Secondhand Sorcery

Nadia sat on the floor for a long time, looking at her adopted father’s body underneath his soiled toga. The toga was dyed with real Tyrian purple—they made it out of some kind of seashell, she thought—and decorated with Minerva in gold thread. Now his blood was wicking up into the fabric, making it a little darker. Ruining it.

It was still better off than the Venus de Milo. She wasn’t just soaked in blood; her head and the stub of her right arm had both snapped clean off. Briefly Nadia was afraid that Papa Titus would be angry, then caught herself and smiled. A small smile, and brief. Soon she went back to staring blankly at the corpse.

Dead. Dead at last. She had wanted it for a long time—hadn’t she? It felt that way. For three years, she had been required to call him Papa, hadn’t dared to give him any other name, even in her head. Now he was gone for good, and she would not mourn him, but she was still afraid. It didn’t seem fair.

She could not stay on the floor forever. She told herself so, several times, and she heard her own warning. But she did not get up. It was simpler to sit there and look at the shrouded body. They would be doing something similar, down in the courtyard. Ézarine was gone—they would know, since her halo released them—but there was no word or message from Titus and Nadia had not come down. The last people to try coming up were dead.

The rap music didn’t start back up outside. The stone walls were too thick to let in quieter sounds, but she could imagine: Varvara, Gulya and Zeinab would have driven the Metics into their dormitories like sheep into the fold at the first gunshot, when Ézarine had killed the men in the stairwell. Leaving the surviving Lictors on duty, and the four surviving Marshalls, to stand around looking at each other. Maybe Hamza had taken charge; maybe he hadn’t.

Eventually Nadia got up, tugged open one of the desk drawers, and got out a pen and a sheet of unlined stationery with an embossed golden eagle on top. Angrily crossing out the Haec verba sunt Titi Martialis, magister legionum right below the eagle, she wrote: “Fatima, please come up here, alone, quickly. Nadia.” Ézarine appeared long enough to take the paper from her, then vanished.

Having done something about the situation, Nadia sat back down in the corner farthest from the body and its pool of blood. Fatima would probably be the least unhelpful person to talk to about this, and she had to talk to someone. Nadia didn’t think even Hamza would try to come with her just yet. He had to suspect what had happened, just from the note, but he would want to avoid dealing with it as long as possible. Wouldn’t he?

Anything would be better than going down herself, where the Lictors were waiting with their guns and she would have to face everyone at once. The room had exactly one chair—hard wood, straight back, no cushions—and Nadia brushed a few shards of broken pottery off it before sitting down and tucking her knees up to her chest.

It felt like a long time before she heard Fatima’s voice, calling her name from halfway down the stairs. Nadia’s voice caught in her throat when she tried to call back, so she just sat there, and after a little longer Fatima poked her head around the doorframe. She looked at the shattered vase, the upturned table, the bare sword, the battered and bloodstained Venus, and last of all the poorly-covered corpse in its pool of blood, which had slowly expanded to cover much of the floor.

Then she said, “Huh. I guess that’s pretty much what I expected.”

Nadia found her voice. “You … expected this?”

“When I got your note? Yeah. What I don’t get is why he pulled out a sword instead of Yunks.” She leaned back against one of the bookshelves and extended a hand, inviting Nadia to explain.

“He did use her, at first. He tried. But I … I fought her off. So he … got out the sword and said I had to give in or he would kill me, and I didn’t.”

Fatima gave her a look. “You. Fought off Yunks. Really.”

Nadia stuck her chin out. “Yes. Really.”

“You get any other superpowers this week that I need to know about? Pick up any freight trains with your pinkies?”

“It wasn’t anything like that,” Nadia said, flailing. “I just, I just, I, I used Ézarine! Yunks couldn’t get through her halo.”

“Ézarine? You busted out a familiar on his ass, and he gave you another chance to submit? Try again. You’re going to need to get your story straighter than that, if you want to convince Hamza. Or me.” She crossed her arms. “Personally, I don’t care if the old man bought it, or if you’re the one who did it, but you can’t drag me up here expecting me to help, then tell me a bunch of lies. Don’t hold out on me, girlfriend.”

Nadia tried to look her in the eye, and nearly succeeded. “I know a trick, a special trick for keeping a familiar from affecting you. You need to hold a special image in your head, and it’s a space a familiar can’t go. I used that against Yunks, and it made him mad. That’s when he got out the sword.”

“Mm-hmm. And you came up with this neat trick all by yourself, I take it.”

At last Nadia held her gaze. “No,” she replied, and left it at that.

