8:1
A barge, heavy with cargo, made its way along the canal, drawn by the mailette tied to its mast which was attached to the harnesses of two draft horses who were making their way along the cobbled road on the far side of the canal. It would have been more efficient, perhaps, to use a tug boat to pull the barge, but with the heavy flow of water from the sea and the steady current of the canal came large, unpredictable surges of Magick. So, shipping and import/export remained largely preindustrial endeavors.
There had been some to speculate on “Magick resistant” ship engines. The ships such engines were put into now rested on the ocean floor, a draw to industrious treasure hunters who plumbed the depths to recover the cargoes lost to the hubris of those who gambled on Null Technology.
Easy access to Magick made shipping and dockside labor tempting for Magickers. Ben would say at least eighty percent of his crew could do Magick of some kind. He wasn’t opposed to hiring Nulls, but not many applied for jobs that, in essence, hearkened back to different times. If a person could work somewhere with electricity, computers, and all the other conveniences the modern world offered, most of the time they picked that. Ben knew, had he the option, he probably would himself. But, again, he would sooner cut off his left nut than give up his Magick so that speculation was not something he entertained.
Up-canal Ben could make out the masts of seafaring ships entering and leaving port. He imagined he could hear the cries of workers offloading cargo. Smell the stink of fish from the fishing boats. Feel salt caking his skin, deposited by the harsh winds that were so necessary for sailing ships. He’d been one of those workers once, breaking his back to earn the money to make those first investments that lead eventually to this place. Years ago his first warehouse had been right on the docks and between that and that early backbreaking work the sounds of dockside work were forever embedded in his memory.
He preferred the location of his newer offices situated over the canal and distant enough from the docks that the smell and the sound were just echoes on the wind and memory. It was no real effort to have his goods transferred from his ships to his canal boats and pulled up canal by horses and the canal, with its clear entry and exit points, was far easier to secure than the wide open dock locations. He’d spent many a night up in that first warehouse, protecting his property with Magick, steel, and fists, Ivan by his side.
Yep, he thought as he cast his gaze over the canal and drew from the swirl of Magick churned up by its current, besides having more time to spend with his friend who was now all “selectman this” and “selectman that”, Ben did not miss that life.
The Magick settled into his bones, filling up the empty spaces that still ached seven days after Kim had drained him. The thought of it, of being gutted of his Magick, lying there emptier than nights waiting for his ma to return, settled in his gut like a fist. He tightened his jaw and focused on the canal boat, forcing himself into a calm place where there was just slow moving horses, slow moving current, slow moving boat moving slowly down the canal with its heavy cargo of treasures headed for the warehouse below.
The view and the calm he could draw from it made the cost of the ceiling to floor casement windows mostly worth it. Being able to swing them open and breath in the canal air, the zing of Magick a base note to the stagnant sulfur of digesting plankton, a hint of iodine, and the smell of seaweed pheromones releasing the scent that most people associated with the sea had no price. Just like those pheromones produced by seaweed eggs attracted seaweed jizz, the Magick churned up by the moving water of the canal drew Magickers like, well, pheromones drew jizz. It certainly drew Ben. Had since he’d been a threadbare kid, knees drawn up to his chest, huddling under a bridge when his ma would send him out of their shack so she could entertain ‘friends’.
Hands clasped behind his back Ben swept his gaze over the canal, a bloodhound hunting trouble. Finding none, for the moment, he turned his back to the window and looked at the large office with its mahogany desk, high-backed leather chair, and the goods from around the world lining the shelves rimming the three walls free of window.
Gold urns glimmered, subtle and rich, the precious stones encrusting them dark pockets of opulence in the rich metal. The cream surfaces of ivory statues absorbed the light of the chandelier, the trick of the light picking them out from the shadows that pooled on the shelves. Brass bells from foreign markets, their chime forming images of winding narrow streets with high stone walls and heavy air pierced by carillon’s call, sat beside elaborately carved sandalwood boxes that when opened released a heady aroma. Mounds of gems gleamed from several opened boxes from which spills of jewelry tempted the hands and made the fingers itch to lift them. Glass cases held playing cards, each set showing one reversed to display the blank backs that spoke of age next to the court cards of the suit of spades, each hand-painted and gilded face more gorgeous than the next. Triptychs with hinged gold frames opened to reveal exquisite portraits of saints and nobles wrought in dark paint and gold leaf. A genie’s trove of wealth and riches, bounty tumbled layers calling fingers to riffle it.
