your relationship with ... what was her name? Meryl?”
“Myrtle,” said Sloot, before he could stop himself.
“Right, Myrtle! Sorry about that. She’s in Carpathian Intelligence too, isn’t she?”
“She is,” said Sloot. It felt a bit like he was betraying her, but Flavia already knew about it, didn’t she?
“You really need to report this sort of thing,” said Flavia. “When we hear about it through gossip, it’s ... unsettling.”
“Unsettling?”
“It gives the impression that you’re trying to hide it from us. You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“No, of course not!” Sloot was more sure than ever that he should have filled out some form or another, declaring officially that Myrtle was his girlfriend. He loved filling out forms, especially new and exotic ones that he’d never had occasion to fill out before. He imagined that sort of form might bear a foil stamp. He liked those best.
“All right,” said Flavia. “I believe you. But there’s something else, and you’re not going to like it.”
“Go on. I’m used to it.”
“It’s about kidnapping the Domnitor.”
“Long may he reign,” said Sloot. “What about it?”
“We’re going to need your help with it.”
“Happy to help,” said Sloot. “Anything to keep him safe! I’m a true salt after all, happy to prove—”
“That is to say we need your help kidnapping him.”
It was a good thing that Sloot was already dead, because that was just the sort of talk that would have given him a heart attack. To his credit, he still tried his best to have one there on the spot.
“You … you want … you want …”
“I know it’s shocking,” said Flavia, “but we’re left with little choice.”
“That’s not true,” Sloot pleaded. “You have infinite choice! You’re Uncle! You can do anything you want, up to and including leaving the Domnitor—long may he reign— well enough alone!”
“We’re Uncle,” said Flavia, motioning to herself and to Sloot. “Our mission is to root out heresy and unrest wherever we find it, and there’s enough going on in the Domnitor’s own castle at the moment to keep all of us busy for the rest of our careers. Trust me, our experts have been over this every conceivable way, and they’ve come to the same conclusion every time. Unless we can put the Domnitor back on the throne, we have no chance of taking the city back from the Serpents of the Earth.”
“Oh,” said Sloot. “You want to put him back on the throne?”
“Well, yes,” said Flavia, in a tone that suggested there was more to it than that. She opened her mouth again to say more, then apparently thought better of it and closed her mouth again.
Sloot thought. He was good at thinking. A bit too good, sometimes. At least he thought so, particularly when he arrived at answers that were scary enough to make him wish he hadn’t. Thought, that is.
“This is a coup d’etat!”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” said Flavia.
“Yes? And?”
“And what?”
“What’s another way of looking at it?”
“We’ll just leave that up to the Ministry of Propaganda,” said Flavia. “They’re awfully good at coming up with answers to questions like that.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sloot, “but I don’t think that I can be a part of this.”
“I can see how you might feel that way,” said Flavia. She was using a very warm smile, one that made Sloot very much want to trust her in all things forever. “But those are your orders.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“I’ve already told you. We’re going to put him back on the throne.”
“I’m confused,” said Sloot.
“We’ve lost confidence in his ability to rule, but he’s been the figurehead for the government for so long that he’s indispensable. If we’re going to take over ruling the Old Country, we’ll need him sitting on the throne. Smile and wave, that sort of thing.”
“He’ll be your puppet.”
“I like to think of it more as a mascot. That’s more cheery, isn’t it?”
It was, but not enough to change Sloot’s mind. What he said next surprised him.
“I’m sorry,” said Sloot, “but you’ll have to count me out.”
Who was this brave and principled Sloot Peril? He’d never pushed back against demands before, and he was less comfortable in that moment than he’d been when he’d worn shoes that were three sizes too small for an entire year. They were a gift.
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” said Flavia, smirking in disappointment. “If you refuse to help, we’ll have to punish Myrtle.”
“What? You wouldn’t!”
“We would. We wouldn’t like it, I promise; but we would. And I know what you’re thinking, but it won’t help.”
Sloot stared blankly at her. If she knew what he was thinking, he was farther behind than he thought.
“About Myrtle being a demon,” said Flavia.
“What? How do you know about that?”
Flavia smiled and stifled a giggle as best she could.
“How do you think we got our reputation for knowing everything? Oh, Sloot! We do laugh together, don’t we?”
“You can’t kill her,” said Sloot. He hoped he was right.
“True enough,” said Flavia, causing Sloot to sigh with relief, “but we can do far, far worse.” Sloot gasped his sigh back in.
Sloot tried another bit of deduction, the last time having worked out well. “You’ve got demons on the payroll.”
“Worse. We’ve got lawyers.”
“Lawyers?”
“Lawyers. They’ve got more red tape than they know what to do with, and believe me, they know how to use it! We’ll get her pitched off whatever assignment she’s currently on and have her working at an office so far beneath Infernal Bureaucracy that she’ll be chained to her desk for the eternity. Quite possibly literally.”
Sloot said nothing, just soaked up the familiar feeling of being entirely helpless and at the mercy of bullies.
“If it makes you feel any better,” said Flavia, “very few people will know what’s actually happened. Your average salt will go back to believing that the Domnitor reigns in Salzstadt, and they’ll appreciate that the dead are in the ground where they belong. I know you’re going to do the right thing, Sloot, I just know it. Think it over, but don’t take too long.”
Bureaucratic Horror
The Old Country is a cold place. It’s not so cold as Nordheim, where there’s been snow on the ground for so long that the Vikings who live there have furious debates over the existence of dirt beneath it; however, the answer to “should I bring a sweater just in case?” is always a resounding “yes.”
Until recently, the elderly salts who lived in the capital would unequivocally condemn the cold as a deliberate assault on their old bones. Until recently.