Secondhand Sorcery

Marko knew he should be grateful to be alive, and so he was—but it galled him all the same, to have no clear recollection of the thing he was to be grateful for. They told him he had set out on the morning of the ninth, a little more than two weeks earlier, to intercept the Marshall children at the bridge, and to rescue his goddaughter. Apparently he had done as well as could be expected on short notice, and badly injured one of the enemy while saving Polina, before getting shot and very nearly killed. Then he had spent several days in a hospital. And he remembered none of it.

A side effect, he was told, of Melkhisedek’s spook-work with time. The best healing they had available, and it wasn’t healing at all; he effectively reached back in time and plucked an uninjured version of Marko out of the past. Either they hadn’t told his master the details of when Marko had been injured, or his power was not so precise, or he didn’t care, but Marko had lost five days of his life as though they never existed. His last memory before waking up whole was going to bed the night of the eighth. He was expected to avenge an injury he had never suffered, by fighting again a foe he had never met.

It unnerved him more than he would have expected—to think that he was not the same man who had fought and almost died on that bridge. He thought a great deal about sincerity and artificiality at the best of times, given his passion for the stage; now he had won high praise for a thing he had, in a sense, never done, that had no part in the story of his life. Polina lived, and another child had nearly died, because of another man’s actions. He was a kind of stand-in, an understudy for his own life.

Shortage of information—it was a theme, lately. Like their plan. They intended to entrap and liquidate the enemy based entirely on testimony from an unknown person or persons working under the ‘Imam of the Caucasus.’ Not only did they not know who this person was, they weren’t even certain how many of the Marshalls they would be facing. Every inquiry got a vague answer after several hours’ delay—or, in one case, thirteen hours.

They knew that the Imam and the woman Therese would be attacking the refinery at the north end of Petrovskoye at some point on Sunday the twenty-fourth, and that two reserve elements would be waiting in locations to the north and south to attack Igor when he moved to defend his territory. Sergei Yefimov assumed that these two would be the mistresses of Ézarine and Mister Higgins, each alone; Kizil Khan was disabled and the Imam would not want Shum-Shum unleashed on his own capital.

Marko was not so convinced. Shum-Shum had never been easy to constrain, if their files were correct, and they did not know who else the Marshalls might have met up with. Border security had gone to hell since he lost the bridge and Tatiana (he was told) died. Their American backers could have sent any number of reinforcements in. This whole operation could be a trap—for them. They had no idea whom they were relying on for their intelligence.

He told Sergei as much. Sergei replied by shrugging, and saying that risks must be taken to maintain operational tempo, and then added something implying Marko was paranoid. Marko countered that paranoia seemed good, after what they’d done in Krymsk. Sergei was unimpressed, and said that whatever had happened in Krymsk—however they had incapacitated every clairvoyant for miles—it had not affected emissors, it had not happened again, and their deaths would surely prevent them from doing it again.

As the senior oprichnik Sergei Yefimov had final authority; there was nothing more to be said. But Marko didn’t care to get himself killed for Sergei’s lack of imagination. He’d already almost died once this month, after Sergei failed to anticipate these brats’ last move.

When the sun rose on the cold morning of the twenty-fourth, he was already in place, on the roof of a small office building with a samovar of tea, a set of binoculars, a dowser, and a trio of lackeys to run errands and get information. His new clairvoyant aide Leonova was crouched beside him with a detailed map of the city. He had done a test run and knew he could get to the car below within sixty seconds if necessary. If that was still too slow, he had a rope hitched to a likely spot. Rappelling would not be pleasant or safe, but preferable to death. His wife was waiting for him.

Marko would have preferred to have state security forces called out as well, with plainclothes officers strolling the streets, but this Sergei vetoed, on the grounds that the Imam might have the local forces infiltrated. They could not risk tipping him off; not only would the day’s plan be lost, he might purge their one spy in his ranks. They could involve no-one local, except Igor.

