WE PUT MR. LANDRY in Hiram’s bathroom, which, as always, smelled of disinfectant and bleach and gleamed with the sort of dull, over-scrubbed cleanliness that implied no one actually used it.
As someone who had spent several hours every week for years on his hands and knees scrubbing it, I knew it intimately. It was small. The window stuck and often took a few Words and a pricked finger to open. The old claw-foot tub was perfectly white, but the finish had worn off, making it dull. The tiled floor was white and black octagonal shapes in a simple pattern, some cracked, the grout yellowed.
There was, as Hiram had promised, already a body in there, a skinny black kid, jeans and a black hoodie, red sneakers. I stared at the tub, doom crowding in on me like I’d seen this before, a body in a tub, and it had killed me in some other life. Mags laid Landry gently on the floor, and we stepped back into the hall. I closed the bathroom door, casting a quick Ward on it in case our new friend Balahul woke up in a frisky mood. Slicing through the skein of white scars on my hand hurt as much as the first time, every time.
“Mr. Mageshkumar,” Hiram called. “The kitchen, please. I’ve made you a sandwich.”
Mags pushed past me, grinning. I’d often contemplated my eventual death via trampling by Mags in some sort of lunch-related incident. I followed, feeling hollow and unsteady and feverish.
Hiram’s kitchen was as white and pure as I recalled. Like the bathroom, it gave no sign of having ever been used for anything more complex than tea. On the small table was a white plate with a large sandwich on it: brown bread, a thick wedge of ham, and some green and red layers that might have been vegetables if I’d seen vegetables recently enough to recognize them.
“Mr. Vonnegan.”
I turned, and Hiram beckoned me out of the kitchen. I followed him into his study down the hall, crowded with stolen trinkets displayed on shelves, furnished in a way that implied Hiram was actually a very old woman. When he turned to face me, I realized he was furious; I recognized his fighting posture, like that of a small, fat rooster about to lean in and peck you.
“You have a duty of care to that boy,” he hissed. “Do you really believe you are fulfilling that duty? Look at him!”
I blinked. Hiram had been so happy to pawn Mags off on me, it had never occurred to me that the old thief might care what happened to him.
Hiram shook his head and deflated a little. “You cannot go on living like this. That boy has complete faith in you, the simpleton. If not for me, for him, bleed others. Bleed anyone. But living like this, bleeding yourselves and getting by on short confidence games, you are slowly killing him—and yourself.”
Suddenly, I was angry. I put a finger in Hiram’s chest. “You were only too fucking happy to get rid of Pitr, asshole,” I said. “You gave him to me like a puppy that soiled the fucking carpet. This while you were in the process of kicking me out of your fucking shithole of an apartment—”
Hiram slapped my hand away and opened his mouth, but in that moment there was a cleared throat from behind him, and he stopped, closing his mouth and turning away gruffly.
A man was sitting comfortably in one of Hiram’s deep leather chairs, a tumbler of something in his hand. He was thin and old, older than anyone else I knew. He wore a black suit that looked like he’d been born wearing it, perfectly cut. His hair was white and his hands had the swollen look of arthritis and hard use. He sat with an ease that belied confidence, absolute and settled. His face was deeply lined. For an old man, he looked spry. And because I’d come to have an eye for these things, I could tell immediately that I was in the presence of power. Saganustari at minimum. Enustari, maybe. An Archmage.
I looked at Hiram, trying to see if I’d missed something. Hiram was a low-rent hustler. Not someone I would have expected to have high-powered mages lounging in his living room. But there was nothing new: He was still Hiram Bosch, fat old man who stole everything he happened to notice, a man who’d funded his whole life by bleeding and stealing, petty thefts and grifts. The man I was still apprenticed to.
Hiram sighed, thrusting his hands in his trouser pockets. “Lem Vonnegan, my urtuku,” he said, gesturing at me. “Mr. Vonnegan, Evelyn Fallon.”
The old man and I looked at each other. Fallon’s eyes were pale and faded but seemed to pin me where I stood. I had the impression that I wouldn’t be able to move as long as he was studying me. When he looked away, I sensed that Evelyn Fallon had just thought about me as much as he ever would.
“You got an Udug, too, huh?” I said.
Fallon glanced at me again and ran his eyes up and down. “This Word, you know what it means?”
I forced a smile and nodded. “I got me an education.”
He sniffed. “No, Mr. Vonnegan, I do not got an Udug. Neither do you. We have arad.”
I blinked. I knew more than most: Arad meant slave or puppet.