Secondhand Sorcery

HMS Spenser was an ugly thing, a lumpy mountain of steel poking out of the Mediterranean. It didn’t look any better up close, when the helicopter landed and a gang of British crewmen hustled Nadia’s stretcher out. Everything about it was dull and drab and functional, from the gauge-covered and pipe-strewn walls to the near-identical sailors bustling about its cramped corridors.

Only Ms. Keisha and Kemal were on the chopper with her; the British would not risk multiple Marshall children on one ship, even if the ship was a cruiser specifically made for counter-paraphysical operations. They’d been warned before the flight that any attempt to call a familiar on board, or create VRIL constructs, would trigger the ship’s defenses and get everyone in a twenty-foot radius knocked unconscious by a Campbell pulse. It was the same system the Americans used to defend their capital, they said.

This would be an annoyance—Nadia had become accustomed to using Ézarine to move herself around, when nobody else was available—and also a relief. The boat was ugly and claustrophobic, but it was stationed on alert a mile off the coast of Cyprus. It might get hit by a missile, gun, or torpedo; it might hit an uncharted rock and submerge, or fall prey to any number of purely natural misfortunes. It could not be attacked by anyone like Yefimov. Nadia’s soul would be preserved from further harm, by herself or anyone else.

Her body was another matter. The ship’s medical officer, briefed in advance, looked her over as soon as she came aboard, and told them what Nadia, at least, already knew: that multiple rounds of surgery, some intended to correct the failings of previous surgeries, all done in haste by stressed doctors working in secrecy in the middle of a war zone afflicted by shortages, had made her abdomen into a horrible mess of abscesses and scar tissue.

It was doubtful whether any facility on the planet could repair the damage done by nearly three weeks’ botched medical care of an already serious traumatic injury. It was a testament to her young and resilient body that she was still conscious; the doctor expected that she would slip into sepsis and die within a week at the most. He did not say it quite so bluntly, because he was not heartless, but he did not lie. Nadia appreciated that.

When they were done talking, the two adults escorted her to her new shipboard quarters in silence, then fussed about trying to set everything up nicely. It was painful to watch them fumble together in the little space, asking whether they should hang the icons here or there, which clothes she wanted ready, if it was okay for a lady serviceman to help her with her bath or if she would prefer Ms. Keisha and when would she like it? She tried to answer them politely, because it was not their fault, but she did not feel she had the energy to keep it up any longer.

She was tired, and beyond tired. The pain was bad, and the drugs to fight the pain were bad, and between the recent past and her probable future Nadia wanted absolutely nothing so much as to see the end of it all, whatever that would mean. Hoping hurt, and there was nothing left to hope for.

At last they were done setting everything up, and there were no more questions to be asked. Keisha looked at Kemal, and Kemal looked at Keisha, and they said nothing, and they did not leave. Nadia would have looked out the window if there had been one. She stared at the wall—the bulkhead—instead, until Keisha finally broke the silence.

“All right, we’re safe now. Whatever spies he has in whatever parts of Turkey, Yefimov can’t possibly touch us here. Fatima and Ruslan are both safe on other ships. The physical and paraphysical security situation is acceptable. Now’s the time we discuss our plans for the future.”

I have no future, she didn’t say. “What do you want?”

“This has never been about what I want. If I’d had my way, you’d have been on your feet and healthy again on Sunday, if not sooner. You said no. I thought that was … wrong, misguided, but I wanted to give you your space, so I got Ruslan and Fatima off on mission so you could think it over without them bothering you, or trying to heal you against your will. You’ve never been given the right to choose, after all. I thought the most important thing was to let you process everything that had happened.

“Then I got back from Tatvan, and found you looking like a corpse. We’re not totally out of options here, despite what that doctor just told you, but I have to ask: Nadia, do you still want to live at all?”

“Of course I want to live. Just … not at that cost, by those means. I value my soul, you know that.”

