“Miss?” He tapped the woman’s shoulder tentatively.
She didn’t move. Fennen looked up and down the deserted streets, then back at the body lying twisted in the gutter in front of his shop. Her hair was matted and dirty, her skin sunburned beneath a layer of grime. Those were foreign clothes, but she didn’t have a foreign face. He put a hand near her nose and felt her breath on his fingers—alive. That settled it.
Fennen grabbed the woman beneath the arms and began to pull her across the pavement. It wasn’t an easy task for the diminutive man, but he couldn’t leave her at the mercy of the city’s wandering perverts. With some difficulty, he propped open his door, then continued to drag her into the back room. In the corner was a low bed, covered with folded cloth and dusty books. He pushed them off, laying the woman down in their place.
Her eyes opened. She looked at Fennen suspiciously and asked something in a language he did not recognise. There was a brief silence before she opened her mouth again. “Who are you?” The woman’s accent was thick, and the words came slowly.
“Fennen Halcyk. I—I don’t want to hurt you.” Fennen was aware that anybody would have said that, regardless of whether it was true or not. The woman wasn’t taking chances. Before he realised that she was armed, she had a knife to his throat. “Really, I don’t,” he spluttered. “Do I look like the kind of man that could take you on?” It was true. She dwarfed him. Slowly, she put the knife away. “Good. Now, what’s your name?”
“Redlin Secher.”
If Fennen was in the habit of reading newspapers, he would have thrown Redlin out of his shop the moment he heard her name. Sadly, in his home world, newspapers came in much the same varieties as their Earthly equivalent—ridiculous and mind-numbingly trivial, or depressingly serious. Neither he nor his friends had wasted money on the rags, to devastating results. The woman was the exiled empress of Saniam. Fennen had married somebody who didn’t mind killing entire villages because one man’s dog pissed on her shoe.
She should have been happy that the entire animal population of the country wasn’t raining excrement down upon her objectionable person. And Fennen hadn’t just married her. He let her run off with his life savings. He let her turn him into some depraved, magic-addicted lunatic. He had a child with her. For seventy-five years he had lived in relative peace, thinking that Redlin and the child had been killed. Then, Candice Feathers happened, and his world had suddenly gained one Redlin more than it needed. He hadn’t run into her yet, but the possibility of it made it difficult to sleep.
He turned to lie on his back, staring at the miniature chandelier hanging from the ceiling. As he thought, a grey-green gas poured out from a spot in the middle of his chest. It formed itself into a woman’s head.
“She’s just a stupid old lady,” the head said, answering to his thoughts. “Don’t murder yourself over what she says.”
“Candice Feathers isn’t stupid.”
“Well, she can be wrong.”
“That doesn’t happen often.” What Fennen really thought was that, in his experience, Candice Feathers was never wrong. He doubted that she was now. Nevertheless, he tried to look convincing as he said, “Well, maybe she is.”
Eskarne was not fooled. “Fennen, you know we share a brain, right? Share thoughts and innermost feelings, that kind of thing?” She sighed. “I know you’re still afraid.”
“I’m not being unreasonable,” he grumbled, pulling the blankets over his chest. Eskarne’s head passed through, and now sat on top of the comforter. That was the worst part about the rain spirit. There was no smothering her, or making her shut up when she put her mind to it. “You’ve never even met Redlin.”
“I’ve read your memories.”
He blushed. “You keep out of those!”
“It’s not anything new. Some skinny, plain-looking tailor—”
“Eskarne!”
“—falls for an exotic sex beast, who was understandably only using him for money. And the skinny tailor—who looks a great deal better under the influence of a certain rain spirit—remains totally enamoured with said sex beast eighty-two years later. Did she really—?”
“I am not discussing those matters,” he snapped.
They were silent. Yawning, Eskarne slipped back into Fennen’s body. He could feel her, quiet, cool and inherently good, nestling sleepily in a spot that had once been taken up by greed and ambition. When they first began sharing a body, there had been an enormous internal war, which had persuaded all of Fennen’s friends that he had gone insane. Perhaps he was insane. Fennen often observed normal people acting in ways that made absolutely no sense, but that could easily have been because he was the nutty one.
