We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle) (38 page)

“Doesn’t mean she wants to. And there’s a lot of daylight between not wanting to murder the world and not wanting to murder
me
.”

Mags shrugged. “Fuck it. We’re
here
.”

Mel’s big plan was to recruit big and recruit little. Any time she found out about an
ustari
of any rank somewhere, she investigated. Most of the mages who’d helped Renar, or who’d joined her at the end to be part of the Immortal Club, were known personalities—and currently, by and large, were
missing.
But Mel scoped out every mage of power she found out about. If you hadn’t been part of the
tah-namus,
Mel wanted to recruit you for the War. Said War so far boiling down to Mika Renar trying to kill me and me doing absolutely fucking nothing. It was tiring, and I paid attention only when Mel made me. Which she was remarkably good at.

Mags pushed the door in, grunted as he strained through, and I followed. We were swallowed up in a moist darkness. Two shallow steps brought us up into the main part of the old church, where a new girl, also in pajamas and a blue bathrobe, waited for us. This girl was young, fresh-faced and delicate, her blond hair a cloud of golden curls, her eyes almost glowing blue, her skin delicious. Her pajamas were silk and shimmered iridescently as she moved. She was beautiful.

“Follow me,” she said, smiling.

The place was full of girls.

The inside was just a huge room now; all the benches and paintings and other religious artifacts had been removed, leaving just a big room that had been furnished as a series of large “rooms” defined by the borders of their furniture. There was a bar and lounge area where several girls, all wearing sleepwear ranging from prim pajamas to silky lingerie, lounged on plush couches while a skinny Asian fellow in a tuxedo polished highball glasses behind a huge, shiny oak bar. There was a dance floor complete with a tiny, empty stage for a band, and two other lounge-like areas, these filled with men and women. The women dressed like the others, in various versions of sleepwear. The men mostly dressed in suits, mostly expensive. The stained-glass windows gave the light an eerie blue quality, and the high ceiling soaring over us made everything sound distant and muted, like we were watching something on a screen. The furniture was expensive-looking. There was a smell of flowers in the air. I instantly felt warm and happy, swimming through an atmosphere of sex and relaxation, a safe place.

All the girls had their hair up, sometimes piled high in ridiculous mounds of curls. All of them had complex arrangements of things thrust into their hair—knitting needles, pens, chopsticks. They bristled with easy weapons as they glided about.

The air was full of whispers.

I felt warm. I glanced at Mags and blinked in surprise. He’d pulled out the candy Mel had given him, and his mouth was smeared with chocolate as he chewed, staring over at the bar area. I tasted the air for gas but didn’t find any. Which was strange, because I would have bet money the place was heavy with spells.

Suddenly, there was a tall black kid standing next to me. He was good-looking, well built and filling a sober blue suit nicely. He smiled at us with white teeth and spread his hands.

“Ms. Abdagnale will see you now,” he said.

“Who are you?”

He bowed his head a little. “Ms. Abdagnale is my
gasam
.”

I smirked. Someone had laid some serious gas on this kid. “Sure she is.”

He led us to the back, where the altar used to be, and through a huge black door on the left, massive and carved in a thick, meandering pattern. As we got there, a silver-haired man in a natty suit emerged from the door across the way, two of the girls on his arms, like they were being escorted to a ball. The girls were wearing satiny costume-like lingerie, like a cabaret act. Every hair in place. Complex hooks and buttons done perfectly.

“I take it back,” I said to Mel’s back as we followed the kid. “She’s not a pimp. She’s a very, very good
thief
.”

All the girls suddenly seemed knowing and ruined. Suddenly seemed rotten instead of lost. Nothing wrong with a bit of gas getting you into someone’s pocket. I’d done it myself a million times. It beat starving to death. It wasn’t that—it was the charade, the complex layer of bullshit. It was unseemly. It was
wasteful
. Why in fuck would she put this much effort, this much blood and frill, into what was basically a grift—a grift that would have worked just as well with half the bullshit. And would have cost some poor Bleeder less of their life.