Not bad for a kid who used to huddle under the bridge arching over the canal to get out of the wind nights his moms had visitors, who didn’t know who his daddy was only it wasn’t the same guy as his brother’s. His brother. From long practice Ben shook off memories of Chris, focusing on all he’d gained rather than the most precious thing he’d lost.
Now some people might point at the means of his revenue stream and sneer, shining a light into the shadowy corners of his world. But, like he gave a shit. The people he knew, who knew what he was and liked him anyways, sure didn’t. Those others? Screw ’em.
It was that whole “those that mind don’t matter; those that matter don’t mind” thing. What? He read. Or at least listened to people who did. Well, listened to Dan. It counted.
Ben turned around at the sound of the door latch, relaxing when his foreman, Sven, ducked his head to avoid the door frame as he stepped into the office. Tall and broad with forearms like oaks and thick fingers crossed with scars of countless mostly forgotten nicks and cuts, Sven was a caricature of a dock worker. Many people would look at him and think ‘big and slow’ or maybe they’d jokingly say ‘he picked things up and put them down’. But that was the people who didn’t look into his eyes and see the keen intelligence lurking in the blue depths. And it was most definitely the people who had never seen the immaculate records he kept in various ledgers, some meant for consumption of excise and custom officers, others meant for his and Ben’s eyes alone.
The large man’s blond hair shone stark against the dark shelves and their treasures as he took a sidestep into the room and crossed his massive arms.
“Someone here to see you.”
When Sven didn’t expand, Ben walked around the desk and rested his hip on the edge. “They got an appointment?”
Sven looked at Ben. Ben looked at Sven. It was a toss up which of them snickered first, but in a second they were both laughing. Ben grinned. “Who is it?”
“Don Franco Rossi.”
Ben blinked. Once. Twice. Three times, giving himself time to digest. This was big. Like “Release the Kraken!” big. Don Franco Rossi didn’t visit people. They visited him. And often that was not their choice. Damn. Made sense now why Sven came to him direct and didn’t send someone with the message. “Damn, bruh, let him in.”
Ben pulled at his pant legs, straightening them over his thighs. He considered getting up and going to sit behind the desk. Would that give him so gravitas? Did he want gravitas? Was that the impression he wanted to make to the man to who sat at the top of the org chart of organized crime in the region – had they an org chart.
Ugh! His brain was so going all over the place. That’s what you get when one of the people you admired, who maybe you could admit to trying to pattern yourself after, came knocking on your door. Something like a giddy giggle – though of course a man in his position never giggled, giddy or not – pulsed behind his breastbone. As a knock sounded on the door, he tightened his jaw to just below the point of grinding his teeth, then crossed his arms over his chest and stretched his legs out in front of him, striking a nonchalant pose.
Sven entered first, announcing in his low rumble, “Don Franco Rossi,” before pushing the door fully open and stepping back to let Don Franco enter the office. Ben forced his shoulders to relax, shifting his crossed arms slightly, as Don Franco strode past Sven.
Don Franco wore a three-piece suit, black, with a black on grey patterned tie cinching the neck of the crisp white shirt under. Ben would bet the suit was bespoke, it had that look, and probably cost around seven thousand. Maybe upwards to ten. For a man like Don Franco that might not be pocket change, but his maid probably cleaned more than that off his bed stand. The slightly wild gray on white beard, thick, a bit long, with a wave to it obscuring his lower jaw, better suited, perhaps, for the aging leader of an MC, contrasted with the tailored perfection of the suit. That beard said this man did not give two fucks for what passed for society’s concept of proper grooming. Don Franco’s white hair, pushed back from his forehead to reveal a slight widow’s peak, was thick, wavy, and brushed his collar in the back. Like the lion whose mane Don Franco’s hair reminded Ben of, there was a predatory intensity to the dark gaze Don Franco leveled on Ben.
