House of open wounds, p.30
House of Open Wounds, page 30
Jack drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time.” Hearing his own voice tremble. “It’s a big forbiddance. He’s very serious about it.”
She rested her chin on his shoulder. “Jack, I’m going to be frank with you. You’ve got your chief and I’ve got mine, you understand.”
He nodded, eyes still screwed shut so that he couldn’t see whatever expression she’d chosen to wear to fit the words.
“I am absolutely bound, by seal and contract, to do what he tells me. And you are constrained to follow your rules of your own will and choice.”
“It’s a sorry state of affairs,” he agreed.
“So I’m going to enchant you,” she explained. “And then your will and choice won’t be a factor, and I can get on with ruining your life like I’ve been told.”
“Okay.”
“For what it’s worth, which is very little. I’m sorry. I— what do you mean, ‘Okay’?”
Jack could feel a tightness in his chest, almost too tight to breathe around. “Just… all right. I mean, infernal wiles, isn’t it. Not like I can stop you.”
She caught his chin and twisted his head round, and at that point he couldn’t keep his eyes shut any longer. The expression he surprised on her face – or that she’d prepared in ambush – was puzzled concern. “Are you… all right?” For a moment he had the terrible thought that she’d offer to come back later, when he was feeling more priestly.
“Just—” he started, and then God came in.
The divine presence had His mouth open and the nutshell cup in His hand. Doubtless He was about to demand a further libation by way of offering. His veiny eyes almost popped out of His face.
“What the fuck,” quoth God, “is happening here?”
The maelstrom that coursed through Jack right then partook of embarrassment and horror and frustration in such outlandish proportions that he felt he’d invented an entirely new emotion. “Will you just – Will you – Can’t you knock?”
“Knock?” spat God, apoplectic. “Knock? Firstly, you slack-jawed lackwit, it’s a tent. Secondly, I am your God who does not need your damned permission to enter into your presence. Thirdly, I am still waiting for a fucking explanation as to just what in the ever-loving hell is going on here.”
Jack looked from Him to Caeleen. “I’m sorry. I’ve got – some theology’s come up and—”
“What’s that?” she asked, looking at God.
Some solid and reliable part of Jack’s world just fell away entirely, leaving him clinging to his understandings of the world by his fingernails.
“You can… see Him?”
“Wait, what?” demanded God, slightly slower on the uptake.
“What is that?” she repeated, staring at God with horrified fascination.
“That’s… God. You’re not supposed to be able to see him. Nobody is. Except me.” Jack turned from her back to his aghast deity. “Can demons see you?”
God spread his hands. “How should I know? Do I associate with filthy demons? I do not!”
“Would you not—”
“You’re objecting to me calling demons filthy?” God demanded. “Demon harlots, at that? Me, your God, and I can’t even talk down to an actual demon? She’s got to you that much already, has she?”
“Your God looks like a rat with a beard,” Caeleen said.
Jack’s eyes bugged. “Please don’t talk about God like that.”
“A rat that needs a bath, wearing a dishcloth,” she added.
“Is that bloody so?” God stormed up to her with clenched fists. “I will bloody smite you, harlot.”
“You will not,” Jack said. “You don’t even smite. You are literally the god of not smiting.” He looked at Caeleen again. “How do you see Him? There’ve been times even I couldn’t.” Blessed times. He pushed the thought back down.
He couldn’t quite tell what she meant, by the look she put on her face next. It wasn’t sultry or sly or the moue of fake hurt. Just a level, pragmatic look from a woman in a hard profession.
“I see him,” she said, “because he’s there.” And, before he could interrogate that, “We have to learn, when we are sold into our contracts, to see in the Lands Above. See, hear, speak, act. All the rules are different here. So we learn to see what is there, and ignore what is not. He is there. I see him. I see you, rat-god. I am here to take your priest away from you.”
