Secondhand Sorcery

Responsibility, Yuri had long ago decided, was a real pain in the ass. That was why he’d always tried to avoid it. He was happiest when Hamza and Papa Titus did all the strategizing, told him what to do, and let him loose to do it. Yuri could follow specific orders, then go home, kick back, and relax until whatever they decided on as the next mission. He only got in trouble when they expected him to improvise and make decisions on the fly. He made the decisions pretty well—at least, he always thought so—but they always bitched at him after the fact, trying to say they’d have done it better. Like that bullshit with the airport back in Thessaloniki.

He hadn’t had much choice lately, though. It had been a rough month. Titus was dead, Hamza was probably toast too, and he didn’t know where the rest of the family had gone off to. Yuri’d had to make the decisions then, because there was nobody else. Fortunately, that meant there was nobody to criticize either.

As usual, he’d done pretty well for himself; he’d made a bunch of messes along the way, just dodging the heat, but he already had a sweet setup back in their old Syrian turf, working with a lot of the same people. It was a long way from the Tit’s setup, with multiple repurposed emissants, but Yuri didn’t want that anyway. He wanted some space to live, steady income, and nobody giving him crap. And he had that now. More or less.

But he still had to be responsible for some things, like explaining the jokes on Death Squad! to a refugee kid whose only experience with animation was bad dubs of old Bugs Bunny shorts. “Yes, it’s a cartoon, but you gotta look past that, okay? This isn’t the baby garbage you’re used to. Matt and Trey are more sophisticated than that.”

He paused a minute to let Aladdin—he still couldn’t believe that was the dude’s actual name, but it was—translate. The kid nodded, then frowned at the TV screen.

Yuri knew what he was thinking. “Yeah, the animation’s crappy too. That’s part of the joke! You’ve got these crazy guys running around the world doing crazy black ops shit, and the animation’s terrible! The blood looks like ketchup, and the people are just blocks of color with blocks of color for clothes! But it’s supposed to be terrible. That’s the whole point.”

Aladdin translated. The boy nodded and smiled nervously, like he didn’t quite get it but was scared to say so. What a pissant. “And that’s just scratching the surface. This is some deep shit, and I can’t expect you to get it all right away, but it’s all satire. Like, half the shows aren’t even about all the killing and overthrowing governments anymore. That’s mostly early season stuff. Now they go multiple shows at a time just focusing on their personal problems, or with them getting pissed off about some dumbass pop-culture fad, and Mr. Chonkey—that’s the dude in the suit with the glasses—is all like, ‘hey, Death Squad! We’re not paying you to dick around here! Get back to killing civilians.’ And they’re all like, ‘whatever.’ But even that’s just a running gag now. They’ve kind of moved past the show’s premise.”

All that took a while for Aladdin to translate; Yuri tried to pass the time by watching the show, but this was one of the lame episodes from the season two slump, and he’d seen it three times already. So he picked up an old issue of Spiral Flame War instead, and got so wrapped up that Aladdin had to cough for his attention. “Oh. Right.” He set the manga down, then turned off the TV.

“The thing you’ve got to understand is, the Yuris aren’t just some dumb after-school club, okay? It’s an elite group, and I don’t hand-pick the members in person because I enjoy going through this. Because yeah, it’s fun to be Yuri—it’s hella fun—but it’s also a franchise, like McDonald’s. You go out into the world, you’re representing me. I need to know you’re not going to make me look bad. That would be embarrassing. So I need to know you’re a good fit for my organization.”

The kid listened to the translation, nodding along, then said something back. “He knows this is an honor, and he hopes he has not disappointed you too badly,” Aladdin said. “He says perhaps he could introduce you to some of our shows, and that would help you understand why he does not yet appreciate yours?”

Damn, this kid was fucking lame. Barely better than Ruslan. Yuri could already tell he’d be a terrible ambassador for the Yuri brand. But the kid matched his height, build, and age pretty closely, and that was the important thing. They’d been running low on volunteers ever since Yuri Numbnuts and Stuttering Yuri ate it in that airstrike. A couple had even deserted. This kid had the guts to try and make something for himself. Or maybe he just hadn’t eaten in a couple of days. Same difference. Time for the personality test.

“Donkey pants,” Yuri said seriously. “The motorcycle eats the cactus and donuts on the blimp. Toys aren’t just a kind of lawyer.”

