Secondhand Sorcery

Ethan Allen Honoré. Major, United States Numenate. Born September 12, 1975, Broussard, Louisiana. West Point, class of 1997, major in International Affairs. Intelligence posts on four continents in five years. Accepted as emissor candidate, 2004, with first successful production of emissant Tantrum Song three years later. Continued duties across globe in years following, culminating in promotion to Major in 2010, a few months prior to transfer to Numenate.

KIA Tuesday, February 26, 2013, Homs, Syria, by a deranged juvenile delinquent wielding a pirated Soviet superweapon.

There was nothing she could do, nothing she could have done, to stop it, when it finally happened. Everything was happening too fast, too fluid. Nadia was in the way, first shielding her brother deliberately, then flailing helplessly in one halo or another. Determined, near the end, with Adesina’s serene purity of purpose, to save her brother and put an end to the night’s slaughter. But Ethan had been equally determined to do his own duty, to destroy the source of all the trouble so that the situation could stabilize.

And Yuri? Just a mad dog. A mad dog Ethan had died trying to put down.

Now all the halos had fallen away, and they were struggling together in the aftershock. Hamp was on the ground, twitching and sore from passing exposure to Shum-Shum’s lightning. Keisha was more than a decade younger, but felt little better. Ruslan and Fatima were still staring up at the sky in a daze, at the place where Ethan had vanished into the fire, like they were trying to comprehend just what in the hell had happened, and what it would mean for them. It was a good question.

Yuri, to her all-too-faint satisfaction, looked half-dead, covered in filth and dry-heaving on the ground. It would have been easy enough to finish the job in that moment, if it hadn’t been for his sister, still standing directly in the way. She was holding her head, wobbling on her feet, and starting to hyperventilate—three different valences in less than two minutes could do that to a girl—but she was still unacceptably close to her brother, and right in the line of fire.

Keisha decided discretion was called for here. She bent down and quietly pulled out her piece, checked it over. No apparent damage, magazine more than half-full. She thought a second, switched it out for a full one. Safety off. She straightened up, hiding the gun behind her thigh as she took a few paces to the right, trying to make it look casual. Visibility was good enough. Her eyes were recovering their night vision from the recent dazzle, and the moon, nearly full, was rising in the sky behind her anyway.

The best bet would be multiple rounds to the head, then followup to the heart. She’d empty the whole magazine into him, if she could. Kizil Khan could fix a lot, but supposedly he couldn’t revive the ‘dead,’ wherever that line was drawn, and a brain splattered clean out of the skull sounded pretty unambiguous to her. It was just bad luck that Tantrum Song hadn’t caused immediately and catastrophically fatal injury. Keisha wouldn’t repeat that mistake.

She had a clean line of fire now, though Nadia was still closer than she liked. The girl was weeping, her face in her hands, her back to her brother, noticing nothing. Yuri was finished gagging, but was still bent over, rubbing at his face, especially his eyes. Was he blind? So much the better. Keisha quietly settled back into a firing position, pulled the pistol up to a spot just above the ear—

“Hey! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

She was nearly startled enough to pull the trigger, but didn’t, and cursed her self-control a second later, when it was too late to make an accident seem plausible. Stupider things than that had happened this night … but an instant later, sense caught up. Killing Yuri was deeply appealing at the moment. It would also be a monumentally stupid thing to do without considering all the consequences.

“I’m preparing to take your brother into custody, Fatima,” Keisha said too late, keeping her eyes on the kid.

He’d jerked a little when Fatima shouted; at the sound of Keisha’s voice he twisted around to face her. His whole face was covered in filth, including his eyes. The look suited him. “You can’t keep an emissor prisoner, you dumb bitch,” he rasped back at her.

“If you insist, I’ll kill you,” she told him, lining the gun back up on his face.

“No, you won’t,” Fatima said. “Not unless you want to deal with the three of us right after.”

Nadia had recovered enough to turn around and get a rough grasp of the situation. “Keisha, stop. There is no need for that. I told you that before, and you didn’t listen, and look what has happened! Put the gun away, and we will talk.” When Keisha didn’t move, she stepped forward, shielding her brother once again.

Fatima spared Keisha the difficulty of coming up with a retort. “It might be a little late for talk, Nadia. You been paying attention? Did you miss what just happened?”

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “They called in a missile strike—without asking or telling us—and everybody started shooting, and then he—“ She looked around, frowning, and said, “Where is Mr. Ethan?”

“Dead. Wasted. Vaporized,” Fatima replied. “Shum-Shum. You might want to shut your trap until you’ve got a better handle on this shit, sis.”

