Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (5 page)

I leaned forward. “So how much are we talking? What number are you willing to throw at my common sense to make it scurry away?”

Aberland squinted, looking at me intently. Then he drew out a leather checkbook and started writing. It took him a while, which kind of made me worry. I mean, I could imagine some pretty big numbers, but I was fairly confident he wasn’t going to throw them at me. Finally, he tore out the check and slid it over to me.

Apprehensively, I took up the check, keeping my eyes on the man. After a moment
, I let them fall to the number. My eyes went up. It was tempting. Very tempting. Ten times what I would have expected for something like this.

My hand went to my face again, my fingers tracing the design that started right above my eyebrow, curved around my eye and then out again. I knew it wasn’t there, but I could still feel it.

Things were getting bleak. It had never been easy to compete with the Guild, not for anyone, but it was especially impossible with my reputation. I had worked hard to gain some credibility, a decent client list. Instead of getting easier, it had only become harder and I found myself working for people like the Tin Man.

I closed my eyes and took a very deep breath. Yes, the m
oney was tempting. But living was too and I found it more tempting than the check. Maybe not a lot more, but the margin was definitely there. And it wasn’t just the Arcus, though that was bad enough. Not even Ben, who if he found out I was doing something like this would most definitely intervene in one way or another. Probably with his fists.

No, in the end I just didn’t trust Aberland. There was a ruthlessness that clung to him. Trusting my instincts was how I walked away from the War and later Nidia when everyone else…when everyone else didn’t.

I exhaled slowly. Hesitantly, I slid the check back, shaking my head.

“Sorry, Cy, but I’m going to have to turn you down on this. It’s tempting,” I paused, my eyes darting back the check for a moment. I licked my lips. “Very tempting. But it’s just too risky.”

I started to get up before I changed my mind. It took a lot to turn down that check. It was a small fortune. Chock it up to the remnants of my Wizardly discipline or something.

Aberland laughed. It was the first time I had heard him do so. It had the same quality as his eyes. It was eerily predatory. Like whatever lived in that deep, dark lair that was this man’s soul liked what it saw. It scared the hell out of me.

Here was a man who had more money than I would in my entire life. He was willing to go up against the Guild, as well as anything else that got in his way. He had resources, intelligence, and people to follow him wherever he went.

His laughter subsided. Deaton was smiling too. That really bothered me, the confidence in his smile.

“Mr. McDane,” Aberland said, sliding the check back towards me. “That’s only your retainer. You get the rest when you return.”

I sat down. Hard. I looked at the check, then back up to him. “Are you serious?” I asked. My voice sounded squeaky. I looked to Deaton before Aberland could answer. “Is he serious?” I interrupted him, looking around the room. “Someone tell me if he’s serious?”

That
retainer
was more than I had ever made on a job before. It was more than I had made since leaving the Guild. Hell, it was more than I had ever made while I was in the Guild!

And I would get the rest later! I kept running that sentence through my head. It felt good. I could taste it. I could smell it. I could buy dinner with it. My word, I could buy a
good
dinner.

I looked back up and Aberland’s predatory grin grew. “Plus expenses,” he said.

Plus expenses!

I leaned
back in the chair, trying hard not to show how good that sounded and failing miserably. He had me, we both knew it. He’d known before I even stepped through the door.

It was like a one-two punch. Followed up by a third and fourth. No one I
’d dealt with had negotiated under Guild Law. There was no need to. Sorcerers didn’t have a Guild or a club or anything. We hated seeing each other almost as much as we hated seeing a Wizard.

There was a buzzing in my left ear but I ignored it. I stuck one finger into my ear and wiggled it, shaking my head.

No one had come even close to offering what this guy was offering. I could live on this money. Forever. For five long years, I had tried to compete with the Guild, all the while bearing the Brand of the outcast, of a fallen Wizard, stuck in between being part of the Guild and a true Sorcerer. I could put that behind me, put scrambling for business behind me.

Another possibility occurred to me. I could actually compete with the Guild.

I looked back down at the check. Without taking my eyes off the paper, I nodded. “I’ll do it.”

Cha-ching.

CHAPTER FOUR

It didn’t take long
for us to hash out the details
, not after I added up all the zeroes. I swear the check made a thud when it hit the table.

Aberland’s party was readying themselves here in the city, making preparations to enter the Walter Cloud and study the Arcus before pursuing its end. I would meet up with them after I made my own preparations.

I stood from the table, tipping my hat in goodbye.  “I hope your people are ready for this.”

“They will do as they are told, as they are paid to do,” he replied. He chuckled. “You were definitely the cheapest of the lot.”

I ignored that. “What do you think we’ll accomplish with all this? Honestly?”

“I have no idea, Mr. McDane,” he replied. “I am merely curious and I have never been disappointed by an investment in curiosity.”

I went to the door. As my hand reached for the knob, Aberland spoke up. “One more thing. Another curiosity. What do you believe the Guild will think of this?”

I frowned. “Do you care?”

The look he was giving me now brought that to the forefront of my mind. His eyes were intense, almost feverish. He pointed to my face. “I know what the Guild did there. Without their actions you would not be here right now, would not be planning on trekking around the world on a fool’s errand. As a man who has felt the influence of the Guild in his life, I can appreciate the irony here.”

“Forgive me,” I said, pulling the brim of my hat down to hide my face, “But the irony seems to
have escaped my notice at the moment.”

His eyes narrowed. The single bulb that lit the room flickered, causing eerie shadows to play across his face. “Whatever comes of this, McDane, it will be their own doing. Curiosity can drive a man only so far, don’t you think? Call it a…” he paused and those same strange teeth flashed in the dim light of the bar as his smile grew wider. “Call it a hunch, but I believe that this endeavor will be of great importance in things to come.”

