Post by marianne on Jan 9, 2008 1:58:09 GMT
The First Virtue: Book One of the Strickland Diaries
By Lynne Jamneck
Unpublished manuscript
Copyright ©2007 Lynne Jamneck
DO NOT DISTRIBUTE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR.
What are myths?
Folklore
What is folklore?
Stories
What are stories?
Who knows.
-- The Book of Lore
The Monarch spat forth from its belly the christening daylight and the sublime pallor of night,
and from his eyes, he reaped the stars.
And he looked at it and saw that it was neither good nor wicked.
-- The Book of Unveiling
Prologue
"Someone once said that humanity's first sin was faith."
The Radix called Morrag dragged long and hard on the moly root spliff. The smoke stroke his throat before bubbling in his lungs, soft and sinuous. He tried to ignore the voice that spoke so laconically behind him. From his perch on top of the Tour d'Ascension, he had a perfect view of the Lotus. The seventh ring of Juno City circled wide far below him. He could see everything clearly, even this far up. The elevated train appeared, bulleting into view silently from behind a row of tightly packed scrapers. Morrag watched the maglev snaked at near impossible angles along the city's spiderweb of tracks. He supposed the slick metal serpent had no real destination. He liked this. To sit and look. The towering buildings of Juno afforded him easy, hidden perches everywhere. Morrag admired human craft. He liked to think that he was part of it, that it could not exist without him and the others.
The voice at is back spoke again. "I say the first virtue was doubt."
Morrag kept still. Now he had company he did not want. Company he did not like. "Go away."
"Eventually. I suggest you stop acting looking for her."
"Go away, Mateo."
The other Radix sat down next to Morrag. "That is why you've been spending so much time here, isn't it?"
Morrag passed the moly leaf to the man next to him. Morrag knew Mateo was not there to taunt him, but was still annoyed by what he felt was one more lecture. How could he help it, ignore the feeling in his chest that something was wrong? Besides, she was as much part of him as she was of him. Who made the rules anyway? If he breached them, what consequence could be worse than what he felt now?
Mateo pulled the moly leaf deep inside his lungs and it made his eyes water. He swallowed deep and handed it back to Morrag. "What is it, what do you feel?"
Morrag crushed the leaf cigarette on the concrete. When he looked at Mateo there was understanding between. He suspected Mateo thought he was weak. Sometimes he thought the same. Other days he felt strength in what he was doing. What he had been doing secretly.
"She's broken. She's lost everything."
"Nothing you can do about it. Live your own life."
"What if it's my fault? What if I made her that way?"
Mateo took a match from his pocket, struck it and lit a cigarette. He stretched his wings, making a handful of the cream-coloured feathers float down toward the main drag and the cars, sixty stories below. He put a hand on Morrag's shoulder and sighed. "Not possible, brother. They made us. Not the other way around."
"And now all of us has to live with it."
Mateo gave the other Radix's shoulder a friendly punch. "Don’t be like that. Come on, what do they have, stinking cities that belch the spoils of their labour and a life castrated by the timely ruin of that shell they live in. We live forever! You should be happy, brother Morag. Have some more moly leaf."
Morag drew his wings close. Shoulders forward, he nudged toward the ledge of the giant tower. Mateo's spoke again but this time his words were stern.
"Don't think you're different just because she is. You are bound by the same rules as I. You interfere with her life Morag and there will be hell to pay. And the one who will end up paying is you."
But the Radix's words fell on deaf ears. Morag's mind was set. Somehow he had to make her find him, because if he could not, what Mateo had said would come to pass. He would burn, spinning on the axle of inevitability forever, and she would feel it but would not now the cause of her pain. And there he would stay forever, making her life a living nightmare, for no human had ever rescued its soul from hell.
****
CHAPTER 1
A Thousand Shades of Grey
What makes her in the wood so late,
A furlong from the castle gate?
Christabel – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
If I could, I would have stayed in bed. Kept my eyes closed. These days it seemed like the easier option. From the small window of my bedroom, I sensed impending sunlight. Rain would have suited me better. Being wet was the least of my problems.
