We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle) (58 page)

He closed his eyes as I nudged the gun into his temple. “I . . . do know him, yes, I know him! But you do not understand, there is a
price
to be—” He stopped suddenly. Shook his head. “You do not understand. I have existing arrangements. With my former
gasam
. She is not so foolish as to allow me to work directly against her. I have already made my deals with her, precluding me from ever working directly against her interests.”

“
Directly,
” I said, “is full of wiggle room. Be creative.” I jabbed him with the gun. “My terms are fucking
clear,
Mr. Harrows.”

“I have a counteroffer!”

I froze. I could feel the power of his
geas
pushing against me, demanding. This was apparently an acceptable action in the negotiation, and I was aware of being powerless to deny him.

“I will tell you everything I know. Every conversation. Every detail I can recall. I will willingly tell you
everything
to use as you will. In return for my guaranteed safety and release.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me. I saw desperation and hope. Clearly, he thought he’d played a trump; he might even have believed that everything else was just a ploy to get him to break.

I nodded. “I reject your terms.” I pushed the gun into his head again. “Mageshkumar.”

The floor under my feet began to tremble.

“Holy fucked,” Claire muttered.

Fallon was in my ear, leaning down, smelling like tobacco and coffee. “Lemuel, I urge you to
think
—”

“Mr. Harrows?”

“Please,” he said in a soft, low voice. “There is a
price
. And I must pay it.
Please
.”

I nodded. “I will release you. And guarantee your safety. In exchange for Pitr Mageshkumar. Alive.”

A low, agonizing tearing noise became audible. The Negotiator was sweating. Rivulets of sweat rolled down his pale face, the sharp angles.

The
kurre-nikas
was an immense Fabrication, running on an ocean of gas. The Negotiator’s
geas
was an old and powerful spell applied by an
enustari
. I had set something in motion, and I didn’t know if it was powerful enough, or how the gears of both machines would grind against one another.

We were going to find out.

“Mr. Vonnegan,” he whimpered, slumping, “
please
.” He looked away, lips moving with nervous energy. “I would remove myself. I would end it all. A blade across the neck, a waste, I would waste my lifeblood. I
would
. But I am
prevented
.” He closed his eyes. “I am
prevented
. Even by someone else’s hand, I cannot.”

I just waited. The
geas
had rules, and every Trickster knew where there were rules there were tricks. I just let him work it out for himself: If he couldn’t allow himself to die, he was out of options.

The hum had gotten loud enough to make it difficult to hear anything else. The floor was dancing under us like we were on a ship going down.

“
Please!
”

I paused for breath. “I will count to three! One—”

“
Very well! I accept your terms!
”

Something exploded. Everything went black.

46.
IN THE DREAM, AS ALWAYS,
Claire had been set on fire. As she burned, she shrank.

“SHE IS
COMING
.”

I opened my eyes and couldn’t see anything. I could smell sawdust and shit, something like a skunk’s terror in the air. I could feel the splintery old floorboards under my hands, dry and pitted. My chest
convulsed and I lay coughing, hands curling into claws as the coughing went on and on endlessly, painfully, each wave making my whole body tense up, every muscle cramping simultaneously.

Each time I convulsed, there was a flash of dull red in my vision, and I thought,
Not blind, at least
.

“
Please
—she is
coming
.”

A strange noise swallowed the air. It sounded like rain but wasn’t.

The convulsions stopped, but I just lay there, breathing. I felt like I was vibrating softly, every bone under my flesh jittering.

“Please . . .”

The voice died off and was replaced with a grunting, pain-soaked noise, a wet noise, like gurgling. As I pushed myself up onto my hands, the gurgling stopped, replaced by the Words, familiar. I sensed immediately what he was casting, but he stumbled on the third syllable and it collapsed, a warm breeze of dull power pushing past me.

The skittering, dry-rain noise was still there. Louder? It was hard to tell. It sounded like the universe was being eaten by something. It sounded the way I always imagined time-lapse video of maggots might.

