King Will Devour

            This one was new: two dead in the Finger’s Market down in Ravenfort. Same sort of pattern. The words were written out on the ground, surrounding the bodies like a forensics team’s chalk outlines. He supposed that was to demonstrate that they had taken the time to write it out after the murder.

            Whispering Jim was pretty sure it was a “them” and not a “he” or a “she.” There had been a similar murder only the night before all the way out in Errister, so unless there was one very well-traveled serial killer, it would seem that there was actually a group of them. Jim admired their industriousness.

            “It’s Thall,” said Richard, taking a bite of toast. Things had relaxed after Jim had gone a month without wreaking any particular havoc. Jim was older than the sea in which Retrein stood. A month did not seem like such a long time, but apparently Richard had decided to allow him out of the basement after this very brief period of penance.

            All told, Jim wished he could forget the whole thing. It was a silly and desperate move that was beneath his abilities. The neighbor had come, one Mrs. Tharby, a middle-aged lady who aspired to live above her station and was a member of the very most local government she could participate it, namely the neighborhood council. No, it did not get capital letters. Jim refused to treat such a thing with that dignity. Jim had seen Empires, true grand Civilizations, and watched them fall, too. To consider what amounted to a dozen bored adults meeting in the community center basement on plastic chairs a “government” was just silly.

            Mrs. Tharby held ambition within her, even if she had never done much with it. It had been a simple thing, subtly encouraging her to enter the house and try a simple summoning spell that honestly would not do much to actually bind him to the will of Mrs. Tharby, but could, theoretically, overwrite the very complex incantation that had left Jim so inexorably linked to Richard Airbright’s.

            Unsurprisingly, the spell had backfired and it was to Richard’s credit that he had been thoughtful enough to design a spell that would only kill someone if they intentionally meant to break it – admirable, especially considering how difficult binding Jim in the first place had to be, to then add this little “just in case” caveat on top of a security measure. Mrs. Tharby was knocked right out, and slept in a coma for three days before she awoke, with no memory of the events.

            It was not as if Richard had ever been exactly “friendly” with Jim, but the Tharby Incident, as he had taken to calling it, had left his relationship with the master even colder than it had been before.

            “How do you know?” asked Jim. Isabelle was off at school. She was usually up long before her father rose. Richard was a night man, and what Richard called breakfast could be mistaken by most as a late lunch.

            Even when Jim enjoyed freedom of movement within the house, Isabelle’s room was off-limits. Jim had no problem with this. A teenage girl’s room had no need of demons to be a realm of chaos and pain. And besides…

            No. She is a human. She is the enemy.

            He repeated the mantra in his mind. It was important to retain one’s vigilance.

            “Most of this is simple, ordinary Standard.” Richard said, pointing to the words that were visible from the newspaper’s photo. “But these letters,” he said, pointing to a few words that were set apart from the bodies’ outlines. “These are an obscure variant on Kerahn’s Tongue. Here, this one says… ‘vasilias tha katavro… chtisei,’ I believe. Do you have any idea what that means?”

            King will devour, thought Jim immediately. The magic languages were always unsettling to him. He imagined it was what a human would feel if they could hear the voice of a long-dead relative.

            “It speaks of the White King,” said Jim.

            “Well, that would reinforce my notion, then.”

            Jim found himself shuddering at the words there. It was below a demon’s dignity to shudder like that, but the mention of that… being (if you could even call it that anymore) made Jim feel terribly uneasy in what, if he had had a physical body, would have been his stomach.

            “This latest one was in Ravenfort. Yesterday was Errister, the day before Wolfsmouth,” said Jim.

            “You think he may be creating a pattern? A remote-form sigil that covers the entire country? It would not be outside his capabilities, and certainly within his ambitions. I simply don’t know what he might be hoping to accomplish. A summoning? Unlikely. Even the Stag’s Head managed to summon and bind Gutop for several years using a symbol no larger than a barn. Though admittedly, if this really is Thall we are dealing with, he may intend to summon something far more powerful.”

            Jim would have pointed out that Gutop was hardly something to be dismissed as a minor creature. The Antelope Goddess had held sway over the entire continent for thousands of years and was still worshipped by nearly a third of Hesaia.

            However, on the other hand, if Thall was trying to summon the White King to Retrein, well, he hardly thought that a sigil the size of the country would be nearly large enough – if the White King could be summoned at all. The White King was not, after all, a god. In fact, Jim believed that he was quite the opposite.

            And besides, Richard had missed the point Jim had been trying to make. “Thall must have people working for him. These murders were planned carefully. Notice the victims? All of them members of the Royal Arcane Society, and all of them have been members for over thirty years. These were not randomly chosen victims. How did he get the victims to their locations? Yesterday’s death, Vivian Corlatti? She wasn’t even supposed to be in Retrein. She was scheduled to give a lecture in Carathon this afternoon.”

            “I see your point.”

            “And that’s only the victims the police have found. Who knows how many Thall has had killed?”

            Richard sat back, taking his glasses off to rub his eyes. “This certainly complicates matters.”

            When the message was written out, Macha and Ouphe bolted out of the alleyway and onto Hill-Thorne Avenue. The Woman had provided them with a special gun – made out of some kind of odd, flaky material like the lead in a pencil. After they had killed the old wizard, Ouphe pulled back a lever and the gun crumbled apart, blowing away in a wind that neither she nor Macha felt.

