Secondhand Sorcery

It was the second time in twenty-four hours that Nadia had had a gun pointed at her. Just like before, she found it difficult to look at anything but the little muzzle-hole at the end where the bullet would come out to kill her.

“Up. Now,” its owner said. “No tricks. The second I start seeing anything that’s not real, I pull the trigger. Two other men know I’m here, plus your father. Move.”

She got up, but she still considered it. There was no way he hadn’t heard something very incriminating, or he wouldn’t be ready to make death threats. There was no way Papa Titus wasn’t at least suspicious already, or he wouldn’t have sent a man to listen at her door. Unless he’d been sent with a message or an order? She couldn’t guess what.

Down the stairs they went, as slowly as she could manage it. Now would be the last chance to call Ézarine, if she was going to do so at all. Once they were out in the courtyard there would be a lot more men with guns, and little Metics in the line of fire. But what if she did resist? She would have the whole Family after her then. Hamza at least would obey orders to kill her, however he felt. Maybe Fatima too. Ruslan would be too scared not to. Yuri … hard to say. Could she kill them all to save herself?

Too late now. They were at the bottom of the stairs. Three more Lictors just in the nearest partition. Yuri had left the bouncy castle, but all the little kids still inside stopped bouncing to stare at Nadia passing by with her hands up and a gun at her back. Just like bad guys in the movies! She wished they would look away.

Damn that Beelzebub, anyway. But wasn’t that what everyone did: blame the devil? Why had she talked to him in the first place? What could he ever have given her, that would make up for this? Nothing she could think of. And still her feet carried her forward.

Gulya did not look up from her bonfire. The martial artists kept up their lesson. The horrible rap music was still booming from the stage, and Nadia did not turn to see if anyone else noticed her shame. This was the time where she should be thinking of a plan to escape but nothing was coming to mind. Nothing in her head now, only a gradually increasing weight in her chest as the courtyard passed them by like scenery from a car window.

Bottom of the big north tower. They were going to see Papa Titus. Papa Titus, and Yunks. That was enough to wake her up a little. Death was frightening, but death was not Yunks. Deep breaths, in and out …

The two men posted at the tower’s bottom detained her (one to point his gun, one to frisk, just like a common visitor got) while her captor went up to speak with Papa Titus in private. He took a long time, but not long enough. Too soon he was back, and motioning her up the stairs. Deep breaths. In. Out. It only came to her at the last second, when they were right before the door, that she had not thought to pray. Well. That was just the sort of wicked child she was. Svyatoy Bozhe …

Too late. The door was open, and she was thrust inside with Papa Titus. He was dressed in a plain white tunic, but Nadia recognized his Tyrian purple toga, piled up on the desk in the corner, and there was a new map of Istanbul with routes sketched out in the streets. He’d been planning another triumph, his fifth since she joined. Maybe he was in a good mood?

A quick look at his face told her he wasn’t. His expression was … solemn. The face he put on when he was angry, but trying to be dignified about it. A little frowny mask, good for the funeral of somebody you didn’t like. She despised it—but it was no good letting that show on her own face. Yunks was already visible in outline behind him.

“Sir,” she said, standing at attention.

He nodded, then turned away to look at his Oath of the Horatii on the wall. She knew he was planning to get the original from the Louvre someday. “I am grieved that it has come to this,” he said.

“Come to what? Sir.” Yunks was still hazy, too immaterial to start feeding yet. She had better stay that way for a while; Beelzebub had given her limited instructions, and she had obviously never had a chance to test them. The little picture in her head was still frustratingly vague.

His shoulders stiffened. Definitely angry now. “You are a soldier—young, but a warrior. You represent the gens Martialis, even now. I expect you to face all challenges with courage and dignity. Not equivocation. Cincinnatus heard you speaking with someone in your room. Do you deny it?”

“I was praying!” she said, the first thing that came to mind. Along with the words of Beelzebub: Everyone’s image is different. For you … we should try a wall, a brick or stone wall, very tall, so tall you could never climb over. Practice for me now.

“Cincinnatus says he heard two voices. One of them a man’s.”