The first time Ben met Don Franco, shortly after he’d acquired his first warehouse down on the docks, Ben had almost wet himself under that stare. Since that time Ben had built up an immunity to the look which let him meet Don Franco’s stare without flinching.
Ben lifted his chin in a subtle nod. “Don Franco.”
“Ben.”
There was a scuffling in the hall. Ben shifted his attention to where Sven stood in the door, effectively blocking the entry of Don Franco’s associates. Don Franco turned as well. Noting Sven’s presence in the doorway, he lifted his voice, “You can stay in the hall Tony. You too, Peter.”
“Yes, Don Franco.” The reply came from behind Sven who wasn’t showing any signs of moving. A fact he showed by crossing his arms over his chest and bracing his legs. Ben lifted his brows and suppressed the smile twitching at his lips. “Sven?”
“Yeah?”
“You got somewhere else to be?”
Sven made a show of looking over his shoulder, then turned back around. “Nope.”
Ben gave Don Franco a look like “what ya gonna do?”, then shrugged and indicated the chairs in front of the desk with a jerk of his chin. “Seat?”
Don Franco eyed the seats, nice leather club chairs Ben had selected because they looked great and sat horribly. It was fun to sit back in his far more comfortable wing-back, behind the large sweep of his desk, and watch visitors either shift uncomfortably in the things or pretend like they didn’t notice the discomfort. Winning a negotiation was all about the little things that gave a guy the upper-hand.
Giving the chairs a dismissive look, Don Franco walked around Ben’s desk, pulled out Ben’s comfortable and empowering wing-back, and took a seat.
Well, all right then. Guess he was showed. Rather than taking one of the club chairs, Ben stood and ambled over to lean against a shelf of treasures with his arms crossed and his expression saying “look at what I got”. He trusted the treasures framing him furthered that point.
Don Franco propped his elbows on the arms of Ben’s chair and steepled his fingers over his vest. The tap of fingertip to fingertip suggested he was not as relaxed as his posture suggested. Interesting.
Without preamble, Don Franco said, “One of my guys went missing. I’ve been told you might be the guy to talk to about finding him.”
His voice was just as you’d expect. Low. Commanding. A lion’s grumble to go with the mane of his hair. Again, first time Ben had heard it he’d been damn impressed. He might even, only to himself mind you, admit that maybe he might possibly try to replicate the man’s slow, measured tones when he himself did business.
“You got the wrong guy. I’m in import-export,” Ben swept a hand to encompass the office, the wide window behind Don Franco that looked out on the canal, and the docks beyond, “not private investigation.”
“I hear you are the guy. For this.” Don Franco reached into the pocket of his jacket, and pulled out some papers and tossed them on Ben’s desk. Because, fuck, why would he hand it to Ben when tossing it was that much more dramatic. Ben was caught between an eye-roll and a slow-clap for a response. He did neither, instead waiting a solid five seconds to show who was in control before strolling over to his desk and picking up the papers.
He started off giving them a cursory look, like he didn’t give two shits what was on them. Soon as he saw the name, Gryphon, followed by what was becoming a pretty familiar sounding narrative he made a real effort to keep his breathing steady and his eyes relaxed so as not to let his expression give a single thing away.
Rather than give Don Franco any indication the papers meant crap to him, he shifted his attention back to the start and read in an even, flat tone,
“Gryphon. Gryf checks the piece of paper in his hand, looks up at the red brick building in front of him. He’s not sure why he’s looking at the paper; it’s not like he didn’t immediately recognize the name of his old philosophy professor, Samuele Bianchi, or the location of the school he’d been kicked out of the moment Don Franco gave him the note to collect on.”
Putting the papers down on the desk, Ben went for a nonchalant shrug as he met Don Franco’s intent gaze. He shoved his hands into his pockets and slowly walked over to look at a shadow-boxed set of cards on the nearest shelf. His heart beat real fast, surging against his rib cage. Possibilities tripped through his mind, faster than his heart beat. After a sufficient time had passed, giving him the time to even out his heartrate and also settle on the best play for the situation, Ben turned to look at Don Franco.
“I could maybe help with this,” he shrugged to indicate how little it mattered, “But if I do your guys stop hassling my pilots and crews.”
