Chương 5: A hostage

We sit at a wiry cafe table, my warlock and I, overlooking a deconstructed historical fiction section. I've made tea. Rooibos is, as always, his choice.

"A Temple Inspector is coming to Rogarth." He carefully raises the chipped saucer and takes an exploratory sip.

"That's why my neighbors did what they did. You harbor a sorcerer, the punishment is collective." He shakes his head.

"I should never have strayed. I wanted to help so badly I ended up doing the opposite."

"You're not the one I'd point the finger at, Cas," I say.

"They literally dug their own graves."

"Putting the pointing aside, ma'am," Caspar says, "That inspector might be our opportunity." I swirl my matcha.

"Go on."

"If they arrive at Rogarth, it won't take them long to get the story from everyone's neighbors and friends, find the gallows, and discover what's happened," Caspar says.

"But if I intercept them, I can force them to turn around and take me to Chamchek. That's the closest Seat Temple. From there, it's an airship to Pastornos, and I find the Suzerain."

"Very nice, Caspar." I give him an appreciative pat on the head. He doesn't shy away, but he doesn't seem pleased. How odd.

"That's a good start. With certain modifications."

"What are you thinking?" He blows across the surface of his cup. I surreptitiously ratchet its temperature down a few degrees.

"No need to drag an inspector with you to Pastornos," I say.

"Just kill him and take his place." Caspar frowns.

"I don't have to do that. There's plenty of reasons for an inspector to be transporting a civilian."

"It's a complication to leave them alive, dude. Just take their papers and their temple cruiser. There's a spell I can teach you to change your face. It won't last long or stand up to close scrutiny, but with my magic and some guile, it'll get you at least as far as Chamchek, and it beats having to keep a hostage the whole way."

"You assume so quick it'll be a man?"

"Cas, you're talking about an agent for a religion called Pastornism, who's going to take you to the holy city of the Proud Father to speak with the Lord Suzerain. The what, the 400th Lord Suzerain?"

"431st."

"Has there ever been a Lady Suzerain?"

"There's lady inspectors," Caspar says, defensively.

"There's a few."

"Okay. Well, in the circumstance we get one of those, just kill her regardless and we'll figure out a plan B. The cruiser and the papers will keep us unbothered on the roadways, at least."

"I ask you to allow me to try it my way first," he says.

"And I'll kill if I must." I sigh and pace to the window. To my subtle satisfaction, Caspar's attention trails down the curve of my exposed shoulder, to where the dress cinches at my waist, then waterfalls over the small of my back. I can feel his curiosity at what's below the violet silk. He doesn't know just how burrowed into his brain I am, Or perhaps he guesses and can't resist, anyway. Well, Cas, enjoy it either way. I made it for you, after all.

"All right." I turn and make a show of smoothing the fabric at my sides, and he gets a glance—just a glance—at the curves I've honed beneath them. His Good Temple Boy programming kicks in and his attention snaps back to my face.

"It's your plan. You take the lead on it."

"I won't let you down," he says.

"I know. But." I snap my fingers and the wall shoots outward behind me as a cream-colored practice mat unrolls from its molding like a loosening tongue muscle.

"Before you wake, we'll have a look at that magic of yours." The dress melts and reconfigures into a tank top and drop-crotch joggers. The waving tendrils that make up my hair lash themselves into a tight ponytail. A chip of bone drops into my hand in the shape of a whistle.

"Finish your tea, warlock. It's time to show what you can do." Caspar puffs a laughing exhale.

"You really put on a show, huh?"

"Age has its perks." I click my tongue.

"Hop up." He obeys.

"You are the gateway of my magic into the world," I say.

"That means the spells you cast use your body as a focal point. Last time, I had the reins. In the future, I'm going to rely on you to cue me. The faster you can do that, the better. Now." I stomp and a chunk of the ceiling collapses. On the slab's inverse squats a stone gargoyle. I point at it.

"Melt that."

"How?"

"Breathe acid on it. Same way you fucked that guy's hand up." Caspar stands and pads onto the practice mat.

"How do I breathe acid?"

"How do you breathe air? Just do that. With acid." He inhales. I feel his cue like a spark of static electricity and let it twitch the reservoirs of corrosion deep within my bulk. He blows a cloud of corruption which liquefies the gargoyle's leer, fusing it into a gnarled fist of stone.

"Son of a bitch." He coughs and spits a fizzing wad of saliva to the floor.

"That tastes foul." I punch the air.

"First try! We'll make an eldritch abomination out of you yet. I love acid breath. A real standby. You've seen a few others. That claw, huh? You like?"

"No," he says, honestly.

"I can't say as I do. But it was useful."