Jack had thought the whole situation had reached a peak of humiliation, but God wasn’t done with him. The little divinity swaggered up to the demon and stood with His hands on His hips.
“Oh my,” He said. “I do hope you don’t mind being just a span late, dear heart, because you aren’t even the first.”
“Please don’t,” Jack said.
“He’s done this nonsense before,” God went on, arms out and looking around as though He had a whole audience He was rousing to a general condemnation of Jack’s morals. “Gone hiding under the skirts of some demon hussy the moment his religious duties got too much for him. That’s why he isn’t even my priest any more! Too good for me, he is! A parting of the ways, a recanting of faith by way of infernal harlotry. Because he was weak. He is weak. Too weak to be any priest of mine.”
“You’re not a priest?” Caeleen said slowly. “You have been nothing but vows and forbiddances since you ducked into this tent, and you’re not a priest?”
“I am not a priest,” Jack confirmed. “I was a priest. Then we had a falling out over the precise duties owed to the faithful by God. And I…”
“You fell!” God jabbed him with a bony finger.
Caeleen had a hand to her mouth. Her eyes glittered. “You’re not even a priest.”
“Well go tell that to your master, I suppose. The secret’s out.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Only if he asks me. I’ve no duty to tell him anything unprompted. He thinks he’s a good draftsman but there are gaps in his contracts he’s never thought of.” She leaned back on the bedroll. “Forbidden, is it?”
“You live your whole life by rules,” Jack said quietly. “And they get like bars, in your head. I just… It’s forbidden still, in here.” He tapped his temple. “Sorry. I wasn’t being straight with you.”
“I’m a demon,” she pointed out. “There’s no obligation.” A calculating look came to her. “So I can tell my master that… despite my best efforts I have been unable to break your vows or rob you of your powers.”
“I mean my actual vows… it’s like God says. I already went there. So it’s not really true.”
“It’s technically true,” Caeleen said. “Which satisfies the terms of my contract.” She met his eyes. “Of course, he’ll just send me back to try again.” A twitch of an eyebrow, an invitation.
“Absolutely under no circumstances,” fumed God.
“I’d like that,” Jack said. And then Caeleen pushed past him to leave the tent and he felt her breath – hot, infernal – on his cheek and her hand on his arm as she shifted him aside. And she was gone, and he let out what felt like the longest breath he’d ever had pent up inside him.
“I don’t mind saying,” God said, “that was a mite disconcerting. It’s never happened to me before.” And Jack had to bite off an appalled laugh at the thought that doubtless Caeleen had heard that one more than once.
“You’re not to associate with her kind any further, mind,” God added sternly.
“Demons or harlots?”
“Either!”
“I’m not your priest any more.” Jack suddenly rediscovered the ability to smile, really smile, and feel happy about it.
“I shall withdraw my healing power. I can kill you with a thought!” God warned him. “Your body is held together by nothing but my divine forbearance.”
“Go on then,” Jack said.
God threw up His hands. “She is a demon under the control of some bastard Pal conjurer who means you ill! What do you think you’re going to get out of this, exactly?”
Jack shrugged. “Well, you’re probably right,” he allowed.
He was still smiling when he ducked back out of the tent, whereupon someone shoved a bag full of something acrid over his head and the whole world went black.
Masty Absents
Masty, then. As noted, not his name. A foreigner, wearing the pale uniform of a second-class soldier, but wearing it well because he grew up in it. They tailored a tiny version of it for him when he was eight years old. Just Masty, formerly an underaged familiar of the camp, passed from hand to hand and Company to Company. Then an adolescent who’d known the army more than he’d known his own family. Striving to be useful, to earn his keep. Running messages, taking notes, organising schedules. Never fighting. There was a note on his card, from when he was just a kid, that he not be allowed to fight, and nobody ever thought to remove it when he was grown. And now, just Masty the orderly, most dependable member of the experimental hospital department. The man who was always there.