“I’m not talking about Ruslan. We have another means of healing you. We didn’t want to bring it up prematurely, but we’re pretty sure can get you in with Metakken. Do you know who that is?”

“Everyone knows who that is! Titus got the offer to assassinate him, when we were in Syria. He turned it down as ‘bad optics.’ But his emissor is willing to take me?”

“He has said he’s willing to consider it, if he meets you. It took a great deal of persuasion by Dr. Gus. We didn’t know for sure until yesterday, when everyone was in an uproar and we were getting ready to leave the country. That opened up some options. For obvious reasons, he’s reluctant to enter a majority-Muslim area in upheaval, and moving you seemed like a bigger obstacle before it became an operational necessity.”

Healing. True, perfect healing. She didn’t know how to handle the idea. Too many doors she’d closed off, flying open again all of a sudden. She turned to Kemal, who hadn’t understood a word of it, and translated, in case it would help. To her surprise, it did, but then she had Kemal to deal with too.

“He can make you well again? Take the offer, child! Take it while it is there. I have not nursed you so far, and worried so much, to see it end so badly.”

“I know. But.”

“But what? His jinni does not kill or harm, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t. Metakken cannot harm, only heal, or repair. He is famous for that. But this is a lot to take on.” Kemal responded by sharing another worried look with Keisha. “Could the two of you please leave me along for a bit so I can think?” She repeated the question in English.

Keisha answered for both of them. “We can give you some time, Nadia. You can have an hour, or a day even. But you might not have much longer than that.” She turned to leave, noticed Kemal not following, and half-dragged him away by one arm. The door shut with a clang behind them.

Did she want to live? The question should have been ridiculous, and maybe it was. But did she? She no longer knew what life would look like, if it went on, and she was not sure she wanted any kind of life she could have. So many choices, so seemingly just or sensible, had gone so wrong already. Beginning with Ézarine, and ending with the madness at the bridge.

Or, maybe, with yesterday, when Ruslan had once again offered to heal her. He’d said it wouldn’t count as any kind of sin, because Noorlan’s death had ‘paid’ for it in advance, and the Russians owed her. As if it worked that way! As if she wanted theological opinions from someone like Ruslan to begin with! She’d ordered him away, then steeled herself for another fight with Fatima. But her sister had only shaken her head and walked away. Even she, who was always so certain, didn’t know what she wanted anymore.

Nadia turned to her icons—Alexander Nevsky was hanging very slightly crooked, she saw, and bobbing with the motion of the ship—but did not say the usual prayer. God felt very far away right now, and the concentration required would feel painful and false. She only looked at the princely saint, gorgeous in fur and brocade, grasping a sword. Wealth and power. Saints had it easy. The writers always talked about the devil tempting them, but Nadia’s was real, and Nadia had stupidly taken her on herself.

(Or had the saints been burdened the same way? An emissant was only a product of its master’s desires. Was it impossible, that they had produced their own fears and temptations? That the evil wishes inside them had taken on real form from long hours of prayer and fasting? What was a miracle? She thought it over a minute, then dismissed the question as a pointless distraction.)

She could not get rid of Ézarine. She had asked Doctor Gus, and Colonel Hampton, and Ethan, and Keisha, and she had even tried the internet and found the most disgusting, and stupid, and insane ideas a human mind could conceive. It was doubtful, at best, whether Metakken could get rid of her. She would be burdened with the concentrated essence of a dead man’s personal darkness until she died, whenever that happened. And anything further she did, however she tried to atone, would be tainted by that.

Ézarine was insane. More than that, she was madness itself. Madness, lies, temptation, a perfect artificial demon. She would never stop whispering in Nadia’s ear, recasting everything so Nadia was the victim and had the right to do something, anything, because she was always the one being wronged. Dr. Gus had called familiars sharpened desires, turned into tools to change the world. But they also changed their masters. He had admitted that.