"Well, you'll like this one." I mime a gun and the wound on his side opens up again. He clutches it and grimaces.

"Anything that doesn't kill you, you can fix. Go on." His teeth grit against the pain and the bizarre sensation as his flesh wriggles and seals.

"By the Fath—" He catches himself.

"These spells of yours. Such weird sensations."

"Literally skincrawling, eh?" I knew he'd be good at this part. At his clinic, he employed minor works of hedge magic to draw away pain or disinfect or staunch bleeding. The training-wheels version of my magic. One reason I chose him.

"What you'll really have to train is your endurance. We only got three spells off yesterday. A fourth would have put you out like a light. Make time for practice when you can. Think of it as resistance training. Your body will adapt." He looks around the training area, notes that the hole in the ceiling has patched itself and shines slightly, like scar tissue.

"Do we keep going, then?" Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

"No reason to. It's your body back on Diamante that we have to condition."

"Then why the mat?"

"We're going to get some practice in with that claw of yours."

"What—" I blow the whistle. A glistening, shrieking humanoid bubbles glutinously up from the practice mat, a blobby clay nightmare, faceless and frantic. It tackles him squawking to the ground. He rolls over into a mount and pins its arms in place.

"Claw, Cas!" I call.

"Summon my shit!" He lashes his arm out and the hardened bone slats into place. He impales my homunculus through the jaw. I click a silver clicker as Caspar staggers to his feet.

"Warn me next—" Two more trills from the whistle. Two more howling assailants. He tears one of them open; the other bears him once more onto the mat.

"Fuck's sake," he snarls as they roll and thrash.

"Onward, warlock!" I tweet an additional beast into being.

"Twelve more of these little bastards and we're done with our first set!" The tuning cicadas, the plaintive croon of a mourning dove. The dappled light reflecting in the glassy eye of a deer as it noses against the rear door. The caroming crash of its flight into the forest when Caspar jolts awake. His hand is clasped to his ribs, where the bullet tore past him. He gingerly removes his palm and it sticks to the dressing where he bled through.

He traps his tongue between his teeth and there's that squirming wrongness again as his flesh sterilizes and seals itself. The strain meets his woozy morning brain and brews itself into a dizzy spell; he sits back in the fake leather seat of the sedan and waits for it to pass. Then he removes the bent screwdriver from the glove compartment and presses its tip diagonally to the broken driver's door. He wants to try something. He gives it a sharp tap with his palm and it drives itself halfway into the metal.

Another blow and it's speared itself through the frame, pinning the door shut.

"Well, I'll be," he murmurs. I'll be what, exactly? He glances at his forearm. It's no thicker or stranger than before. Is he still human? Does this still count as human? He shakes the redness out of his palm and turns the key in the ignition. He has his task. His first stop is Altarwood River. He proposed to Vesta here, the morning he received his departure orders. Remembering it now, he feels thrice over a fool. The Father was gone by then. An empty throne. His duty should have been to her, not to Him.

He strips down. There's a pale pucker on his side where the bullet took him. Another landmark on the map of his shitty decisions. He plunges into the water, swimming against the current until his arms burn and the filth of his rebirth is as scrubbed away as it'll get without soap. He climbs onto the bank and lets the sun dry him while he pops the trunk and examines the dead men's workwear. Nothing in his size, really. Caspar has always been self-conscious of his heft.

He was an overweight kid—Chunky Caspar, they called him—and while bootcamp transformed that fluff into muscle, he's never truly felt comfortable in his body. And that was before it spat acid. He makes do with charcoal dress pants and a crisp service button-up, sleeves rolled up and front partially open so it doesn't pinch so much in the shoulders. He catches his reflection in the side mirror. Looking like an overgrown toddler, Cartwright, he thinks.

(It's my opinion that he's looking very fetching, but he can't hear me.) He leaves his ruined burial clothes on the riverbank. He digs into his chore coat pocket and pulls his charm braid out from it, runs his thumb across the wooden saint icons strung together. Bianca of the Builders, Drusus of the Sword, Deborah of the Field. The faces of his childhood, of his worship. He wound his hands with this every night as he prayed. The Father is dead. He reminds himself.

The Father is dead and he's working for His killer. He takes the thing with him anyway. One final tether to his old life he isn't yet willing to sever. He returns to the sedan, remembers he's spiked the driver side shut, and scoots across its divider to reach the steering wheel. Let's see, now. The inspector is coming from Chamchek, so the likeliest route is off Exit 12-Votive. Caspar drove this journey many times when his unit was stationed there. There's a rest stop within sight of the exit.