Masty, whose stock in trade was to be at everyone’s elbow the moment they needed something, and with that particular something being humbly proffered, was not there when they were kidnapping Maric Jack. By that point the general atmosphere of cheer around the department had risen to intolerable levels and he’d slipped away, unremarked. Because one advantage about always being where you’re needed is that nobody actually looks for you. He had the customary invisibility of one who is taken for granted.
Nocturnal walkabouts around the camp as a whole weren’t new to him. There was always something to see, something to do. Someone who needed another pair of hands. Growing up in the shadow of the Palleseen Sway, being useful had been his shield, then his habit, and at last just a way of breathing. Because the uniform got tight sometimes, even on someone as slender as Masty.
Tonight the camp would be no respite. He should have known. The rest of the army didn’t quite have the alcoholic bounty that bureaucratic oversight had given the hospital, but a cup of rummell each was being supplemented by cached supplies on a squad by squad basis. More important was the implicit permission. Uncle handing out the grog ration meant a licence to get a bit rowdy, to scrum and sing. Mother Semprellaime and the others of her old profession would be doing a fine trade tonight, alongside a solid amateur showing no doubt.
Masty wanted none of it. Not that he was either chaste or prudish, but it was awkward. Pals were a status-conscious people. A couple of troopers mashing anatomies wasn’t complicated, but when you invited rank into the equation it held the door open for awkwardness, power dynamics and abuse. And Masty wasn’t even just some foreigner who could conceivably have just sought out some youth in a similarly pallid uniform to offer a flower and a smile to. Masty was the kid who’d been brought into the army when he was seven, grown up there, become some unique hybrid thing. Which meant there was nobody like him, really. The one and only original Masty. Or whatever his name had once been.
Normally his best chance at a little release came when the department was given leave in some friendly port. And, technically, that would be theirs to enjoy in just a couple of days. Except he wouldn’t, not this time. Worst of all possible worlds. And so he walked, hunching his shoulders against the ribald calls, the whoops, the sound of some Cohort-Invigilator singing a Pal marching song comparing a variety of named officers to the arse ends of pack animals from across the world.
Actually, he stopped to listen to that one, because the singer was flat but the lyricist had been inspired, and Masty, more regular than the regulars, knew most of the individuals. He stood at the very edge of their firelight and mustered a bit of a smile, and felt better for it. And then left before anybody noticed him and either called him over or told him to go away.
It was a terrible thing to know that, while he liked the department, he very much preferred them in their usual state of grim misery and personal problems. That made him sound like a profoundly broken person. Which he was, but not in that way. It was just that he wasn’t very good at being happy. It wasn’t a life skill that being a foreign ward of an ideologically dictatorial military force taught you.
Then he was being hailed, as he crossed through the dark between two rows of tents. Dark, but of course the paler uniform of the Accessories always stood out, catching the slightest glimmer. We know you’re all sneaks, that uniform said. Sneak your way out of this.
He stood when addressed. The man who’d called was a stout, balding Cohort-Monitor not known to him. Bustling over, a half-cloak slung over his uniform jacket.
“You, Accessory! What’s your business here? Where are your papers?”
Masty blinked at that. Not what he was used to; certainly not what he expected tonight of all nights. He got out his dog-eared identification, the card with his essentials, the folded orders paper detailing his hospital duties. The Cohort-Monitor flicked open a hand-lamp, the tableth-powered glow spiking in Masty’s eyes.
“What in reason is an experimental hospital?” the man demanded. His lips had been moving as he read, which probably wasn’t a good sign. “You an experiment?”
“I’m an orderly, magister,” Masty explained.
“Orderly? Skulking around camp is hardly orderly,” the man spat. Masty forced a laugh, then bit it back because the man hadn’t been making a pun at all but had apparently never heard the word used as a job description.
“I help the medicos, magister,” he tried.
“Where’s your excursion permit?”
Masty blinked. “I’m sorry?”
A moment later he was sitting down because the man had shoved him hard in the chest.
