Secondhand Sorcery

Yuri agreed to meet them that evening, in a public park north and east of his oil-refinery stronghold. It was a lonely place by the banks of the Orontes, all low clumps of grass and leafless trees under a cloudy sky. Nadia could see buildings in all directions in the far distance, but nearby there was nothing to see but the reeds rattling and swaying by the riverside, nothing to hear but the white noise of rushing water. In a few places the current ran through concrete culverts, but in general there was very little that could be burned or permanently destroyed.

Nadia and Keisha got there first; Mr. Ethan came towing Ruslan a little bit later, and Colonel Hampton drove up last, all but dragging Fatima out of his car. By then it was nearing sunset, and the wind was picking up. Though Homs rarely got below freezing at this time of the year, there was a steady wind blowing in from the Mediterranean, fifty miles away.

“I suppose it’s just like the little bastard to be late,” the Colonel grumbled.

“Hamp!”

“No, it’s all right,” Nadia said. “My brother is being inconsiderate, as usual.” Even though he had not seen his sister for a month, and might have thought her dead, he was taking his time.

“Solid shopping scene in Nicosia,” Fatima remarked to nobody in particular as she rummaged through her pockets. “Could have been there still.”

“If you’re going to smoke, do it downwind,” Keisha told her.

“Who made you boss? Anyway, it looks like I’m out, so there.”

Nadia sighed and looked over her shoulder at the stand of trees where Mr. Ethan had elected to shelter from the wind, and from sight. Nadia wasn’t sure what hiding would accomplish, tactically. Yuri and his cronies would know exactly how many people had driven up; if nothing else, they could count cars. And if Yuri, for whatever mad Yuri reason, decided to open this meeting by dropping fire from the sky, just being a hundred feet away would accomplish little.

On the other hand, Nadia couldn’t say with any certainty that Yuri would not do such a thing. He’d been running out of control for a month now. When she thought of it that way, she was tempted to go hide in the trees herself.

The silence was oppressive. “Keisha, are you sure you don’t want to hide as well? Your last meeting with Yuri did not go very well, and I don’t want to set him off.”

“You know your brother better than any of us do. If you really think that’s the way to go, I’ll comply. But what tone are we trying to set, here? I think we need to be firm. It needs to be clear that we’re a united front, and that we’re not playing around.”

Nadia chewed her lip as she thought it over. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I know Yuri—at least, I used to know him—but I’m his little sister. Even Hamza and Titus Marshall together were never able to make him behave completely. They could only … I don’t know how to put it.”

“Aim him,” Fatima supplied. “He was going to wreck people’s shit no matter what we said or did. But he didn’t really care what he destroyed. You could point him in a useful direction, if you asked nicely.”

“Yes, that’s fair,” Nadia said heavily.

“And we’re going to be trying to talk this kid over?” Hamp said doubtfully. “You three sure this is what you want to do?”

Ruslan shook his head, very subtly, but it was dark enough that it was hard to notice, and Nadia could pretend not to see. Fatima was more open about it. “I don’t really like the turd, but we can’t just leave him running loose. And the boy can be real useful to have on your side. You’ve got to give him that much.”

“He saved us in Fatih,” Nadia added. “We are safer with four than with three.” The Colonel gave her an incredulous look, visible even in the fading light, and she added, “If I am a victim here, so is he. He has had Shum-Shum inside him for three years now. Ézarine is bad enough; Shum-Shum must be far worse. How well do you think you would do, with that thing whispering in your ear all the time, and with ‘Papa Titus’ for the closest thing you have to a father?”

The Colonel sighed but didn’t answer. Keisha mutely turned to look at the sunset, and Ethan did not speak up from his improvised duck-blind. Nadia pressed on: “I know he is guilty. He is guilty of many things. But this is not his fault! He was younger than me when that thing destroyed our home, and I was just a bratty frightened child he suddenly had to be responsible for. All of this was a disaster that never should have happened in the first place.”

“Easy there, girl,” Fatima said. “Don’t get all worked up now. You’re going to need some of that fire for dealing with him when he actually shows up.”

“If he ever does,” the Colonel added under his breath.

Nadia decided to copy Keisha. The western sky was a glorious array of reddish-orange light wreathed in masses of dark cloud, shooting out a kindly beam here and there to turn a favored patch of ground to solid gold. Looking at it didn’t banish her worries or change them in any way, but it made a nice distraction right until Ethan spoke up again from the trees: “Is anybody else hearing that? I really hope it’s just my imagination.”

