We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle) (57 page)

I concentrated, and the
gespu
grabbed hold. And the Negotiator started kicking.

I could feel the Artifact working; smoky, insubstantial tendrils twisted and hooked into something soft and yielding—him. His resistance grew frenzied, pushing back until I closed my eyes and began to tremble with the effort of keeping my mind focused on him. It was like someone trying to distract you, to break your concentration, except instead of just losing my train of thought, I was being squeezed for
blood. I felt it pouring out of me like someone had attached a straw to my arm and started sucking.

When he started to come through that wall, it began to
hurt
.

Someone had taken hold of the nub end of a nerve that looped in a single line around my entire body and started pulling at it. When I pulled at the presence that was the Negotiator, the nerve got pulled in the other direction, a burning line of agony that started in my belly and snaked around to every limb, every toe, every finger. I felt myself drop to my knees, holding my arm up over the
gespu
with increasing effort. I heard Claire shouting something that I imagined was encouraging.

And then, without warning, all the resistance and pain ceased and I rocketed back onto my ass, a warm spray of my own blood landing on my face. I was suddenly conscious of being soaked in sweat and shivering like an old drunk. It wasn’t the most I’d ever bled, but it had been a long time, and I was out of practice.

I looked up and my eyes met his. The pale, skinny shit was right there, breathing hard, eyes popping in shock. We stared at each other for exactly one heartbeat. Then he opened his mouth. Claire skipped forward with the animal grace I remembered, a superpower, and hit him over the head with a sap that had appeared in her hand. He twisted off the chair and crumpled to the floor.

I looked at her. I looked at Daryl, who just stood there, arms out in shock.

Claire shrugged. “Well, your spell was finished,” she said, “and he didn’t make a sound.”

45.
“ONE PIECE OF GREEN GLASS,
six hundred and fifteen dollars in what appears to be pre–World War Two currency, one small jade figurine.” Claire nudged the Negotiator’s body with her foot. “Glad we weren’t trying to rob him or I’d be fucking
pissed
.”

Fallon and I knelt on the floor next to the bound and gagged man and examined the slim pickings of his pockets. Fallon reached down and picked up the piece of glass. It was a jagged and nasty hunk and had some dried blood on it. I guessed it came from the thick bottom of a beer bottle.

“Crude, but I suppose it gets the job done.” Fallon looked past it at me. “You should move quickly. Elsa will be searching for him. And she will find him soon enough.”

I nodded. “We’ll ask Billington to get a bleed going and obscure him a little.”

Claire reached down and snatched the figurine from the floor, let out a yelp of surprise and dropped it. It rolled towards me; it was square and resembled some sort of ancient god, eyes angry, mouth open. I picked up the milky-green thing and a jolt of buzzing energy instantly coursed up my arm. I recognized the gas right away, but it was more than I’d ever felt in my life. An ocean of roiling,
living
energy, like someone had recently bled a stadium full of people five seconds ago.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

Fallon reached out for it. I instinctively pulled my hand away. No
enustari
should ever have this much gas in their hands. He left his hand outstretched for a moment, then smiled slightly and glanced down at his shoes.

“A Token, I believe. A connection to all that sacrifice they’ve been storing.” He sighed. “That is
wonderful
work. Elsa has a touch.” He frowned. “It is likely a copy of the existing piece. Although I am unaware of any other Fabricator capable of this.”

I nodded. So simple. I could feel it, seemingly endless power vibrating inside the tiny statue, ready and willing to be drawn out and used. I closed my fist around it and spent two heartbeats exulting in it, just imagining what could be done with that kind of gas on demand, always in your pocket.

I thought of Pitr. All that gas—it felt infinite—and yet it wasn’t enough to bring someone back, to reach back two years and erase a
death. If it had been, Renar would have reached back and reworked everything already.

I looked at Claire and Daryl, who always seemed to be hulking behind her, simultaneously protective and completely confused. I pushed the Token into my pocket. I could feel it humming against my thigh.

“Help me tie him to the chair,” I said.