Hours passed; he half-emptied the samovar, and pissed in a jug twice, unwilling to leave his post. If their source was correct, the children were coming from an old aul mountain-fort, a long drive away. He might have hours more to wait on this cold and windswept roof. So be it. He got out his wolf’s-head cross once more, and kissed it.

Could he go back to the Crimea, when all was done? He had not dared to ask, for fear of the answer. It would be difficult to explain why the famed director had vanished for so long, so soon before the start of the show. Nor would the Knyazya have any reason to care, if they had to announce the tragic death of Marko Hushchyn. They would throw it all away and make him start a new life in the east end of Siberia if it pleased them, and expect him to show gratitude for his chance to serve the state.

Was he less of a puppet than these pathetic children they expected him to kill?

“Contact,” said Leonova, tapping the map. Right on top of the refinery. It began. “And halo,” she continued, moving her hands to show the size of Igor’s new playground. A good, swift response. At least Igor knew what he was doing.

And the children? No response. Leonova’s hands didn’t move for the next five minutes, then the next ten. Either the enemy was utterly incompetent, or brutally callous—or they were waiting for some cue from him? No, that didn’t make sense.

“Contact,” repeated Leonova, slapping at a point to their southwest. “Now halo.” One hand moved away from Igor’s captives to draw a new incursion. Far enough that they were at no risk of the halo reaching them here, close enough to strike without leaving the roof. The convenience made him wary.

“Retracted,” Leonova said, before he could decide what to do.

“So soon?”

“Yes. The halo is gone, no familia—never mind.” Her hand slapped the map once more, at the same spot. “It’s back.” She shook her head. “No, not back. It’s a different signature.”

“A different emissant, then?” She nodded, then grimaced.

“The characteristics are strange. It’s a halo, but coming out slowly.” Another, more irritable shake of her head. “What is this?” Her hands wavered, undecided, starting to draw the halo, then falling down to rest. There was a whole sign language to this, Marko knew, an elegant code, but he had no skill with it. Not enough battle experience.

At last she decided it was a regular halo, with much the same bounds as the first. He waited a few seconds to see if it would disappear as well, felt mildly disappointed when it didn’t. He didn’t care to face two emissants, even commanded by children. But that made him think—“Is it a harmonic effect? Are there two of them, synergizing? Is that what feels strange?”

“No. One emissant, one center.”

“Hmm.” Even so, there were definitely two of them. He had told Yefimov this might happen. But one or two, they would have to die. Marko already had the bare stage prepared in his mind. He kept the ryumkas in his pockets as he called Ardent; it would work better if they didn’t notice him right away.

They had line of sight, barely; the enemy, whoever they were, were holed up in a grubby coffee shop. Marko squinted through his binoculars, keeping Ardent out of sight for the moment. A dark-haired woman, impossibly tall and lovely, came out of the wretched hole in the wall like a butterfly from a pupa. She looked perhaps Persian, with clothing to match—embroidered gold vest and cap, flowing white sleeves and pants. Target acquired. What could she do? One way to find out.

She lifted off the pavement with perfect grace, and Ardent rose to challenge. She made no attempt to evade, and his first hit struck her clean in the chest, knocking her back. She wavered, then flew on, right into a second bolt of burning rock. That one dropped her, it seemed, and he glanced down to Leonova’s map; her hands stayed in place. Halo still up. “Durable little bitch, aren’t you?”

He counted the seconds as he waited, one eye on the map, the other on the city. Ardent stayed where he was, some distance away from his master. Still in a diabolical shape, befitting a destroyer. Let him be a villain, a monster. If that was the need of the moment, so be it. He could play another role tomorrow.

And there she was again, a beautiful little lady in gold, floating serenely up in the air without a scratch on her. Ardent hit her the moment she appeared, following up with a second shot before the first had properly landed. Three, four, five, and she was still up, but wavering. And she hadn’t even tried to fight back. Did she want to be attacked? Was it a diversion? He spared another glance for the map—Leonova showed nothing new—and almost missed it when the creature died.

