The Wake
“. . . and Jeremiah was hic always a good friend to him, he, he uh, he put on wonderful parties for his friends, lovely things, he loved watching the dancing at his parties. And smooth, he was, he was, he was very smooth in his ability to speak to others, calm a difficult situation. He couldn’t admire the man more, he’s a role model to him. . . .” Colonel Po’s speech meandered further into murkier depths of misunderstanding, and some of the spectators began to drift to the refreshments.‡¶
“What’s he on about?” Rhea asked Mr. Whiskers.‡
“I don’t think he even knows anymore. Po only refers to himself in the third person, and he’s obviously drunk.” Mr. Whiskers stood perfectly still, looking off in another direction, but his tail swished in agitation. “However, you stray from the point. It is not your place to share the Spider’s Game with a nonweaver. Introduce him to Celeste, or to Indra. They can place him in a weaver cell, and then he can learn the game. To do anything else is not proper.”
Rhea looked around her. The wake had been going for a couple of hours now and, if Colonel Po was any indication, some were drowning their grief rather more liberally than others. She hadn’t, at least not to the same extent. There was too much to be thinking about to risk clouding her judgment so freely.
She glanced back to Mr. Whiskers. There wasn’t a creature alive who could do immobility better than the cat. He seemed utterly disinterested in the proceedings, but his presence suggested that he wished it to be known that he was disinterested and therefore had cared about Jeremiah. If he hadn’t cared at all, he wouldn’t have come.
“Are you sure you don’t recognize the name?” she asked again.
Mr. Whiskers looked at her with no expression for several long seconds, then began cleaning himself.
Rhea gave up and went to the room where Jeremiah lay. Ward stood next to the body along with Lowell the dance instructor, Carrie, and Cole. She sidled up to Ward and asked him quietly, “Can you sense him at all?”
Ward shook his head sadly. “Not a bit. I feel like he must have moved on, didn’t want to stick around. Pity, really, I wouldn’t have minded hosting him today, if he’d wanted.”
She put a comforting hand on his arm. “Keep trying. Maybe he’ll want to talk later.”
Rhea contemplated the last few days. Gatesmithe already seemed far away. Though it’ll never be far enough. The images Kithri and Marweg had described made her skin crawl every time she remembered them. And yet, perhaps if Jeremiah had come with us. . . .
A wave of regret and guilt threatened to wash over her, but with it came the sound of sobbing outside. She turned, then looked back at the body once more.
“Farewell, Jeremiah,” she whispered, and walked toward the tears.
Winstead’s mind had withdrawn very far from the proceedings of the afternoon. She had failed repeatedly to make any sense of the journal she had brought back and similarly failed to suppress the memory of cutting Jeremiah’s body loose from the ceiling.* Annalise broke down into tears not ten feet away from her, and yet she couldn’t summon any of the empathy that seemed appropriate or needed. She should have felt relieved when Rhea came to comfort Annalise, but Winstead felt nothing.
She looked down at the glass in her hand and took a gulp to make sure it was really there. The burn of the liquor suggested that she wasn’t dreaming. Still, as she was no use here, she set an aimless course through the rooms.
Angela was holding court with a larger group in the ballroom, Brian sitting dolefully against the wall, arms stretched around their two children. It was a small wake, but even so, all the homeowners and a decent number of Jeremiah’s friends were here. Unwilling to join their conversations, Winstead passed through and found Marweg talking to Früz and Smick, Kithri listening in.
“We greatly look forward to your visit. It will be a welcome occasion after the awful occurrences we’ve had recently,” Früz was saying as she slowly approached.
Marweg looked pained and pleased simultaneously. “I cannot begin to describe to you how much I look forward to seeing your menagerie. I only regret that my own collection was not increased. Such a tragic waste. . . .”
Smick nodded in understanding. “It was a most grievous loss. And who knows whether there even are any more? My condolences, my friend. You mourn multiple losses today.”