            It wasn’t the first time she’d killed someone, but it was strange to see someone who looked older than her granddad bleeding out of a big red gunshot wound. That wasn’t how old people tended to die, was it?

            Macha had drawn all the stuff in chalk, using a little cheat-sheet The Woman had provided for them, along with the gun. It was another one of those magic languages – this one seemed to be made entirely of straight lines in kind of boxes, and the letters flowed down instead of from left to right.

            Macha was a better artist – had a steadier hand when it came to writing. Ouphe could shoot a gun, but her handwriting was often illegible even to herself.

            They hopped on the bus bound for Vinebarrel Street.

            “You got bug-eyes,” said Ouphe. Macha was staring out at the rainy city that scrolled past them through the windows.

            “No I don’t,” said Macha.

            “You don’t have to come. I can talk to The Woman for us.”

            Macha shoved Ouphe back. “No way in hell. I’ll not let you take all the money.”

            “I won’t cheat you,” said Ouphe.

            Macha scoffed. “Like you didn’t cheat me on that skunk I got for you?”

            “Fuck you, chavvy,” replied Ouphe.

            A woman, perhaps fifty, stood up near them. She looked them up and down. “Excuse me, but shouldn’t you ladies be in school?”

            “Fuck off, grandmam,” yelled Macha.

            The woman bristled, but quickly went back to her seat.

            After ten minutes, they arrived. Ouphe led the way up to the luxurious townhouse out of which The Woman operated. Ouphe banged on the big eagle-headed doorknocker. After a few seconds, the door opened, and an old valet regarded them with the stiffest of upper lips.

            “We’re here to see The Woman.”

            The valet nodded. “Yes, she has been expecting you. If you would follow me, ladies,” and he turned, leading them into the house.

            The entrance hall was palatial, with a marble floor and a grand staircase. A thick Arizradnan carpet was spread over the floor, and it appeared immaculately clean and soft. The valet led the two teenagers through a large double door on the left and into a drawing room. Everything here was green and charming, and it all looked extraordinarily expensive.

            The Woman sat in her chair, legs crossed, a pair of glasses dangling from her mouth by one earpiece. Her hair was held up in an impressive tower with what Ouphe imagined took fifty pins.

            “Hello, girls,” said The Woman.

            Ouphe nodded in greeting. Macha opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself.

            “You’re in my home. We can speak freely. Mr. Prenticott is dead?”

            “Yes, m’um,” said Ouphe.

            “And the pistol was disposed of?”

            “Yes, m’um.”

            “Do you still have the diagram?”

            Macha nodded. The Woman held her hand out. Macha brought the sheet of paper over to her. The Woman reached over to the table at her side and picked up a lighter. The paper burned and The Woman watched as the words on it crumbled into ash, only blowing out the flame when a tiny blank corner onto which she had been holding was all that remained.

            The Woman nodded approvingly. “Good. Once my employer has confirmation, we will make the full transfer. For now, take those.” She pointed to two leather satchels – both would fit within the girls’ bags. Each contained twenty thousand tolls in cash. The remaining hundred would be put in trust until each of them was eighteen.

            Clara watched them out the window as the two girls made their way back to the bus stop. Certainly they could have called a cab, but old habits, etc.

            Clara stood up, eager to take the pins out of her hair and to get into a more comfortable dress, but she expected receive the man from Wolfsmouth in an hour, and it wouldn’t do to slip out of costume only to have to put it back on.

            “Jaquis,” she called. The valet came in.

            “Yes, m’am?”

            “Bring me some coffee. And the paper.”

            Clara lounged back in the chair, unfastening the top button on her dress. The thing was rotten to wear, but it looked incredible on her, and so she endured the pain when she was entertaining the contractors. In the meantime, though, she preferred the ability to breathe.

            It had taken weeks to get used to sleeping on a soft mattress, but the cooking staff was an easier adjustment to make. Jaquis, she adored. Yes, now that she had seen what it was like to have money, she had come to fully understand the appeal.

            Jaquis came with the paper and handed it to her. She scoured the headlines. Yes, there was a bit about the Finger’s Market killing. She skimmed that one to see if the enforcers had come up with anything. She made her methodical search, first of the Arcane, Science and Technology section, then Art and Culture, then Business, and finally even Sport, but there was not a single mention.

            Clara sipped the coffee and picked up the phone on her table. She watched out the window as the rain began to bombard the bus stop where the two girls had gone.

            “Clara? Anything?”

            “Prenticott is dead.”

            “Good. And?”

            “Airbright is remaining quiet. Do you think he understands that this is you?”

            “Yes.”

            “Do you think he knows what you are trying to do?”

            “That depends. What do you think I am trying to do, Clara?”

            Clara paused. She preferred it when Mr. Thall kept her out of any of his greater philosophical motivations. It made her feel exposed. “You are… taking revenge on these people?”

            There was an audible chuckle from the other end of the phone. “That would be a perfectly logical deduction.”

            “Is it true?”

            There was silence, but somehow Clara could imagine Mr. Thall was smiling on the other end. “Thank you, Sweet Clara,” he said. And then the line went dead.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2013)