Nadia kept looking around, a horrified expression on her face, but didn’t step aside. Keisha flicked the safety back on and holstered the gun. All that talk had given her time to think up a new plan. “Obviously, any American cooperation with Yuri is out of the question at this point,” Keisha said. “But I’m willing to take him into custody, if you’re willing to assist and help me keep him there. He’s still legally a minor.”

“Custody?” Fatima snorted. “What for? All that was clean self-defense. Ethan was doing his best to waste Yuri that whole time.”

“I killed an American emissor too,” Ruslan chipped in. His voice sounded high, almost squeaky. His indignant voice, standing on his rights. “When I rescued Fatima. Remember? And you let me work with you.”

“That was different,” Keshia said. “You were misinformed, your intentions were good, and you were acting under coercion.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nadia answered, wiping the tears off her face. “We aren’t going to help you drag our brother off to stand trial for his life because he defended himself. Are we?”

“Hell, no,” Fatima said. “They’re the ones who started this! We were just talking before Ethan’s dumb ass had to call in a missile strike. That was what started all the shooting.”

Shit. “I know the situation is complicated,” Keshia said, carefully. “That’s why courts of law exist, to get to the bottom of things.”

“Whose court?” said Nadia. “Yuri is not an American citizen. He has never even been to America.”

“There are international tribunals, the UN—“

“Oh hell no,” Fatima interrupted. “I see your angle here. I know exactly how this goes. You’re going to drag him off using this as a cover, then put him in front of the High Commission on Human Rights for Whatever and hang everything he ever did around his neck till you own him, then use him to rope in the rest of us.”

“That’s—“ She wanted to say paranoid, because it really was, but that wouldn’t help. “Let’s just take a step back here,” she said, literally taking a physical step back of her own, keeping her hands visible. It wasn’t easy, holding her temper when the little rat was flashing her a shit-eating grin from behind his sister’s back, but she was an adult and a professional. Just like Ethan had been.

“I never wanted the missile strike,” she told them. “That was something Israel demanded as a condition for calling off their own hits on your brother. I didn’t think it would end well, and I told them as much, but they refused to accept any situation that could end with Yuri going back to business as usual. Not with them sitting there, inactive. I came here tonight knowing I would be risking my life. The alternative would have been snipers, and maybe the rest of you killed in the bargain.”

“And that is why we cannot continue working with you,” Nadia said. “Don’t you see? You cannot keep your own promises. It’s not that you don’t or won’t; you can’t. Because you’re only a representative for other people, who will make their own decisions behind your back, and leave you to explain them after.”

“That’s part of what it means to serve in the military, Nadia. I don’t get to make all the decisions. I’m not always happy with them. I just carry them out.”

“We never volunteered for that kind of life, though, did we?” Fatima said.

“No, we didn’t,” Nadia said. “And I know what happens to people who do. It’s happening to Keisha herself. She has done everything they asked of her, given half the years of her life in their service. And what are they going to do? Drag her back to stand trial. Just like she is proposing to do to Yuri. We know they aren’t going to be fair to her, and she has only ever been their friend and loyal servant. What chance would my brother have?”

It was such a low blow that Keisha couldn’t even come up with a reply. She only swallowed, and clenched her fists. Yuri, still safe behind his sister, stuck out his tongue, but kept silent. He didn’t need to say anything. His family were making all his arguments for him, and he was sitting there, with a good soldier’s blood on his hands, laughing his ass off. She could feel her hand drifting back towards the gun, and stuffed it in her pants pocket instead.

“I know what you want to tell me,” Nadia went on. “’All is well, and all will be well.’ That is what you always say. But it won’t. Those are words for a child, and I can’t be a child any longer. I can’t have that kind of faith. Or I can, but only in people. I could have faith in you, Keisha, or the man who healed me. He warned me: put not your trust in princes, in sons of men. And I will not.”

Keisha took a very long, slow, deep breath, shutting her eyes so she couldn’t see the boy. Before she could open them again, or even think about formulating an answer, Hamp spoke up for her, from his place in the grass beside her ruined car: “I’m going to tell the three of you the same thing I just told him. Be very careful about the choices you make here tonight. There are going to be consequences. Your brother just got a very large number of his own allies and subordinates killed.”

“No, he didn’t,” Ruslan whined. “You did! You launched the missiles. You started it.”

“And why do you think we launched those missiles? Just to be mean? No! That son of—ngh. Sorry. Your brother, that fine and handsome young man there, was determined to eat this country alive for the sake of his own personal cult, just for laughs. He had enormous resources at his disposal, and wasted them on an army of body-doubles, and his name on the money, and, and a goddamn theme song!”