Marweg nodded. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose, then stowed it and made a visible effort to brighten up. As he sought a change of subject, Kithri looked up and touched Winstead’s arm gently.
“It’s not easy, is it? Sorting through all these feelings here?” She gestured at the glass. “Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. But you got hit the hardest . . . how’re you holding up?”
Winstead shrugged, her expression mostly blank. “I’m not sure. Everything feels kind of stuck, like it’ll break loose and start spiraling out of control at any moment. But I have no idea what moment, and I don’t know what to do right now, whether to prevent it or pursue it.” She took another distracted sip.
Kithri nodded. “I didn’t know him. But the death of a community member is always hard.” She nodded toward the rest of the house. “They have it right, trying to deal with his loss together. It’s more than an individual gone; a part of their world has changed. They’ll need each other as they deal with the fallout.” She looked back to Winstead. “You’ll need it too. You’re part of this. Don’t isolate yourself. It’s the community that’ll help you keep your footing.”
Mikey entered the room and rushed up to Kithri. “Pardon me, but there’s a fellow at the door saying there’s a fire, Skytower or some such? He said the Pristine Guard requires you right away.”
Kithri thanked him, then turned a wry smile on Winstead. “See? Community calls.” She moved her hand to Winstead’s shoulder and squeezed, then followed Mikey to the door.
Winstead stared after her, no longer registering the drink in her hand or the people walking by. The whole affair still didn’t seem real. The house in Gatesmithe that she’d lived in, slept in, now it was a demon’s breeding ground? She could feel herself retreating from it, her skin itching as though ants crawled all over her, nausea signaling its approach.
Time slipped away. All the world moved past her and she did nothing . . . thought nothing. She just stared into the middle distance and silently screamed.
A voice snagged at her attention. “Kithri, what do you suggest we do about—oh! Where’d Kithri go? She was with you, wasn’t she? Winstead? You all right there?”
“What? Oh, no I’ve got one,” she said absently, holding up her glass.
Marweg moved into her line of sight. “No, no, no, I was looking for Kithri.”
Winstead came back to the world again. “Right, right. No, she got called away, something about a fire in a tower.”
“That’s a shame. Still, it might interest you to know that we were discussing how to avoid the hallucinations in your old house next time.” His chest swelled as he leaned forward. “You see, we think that it might have been fungal spores that caused the hallucinations, so next time we go back there, all we should have to do is wear appropriate masks.”
Winstead shuddered at the prospect of returning.
“I quite agree,” said Marweg. “It gives me a turn as well. But there’s also a countermeasure to the hate cyst called rotfire. If we could bring some here, it would possibly destroy the hate cyst completely.” His beaming face fell. “Alas, it only grows on Nightside Green.”
“Can’t Rhea get there? She’s the one who travels through the suns, isn’t she?”
“I haven’t had a chance to ask her yet. Last I saw her, she was trying to comfort Annalise. She’s taking Jeremiah’s death really hard, you know.”
“Rhea?”
“No, Annalise. I think perhaps she was hoping for a relationship with him.”
“But how do we deal with the demon?”
Marweg held up his hands. “We’ll come up with something. If demons may be called, they may also be banished.”
Winstead sighed. “I’m going to get a refill. Thanks, Marweg, but I don’t think I can handle thinking about dealing with Gatesmithe right now.”
Marweg nodded in understanding and let her pass. Winstead found the drinks cabinet and poured herself a double. As she swallowed, the back door opened and two figures walked in.
The slender man in black led the way, a look of smug satisfaction on his face as he strode through the room toward Angela. A giant man followed, uncomfortably squeezed into a suit, trying and failing to slip in unnoticed. He moved obediently, but his eyes darted like those of a caged and hungry wolf.
They approached Angela and pulled her aside. There was a brief conversation, the slender figure speaking low and easily, Angela’s responses terse and heated. Five minutes later they walked out the way they’d come.