I'd woken with a start and no memory of the dream that had distressed me into consciousness. After that, I found going back to sleep an undesirable prospect. As a substitute, I brewed a strong pot of coffee. By the time the machine squeezed the filtered liquid into the jug I could taste the bitter aroma against the roof of my mouth. For a moment it felt like I was back in the canteen, the City Guard district office, and my partner—ex partner—would come around the corner any second, bearing two cups and a really, awfully bad joke.
Knee-jerk reaction. Why do we always yearn to go back, to live in the past?
The coffee machine belched steam and I poured a cup, taking the coffee to the study down the short corridor. The apartment wasn't big, but it was mine. It was also dark, particularly in the early morning hours. The streets of the city were narrow and flanked with tall scrapers that broke off sunlight.
I moved my hand across the switchpad on the wall and the light went on, masking the study in the soft, Victorian tint I favoured. The desk against the far wall was big because I liked solid furniture. It took up space, but I'd managed to negotiate enough room between it and the book lined shelves covering the walls. I sat down in the somewhat bruised leather chair, took a sip of coffee, and picked up the nearest pile of papers.
"Let's see now…" I leafed through the assortment of envelopes, white, blue and brown. Then a red one; angry and demanding attention. I flicked it callously, annoyed, and it landed on the other side of the desk.
"Bills and more bills." I chucked the entire stack of envelopes in the waste paper basket. Impending bankruptcy demanded a certain degree of flippancy. What exactly was the way out of this situation? The legal way? Any day now, the Guard Consulate was going to let me know that my dismissal would not be an honorary one. No kind words of reassurance. No stipend until I could get back on my feet.
In the meantime, I needed money. The rent was overdue and the fridge empty. I ate too little and drank too much, of everything. All it did was make me jumpy, more anxious than need be. Yet, I couldn't seem to stomach the notion of food, either. I hoped the Consulate would speed up their decision and make it formal. I've never been the kind to like change but I hate uncertainty even more.
My fingers rapped rhythmically on the desktop, poised with indecision. I caught sight of the business card again. I had not thrown it away, of course. For the last two days, the ritual had been to try to convince myself that it wasn't there at all. Now the arguments in my head, the quiet, one-way reasoning appeared to be slipping away.
The man who had left it there, the thought of him made me nervous. His suit had looked too pressed, the corners too sharp. Like he never sat down. His shoes—too polished. Why had he left his name in my home, his presence for me to be tempted by? That was what I disliked him for most. I reached for the card. The lettering was gold and rich on the smooth, a white background.
W.S. Beaty
Moreover, never trust anyone who withholds their first name. Despite that, despite it all, the swirls of gold and the white made me reconsider, made me think of currency and how badly I needed it. The rent board wouldn't give a damn about my unemployment, and living on the streets off charity was not a noble thought.
There was a number underneath the name. I picked up the phone and dialled it.
Juno City was built on nuance, shadow and silhouettes. The Casting Circle was a district run by spellcrafters, hexes, shamans, soothsayers, fortunetellers, cantrip traders and whatever other manner of conjuror you could think of. It has been my home for five years.
When I had been a guardsman, I'd rented in the centre rings, closer to the guardhouses and governments. However, it's not a good place to live. Everything is too dazzling, too illusory. Politics smother. When I'd made the decision to move out to the eighth ring there was surprise amongst my co-workers. Some disapproved openly. The eighth ring is darker than most neighbourhoods but it feels safer. In addition, there's a certain communal solidarity implicated once you're seen as an outcast.
The Aldermen ruled the city. They revered technology. Magic and the arts of weaving were forbidden mostly, but there were exceptions. Even the Aldermen could not entirely quash the use of all magics. In the Casting Circle, the rules were most different of all. Here, there were even stranger forces at work than those of the Aldermen. For the most part, it was political; machines can be controlled, but magic had a way of making up its own rules. The Aldermen didn't like that. Some said they feared it. As for me, I was no weaver of spells. I was a foreigner nonetheless. Few knew where I'd come from, and that was how I liked it.
