Secondhand Sorcery

It took Nadia another forty-five minutes of limping around the outskirts of Istanbul—without a working GPS—before she found a place remote enough that she felt safe dismissing Ézarine. As long as her lovely new friend was around, she felt too annoyed and hostile to be scared, but so would everybody for several hundred meters around them, and they were terribly conspicuous.

Three more times the familiar had to move aggressively to scatter soldiers. Each time, Nadia had no idea what she was doing to these men, who were only doing their jobs and probably had no way of knowing she was not a Russian agent on a terror raid. It was too dark, and Ézarine moved too quickly for her drooping eyes to follow. All she knew was that none of the attacks lasted more than a few seconds.

They put up blockades and barriers, trying to herd or contain them, but none of them worked. Ézarine’s voice could shatter any material it met, including cinderblocks and solid steel. All she had to do was find the right pitch. Nadia would have felt proud of her new friend if she hadn’t been so terribly tired.

When she finally found shelter it wasn’t much good, just another little patch of woods, but she was dead on her feet and didn’t know if Ézarine would stick around to protect her if she passed out. Probably not. As soon as she was hidden, she called the familiar back inside of her (it took some doing to figure out how), then fumbled to work the dowser’s messaging function with half-frozen fingers.

The plane had landed ages ago to save fuel, so she had to wait for Ruslan to lift back off, then squint anxiously at the little screen for a sign of Kizil Khan’s approach. When he got close enough, she wandered out into the closest open space and set the device flashing S-O-S. As his halo passed over her again, she suddenly remembered the way the first soldier had fallen and broken his body on the street. Nadia was crying hard, her shoulders shaking, when the dark eagle picked her up.

She spent the plane ride back slumped against the window, half-asleep. Ruslan was almost as tired as she was; the coalition had a huge field hospital set up not far from the airport, and Kizil Khan had been doing his part for the war effort. It was a different kind of exhaustion, but her new brother only mumbled something that might have been ‘congratulations’ before slumping back into his chair.

It was after midnight by the time they landed back in Thessaloniki. The Praetorian hustled them out, yawning and rubbing their eyes. A Lictor was waiting in the airport’s parking lot to recover her weapons. Nadia handed him the knife and the spare magazines before admitting that the firearm was lost. The Lictor shook his head, patted her down, then waved her into Papa Titus’s armored limousine, where he was waiting in the backseat.

“Valence and domain?” he said, as soon as they were both in and the doors closed.

Nadia was so frazzled it took her a moment to realize it was a question, and addressed to her. The car’s engine started up, and it lurched its way onto the road back to base. “Anger, sir. Anger, and frustration, with … with people. I don’t know all she can do yet, but she shouts and breaks things with it. She’s very fast. I think she can fly around too, and maybe move people with her.” And drop them out of the sky …

Papa Titus looked at her closely for a moment, then nodded. “Very good.” He laid a hand on her head, like some kind of blessing. “Well done, Nadezhda Titovna Marshall.”

It didn’t mean anything. She knew he didn’t love her, or anybody else. By taking on Ézarine, she’d become useful enough to be worth better treatment, too valuable to throw away without a thought. That was all. But at that hour, after that day, something about the moment was still enough to make her burst into tears, though she couldn’t have said why.

His hand jerked back from her head, as if it had lifted up a rock and found a scorpion underneath. Ruslan hurried to throw an arm around her instead, patting her on the shoulder and making vague comforting noises. She ignored both of them, sobbing into her hands until Papa Titus said, “That’s enough of that. Remember you represent the gens Martialis now.”

The thought of Yunks dried up her tears in a hurry. She sat back in the seat, trying not to rub her eyes or hiccup.

“Better,” Papa Titus said. “You’ll be an example to the Metics from now on, and a soldier for the Family. I’ll expect you to behave accordingly.”

“Yes, sir,” she said faintly, and laid her head back against the seat. Mercifully, he turned to Ruslan, allowing her to doze while he interrogated his second-oldest “son” about the way he’d spent the evening.

She didn’t remember later how she got up to her bed in the old prison building, but she must have, even if someone had to carry her, because she woke up—still in her rumpled “Turk” clothes—around 1100 the following morning.