“For this?” Don Franco sat back, all comfortable in Ben’s chair, shot his cuffs, got his negotiation on. “It’s not that big a thing.”
“You wouldn’t have come to me if it wasn’t.” Ben settled his shoulders back against the shelf, dug his hands deep in his pants pockets. “What’s so special about this guy?”
“I knew his uncle. Said I’d look out for him.”
Ben raised his brows, gave the papers in front of Don Franco a significant look. “Way to look out.”
Don Franco braced his elbows on the arms of the chair, steepled his fingers in the region of his natty tie. “I’m not giving up the revenue stream you provide my organization. It would look bad to the other businesses we support.”
Ben nodded, like he understood the difficulty Don Franco would face in appearing to give deals to a guy of Ben’s less than stellar standing in the local organizational structure. Truth? He kinda did. Another truth? He didn’t care. He was not letting this opportunity go. Sure, there was no way in fuck he brought these papers to his friends and they didn’t investigate, but Don Franco didn’t need to know that.
“I find your guy. Until I do its status quo. After, your guys stop pressuring my guys and I give you a yearly gift in appreciation for keeping the docks safe.”
Don Franco tapped his fingertips together. “That might be acceptable. How big a gift?”
“Five percent.”
“We’re getting fifteen now.”
Ben lifted his brows. “You want to find your guy?”
Don Franco stayed quiet, staring Ben down. Ben stared right back at the guy who had been the template on which he’d built the persona he adopted when he got into business and he didn’t flinch. Don Franco stared. Ben stared. The moment stretched. When it was right at that fine place where a fiber of glass, spun out to its fullest, would snap with a tap, Ben lifted his chin and his brows again, a visual shrug that reflected in his words.
“My guess is you’ve already tried to find him and your people can’t do it. How long has he been gone?”
“Five days.”
Ben did the math in his head, counting back the seven days since they recovered Kim. Their enemies were moving fast. And, if this Gryphon was muscle for Don Franco, then they also had some resources behind him. Someone Don Franco cared enough to look for himself? Yeah, that was a guy that wasn’t an easy grab.
“Hmmm.” Ben made a big show of settling himself against the bookshelf. “So, my people offer a special service. Its an expensive one. Lots of risk. Expenses will be incurred. Its worth the loss of ten percent for the next, let’s say, five years. In that time maybe I have another service I can offer you and we renegotiate.”
The look Don Franco leveled Ben with was equal parts canny and assessing. He also did the draw the moment out ’til it broke thing before lowering his hands to the desk. “I can work with that. But it only goes into effect if you get my guy.”
“When,” Ben projected confidence. “When we find him.”
*
It tasted like something had curled up and died in her mouth. And not like something pretty and sweet, if it was possible for something that curled up and died to be sweet. No, this was full on carrion-bird buffet time, all swollen and black and set to burst releasing a world of stink into the universe. The lips she opened to smack or curl or, well possibly crawl straight off her face in retreat from that stink, cracked, adding the distinctive high tight sharp taste of blood to the mixology going on in her mouth.
Blech.
It took some effort but she managed to lift her leaden lids a solid, oh, sixteenth of an inch by means of a lot of forehead twitching and nose scrunching, allowing her to get a veiled look around her through the haze of her long lashes. The first thing she saw was it was light. That was new. And good. Next, she appeared to be in a bed. Judging by the black cotton sheets pulled up to her chest she’d hazard a guess it was her bed. Good. Real good. Unexpected even. And something was weighing down her lower legs so she couldn’t move them, should she have the urge to do so which, at the moment, she was strongly without urge to do. Another effort and her lids lifted enough so she could vaguely make out the shape of whatever it was weighing on her legs. A haze of sparks and heat told her the rest.
“Hey, you,” she croaked out, dry throat burning fierce as she forced the words free of it.
The words were low. Real low. Ridiculously low. But they seemed enough to carry to the fire coyote plonked over the base of the bed with its head on her shins and its legs stretched to cover her knees with paws the size of salad plates.