The morning was already taking a sharp twist toward noon when I left my apartment. The weather was playing havoc with the seasons again. If you believed weather science, then once again we were on a path to destroying ourselves. We probably never stopped.
I made sure to lock in fast the three deadbolts on the front door before walking out onto the main drag. There was the sudden pull of magnetism and a tight rush of wind above me as the maglev surged past. The train did not make many stops here. When it did, it took off again quickly.
Candle was in his usual serving square, on the sidewalk of a busy intersection, selling coffee from his metal-polished trailer. I gave a brisk nod when he saw me; immediately he started fussing with his equipment.
Seven years ago, I had saved Candle and his trailer from a gang of doped-up xenophobes. I was patrolling in the area. He'd been lucky, but a spate of attacks had followed, the outcomes of which had been less so. The continuing violence had forced the hand of the eighth ring council to pass a bill that condoned the use of street magic against racist attacks. Small things mostly—harmless cantrips and illusions, enough to afford a safe getaway. Truthfully, few Junonites really feared magic anymore, but there were always those who hated everything.
The Guard was lax when it came to patrolling the Casting Circle. Deployment throughout the inner rings were preferred. It was easier that way to attract the attention of the Aldermen and the ziggurat. On the day Candle was attacked, I was there because I'd been curious about the eighth ring, a region I had generally avoided because of stories I had heard from others. When I came upon them, the gang of
néo réformateurs were already into their fight good and solid. Candle was on the ground, there too many of them. He would never have been able to fight them off.
They fled when they saw me, because hate or no hate there is nothing a gang of unarmed zealots can do against a guardsmen's rifle. Many of the city gangs revered technology but they still grew skittish at the thought of the Aldermen. Arrests lead to trouble. 'Trouble' was doublespeak for 'government'. Urban myths that involved the disappearance of street trash were a dime a dozen. "Fed to the ziggurat," the old story goes.
Ever since I'd saved his skin, Candle insisted I never pay for my coffee. It's a brilliant gift, because Candle's coffee was the best blend in the eighth circle. Also, I could trust him to not put anything funny in my cup. Candle was a good man but he was young and a craftweaver. It was his nature to want to play with people. How many apprentice weavers had spent the night in the commons prison because they'd been found out at trickery? Truth serums in the food of political candidates, unlocking the secrets to home security systems, the hidden door key under the welcome mat. Thievery was as good a motive as any, but a weaver worth their salt rarely stooped to such a level. Usually, it was a personal effect they were after. Who knew when the time might come for swaying influence over those in powerful positions? Voodoo magic was a favourite pastime amongst less scrupulous craftmakers.
Candle passed me a steaming cup. It smelled rich, full and hot. "How's business?"
His focused eyes were intent. Before he could answer a man in a dark green trench and plug hat approached, fishing for currency in his pocket. Candle gave him a brisk nod and worked his machine. "It's good. People like coffee."
"Never seems to go out of style, does it?" I glanced at the man in green. His black hat drew a broad sidelong shadow across his face. His beard was trimmed and neat. Candle's normally twitchy body language seemed even more mantis-like than usual. I got the impression he was nervous. A kafuffle sounded from across the street. I turned to look and saw a woman clutching her handbag, her mouth wide open in an argument with a taxi driver. She would lose, I knew. The cabbies in this city were alligators. Back on my side of the street, the man in the coat was gone. Candle was looking out over the crowd. I wondered what it was he tried to see.
"Don't like that man," he stated.
"Who is he? I don't think I've ever seen him before."
Candle fished a rough-rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket. "Don't know. He started showing up a few weeks ago. Doesn't speak much. Has the smell and the look of government about him."
"Yeah. Not the type you usually see around here."
Cigarette smoke trailed hazily from the side of Candle's mouth. He said, "Is it just the coffee you want?"
