Secondhand Sorcery

The ceiling was white. Very white, and clean. There weren’t any stains on it. It was nice. It looked like a nice place, but it got boring after a minute. Also, she wasn’t very comfortable; her hands were behind her back, and she was lying on top of them. They were numb, and her shoulders hurt a little. She tried to pull her hands out from under her, but found she couldn’t. It was kind of annoying.

She tried to sit up. That didn’t work very well either, since she couldn’t use her hands to help. Also, her legs seemed to be stuck together at the ankles. Weird. She tried to move her head to see what was going on, and caught a glimpse of wall to go with the ceiling—it was sort of tan—but it made her neck hurt and her shoulders hurt worse and after a couple of seconds she gave up.

After another minute she thought to try rolling on her side. That was hard too, but she managed, and found out she was lying on a bed in a bedroom. It was a nice room, and it looked clean. The comforter was striped brown and white, and the drawn window curtains were the same pattern. There was a nice yellow light from a lamp somewhere. That was good. It was a pretty place. Something about it looked familiar but she couldn’t say how.

She wished she could move more, but before she could try it a man came up from behind her, around the foot of the bed. He didn’t look friendly. He grumbled to himself, too quiet for her to hear, then he reached down and did something that made the back of her hand sting. She tried to ask him what he was doing but the words came out all mushy and then she fell asleep.

She woke up again, cussing, because something was hurting the inside of her leg. She tried to kick but her feet were still stuck together. That stumped her until she figured out that her eyes were closed, so she opened them. It was darker now, but it looked like the same room—a hotel room, she thought. There was a man, a different man from before, pinching the hell out of her thigh, so she twisted around to look at him and called him a goatfucker and he let go and that was good.

She was out of breath for some reason, and took a minute to rest before she tried talking again. The man didn’t say anything, only watched her. There was another man behind him, and a girl beside that man, a kid. The girl looked really mad about something. She couldn’t guess what. The second man had a hand on her shoulder but she was ignoring him and glaring at her on the bed. Whatever.

She looked back at the first man and asked him who he was and what he wanted. Or maybe what he was and who he wanted. It came out a little vague. He didn’t seem to notice. Just asked for her name.

“Fatima,” she told him. “Fatima Alvarez-Marshall. What’s all this about?”

“Your attack against Turkish military officials, and Turkish civilians, on Turkish soil.”

“Oh.” It sounded like she was in trouble. She giggled. “Shit. My bad.”

“Yes. You are bad. You have done wrong. But it will go easier on you, if you cooperate. Who were your accomplices, and where are they now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t, like, radar-tag them.” She was still sleepy, and if he wanted her to help him he shouldn’t have pinched her leg. It felt like he’d maybe left a bruise.

“Their names?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s Bob, and … Rus, and the, and … you know? Leave me alone.” She shut her eyes.

He pinched her again, in the exact same spot. She cussed him out up in down, in Pashto this time, but he kept on pinching until she ran out of breath to cuss with. “There is no point in resisting,” he told her. “No help is coming for you. I am an experienced interrogator. The medicines we have given you will prevent your calling your emissant for help, or concealing the truth effectively. Cooperation is key to your survival.”

That sounded like bullshit to her, and she tried whistling for Mister Higgins. She was still really sleepy, and the room was all pleasant and dim when the asshole wasn’t hurting her leg. She could remember Mr. Griffith, and the trouble at the shop, and all the rest of the keystone sequence, but it didn’t seem to mean a whole lot to her. She just couldn’t focus. Well, damn.

After a thirty-second staring contest, the asshole said something she couldn’t understand to the other guy, who left her frame of vision to knock on the door and call out into what she guessed was the hallway. Then they waited, with the guy staring down at her like a creeper. The curtains were still drawn, but the lamp was off, so all she could see by was daylight sneaking in around the edges.

A third dude came in and rolled her on the bed to do something to her hand again. She tried to pull her hands away, but they were stuck together at the wrists and her shoulders still hurt. A couple of seconds later, things started to go blurry, and she noticed she was talking without meaning to. Then she noticed she was talking, and started talking about how she shouldn’t be talking, and then she realized that, shit, she was still talking, and it was kind of funny so she laughed but nobody else did. They asked her some more questions about people she knew and she answered them but she didn’t really understand her own answers and they kept asking the questions.

She opened her eyes again and the room was empty but her stomach felt bad so she rolled over until her face was just over the edge of the bed and then she threw up all down the stripey comforter thing. She felt kind of bad about that, since they were nice, but not much came up anyway. Her head hurt, but not too much. Everything seemed like it was far away, like her eyes and ears were down a long tunnel from her brain and took forever to send a message. Even her head couldn’t manage to tell itself how it hurt. It was just too far away.

She woke up again when she fell the rest of the way off the bed. It felt pretty bad. The room was dark, and still empty, and nobody came even when she yelled so she fell back asleep.