Hamp pushed himself up to his feet, leaning on the ruined car for support. “We used our resources to heal Nadia, and to set the rest of you up in a position where you could make a meaningful difference in the lives of innocent civilians. Now you’re proposing—if I understand you right—to throw all that aside, for the sake of a young man whose actions have failed even to work out in his own best interests, who has made bad call after hasty bad call, again and again, and killed thousands in the process. In siding with him, you will make an enemy of half of the world’s major industrialized powers, which were tentatively on your side. Against the other half, which are already after you.”

“And your so-called allies came real close to getting us all killed tonight,” Fatima said. “So I don’t see what good it is to be on your side, or anybody else’s. I didn’t sign up to be no kiss-ass Uncle Tom lackey, Colonel, to do your work and clean up the messes you make.”

“You’ll forgive me for saying that, up till tonight, our relationship has mostly gone in the opposite direction, where cleaning up of others’ messes was concerned. Of course I don’t fault you for that. You’re children.”

“But we can’t be children anymore,” Nadia protested. “Children don’t have familiars. They are barely responsible for themselves, for going to school and making friends. That ended for me in Guryev, for the others even sooner. We have the power to change the world. I made a promise that I would use that power right.”

“I think you have all the power you need,” Hamp said, “but not the judgment.”

“Fool,” Fatima said, “don’t go talking to us about judgment, after a night like this.” She frowned at Yuri, who was now making a jerking-off motion with one hand. Fortunately the girl Maria chose that moment to appear from behind Keisha, kneel down next to her boyfriend, and start wiping his face clean with the least soiled part of his own jacket’s sleeve. Yuri spluttered and scolded her in Russian. She kept cleaning.

Keisha had been doing her best to calm down already. Ethan was gone, and much as she wanted to end Yuri, that wasn’t on the table right now, while something much more urgent was. And logical argument simply wasn’t working. “Nadia, you know I love you.”

She smiled. It wasn’t a big, or happy, smile. “I’d like to think so. At least, you are doing your best for me, and you mean well. I wish that were enough.”

“If you walk away from here tonight, if you abandon our partnership, I won’t be able to help you any longer, regardless of how I feel. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

Nadia shrugged. “I don’t think it’s about what I want. It’s about what has to be. I’m sorry about what happened to Mr. Ethan. I’m not happy with Yuri now, either. But if we stay together, how long will it be until the next order comes, and we wind up killing you, or the Colonel? Or one of you is ordered to kill us?”

Sorry about Mr. Ethan. Not happy with Yuri. Well. That was something, wasn’t it? “That moment might come anyway, and sooner than you think, if you bail on us immediately after killing a high-ranking American officer. That kind of decision will play into all the wrong hands.” For the first time, Nadia’s face lost some of its grim determination. Or whatever she was trying to put on. The mask slipped. It might be enough. “Look, you’re tired and stressed out. This is a lousy time to make drastic decisions. How about you come with us, get some rest, and think it over in the morning?”

“No,” Yuri growled—if a little toy dog in a sweater could growl—pushing his girlfriend away and standing up. “They can go with you if they want. I’ll even let you two go. We’re even now. That familiar was probably worth an oil refinery, some trucks, and a bunch of low-rent cumstains. Maybe not Faisal’s recon crew too, but they might have escaped. Anyway, there’s no way in hell I’m going to go anywhere with you fuckers after all this.”

Nadia snapped something at him in Russian; he replied with a slow, insolent drawl in the same language. Keisha really wished she’d kept up on her studies. But it occurred to her that her reasons for not just punching Yuri Voronin-Marshall full of holes were becoming fewer by the second.

Nadia broke off the conversation before Keisha could reach for her gun again. “I promised Metakken’s master that I would put an end to Yuri’s operations here,” she said. “Going with him, to keep an eye on him, might be the only way.”

“You promised?” Double-digit casualties for the evening, including one of her allies, but she promised! Was it a pinkie promise? Would he not be her friend anymore if Yuri became her new bestie instead? Keisha felt like she was in serious danger of abruptly losing her mind.

Hamp limped over from the car, put an arm around her shoulders, and again spoke up before she could. “If you three are serious about abandoning our arrangement, let me make one thing clear: no part of the Coalition will tolerate Yuri’s continued presence or activities south of the Turkish border. You will be leaving the country or facing imminent war with Israel at the very least.”

Yuri waved the remark away. “S’fine,” he said. “You just wrecked all my shit here anyway. I’m not proud. I can cut my losses.”

The whole situation was ludicrous. But everything was ludicrous lately. One last try. “Nadia, could I speak with you privately for a moment?”

She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Of course.”

‘Privately’ meant a different stretch of grass, free of corpses and close to the water, barely out of earshot. “I can understand why you don’t trust us, after this. I might not like it, but I understand. If you want to be independent, I’ll respect that. Tying yourself to your brother is a whole different matter.”

