Chương 10: an enemy

Caspar snorts awake behind the cruiser's wheel. There is a rhythmic banging noise behind him. He hastens out of the car and pops the trunk open. Jordan Darius unfolds herself from the detritus and sits up, a pair of jumper cables hanging off her shoulder.

"My gun," she demands. Caspar passes it to her, unloaded. She tucks it back into her holster as she leaves the trunk.

"All right." She grimaces downward at herself, the sizable orchid bloom of blood that came from her impaled heart.

"Step one is a damn wardrobe change." Back into the cruiser, and Jordan steers them away from the model village. They maintain their strained silence. As they coast back onto the highway, Caspar says, "Maybe some music again?" Jordan just stares at him. I'm losing my patience with this woman.

"Okay, Madame Inspector." Looks like Caspar is, too. Good boy.

"I'm sorry that I killed you, but you can't keep holding it above my head, all right?"

"You hear yourself?" She scoffs.

"You took me away from everything I cared about and now I'm the worst thing in the world. You broke my life."

"Your life was broken already." He leans forward.

"I killed you, but I was right to." She sneers at him.

"I was," he insists.

"How many people have you executed for a lie, Jordan? How many more if I hadn't come along? And now you know the truth." She flicks her eyes from his and stares at the road. That's right, Caspar. You tell her.

"You want to be pissed?" He folds his arms.

"You go ahead. You have every reason. But you're wasting it on me. You know you are."

"Fabulous start to our partnership," she mutters.

"It's unfortunate. I ain't saying it isn't." Caspar sighs.

"But if we can't be friends, I ask you at least to be civil. This job'll be hard enough without us giving each other the evil eye the entire way to Chamchek." Jordan reaches over and turns the radio back on. Caspar's shoulders relax. They pass a massive billboard with Archbishop Tilliam's tombstone-toothed smile stuck across it. HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT HOW LUCKY YOU ARE TODAY? It asks. Jordan gestures up to the sign.

"Guy's a prick, y'know," she says.

"Met him a few times."

"Really?" In Caspar's pre-warlock days, he'd tuned into Tilliam's Tabernacle every Friday, live from the Chamchek Basilica. I used to watch through his eyes and think deeply uncharitable thoughts about the Archbishop.

"Doesn't come across on TV." It absolutely does, Caspar.

"Yeah, well. TV rots your brain." Jordan scoots past a slow-moving 18-wheeler.

"Wouldn't mind assassinating that motherfucker now that I'm a servant of the Adversary, tell you what." Caspar twinges. He doesn't like to remember that's what he is.

"Rebecca's a total sweetheart, though. And a smoke show. No way does he deserve her." Jordan waves at the truck driver while she passes; he's doing an unsafe amount of genuflection behind his wheel. She glances into the rearview.

"You notice how your weird goddess stole her wardrobe?"

"Hadn't realized," Caspar lies.

"You seem awful chummy with her."

"I owe her. And she's kind." She snorts.

"Kind?"

"Yes," he says, unwavering.

"You ease up on her and maybe you'll see that. She's a kind person, I think." My chest gets a little tingly. I'm not used to these involuntary reactions my humanoid manifestation keeps feeding me. I thought you guys smiled as a choice, not by accident.

"She's not a person at all," Jordan says.

"You know how much you're not seeing? How much she's hiding? She's just showing you this little bit of her you'll like."

"I know," Caspar says.

"That's what people do." Jordan clicks her tongue. She doesn't have a response to that.

"What I wanna know," she says instead, "is why you get a sexy shadow chick and I get a wolf bug monster thing."

"They can both hear us, you know," Caspar says.

"Well, no offense, Miss Bina." Jordan quirks an eyebrow.

"And don't let it go to your head, Irene." Shut the hell up, inspector.

"You're gonna need to help me out with these powers and such." Jordan flicks her turn signal on and heads toward an exit.

"That armor thing especially. I want to try that."

"I'm not sure how it works with Miss Bina," Caspar says.

"But I'll do my best. They really do a number on you at first."

"Hey," Jordan says.

"No rush, right? The Suzerain ain't going anywhere." A see-saw twist in the traffic tunnel ventricles of my heart. Of course, it had to be Jordan who brought the time thing up. It's probably high time to introduce these warlocks to the competition. ₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪ I objected to Caspar calling my sisters and me devils, but speak of the devil. As Caspar and Jordan roll through a nursery suburb, seeking as out-of-the-way a clothing store as they can find, the war-trumpet psychic siren of Ganea thrums in my gut.