At the sound of her cracked whisper it lifted its head slightly to give her an assessing look from eyes that were the white hot heart of flame standing out stark in the cracked lava surface of what could be poetically referred to as its furry face. You know, if fur was made of cooled lava. Which, yeah, it wasn’t. But the rippled surface was the closest fire could seem to get to replicating fur and Kim, herself, was damned glad it had finally managed to settle on this form rather than the flexing, fluctuating, unformed cloud of heat and destruction that had first made itself her acquaintance when she was too darned young to know “fire bad, don’t touch”.
Pretty much she figured she was to blame (or thank) for the vaguely dog, wolf, coyote shape, seeing as at the time of their first acquaintance, when fire was looking for a form that would be pleasing to her six-year old self, she’d been in want of a puppy. Fire had gone into her head, or the universe or whatever it did, to find an image and this was what it came up with. It had refined it a little over the years, its features becoming more refined, more mature as she did, spawning more of itself, forming a pack for a child that desperately needed one. Prolly with other Magickers who worked with the elements Fire might appear to them in other ways. Maybe cool, sexy, high fantasy glorious creatures from myth and legends ways. But, then, most Magickers hadn’t opened themselves to a relationship with elemental creatures at the age Kim had. They likely hadn’t needed to.
Fire had been her first friend. It seemed only fitting it would be the one to greet her when she woke from… Huh.
“How long have I been out?” she whisper-croaked, projecting the question on a thread of Magick in the way she communicated with the elements to twine with the words as she focused on the fire manifestation at her feet.
Fire just looked at her with those intense eyes. Made sense. Time held no real meaning for an element of nature.
“Did you get them?”
A series of images flashed in a flurry through Kim’s mind, indistinct glimpses of a swirl of colors and shadows the heat map vision Fire saw the world through made harder to discern by the addition of speed and movement. A feeling of frustration, a burst of intense heat, burst a nova from a dark core that would have overwhelmed Kim’s mind had she not developed a certain mental defense over the years against Fire’s passions. As if to punctuate the mind blast, Fire harrumped, releasing a short burst of hot breath to first ruffle, then singe the sheet. Instinctively Kim reached into her well and called the air from around the sheet to stop the cloth from catching fire.
She frowned as the Magick responded. Raised a hand to press in the area vaguely around her solar plexus which had become nothing but a sucking vacuum of, well, suck when They were done with their fuckery. In that dark place, where she’d wrapped eventuality around herself like a weighted blanket, she’d accepted her Magick was gone. Guess she had been wrong.
The press of her fingers, light at they were, caused a sharp, hard stab of pain that radiated out from her breastbone and pulled at the muscles along her ribs all the way down to her hips. Damn! Ouch! Crap! Moving real slow and gingerly Kim lifted the sheet, cracked her eyes more, and tried to get a look at what was causing the not inconsiderable pain.
The first thing she saw was the right side of her body from rib to hip, she couldn’t see lower due to the coyote on her legs but prolly there too, was one big glorious bruise in the green, yellow stage of healing. Under the sheet and coyote she felt a sting in her thigh and when she shifted slightly, adjusting beneath Fire’s weight she felt the pull of stitches followed by itching suggesting whatever wound the stitches closed was at least partially healed. There was a similar pull at her throat. When she lifted her fingers to it she felt a inch, inch-and-a-half incision there.
Damn. She’d gone through something for sure.
Not that she felt she could complain too much. Last she remembered she was asking her friends to kill her. That she was, in fact, not dead was a real pleasant surprise. And it kind of put the pain in perspective. You didn’t feel pain when you were dead. Alive and hurting seemed infinitely preferable to dead and free of pain.
Prolly.
Yeah, no. Totally.
Kim frowned. She’d asked them to kill her. Why had she…? The memory of asking came, crystal clear, to her mind without any strain yet the details were…
Maybe she was just tired but the more she tried to think of what happened the more the details darted away like minnows in a pond eluding the swipe of a hungry kitten. She remembered the dark. She remembered… She remembered the emptiness. She’d been so empty. And the elements had left her, coursing off after Them.
Yeah, she remembered that. But, the rest? Slippery damned minnows. Maybe it was the way They’d kept her. In the dark. Alone. Mostly alone. Except for the times they came to poke and prod at her. Talk to her. Make her think things. And starve her. Damn, yeah, that she remembered.