Nadia might save her own life, but she had no faith that she would not do more and greater evil down the road if she did. She could not save herself without saving Ézarine, and there was no good Nadia could do which could outweigh her pet demon’s potential for evil. There would be more deaths like Fatih, like Panos, like the men killed at the bridge and the hospital, and in time Nadia would stop even feeling bad about them. It was not safe, or just, or fair to the rest of the human race, to continue to inflict this disaster on the world. She was only a child, and now a very sick one, but it seemed to her that the best thing left to do with her life was to end it. It would be a kind of martyrdom.

She had made up her mind, but was still thinking it over, when she heard a knock at the door—the hatch, they called it. “Who is it?”

“It is Kemal. May I come in?”

Nadia bit back a sigh. “I cannot stop you.”

There was a little stool in the room, and Kemal drew it up beside the bed to sit down. Nadia turned her face away, waiting for the begging and pleading to start. It would only be a little longer.

The old man cleared his throat, and began: “Have you seen when men cut a tree down, the part which stays behind? The kütüğü?”

She kept her face turned. “What are you talking about?”

“The kütüğü, the part of the tree which stays in the ground. You look, and you see circles, and circles, and circles. One inside another. Every circle is one year.”

“Yes, Kemal, I went to science class, long ago. What is this about?”

“Some circles are better than others. Some circles are very bad. Thin ones, no rain, little growth. Old scars from insects. Burns, terrible fires. They do not go away. The tree does not forget. But always there are new circles. The tree still grows, for many more years, with old damage inside and not seen.”

Now she let the sigh out. “I am not a tree, Kemal. This is not helping.”

He gave a feeble laugh. “I know. I am bad at telling stories. But I try to be a good man. Do I succeed?”

“Yes. You’ve been very good to me, and done far more than I had a right to ask you.” She had to admit that much, even if he was going to use it for a cheap guilt trip.

“Sometimes I do not think so. You did not think so. You remember? The same day you were hurt, you called me a coward. Do you remember this?”

“Yes, I do, and I’m sorry. I’d forgotten that, with everything that happened. You really weren’t.”

“Yes, I was! I saw men and women being killed, and I could have stopped it, and I did not, until you shamed me. You were right to shame. I was a coward, and I thank you for saying so.”

“But that wasn’t fair! You’d never been at war before, you didn’t know what it was like, and I threw it at you all at once—“

“All true. But I was still a coward. You forgive me? But you do not forgive yourself. Why? You excuse the weakness of a grown man, but not a half-grown girl? Where is the sense in this?”

“You can’t compare what you’ve done and what I have. You haven’t killed anyone.”

“No. I do not have a jinni. You did, and you saved Panos from the men who did evil. You have more power, and you do more with it, good and bad. But my cowardice did not end there, that day.”

“Now what are you talking about?”

“All that day, I live with shame, terrible shame. I tell myself: you needed a little infidel girl to teach you courage. Are you a man, Kemal? When your grandchild comes, will you need him to tell you right as well? And I hear this voice, my shame, and I listen. I am so ashamed that when you come and ask me to do a thing I know should not be done, I barely fight. I am ashamed to look in your eye to correct you, though I am a man and you are a girl with a mad jinniyah inside you.”

She glared at him. “That’s not how it went!”

“I was there! I remember!” He lowered his voice with a visible effort. “Whose fault is it, that you are dying? Yours, and mine, and the man who fired the gun, and many others. All are true. I am not responsible for all, but I am responsible for some. I did not fight to prevent your mad attack on Tutak, because I feared to be called weak once more, and so made my weakness double. I have sinned against you, my daughter-by-chance, and for that I ask forgiveness of you and God alike.”

Nadia didn’t know what to say. He kept looking at her face, with his own bearded face set like a statue’s, until she had no choice, if she wanted to end it, but to tell him, “I forgive you.”