After what sounded like a deep breath, the Negotiator whispered, “
Please
.” Then he started casting again. Now that I knew to look for it, I could sense the line of gas in the air—more than a trickle, but not by much. A bitten cheek or lip. The
enustari
were turning into Tricksters, one by one. You got desperate enough, you lost your fancy ways.

Meanwhile, pounding at the door. The Army of Assholes. More gas in the air, big streams of it as my Bleeders got into the act, and a second later the door blew in, a hollow drumlike noise. I tried to speak, but my throat was tight and knotted.

The Negotiator fucked up again, mangling his fourth Word, and the spell collapsed again. Feet on the floorboards, shouts, and then hands on me, pulling me up.

“Please,” I heard the Negotiator say. “Please, she is coming. Please, I am willing to be accommodating. Please! We can come to an arrangement.”

I was held up between two people, my legs numb and useless. I struggled to speak. “Shut him up,” I croaked. “Shut him the fuck up.”

“Chief,” Billington shouted. “Chief! You okay?”

“Fucking immortal,” I spat, swaying between my invisible supports. A chair scraped behind me and I was dropped into it. “I’m a fucking roach—you
can’t
kill me!”

The dry rain had gotten louder. “Can you hear that shit?”

“Watch him!”

“Fuck!”

He was on me, the Negotiator, damp and warm and clinging to my shirt with his hands. “Mr. Vonnegan! Mr. Vonnegan! Please! We can help each other—but we must be
quick
!”

Someone was trying to pull him off, but he held fast. I thought I could just make out his outline right in front of me, a squirming shadow of terror.

“Mr. Vonnegan! We must come to an arrangement for safe passage! For both of us! We can
help
each other, but we must be
quick! Please! SHE IS COMING!
”

“Who?” I croaked, waving off whoever was tugging at him.

“
Renar,
” he wept, fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt. “My old
gasam
. She is
coming
!”

A spike of fear drove through me. She was an ancient, mummified old woman in a wheelchair, but I remembered those malevolent, dry yellow eyes and the way they’d stabbed at me during the
Biludha-tah-namus,
and I wanted to piss myself. Something about watching someone try to bleed the whole fucking world took the starch out of a person.

The dry rain was maddening. It was like a distant wave of water. You knew it was out there, could tell it was coming to swamp you, to flood you out, but you had no idea how far, how long, how deep. It got louder and louder a tick at a time, impossible to catch in the act.

“Mr. Vonnegan!
We must make a deal!
”

I stared around, blind. I could make out shapes. Shapes were everywhere.
My Bleeders, standing around leaking gas, their dicks in their hands. My heart pounded crazily in my chest, but I was aware of something else. Steady, slow, like a truck in low gear making its lazy way up a steep incline. In between my crazy pre-stroke heartbeat, someone else’s.

I surged up and swayed, nearly falling down. “Mags!”

It had been a long time since magic had amazed me. A long time since I’d thought of it as a way to do the impossible, the amazing, instead of just a way to make fifty dollars, a way to hide from the police, a way to make people do what I needed them to do, or just something to be terrified of. I remembered the first time I’d seen the old man, floating inches off the ground in that grungy parking lot. My bleeding hands, the first time I’d cast a spell by myself. Since then, there hadn’t been much amazement.

Now I was amazed.

“Mags!”

And he was there, his hands on me with crushing force.

“I’m here, Lem,” he said in his concerned voice, two shades south of fury, ready to destroy anything that had hurt me, anything that had made me even momentarily unhappy. Though I’d done nothing but contemplate leaving him behind, nothing but ruin his life and condemn him to a lifetime of starving and grifting and then one day led him into a fucking apartment that hadn’t been touched in fifty years and destroyed us both.

I reached up and put my hands on his face. “You okay, buddy?” I let out a crazy laugh. “You all right?”

Jesus fucking Christ, was I crying?

“Hey!”

Claire’s voice, deep into pissed-off territory, barely cutting through the hissing noise. “Hey! Did you hear the part about the psycho witch coming and
what the fuck is that noise?
Let’s fucking focus here, okay?”