He felt it, when the field retracted. Looked up, saw a floating black mess in the air where the princess used to be. Looked down again; Leonova’s hands were busy. “What the hell is all that supposed to mean? What is that thing?”

“Halo, but very small. Small, and unstable. No!” Her arms left the map to cover her face as she flinched back. Marko followed suit, half from instinct, half from the sudden force of the halo exploding outward again. Ardent tumbled end over end; Marko got a hand on his first ryumka at the same time his familiar came to rest, a hundred meters back. If that was how they wanted to play it … he glanced over the railing to get visual, and let go of the lid.

It might, very vaguely, look like a bird. A bird, drawn with three or four slashes of a broad brush dipped in too much black paint, and left to drip and run across the canvas of the sky. Nothing like the gorgeous woman who had been there before—or like any human, for that matter. Not even vaguely. There was scarcely a trace of personhood there for a psyche to latch onto. It was primeval, or something close.

The Americans did not employ primevals, never had. They weren’t even supposed to know how. Who the hell was he fighting?

Without Marko’s even thinking of it, Ardent made himself a massive armored knight, holding a four-meter sword. He was the villain no longer. He swung the sword, and an arc of burning rocks went flying. The black thing was already advancing to meet it; the fire passed into and through it, and it did not notice. Again Marko flinched, but the black thing was still bound by a halo; it reached the end of its tether, slowed to a reluctant halt, and began thrashing in a rage, losing what little coherence it had to strain and flail, turning into a bubbling mass of black ink.

Leonova had recovered her composure, and returned to her map. Their halos had stabilized now. “Can you push it back, Great One?”

“No,” he told her. “It’s primeval. I don’t know how it will react—bozhemoi!” The black mess dropped like a diving falcon, right into and through a condominium complex. The building simply disintegrated at its touch, erupting in a vast cloud of dust. The noise of it was incredible, like nothing Marko had ever heard before, as if every brick and beam had screamed as it died. The monster came out of the ruin intact, back in its almost-avian shape. It was calmer, maybe, for having committed mass murder. But it was already moving back in their direction …

Marko took the stairs down to the street three at a time, unscrewing the ryumka as he did. Outside, Ardent was a dragon in the Slavic style, nine heads spewing fire. A bold choice, the zmiy as hero—but with such a villain against him, nearly anything would do. Marko nearly fell down the second-to-last flight, busy popping a second canister. There were ten more in the car.

He heard Leonova shouting down the stairwell after him, slow to catch up. He saw, through Ardent, the primeval lashing out from its forced retreat, long tendrils of darkness ripping gouges in the street and smashing cars into steel powder. A bolt from Ardent caught it clean in center-mass; it thrashed around exactly the same as before, as if it hadn’t noticed. Abruptly it decided to move sideways, and before Marko could think to stop him Ardent sent another two jets of burning rock after, tearing a hole in an old department store and carving another furrow in the street.

Leonova barely made it into the car before he drove off. She shouted at him that she’d left the map behind; he told her she was over-emoting. By heroic effort Ardent, now in bear’s form, caught up with the beast. He swatted at it, trying to drive it back. But its paw broke into fragments the moment they made contact, and the primeval gave no sign of caring; countless black tentacles snaked out to strike back, and raked through Ardent’s molten skin. The bear retreated in shame and fear. Behind the wheel, Marko clenched his teeth, and passed a third ryumka to his passenger. If he had to win through nothing but valence pressure, he would do it.

Again the black thing fell back. Ardent took to the air as a hulking barbarian warrior, swinging an enormous ball and chain over his head. The brute came flying straight at him and he flung the weapon as hard as he could. For the first time, the thing seemed to feel it, collapsing into a spastic tangle of oozing black lines. Triumphant, Ardent spun out another ball, building momentum for another impact. Enough of a battering, and the damned thing would die. Meanwhile … “Leonova. Point me to the emissor.”