THE NEGOTIATOR CAME TO
while we were covering the knots of his binding with duct tape so he couldn’t pick at them even if he managed to get his fingers free. He jerked awake, tried to speak through the ball and gag, rocked his bindings a bit, then instantly calmed, his eyes going around the room before finally settling on me. Fallon leaned against the bar to his left. Claire and Daryl were still behind him. The room was silent except for the low hum of drinkers’ voices leaking under the door. I felt hot and sweaty.

I turned and dragged one of the other chairs over, pushed it close to him. Pulling James’s gun from my pocket, I sat down so that our knees were touching, and held it flat against my thigh. I could smell myself. It wasn’t pretty. His eyes darted to the gun and then back to me.

I smiled. “You can’t speak yourself out of a bullet, eh?”

He just stared.

“I’m going to let you speak. If you try to cast, it will go very badly for you. Do you understand?”

He nodded once. He looked confident. He knew what was coming, or thought he did.

I glanced up at Claire, and she shrugged and reached savagely around, took hold of the gag, and yanked it free with one brutal pull.

The Negotiator howled. “
That
is quite unnecessary, Mr. Vonnegan!”

I nodded. We were all friends here. “Tell me, Mr. Harrows, can you negotiate on your own behalf?”

His eyes went to the gun again and lingered a bit longer. “Yes.”

I leaned forward. “Can you negotiate under
duress
?” He didn’t
answer. I nodded. “Sure you can. Because this was a punishment, right? This was designed to ruin you. So sure, you can negotiate under
all sorts
of conditions, can’t you?”

The Negotiator and I stared at each other. I reminded myself that in this world, in this
version
that Mika Renar had created, he had killed Pitr. Or caused me to kill Pitr. Either way, I let that thought bloat and push against my brain.

“If I refuse to engage in . . .
negotiations?
”

“I don’t think you can,” I said. “Because where’s the suffering if you can
refuse
?”

He snorted, a crooked smile forming on his face. “Do you believe this is the first time I have been used thus? Mr. Vonnegan, this has been my existence for many years. I have been reduced to a tool. And I am used roughly.”

I was an old hand at bullshit. For years, Pitr and I had made our meager living on bullshit. I was a fucking expert, and I could see, behind the jolly calm, that the Negotiator was agitated. Upset. Worried. I tipped my hand down and fired a shell into the floor. Everyone but me jumped. The noise outside the door went quiet.

“Boo-hoo, Mr. Harrows.” I glanced up. “Daryl, check the door and tell anyone who inquires that everything’s fine. And pass a message to Billington to get a bleed going and hide this place as best she can.”

Daryl nodded and turned to go. I could hear him whispering my instructions to himself. He’d been with me a few hours and was already one of us. I heard Billington with her perpetual question:
You sure?
I wasn’t winning, but in small ways, in ways that felt important, everything was coming up Lem, like an invisible hand was guiding things or my own invisible gravity had increased. I didn’t know what kind of weird aura the universe had me wrapped up in, but it was fucking useful, that was for sure.

The Negotiator had closed his eyes. “Very well,” he said. “Let us
negotiate
.”

He spoke the word as if it tasted like poison.

I nodded. I took a deep breath and kept my eyes on his angular, flushed face. “I want Pitr Mageshkumar.”

I HAD SAT IN
the cold, disturbingly clean kitchen and eyed the cup of tea steaming in front of me with dread. It was probably just tea, but there was something about the fruity, rotten smell wafting from it that made me imagine exotic, poisonous roots and berries. There was steady, disturbing breathing filling the air. It was right across from me, blowing the warm scent of sour cream and onion potato chips into my face. I was afraid to look up, because the largest man in the world might hit me again.

He was also the angriest man in the world.

I reached out and took hold of the teacup. It was excessively fragile, decorated with whimsical drawings of kittens with umbrellas. The edge of the cup was gilded, and it gleamed as I brought the hot liquid up to my nose for a sniff. The old bastard had added cream and sugar without asking if I wanted either.

My stomach rumbled.

I looked up. The Huge Indian Man was staring at me, his eyebrows knitted into one angry bar. He sat two feet across from me with his shovel-like hands clasped tightly in front of him, breathing with his mouth open like a panting lion.