“You will address me as ‘Magister’, Accessory. Where’s your excursion permit?”
“I… Magister. I wasn’t issued with one, magister. I don’t know what one is, magister.” He wasn’t sure what was going on. He seemed to have stepped out from the night of unwelcome but harmless celebration into a different situation entirely.
“No Accessory can just go on a jaunt through camp without a permit, and you know that damn well,” the Cohort-Monitor told him. “Looking to see if we’d left any unsecured possessions while we were in our cups, were you?”
“No, magister.”
“On your feet, Accessory! Do you think it’s appropriate to speak to a superior officer from the ground?”
“No, magister.” Masty scrambled up and the man lurched into him, a hand like a pincer of ham closing about his shoulder. The officer was drunk, he realised belatedly. Meanly, brutally drunk.
“You’re coming with me, sneak-thief. We’ll see what the duty Inquirer has to say about you.” Without warning the man was in motion, an inexorable momentum that dragged Masty in its wake. “How’s your back? Got room for more stripes or is it all scar-mail already?”
Masty tried protesting, which the Cohort-Monitor shook out of him in short order before dragging him deeper into camp. They ended up at a small tent where the worst-tempered woman in the world sat before a small desk. There were creatures in the world with a killing stare, Masty had heard. This woman could have looked right back down the line of their gaze and turned any one of them into dust.
“Tunly,” she said, in the manner of one describing a bowel ailment. “What now?”
“Found this little shit pilfering.”
“Magister, I was just walking.”
The Inquirer made a note. “Found him with his hand in a pocket?”
“As good as,” Cohort-Monitor Tunly said.
“Magister—”
Tunly shook him again and he bit his tongue. The Inquirer asked for his papers, and had to ask a second time because Masty’s head was still ringing. And then he didn’t have them because Tunly hadn’t given them back, and for a minute and a half’s pantomime Tunly could not find them either, and Masty was about to be reclassified from Accessory to Possible Spy. Then the documents turned up, crumpled in a pocket and stuck to something half-melted and nasty. The Inquirer took them fastidiously and unfolded them with the very tips of her fingers.
“You utter prick,” she said, after a second going-over aided by a pair of spectacles.
“I know,” Tunly agreed. “Nasty little piece of work.”
“You, Tunly. You are the prick,” the Inquirer told him flatly. “He’s not one of ours.”
Tunly swelled with pride and selective hearing. “You’re telling me I have secured an enemy agent?”
“He’s from Forthright Battalion, you twat,” the Inquirer told him. “He’s one of theirs.”
“Then why was he in our camp?”
The Inquirer massaged her forehead and Masty began to have an idea why she looked so very ill-tempered. “It’s a conjoined camp. There is no marked boundary between the Battalions, it’s just cheek by jowl out there. Something something not-wanting-to-foster-unhealthy-rivalries something, if I recall the justification. You’ve basically gone and grabbed one of their people and kidnapped him. Probably you were the one in the wrong camp, at that.”
“I was not!” Tunly insisted. “Megget, I caught him—”
“Sneaking,” the woman – Cohort-Inquirer Megget, apparently – cut him off. “Do you have any idea how much paperwork this is going to generate?”
“Discipline is more important,” declared Tunly in the manner of someone only peripherally connected with that paperwork.
“You a thief?” Megget asked Masty.
“No, magister. I’m a—”
“Didn’t ask what you were. So I have a Cohort-rank officer who says you’re a thief, and I have some sort of medical Accessory who says you’re not a thief but is likely to be biased towards you, on account of he’s you. And anyway, you Accessories always stick together.”
“And he didn’t have an excursion permit,” Tunly threw in.
“That’s because excursion permits are an invention of the Landwards Battalion Logistics Department who are specifically trying to inflame my writer’s cramp,” Megget snapped. “They don’t have them in Forthright. They don’t have them anywhere else but bloody here.”