“I don’t know what all he heard, sir. I can only tell you that I was praying. Out loud.” But the wall isn’t there to protect you—it’s there to keep you out. Everything you ever wanted is on the other side of that wall, but you can’t get around it and you can’t break it down. Can you picture that? Can you hold that in your mind?

Yes. She could. She could see it now. Because she had to. Because the alternative was lurking behind Papa Titus’s back, lusting to tear her soul in half.

“I haven’t known Cincinnatus to lie,” Papa Titus said slowly, turning around to stare right into her eyes. “Or to ever show a grudge against you, that might make him lie. Do you hold grudges, Nadezhda Titovna?”

“I try not to, sir.” The wall was there, strong and firm. She knew she would never get past it. Could Yunks? Of course it will work. It worked for me, didn’t it? We all learn to defend ourselves this way.

“But I’ve been hearing stories, Nadezhda. They spread among the Praetorians, men who have never seen your face. Have you heard these stories … Nadezhda Titovna?”

She knew he was just using her patronymic to intimidate her. It didn’t. Mostly, it was annoying. He didn’t own her. “I don’t talk with the Praetorians, sir.”

“Or with anyone else?”

“No, sir, except for our own family. Not without your permission.” The wall will not protect you from anything physical. It will have no effect outside your body. All it will give you is noetic sovereignty. No valence can bind you, as long as you can imagine that wall.

“Strange. I hear stories about a malcontent in the ranks. There are plain security leaks on a critical mission. And now one of my most senior Lictors, a man who has served me faithfully for four years without incident, hallucinates a male voice in your room.” He raised his chin to stare down his long nose at her. “How does that happen?”

“There was no man in there with me, sir. Did Cincinnatus say there was? Or a radio?” she added, on an afterthought.

“You know there were not … Nadezhda Titovna.” Abruptly the figure behind him came into clear focus, and Nadia saw her: the arms, legs, and trunk of a nude woman, curvaceous and desirable, with the four hairy black paws of a bear past her elbows and knees, and a long, sinuous neck covered in red feathers, ending in a bird’s head with a bill like a sword and a splayed crest of needlelike quills out the back.

The shock of the sight of her was so sharp, so sudden, that for a moment her wall was lost, and Nadia felt herself falling down the precipice into the pit of unfathomable fear where Yunks was waiting at the bottom, hungry and eager. She cocked her head, bird-like, at the taste of Nadia’s despair, and her eye glinted in the light.

She did not eat, could never eat, as often as she liked, and she had barely tasted Nadia before. Her master used her to break disobedient soldiers, to bully Ruslan, or to teach compliance to idiot Greek officials who did not know their place. The heart of a young girl would be a tender treat, she said with her shining eye. And the thick, clumsy bear’s hands ran up and down her body with anticipation, caressing neck, breasts, belly, groin, and thighs.

But even as Nadia fell the thought of the wall came to mind again—if only because it was an agony to lose it—and the moment it returned the power of Yunks receded. Not all the way; Nadia could still feel the stinking heat of her breath down her neck. But enough. It was little bit to cling to, and from the little bit of desperation Yunks fed her she built up her wall again.

“No,” she said out loud. No, you cannot have me. You think you can trap me in fear? Not if I trap myself first. The wall went up all around her inside her mind, higher and higher, until she could no longer picture its top, and the light of the sky and the sun above were just a tiny shriveled dot in the theoretical center of an endlessly-shrinking circle. She might be a prisoner, but she would be her own prisoner, not some beast’s.

“No?” Papa Titus repeated, incredulous, and Nadia realized (without letting go of the wall) that in her brief time in Yunks’s paws she had stumbled sideways and fallen over into a bookshelf, scattering half its contents over herself. She was on the floor, buried in old books, and hadn’t even noticed. The wall was more real.

“No, sir,” she amended, kicking a Latin text aside as she stood back up.

“I see you’ve been talking with Miss Sarah Lawrence,” he said, crossing over to the desk and throwing the toga on the floor.

Sarah who? “I’ve never met her, sir.”

“Do you know me, then? Who am I, Nadezhda? What is my title?” He was breathing faster now, his jaw clenched. The solemn face was gone, and in its place was something she hadn’t seen before, something unbalanced and almost crazy.

“Paterfamilias, sir.”

