We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle) (49 page)

Fallon turned slightly and glanced down at his hand. “Just so,” he said.

I shuddered.

37.
THE ROOM SAGGED AND GROANED
around us. Every structural piece of the place had been stretched beyond its engineered limits. Gaps had appeared around the door and window frames, letting the air in. The floor slanted sharply towards the bathroom, the carpet bulging in several spots where the subfloor had snapped. The wind howled in through the broken window, playing with the Negotiator’s nearly white hair. The fresh air was helping with the smell of old blood, dead and useless.

I didn’t know anything about the three
ustari
we’d just killed. Whether they were skilled, whether they were particularly evil people. I sat on the bed, legs spread, hands clasped between my knees. My pants were torn and had seen better days, and my hands were filthy.

We’d taped the Negotiator’s arms to the desk chair with gray duct tape and put his back to the door. He’d come to a few minutes into the process and said nothing, just blinked around a bit, looking thoughtfully at Fallon as the old man stood at ease across the room, smoking one of his brown cigarettes.

I could hear Billington talking to Remy and Roman outside, voices low. Calming them down.

Mags stood next to me with those huge hands clenched into fists, barely restrained from beating the Negotiator until his hair fell out. I focused on the curious sensation of Mags’s heartbeat: slow, ponderous. Too slow, I thought, for him to still be alive, as if the last year and a half had been a Glamour.

I’d been staring at the Negotiator. He’d been staring back. Suddenly, he took a deep breath and smiled. He had a young face, ruddy-cheeked and hairless. His lips were the same color as his shoes, bright red, like slashes of blood on a face that was all sharp lines, subtle shades of pink and salmon and white. His smile looked artificial to me, a definite put-on.

“You’ve made a mess,” he said, chipper and fake.

I nodded. Something rusted and creaky inside of me spun into lurching motion. “We won’t get the security deposit back, no. Speak one Word and I’ll break your jaw.”

He nodded. He looked as if he wanted very much to laugh at my joke but didn’t have the spare energy. His eyes remained locked on mine. There was no hint of begging, no scent of desperation. I’d fought him back in New York. I’d managed to spark a little fear into his eyes that day. There was none now.

“You were here looking for me?” I asked.

His eyes tightened and he cocked his head slightly. “We have not come to an arrangement,” he said, sounding apologetic. “What do I get if I tell you?”

I twisted my head around until I got a satisfying pop as a reward. I put my hands on my knees and pushed myself into a standing position. His gray eyes followed me up. I started taking my jacket off.

“It’s been some long years,” I said. “I used to not bleed people, did you know that? I used to be a fucking priest about it. I rode my own gas, period. Never touched anyone else. Almost bled myself out daily trying to stay alive, make ends meet.”

The Negotiator continued to stare at me with his head cocked slightly. “I know.” He jerked his head at the three dead men in the room, limp and bloodless, almost like wax figures. “You seem to have relieved yourself of that concern.”

I didn’t look at them. “They’re not on me,” I said.

He smiled. I’d left no scars on him from our last meeting. His face had healed and he was just as pretty as before. “Oh yes? Who are they
on,
then?”

I shrugged. “Mika Renar. Her little boy Cal Amir. It’s on them.” Every person I bled, every crime I committed, was theirs. Thinking that allowed me to sleep at night.

His smile bloomed into full, twitchy force. “Is that
so
?”

I worked the jacket off and made a show of folding it neatly, stains and tears and all. “And you, and yours, of course.” I waited a beat. “Who sent you to find me?”

He shook his head, still smiling, still looking directly at me, as if no one else were in the room. “No, Mr. Vonnegan. We have not struck a deal. We must come to terms.”

I shook my head, anger boiling deep inside. “There is no deal.”

His smile turned comically sad, his mouth pulled down into a frown, his eyes still laughing. “Nonsense, Mr. Vonnegan. I am the Negotiator.”

