We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle) (15 page)

“Be still,” I whispered to her. She smelled like cigarettes and autumn leaves. “
Still
.”

I stared down the corridor. The door slowly closed, revealing Cal Amir and two plump Bleeders standing in Hiram’s entryway, looking around. They were photocopies, all white edges and black fields.

“Hello, Tricksters!” Amir shouted. “You naughty boys, you have something of ours, don’t you?”

I glanced at Claire, panic surging. But it couldn’t be. If Amir knew Claire was here with us, he’d have come heavy. He’d have come breathing fire, with an army of Bleeders. He’d have come to
punish
us, not make cheerful jokes.
Jesus,
I thought.
He doesn’t know she’s here.
I saw again the flash of green as Hiram pocketed the
Udug.
Steal from
enustari
and you suffered for it, eventually, for all of Hiram’s speechifying about my recklessness and stupidity.

I moved my mouth near Claire’s ear without taking my eyes from the trio. “
We are furniture,
” I said as quietly as I could. Her hair smelled sweet. “
Do not move. We are
furniture.”

She didn’t say anything, which was encouraging.

Amir looked exactly as he had a few days before: groomed, polished, expensive. Cheerful. He was wearing a heavy-looking overcoat and a pair of black gloves. His two Bleeders were typical: fat, tall men, older than some.
Fattened
was a better word. One was bald and appeared to have no facial hair, or perhaps he was blond and it just looked that way, the bloated folds of his face hanging off his skull like heavy drapes. The other was dark and taller and hairier, his salt-and-pepper mop damp against his forehead. His head was squared off, somehow, on top, and his arms looked too long, hands hanging down by his hips. They both looked unhealthy, their skin slack, their scent stale and sour. They were paid to be meaty. Old hands, trusted. Men who’d been selling their blood for years now, living well in exchange for blood. Men who probably thought, by this point, that they’d won their bet. They’d lived good lives from Cal Amir’s generosity and hadn’t been bled to death yet.

Amir spun around, searching the dark. His eyes swept over us without pause. It was a simple trick, but it worked: People saw what they
expected to see. Even
saganustari
. Even
enustari
. We were all human, and frail.

I could feel Claire pressed against me, simultaneously soft and rigid. She was perfectly still.

Amir said something to his Bleeders, and they followed him into the kitchen. He came slowly, peeling off his gloves, looking around. Casual. As if he hunted down assholes like us every day for his
gasam
. Which he probably did.

His two Bleeders wheezed their way into the room, moving around him to stand on either side. They were panting after the small effort of climbing Hiram’s stoop. They wore decent suits and might have passed for normal obese men unless you knew what they were, or saw the network of fine scars on their faces, their hands. Bleeders couldn’t be choosy; they were paid to bleed on command, as much or as little as their master demanded, and if their face was the only convenient place to draw blood, they slashed it. The black one looked like a sad dog, his cheeks heavy and jiggling as he moved, his eyes turned down at the corners.

The floor creaked under them.

“I hope you have not been listening to our tiny friend,” Amir said lightly, spinning in place. “Many small minds have imagined they will master that particular Artifact and become great. They are always mistaken. Believe me, Tricksters, I am here to do you a favor.”

Amir gestured at the dark-skinned Bleeder, who went through a tiny ritual: taking off his fine overcoat and laying it on Hiram’s little-used stove with great care, undoing the buttons on his cuff with a dainty touch that seemed incompatible with such thick fingers, and rolling his sleeve up to the elbow. His forearm was the expected maze of tiny puckers and scars, just like mine but worse. More methodical, precise. Like he’d mapped out the skin of his arm and was tracing some grand design on it.

“Of course,” Amir said with a shiny grin, “you will still have to be disciplined.”

Primly, the Bleeder produced a tiny blade, ornate, custom-made. It was small enough to hide in your palm. With no fanfare, he dragged it along the top of his arm from the elbow to the wrist, deep enough to bleed, shallow enough to avoid veins and arteries and ligaments. He’d live to play the piano again. This time.

The blood looked black to my magicked eyes, and my whole body went tense as Amir began whispering the Words. Singing them, really, a lilting, rhythmic recitation, the way
real
mages did it.
Saganustari.
Real power.