This was maybe the fifteenth time he’d done this test, and he was pretty sure Aladdin translated perfectly each time. The kid blinked, then looked doubtfully at the translator, who stayed stone-faced. Then back at Yuri, before very precisely enunciating something in Arabic that worked out to, “I do not understand what you are trying to tell me.”

Yuri put on his best annoyed face and said, “Gangsters don’t wear violins! And anyway what about the pandas, huh? How did the pandas get mixed up in all this?”

The kid’s brow wrinkled. He looked at Aladdin, back at Yuri, and said through Aladdin, “If this is American humor, I do not understand it either.”

Yuri slammed his fist on the table, and the kid jumped. Acting, at least, was fun. “I’m not a glassblower! Neither was your dad, and anyway dinosaurs can’t wear false teeth. They don’t even have eyes, you clumsy robot!”

Aladdin translated that, and the kid was silent for a long moment. Then he gave a long-ass speech, very softly. Aladdin said, “He says he is not sure what is going on, but based on your reputation he suspects it is some kind of joke at his expense. He does not enjoy this, but he knows he has few options left in his life and wishes for you to know that he will tolerate this sort of humor as long as you continue to find it pleasing.”

Yuri smiled. Everybody reacted to the personality test a little different. Some of them cried, or got mad, or had a panic attack. Some of them ran out of the room. A few just smiled like morons and pretended they thought it was actually clever. Those ones got names like Yuri Brown-Nose or Yuri Knobslobber. But this one … this one had dignity. Wild. Definitely a keeper.

He got up, poured two very small glasses of the stuff in the knockoff “Jcak Daniels” bottle, and handed one over. “Here, kid. You pass. You can be Yuri Brassballs, I don’t think we have one of those yet. Forget your old name, whatever it was. And I’m Boss Yuri to you, now. Aladdin, call the kitchen for some of that lentil and rice stuff. Everybody loves that.”

The kid gave his very stiff thanks, staring at the booze the whole time. It’d be interesting to see what he was like drunk, but probably he’d just make weenie faces and splutter and choke the whole thing down, same as most of them, and that would just be depressing. So Boss Yuri took a few sips, to show him how a man took his liquor, and wandered out of the old employee lounge before his new employee could finish his spiel.

He had half a mind to go see Maria now, but she probably wouldn’t like being interrupted, so he decided to keep being responsible. Anyway, he needed to stretch his legs, and Faisal said it was better to move around as much as possible, so nobody could predict where he might be at any time. Time for an inspection tour!

Homs, Syria, had one of the pathetically poor country’s two oil refineries. Yuri had taken it up as headquarters because it was big enough to hold a lot of people, it could make stuff he could sell, and if he got pissed off and called Shum-Shum the whole thing would go up like Hiroshima. Anybody who tried to sneak in to assassinate him would face the overwhelming likelihood of being blasted into the stratosphere even if he succeeded, and his employees were very, very motivated not to let anybody try.

Yuri tossed back the last of his Jcak Daniels. It was pretty bad, but he’d had it tasted a full day before he touched it, so it was safe. Hopefully the situation would settle down soon so he could stop living like some kind of old-timey nobleman. For now, though, he took the stairs down to peek in on the spook on duty. It was Faisal himself, at the moment, and Yuri could tell he was trancing for real. Nothing paraphysical could pop up within three miles without triggering an alert. They’d tracked and killed five VRIL pipers that way before they learned their lesson, but he still kept them trancing around the clock. His clairvoyants were all old contacts from the Tit’s Syrian days, officially still on the government’s payroll. Whatever the government was, anymore.

He passed a few other Yuris—Gaptooth and Haha—doing sentry rounds together. They both went stiff at the sight of him, then relaxed when he smiled. Had they seen anything suspicious? No, but they were looking forward to their next trip out. Very good. That was about all the conversation Yuri’s bad Arabic and their bad English would bear, so he nodded awkwardly and they all moved on. Gaptooth had looked a little glassy, so Yuri got out his notepad and made a note to cut back on the weekly coke allowance. The stuff was expensive anyway. Responsibility—what a pain in the ass.