Winstead watched them go and then looked back; Angela’s face was filled with fearful anger, and she abruptly left the wake, calling for Mr. Whiskers to accompany her. Winstead scanned the room, and her eyes met Rhea’s. The concern in Rhea’s eyes mirrored her own, and then Rhea followed the stewards out.
Winstead turned to the back door once more. “I’m an idiot,” she muttered. She downed her drink and followed the strange men.
“And here’s the other contract. You see here”—Angela spread the documents out on Mr. Whiskers’ table—“it says the signatories to this secondary contract are Iskander and Asclepius.”‡
Rhea had never been inside Le Roix before. Mr. Whiskers did not care to give up his privacy, nor was he keen on hospitality, at least not in his own home. As a result, it wasn’t the most welcoming of spaces. Austerity described the predominant aesthetic, accented with cushions and staggered ledges. There were two empty boxes in the middle of the dining room.
Rhea leaned over for a closer look at the glowing papers. “Okay, but what contract is this? This isn’t the one with Maxwell, is it?”
“No,” said Mr. Whiskers. “This is a contract transferring responsibilities as intermediary in the previous contract from Iskander to Asclepius. It commits Asclepius to dealing directly with Maxwell and the gerent of Camden on the parade’s behalf.” He twitched his ears quickly and irritably. “Not that Iskander informed us of this at the time, of course.”
“Hang on, what’s that symbol again?” Rhea pointed to a small insignia near Asclepius’s signature.
Angela looked closely at it. “Oh, that’s the symbol for the Order Goetica.”
Rhea looked up sharply and made for the door, saying over her shoulder, “Bring the document to Kingston, I’ll have Marweg there in a minute.”
Where are they even going? thought Winstead as she kept the large white suit in view. They’d left the parade far behind and now were nearly at Demonsbridge. Shopping was a bit sparse in this area, but there were some notable stores out here. Winstead passed a changery, a library, and a restaurant called Shadow Reinvented that she had dined at once (the tasting menu of foods remembered from Shadow had been sorely disappointing)‡. She would have lost her quarry long before were it not for the wake they carved through the crowds. Vislae and elderbrin, lacuna and thoughtforms, all slid around them; like the edge on a heavy blade, the slender one opened the path and the large one widened it, leaving a gap that surrounding traffic was slow to fill in behind them.
Their path cut through to the entrance of a haberdashery. Winstead stood outside the open entrance to listen in, but little of what she heard made sense. The sentences they exchanged with the shopkeeper seemed perfectly correct but carried no obvious meaning. Unfamiliar idioms made her painfully aware of her lack of familiarity with Fartown slang. She waited, slowly counting to ten under her breath, and then walked into the store.
It took little more than a glance to see they were gone. The larger fellow could no more have hidden here than a gorilla could in a shoebox. She walked up to the proprietor, a woman in her midforties who’d long since given up resisting the temptations of cake, who immediately gave a large commercial smile and said, “Hello there, welcome. How may our millinery serve you today?”
Winstead smiled. “I was looking for someone. I thought I saw them enter here a moment ago—did you see them?”
The warmth in the woman’s eyes shut off like an electric switch. “No, dearie, I didn’t see anyone.”
“Are you sure?” Winstead pressed. “There was slender one in black and a larger one in white, you couldn’t have missed them—”
The woman tut-tutted and waved her hand. “It’s not good business to gossip about folks who have or haven’t been here, that’s not what I make my money doing. Please, if you’d like to try on a hat, I’d love to oblige you, but I’m telling you there’s not been anyone else walked in the last ten minutes but you, my dear.” Her tone sounded practiced and warm, but her eyes flashed a warning.
Winstead held up her hands in surrender. “Fair enough, I understand. Perhaps I misjudged where they entered. I’ll go look elsewhere.”
