Secondhand Sorcery

The farther Nadia went in Turkey, it seemed, the colder it got. Istanbul had been cool but tolerable even at night. Ankara was a bit chillier. Panos, up in the mountains, was barely above freezing at noon. And now they were coming up on … Dûtax, or Tutak, depending where along the road you stopped to look at a sign, and it was snowing.

Whatever you called the place, it was on the small side, a couple of hundred houses huddled together against the wind on the far side of a minor river. They could see the whole thing from where they were parked on the hillside. Only a few lights shone against the twilight, just enough to show Nadia how little more there was to see. Somewhere in those streets, if her sources were right, were the remnants of a division from the Turkish army, and the man or men who had ordered the slaughter this afternoon. The trick would be picking them out from the guilty.

“We could go back,” Kemal said from the driver’s seat.

“No. They will be gone tomorrow. They might be gone already.”

“You promised to obey,” he reminded her. He didn’t sound as indignant as he might have, before this afternoon. A great deal could change in a couple of hours.

“I was only arguing. If you make me go back, I will. But the men who ordered that do not deserve to get away.” When he did not answer, she added, “I will do it myself, you know. I only need you to get me within walking distance.”

“How long will you taunt me, child? I am not afraid. Not for myself.”

“Why not? I am. And I wasn’t taunting you, I was only—“

“It is getting colder,” he said, cutting her off. “Whatever we do, we should do it soon. Petrol is too dear to spend on the heater.”

“I do not want to go back there and tell them we didn’t do anything to the men who hurt them.” She wished they had not told them anything, but it was no good saying nothing. The people of Panos were poor, but not fools. They had seen and felt Ézarine. They knew emissants had masters. And they were justifiably suspicious of strangers. It was better to be known as the saviors of the town than suspected as spies for the Turkish army, and possibly strangled in their beds.

And, once that much was known, once they had seen for themselves what those helicopters had done to that town, once man after man had come up to them and told them where the Turks had their forward base … there was only one acceptable response to that information.

“Please get us closer,” she said.

“What will you do?” he asked her, without starting the car.

“I am not going to start a massacre. Our fight is with the army.”

“That is not an answer.”

“A familiar doesn’t have to cause big explosions. I will find the people who ordered this, and I will make them pay.”

“And if you cannot find those people?”

“Are you looking for reasons not to do this?”

“No!”

“Don’t you think they deserve justice? Or do Kurds not count?”

“That means nothing! Saladin was a Kurd, and a hero. But … I am frightened. Not for myself, for you. Will you go in there alone?”

“I am a girl, but I am also a soldier. I got out of Fatih against much worse odds. Whatever is there, I can handle it.” That was leaving certain details out, of course, but it was mostly true. There would only be a few soldiers down there, freshly frightened from that afternoon’s defeat. No familiars, no support, no giant wall. Simple.

“All this is too soon, too quick. Do you understand? You are still hot, angry, making choices while upset. I do not like it.”

“Angry? Do you mean you aren’t angry? We came here to stop this kind of thing, didn’t we? Maybe you really are looking for reasons not to do this.” Which wasn’t a fair thing to say, and she knew it as soon as she said it—but she did not take it back.

He replied by turning the ignition, and putting the car in gear. “Very well. But I will come with you.”

She wished he wouldn’t. It would mean another back to watch besides her own, if things went bad, while he could do nothing in a fight. She didn’t like the thought that he might be put in harm’s way on her account. And yet it seemed brutal to say so, to tell him he would only get in her way. Not after everything else that had happened today. They drove down the deserted road in silence.

It wasn’t a long drive. They made it through the outskirts of the town, came to the bridge over the river, and were promptly stopped by a pair of the ubiquitous Turkish Army vehicles not quite blocking the way across. Kemal turned to thread the way between them, saw the barrier just past their rear bumpers, and stopped. “The men in these trucks were not responsible,” he said quickly. “They are low rank.”

“I know,” she said, and left it at that. They waited for the better part of a minute with the engine idling. The thing blocking their way looked a cheap metal bike rack, light enough that even Nadia could have gone out and moved it by hand—or Kemal could have simply shoved it out of the way with his car, and moved around when he had room. Either action would put the whole garrison on alert and likely get them shot. It was not time to begin hostilities yet. So they waited, watching the snowflakes come dancing down past the headlights.

At last a big man in a bigger coat came out of the truck on their left, rubbing his eyes, not bothering to unsling the rifle bouncing against his padded back. It wasn’t even that late. “Do you live here?” he asked without preamble, as soon as their window was down.