I was going to hit him. The knowledge was suddenly there. All my plans to play it cool, to play
enustari
and be mysterious and ominous, just melted away, and I was going to knock him down in the chair and beat him until the mocking look in his eyes died out. And this would have been mercy because it wouldn’t be Mags doing the beating. Mags would crush him by accident and then hold his bloody hands out at me and whimper apologies.

Behind me, Fallon cleared his throat. “He has had a
geas
placed on him, Mr. Vonnegan,” he said. “Powerful. Complex.”

The Negotiator smiled again, nodding as he looked past me to Fallon. “Yes. My old
gasam,
bless her, was displeased with me. I have
been punished.” He looked back at me with those deep, tragic eyes. “Oh, how I have been
punished,
Mr. Vonnegan. Come, let us come to terms. You wish information. I must preserve my life. Let us strike a bargain. It is what I
do
.”

I vibrated with the need to hit him, to tear at him. A black spot of weary hatred bloomed on those thoughts like mold, growing, spreading. Hadn’t I killed enough fucking people today? I’d wasted half my life refusing to bleed the world. Now I couldn’t wait to bleed one more person, for no real reason.

I twitched myself around to look at Fallon. “What kind of
geas
?” I asked, my voice surprising me by being ragged and rough, like I’d been crying for ten years. Or recently dead. Or dead for a long time.

“It is a cursory impression,” Fallon said with a shrug. “But it appears he is compelled to speak the truth. Unadorned, without guile, without omission.”

“Yes!” the Negotiator shouted, sounding exultant. “
Yes!
So simple. But that is not all! My old
gasam,
she is very
clever
when it comes to punishments.” He laughed, sounding crazy. “I have been punished quite
thoroughly.
”

I turned back to him. “Can I negotiate for
you
? For your life?”

His eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. He leaned towards me slightly. “State your terms.”

My vision swam. The magical energy I’d bled out of the three dead men was fading, was now just a green scum of adrenaline floating on top of my thinned blood. “Or I could kill you.” Bleed him out for another round of healing. If I took it all, I’d be right as rain when I was done. The thrill of desire that vibrated through me was visceral. My mouth watered.

The Negotiator shrugged. “You could. But then you would learn nothing from this. As you have already killed
everyone else
.”

I could almost hear Billington saying,
You sure?

“All right,” I said. “Here are my terms. I want to know where Mika Renar
is
. I want to know why they’ve been bleeding the world a couple
thousand people at a time, storing all that blood. If it’s another go at the
tah-namus
or something else. I want to know what the
kurre-nikas
is.”

The Negotiator nodded crisply. “Three questions. Very elegant, Mr. Vonnegan. You think well. As it happens, I can give you the opportunity to ask your questions. We will have to travel to accomplish this.” He paused and studied me, cocking his head as if considering something. “Allow me to formalize our agreement,” he said suddenly, that half-crazy smile touching his bloodred lips. “You wish to be transported to meet my employer. You wish to ask three questions as stated—the location of Mika Renar, the purpose of her activities these past few years, and the nature of the
kurre-nikas.
I guarantee answers to your questions. You stipulate to this wording of your terms?”

Something felt off, and I could feel a ripple of discomfort go through everyone in the room, but it sounded right enough. “Yes.”

He nodded. “In return, you will be asked
one
question, and my term is to require you to answer it.” He pursed his lips. “I will not reveal the question at this moment. I will tell you that you will not like it. It is why I was sent to fetch you all those many months ago. It is why I was sent to fetch you
today
.”

I considered this man. This parasite. His suit was torn and stained but still had an essential crispness to it. He was ruddy with health, and he’d been riding along on the back of some major movers, serious
enustari
. He’d told me back in that church that he didn’t work for Renar. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. There were other
enustari
at her level, but who said he was telling me the truth.

“If there is travel,” Fallon said precisely, “we must have guarantees.”

The Negotiator nodded. “Of course. I can guarantee your safety and return.”

I turned and frowned at Fallon. “Are you fucking senile, finally?”