She heard shouts and thumps from outside, and looked out of her (barred) window. Of course, it was Saturday—Recreation. Yuri and the five oldest Metics were playing basketball in the nearest of the courtyard’s walled partitions, with Hamza standing by as referee. Papa Titus would be up in the central watchtower where the partition walls met, watching the game … and there was Yunks down below, skulking about in the shadows around the chalked outline of the basketball court. Reminding everyone that Papa Titus had his eye on them.

She scowled, and turned away from the window to put on some clean clothes.

The shame of it, she thought as she chucked her wrinkled pants into the hamper, was that all those Metic kids thought of this as normal. All five of them down there had been with the Family longer than Nadia and Yuri had, and they’d been orphan street-beggars or pickpockets before that. Papa Titus might torture them with his pet monster now and then, but he did feed them regularly and keep them clean. He was as good as a real father, to them, and Varvara, Gulya, and Zeinab were the only mothers they knew. They’d be his most loyal soldiers.

Nadia was hungry, but still took time to make her bed and set the room in order so Varvara wouldn’t fuss at her later. It was a huge favor that she’d even been allowed to sleep in. Later she would come back and carry her hamper to the laundry. For now, breakfast.

There wasn’t much left cooked; whichever Metic had been on mess rotation had already cleaned up and stowed the leftovers. Nadia went foraging through the fridge and emerged with a bit of fried sausage and a pan containing a single slice of some flaky Greek pastry thing. Something drenched in syrup, with a thick layer of custard at the bottom. She added an apple so she wouldn’t feel like a complete pig. It wouldn’t be long till lunch, when she promised herself she would eat salad.

It was only after she had finished, and was loading her dishes into the dishwasher, that she realized the previous night had been her last in the girls’ dormitory; as a Marshall, she was entitled to private quarters in one of the south towers now. The thought cheered her up a bit, and she decided to visit Fatima. Her “big sister” never took part in Recreation if she could help it, and Papa Titus never forced her.

Nadia’s timing was awful; she got to Fatima’s room in the tower west of the gatehouse just as she was starting one of her prayers. Nadia always forgot about those—just as, she realized with a guilty start, she had forgotten her own when she woke up. She dashed off a Trisvyatoye while she was waiting, put her ear to the door to listen for Arabic, gave it another thirty seconds to be sure, then knocked. “Fatima? It’s me.”

“Nadezhda? Come on in.”

Fatima’s bedroom wasn’t especially big, only bigger than the literal prison cells the rest of them got to sleep in, and more private. As Nadia entered, she was rolling up her prayer mat and stowing it in a closet. Then she turned and leaned against the wall, arms crossed, to look Nadia over. “So. You made it, huh? I guess I should congratulate you.”

“Yes. We’re sisters now.”

Fatima snorted. “If you say so. You can call me what you want, my last name’s still Alvarez. Still: cheers, girl.” She lifted an imaginary glass. “What’s it do? Anything good?”

“I don’t really know yet. She screams, and things break.”

“Hah! Yeah, I feel like doing that sometimes too. We should get along fine. Can you show her to me?” Nadia hesitated, thinking of Papa Titus. “Oh, don’t worry about the old man. He doesn’t know everything, and he doesn’t need to. I whistle up Mr. Higgins in here all the time, and I haven’t been yelled at yet. Just don’t get carried away, and you’ll be fine.”

“All right.” She closed her eyes and concentrated on her most frustrating and annoying memories of Yuri, Varvara, and Papa Titus. Soon she was rewarded with a familiar memory of a quarrel in a cafe, and an indifferent mother by the window …

And Fatima said, “Nadia. Why is she naked?”

Nadia opened her eyes just wide enough to glare. “I don’t know. I didn’t make her. That’s just the way she is.” Ézarine’s skin had a pearly sheen today, and lit up the little room.

Fatima shook her head. “Seriously, I’m just saying, she looks like a hooker, showing all that, or a stripper. You got a magic prostitute with black-hole eyes. Gross.”

Ézarine glowed a little brighter. Nadia didn’t know why she’d expected any better from Fatima. She was probably jealous that Nadia had a beautiful familiar while she was stuck with Mr. Higgins. So she took a deep breath and called Ézarine back, before she could be tempted to pop Fatima’s eardrums out. “Fatima. Do you have to be so hateful?”

“You’re the one who came to visit. You showed me your familiar, and I gave you my opinion. Door’s still behind you if you don’t like it.”

Hopeless. Time to change the subject. “Did you make any more progress on the dress yesterday?”