WE WILL MEET, it sounds, and it rattles my baleens. Bina corkscrews about in a panicky tizzy as she reorganizes her insides; she's always trying to impress Ganea. I put forward my demesne as a meeting point and propose a council of manifestations. I'm always the one who agitates for this sort of thing. It's not as if our psionic pathways are that much faster or more detailed, and Ganea especially has a bad habit of inadvertently sending the scents of saltpeter and brimstone through them. FINE, Ganea grouses.

Oh, like she isn't excited to roll in whatever war machine she's been working on lately. Always cracking my damn tiles. I dust off an amphitheater I manifested a while ago and drape it in violet pennants. As an afterthought, I hang it with Bina's favorite emerald green as well. A little show of sisterly solidarity. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Ganea's avatar announces its presence with a firm broadside thwack into my side before I even have the chance to open a valveway for her. Ow. Dick. Then a mechanized rumble sounds through my corridors as she arrives. Five times my height, coated in riveted steel and brass mail, her horned war-helm in the crook of her ramrod forearm. Every fall of her sabatons reverberates back to me.

I tap a heeled foot in an exaggerated show of impatience as she sits across four rows of my amphitheater, crumbling the masonry with her big metal ass. Her armor glares in the pink light of my fake sun.

"Hi, Ganea," I say.

"Been a second."" Irene.

"Her razor teeth grit." Where's Bina? I know she's here. You've been plotting."" Plotting." I roll my golden eyes.

"Like I've been at all subtle about my intentions. How many invites have you ignored, Gan?" Bina flaps into the arena, her wolf form clarified and streamlined. I know she'd prefer a lot more funky pseudopods, but she craves Ganea's brutalist approval. She settles on her haunches.

"Hi, everyone."" A warlock, eh, Bina?

"Ganea leans forward with a sound like a massive creaky door. She fixes her six grilled eyes on our youngest sister." Finally got skin in the game?" Bina tries to look confident.

"I never found the right human before, that's all. I'm ready now."

"It's not a game," I say." It is. And you convinced Bina to support your play."

"I didn't need to convince her," I say.

"It's the right move. You know it is. We've been going about this shit all wrong. We worked together to take the Father down. It was the only way. We need to cooperate on His servants, too. You underestimate them."" His servants are a bare concern,"Ganea says." I'm interested in yours."

"I'll happily coordinate with you," I say.

"You just need to promise not to kill these." Ganea shakes her head." Two ants crush under a wheel as easy as one does." She's talking about the Butcher. She's going to sic him on us. One thing at a time, Irene. That maniac's on the other side of the ocean, last time I checked.

"Gan," I say.

"It's time to get serious. Eight is making moves while we squabble. If we keep fucking around, you know what's going to happen. Nobody wants her in charge."" You want you in charge."

"I want us to be a pantheon," I explain.

"I keep telling you this."" With you at the head." I throw up my hands.

"That's what happens when I'm the one trying to herd the elephants and you insist on being an elephant. I'm not interested in putting myself above you. I'm really not. And I'll happily negotiate w—" Ganea's gauntleted fist smashes me flat, breaks every bone, liquefies every organ, sends every nerve in my Irene body into the painful red zone for the second they take to die. I reconstitute from the grease stain she reduced me to.

"You done?"" Are you?

"She leers." I don't negotiate. Why argue for a slice when you can take the cake?"

"Because you haven't taken it," I say, "and you won't. You can keep throwing warlocks at the wall. You haven't even made a dent."" Neither have you." I put a defiant arm around Bina.

"That's why we're cooperating." She crushes us both. I stand up as my bones de-powderize.

"Oops! And I'm back. You see how that keeps not working, Gan?"" Ow ow ow," mutters Bina.

"You can come to the table now, when you have something to actually bring," I say, "or you can come begging for scraps when your position erodes. Your choice."" Or I could splinter the table,"Ganea says." I've gotten good at it. You could submit. Stay out of my way. That's what I'm here to tell you." I put my hands on my hips. Ganea even offering a truce like this, that's new. She's realizing my plan might work." When I have the key, I'll give you and Bina your own kingdoms,"Ganea says."

Your own little slice of heaven. That's a good deal. Best and last one you get." We'll see about that. I shake my head.

"If we all just race each other for the key, we all know who wins. She's already winning. And then we're fucked." Ganea's huge fingers drum on the side of her helm." Sounds like I'm talking to the wrong sister."

"You want to go parley with her? You be my guest," I say.

"You can let me know how it went after the rest of us scrape you off the stratosphere. Bina's got a warlock and the landscape's changed. Other sisters are going to see which way the wind blows."" We'll see. I'm gone." She stands up." Bina." Bina tries not to quake as she looks Ganea in the LED-light eyes.