“And what is the power of the paterfamilias, if not the power of life and death?” He picked his replica gladius hispaniensis up off the top of his desk. He tugged it free of the scabbard and thunked the tip of the two-foot blade easily into the table. “I give you a choice, my daughter: either submit to your father’s justice willingly, or it will be imposed on you by force.”

“Justice?” It was difficult to keep the image of the wall firmly in her mind—which was her top priority—and still think of anything else. She looked from the sword, to Yunks, and back again. Obviously, he expected her to give in, let Yunks peck at her for a bit. When she was suitably broken, provided she hadn’t screamed out anything too incriminating, he would let her free to serve him again. Assuming Yunks had left her enough of a mind to still be useful.

If it came to that, she was less frightened of the sword. It wasn’t even close. Everyone agreed that letting Yunks eat you—really go after you, not the little pokes that Ruslan got for being a ninny—was worse than death. But her imaginary wall could not protect her from a real blade, and Papa Titus did not look patient. So she let the barrier fall, and called up Ézarine instead.

Her whole keystone sequence took only the blink of an eye this time, and Nadia barely noticed it; Papa Titus, of course, could not see it at all with Yunks out. Nadia realized only after she did it that she had done something irrevocable. But what was her alternative? Now she was not alone.

“Are you threatening your father?” Papa Titus said, baring his teeth at her beautiful friend. She’d materialized almost directly between them, slightly off to one side so she could move to intercept either him or Yunks. Not that she could do much to an anchored man.

“You are not my father,” she told him. It was an unspeakable relief just to say it, and Ézarine had banished her fear as she always did. Now she had a stomach full of fresh hot anger, making her strong. “You don’t love me, or anyone else, and you never have, you horrible old man. A street-corner pimp would be a better father than you.”

“You wound me,” he said, and pulled the sword back out of the table. It was not a large room, but Nadia edged away, trying to keep the table between them. He gave her ghastly, clench-toothed smile—a grimace trying to smirk—and began sidling around. The space was cluttered, and she had nowhere to flee to; eventually she would trip on something, and he would be on her. And anyway, why should she run from this old gargoyle? He had held her back for long enough.

She heard shouts from outside the door—the Lictors, alerted by her halo—and sent Ézarine to deal with it. There were a few shots, a very loud scream, then nothing. Even the obnoxious rap music finally fell silent. Papa Titus kept moving, and Nadia ducked under the table to avoid circling back around until she bumped into Yunks. Another retreat. Damn him.

The old man hesitated a moment, then gripped the edge of the table with his left hand and tugged up. Nadia took the second’s grace to pull a heavy Lexicon of Classical Greek off a bottom shelf; just as Papa Titus finished overturning the table and pulled his arm back, she threw it right at his face with both hands. It hit him square on the nose, snapping his head back and nearly knocking him over. It was a sight for Nadia to cherish, even as she scrambled over the table before he could recover. She felt the sword tug and tear at the hem of her dress as she cleared the rim and fell down the other side.

Yunks was already clumping over to intercept; she did not like to use her body, but in a pinch her bear’s claws would tear well enough. Hmph. Ézarine popped back in behind her, grabbed her by her snaky throat, and yanked back hard, slamming her to the floor. It wasn’t a fair fight. Scary as she was, Yunks was just a freak, with no real halo. She could only draw off her master and whoever he let her eat. Ézarine had half the castle for support. Why had Nadia been scared of the ugly thing for so long? Why had she allowed Yunks to hold her back?

Now the upended table was between her and Papa Titus, who dragged it out of the way one-handed, weapon ready to deflect further books. Blood was still pouring out of his nose, streaming across his chin, beard, and tunic. Red bubbles came frothing out of his mouth. He was breathing very hard now, harder than he should have for his exertions, and shaking a little. His fingers clenched and twitched on the sword’s handle.

The look on his face was ugly, but it wasn’t anger; it was yearning. He ran his eyes all over her, as he had never done before. Yunks was in his eyes. Always hungry, never satisfied, but always allowed a taste—until now. If she could not gorge Nadia’s fear and pain in her usual way, a sword would have to do. And Papa Titus was the only one with hands free to swing for her.