“Didn’t think so.” Fatima pursed her lips, her eyes running all over the room. This wasn’t her first time losing a father, and she didn’t even like this one. She was already looking for the best way to use the situation. “But I know Titus didn’t teach you. And you didn’t share this helpful tip with the rest of us, either. It sounds like my baby sister’s got a hustle on the side.” She favored Nadia with a sly grin. “Good for her! Any chance you can teach me your super-special handy trick?”

“Maybe. It might be hard to teach it. I just learned it myself.” She hadn’t even thought about what this would mean with the Beelzebub situation. It was his fault all of this had happened in the first place.

“Good enough, for now. Just don’t try to bullshit me any more and we’ll be square, okay?” Nadia bobbed her head glumly. “Sweet. Lemme deal with the rest.” She clapped her hands as she sprang away from the bookshelf. “Fatima Alvarez, attorney at law,” she added over her shoulder as she started down the stairs two at a time.

Nadia buried her face in her hands and waited for the inevitable, which was not long in coming. Too soon she heard a clatter on the stairs and Yuri burst into the room with a whoop. He took one look before shouting back down the stairs, “It’s true! The Tit’s gone tits-up!” He turned back to Nadia for a high-five. She left him hanging. He didn’t seem to mind.

Fatima came back up next, dragging Ruslan by the hand while she gave him her own account of events. He didn’t look like he was taking in much of it, and when he saw the body under the toga picta he just about fell over. Yuri laughed at him.

“Ruslan, buddy! You need to look at the big picture here. Teacher’s gone, school’s out forever. No more Plutarch, and we make the rules. What say you and me hit the town and score some Greek pussy? Hey!”

Hamza, coming up behind him, picked him up by his jacket collar like a kitten by its scruff, and threw him into the wall. He hit hard, then fell to the floor face-down. Only Nadia, moved by a lingering sisterly affection she more than half regretted, bothered to watch him get back up, dabbing at a split lip. Ruslan and Fatima were too busy watching Hamza to notice the shifty smile on Yuri’s face.

As for Hamza, he hardly paid Yuri mind at the best of times, and once Nadia’s brother was shut up he went straight for the body, kneeling down in the bloody mess to peel back the gaudy covering. For ten seconds he only stared. Then he let the cloth drop, buried his face in his elbow, and shook as he cried.

Nobody said anything. There was nothing to say. To Nadia and Ruslan, Titus had been an ogre; to Fatima, he was just a boss, and not even a good one. To Yuri, who took nothing seriously and held nothing sacred, their supposed father was only one more of life’s many jokes. Only Hamza had ever really thought of him as something like a father—the man who had taken in a puny Kyrgyz refugee brat, given him a good life, and raised him to be a warrior fighting at his right hand, each guarding the other’s back in battles across all the mountains, valleys, and steppes of Asia.

It was almost, but not quite, enough to make her wish she had not killed the old ghoul. Maybe, she thought as Hamza bawled, she could wish that there could have been another life for him, where he might have been only unpleasant and not a monster, so that she could feel honest pity for the dead. As it was, Hamza’s tears were like the sight of a dog howling at Stalin’s tomb. She could only regret that a good creature hadn’t found someone more worthy to love.

Hamza cried for a long time, and every tear added to Nadia’s unease; all that sorrow would have to translate into rage eventually. Just when she felt sure she could not stand another second of it, he dried up, and rose to his feet, looking dazed. Dazed, and lost, the power and authority of adulthood falling away to reveal the little lost orphan who had been inside the whole time. He looked all around the room, pleading—almost as if he expected one of them to give him orders.

He looked first to Ruslan, who hid behind Fatima, shaking his head, and his whole body with it. No, Kizil Khan could not fix this. Papa Titus had been dead too long, was too far gone—nothing like a simple cardiac arrest. It spared Ruslan the trouble of refusing.

He moved on to Nadia. His expression didn’t change much as he did; it was still a begging look, and his cheeks were sopping. Nadia hated to see him that way. Anger would have been easier to take. “Yes, Hamza?”

“Why?” he asked. Just the one word.

“He heard stories. From the Praetorians,” she added, and she saw that he understood. “He brought me here for questioning, and it got out of hand. I’m sorry.” The last two words sounded ridiculous as soon as she said them, but she could not take them back.

“Out of hand,” he said, turning back to the corpse. He shuddered, then bent slowly down to pick up the sword. Nobody else moved.

“Are you going to kill me, Hamza?” Her voice was very quiet.

He looked down at her, deciding. She did not move from the hard chair, and stared intently at her shoes, wishing the room did not smell so strongly of blood. She saw she had made footprints in it. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the sword’s blade quivering in Hamza’s right hand, and there was more blood there, dancing and wobbling crazily down the edge as it shook.