The woman’s smile eased back into her face again. “I think that’s a good idea, dearie. But if you ever need a hat, please come by and visit.”
Winstead walked out and around the back of the store. Nobody was there, so she uttered a disguising spell. A moment later, a middle-aged lady in middle-class style with middle-sized proportions entered the store.ࠠ
“‘Scuse me,” she called out as she approached the counter, “have you seen my relatives about? They’ve been avoiding me, they said we were to meet around the corner, and I haven’t seen them yet.”
The store owner’s face took on a stony expression, the plastic smile dipping at the corners. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t. Or I wouldn’t know if I had, as I don’t know who you are, my dear. I should try elsewhere if I were you.”
Winstead began to speak, but a burlap sack interrupted her, cutting off her voice and vision as it was pulled over her head. Large hands squeezed her middle, stifling her cry of alarm, and plunked her over a broad shoulder.
Dammit, she thought as her quarry carried her away, this was not how this was supposed to go!
Marweg looked up from the documents in astonishment. “Do you know just how expensive it is to create contracts with an ongoing validation effect?” he asked.‡
“A what?” asked Ward.
Marweg gestured to the glowing red documents. Angela, Rhea, Ward, and Mr. Whiskers all sat around the table in the community room in Kingston.
“These sorts of contracts have a built-in magical aspect that constantly checks reality to see whether their terms hold. As long as the documents aren’t glowing red, the contract is upheld. A breach in contract causes them to glow, and they will continue to glow until the breach is remedied. They’re frightfully expensive.” He shook his head as he looked at the papers. “These are both in breach, and I don’t know how to fix them.”
“What caused the breach? This Asclepius?” asked Rhea. Marweg shrugged.
“The contract between Asclepius and Iskander,” stated Mr. Whiskers, “did work. Until it didn’t any longer. Whatever happened to this Asclepius fellow, it left him incapable of both fulfilling the terms of the contract with Iskander and upholding this contract. As a result, we defaulted on our obligations to Maxwell.”
Ward craned his neck to look at the papers Marweg held in front of him. “And this fellow was supposed to be in charge for one thousand suns?”
Angela waved a hand dismissively. “That’s just archaic legal jargon for a decade.”
“Oh.” Ward sat back again. “But when this guy stopped fulfilling the contract, Maxwell sent goons?”
Angela nodded grimly.
“So Maxwell is not obliged to provide protection, and we have no intermediary between him and the parade.” Rhea pursed her lips pensively. “And he still wanted back payment?”
Angela nodded.
“The symbol by Asclepius’s name is for the Order Goetica. You ought to know the fellow, Marweg,” purred Mr. Whiskers.
Marweg shook his head. “I’m afraid not.” He brightened up. “But I may soon be able to ask someone else. I’m to have tea with Gertrude of the Order this Triumdies. Perhaps she can help.”
“That would be a great help to us. The sooner we can locate this person, the better.” Angela began collecting the papers again and setting them in order.
“I . . . I do have one question though.” Marweg paused. “Who is Iskander?”
“What was that foolishness you were attempting back in the shop? Did you think we couldn’t tell you were following us?”‡
The slender fellow in black paced back and forth in front of Winstead’s chair. The room was untidy, with a dirty floor and scattered furniture. The sack that had recently blinded her lay on the floor. The meager lighting was further obscured by the shadow of the larger man looming behind her.
Winstead wasn’t interested in being intimidated. “How do you know Jeremiah?” she retorted.
He stopped pacing and flashed a razor grin. “We were colleagues.”
“What do you mean by th—”
He cut her off with a sharp laugh. “I think you fail to understand the situation you’re in. Iam not the one in the chair.”
Winstead felt two ham-sized hands come to rest on her shoulder, deeply and menacingly massaging her upper back.
“Now,” the slim one said, pulling up another chair and sitting down backward, resting his arms on the back, “do you want to try again?”