“We do not,” Kemal said.

There was more he planned to say, but he wasn’t given a chance. “All visitors must be received by a known Tutak resident and submit to a search of their vehicle. Do you know the address or phone number of a Tutak resident who will vouch for you?”

“We have … we have no such person,” Kemal replied. “We wish to see your commanding officer.”

The big man knelt down to look more directly through the window, frowning at the two of them. His glasses were half-fogged with his own breath, and his jaw was very stubbly. “Why do you wish to see the captain? It is late.”

Kemal hesitated, and turned to Nadia, which probably didn’t help their cause. “It is urgent,” she told him. “We have news for him. There will be an attack soon. Before midnight.”

The man wiped his glasses and stared at her. She made herself look back. She was sure she looked nervous, frightened even, but a girl with the news they were pretending to have would look that way too. However she looked, it satisfied the man, who stood up straight, pulled a radio out of his pocket, and barked something she could not hear into it. He got a scratchy reply, barked something else.

Good. Now they would have to wait a little longer while they got somebody to drive out here and escort them to wherever this captain planned to spend the night. Assuming they believed her. If not—or if the captain was busy, drunk or with a woman—they might have to waste a bit of time trying to convince some underling, a sergeant or lieutenant. Either way, they would be indoors soon enough—

The deafening wail of a siren, coming from right overhead, sent all of Nadia’s plans tumbling out of her head. “What in the world?” The noise seemed to be coming from high up, from the tower holding up the little bridge’s suspension on this end. It was echoed from the far side of the river, where many more lights were coming on, one after another.

Kemal stared aghast, his jaw hanging low, as searchlights began weaving over the low ceiling of clouds. He looked behind them, as if calculating whether there was time to simply throw the car in reverse and run for it. But there were already more men boiling out of the trucks around them, men with rifles ready, and that decided him. He leaned forward and put his face in his hands. He said something as well, but she could not make it out over the sirens.

The soldiers—there were five in total—swarmed around the car, shouting too fast for Nadia to understand. One of them leaned through the driver-side window to shove his face right into Kemal’s, screaming demands. He stammered something back, something about Kurds she thought, while another man banged at her window, shouting and pointing down. She shook her head, not even thinking about it, and that made two of them because he responded by slamming the butt of his rifle against the window so it spiderwebbed.

Nadia screamed, and the man in Kemal’s face pulled out, banging his head in his hurry, to scream at the man on Nadia’s side, and then there was nothing but screaming and shouting and the wail of the siren as the two men got in each other’s faces to shout point blank until a third vehicle, a plain passenger car, came roaring over the bridge and a thin man in uniform with a mustache came out of it to shout the lot of them down in a hurry.

This was it. Nadia summoned up her wall, ready to call for Ézarine on a second’s notice. After a moment’s confusion the thin man came up to them and motioned brusquely for them to get out of the car. They complied—Kemal might have given Nadia a reproachful look, but she could not see clearly and it was only for a moment—and stood in the cold before the man with their hands in the air. The sirens abruptly stopped, cut off in mid-squawk, so the only sounds were distant shouts and the groan of their shoes on the snow.

The thin man looked more annoyed than frightened. He beckoned a subordinate over to mutter something in his ear, then turned back to them and said, “My men say you have threatened them.”

“Not a threat,” Nadia said, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “A warning. The Kurds in Panos—“

“Patnos,” the man corrected, his eyes narrowing. Behind them, two soldiers were ransacking the car, slapping their hands all over their bags before throwing them onto the snowy street in their hurry.

“Patnos, yes. The Kurds in Patnos are angry, they are planning an attack.” She could not think of any details to add. Not anything her limited Turkish would let her say clearly while the man had a hand on the pistol at his hip. “Are you the Captain?”

“How many, how armed, and what time?” he snapped back. “I do not need more rumors.”

“Many,” Nadia improvised. “They are … calling together their forces—“

“Silence,” he said, chopping the air with the hand not holding his pistol butt, then pointing at Kemal. “You. You tell me. How many, how armed, what time?”

The best the old man could manage was a disjointed bleating about danger. He did not seem able to take his eyes off the hand on the pistol. After thirty seconds’ babble yielded nothing concrete about numbers, guns, or time, the officer shut him up as well.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “You, girl—you do not speak like a Turk.”

“I am Kazakh,” she blurted, then bit her lip.

