“You look like you’re going to cry.”
“Get moving. We have stuff to do.”
He moved, his limp matching hers, in most part.
The trip the rest of the way up the slope to the road was difficult. Headwind, the snow just deciding to be in the worst possible condition for walking through.
Did celebrities and powerful people glide through life, in large part, because their names carried weight?
Doing things this way wasn’t working.
The only person who was able and ready to help was Johannes, and she wasn’t sure if Johannes would ask her to make compromises. Laird had asked her to make a compromise.
There weren’t many roads open to her.
Was there a road where she could be her, while avoiding retreading old ground and doing what she’d done to Molly after Laird had approached her?
If there was… what would that road look like?
Her best tools were the goblins. Nobody else wanted them, and she understood them. She’d dwelt on them for so long that her mind was keyed to think like goblins thought, to expect their reactions. They were uncomfortable to deal with, but they were comfortable territory.
“Buttsack?”
“Yes, nameless mistress? Wormy apple of my eye?”
He made his voice ooze with syrup. Had he seen the reaction his ‘sweet’ act had had on her earlier?
He was still working out safe ways to get to her. Scattershot approach for now, he’d narrow it down later.
“You get that line from some cartoon or something?”
“Yes,” he said. His smile showed bad teeth.
“Needs some work,” she commented.
His strategy wasn’t the best bet. Later wasn’t a sure thing, when it came to her. She was liable to lose her grip on reality, or, more correctly, reality would lose its grip on her. To top it off, the ogre she’d seen on entering the north end had warned her that she might not be a practitioner for long.
She’d said her name when she’d sworn her oath. How long before the oath unraveled, leaving her without anything at all? Padraic was pretty much guaranteed to be making a claim to her ability to practice if he was pretending to be her, but he hadn’t sounded confident about his ability to simply take that power.
If that was one hold she could maintain… maybe she needed to put a nail in that too.
Well, getting power would be a start. If she had a little bit more oomph at her disposal, she’d be able to cement her position better. There were ways to do it, even, without committing to a decision.
“Are local goblins still hanging out at the MacEwen Park shed?”
“Last I saw.”
“Do you know a better spot to find a lot of goblins in one place?”
“Don’t really care enough to know. Little fucksops run when they see me coming.”
“Are you pulling my leg? You’re telling me you’re not a charmer, Buttsack?”
“They do what I say when I need it. Give one of them a kick in the ass and tell him to gather the others, or I’ll come after them.”
“Like the time before, where I shot you.”
“Yeh,” he said, barely audible. He glared at her. “Like that.”
She reached an intersection and turned north.
“We’re not going to the park?”
His bulldog-like face, growl of a voice and the question made her think it was what a dog might say in similar circumstances. It was a welcome shift of tone from the accumulated emotion of talking to Molly. She laughed out loud.
Stumbling a bit in the face of the wind and the slippery sidewalk, she had to stop, leaning on a railing, still laughing. The wind picked up, catching on her scarf.
The girl in the checkered scarf grabbed at her scarf before the wind could claim it and make it so she was no longer the girl in the checkered scarf, but only the girl.
“That’s a no?”
“Yes, we’re going to the park…” she said. She secured her scarf. “But we have one step first.”
He saw the tunnel loom and groaned.
They passed into the tunnel, and Johannes’ realm unfolded before them. A different entry point than it had been on her last visit.
Straight to Johannes’ apartment building, the tallest building in Jacob’s Bell at maybe eight stories. The penthouse was perched on top, sitting askance, a tilted crown atop the building, all done up in tempered glass that reflected the peach colored sky in dark purples, golds and reds.
The sorcerer had left the invitation open, the door sitting ajar. Welcoming her in as he might one of his guests.
Buttsack muttered something foul under his breath, growing with intensity as they took the step that put the real Jacob’s Bell firmly behind them.
“Suck it up, Buttsack. The alternative is that I ask you for this stuff, and I don’t think it’s the sort of thing you want to be sent out to collect.”
“What stuff?” he asked.
■
Johannes nodded slowly. “Chains, steel wool, lighter fluid and matches, shotgun shells…”
The windows were open, but it wasn’t cold. Here on the top floor of the tower, the upper section was raised, and only an arrangement of pillars held it up, reflective panes extending between each pillar, floor to ceiling, marked with curls of gold, bronze and the like. Inside each curl of metal were the seams for the opening of the windows.
“…marbles, chalk and a plastic bucket…”
“Two buckets,” she said, without taking her eyes off the view.
Here, standing in the middle of the room, the only view was of the clouds on the horizon, cast in colors that were surprisingly cold, considering they were reds, oranges and purples. There was no city, and there was no winter, not from this vantage point. The breeze was warm, the air fresh in a way that one typically only found while driving through a park or something.
He went on, “…Cranberry juice, not pure, some coke, bottled water, and some sandwiches. That’s all?”
She nodded. “So long as I can take it out of your territory, yeah, that should be it. What are your terms? What do you want?”
“What are your intentions?”
She wasted no time in replying. “Getting power.”
“To be used against me?”
“Are you seriously worried about little nameless me?”
Johannes smiled. “I suppose not.”
The girl in the checkered scarf had to readjust her hairband to keep the hair at the front of her ear from tickling her eye. “I’m hardly a threat to anyone, but if you need it, I promise not to use the power I gain here against you.”
“Very well. I have one guest I can tap for the task. Faysal, do you think you could bear a message to the Duck Knight?”
His dog sat by the window, long white hair billowing in the wind. “The market district has no oversight. The Djinn-born are restless.”
“I’ll keep an eye on it,” Johannes said. He let go of the paper. The wind direction changed, carrying it to Faysal.
Faysal flared. A flash of light, a gleam, a brief glimpse of a humanoid figure, too bright to look directly at, and the entire area seemed to bend, like it sometimes did in the science fiction shows, when a ship kicked off into hyperdrive and the area took a second to resettle.
Then the dog and paper were gone.
“Duck Knight?”
“Long story. Tagged along on another’s invitation. We had words, and he’s agreed to be at my disposal while I grant him my hospitality. I’m disposing, and I’m frankly glad to have the chance. I wouldn’t want him thinking he’s getting off scott-free.”