“And I accept your forgiveness, and I thank you, my daughter. The coward is dead. We will not speak of him. But we must bury him. I must be a coward no longer. I see you, in the land of the Kurds, and now here, hating yourself, wishing to die. And I must tell you that this, too, is cowardice.”

“It is not! I am trying to prevent more death. I have Ézarine inside me forever, don’t you see? If I live, so does she.”

“Then control her. You say she is not even real, not a person, only a thing. But this is not about that. You did not say this before. No, it was ‘not by your methods, Ruslan.’ Now you cannot say this, so you say the other thing. This is excuses. What kind of person makes excuses?”

“This is about principle, Kemal. I’m not … scared to live. Whoever heard of that?”

“I have, and I have seen it and felt it before. Sometime I will tell you how it is, to be a man on the docks of Trabzon. But not now. Now it is you who are scared. You say so yourself: ‘How do I control my jinniyah? It is too hard. I may do bad if I live. I will simply not live, it is easier.’”

For a moment Nadia was tempted, in spite of everything, to call Ézarine and show him what she could do. But she knew it would only cause her to black out when the defense system kicked in, and probably get shot in the head while she lay unconscious. She didn’t want to die right away, like that.

“All are excuses. You are my ward, as good as daughter now. I allow my daughter to worship as she likes, but I will not have a liar. This is your fear, and worse your pride.”

“I’m not proud of anything, Kemal. Weren’t you just saying I was ashamed, or something?”

“You can be both. You are proud because you do not wish to let go of your shame. You hold it tight, like a doll. You say, ‘this is my special shame. I have done great and terrible things, and am beyond forgiveness.’ You are not! There is nothing special in any shame. All men sin. We say: in the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. But He forgives the bowed neck, and the hard way freely chosen. This is too hard, and you hurt, so you turn away, you quit. Daughter, you will earn yourself nothing but hellfire that way.”

“You know I am not a Muslim.”

“Do your priests and your books tell you any different?” He pointed to the icons. “Which of those people died because he would not ask God’s forgiveness?”

All of a sudden Nadia found herself crying. Kemal leaned over the bed to embrace her. It pulled at the pain around her hip, and she could have screamed, but she hugged him back and did not let go.

“I am not the world,” he murmured in her ear. “I cannot forgive all. But I see what you do, I know what you have done, and I what I can forgive I will. I do not want your death. Keisha, she risks so much. She does not want your death. Your brother, your sister, they ask you to live. The doctors, the nurses, all who work so hard to save you: they did not do this to see you die. Do you think you are right, and all of them wrong?”

She honestly still did, but she was weak, and she still hurt. It was easier to hug him and sob a bit. When she was done, she lay back on the bed again, and asked him to let her rest for a bit. He nodded and went away smiling. Nadia fell asleep.

Some time later, a woman in uniform showed up to offer her a bath, which she accepted, and to fuss over her bandages. It was all unpleasant and demeaning, but Nadia bore up under all of it. At last the woman asked if there was anything else she could do, in the usual perfunctory way of medical people, and Nadia asked if, being near Cyprus, she could find an Orthodox priest willing to hear a very long confession. The woman seemed confused by the request, but said she would see what she could do.

Keisha showed up a little later, her face apologetic but not unhappy. She made a long speech about security regulations and military secrets, and made a big fuss about all the parts of Nadia’s beliefs she frankly didn’t get and how sorry she was about that … but the long and short of it was that she was going to have to ask Nadia to promise not to be too specific with her confession. With that said, she would see what she could do.

Nadia laughed. “I confess to God. He knows the details. The priest is only there to keep me honest. I can be nonspecific.”

“Okay. I probably have a few strings left to pull. Maybe I can get some kind of chaplain, they’re used to dealing with classified stuff. But, if I’m going to do all that—“

“Yes, you can fly me to Tel Aviv or wherever,” Nadia told her. “That is fine. I only want to get my soul straight before I go trying to fix my body.”