She woke up again, and the room was dark, totally dark except a tiny bit of light around the curtains, but she was back on the bed. It smelled like a gas station bathroom but she couldn’t tell why. She was about to ask when something grabbed her shoulder. She yelled, and the something reached down and jabbed her hard between two of her ribs. That made the yell louder. Then she was dragged around so she was face up on the bed, and something hit her in the face, and then her stomach, really hard, so she threw up again, and a voice—a high voice, a kid’s voice—hissed something in her ear while she retched. Then something smashed into her ear and knocked her back down to the bed.

“O benim babamdı!”

“Wha?”

Another hit, to the face. “O benim babamdı, seni fahişe. Beni duyuyor musun? Ma fotter!”

“Ow! Dammit!” She tried to roll away, and fell off the bed again, landing on her face. Even on carpet, it hurt. It hurt more when whoever the hell it was landed on top of her, and started screaming in her ear.

“Sen kim olduğunu sanıyorsun, seni yabancı kaltak? Babanı bulacağım ve gözünün önünde onu parçalayacağım! Beni duyuyor musun? Ve sonra öleceksin. Bana bunu yapmayacaksın ve yaşayacaksın!”

The door crashed open, the lights came on, and a man added his shouting voice to the mix. The girl kept on screaming in Fatima’s ear, and yanking at her hair while she was at it, until somebody hauled her off by force, and she got in a couple of kicks at Fatima’s ribs as she was being lifted off, and a gob of spit right on her cheek just below the eye. She kept screaming all the way out of the room, and after the door slammed shut behind her she screamed some more and hit it too. Fatima lay there hurting on the floor, her hands and feet still bound, wondering what the hell was going on, until the crazy girl got dragged away.

When she was gone she heard men talking outside the door. They came in, and hauled her back up on the bed, grumbling and babbling in more Turkish. She was too confused, and hurt too much, to struggle or ask questions. It was a relief when they twisted her arm around and jabbed her again, this time inside the elbow. Her last thought before she passed out again was of the look on the kid’s face as they dragged her away. Mouth open, teeth bared, dripping spit like a mad dog and oozing tears all down her cheeks. Just plain unhinged. And she was, what, eight years old? What the hell …

It was day again, early morning peeking around the blinds. The lights came on, and she groaned. Quick footsteps. She squeezed her eyes shut. It hurt, all over. She rolled away, facing the window, and the bonds around her wrists and feet promptly snapped, immediately treating her to fresh new kinds of pain as blood started flowing back into places it hadn’t been allowed for a very long time.

Yet another hand on her, grabbing her by the shoulder. “Fatima, are you okay?”

The voice was familiar, her response automatic: “Do I fucking look okay, Rus?” Then she rolled back over so she could glare at him. Then her brain caught up. “Are we getting out of here now? It’s about time.”

“We had a hard time finding you! We didn’t even know you were alive. If there hadn’t been one lady on the cleaning staff who—“

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let’s go.” She made an effort to sit up, and got it on the third try. More pain in more places. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”

“It’s only been a little more than a day,” Ruslan whined.

“One long-ass day.” Her head was still a little fuzzy, and she was sure she’d throw up again if only there were anything left in there to spew. “Got any water?”

“Sure.” He bumbled off towards, she assumed, the bathroom. “Oh. There’s no glasses here. Sorry. I think we’d better hurry.”

“Fine.” She slid her feet down, real slow, and that felt rotten too. “Any chance of a patch job, then?”

“I’m not supposed to be using Kizil Khan. We’re trying to keep a low profile.”

“We.” She got to her feet, and fell back against the bed to get steady while blood flow sorted itself out again. “Again, do you notice how ‘we’ means you come in and do the hard part while the grownups chillax?”

“Not this time. Look.” She followed his pointing finger to a body on the floor next to the bathroom door. A quick glance didn’t show any wound.

“VRIL work?”

“Yeah. She cleared the way for me, and she’s our backup, keeping an eye on the hotel.”

One step, then another when that worked out okay. “She still could have popped the whole building open and got me out her own self. I’m telling you, the woman’s got her own familiar.”

“I know. I’ve seen it. Do you need a hand?”

It was nice of him to offer first instead of just grabbing like he usually did. Probably because she stank of piss after more than twenty-four hours drugged out and immobile. She was lucky she hadn’t choked on her own barf. “Sure. Thanks.” He guided her carefully around the corpse.

Another couple of dead guys in the hallway. “How many people did Bob cack for you?”

“Enough that I didn’t have to use Kizil Khan, or my gun.”

“Damn.” But that reminded her of something. “Were any of them kids?”

“No. Was there a kid?”

“Yeah.” The angry face floated back up to the top of her memory, with a murky wash of drugs laid over it. “Girl. Turkish. Younger than us. I was too out of it to tell you more than that for sure.”

“Is she Pangu’s new—“

“She didn’t pull him out. But yeah, probably. They kept her handy when I woke up the first time.” It was a very nice hotel, with a real posh hallway, but it felt twice as long as it needed to be. “Don’t know who she was.”