I set the tea down. The possibility that it was deadly seemed suddenly very real. I picked up the spoon from the saucer and shook the cold pool of tea from it onto the table. I heard the Big Man grunt in disapproval. Holding the spoon up, I flashed out my other hand in a theatrical gesture, drawing his eye.

“Want to see a trick?”

By the time he’d reoriented on me, I’d bent the spoon between my thumb and forefinger, just at the neck. The dumbest trick in the world. But I suspected I had the dumbest audience in the world, too. He nodded curtly, hands now curled into fists, like he was thinking that if my trick sucked, he would hit me.

“I’m going to bend this spoon with just my mind,” I said.

He frowned. “No blood?”

I frowned back. “No, no blood. Just my mind.”

He nodded back, serious. “All right.”

Holding the spoon so it was at a straight-on angle to him, I began waggling it back and forth, holding my free hand over it in various mystical shapes. “Bend,” I commanded. “Bend!” As I waggled, I increased the angle so that from his point of view the spoon did appear to bend slowly. All it was really doing was inching towards him, revealing the bend that was already there. I’d won two beers and one punch for this one. I wasn’t very good at it. But I’d never met a man more easily distracted than this hulk.

His face froze, his eyes wide and his mouth open. He stopped breathing. He lunged forward and grabbed the spoon from my hand, almost breaking a finger.

“Holy shit!” he said, rubbing his thumb along the spoon. “You didn’t even
speak
!”

I smiled and opened my mouth to say something. He surged up out of his chair with a whoop and spun, taking hold of one of the cabinet drawers behind him and pulling it out so hard that it popped right off the tracks and crashed to the floor, making me jump. He dived down and popped back up, spun, and dumped about two dozen spoons of various sizes and purposes onto the table.

“Show me how!”

I looked from the spoons to his wide, excited face, without a shred of threat. I picked up my cup of tea and gestured at his chair. “Sit down, I’ll show you.”

“FEKETE KUTYA,”
FALLON MUTTERED.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him throw his hands up and turn away.

The Negotiator blinked and began shaking his head slightly, his brow furrowing. This represented the most lines I’d seen in his face since I’d met him. It felt like a minor victory.

“What?”

“The things you say
become the truth,
” I quoted. “Those are my terms.”

He licked his lips. “This is . . . This is not possible. You have to be—”

I fired another shell into the floor. “Say the word
reasonable
and the negotiation is over.”

He was breathing in short little gasps. For me, Pitr had been dead four days. To everyone else, he’d been gone for two years. But I knew what was possible. Mika Renar had ginned up an ocean of blood and built herself a Fabrication that changed moments. I’d felt that change, I realized. More than once. Standing in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, feeling smug for a little trick I’d managed, I’d
felt
it. And when I’d come out on the other side, Pitr Mageshkumar had been dead for two years.

“This, I cannot grant this,” he said, craning his neck forward.

I shook my head. “I think you can.” I was betting on it. “I think the Archmage who punished you with this
geas
doesn’t know how to do anything lightly. I think she hammered this into place with every bit of skill she had. And I think if you
negotiate
in good faith, you can make any-fucking-thing happen, because
the things you say become the truth
.” Hiram had taught me: Reality is
perception
. “And I think your
geas
allows you to negotiate for your own life because it was designed as a punishment.”

He flew into a constrained frenzy then, rocking in the chair and straining against his bonds. He stopped suddenly and was still, his nearly white hair disheveled, sticking up in every direction. “Punishment! You know nothing of punishment. Of suffering. I reject your terms!”

I nodded. “Then I’ll kill you.”

“You won’t.”

I brought the gun up to his head. Claire let out a yelp. The Negotiator flinched away, sucking in a breath and then breathing rapidly, shallowly, straining his head back from it. It was always the way: People got used to having the gas at their fingertips, got used to people bleeding for them. They didn’t react well to threats.

“Please!”

I resisted the ridiculous urge to cock the hammer. “Pitr Mageshkumar,” I said. “You know him.”