The kitchen suddenly seemed hot.

As the blood hit the air, reacting with the atmosphere, I could feel it. Literally. An electric, sizzling, untapped power. Someone else’s power. I’d felt it in Hiram’s study all those years ago with the shivering girl in her doodle sneakers, and I felt it every time Mags or anyone cut themselves. Blood was blood. And it made you want it.

I wasn’t familiar with the spell Amir was casting, but I picked out words and phrases, sounds that I’d run into, and I put together the vague idea—simple enough: remove Glamours, clear the air. Turn that odd set of chairs against the far wall back into a girl and her idiotic protectors. Much simpler than searching around, especially when you had people to supply your gas for you.

I looked around. I had nothing. I didn’t think I’d be able to bleed enough to light a cigarette before passing out.

I thought about giving them Claire. Wondered for one awful moment if that would buy our lives. But Amir had come to
discipline
us because we had stolen an Artifact, and I had no doubt we would barely survive that discipline. When he found out we had Claire, there would be no negotiation, no bargaining.

And it wouldn’t matter, because this was the end of everything, everyone dying in thirty seconds of unbelievable, incomprehensible carnage. An invisible engine tearing every living thing in the world to pieces. Soaking them for blood to feed the
biludha,
to make the old bat immortal. People. Kids. Kittens. Fucking
lice
—everything—dead.

And I saw Claire bleeding out, twisting and screaming, the mummy in the office getting younger, coming to life as Claire died. When I imagined it, I kept confusing Claire with the kid in the sneakers, Hiram’s hired whore, all those years ago. Most likely dead. They kept switching back and forth, bleeding out as one, mixed together. She would be Claire’s age now.

Or dead. Dead. I hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t bled her. I hadn’t done—

Anything.

When I thought of that long-past girl dead, a leaden sadness filled me. Weighed me down. I couldn’t imagine what had driven her to that point in her life. And I didn’t want to imagine what wild hopes she might have held deep inside. That someone would save her. That someone would help her. I’d done nothing to her. I’d left no mark. She was exactly the same after having met me, and for a while I’d been proud of that.

But I wasn’t proud anymore. I’d left no mark. I’d done nothing. I was not good people. But what was my option now? To kill Claire? Save the world, make Renar howl in rage, be a fucking
hero
by killing her? A girl who’d done nothing besides look a certain way and get herself snatched by the Skinny Fuck.

I thought,
There have to be more options.

Slowly, I moved my arm away from Claire, preparing to make my move. Blood flowed from the Bleeder’s arm in a slow, steady stream, disappearing into the air as Amir spoke. I balanced myself on the balls of my feet. I gathered myself for a charge. There was the window in the kitchen; if I could barrel into them, my partner coming after me with the automatic loyalty that only someone as stupid as Pitr Mags could manage, we might buy Claire enough time to make an escape, shimmy down the fire escape, hit the street.

The Bleeder convulsed.

He staggered a little, recovered, and then went down to his knees. Convulsed again, and blood shot out of his mouth while Amir continued
to recite, the syllables rolling out of him with practiced ease as he watched his Bleeder hemorrhage in front of him. I was frozen, watching. The fat man on the floor was panting wetly, struggling to breathe, and lifted one heavy arm up to Amir, reaching for his master. One glance at Amir told me this wasn’t his doing. He looked appalled. Surprised. But not scared.

The mage took a single step backwards, staying out of reach, not skipping a single Word. The second Bleeder stared on with popped-out, unhappy eyes but didn’t make a move to save his friend. They’d both made their deal: They bled for an easy life, everything a powerful
saganustari
like Amir could offer them, and there was always the chance they’d be consumed entirely.

Amir was startled, spinning around and trying to figure things out, when Hiram stepped into the hall. I could see straight down the line to the older man. He’d rolled up his sleeves and was speaking a spell, too, using the Bleeder’s blood to cast—an old, dirty trick. Frowned upon, using someone else’s gas. Under normal circumstances, it earned you censure, it got you sneered at. But Hiram knew Amir would be justified in killing us, as thieves. He was saving our lives. Or, more likely, he was saving his own life in a way I hadn’t figured out yet.