I shifted one hand to Mags’s shoulder and blinked rapidly. Everything was in twilight, but I could make out lines and shades. When I
had some vacation time, I’d do some at-home studying and figure out what had happened to me, what price the universe had extracted from me for fucking with it.

“She is
coming for me!
” the Negotiator shouted, grabbing me again. Mags hesitated, then reached over and plucked the writhing man up by his collar, holding him an inch or two off the floor. If I concentrated, I could make out his face. I squinted, then wished I hadn’t. If I’d been sitting around wondering what complete despair looked like, this would have been a good answer.

The room was filled with voices and the intense sizzling noise that was like the fucking sound of insanity creeping up on us. I spun away from him.

“Everybody
shut UP!
” I shouted.

The voices died off. The dry rain got louder, as if in response.

I spun back and leaned in towards the Negotiator. I could see details now. His chin and neck were covered in blood. It looked black and slick on his face. His careful hair was a tousled mess, and his suit, for the first time, looked like it didn’t fit him right.

“All right,” I said. “Talk.”

He nodded and raised his hands up between us. Strands of rope and tape still clung to them, and I made a note to ask if he’d really snapped his bonds through sheer terror.

“We,” he said in a slow, shaking voice, as if he was containing his fear with extreme effort. He reached forward slightly as if to touch my face, then pulled back. “We must make a
deal,
Mr. Vonnegan, granting each other safe passage in return for understandings, concessions—anything. But we must do so
quickly
.”

“A deal,” I said. “We make a deal giving each other safe fucking passage, and she can’t hurt us.” It was cons on cons on cons. Fucking cons all the way down.

“Yes!” he shouted, reaching out for me again so suddenly I staggered backwards. He took his hands back and held them up in a placating gesture. “Yes—yes, if the language is
precise,
if the arrangement is
carefully
constructed.
But luckily I have experience with such contracts!” He smiled, and I was willing to go blind again. The black blood, the white teeth, the deep dark holes that were his eyes. He was triumphant. “We have been
punished,
Mr. Vonnegan!” he shouted. “But we have
learned
!”

The dry rain was almost too loud to shout over. “What about my people? What about their
safe passage
?”

He began to shake his head, his eyes going wide. “I—I cannot construct—there must be believable gain on both sides! What can they offer me, all of them?
I cannot make this work for so many! Please! She is
coming
!
”

I stared at him. He’d been Renar’s
gasam
after Amir. When I’d met him at Abdagnale’s, he’d already become the Negotiator. Whatever had happened between him and Renar, it had happened
quick.
He’d been a tool ever since. Kidnapped, no doubt, on a regular basis. Negotiating for his life over and over—I hadn’t been the first fucking genius to come up with that idea. He’d ping-ponged from one horror to another, and then he’d hooked up with Elsa. Revenge. I supposed they couldn’t come up with a way to make a deal to ruin Renar—or maybe they had, in a way. He’d thought he was free for a bit.

And now here he was. I assumed Renar would not be in a mood to consider his debt paid.

“Mags,” I shouted. “Me and Mags. Safety fucking guaranteed or however you want to phrase it. Fallon!” I yelled. I needed someone who knew all this shit. “Fallon!”

“Why the
fuck
are you calling his name?” Claire demanded, leaning in close to shout directly into my ear. “When was the last time you saw that old man?”

I hesitated. I started to say
He was just here
and then wondered if he really had been. Mags hadn’t been here. Now he was.

“Mr.
Vonnegan
!” the Negotiator shouted, his voice distant, buried under the sound of hail hitting a tin roof, fed directly into an overcharged amplifier. “I will phrase as needed. I accept your terms! You must hear and accept—”

I had brought Pitr back to life. I had brought Pitr back to life by abusing this man, and I wondered what else I might accomplish. “Jesus
fuck
me,” I hissed. “Your
terms,
Mr. Harrows!”

Again I heard Billington say,
You sure?