Nadia did not want to see Hamza’s face but she wondered if he was thinking, as she was, of the myth of Orestes, and the gods who drove him mad for killing his kin even though they had ordered him to do it themselves. Orestes had a sister … didn’t he?

Or the Horatii, whose picture still hung on the wall behind her. They’d definitely had a sister. One of them killed her just for crying over a dead enemy. She was in the painting too. Was she also sitting in Nadia’s chair right now? Papa Titus had always loved that story. Had taught it to all of them, as an example of civic virtue. No mercy for disloyalty.

The blade was still shaking. But he still wasn’t lifting it to strike.

Fatima spoke up at last. “It was self-defense, Hamza. She didn’t ask for this. We all saw her getting marched through the courtyard.”

Her hand snuck out and poked Ruslan, who flinched and said, “I don’t think Nadia’s a traitor, Hamza. She saved our lives yesterday.” She was grateful for the words, but wished he hadn’t managed to make them sound so whiny.

Still Hamza didn’t move or speak, and Nadia didn’t look up from her feet, but she could see Fatima and Ruslan turning. “What are you looking at me for?” Yuri said. “You want my opinion? I think ‘no trying to defend yourself if the boss tries to murder you’ is a pretty stupid rule. What’s the penalty for breaking it supposed to be? Death?” Nadia knew his eyes were rolling.

Fatima sighed, and turned back. “Look, you’re in charge now, Hamza. You’re the oldest, and you’re the only one of us who had imperium. It’s up to you what kind of king you want to be. But Nadia’s still our sister. At least, she’s still mine.” Fatima’s hand reached out to grasp Nadia’s shoulder.

The gladius fell to the floor, and Hamza fell to his knees, then his hands, and again he cried. As one they gathered around, even Yuri, to lay a hand on him, to embrace him, to reassure and comfort their big brother. Nadia could not have said why she was crying too, but she knew it was the right thing to do, and that she would live at least to see the sun rise in the morning. Hamza would not kill her, for the same reason she had not even thought to defend herself against him.

For a time, they had peace in their grief, but it couldn’t last forever. In the end it was Ruslan—of course it would be Ruslan—who straightened back up from their miserable huddle and said, “What happened to Yunks?”

Nadia felt Hamza’s back tense up under her hand. Slowly he rose again to his feet, brushing off their affection, and she saw a familiar look on his face, the same one he had worn in the park last night. If you didn’t know him, you would think his expression was blank, even stupid. Really it was the way he looked when he was thinking very fast. It quickly hardened into something else, something terrible; she saw a lion roaring in his eyes.

“Yunks ran away,” she began, but it was too late. Hamza was already off and running down the stairs. Fatima hurried after him, then Yuri. Nadia looked at Ruslan—who still seemed amazed, even shocked, that he had had the nerve to say the name—before following, as fast as she dared. Which was not very fast. There were two dead men to step around at the bottom.

She heard Hamza’s bellow from the courtyard before she was halfway down the stairs. “Lictors! Assemble! Fall in! Now, damn it! That means all of you!” They were forming into lines by the time she got out the door at the bottom, and Hamza was stomping around them as they did, looking white-hot mad. Fatima and Yuri hugged the wall tight enough to leave dents while he shouted. “There were twenty-four of you on duty, weren’t there? Two down. I’m seeing sixteen here! Where the hell are the other six?”

Sixteen men stood at attention in four ranks, rigid as flagpoles. None of them answered.

“That was a question, god damn it! Where did a third of my men go? Cornelius, Lucius! Round up the stragglers. I’ll give you two minutes to get them out here.”

The two men saluted and ran for it. Nadia looked at Fatima, who shrugged, and Yuri, who was snickering into his hand to watch the Lictors sweat. Hamza didn’t really use his authority much; he was as good as a mascot for the Lictors, most days. Occasionally he’d join them off-duty for a couple of rounds. Now this same young man was stalking around them in a restless circle, looking just shy of deranged.

It couldn’t have been two minutes before four men came running back, one of them fastening his pants as he ran. He hadn’t quite fallen into formation before Nadia started thinking about Bernie Willard again, and his pants were just starting to slide down his thighs when Rhadamanthus appeared at the head of the formation. Four or five of his smarter and more prepared comrades were already reaching for their guns, but all of them alike were frozen in place; the skeletal familiar had appeared with his palm out and facing them.

Rhad didn’t try to savor the kill this time. As soon as he was fully formed he went running through the ranks, swinging his scythe blade in every direction on its long and many-jointed arm. Eighteen Lictors died in less than ten seconds. Good riddance, Nadia thought—then wondered if she had actually thought it. Rhad made for the front gate with his blade still dripping, and Hamza turned to face his family.