As he walked down the hall, Hiram’s voice got louder while he recited something quick and nasty. He had always had a talent for hacking spells down to the bare necessities, getting rid of any decoration. It was a War Talent, really—if you had nothing but time, you could devise a wicked spell; in the heat of battle, it wasn’t always the most elegant spell that won the day. It was usually the fastest one that still had some punch. Hiram cast battle spells better than anyone I knew.

Tricksters, we fought dirty. For all their power,
enustari
didn’t understand that.

Hiram finished his spell before he’d even hit the living room, before Amir had finished
his
, and as the Bleeder finally passed out cold, slumping to the floor, Hiram’s hands erupted into flames.

“Fuck!” Mags whispered next to me.

“
Get. The. Fuck,
” Hiram shouted, holding his hands up in front of him like a boxer, “
out of my house!
” A ball of flame, liquid and roiling, began to bloat between his hands.

Amir suddenly stopped reciting.

Mags and I both ducked over Claire.

The pent-up energy of Amir’s unfinished spell tore through the room, ripping the table and chairs up from the floor and smashing them against the opposite wall.

“This is our property, old man!” Amir shouted back, unaffected by the heat and gesturing behind himself at his second Bleeder. “That spell you are gnawing at will bring a lot of attention to us—do you forget our traditions? Our
ways
? And you would anger Mika Renar? Cal Amir? You would anger
us
?”

Amir still didn’t understand. He was confused by Hiram’s reaction. We should have expected to survive if it was just the
Udug
. We should have been meek and begged for forgiveness, or fallen out and betrayed each other. Groveled a little. Fireballs from Hiram Bosch had Amir’s head spinning.

The second Bleeder, his face set in a mask of sweaty horror, nonetheless peeled off his coat, dropping it unceremoniously on the floor, and began rolling up his sleeve. Taking his time. No doubt hoping something would happen to save him from having to bleed out like his friend.

Hiram seemed to have grown six inches, filling his own hallway like a giant. “You are on
my
property!” he bellowed, the ball of flame growing larger. “You have three seconds to leave!”

“You stupid old—”

I couldn’t swear it was three seconds. Hiram pushed his hands forward suddenly and the ball of flame swelled up to the size of an adult person and rocketed towards us. The air around me became superheated, and as Amir and his Bleeder dove for the floor, I could smell the artificial fibers of my coat starting to burn. Flames exploded into the room, the ball collapsing into a sheet that splashed against everything
like water. The windows shattered, glass tinkling around us. I shut my eyes and threw my hands over my face, but the flames disappeared the second they touched anything, and in a moment the room was empty and dark and cold, wind blowing in from the outside.

I turned to urge Claire up, but she was moving past me already, springing for the window. I turned to pull Mags along with me, and we leaped to follow. I hesitated for one moment, letting Mags move past as I stared down the corridor. Hiram was gone. Amir was getting up. Not looking in our direction, looking mussed and dirty for the first time since I’d met him. It cheered me.

And then Amir turned and looked right at us. His eyes on me. They narrowed. Then they flicked to Claire and widened.

I spun for the window and followed Mags’s ass out onto the rusting fire escape. I bent over the railing and saw Claire a floor below, climbing like a monkey for the alleyway. Mags and I started down, the rungs of the ladders leaving our hands a curious red-brown. Halfway down, I heard an explosion behind us. The whole building shuddered, and the fire escape rattled and shook like it had been leaned against the wall a few years ago and never attached. The last bits of glass clinging to the frames came raining down, and I jumped the last six feet and hit the asphalt hard, head spinning, legs weak.

Claire was already running for the street, and I staggered after her. She wouldn’t be safe. She didn’t understand. Amir and Renar would find her. Runes or no runes, they would find a way. It was
magic
. Anything was possible. She couldn’t understand that from watching Mags cast the firebird once.

I almost caught up with her. Then a car roared into the alley, an unmarked Crown Victoria, lights flashing. Cops. Cops I knew, I found out a moment later, when Holloway emerged from the passenger-side door, badge in one hand, gun in the other.