Nadia cocked an ear, and felt her heart skip a beat. She heard it too: an aggravating, simple, repetitive tune, like you might hear from a child’s toy or a TV commercial. A very, very familiar tune, that had featured in most of her nightmares for the past several years. “Keisha? Dr. Gus said—“

“Yes, I know.” She pulled her phone out. “No message.”

“Did the old boy fall asleep on the job?” Ethan said. The music was getting louder, but there was no sign of the monster on the horizon in any direction. Had Yuri somehow learned to hide Shum-Shum? That was not a pleasant thought. But the music sounded different this time as well. Something else was laid over it—was somebody shouting? He didn’t sound like he was hurt.

“Do sovereign protocol, but nothing more,” Keisha advised. “We have a couple of kitties, if he wants to start something. But we should be feeling it already if it’s that—oh, for the love of God!“

A small convoy of military trucks had appeared against the sunset, cruising down the road toward them. As they got closer, Nadia saw that they had speakers mounted on them, from which Shum-Shum’s horrible music was blasting. With all obstructions cleared, she could now hear the man talking—no, rapping—over it in a foreign language. “Is that … is that Arabic?”

“Yes,” Fatima said, sighing. “Technically. But the lyrics are just pure shit. I think I can actually hear al-Khansa turning over in her grave, even over that.”

The trucks swerved off the road to park in the grass a short distance away, and began disgorging passengers. To Nadia’s immense displeasure, the engines kept running, and the speakers with them. There was a chorus, it turned out: several women cooing Yuri’s name many times in a row. The effect, against a bad recording of Shum-Shum’s already tinny music, was horrific, the more so because he hadn’t bothered to synchronize the playback so that one truck was playing the chorus while the next two had moved on to the next verse.

But trucks kept pulling up, one after another, and people kept pouring out of them: half armed men in uniform, the other half teenage boys, several of whom were chanting along with the hateful noise Nadia supposed she must call a song. She was on the verge of summoning Ézarine to shut it down when the last truck was emptied and all ten of them, in near-unison, turned off their engines and the noise. Their headlights stayed on, blotting out the light of the golden hour with harsh shades of electric white.

Now there was a small but excited crowd of boys, milling around talking to one another. Several were rather rudely pointing at them, and making comments; judging by the smirks, they were not all compliments. They were at least not audible. Then the sudden blast of an airhorn made everyone jump, and the teenage army hustled into two lines facing each other, forming an avenue in the grass from the third-to-last truck to where Nadia and Keisha stood waiting. The bodyguard types stayed where they were.

In a ragged chorus the boys shouted, the English words comprehensible in spite of thick accents and poor timing: “Hey! Ho! Boss Man Yuri is on the floor. Respect!” And every one of them raised a clenched fist into the air in salute before falling silent.

The back door on the truck so honored (it looked identical to the others) popped open, and two people came out. The first, Nadia easily recognized in spite of poor light as her big brother—or her older brother, anyway. He hadn’t gotten any taller, though he was swaddled in an oversized bomber jacket. He threw her an idle wave, then reached into the truck to help out a girl with long, curling black hair and designer sunglasses. Her jacket matched his own but fit better; it might have been the same size, as she was taller. Under it she wore tight jeans and a midriff-baring white top. In this weather? Maybe she didn’t have any more sense than he did. Nadia supposed not, if they were together.

“What’s up, bitches?” Yuri squeaked as he led his lady down the line. “Been a while. How’s it hanging?”

Nadia spared the others a glance. Fatima had her arms crossed. Ruslan’s gaze was focused on a spot somewhere around the girl’s navel. The Colonel and Keisha both had their hands in their jacket pockets, very stiff postures, and faces kept carefully expressionless. Ethan remained hidden. Nadia turned back. “Hello, Yuri. It’s good to see you again.”

“Sounding a little stiff there, sis. Somebody die?”

“A couple of thousand so far,” Fatima told him. “You might have lost count.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I checked around, and they don’t make scoreboards that big. I’m off the charts. Maria, meet the crew. This is my sister Nadia—“

“I am not here to make friends with your concubine, Yuri.” She said the words louder than she intended. All the boys in both lines flinched and swiveled their heads to stare at her, then at Yuri.

“Don’t worry about her, babe,” he reassured the girl in Russian. “She’s always like that. I got all the fun genes.” He gave her an apologetic peck on the cheek, to which she barely reacted. She had taken off the useless sunglasses, and her eyes were moving over their group even as her head kept perfectly still.

“We’ve come to take you back,” Nadia told him. “You will be coming with us.”

Yuri looked them over, leaning back on one foot and jutting his lip out in an insouciant way. His gaze might have faltered as it passed over Keisha, but then Nadia might have imagined it. He took his time before answering, “It’s kind of short notice, sis, and I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. You want to do a family outing, it might have to wait until next week.”