“There were forty-eight Lictors total,” he said, talking very fast. “Twenty-eight left. I don’t know how many Praetorians are on the rolls now—their numbers change more—but it’s less than a hundred. They all live in the city when they aren’t on duty here. Most of them live close. If we’re fast we can take them all out tonight.”

The three of them looked at each other. Fatima spoke first. “Hamza. What are you doing?” Her tone was very carefully level.

“What do you think I’m doing? You know these men. You think they’re all loyal? You think they’ll stay that way, with Pa—with me in charge? Do you? Because I sure as hell don’t. Six of them ran for it already!” He drove his fist into his hand with a thwack. “They know our faces, they know our secrets, they know about Yunks, and they know familiars can get new hosts when their emissors die. They’ll sell us out, first chance they get, or screw us over. Unless we get them first.”

Yuri whistled. “Shit. Imagine assholes like Scipio or Cato with Yunks on their side. Good call, boss-man. What’s next?” Fatima gave Yuri an annoyed look, but kept her mouth shut.

“You’re going to the airport,” Hamza said, pacing back and forth as he talked. “Lock it down, nothing gets off the ground. I’ll take the houses around here for now. Nadia, you sit on the women and the Metics, keep them where they are and keep them quiet. Fatima, you and Ruslan are a team. Get into the files and look up addresses. Ruslan can handle research, it’s all he’s good for. You’re in charge, you decide who to go after in what order. Lictors first. I’ll be checking in.”

His face was still locked in a snarl; nobody dared to ask him any more questions, and he didn’t stop to be sure they understood. As soon as he was done talking, he went after his familiar. Yuri was not slow to follow.

That left Nadia and Fatima alone with the remains of twenty men who had all been perfectly healthy two hours ago. “Well, you’re still alive, right?” Fatima said, before Nadia could even open her mouth.

“Yes,” Nadia answered, looking up at the night sky to avoid looking at the horror in the courtyard. “I am alive.”

“I didn’t say it was going to be neat and clean, okay? Did I say that? Would you rather he’d cut you into little pieces?”

“No. I didn’t say that.”

“Hamza’s not in a good place right now, he’s going to—you know.” She said something under her breath in Pashto. “If he can just … get this out of his system, we should be good. I mean, it’s not like we needed these losers for anything, is it? Or the Praetorians. You guys are cool and all that, but I don’t think we need to be shaking down shopkeepers for rent and shit. We should have left that hustle behind in the ‘stans where it—“

“Fatima,” Nadia cut in through her babble. The stars were still pretty, but the edge of Rhad’s halo was receding rapidly as he ran off on his mission of slaughter, and Nadia could feel it. “We both have orders. Shouldn’t you be getting Ruslan?”

“Yeah, probably,” she said. Nadia moved pointedly away from the bottom of the stairs, and Fatima gave her an all-too-carefree shrug before strolling up past the two men Ézarine had killed.

As soon as she was gone, Nadia turned her face to the wall, breathing slow and deep while she pressed the cold stone to her cheek, to the palms of her hands. If she turned around now, she might recognize some faces, and remember the stories that went with them. Just last week Caius had bragged to Gracchus about how his daughter had been the best at her ballet recital. Now there was a good chance Caius and Gracchus were lying in pieces behind her; if they were not, Hamza would shortly hunt them down and destroy them like mad dogs.

The rich party food threatened to come back up from her stomach; she jammed her face harder against the stone.

Now she could hear Ruslan’s complaints from upstairs, much louder and more shrill than Fatima’s hissed replies in between: “Who said we were doing that? I don’t want to do that! But he’s not Papa Titus. He’s not! He doesn’t get to just decide to do that on his own, does he? That’s crazy, Fatima! Yes it is, it’s totally crazy, and you know it. Couldn’t you have tried to stop him? Well, I’m not going to, okay? I’m not. And you can’t make me.”

She could, and she would, Nadia thought. It was only a matter of how much time it took to “persuade” him. And the same was true for the rest of them. Crazy or not, Hamza was already out doing it. There was nothing she could do to stop it—not without raising fresh questions about her loyalty, and maybe starting a familiars’ battle in the streets of Thessaloniki. But her part would not be so bad.

The screen that had been playing rap videos was a blank blue now, NO SIGNAL flashing in the lower corner. Master of the Flying Guillotine was still playing in the other compartment, the bonfire was still glowing, and nobody had thought to deflate the bouncy castle, but the party, plainly, was over. The courtyard was cold and empty, and Nadia had her orders. Trembling, she made her ways toward the dormitories, to reassure the women and children there of what she did not really believe herself—that the world was not, in fact, going to end.