LANDRY, MUTTERING “BALAHUL” UNDER his breath, wheeled the cart into the tiny room with exaggerated care, as if he’d only recently learned how gravity worked. My hostess smiled blandly as he maneuvered the cart between us, bearing a delicate-looking teapot with pink flowers on it, two white teacups, and a small plate of butter cookies.
I looked up at her and opened my mouth. “I—”
The Bleeder behind her moved in a flash to cut himself, a thin, precise line of red opening up on his forearm. The grandma spoke a single Word, sed, gently, almost absent-mindedly, and my words died in my mouth. It was really disturbing that I hadn’t seen any sign from her. Her Bleeder had just moved. I didn’t often travel in the swanky circles of enustari, the powerful and the ruthless, but usually they had to give some sign to their Bleeders.
I sat in polite silence while Landry made his stiff, dead way out of the room, humming his one Word.
My host leaned forward and picked up the teapot and poured. “All right, let’s find out what you’re good for. I don’t get enough living ones. More complex, of course, requires more effort but yields better results. You’re a practitioner? Ustari?”
Ours was a small, strange club. I didn’t know for certain how many of us there were, bleeding people for gas and casting spells, but certainly no more than a few thousand. Maybe fewer. I hesitated for a moment. The dancing, watery light of the kerosene lamp and the utter silence made the room feel even smaller. I wondered if I’d have any chance of making a run for it past Landry.
Deciding I needed a better shot, I nodded.
She smiled. “Sugar? Milk?”
I nodded again.
“Quiet one,” she said, dropping two cubes of sugar into a cup and following that with a dash of milk. Handing me the cup, she smiled again. “That’s a sign of intelligence.”
I wanted to say something about how, if that was so, it hadn’t done me much good, but I just shrugged, holding the teacup stupidly. It felt incredibly tiny in my hands, as if I might snap it with a twitch. It was like a glimpse into what it was like to be Pitr Mags, the whole world made to a smaller scale.
She picked up her own cup and settled back into her chair. “Now, this is very important, son,” she said, sucking on her teeth a bit. She leaned forward slightly and whispered, “Do you have any . . . devices on you?”
I blinked.
“A phone? A—” She winced. “A computer?”
Kerosene lamps, no outlets, the utter stillness—the source of the music was an ancient wind-up turntable, a thick black record on its green felt. Ustari as a rule didn’t care for technology, that was true; I’d toyed with the idea of collecting spells in some digital files, but the thought made me uneasy and I’d never gotten around to it.
I shook my head.
Her eyes were old and flat and heartless, and she kept them on me unblinkingly.
“Oh, good. That is good.” She sipped her tea with a slurpy relish. “That’s the problem with this world. Devices. Technology.” Her face took on a softer, dreamy look. “There was a time when this was our world. We summoned the peasants and they sent us their sacrifices. We directed the armies and they shed blood for us. The invisible hand.” She refocused on me. “I had an ancestor at Agincourt, you know. The tale is passed down to us to this day: Such glorious blood! Blood enough for any biludha, for the most complex ritual! Mountains raised, seas drained, anything! He stood beside King Henry V, and it was glorious!”
Her cadence, energy, and unblinking stare were exactly what you encountered on the subway after midnight, people demanding that you stop following them, demanding that you admit the president was a robot. Except those people didn’t have a chunky Bleeder ready to gas up some serious spells, and I didn’t have Mags’s intimidating presence looming over my shoulder.
She waved a hand. “Ahh, golden days of yore. It’s different now, isn’t it? Guns. Computers. All of it. Clever peasants have harnessed the forces of the universe—well, some of them—and here we are, scuttling about, hiding. We, the invisible hand!” She shook her head at the insanity of it all. “They discovered gunpowder and split the atom, and here we are.”