He looked out the window and saw two cars headed out on a tribute run. Those were a solid moneymaker and—he checked the schedule—it was Manboobs and Dingleberry this time around. Reliable performers. Dingleberry especially was damn good at acting batshit crazy; everyone believed just one more bit of jewelry would be enough to cool him down and avoid a visit from Shum-Shum. Hopefully he’d come back alive, and not try to skim. Dingleberry could be a little greedy, and it would depress morale if he had to wind up in a hole in the desert after doing such an awesome job. Not that they actually bothered to dig holes anymore. Figure of speech.

He moseyed down to the cafeteria, where they were just setting out lunch. A few Yuris, a few hired guns, a few old refinery hands who’d been vetted and allowed to stay on making the Yuri-Industrial Complex some more cash. The local price was pretty high, these days, especially for a country with so few functioning roads left.

Yuri could have gone on to look at the actual oil-producing parts of the refinery, but it wasn’t like he actually understood what the hell was going on there, and that part had never been a problem. He had people keeping the oilmen honest, and people watching those people, and all that. The system ran itself; they only needed Yuri to be the gorilla in the room. Nobody could try and jockey for power with him around, because he’d throw a fit and burn them alive. It worked out better for everybody. Better than the last couple of years in Syria, and that was for sure.

All in all, things were looking up, he decided as he cut his tour short. He was sort of responsible, but it wasn’t too bad. The board of directors were fine as long as he kept the peace and didn’t shake down anybody they cared about. Yuri was pretty sure they all had side hustles here, and he was fine with that. Everybody needed a hobby, and he had somebody he trusted making sure they stayed in the black for real. They were on track to be basically running the whole country by the end of the year, with Yuri, Inc. as a generously compensated security guarantor.

Faisal didn’t like him sleeping in a regular, predictable location that could be taken out by a single rocket strike. Yuri was a big fan of living, so he complied, but Maria was stubborn so she got somebody’s private office to herself, complete with private bathroom. She didn’t have to deal with anybody but him—though she could, if she wanted to. She just never did.

He cracked open her door and peeked in; she was curled up in her beat-up armchair, staring hard at one of the refinery’s technical manuals, mouthing the words as she read. Yuri liked watching her study. Actually, he liked watching her do pretty much anything. She was maybe sixteen—she didn’t know for sure herself—and not much taller than him, but a rough childhood in a shithole country hadn’t hurt her looks. Just now she was hanging out in pajamas, and he bet she’d feel pleasantly soft.

“I am trying to concentrate, Furunin,” she said without looking up. “What do you want?”

“Same thing I always want, girl,” he said as he strutted into the room. “You up for it?”

“You can wait,” she told him, and turned a page. “It’s good for you, to try self-control for once. You need practice at it.”

Yep. Grumpy, as predicted. But he actually kind of liked that about her—not that she was grumpy, but that she didn’t give enough of a damn to hide it, from him or anyone else. Generations of living on the edge of a desert, doing whatever it took to survive, had produced a girl who might be afraid of something someday, but would never, ever show it. Yuri could feel the Jcak Daniels kicking in, just a bit—probably he should have eaten breakfast, too late now—and sidled around the room to start rubbing her neck and shoulders as she read. He put his heart into it, but she kept on reading. Probably just to annoy him.

They’d known each other for a little less than three weeks now, since her family helped move him across the border. The gang had spent enough time running hot Soviet gear to speak something that could generously be called Russian, and for the third-youngest cousin in the group to answer to either “Miriam” or “Maria.” One miserably cold night in the desert he’d sat next to her around the fire, passing the bottle while cousin Ahmed/Arseny went to fetch more gas.

After the third round he’d got up enough courage, or lost enough brain function, to put an arm around her waist. At first he thought she didn’t even notice, and started drifting his hand lower to see what he could get away with. Eventually she sighed, said something like, “Well, it’s not like I have anything better to do,” and walked off to the one of the convoy’s empty cars. Yuri sat there blinking at the fire, trying to come to grips with the situation, before her uncle told him they’d be on the road all day tomorrow and she’d be an insufferable bitch to everyone if he stood her up.

Later on in that evening, under the influence of even more alcohol, he confessed that he was an infamous emissor. She replied that they’d figured that out before he joined, and that she’d mostly slept with him to see if the familiar would come out on its own if he got excited enough. Which was probably stupid, but she was curious. When they got across the border she went along with him like it was a thing that had been decided—Yuri wasn’t going to argue—and proceeded to follow him wherever he went, whatever he did.

