We weren’t good people.
“Come on,” I slurred, heading for Mags, who was struggling with our quarry. Calls were being made, cops would be coming. We needed to get Landry out of here before I saw my payday melt away. When I was a few steps away, Mags—the strongest man I’d ever met—was shoved violently toward me, windmilling his massive arms and squeaking like a baby bird. I dodged and let Ketterly take the hit, and for a moment I was face-to-face with Mr. Landry.
He grinned at me. His face was oval, deeply lined, and his teeth were the bright squares of dentures. There was something off about him—something in the eyes, which were flat and lifeless, and the skin, which was yellowed and slack.
“Balahul,” he said.
Behind me, I heard Ketterly say, “Oh, fuck me.”
The Word meant, literally, evil change, more popularly translated as chaos. It wasn’t a Word that a lot of ustari tossed about, since most of us—at least people at my level, the idimustari—were practically illiterate, knowing just enough vocabulary to get by. It was definitely not a Word you’d hear from a non-mage.
“Balahul!” Landry shrieked, leaning forward and shoving me back with both hands. Then he surged forward and took hold of my jacket and, with surprising strength, spun and slammed me against a column, knocking my head back and causing my vision to swim. A second after that, he was torn away from me as Mags crashed into him, roaring, and I slid down to the platform, my legs going rubbery.
Mags was struggling with the old man. I’d never seen Mags struggle with a human being. I doubted he’d get much struggle from a bus. Mags routinely broke things by touching them gently, and we had a long-standing rule regarding kittens and puppies. But this old man, who looked like he weighed about fifty pounds, was giving Mags a run for his money, shouting the one Word he seemed to know over and over, grinning his yellow grin.
I could taste a little gas in the air and realized my head was bleeding. Since I had gas to use, I croaked out three Words of my own. When I opened my eyes, the old man lay prone. Mags twisted around, seams splitting. His face was horrified.
“Don’t worry, Magsie,” I said, ignoring the people who were grouping around me, concerned. “I just put him to sleep.”
Mags shook his head. “Dead.”
I POUNDED ON the door again, making the plate glass rattle. “Come on, Ketterly!” I shouted. “For fuck’s sake, I can see you in there, you cowardly piece of shit!”
Mags stood next to me with the old man draped over his shoulders like a shawl, but thanks to a little spell that made Mags and me the least interesting thing in anyone’s field of vision, no one paid us any attention. It was handy for hiding from the cops, and it was handy for wandering the streets with a corpse.
“I swear to fucking God, Ketterly, if you don’t open this door, you will never have another peaceful day in your life!”
Our world was pretty small. There were mages everywhere, but in this city, the band of idimustari pulling short cons and little jobs here and there was tight and intimate. Ketterly would never be able to avoid us, and if we complained loudly enough, he’d start to get the cold shoulder. Tricksters didn’t have many rules, but one we all stuck to was You don’t fuck each other. At least not unless it was absolutely necessary.
He opened the door, the bell tinkling, and stepped back. “In!” he hissed. “Quick, before someone sees you.”
We went in. Mags shrugged the old man off his shoulders and set him gently on the floor.
I pointed at Ketterly. “You fucking left us there.”
He nodded, putting his hands up. “Look, I panicked, okay? You know what he said?”
I nodded. “Balahul. Chaos.”
Ketterly shook his head. “It’s a name. An intelligence.”
A demon. Udug was the Word. I frowned, glancing at the old man, who now looked like he’d been dead for days. “That doesn’t make any sense, Digs,” I said. “You summon a demon, you trap it in something. That’s what a Fabricator does. Little machines or pieces of jewelry. To do things for you, you get something that can think. They don’t possess people.”
Ketterly shrugged. “Balahul wasn’t possessing that old man—it was animating him.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry I left you, I am. But this shit is above my pay grade.”
I looked at the old man again. He’d been dead before we got there, so I hadn’t accidentally killed him, which was good for my sleep patterns. But the idea that Landry was a meat puppet—that was some deep magic. And deep magic meant an Archmage, and that meant I suddenly understood perfectly why Ketterly had run. I swallowed and looked back at him, suddenly nervous being near the body. “So what do we do?”