I smiled. "How did you know?"
His lips formed an easy smile. "You look a little on edge, like you need more sleep. Any word from the Guard?"
I shook my head. "They like to take their time."
Another customer approached and Candle flushed the filternets on his coffee machine. The smell of cinnamon, moka and hot vanilla rose in the steam. I felt something brush my leg and looked down to see a black cat butting against my boots.
"It likes you," Candle said, crushing his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
I tried to ignore the cat. "It's probably hungry. Doesn't look like stray, though."
"I've seen it around. Apprentice hexes sometimes get annoyed with the constant observation of their familiars and boot them out the door. Then they end up wondering why they cannot remember their spells. Kids. They're stupid. No sense of tradition."
That made me laugh. No wonder I liked Candle. He spoke his mind, and more than not, I agreed with him. Fishing the flashy business card from my pocket, I gave it to Candle. He gave it no more than a perfunctory glance before handing it back.
"Heard of him?" I asked.
Candle shrugged. "Only in passing."
"And what's the passing opinion of Mr. Beaty?" I moved closer to the trailer window. The cat was still sniffing at my feet. "Candle, I'm running on empty. I need money." I laughed again. "Or you're going to have to make me a bed in that tiny trailer of yours."
He frowned at me then, the expression threatening a scowl. In the end, he sighed dramatically. "Oh fine, since you once saved my life and all."
I waited.
"I suppose he is well-known, in the right circles."
"What circles?"
"Theosophical, mostly. Chaos magic. Ever heard of the Order of the Yellow Sun?"
"No."
"You're probably better off."
"Noted. Now tell me."
Candle squared his lanky shoulders. "Let's just say Mr Beaty is very old. What I mean is that his spirit is old, his body is not."
"You mean he's a reincarnated core. Like the Pharisees believe?"
"Yes. At least, that's the theory."
"Theory's good. Practical is better." It seemed Candle was not particularly thrilled about the topic. His usually pale complexion was flushed with a pinkish glow. He seemed twitchy again, too, and his words had a measured quality. I always found it disconcerting when a spellmaker became hesitant on the topic of magics.
Candle asked, "What do you know about core rebirthing?"
"Honestly, not very much." I finished the coffee and slam-dunked the cup efficiently into a bin. The street traffic was getting heavier. Busses growled by with advertisements for AshBrooms at knockdown prices, and above ground, electronic tickertape snaked PentaCorp shares around the granite corners of scrapers. Soon, Candle would be too busy serving thirsty customers to talk at all. "All I know is I need to know something about him before I agree to work for him."
"Why?"
"Well—" I didn't have an answer. How long had I worked for the City Guard before I had started asking questions?
Candle asked, "If you know more about him, would you reconsider working for him?"
"Probably not."
The coffee maker man shrugged. He must not have cared. "It's quite natural for a person's core to be rebirthed. Plant, human, animal, mineral. What's not natural is for cores to continuously be rebirthed in the same shell—mineral to mineral, animal to animal or human to human."
"I'm going to guess and say that's what Mr Beaty has been doing."
Candle nodded quickly. "His spirit has been rebirthed since the mid twentieth century. He looks different every time, but he's still the same…man."
"I always thought rebirthing was a good thing."
"It's not a bad thing at all. But part of the process is to teach the core humility and the recognition of other forms. Being rebirthed in the same form repeatedly has an adverse effect. It confuses the core, turns it angry and twisted. There is no clean break from the thoughts and memories of the previous host, no separation. The core needs that severance from the previous host to assimilate the experiences of each life."
"Do you have any idea what he might want?"
"Beaty? None whatsoever. What exactly did he say to you?"
I cast my memory back. I thought I remembered the man in my doorway but now I only recalled a dark figure, a man painted by shadows, an inkblot on an otherwise sunny day. He had said he was looking for something. I'd rejected him almost immediately. Even I must have felt something then, something off. Something not quite right. "He didn't stay long. Kind of hovered near the door. Now that I think about it, I can't really say what he looked like."
