Mother Semprellaime, who puts on thirty years in the mirror every morning so that she could go practise arts forbidden under Pal statute. Conjuration for military purposes was just barely tolerated; Maserley had to work hard at maintaining his social inclusion. Conjuration under the old Allorwen traditions for the purpose of carnality was absolutely banned. Yet giving soldiers somewhere to vent their passions that wouldn’t either swell bellies or lead to inappropriate attachments was just one more piece of necessary imperfection, to be done away with in that future the Pals looked forward to so ardently.
She had her rituals. Not the magical ones that delved into the horrors of the Worlds Below. Mundane but just as exacting. Each morning a little pot of glue on the stove alongside the tea. The crone’s hooked nose over her own rather flat one. The artfully positioned warts on cheek and chin. The cast that closed up one eye. And at first she’d worried that those she met more than once – perhaps three in ten of her clientele were regulars who made her services a part of their routines – might notice that her blemishes were somewhat peregrinatory in nature. Then she’d worked out that the point of them was so that her Pal callers wouldn’t look her in the face, because an old woman’s ugliness wasn’t a part of their perfection. And by now it all went on with a mechanical precision anyway.
After that was the make-up. She kept the interior of her wagon shadowy and seldom ventured out into the camp in daylight, but she applied the stick with artistry nonetheless. Each wrinkle a little masterwork of forgery. The face came together in her glass, like a sour old aunt come to disapprove of her life choices. Her aunt would most certainly have disapproved. Not of the conjuration, but of turning her infernal tricks for the Pals. Her aunt had been taken when the Palleseen armies marched into Allor, like most conjurers of any station who hadn’t managed to flee. Taken and never seen again.
Semprellaime, who had taken the title ‘Mother’ without earning it, thought about her aunt a great deal. A haughty, wealthy woman who loved nothing except gossip. Who had made every ninth day a trial, when her niece had been sent to her grand townhouse to learn the principles of the Allorwen traditions. The scholastic semi-religion that governed so much of their society, and drew heavily on contracts with Those Below. Her hateful aunt, who had beat her when she got the wordings wrong, or criticised Semprellaime to her haughty, wealthy friends. Her aunt, who had nonetheless taught her the skills that Semprellaime used to survive.
She was a queen of votaries, she thought, looking in the mirror at the haggard face she’d constructed. I am a bawd.
She donned the wig of tangled, lank grey, that hid most of the joins between fiction and reality, and turned to her records. You learned to be precise about details in her trade. She had nine workers on the books, right now. Nine being an auspicious number to the Allorwen, and let the Pals sneer at that kind of superstition. They didn’t have to deal with demons. Nine, each bound to her with its own contract. No groups, no consignment of brutes to work or fight, no expendables provided as job lots from the pens of the Kings Below. Each of her agreements an artisanal arrangement with one individual demon, the way it used to be back in the day. And even then she couldn’t tell herself that, left to their own devices, her demons would be lying on their backs fucking Pals for their pleasure. The Worlds Below were harsh. Commerce with those Above was one of the few ways out of the mire. They did what they had to, just as Mother Semprellaime did. Nobody exactly enjoyed the way things were going, but everyone lived another day.
There was a knock on the wall of the wagon, beside the door. An oddly tentative thing, and positioned so that, if she hadn’t barred the portal, her caller wouldn’t inadvertently push it open and expose eldritch things not meant to be seen by human eyes. Such as a partly made-up Mother Semprellaime hurriedly shrugging into her ragged old woman’s costume. She found where the voice came from, in her throat, and croaked out an answer. It was early for a John, but it had been known.
And one might think she’d be looking ahead at some dull days, with the army being rota’d in and out of Magnelei for rest and relaxation. Listen to some soldier talk and you’d come away with the idea that the whole city was basically a brothel with open doors. Except Semprellaime knew how it was. Plenty of soldiers would get their wicks dipped, sure enough. But opportunity inflamed the desire rather than dousing it, and soon they’d be off-rota and back in camp. Who would they turn to then? Nobody but Mother Semprellaime’s infernal harem, or one of her fellow sometime-laundresses. And there would be those who lost their wages to the gaming tables, tavernas or pickpockets before pouring it into the open hands of the pimps, and they’d come back doubly frustrated, and she’d be waiting with her more reasonable prices. So perhaps this was some cocky beau who’d been on leave yesterday and come back stoked up one way or another, and here she was.