I laughed, but it came out choked. “I don’t think your return on investment will be as high as you’re hoping.”

“We will see,” he said quietly. “Together we are committing an insult against them, a rebellion of sorts. For that I would pay much, much more.”

              I considered his words. Opinions of the Guild varied, especially after the war with Ander and there weren’t nearly as many that outright loathed them anymore. Looking into Aberland’s eyes, I saw an intense hatred.

“Half the world is probably preparing to do the same thing.” I said. “A small act of rebellion, don’t you think?”

He nodded quickly, his eyes losing none of their intensity. “Yes, but then the greatest usually are.”

I took a deep breath as the heavy door shut behind me. What had I gotten myself into? I shook my head and began the long walk home.

The streets were full of cars tonight. The simple design that had been the only option a few years ago was dying out. You couldn’t even tell the machines were cars these days. Every company in the industry had a concept they were pushing and no two models were alike. Quicksilver raindrops and white lightning bolts darted through traffic. Planes, arches, spirals, wings and gem shapes filled the streets in every possible color, riding on anything from one to four wheels, hover rails or treads and pro
pelled by steam, electricity, even petrol.

I walked up to my building twenty minutes later. It was the only place I could afford and pretty much the only one that would have me. It was tem
pting to just walk on by, but I’d stashed several important things I didn’t want to carry in my coat and wasn’t about to leave them.

I took the stairs up to my apartment, ignoring the buzzing in my ear and the odd look the guy on four gave me.

As I entered my apartment, the buzzing in my ear began to form words. Al had been trying to reach me the entire time.

I snarled. “Hold on, Al. I’m coming!”

I faced the mirror, peering at myself in the gloomy light of my small bathroom. To say that I looked like shit…well, if you were to shit something that looked like I did, you’d go to the doctor. Before the Guild, before Nidia and my banishment, I would have been good looking. Well, maybe not good looking but not “lives under a bridge” scary. The years had been hard on me. My skin was pale and sallow and my cheeks were sunken in. Deep bags hung under my eyes and between them my sharp, hooked nose made me look like a tired, half-dead hawk. I hadn’t shaved in a few days, my eyes were blood shot, and my hair hung about my face in disarray.

I looked into the mirror a little deeper. Not Deeper, just deeper. Me and Al hadn’t really talked much in the past few
years. He was too busy cleaning things up, trying keep my mind from shattering apart and we’d grown apart.

But it was
kind of hard to ignore your imaginary friend.

I
took a deep breath, beginning to focus my will. It was a slow process. The bathroom began to spin, my vision to blur. Though I was gripping the sink with white knuckled determination, fighting not to move an inch, it felt like I was moving through thick, clinging fog.

“Come forth, Algernon,” I whispered.

With a sickening lurch, I felt the barrier between my mind and body dislodge. It was uncomfortable, almost like having a joint out of socket with the added joy of numbness.

I felt a sudden pressure drop into my left eye, followed by a deep cold that numbed half my face.
Suddenly, it felt like someone else was in the room. The cold ran down my neck and shoulder then through my left arm all the way to my fingertips.

My face shifted, my muscles relaxing and hardening in strange ways.
It was still my face, only an alien expression underneath. Slowly, the iris of my left eye changed from the burnt, reddish brown of copper to the dark, gunmetal grey of steel.

Then, just like that, it wasn’t me staring back at me through that eye. It swiveled independently, looking around the room until fixing on the mirror. I could still see through it but it was fuzzy and distant, like looking through a dirty camera lens.

And it certainly wasn’t my voice that said, “You’re a bloody right git, you know that?” A thick Irish accent overwhelming my Tennessean.

I clenched my jaw but he was still trying to say something so I ended up biting my tongue instead. Al liked to be right, liked even more for me to be wrong, and had a rather blunt personality. It wasn’t what I created him for, but once he had taken form, evolution was as unstoppable as it was unpredictable.

“Let me talk!” he growled through gritted teeth. My face had twisted up into a severe snarl, though whether that was him or me, I couldn’t tell. I loosened my jaw and my left arm, his at the moment, reached up and felt my tongue, pulling away with a red stain.

“Do you see that?” Al asked, his tone reprimanding. “I didn’t do that. That was you!”

“What do you want?” I rasped. I had no idea why he was Irish, but it always bothered my throat.

Al sighed, shaking his head. Well, my head. I had never really gotten used to talking to him like this.
“Virgil, I’m not here to argue.”

“
Yes you are,” I said. “And you’re not going to tell me anything I don’t already know.”

A bitter laugh crawled
up out of my throat. “The shite you pulled back in the warehouse, yes, I’ll be cleaning up after that for a while, but I don’t care about that. That is my job.” He glared at me. “I’m talking about the Arcus. I’ve been trying to get your attention since we walked into that tavern.”

I took a deep breath. “You, more than anyone else, know I need this.”

He slammed his fist on the side of the sink. “I also know more than anyone else, we can’t do it!” Spittle flecked the mirror as he screamed, rage contorting our features so tightly my face hurt.

I flexed my left hand, pushing him out of it. Al forgot about little things like our body when he was upset.

I took a deep breath. “We both need to calm down before we rip our body apart. Deal?”

I
leaned in. “Nothing will come from us arguing about this. It’s going to happen.” I waited for him to interrupt but the grey eye just kept staring. “We have no choice, no alternatives. Do not tell me what little we have to do this with, tell me what I can do with the little we have.” I paused. “I need your support on this, Al.”