The unfairness of the whole situation swelled up inside her. Everything from the last weeks replayed itself in her head in vile and terrible vividness. I saw my own dead body split open like a boil, fought with the parade, confronted a friend changed beyond recognition, escaped a demon, cut down Jeremiah’s dead body, and now this bastard thinks he can bully me?! She clenched her fist. Her anger and distress manifested as a too-small iron ring cutting into her finger. She focused as blood welled into her fist and punched behind her, hard.††
She heard a heavy wet impact, and then deep gruff laughter erupted. The hands on her shoulders never moved, but her hand came back covered in blood.
The slender one burst out laughing too, peals of mirth echoing off the ceiling and mixing with the deep guffaws from behind her. “You think you can hurt Dickie?” he said, wiping tears from his eyes.
As his chuckles died down, Winstead replied, “I just want to talk, that’s all.”
“Oh, we are talking, we’re definitely talking,” he replied, still grinning. “Dickie here is marvelous at prolonging conversations if we so choose. Often rather painfully, I admit. . . .”
Winstead snorted. “If you think you’ve got anything to threaten me with that holds a candle to the bullshit I’ve had to deal with this week, you’ve got another thing coming.”
He gave Winstead a more appraising look, his eyebrows rising. “Well, well, well. I love this fearlessness; you’re a remarkable one, yes you are. How in the world does someone like you owe Jeremiah such a favor that you would seek us out deliberately?”
Winstead shrugged. “I found the body. I thought it warranted following up.”
“That’s it? He didn’t, say, name you in his will, or sire you, or anything like that?”
“Look, can we have this conversation as equals? I’m getting a little tired of this.”
He gave her a shrewd glance. “First, I’ll have to ask you to remove that ring.”
“Tell him to get his hands off my neck.”
“Hmm . . . perhaps all together?”
“Seems fair.”
She took a deep breath and removed the ring. It disappeared, and the brute let go of her at the same time.
Winstead turned to look at Dickie. He grinned back at her, his menacing expression disregarding the blood soaking profusely through his waistcoat, staining it an ugly crimson.
“Um, do you want some help with that?”
Dickie shrugged. “All in a day’s work,” he rumbled.
She turned back to the other. “Well, what kind of work were you doing with Jeremiah?”
The slender one got up and tried to impose a businesslike expression on his amused face. “We were assisting Jeremiah with bringing the parade back into compliance with its commitments.”
Winstead frowned. “His death will cause delays.”
“Sometimes one must play the long game. But we haven’t introduced ourselves! You may call me Mort, and I believe you’ve already met my charming associate, Dickie.” His hand darted into his coat pocket and produced a card, which he proffered to her with a small bow. “Should you ever need to make your communications to another party perfectly clear.”
Winstead looked at the card. It was blank on both sides. “Thank you,” she said dubiously. “I could provide some editorial services in exchange perhaps?”
“Very generous of you. I’ll be sure to keep you in mind should I need someone cut down to size.” He gave her a thoughtful look, then nodded. “I don’t believe we have further need to detain you; come, Dickie, shall we show our new friend out?”
They escorted her to the street and pointed her in the direction of the parade. “Farewell, farewell, it’s been a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Perhaps we’ll see you soon!” They returned inside, and with one last bladed grin, Mort closed the door.
“Let me get this straight,” Rhea said. “Your treasurer made a deal that went bad, the other signatory disappeared, and your punishment for his unilateral decision about the parade’s dealings was to transform him into the Rook?”
Angela nodded curtly.
“So when we went to the Rook . . .”
“I’ve been talking to the former treasurer all this time?” asked Marweg, nonplussed.
“That is accurate,” said Mr. Whiskers primly.
“And since then you’ve ignored all your dealings with Maxwell and let the debts mount up, and now Jeremiah’s dead—” Rhea’s voice rose higher as her accusation gathered momentum.