The girl laughed, very softly. “Keisha, I have known my brother for much longer than you have; that’s not difficult. You’ve never really known him at all. If you are telling me that he is vulgar, thoughtless, rude, cruel, a bully, and very nearly mad—I know all that. I knew that before I met you.”

“But you’re not taking it seriously! I’ve told you, he has something dangerous anchored to his mind, much more dangerous than yours, and he’s had it much longer. You’re right that I don’t know him. But I know familiars, and I know his record. He and Shum-Shum have, as of this moment, killed more people than the rest of your family put together. Even counting Titus Marshall.”

“Of course. Shum-Shum is very powerful, and hard to control. But even if he weren’t,” Nadia pressed on before Keisha could object, “Yuri is still my brother. He is bound to me. I wouldn’t be alive without him either; he brought me out of Guryev as it was burning. If I can save him, if there is even a chance of saving him, of bringing back the wonderful boy I knew before—and I have still seen little glimpses of that boy, more recently than you would think—I have to try.”

“It’s debatable, very debatable, to what extent he remains the brother you knew, or how long he will stay that way. One of the dangers we have to look out for, in our line of work, is self-deception. Are you sure you aren’t just seeing what you want to see?”

“I just said the same thing to you, didn’t I? You trust in your system, or whatever. I will trust in my family. Not because it is wise. Because I have to. Because I am still a Marshall, even with Titus dead, and at my hands. Because—because he told me, yesterday at the airport, that to save one life is to save the whole world.”

“… what does that even mean?”

Nadia lifted up her face to look Keisha in the eye. “What it says! You think so yourself. At least, you act like it. You could have given me up, given all of us up, as acceptable losses for the greater good, like so many other people do. But you didn’t. I am only following the lesson you taught me.”

“Not on purpose!” Nadia winced as she shouted the words. “Sorry.”

“I know what you are going to say: Yuri is different. He is sick, he is broken. Maybe he is. But there was a time I thought the same thing about myself. Only a few days ago. But I was able to forgive myself. I have no right to say my brother is beyond mercy, without putting him to the test.”

Keisha was about to say that Yuri had been tested plenty when Fatima jogged up from behind them. “Hey. Sorry to break in here, but Hamster there says his cavalry is on the way, or will be fast. We’ve got to move.”

“Cavalry?” Nadia asked. “What kind?”

“Beats me. But that Gus dude has been keeping tabs on all this, and Jerusalem’s got people on the ground too, and one of them just sent him a heads-up. He’s stalling them, but we don’t have long. Yuri’s on the horn with his own people for a pickup.”

Damnation. Nadia lunged in, and hugged her tight. “I love you too,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you have done for me, and I wish it didn’t have to end this way.” Keisha heard tears. It reminded her of her niece, saying goodbye to friends at the end of summer camp.

“Just … just hold on a second—“

“I love you,” Nadia cried again, and dashed away on those nice healthy strong legs they’d moved heaven and earth to get working.

Absurd. It was all absurd. There had to be something she could say, or do, anything at all, to put an end to this. But nothing came to mind. Everything had happened so quickly, impossible to track—and yet inevitable, from the moment she’d learned of the missile strike. Earlier, even. She should have known that there was no chance she would ever peel this girl away from her family on the basis of three month’s acquaintance. Even if that family was a single certified moral cesspool.

She followed Nadia much more slowly, part of her wondering how the hell she was going to explain all this in report, but not much caring. She could feel a hand of solid ice clamping down on her heart. Nadia had already joined up with her brother and his groupie, and joined in on chastising him in Russian. She was sure the little shit enjoyed it. Fatima hung back a moment, waving diffidently to the two of them, before shrugging and walking on. Ruslan didn’t even look back.

When they were all together, they set off for the edge of the park. Leaving behind several dozen dead kids and adult minions, who she was sure would all be forgotten by morning, if they weren’t already. With the ghost of Major Ethan Honoré watching over all from a perch high in the sky.

She couldn’t let that slide. “Yuri!” she called out as the little family started moving off. “If I see you again, I promise I will put you in the ground.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll see you in hell, whatever.” He flipped her the bird as he kept walking.

Hamp put an arm around her shoulders again as she reached for her pistol, clamping his hand down tight above her elbow. “Save it, Chief. There’ll be another time.”

“I know,” she said, releasing the grip with difficulty. Less than fifty yards, still. A bit far for a safe gunshot, but Adesina could be out in a literal flash, and disintegrate his skull without ruffling his sister’s hair. She still didn’t do it. The five of them walked on, like kids on their way home from school. She could see headlights in the distance. “I know. This isn’t over.”