“Not funny, fool,” Fatima spat out. “We’ve all heard it before anyway. This isn’t any kind of negotiation. We’ve had it with your shit, and you’ll be coming along, quiet or otherwise.” Nadia was surprised by her anger; she’d only been her usual kind of grumpy before.

“Is that so,” Yuri said. “Didja know your buddies there put a price on my head?”

“Yes,” Nadia lied, before the others could say anything. “And they were right to do it. Yuri, you cannot carry on like this.”

“Why not? I’m doing better than the rest of you. What do you guys have, a couple of towns in the middle of Turkey? I’m halfway to running this country. They’ll be writing ‘Yuri’ on the money by December. Actually, I’m starting up a mint pretty soon, I think I’ve got a sample right here. Hold up a second.” He rummaged in his pockets. “Damn. Must have lost it.”

“We don’t care,” Nadia told him. “Whatever you are doing here, it has to stop. You are causing too much death, too much pain. If you do not stop, we will have to stop you. And we will.”

“Uh-huh. Who’s ‘we’ here? Ruslan, I notice you’re not talking. You in on this too, bro?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m on their side.”

“Figures. Hell, it’s not like I’d expect you to do anything on your own.”

Nadia cut him off. “Don’t try to get out of this with bullying, Yuri. We will not allow you to ruin Syria—“

“I’m not—“

“And if you do not come with us, tonight, it will be war.”

“War with who?”

“With us. With what used to be the Marshall family. We have five familiars between us now. You have one. You can’t fight us all.”

“And also renewed war with the United States government, and allies,” Keisha added. “We’ve put the kill order on hold for the moment. Yuri, it must be obvious that you’re only allowed to continue here because this country isn’t enough of a priority for anyone to pull an emissor away from an ongoing commitment to deal with you.”

“Ouch.” He put a hand to his heart. “You really know how to hit a man where it hurts. That hurts almost as much as the last time we met, when … what was it? Oh yeah, you fuckin’ shot me, bitch! It kind of messed up our beautiful friendship. So I’m not gonna believe one goddamn word you say.” He made two-finger V’s with both hands. “Peace out, whore.”

“Well, I haven’t shot you,” the Colonel said, “though you did come very close to killing me that night—and her as well—and your careless actions nearly got your three family members here killed as well. You have a history of rash decisions, and I’d invite you to think over what you’re doing before you make another.”

“Hold up.” Yuri turned to Nadia, jerking a thumb at the Colonel. “Who the hell’s this geezer? Does he matter?”

“He is the American liaison to the Marshall family. A colonel in the Numenate.”

“The Tit’s dead. Marshall family ain’t even a thing anymore. He doesn’t rate for shit.”

“If you walk away from us tonight,” the Colonel went on, ignoring him, “you will almost certainly die. Maybe you don’t think your own family would attack you. And maybe you’re right. But we have emissants not under their control, including one who’s faced you before, in Ankara. I assure you he would relish a rematch, and he could easily bring that oil rig down in flames around your ears.”

“Yeah, that’ll play great in American news,” Yuri snickered. “An emissor blowing a building full of orphan kids?”

“One of whom will probably be her,” the Colonel said, pointing a finger at the girl in the crop-top.

She had been looking a bit bored by the proceedings; she reacted as if slapped, and hissed something in Yuri’s ear. It sounded Russian, and Yuri muttered back in the same language. Placating words—Nadia caught blefovat', “bluff”—that the girl obviously wasn’t having. They all got to stand around waiting while the two of them bickered. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for the girl to snap out a cutting remark, stuff her hands in her jacket pockets, and flounce off, away from all the trucks. Yuri shot the Colonel a dire look as he hurried after her, pleading, but was interrupted by the sudden renewal of his obnoxious Yuri-rap—coming from his pocket.

He dithered on the spot for an instant, cursed horribly, but fished the phone out of his pocket and answered with a very sharp “What? What the fuck is it now?” His jaw dropped as he listened to the answer. At the same time, multiple other phones went off, from the pockets of armed men all around the clearing. Their owners were still answering when Yuri turned his off, without answering, shoved it in his pocket, and snarled, “You rat sons of bitches—“

“Save it,” the Colonel spoke over him. “You don’t have time for temper tantrums, Boss Yuri. Concentrate on evacuation. There’s still time to salvage something. Assuming you care about innocent lives at all.”