“While you were out whore-hunting? Not a lot, just a little on the right sleeve. Take a look.” She fetched their project out of the same closet she’d just stowed her rug in. They’d been working on it since they came to Thessaloniki, adding decorative embroidery to a plain white dress from a local shop. It was Fatima’s size, of course; she was two years older than Nadia and might have passed it down, but Nadia was tall for twelve, and the difference in their figures was enough that she would never be the right shape and size to wear it.

Nadia hardly cared. They were the only girls on base, if you didn’t count Metics, and none of those girls were over eight yet. They needed something they could do together, something they wouldn’t fight over (much), and this was it. Fatima had done her share of sewing with her mother in Afghanistan, and liked the idea of mixing Pashtun and Russian styles. They had a little time yet before anyone would be expecting them, and Nadia thought they could squeeze in a bit more progress.

“Town Day tomorrow,” Fatima reminded her, as they went over her work from yesterday. “You got anything you want to buy? We’re good on thread for now.”

“Not really. I already got Yuri his Christmas present.” They were the only Christians in the Family, if you could call Yuri a Christian. He loved Jesus just enough to get a present on His birthday.

“Pfft. He doesn’t deserve it, the way he’s been acting.”

“I know. But he’s my brother, and I love him.” Though it was a near thing sometimes. She drifted over to the other sleeve to resume her part, and for several minutes neither of them spoke. “What’s it like, going out on missions? Are you afraid?”

“Yeah, a little. Before Mr. Higgins comes out. It’s all his show after that.”

“Of course. But how do you deal with it?”

“What, being scared? I’m used to it, by now. I was a lot more scared before I joined up, and I was on my own. Here, I’ve got backup, and I’ll be home for dinner. So it’s not bad at all.” She looked sideways at Nadia. “I’m sure it’s different for you. But you’ll get over it. I did, and I was only nine.”

“I know.” Fatima’s original family had been assassinated by a rival warlord, one who didn’t care for American interlopers and their witchcraft. She ran for her life in the night, and would have been dead by morning if she hadn’t run into her father’s familiar and bonded with him.

After more than a year running a hopeless one-girl insurgency in the wild, she’d come to the attention of the valley’s newest visitor and his two adopted sons. They’d made a deal, her father’s killer and his men were wiped off the face of the Earth overnight, and Fatima Alvarez became Fatima Alvarez Marshall. On paper, at least.

Which meant she wasn’t likely to be sympathetic to Nadia’s next question. But she didn’t know who else to ask. “Do you … do you ever feel bad, about the men who die?”

Fatima shrugged. “Not bad, exactly. They’re mostly soldiers, doing their job, right? They knew what they were signing up for. A lot of them aren’t even soldiers, just sacks of shit with AKs. The ones who aren’t, who might have been worth something? Sometimes, I’ll say a du’a for them—if they were believers. It’s all I can do.”

“Oh.” Nadia looked down at the bright red thread on her needle. “Prayer doesn’t feel like enough, lately.”

“You can join me anytime. Then I can call you ‘sister’ for real.”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” She sighed. “At least a few men are dead because of me, because of yesterday. I was frightened of Papa Titus, frightened of Yunks, and I didn’t know what else to do. One of them was firing on civilians, but only because Ézarine was there, I think. That’s not enough for me to kill them over, is it?”

“Did you start any of the fights, attack them on purpose? No? Then it’s on them for getting into something they couldn’t handle. You’ve got a right to protect yourself.”

“But should I have been there at all?”

“Yes. Because your father and commanding officer told you to. Simple as that.”

“He isn’t really my father, Fatima, and I’m too young to have any ‘commanding officer.’ Yuri and I are only here because of trouble he started—trouble that got our family killed! Shouldn’t he be the one who owes us?”

“Maybe. Go explain that to him, if you want, and see how far you get. As for me, we made a deal, he kept his end, and I’ll keep mine.”

“It must be nice, to have things so simple,” Nadia grumbled under her breath. Fatima either didn’t hear her or pretended that way, and they went back to their work in silence.

But Nadia didn’t stop thinking. She’d always expected life to get easier, once she had a familiar of her own. Assumed it, really, like a silly little Metic. But already she was looking ahead to the day when she would have to use Ézarine in a real battle. What would Papa Titus expect her to do with her new friend?