"You've decided to accept his offer?"
By Lynne Jamneck
Unpublished manuscript
Copyright ©2007 Lynne Jamneck
DO NOT DISTRIBUTE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR.
What are myths?
Folklore
What is folklore?
Stories
What are stories?
Who knows.
-- The Book of Lore
The Monarch spat forth from its belly the christening daylight and the sublime pallor of night,
and from his eyes, he reaped the stars.
And he looked at it and saw that it was neither good nor wicked.
-- The Book of Unveiling
Prologue
"Someone once said that humanity's first sin was faith."
The Radix called Morrag dragged long and hard on the moly root spliff. The smoke stroke his throat before bubbling in his lungs, soft and sinuous. He tried to ignore the voice that spoke so laconically behind him. From his perch on top of the Tour d'Ascension, he had a perfect view of the Lotus. The seventh ring of Juno City circled wide far below him. He could see everything clearly, even this far up. The elevated train appeared, bulleting into view silently from behind a row of tightly packed scrapers. Morrag watched the maglev snaked at near impossible angles along the city's spiderweb of tracks. He supposed the slick metal serpent had no real destination. He liked this. To sit and look. The towering buildings of Juno afforded him easy, hidden perches everywhere. Morrag admired human craft. He liked to think that he was part of it, that it could not exist without him and the others.
The voice at is back spoke again. "I say the first virtue was doubt."
Morrag kept still. Now he had company he did not want. Company he did not like. "Go away."
"Eventually. I suggest you stop acting looking for her."
"Go away, Mateo."
The other Radix sat down next to Morrag. "That is why you've been spending so much time here, isn't it?"
Morrag passed the moly leaf to the man next to him. Morrag knew Mateo was not there to taunt him, but was still annoyed by what he felt was one more lecture. How could he help it, ignore the feeling in his chest that something was wrong? Besides, she was as much part of him as she was of him. Who made the rules anyway? If he breached them, what consequence could be worse than what he felt now?
Mateo pulled the moly leaf deep inside his lungs and it made his eyes water. He swallowed deep and handed it back to Morrag. "What is it, what do you feel?"
Morrag crushed the leaf cigarette on the concrete. When he looked at Mateo there was understanding between. He suspected Mateo thought he was weak. Sometimes he thought the same. Other days he felt strength in what he was doing. What he had been doing secretly.
"She's broken. She's lost everything."
"Nothing you can do about it. Live your own life."
"What if it's my fault? What if I made her that way?"
Mateo took a match from his pocket, struck it and lit a cigarette. He stretched his wings, making a handful of the cream-coloured feathers float down toward the main drag and the cars, sixty stories below. He put a hand on Morrag's shoulder and sighed. "Not possible, brother. They made us. Not the other way around."
"And now all of us has to live with it."
Mateo gave the other Radix's shoulder a friendly punch. "Don’t be like that. Come on, what do they have, stinking cities that belch the spoils of their labour and a life castrated by the timely ruin of that shell they live in. We live forever! You should be happy, brother Morag. Have some more moly leaf."
Morag drew his wings close. Shoulders forward, he nudged toward the ledge of the giant tower. Mateo's spoke again but this time his words were stern.
"Don't think you're different just because she is. You are bound by the same rules as I. You interfere with her life Morag and there will be hell to pay. And the one who will end up paying is you."
But the Radix's words fell on deaf ears. Morag's mind was set. Somehow he had to make her find him, because if he could not, what Mateo had said would come to pass. He would burn, spinning on the axle of inevitability forever, and she would feel it but would not now the cause of her pain. And there he would stay forever, making her life a living nightmare, for no human had ever rescued its soul from hell.
****
CHAPTER 1
A Thousand Shades of Grey
What makes her in the wood so late,
A furlong from the castle gate?
Christabel – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
If I could, I would have stayed in bed. Kept my eyes closed. These days it seemed like the easier option. From the small window of my bedroom, I sensed impending sunlight. Rain would have suited me better. Being wet was the least of my problems.