“I don’t hate Iskander for what he did, but it was without consultation, without approval, and without any oversight whatsoever,” Angela exclaimed. “He fucked things up for the whole parade, and we’re the ones having to clean things up! So before you get all sanctimonious about his predicament, consider the fact that he’s safe as he is, while it’s the rest of us having to devote every spare magecoin to paying Maxwell.”
She got up and put both hands on the table. “Asclepius bailed on us. Without him this whole thing can’t be sorted out. And no one seems to know where he is or what he is or whether he even is at all.”
Marweg raised his hand. Angela glared at him.
“If he’s no longer an entity at all,” he said hesitantly, “then that would explain why the contract is in breach. And it might be unfixable as it is.”
Ward chimed in, “What do you mean, that Iskander is safe?”
“The curse we cast on him doesn’t allow danger to befall him directly.” As Mr. Whiskers clarified this, the door opened. “Neither can he run, nor make things worse.”
“Hey guys,” said Winstead. “What’d I miss?”
Rhea got up to greet her. “Marweg couldn’t find you. Where did you go? I was a little worried.”
“I followed the two men who threatened Angela,” Winstead replied.
Angela started. “Mort and Dickie?! Whatever possessed you to do that?”
Winstead shrugged. “I thought they’d be able to tell me something about what happened. I didn’t learn much, but they didn’t hurt me, either, so I guess that makes us even.”
“They’re Maxwell’s hired muscle.” Mr. Whiskers said to Ward.
“Jeremiah’s murderers, I’d bet,” Rhea added vehemently.
“Not exactly Maxwell’s,” Winstead replied. “They’re mercenary.”
“Those two are the consequences of defaulting to Maxwell?” said Marweg, aghast.
Angela nodded. “And if you think that Maxwell is bad, I can tell you for certain that the gerent of Camden is worse.”
“Hang on, can I see those documents?” asked Winstead. She took a seat beside Angela and started reading.
“Those are the breached contracts between the parade and Maxwell and between Iskander and Asclepius,” supplied Ward.
“Who?” asked Winstead. They told her about the Rook and why it hadn’t always been.
She frowned, scanning the papers. “These are different colors,” she said at last. “This one about Iskander and Asclepius is darker. Why’s that?”
“Uh, that’ll be the one that was broken first,” Marweg replied. “If the one was contingent on the other, it means that the deal with Maxwell didn’t break until it was no longer possible for this Asclepius to act as intermediary. Something must have happened to break the agreement between those two before the parade defaulted to Maxwell.”
“And where does that leave all of us now?” asked Rhea.
Mr. Whiskers’ ears flattened. “For our sake, we need to resume timely payments to Maxwell before he sets those two fiends on us again,” he said in clipped tones. “Asclepius’s presence might solve the problem, but until we have any further information, all we can really do is try to pay the protection money.”
Ward asked, “Should we show him the contracts? Maybe it’ll make your case more understandable and give us some more time . . .”
“No, please, the documents need to stay here at Kingston.” Angela quietly pulled the papers back together. “You can come here to access them whenever you need, but we need to keep them near at hand. You can’t just let records like these wander away.”
“That seems reasonable,” said Marweg, getting up. “We’ll keep our eyes open for what we might learn to bring a close to all this.” He gestured to Rhea, Ward, and Winstead. “Shall we go back to the wake? I’d like another drink, and I should share some information I learned from Kithri about what we’ll need to do about Gatesmithe. . . .”
‡ Invisible Sun, Incriminating Skull
¶ Waxing Gibbous: Kithri +1 to a pool of choice.
‡ Silver Sun, Elusive Sleep
* Failed to read book.
‡ Green Sun, Rat
‡ Blue Sun, Unwelcome Child; Indigo Sun, Ghostly Presence
‡ Pale Sun, Golden Ship
†† Lies of the Mirror
‡ Grey Sun, Lost Star
‡ Red Sun, Compelling Voice
†† Circle of Luctus (5 damage, 1 wound)