“Kazakh?” He cocked his head. “Yes, you probably are,” he said in Russian. The words were good, but the accent was thick, and he did not speak so quickly as in Turkish. “Thank you for telling the truth. Now, Kazakh girl, let me explain what is going to happen. In a minute, I am going to call my intelligence squad, back in town. These men are not trained in interrogation, but they do have a way of getting a small piece of metal glowing hot. Do you understand?”

Nadia’s mouth was dry, but she tried very hard to nod, and her head wobbled a little.

“They can put this piece of glowing metal many places, on men or women. If you do not wish to meet these men, you should try to talk clearly, and precisely, and truthfully. And now.”

This was it. But Nadia realized she had lost her wall. When? She wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t there any more. Could she risk the full keystone sequence? There were a lot of guns pointed at them now. Better not. So she would have to pull up the wall again … only the officer was looking impatient, and it was very hard to think of anger or frustration when she could not manage to banish the thought of a little bit of metal, red like a coal from a fireplace, out of her mind.

The man stepped a little closer, and drew his pistol. “Good behavior will mean a better future for both of you,” he said in Turkish, “but there are many possibilities. In the worst, when we have learned all we can, we will tie you up and put you over the side of this bridge. In the best, you will only be our guest, and well treated. Think carefully.”

At once Kemal started babbling again, thick and fast, but about different things. Something about his daughter, and her child, and how he was a peaceable man only trying to do his best, and he knew he was not brave and never would be. He was not a soldier, he worked at the dock, but this child, this mad child insisted …

Was he going to tell this man everything? There was no way he would let her live if they knew she had a familiar. There would be no hot metal, he would simply shoot her in the head. Very soon, if Kemal was not shut up, which the officer showed no interest in doing anymore. He was listening attentively now. She had brought Kemal along to help her, and she hadn’t wanted him involved in this … this encounter, and now he was going to get her killed? Why had he insisted on dragging her off to Kurdistan if he was going to act like this? What on earth did he want?

The cafe, the girl, the waiter, Ézarine. Nadia was not surprised to see any of them. Neither were the men, exactly, but only because of her halo. They could not feel surprise, only an anger that was too ill-informed, as yet, to come to a coherent plan of action. Ézarine took the officer by the throat, flinging him easily into the air and over the railing where he had threatened to send them. It was just, and good, and he fell screaming until the cold running water cut him off. And the men stared, angry but confused.

A flicker, and she was next to the man on Nadia’s left. Another flicker, and they were both to her right, facing the other soldier. One or both men fired, multiple times, and the noise was incredibly loud. Nadia and Kemal lurched out of the way, and Ézarine moved again, behind the car where the men were still rifling through their things. A crunch, a thump. Gunshots, fast and frantic, while Kemal and Nadia cowered next to the front bumper. Another crunch.

Silence.

How many had there been? Five in the trucks. The officer. Six in all. Nobody was moving now. Good. But she would need to move fast, if she wanted to salvage this plan. The town would be on alert, and whatever uniformed murderer had sent those choppers would soon find his radios were not working. The little cockroach could not be allowed to scurry under a rock.

She put out a hand, grabbed the bumper, and pulled herself to her feet. A sharp, hot pain in her hip stopped her halfway, and she fell against the frigid metal of the grill. Her hands scrabbled over the hood, caught on something so that she did not hit the ground again. She looked down. Her jeans were stained dark, almost black, down the top part of her right leg, which didn’t want to move quite right anymore. The snow on the bridge shone bright cherry red under the headlights.

Kemal was getting up now, groaning and complaining in his usual tiresome way. He rubbed at his head, brushed snow off his jacket and slacks. Patted himself down, winced as he caught something tender. He turned to scold her, saw her half-hanging off his car, and let out a barrage of curses. Then he called her many names, very rapidly so that she could not understand even half, and when Ézarine popped up to defend her mistress he cursed her too, Arabic and Turkish mixed together.

What did he think he was doing? Anyone could see Nadia needed prompt medical attention, but he was wasting time with scolding. And anyway, this was his fault in the first place. He had no right to scold. Nadia tried to say as much, but couldn’t make herself heard over him. She didn’t feel very strong.

Damn him, anyway. There was no other option if she wanted anything useful to get done here. She let Ézarine go. At once the pain was stronger. She lost her grip on the grill, and fell down onto the snow crying. She cried harder when Kemal’s shaking hands came clapping down on her hip. Nadia reached out to pry them away, but only made him clench harder, so she screamed and blacked out.