"Uh huh?"" Welcome to the warlock business. I'll kill yours last." She tips a column over as she stomps away.

"Fucking Ganea, huh?" I shake my head.

"Such a narrow definition of power."

"I don't want her to kill Jordan and Caspar," Bina says.

"I like Jordan and Caspar."

"She won't." My column resets itself and the enamel slides back across the craggy break.

"I have a good feeling about these two." Well, I have a good feeling about Caspar, anyway.

"But if she does, they can't come back, right?" Bina's ears flick.

"It's a one-shot thing."

"Even if she does," I say, trying to sound blasé, "there's always more mortals." If we have the time, I don't say. I settle to watch my warlock. He's trying on shabby workwear at the moment, in a threadbare changing room. His conservative earth-tone yes pile sits side-by-side with all the interesting no s that he's lost courage about. If Ganea's little conference denied me prime peeping time, I'll never forgive her. Okay, false alarm. He's taking his pants off.

When he unbuttons his shirt to try on his other finds, and he reveals the brand I planted on him, a rush of dark, gleeful possessiveness pulses through me. He prods at his marked pectoral, his face distant and pensive. That's right, my pretty little warlock. Remember she who awaits you. Remember that you are mine. After five wonderful minutes, he emerges in unassuming denim and linen and lays a few ducats on the counter, dropping his change in the battered war orphan tin. Jordan's waiting in the parking lot.

She's replaced her pinstripe suit with a pair of cargo shorts and a shirt portraying St. Petraeus of the Lines in galoshes and a fly-fishing hat over the slogan FISH DON'T PRAY SO IT'S OKAY. Caspar tosses the rest of his acquisitions into the back seat.

"No new suit?" Jordan shakes her head.

"Too used to the Inspectorate tailors. I got two modes. This is the other one."

"You ever do any fishing?" Caspar sits in the back.

"No, Abe, that's the joke." Jordan slides behind the wheel.

"Man, just get up here. Take shotgun. I need someone to man the radio." A cheerful lurch through Caspar at that pronouncement. This redeveloping camaraderie doesn't bug me like it used to, and I'm not entirely sure why. I suppose it's because I know Jordan isn't a threat now. To the mission, I mean. Before they get back onto the highway, Jordan takes them into a secluded field that's grown up around an abandoned parking lot. They practice their warlock powers.

Caspar's getting the hang of flinging his arm off of him like a whirling boomerang, and while the sickening ghost weightlessness discomfits him, he's learned to skitter the detached limb around with his fingers.

"Fuck kinda power, is that, anyway?" Jordan chuckles. The kind of power that got your ass killed, I wish I could say.

"Miss Irene says it works on other parts, too." Caspar blinks, and then his right eye pops out of his head.

"Oh, this is so odd." He shuts his left eye and peers around with his detached peeper. The inspector marvels at the body armor Bina can generate, and I do, too. My armor manifests unadorned and featureless. But when Jordan's helmet bleeds forth, it's with a wrought wolf's head of black iron atop her crown. Shit, Bina. You're showing me up in front of Caspar. Jordan discovers firsthand how gnarly acid breath tastes, and how fatiguing the system strain is.

After her second billowing exhalation, Caspar holds a hand up.

"You do another and you might not be okay to drive."

"Hell do you mean by that? I'll have you know my half-marathon time is augh, okay." Jordan takes a woozy step.

"Maybe you're right." He sits with her as she recovers in the driver's seat. They're quiet for a while and then they're talking about Wicketball and the Cardinals, then about Archbishop Tilliam again, then about the people they've killed.

"Ten," he says.

"One before I was a warlock, five when I came back, then the three templars and you." She takes a long pull from a water bottle.

"Fifty four," she says.

"Four warlocks, about a dozen sorcerers, and the rest were decimations." He wants to pat her on the shoulder or the back, but he isn't sure how appropriate that would be. He just says "Sorry," instead.

"I wasn't. Well, I was, and then I told myself it was all right. That I'd shriven them best as I could, and maybe they'd get an okay shake at the gate of Heaven. Told myself it was in the father's hands." She barks out a humorless laugh.

"Oops." He passes her the last third or so of his fruit leather. She inhales it.

"Do you want to get out of here?" He asks.

"Sooner we're in Pastornos, the sooner we can let them all out."

"Yep." She starts the car.

"Turn the Suzerain upside down and shake him till the key falls out, right?"

"My hope is we can just explain ourselves." She looks hard at him for a few seconds.

"You're serious," she declares.

"You're actually gonna try."

"He's a wise man."

"You must be dumb as a bag of rocks, Caspar," Jordan says. He grins.

"You used my right name that time, though."

"Shut up and buckle your seatbelt."