I'd woken with a start and no memory of the dream that had distressed me into consciousness. After that, I found going back to sleep an undesirable prospect. As a substitute, I brewed a strong pot of coffee. By the time the machine squeezed the filtered liquid into the jug I could taste the bitter aroma against the roof of my mouth. For a moment it felt like I was back in the canteen, the City Guard district office, and my partner—ex partner—would come around the corner any second, bearing two cups and a really, awfully bad joke.
Knee-jerk reaction. Why do we always yearn to go back, to live in the past?
The coffee machine belched steam and I poured a cup, taking the coffee to the study down the short corridor. The apartment wasn't big, but it was mine. It was also dark, particularly in the early morning hours. The streets of the city were narrow and flanked with tall scrapers that broke off sunlight.
I moved my hand across the switchpad on the wall and the light went on, masking the study in the soft, Victorian tint I favoured. The desk against the far wall was big because I liked solid furniture. It took up space, but I'd managed to negotiate enough room between it and the book lined shelves covering the walls. I sat down in the somewhat bruised leather chair, took a sip of coffee, and picked up the nearest pile of papers.
"Let's see now…" I leafed through the assortment of envelopes, white, blue and brown. Then a red one; angry and demanding attention. I flicked it callously, annoyed, and it landed on the other side of the desk.
"Bills and more bills." I chucked the entire stack of envelopes in the waste paper basket. Impending bankruptcy demanded a certain degree of flippancy. What exactly was the way out of this situation? The legal way? Any day now, the Guard Consulate was going to let me know that my dismissal would not be an honorary one. No kind words of reassurance. No stipend until I could get back on my feet.
In the meantime, I needed money. The rent was overdue and the fridge empty. I ate too little and drank too much, of everything. All it did was make me jumpy, more anxious than need be. Yet, I couldn't seem to stomach the notion of food, either. I hoped the Consulate would speed up their decision and make it formal. I've never been the kind to like change but I hate uncertainty even more.
My fingers rapped rhythmically on the desktop, poised with indecision. I caught sight of the business card again. I had not thrown it away, of course. For the last two days, the ritual had been to try to convince myself that it wasn't there at all. Now the arguments in my head, the quiet, one-way reasoning appeared to be slipping away.
The man who had left it there, the thought of him made me nervous. His suit had looked too pressed, the corners too sharp. Like he never sat down. His shoes—too polished. Why had he left his name in my home, his presence for me to be tempted by? That was what I disliked him for most. I reached for the card. The lettering was gold and rich on the smooth, a white background.
W.S. Beaty
Moreover, never trust anyone who withholds their first name. Despite that, despite it all, the swirls of gold and the white made me reconsider, made me think of currency and how badly I needed it. The rent board wouldn't give a damn about my unemployment, and living on the streets off charity was not a noble thought.
There was a number underneath the name. I picked up the phone and dialled it.
Juno City was built on nuance, shadow and silhouettes. The Casting Circle was a district run by spellcrafters, hexes, shamans, soothsayers, fortunetellers, cantrip traders and whatever other manner of conjuror you could think of. It has been my home for five years.
When I had been a guardsman, I'd rented in the centre rings, closer to the guardhouses and governments. However, it's not a good place to live. Everything is too dazzling, too illusory. Politics smother. When I'd made the decision to move out to the eighth ring there was surprise amongst my co-workers. Some disapproved openly. The eighth ring is darker than most neighbourhoods but it feels safer. In addition, there's a certain communal solidarity implicated once you're seen as an outcast.
The Aldermen ruled the city. They revered technology. Magic and the arts of weaving were forbidden mostly, but there were exceptions. Even the Aldermen could not entirely quash the use of all magics. In the Casting Circle, the rules were most different of all. Here, there were even stranger forces at work than those of the Aldermen. For the most part, it was political; machines can be controlled, but magic had a way of making up its own rules. The Aldermen didn't like that. Some said they feared it. As for me, I was no weaver of spells. I was a foreigner nonetheless. Few knew where I'd come from, and that was how I liked it.