Starving. Being so damned empty. Worse, cut off from the elements that had been her constant companions from the age of six. Cut off from people? Yeah, that she had on lock. Cut off from the elements? A whoosh sounded in her ears, disincorporate memories swooping in on her, wispy sheer fragmented ghosts chiffon caught up in the maelstrom of her mind wrapping her head to choke off her breath.
As if responding to the surge of her emotions – and let’s be honest it probably was – the coyote began kneading her legs. The rhythm settled her breath, calmed her thoughts. She forced herself to focus on the tactile, to be in her body not her mind. The sheet settled over her face, blocking out everything but a field of white. With the ease of long-practice, she made herself breathe. The sheet rose and fell over her nose, little ripples against her cheeks. In. Out. In. Out. The rhythm of her breathing slowed until it matched the kneading of the coyote’s paws.
Even after she had her breathing under control, the underlying panic a placid pool beneath her breastbone in which her heart lay quiescent, Kim lay there in the contained world between mattress and sheet and just let herself be.
Long moments passed. Finally, she felt ready to come back to her body and the world it resided in. Only then did she lift the sheet enough to look down at that body, to frown at the mottled bruises turning her right side to a heat map. Guess that’s why she was so achy. Huh.
Kim lowered the sheet below her chest and stretched to rest her hand on the coyote’s paw. When it looked up at her with its eyes of fire she gave it something resembling a smile, wincing inwardly as the cracks in her lips split wider with the movement.
“Hey.”
The coyote wagged its head, its tongue lolling out at one corner as it rose to slink up and nudge her hand.
“Careful. I’m all hooked up here.” She carefully lifted her hand and laid it on the coyote’s head. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”
The coyote bumped her hand, demanding pets, and she complied, slowly drawing her hand over the hard, cooled lava surface of what passed for its skin and smiling as the sparks tickled her fingers.
Softly. Hesitantly. Like she was walking on a floor made of isomalt she slowly released what she thought of as the muscles that held her Magick close to her body at all times. She imagined an old-fashioned bank vault, one of those ones from cartoons and batman movies with the gigantic cranky wheel thing like that used to seal submarines so water didn’t get in and drown everyone. Then she imagined spinning that wheel. At first the action was stiff, the door mechanism resistant. How long had she been locked down, she wondered as she spun and spun and spun that illusory wheel. Finally the spin stopped and the door to the dark, echoing cavern inside of her, the bottom of which was the well in which her Magick pooled, swung open. Magick poured out, washing over the coyote. It turned its head, basking in the touch and alleviating the fear lurking in the back of her mind. It felt her. It understood. They hadn’t crippled her. Tears pricking the back of her eyes, she lowered her lids and whispered, “Missed me?”
The coyote rose on all fours and romped up the bed like a pup. Kim’s breath rushed from her lungs as it dropped hard on her chest and bathed her face with a tongue rough and dark as basalt. She lifted her arm to place it around the coyote’s back, only to stop with a frown as an iv line pulled the back of her hand.
She eyes the line then looked at the coyote. “Guessing you didn’t put this in?”
The coyote huffed a laugh and settled its head against Kim’s breastbone. The sheet smoldered, a small puff of smoke rising from it before Kim called air to smother it, a giggle bubbling up as she felt the air respond to her Magick.
“Where we at?” She asked the coyote. When it didn’t respond, the world of non-fire being, Kim suspected, pretty much all the same to it, which was to say a sliding scale of “it burns” to “it doesn’t burn”, Kim lifted her eyelids another quarter inch and swept her gaze around the room. The movement sent a stab of pain into her brain. Her eyes stung as her pupils contracted but they still managed to confirm the familiar surroundings of her own room.
Maybe it was the smell of burning cloth that grabbed Siobhan’s attention. Maybe it was the sound of Kim’s croaking question. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was less than ten seconds after Fire set the sheet to smoldering and Kim put the fire out with Magick which seemed a greater gift than it ever had before – and mind you she’d always though Magick a pretty damned awesome gift – there was the sound of rushing footsteps and then Siobhan came chasing into the room. And promptly tossed the towel she was holding into the air as her wide eyes went to the coyote lounging on Kim.
Enter The Woods 