Nadia jabbed Keisha in the side during Yuri’s inevitably profane response. Before she could even ask, Keisha leaned over and whispered, “Missiles from the INS Lahav. ETA maybe five minutes. Ethan called it in. Yuri keeps eyes all along the coast, but his refinery is far out of protective halo range from here.”

“You couldn’t have told us?”

“No. Security. Not that you’d have blabbed, but you wouldn’t have acted the same if you knew, and Yuri might have suspected. Sorry.” She straightened up and said to Yuri, who was trying to start a screaming match with Fatima, “She had nothing to do with it. This was a joint Israeli-American decision. She wasn’t even informed.”

All around them, men in uniform were babbling into their phones, barking commands in Arabic. Yuri’s little boy army were obviously bewildered, but seemed to be taking in just enough to feel sheer pants-soaking terror. Maria, the concubine, had turned to observe the drama with a shrewd smile, her arms crossed like Fatima’s. Yuri himself was merely infuriated, as if he’d caught them cheating him at cards. He screamed and shook his fists at Keisha, who only looked down at him with her hands on her hips from inches away.

Nadia walked away to get a better view of the western horizon, out of the glare from the convoy headlights. The sun had finished setting; miles away, men would be evacuating Yuri’s headquarters in a panic, in the dark. She hoped that the boys, at least, would escape, and any of the old refinery workers who had stayed behind to work. The rest could take their chances as far as she cared. The fortunes of war, they called it. How many more people would have to die before this was over?

She was looking away from Yuri and the others, and her wall was up; she didn’t notice anything until she heard the gunshot. Then there was a very bright light, and a scream of anguish, and Nadia looked up to see a bent form wrapped in luminous white cloth, standing on the roof of one of the trucks. There were no more shots. All the shouting had mercifully ceased, even Yuri’s; thank God for halo effects. But Nadia kept up her wall. Sensible as the decision might have been, she was still annoyed, and wanted to be annoyed, that Keisha had not let her know the plan in advance.

A brilliant flash caught her eye, and she turned to look just as the sound hit, a titanic roar she could feel in her feet. Several thousands of gallons of petroleum products, in various stages of refinement, went up in an instant. Nadia said a prayer for anyone who hadn’t gotten out in time as she blinked the afterimage away.

The fires kept burning for a long time. Nadia turned away after a moment, brushing past the security men running the other way to gawk at the funeral pyre of their collective livelihood. They seemed dazed. The host of Yuri impersonators were even worse. Most of them were crying. Yuri stood in place, alone, his shoulders shaking so hard that Nadia thought he was crying too. Then she saw he was laughing.

“You got me!” he shouted, too loudly. “I gotta give it to you—that was good! You got me, bitches. Good one. You got me. Yeah. You got me.” He turned around to his crying army of doubles, snapped, “Hey, why aren’t you little shits laughing too? Laugh, dammit! Ha ha ha fuckin’ ha, you get it? Can’t your dumb asses even work that out?” His voice cracked on the last words. The boys shrank back, silent.

“Get over it, Boss Man,” Fatima told him, cool and in command like she had known this was coming. “Nobody’s going to follow you now. You’ve got nowhere to go but with us.”

“Bzzt! Wrong. War’s on now, motherfuckers. Not now, woman!” he snapped at the girl—Maria, was it?—who was running a hand over his chest. He slapped the hand away, then thought better and grabbed it, switching back to Russian: “C’mon, we’ve got places to go.” He took two lunging steps away, then jerked back like a dog on a leash when she stayed where she was. “I said move!”

The girl replied with something Nadia couldn’t hear.

“No, they’re not! This isn’t over.”

“Yes, it is,” Keisha said—and Nadia saw she had her gun in her hand.

“Put that away,” Nadia told her at once. “That isn’t necessary.”

“No, it isn’t, because I’m sure Ethan has a bead on him too. But I’m still going to keep my own piece out. For my safety, and yours, and his. Yuri, this doesn’t have to be the end. Come with us, and we will do our best to turn your life around—“

Anything else she might have said was buried under an absolute landslide of profanity. To Nadia’s surprise, several of the security thugs had their own weapons out as well, and joined in with their own shouts in Arabic. Fatima shouted back in the same language, her fists clenched at her sides. Ruslan started screaming over all of them, but Nadia couldn’t make out the words.

The girl Maria looked around, wrenched her hand free of Yuri’s and took off at a run into the night. Yuri started after her, tripped in the dark, and fell flat on his face. Gunshots roared like rolling thunder, and Keisha too fell to the ground. Everyone was shouting now but Nadia couldn’t hear it for the ringing in her ears. More gunshots, and multiple men fell down. Nadia threw herself flat and crawled on her belly towards Keisha’s car.