The morning was already taking a sharp twist toward noon when I left my apartment. The weather was playing havoc with the seasons again. If you believed weather science, then once again we were on a path to destroying ourselves. We probably never stopped.
I made sure to lock in fast the three deadbolts on the front door before walking out onto the main drag. There was the sudden pull of magnetism and a tight rush of wind above me as the maglev surged past. The train did not make many stops here. When it did, it took off again quickly.
Candle was in his usual serving square, on the sidewalk of a busy intersection, selling coffee from his metal-polished trailer. I gave a brisk nod when he saw me; immediately he started fussing with his equipment.
Seven years ago, I had saved Candle and his trailer from a gang of doped-up xenophobes. I was patrolling in the area. He'd been lucky, but a spate of attacks had followed, the outcomes of which had been less so. The continuing violence had forced the hand of the eighth ring council to pass a bill that condoned the use of street magic against racist attacks. Small things mostly—harmless cantrips and illusions, enough to afford a safe getaway. Truthfully, few Junonites really feared magic anymore, but there were always those who hated everything.
The Guard was lax when it came to patrolling the Casting Circle. Deployment throughout the inner rings were preferred. It was easier that way to attract the attention of the Aldermen and the ziggurat. On the day Candle was attacked, I was there because I'd been curious about the eighth ring, a region I had generally avoided because of stories I had heard from others. When I came upon them, the gang of
néo réformateurs were already into their fight good and solid. Candle was on the ground, there too many of them. He would never have been able to fight them off.
They fled when they saw me, because hate or no hate there is nothing a gang of unarmed zealots can do against a guardsmen's rifle. Many of the city gangs revered technology but they still grew skittish at the thought of the Aldermen. Arrests lead to trouble. 'Trouble' was doublespeak for 'government'. Urban myths that involved the disappearance of street trash were a dime a dozen. "Fed to the ziggurat," the old story goes.
Ever since I'd saved his skin, Candle insisted I never pay for my coffee. It's a brilliant gift, because Candle's coffee was the best blend in the eighth circle. Also, I could trust him to not put anything funny in my cup. Candle was a good man but he was young and a craftweaver. It was his nature to want to play with people. How many apprentice weavers had spent the night in the commons prison because they'd been found out at trickery? Truth serums in the food of political candidates, unlocking the secrets to home security systems, the hidden door key under the welcome mat. Thievery was as good a motive as any, but a weaver worth their salt rarely stooped to such a level. Usually, it was a personal effect they were after. Who knew when the time might come for swaying influence over those in powerful positions? Voodoo magic was a favourite pastime amongst less scrupulous craftmakers.
Candle passed me a steaming cup. It smelled rich, full and hot. "How's business?"
His focused eyes were intent. Before he could answer a man in a dark green trench and plug hat approached, fishing for currency in his pocket. Candle gave him a brisk nod and worked his machine. "It's good. People like coffee."
"Never seems to go out of style, does it?" I glanced at the man in green. His black hat drew a broad sidelong shadow across his face. His beard was trimmed and neat. Candle's normally twitchy body language seemed even more mantis-like than usual. I got the impression he was nervous. A kafuffle sounded from across the street. I turned to look and saw a woman clutching her handbag, her mouth wide open in an argument with a taxi driver. She would lose, I knew. The cabbies in this city were alligators. Back on my side of the street, the man in the coat was gone. Candle was looking out over the crowd. I wondered what it was he tried to see.
"Don't like that man," he stated.
"Who is he? I don't think I've ever seen him before."
Candle fished a rough-rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket. "Don't know. He started showing up a few weeks ago. Doesn't speak much. Has the smell and the look of government about him."
"Yeah. Not the type you usually see around here."
Cigarette smoke trailed hazily from the side of Candle's mouth. He said, "Is it just the coffee you want?"
I smiled. "How did you know?"