We stepped into a small office, suddenly crowded. It was done up in velvet hangings and delicate wooden furniture with ornate scrollwork. It felt hot and tiny, dry and woolly, like the air itself was furred.

Carith Abdagnale was a giantess, tall and statuesque, with an hourglass figure poured into an expensive dress that shimmered. She smoked a cigarette using a long glittering holder that caught the light, trailing streaks of color as she moved it around. She was sixtyish but youthful, her makeup careful and perfect, her hair an unnatural shade of red, her face round and cheerful. She breathed very loudly through her nose.

I paused to marvel. This was history, seeing the infamous Abdagnale in the flesh. I had no idea how close to real life she looked, how much or little Glamour was poured on her. Mages usually stuck close to reality, only improving, blurring, and adjusting. It could have been
blood economics, or it could have been the fact that every mage I’d ever met thought pretty well of themselves—so why would they mess with perfection? But we all used Glamours that were close to reality.

“Group rates?” Abdagnale said in a shrill voice, all nose and twitter. “We offer them! You will be made very comfortable. Your tastes will be learned, memorized. Your drink order, your preferences.” She looked at Mags and affected shock. “You are a burly one! We will have to treat you as
two
normal men when it comes to invoicing.”

“Can it,” I said. “We’re here to—”

“Recruit me,” she said. “Into your Suicide Cult! More stylish than those on the subways, yes, but no less doomed!”

The way she half-shouted everything was unnerving. Her office was closed off from the rest of the church but had a heavy feeling, like the air had been filled with a scentless incense. Like it was fractionally harder to breathe inside than it had been on the street.

I glanced at Mel, but she just shrugged. I considered my options. On one hand, I was tired of the fucking ranked
ustari
and their assumption that because they knew the Words and how to use them well, they could be as balls-out insane as they wanted and the rest of us had to eat it. Carith Abdagnale hadn’t stepped foot outside her little whorehouse in decades and was burning oceans of blood to spruce the place up and look like a big shot. The pretense was exhausting.

On the other hand, as Mel kept reminding me, we needed firepower. And if Abdagnale had enough skill to cook up this Glamour, she might be useful.

I cleared my throat. “I’m not here to insult you, Ms. Abdagnale. You’re right, we’re probably going to be killed before this is over. But
you’re
probably going to get killed, too, even if you don’t do anything. You think Mika Renar is going to leave you be? She’ll soak you, just like everyone else. Bleed you dry. You gotta stand up, be counted. Do something about it.”

The boxy woman looked at me, leaning back a bit in a stiff posture, her hands clasped in front of her. She pursed her lips. “Don’t presume
to teach me about that dried-up old devil Renar. And don’t
presume
to tell me to do something about it, as if I am not. Not in this place. I will not allow it.”

Something felt off, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“You were not invited here, Mr. Vonnegan,” Abdagnale continued. “You were
lured
. Because you are not the only person working to bring Renar and her traitors to justice—
our
justice,
true
justice—you are merely the most incompetent.”

Mel raised a hand. “Wait a second—”

Abdagnale surged to her feet and made a sharp cutting motion with her hand, and Billington went silent. She kept moving her mouth for a few seconds and then brought her hands up to her throat, eyes popping.

The black kid jumped to Abdagnale’s side, offering his arm, a thick, invisible haze of Cantrip around him like a cloud. She leaned on him heavily as they made their way around the desk. “This is
my
world, Ms. Billington. You will speak when I
allow
it.”

My eyes met Mel’s. I thought of the runes over the door. Alarm, vague and distant, flowed into me like a jelly.

“I have labored, Mr. Vonnegan,” Abdignale said breathlessly, pushing past us and waddling towards the exit. Mags shot a look at me as she elbowed him aside, but I felt like everything was happening too quickly to keep up with. “I know the gossip! I know what is said of me! Pimp! Cheat! Coward! What I have achieved here, Mr. Vonnegan, will be legendary in our order. And you,
idimustari
with wonderful
timing,
you presume to recruit
me
? You perceive the illusion we exist under in this establishment!” She tittered, breathing heavily as she hefted herself back into the huge open area of the former church. “You have the sight, you can see through the illusion. But I assure you, for not being real, your experience, your memories, will be just as satisfying.”