All magicians were loony, anyway. Athanasius struck him as a glaring contradiction to this theory, but at fifteen, he was probably still struggling with embracing his inner nut. He made a mental note to discuss this matter with his apprentice. It wouldn’t do to leave a young wizard alone to deal with his burgeoning madness. That could go two ways: badly or really badly. One had to have the mellowing influence of an experienced master, who could persuade you not to wear too much black or build Fortresses of Darkness in downtown Toronto.
Fennen shut his eyes. Tomorrow, he would deal with everything Fate chose to throw at him. The night was for sleeping, and he’d be damned if he let his idiotic ex-wife steal that from him, too.
Szchostn looked around. There were many people around the subway station, even at that hour, and though he could definitely rule out about half of them, it was still difficult to find the woman he was searching for. Dark hair, Blanchett had said in the message. Young, with dark hair and eyes. Szchostn had wondered if Blanchett meant that she had eyes, or that the eyes she had were dark, but there wasn’t enough time to ask. Either way, the description was depressing in its overwhelming preciseness.
He hesitated before approaching a woman who was leaning against a lamp post, smoking. “Alice Padovan?” She shook her head, and he moved on. There was a girl in the shadows, dressed in a lime green jacket and sitting on a newspaper. Young, yes, but probably too young to be on MagRIA business. Szchostn honed in somebody else—a lost-looking woman secretively consulting what appeared to be an ornate pocket watch. If he didn’t find Padovan that night, he could at least tell Blanchett about a suspicious woman with a Sniffer.
“Are you Alice Padovan?”
She started, and abruptly put the Sniffer back into her pocket. “Yes.”
“I’m Szchostn.” He extended a hand, which she examined curiously for a few seconds before realising that he meant for her to shake it. “Come on, the car’s parked over there.” He waved in the general direction of the parking lot before turning. During the brief walk—which was done in complete silence—Szchostn found himself wondering if taciturn creepiness was the hallmark of the MagRIA. “Not a conversationalist, are you?”
“Tired,” Alice said. “Long journey.”
That seemed right to Szchostn’s mind. They had passed several streetlights and were on the highway before he said something again. “So, I hear you’re big back in—er, I think it’s Darna? Did I say that right?”
“Little bit,” was the woman’s perplexing reply. “Darnà.”
“I don’t think I could manage that, to be honest.” He let his thoughts trail for a moment before adding, “You can call me Justin if that’s easier, you know? Like, most people have trouble pronouncing it—”
“Szchostn.”
—but, he finished mentally, Alice isn’t among them. So far, he didn’t like the agent. She had a talkative sort of face, yet never seemed to say more than three words at once. This upset Szchostn, who felt he was a good judge of faces. When he saw Alice, he’d been relieved to sense a fellow talker, only to be disappointed by her reluctance to speak. If the woman was so tired, why couldn’t she just sleep, and not stare at him mockingly?
They passed an awkward half hour in a silent car before Szchostn thought to put the radio on. A chatty man’s voice filled the space, “… rumours about Whitney Clears having extensive plastic surgery, but the breast size fluctuations can be…” He took a few turns. The tall buildings and bright signboards were gone now, replaced by little brick houses, clusters of shops and the occasional undeveloped field. In about four minutes, Szchostn would be free of the burden of his unpleasant passenger.
“We always think the worst when a woman suddenly increases five cup sizes!” the radio DJ declared as the car pulled into a gravel driveway.
The house was considerably older than the rest of the neighbourhood. A road and extensive fields cut it off from the other houses, as well as the enormous yellow abomination that was the area’s Catholic high school. Originally a two-storey building, the school had grown various additions over the years, which eventually resulted in the hideous, lumbering brick creature that glowered at the house from across the road. Szchostn set Alice’s suitcase down while she looked out the windows, apparently amazed.
“I’ll be off, now.” He was about to leave when a pang of guilt made him come back to write something on a scrap of paper. “If you have any trouble, or need a car or something, you can call me.” Pressing it into her hand, he said, “My number’s on it. Bye.”
Szchostn walked out. Alice watched him, but to his annoyance, said nothing.
Halfway across town, a woman poked a platypus. The world jiggled. She did it again. A piece broke off. For a moment, she thought she saw something at the edge of the hole, but—no. It was nothing.