His lips formed an easy smile. "You look a little on edge, like you need more sleep. Any word from the Guard?"
I shook my head. "They like to take their time."
Another customer approached and Candle flushed the filternets on his coffee machine. The smell of cinnamon, moka and hot vanilla rose in the steam. I felt something brush my leg and looked down to see a black cat butting against my boots.
"It likes you," Candle said, crushing his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
I tried to ignore the cat. "It's probably hungry. Doesn't look like stray, though."
"I've seen it around. Apprentice hexes sometimes get annoyed with the constant observation of their familiars and boot them out the door. Then they end up wondering why they cannot remember their spells. Kids. They're stupid. No sense of tradition."
That made me laugh. No wonder I liked Candle. He spoke his mind, and more than not, I agreed with him. Fishing the flashy business card from my pocket, I gave it to Candle. He gave it no more than a perfunctory glance before handing it back.
"Heard of him?" I asked.
Candle shrugged. "Only in passing."
"And what's the passing opinion of Mr. Beaty?" I moved closer to the trailer window. The cat was still sniffing at my feet. "Candle, I'm running on empty. I need money." I laughed again. "Or you're going to have to make me a bed in that tiny trailer of yours."
He frowned at me then, the expression threatening a scowl. In the end, he sighed dramatically. "Oh fine, since you once saved my life and all."
I waited.
"I suppose he is well-known, in the right circles."
"What circles?"
"Theosophical, mostly. Chaos magic. Ever heard of the Order of the Yellow Sun?"
"No."
"You're probably better off."
"Noted. Now tell me."
Candle squared his lanky shoulders. "Let's just say Mr Beaty is very old. What I mean is that his spirit is old, his body is not."
"You mean he's a reincarnated core. Like the Pharisees believe?"
"Yes. At least, that's the theory."
"Theory's good. Practical is better." It seemed Candle was not particularly thrilled about the topic. His usually pale complexion was flushed with a pinkish glow. He seemed twitchy again, too, and his words had a measured quality. I always found it disconcerting when a spellmaker became hesitant on the topic of magics.
Candle asked, "What do you know about core rebirthing?"
"Honestly, not very much." I finished the coffee and slam-dunked the cup efficiently into a bin. The street traffic was getting heavier. Busses growled by with advertisements for AshBrooms at knockdown prices, and above ground, electronic tickertape snaked PentaCorp shares around the granite corners of scrapers. Soon, Candle would be too busy serving thirsty customers to talk at all. "All I know is I need to know something about him before I agree to work for him."
"Why?"
"Well—" I didn't have an answer. How long had I worked for the City Guard before I had started asking questions?
Candle asked, "If you know more about him, would you reconsider working for him?"
"Probably not."
The coffee maker man shrugged. He must not have cared. "It's quite natural for a person's core to be rebirthed. Plant, human, animal, mineral. What's not natural is for cores to continuously be rebirthed in the same shell—mineral to mineral, animal to animal or human to human."
"I'm going to guess and say that's what Mr Beaty has been doing."
Candle nodded quickly. "His spirit has been rebirthed since the mid twentieth century. He looks different every time, but he's still the same…man."
"I always thought rebirthing was a good thing."
"It's not a bad thing at all. But part of the process is to teach the core humility and the recognition of other forms. Being rebirthed in the same form repeatedly has an adverse effect. It confuses the core, turns it angry and twisted. There is no clean break from the thoughts and memories of the previous host, no separation. The core needs that severance from the previous host to assimilate the experiences of each life."
"Do you have any idea what he might want?"
"Beaty? None whatsoever. What exactly did he say to you?"
I cast my memory back. I thought I remembered the man in my doorway but now I only recalled a dark figure, a man painted by shadows, an inkblot on an otherwise sunny day. He had said he was looking for something. I'd rejected him almost immediately. Even I must have felt something then, something off. Something not quite right. "He didn't stay long. Kind of hovered near the door. Now that I think about it, I can't really say what he looked like."
"You've decided to accept his offer?"