Fallon’s smile was just a hint. “His
geas
is powerful. The
ustari
who crafted it spent time on it. Made it a complex flower of a spell. It has also made
him
powerful, by association.” He shrugged. “He always speaks the truth, you see.”

I stared for a moment, then shook my head. “What?”

“What the infamous Evelyn Fallon means, Mr. Vonnegan,” our thin captive said cheerily, “is that when I have been engaged to speak on behalf of someone—to
negotiate
—the terms, I come to
become
the truth. The agreement is woven directly into reality. Into the future. If I say to you that you will not be harmed, you
will not be harmed
. If I say to you that you will be returned after your interview, you
will be returned
.”

I kept looking at Fallon. “Jesus,” I said.

“Only in the context of negotiation, of course. My old
gasam
hated me far too much to grant me such unfettered power. I can grant it only in the context of serving the interests of others, never my own.
Never
my own! And there are limits. There must be a true motivating factor for the negotiations—a need. Need is what drives my
geas
. I cannot negotiate simply to achieve my own aims.” Reciting this, he sat up straighter. Looked like one of those prim, fluffy dogs at Westminster.

“Do we have an agreement, Mr. Vonnegan?”

I kept my eyes on Fallon. “Who in their right mind would give someone this kind of power and call it a
punishment
?”

Fallon smiled slightly. It was just a tick of the corners of his mouth, but it was a terrible expression. “You do not know much about punishment, Mr. Vonnegan. Being in the service of others, eternally, forced to negotiate all manner of things no matter your personal feelings—you do not find that terrible? I do.”

I looked back at the Negotiator. The awful faked energy I’d siphoned from the three Bleeders was completely gone, and I was shivering again. I considered the power and skill required to create a
geas
of that complexity, duration, and power. I held up three fingers.

“Three questions—answered.”

He nodded. “Agreed.”

“Safe passage to and from.”

“Agreed. And you will answer
one
question.” He smiled, a twitchy thing that flickered on his face. “And guarantee safety in turn.”

I turned to look at Fallon. He gave me a typically Fallon-like shrug. I looked at Mags. He was staring at the Negotiator intently, breathing loudly through his nose. I turned back to the skinny shit himself.

“Agreed.”

38.
THE EXPERIENCE OF TELEPORTATION WAS
that it was no experience at all.

The Negotiator cast it pretty plain, right out in the open, with no effort to obscure it or hide its format from me. Either he didn’t know how or he had the usual disdain for
idimustari
and assumed I wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. I paid attention, though. It wasn’t about the specific Words, it was about the grammar and the structure. The way things led into other things. It was an impressive spell, and while I didn’t manage to memorize it, I got ideas from it. And I had to admit it was both simpler and more clever than I would have imagined a teleportation spell to be.

He didn’t bleed anyone. I recalled the time he’d appeared in Abdagnale’s office, and he’d bled a man dry to get there. Something had changed in his circumstances. Hell, the whole universe had changed, because this was fucking
impossible
. At least so my incomplete education insisted.

He spoke his spell, and we were somewhere else. As he spoke, I cut my thumb open with a palmed blade, whispered a little insurance. An old survivor trick.

There was no sense of movement, no transition. No blurring, no wind, none of the bullshit a showy mage would have incorporated. He finished speaking and then we were all in a different room, just like that.

As we arrived, I finished my own
mu
. A tiny thing inspired by the deal I’d just made. A down-and-dirty Cantrip ideal for
idimustari.

I wasn’t sure if it would work in the context of the Negotiator’s
geas,
which was a spell so convoluted and awful I had no idea where to even begin trying to suss it out. I couldn’t see it without help, the way Fallon had; I still needed a witch light to trace runes or Wards or other marks. Even if I could have seen the
geas
plainly, I wasn’t certain I’d be able to follow it. To make it reality simply by speaking it, even within the limitation of a third-party negotiation—who could create such a spell? Powerful fucking stuff. The sort of thing you bled a whole town to fuel, and according to the Negotiator, it had been done simply to
punish
him.