“God, you really are a pimp, aren’t you?” she said, and he froze, staring at her as if he did not quite understand. Nadia glanced around—she was in a corner. The familiars were wrestling on the floor to her right, while shelves and the table cut her off from the door to the left. Behind her was a big Athenian red-figure wine jug, about 2,500 years old.

“Svoloch’! Otyebis ot menya!” She had to torque her whole body around to launch the vase at him. He was not too mad with Yunks’s lust to shy away, and it shattered on the far wall. Ceramic shards went flying everywhere; he was closer, and snarled as a few of the largest jabbed into his back and legs. A few stinging flecks hit her arms and face as well, but she ignored them. He had twisted around to pluck a tiny clay dagger out of his leg. This was her chance.

Nadia took a flying leap past the familiars, landed on the toga, and nearly crashed into the wall. She could hear his footsteps thumping across the floor behind her, and again grabbed the nearest heavy object—his Venus de Milo miniature, authentic Parian marble, on the desk next to the lamp. It was small, but very dense, and he was almost on her by the time she turned; she didn’t throw it so much as swing it across and down like a two-handed war-hammer, letting it go at the last instant. Her feet caught on the toga again and slipped out from under her, but the Venus hit hard. He staggered back several steps, awkwardly catching it left-handed as it thumped into his chest.

Still, he recovered, and Nadia was on the floor tangled up in his horrible purple rag. He was blocking her exit, there were men with guns down there anyway, and her wonderful Ézarine was still tied up with Yunks. Again and again she slammed the monster’s head into the floor, but she refused to die, and until she went away Titus was untouchable. It just wasn’t fair.

No. Not untouchable. The man himself had taught her better than that. “Highly resistant to paraphysical effects.” That was the phrase. None of Ézarine’s powers would work on him, and Nadia was no match for him alone. And they both knew it. Before he closed in to kill her, her adopted father took a moment to set his precious Venus gently on the floor, then wipe some of the blood off his face with the back of his arm while he looked on her with desire. Soon, his face said, he would drive the gladius into her heart.

Nadia had her own yearning. She wanted to pick his love-goddess back up and break his slobbering face with it, but she was on the floor with his awful toga and she would never reach it without getting cut open but

a hunk of rock is not a paraphysical effect

He was just taking a step toward Nadia when Ézarine let go of Yunks’s head and disappeared. He saw her reappear, out of the corner of his eye, and twisted his neck to look back as she picked up the Venus. She twisted his neck a good deal more—and the rest of his body with it—when the little masterpiece hit him in the jaw. Ézarine was much stronger than she looked. Nadia fancied she could hear half his teeth shattering under the impact, though really she couldn’t possibly have distinguished it from the noise he made slamming into the bookshelf.

He was in remarkably good shape for a man of his age. He kept his grip on the sword, was still strong enough to lunge at her familiar with it. Ézarine dodged easily, flickered around behind him, and brought the Venus down on the back of his head with a very satisfying sound. He fell down on his face, and did not move, but Ézarine was more thorough than merciful, and hit him a few more times to be sure. Nadia relished every blow, and only stopped her familiar when the floor around her adopted father was the same shade as the toga.

It would not be ladylike to spit on the body. Instead she threw the toga on top of him, so she wouldn’t have to look at the mess. A triumphal exit. Hah.

That left Yunks, who was just beginning to recover from her own drubbing. Slowly she rose to her … paws and knees, swinging her long neck back and forth to take in the scene. Nadia thought she was a little paler, maybe a bit less solid, than she had been earlier, but it might have been her imagination. Either way, Ézarine took a step toward her, still clutching the Venus, and she retreated at once, drifting right through the wall. Let her go off and die somewhere, then. Nadia didn’t care.

Now they were alone at last. Alone and safe, the conquering heroines. Nadia took a moment to embrace her protector before dismissing her; Ézarine was wonderful, but her job was done. Nadia could call her back in an instant if she needed to.

Ézarine had been gone for perhaps five seconds when Nadia got the shakes, so bad she had to lean on the desk to keep standing. A patricide. She was a patricide now. Papa Titus had left her with his fortress full of armed killers, in a city full of the enemies he had made. And now her brothers and sisters were waiting for her to come down the stairs and explain what she had done, and why.

What was she going to tell them?