“Keisha had them look it up yesterday, after … you know. Major Polat had two kids. The older one’s a daughter, nine years old.” They’d arrived at an elevator; he hesitated, looked further down the hallway.

“I’m not going to make it down any stairs on my feet, Rus.”

“I know,” he said, and pushed the button. They waited in silence until it arrived, then got on. “You’re really lucky to be alive. This is twice, now.”

“Don’t rub it in, fool. I already said thanks.” She was pretty sure she meant it, but not positive. She was all wrung out, sore and hungry and hungover from whatever crap they’d been dosing her with. She needed water bad, but wasn’t sure she wouldn’t throw up the first drink she got. There wasn’t much room for legit emotions on top of all that, though she figured she’d be seeing Polat’s daughter in her next nightmare. That was something to look forward to.

“I was thinking, maybe you should take it easy for a while.” The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open; Fatima took the opportunity to leave without responding. Ruslan didn’t push it, but led her down a side hallway to an emergency exit with its alarm-rigged lock melted clean off. It looked like it was late morning outside. “I can do something too, you know. You don’t always have to be the one doing the dangerous stuff.”

“Did I just hear you volunteer for emissor work?” She pushed the door open. As expected, the wind off the lake cut like a knife.

“Yes, you did!” he snapped. “Hold on a second.” He bent down to pick up a couple of black trash bags off the sidewalk and throw them aside. A new-looking coat was lying under them. “Here. Put this on.”

She took it without comment. She chose to assume Bob was responsible for thinking of it. No way Rus had it together enough to plan ahead like that. The fur coat she’d liberated was long gone, and the cigs too, but the last part was just as well. “Where to?”

Ruslan opened his mouth, and he said something, but she never heard it. She had a sudden, overwhelming feeling, watching him talk, that there was no point to any of it. Turkey was ruined and falling apart, and even if they bit off a piece for themselves there was no guarantee that somebody else wouldn’t come along and take it from them. The whole business was trashy and ugly, and what she wanted, in that moment, more than anything else, was for something to make it right again. It was winter here, had been winter too long already; when would it be spring?

All that flashed through her mind in an instant, so sharp and sudden that she literally staggered and fell back against the wall behind her. It would have been too much to take, if in the very next second she hadn’t felt just as certain that spring would arrive sooner or later for sure. Nothing stayed bad forever. If she kept her head up and her eyes open, all would be right in the end. All the cars in the narrow street had slowed to a stop to wait for it with her. And look, there it was! Right there, poking up through the brickwork—a bright green sprout. New life, shining and perfect.

It grew up fast, while the two of them watched. In less than five seconds it was over their heads, and budding out a single enormous white flower. A flower in the shape of a woman, all milky white in her skin and her dress, and ripe with strength and beauty. She was fifteen feet tall now, and bent down gracefully on her stalk to look at them. One flawless hand extended to bless them, and the air around them shimmered like dew at dawn.

Fatima put out a hand to touch the goddess, and found she couldn’t. The air had hardened between them, hardened to form a barrier of unbreakable strength. That made her sad, but it was right. All would be right in the end. She recognized this woman, this vision of majesty. Snowdrop had the power to make things right, and she would. Fatima turned around, saw that the shimmer in the air extended all around them, protecting them from the hostile world. It was hardening further, settling down, taking on a crystalline form.

They both covered their faces as a sudden flash of white light, burning-bright like the sun, shone through the new glass, scattering into a thousand rays and hues. Ruslan grabbed her by the shoulders and whipped her around and behind him for cover, so hard she nearly fell over. Fatima barely noticed; her eyes were on the goddess in white, who didn’t like the light any better than they did. She swayed back on her long stalk, holding her arms in front of her hooded face for a shield.

But the light was fierce; they could feel the heat on their backs as it burned through the translucent wall behind them. Snowdrop’s white sleeves weren’t looking so white anymore. More brown, like toasted marshmallows, with a bit of black around the edges, and the hands inside were a harsh and ugly red. She struggled, twisting and flailing her arms, but it was too late. In an instant the whole top part of her burst into flames, everything above the green shoot burning at once. Her pretty mouth was open in a scream, but she never made a sound, and her whole body took only an instant to burn away into nothing. Then her stalk withered, and drooped down to the ground, and disappeared.

Fatima wasn’t worried; you couldn’t kill a goddess that easily. She could still feel her presence; she’d be reborn in a second. Out of curiosity, though, she turned around, to see what had done it. All she saw was a little old lady standing at the next intersection—a crook-backed creature with wrinkled skin the color of tarnished mahogany. She was wrapped in a shining white cloth, nothing more. She looked at the two of them, and her eyes were glowing too bright to bear.

Again Ruslan grabbed her, yanking her back into the hotel they just left. It was annoying, but she didn’t resist. She was confident that, whatever happened from here, it would turn out for the best. Any fool could tell you that. But they could also tell you that it was dumb as hell for little people to hang around and gawk when the masters of the universe got together for a brawl.