Two weeks and many long talks at varying levels of sobriety later, he still couldn’t tell if she was just bored and wanted to see what happened, or lazy and looking to sponge for a while, or hatching plans to take a cut out of his ops for her family. She was never really affectionate to him, but she never seemed interested in anyone else, either, and she didn’t object to having him around or doing whatever, whenever, provided she wasn’t busy with something she thought was more important.

Maria wasn’t his girlfriend, or even really his friend; she wasn’t anything. She was just there, all the time, and Yuri wanted to know why, and was absolutely terrified that she would get fed up and leave before he found out how to make her stay.

Judging by her current behavior, he wasn’t making any progress on that front. He leaned down to scan the manual over her shoulder; she growled and swatted him back. “Phew! Your breath is terrible. Go away.”

“What do you get out of a book like that?”

“Knowledge. Information. Novelty. All things I can’t get out of you.”

“If you want me to give you information, just ask.”

“You don’t have anything to tell me that I don’t know already. And I’m asking you to leave. This is hard enough to follow without you distracting me.”

“But I want to distract you,” he began with a smile, though he was pretty sure he was well on the way to being physically shoved out of the room. He couldn’t help himself. It was probably for the best that the alarms went off before he could go any further. “Damn it!”

The refinery had a number of alarms pre-programmed, and they’d set up a few new ones, but they were all in Arabic and Yuri’s brain wasn’t up to decoding them at the moment. He was pretty sure that wasn’t the one for aerial incoming, but beyond that … he froze in place, hands still on Maria’s shoulders, until she said, “Esper sentry alarm. Faisal spotted something.”

“Thanks, babe,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. She continued staring at a diagram of a filtration system.

As a primeval, Shum-Shum didn’t have a keystone sequence; there was no complicated story or set of ideas he needed everybody to fix in their minds. All the poor thing wanted was for things to stop being so boring all the time. He came out in an instant; the trick, more urgent here than anywhere else, was to keep him from getting to work burning and wrecking as soon as he appeared.

There was no need for that now anyway. As soon as his sparkling, jangling buddy rose into the air above the sprawling oil complex, they were absolutely safe from VRIL attacks, and could search the area for more serious threats. Shum-Shum didn’t really have eyes to see with, or anything else like a sense organ, but he had something like senses that Yuri could scan the world with well enough, even if he could never have described or explained the things he saw afterwards. And somehow, at that moment, Yuri could tell that there was a tall, brilliant figure like a beautiful woman with long hair standing on a rooftop in downtown Homs, to the east. Not doing anything, only standing, naked and glowing bright, with her arms across her chest.

Shum-Shum could tell she had power, and itched to confront her, to set that luminous rosy skin on fire and see her shake the earth as she struggled to escape him, or to fight back. But Yuri had expected that, and kept him in heel. If he couldn’t have managed that, he’d have got himself killed ages ago.

Suddenly the monster felt something twinge at his senses; there was pressure on his halo from the north, pushing back at his place, keeping him from taking all the power he should. It was harder to keep him from reflexively hurling lightning at the offending spot, but Yuri managed to restrain his partner somehow. Instead he turned the beast’s focus around, and perceived an enormous shape like a black bird floating in the sky.

There was a second twinge from the south, and Shum-Shum bucked against Yuri’s will, spitting out brief flashes of flame in spite of all Yuri could do to restrain him. He hurried to shut him down and pull him back before he could kill them all. He didn’t get the opportunity to see what had caused the second incursion, but he didn’t need to. He could guess.

“What is it?” Maria said, as they shook themselves out of the hangover together. She didn’t seem to mind having Shum-Shum take over; she almost seemed to enjoy it. Which was worth thinking about, but not now.

Yuri didn’t bother to answer her, but picked up the clunky old phone off the desk and dialed Faisal. “Hey, it’s me. No, nothing to worry about, this time. Yeah, I know there’s three of ‘em. It’s fine. They’re not moving yet, are they? Right. Standing there waiting. It’s just … a little surprise for us, that’s all. Yeah, I know you don’t like surprises, but seriously, it’s fine, we’re cool, it’s all … yeah.” His tongue felt like it was a foot thick. Damn Jcak Daniels. “Anyway, it’s nothing for you to worry about. Just a little family reunion.”