Gas station, chapel, teashop, SnappyMart. He parks his sedan so the dings and the gleaming screwdriver tip are facing away from the roadside. He considers crossing the street and picking up some supplies, but his fear of missing the inspector glues him to his seat. After a half hour, he can't ignore his stomach. He picks up jerky, fruit leather, and a road map from the SnappyMart.

He considers first aid supplies and then remembers the tricks I've taught him; he spends the crowns on a lighter and a grubby cup of black tea instead. Should he be concerned about witnesses? The bored teenage pilgrim working at the teahouse barely looks up from her chapbook. Caspar eats fretfully in his stolen car. He does not think he's cut out for this existence. He is not a good fugitive. Irene has made a mistake, he thinks. He wonders about my real name, my real form, my real motivation.

He wonders whether those men I showed him are really the same ones he killed, or more of my creations to deceive him. He wonders why I'm acting like his friend. He wonders if I watch him bathe (I do) or pee (only once. I was curious, okay?). He wonders, after an idle hour of waiting, about my dress. I don't look how Bina looks. Is it an attempt at controlling him? (That is one reason, yes.) So involved he is in his fathoming of the unfathomable that when the temple cruiser pulls into the gas station, it scares the jerky out of his hand. It's an unmistakable vehicle. Gold and pearl with the seal of the Suzerain on the hood. Every kid with even a spot of grease behind their ear dreams of growing up and driving one. Muscular and vintage on the outside, sleek and modern on the inside.

The door swings out and Caspar beholds the charm braid hanging from the rearview, the carved images of a line of smiling suzerains. A stitched leather riding boot taps onto the tarmacadam and the driver swings out with cocky ease. It's a good thing Caspar isn't one to rub things in because he absolutely called it. This inspector's a woman. Tall and strapping in sleek pinstripe black, with a curtain of box braids and a pair of brass-fitted sunglasses.

She adjusts one star-shaped cufflink and strides toward the SnappyMart. The proprietor is quick out the screen door, kneeling and scraping.

"Madame Inspector. What an honor. Please, please. Anything we can do."

"All right, fella. None of that." She pulls him to his feet and dusts his shoulder off.

"I'm just here for fuel and carbohydrates. Is the padre in?"

"He's on lunch. I could call him—""No need, brother mine." She rests a hand on his back and steers him back into the SnappyMart.

"I can shrift myself. Perks of the gig." Caspar breathes in for four and out for eight. Then he opens the glove compartment and removes Edgar's revolver from it. He slots it full of slugs and stuffs it into a utility belt, tucking it halfway into a snap pouch. It's no holster and he's no gunslinger. But Father willing, this'll be quick and simple. The inspector emerges from the mart with her hand in a bag of potato chips. Her. 45 bumps against her hip as she drops a quick curtsey to the SnappyMart guy.

She sees Caspar crossing the street, gives him a nod.

"Brother." He bobs his head.

"Madame Inspector." She saunters to the chapel. It's a boxy little one-room job, its saints and icons injection molded and chipped. She shoulders the double door in. Caspar waits for a ten-count and then follows.

"Turn your eye to me, Father." The inspector's knees rest on an orison pillow. Her hands are clasped around her removed sunglasses.

"Close your hands around my heart that I might remember my duty and cleave not from you. Clarify my wrath and let it be made justice in your sight. Watch over Miria and Klaus. And this is low on the list, but if you got any benediction left for me, let the Chamchek Cardinals smash the Pitbulls tonight." She moves to stand. Caspar clicks the hammer back on his revolver and places it between her shoulder blades.

"Hands on your head, please, Madame Inspector." She freezes. Then she slowly raises her manicured hands and does what he says. Caspar takes a few steps back.

"Unbuckle your gun and put it on the floor."

"Is this something we can discuss, brother?" She places her gun on the ground.

"Do we know each other?"

"Stand up and slide it back with your foot." She obeys. Her pistol is black and compact.

"Walk out of the chapel and back to your car. Slow and casual." She turns. Her eyes are slivery blue as she surveys him.

"Are you from around here, brother?" she asks.

"I'm sorry, inspector." He fights to keep the revolver steady.

"Ain't going to work like that. Move, please." She stalks outside and he follows her to the cruiser. She fishes her keys out with exaggerated care and unlocks her car.

"This needs gas."

"Not from here. Take a seat and open the back." She ensconces herself at the wood-paneled dash and sweeps the rear door open. Caspar slides inside.

"Let's go." Her eyes meet his in the decorated rearview. The charm braid flutters.

"You buckled up?"

"Go." The inspector's wheels purr into action. The temple cruiser rolls out of the gas station. I lean forward on my chaise and watch my warlock's white knuckles against his stolen pistol.

"All right, Cas," I murmur.

"Let's find out if I told you so."