I didn’t like the wet way she pronounced
satisfying
. I looked at Billington again, and she made a helpless gesture, her face a mask of deepening horror. I felt tired. I hated it when Tricksters hitchhiked
their way to New York expecting me to be some sort of savior, some sort of hero. I hated it when they expected to be given a uniform, given orders, taught something. When they looked at me after being rendered speechless without a drop of blood in the air and demanded I explain to them
how
. No one had taught
me
anything.

Early in my apprenticeship, I had planned to scan all of Hiram’s notes into my phone, only to discover that the idea of reading his notes on a screen made my skin crawl. Like technology added a filter to the Words that the universe disapproved of. I spent my free time studying the notes instead. In code, of course, but I knew Hiram’s codes. All his spells, his thoughts on spells, his study of old Artifacts, most of it was over my head. I was good with the Words, but when I thought about Hiram’s notes I felt sad, because when he had been alive, when he’d been here with me, I hadn’t bothered to
ask
him anything. And now he was gone, and
idimustari
who didn’t have a pair of shoes to their name came tramping in expecting me to outfit them.

Not for the first time, I wished I could see Hiram again. He had died protecting us, died trying to help—and that had changed how I thought of him. I was glad for that, in a weird way, glad Hiram was no longer the son of a bitch who’d kept me on a leash for ten years, teaching me some awful lesson I didn’t want to learn. And I wished I could tell him so.

I trailed the big woman as she led us towards the middle lounge area, where half a dozen girls sat with half a dozen men, their skinny legs draped over laps, shimmering arms looped around shoulders. I smelled perfume and stink. The sour odor of unbathed bodies. I looked at the men, seeing them for the first time. They were vagrants. They lolled with the same slit-eyed air of ecstasy as the swells who populated the rest of the place, but they were ragged, and dirty, and—

Expendable.

I looked at Mags, but he was already pushing the sleeve of his jacket up, already had his small penknife in hand. I clicked through the spells
I had—fast and dirty work, all of them; memorizing some endless saga would do you no good in a fight. The Griefers had the right idea, even if they took it too far: Pare it down. If you could make something happen in three syllables, that was the way to go.

Mags slashed his arm. I opened my mouth to speak.

Mags didn’t bleed. I didn’t speak. We looked at each other. Then back at his arm. Where there was no mark. He slashed again, fiercely, hard enough to open an artery and kill himself, and the blade rubbed against the skin dully, without effect.

“As I said,” Carith Abdagnale tittered, “this is
my
universe.”

The whole room seemed to be shrinking, a blanket of thick blackness descending on us. As it closed up around Mags, Mel, and me, I thought,
That’s a new one.

I NEVER LOST CONSCIOUSNESS.
At first I thought I was, but then I realized I was just wrapped up in a suffocating, total blackness. A thick fabric piled on top of me. But I could feel my hands, my feet. I could even move. I could hear my breathing. I could hear
everything
. I could hear my heart beating. Blood flowing through my veins. My tongue scraping the inside of my mouth. When I moved my hand, I heard the creak and snap of ligaments. Distant, like they’d been buried.

I reached out and felt around for the gas, the large amount of shedding blood that should have been required for this, this Glamour, this Binding—whatever it
was
. I felt nothing. There was no blood in the air.

It was disorienting. And also impossible.

I kicked and struggled. I could feel myself moving, but there was no commensurate sense of movement or reaction. I was in a void. There was no momentum, no resistance. My joints rolled noisily in their sockets, but nothing happened.

I forced myself to be still. I braced myself and bit down on my tongue, hard. It was a useful skill, easy enough to cultivate as long as you could get over the creepiness factor. And the pain. If you were
idimustari
—as I still thought of myself—you couldn’t mind the taste.

There was the expected pain—sharp, fundamental, your body warning you that there were major vessels in the tongue, that you could bleed to death if you severed one—but the flood of hot blood never came. I couldn’t bleed. It was like I’d found myself in an alternate universe—