Her hand jabbed confidently to their right; he took the next turn, steering around a fresh crevasse in the pavement. “Static, or mobile?”

“Static.” The second ball hit, and the black mess spattered everywhere under the impact. One more hit, maybe, and then they would kill it right at the source.

“Then we will—“ The black mess abruptly sucked itself together into a smooth mass like a billiard ball. Ardent caught perhaps the tiniest hint of gold in the center of it. Then it exploded, and the halo with it, and the force was enough that Marko’s arms jerked on the wheel without meaning to. The ground fell out from under them, and the last thing he saw was the whole world turning sideways as they plunged into the rift.

He woke up weeping. Their car was tilted at a mad angle, its entire front end wedged into a deep gash in the road, its rear poking straight up into the air. The hood was crumpled, the windshield shattered into bits. Beside him, Leonova groaned and raised her head from the dashboard, which was sticky with her blood. Tremendous amounts of blood; she patted at her face and neck, bewildered at finding both whole.

Marko twisted about in his seat to look up at the sky through the rear window (also smashed). Great suffering, he knew, had happened here. They had been made whole again only through equally great pain. This was right, and true, and necessary, but still it made him cry pitifully. He could not tell why.

Then, in an eyeblink, the feeling passed, and he was stuck in a wrecked car, in his right mind, and merely perplexed, as any sane man might be. For a long time he stared at the steering wheel, wondering what to do. One place to start. “Leonova.”

She blinked at him. There was still blood on her face, of course, but nothing was bleeding. “Great One?”

“Can you sense anything?” Before she could reply, his phone rang. No halo, then—if any proof were still needed. He rummaged in his pocket until he took it out. The screen, naturally, was cracked, but it still worked. “Hushchyn.”

Sergei Yefimov’s voice was crackled by static. “I have been attempting to reach you for some time. Kindly report your status.”

“Alive,” he reported. “Probable mass civilian casualties. Substantial damage to the district. Also, my piece of shit state-issue car is doing something obscene to a new orifice in the street. That, too, has happened.”

“Truly. And the Marshalls?”

“I didn’t even see the little bastards, Sergei. There’s no sign of them. I assume they’re alive. But there were two new emissants, one of them primeval.” How calmly he said it!

“A primeval,” Sergei repeated. “And not one of ours? You are sure of that?”

“It looked a little like a bird, but not much. I didn’t get to test the fucking thing, Sergei. I didn’t have a chance to rectal-probe it, or get fingerprints. I was too busy trying to keep it from wrecking the whole fucking city.” He was not especially upset, in spite of the profanity. If anything, he had to fight a faint urge to giggle.

“I will require considerably more detail than that. Am I to understand that your portion of the mission was a failure?”

“I do not know what you understand. Personally, I don’t understand shit. I was nearly killed. In fact, I’m not sure I wasn’t. Maybe getting killed is becoming a habit, with me. Am I in hell, Sergei? Is this the afterlife? You tell me.”

A pause. “I surmise that you are hysterical, possibly as a result of valence shock. I suggest you rest, and avoid any further strain until I can debrief you.”

“That will be difficult, Sergei. I am not in a comfortable resting position, and I will have to strain myself to climb out of the ass-end of my destroyed vehicle. I am very sorry to be unable to comply with your orders, but it is so.”

“This is not helpful, Marko.”

“You are not helpful, Sergei. Did you hear the words I just said, Sergei? There are at least two previously unknown emissants on the loose in this city, one of them unstable and immensely destructive. Your flawless plan has just bitten us and, if I had to guess, several hundred Russian citizens in the ass, Sergei, and if you have any sense you will … hello?” The line was dead. He laughed, and put the phone away.

“Great One?” Leonova put a hand on his shoulder. Her face was fearful. “What are we going to do now?”

“Exit stage right,” he told her, and got to work on his seatbelt.