Except, when she opened the door, it was Maric Jack. And that didn’t mean he wasn’t a John, because she knew the type, and reckoned he would just about fit in. Maybe not for the usual reasons, but when he’d recognised what business she was in he’d picked up an edge that she recognised. Except he didn’t look like he was in the market right now. And she was glad of that. A little more time to herself in the mornings, without having to put on the mystic airs for some Pal seeking forbidden Allorwen delights, that was a welcome respite.
And besides, it was Jack. He’d come by a couple of times since that first meeting – the one where the Butcher had dumped him on her and then the provosts had removed him just as unceremoniously. She’d kept his box safe, and that had endeared her to him. And he was, in turn, mild and pleasant and helpful, if a bit wet. And perhaps, with the brash and the pushy turning up to sample her wares day-in, day-out, she didn’t mind a little wet, in a caller. Perhaps she found him slightly endearing in turn.
Dangerous, she knew. Her own contract with herself: do not like any of them. No feelings in her for a man in uniform. That way lay only ruin. But she still smiled when she saw him.
Soon enough he was sitting down in the cramped half of her wagon she lived in, sipping at a mug of tea.
“So can I finally tempt you to the forbidden delights of my mystery?” she asked him, overdoing the old woman voice and the Allorwen accent, and then her throat went dry because he put some money down with the cup. And found herself not sure what she felt. A little vindication, that he was no different to the others. A little triumph, that he was hers. A little disappointment?
“I… wanted to consult with you, if that’s all right. Not – not that, not the actual. But as a scholar?”
I’m a scholar? She had on her Ancient-Crone-Knows-The-Secrets face but behind it she had no idea where he was going. “Speak,” she invited, as a usefully neutral utterance.
“I wanted to ask you about demons. Only I realised I… We had a decent Allorwen quarter, in Ilmar, and I knew some, but I never… I realised I never actually found out anything about the trade, conjuration and the like. It’s not a Maric thing, you see, and…”
She settled herself across from him, sipping her own tea around the warts and the nose. “You come here seeking the ancient secrets of my people,” she said, still doing the voice.
He grimaced, shoulders drawing in. “I’m sorry. It’s not… You’re not allowed. I understand.” He made a helpless gesture at the money, either to persuade her or preparatory to scooping it back.
“Ask, Jack,” she said, in more of her normal voice. Because he’d pierced the disguise already, and she didn’t actually need to do the act with him. Him and the Butcher and a couple of others, the only people she could be even half herself with. “I reserve the right not to answer.”
He nodded, then nodded again, twitchy with something. “Is it true that demons are – well, I heard that they’re, like, a reflection of the conjurer. That they’re sort of formless nothings until called here. And then they’re just like the conjurer in another shape. Like they’re out of a mould and—”
“No,” she said simply. She’d heard that one before. It was a Pal idea, trying to rationalise the trade so that they could conjure to their heart’s content with a minimum of philosophical griping, but it was nonsense. “No, they exist Below, in their own place. Perhaps not quite exist as we exist, because Below isn’t quite a place like Above is. But they exist without us.”
“All right. Fine. So if Maserley… then it’s not just another Maserley in a funny hat or something. All right.”
She went very still at the mention of the Pal conjurer, a man who she had no cause to love. Please no, Jack.
“So tell me…” And then not actually asking. Building his thoughts and screwing his courage together. “What are… what’s a demon? When it’s at home? How much like us are they? No, I don’t mean that. I mean, can a demon… What are they like, in themselves? Because all the stories say they’re wicked. Leave them a loophole and they’ll be through it like a snake up a… you know what people say.”
“More than anyone,” she agreed, to give her thinking time. What are you caught up in, Jack? “Yes, demons will exploit any loophole. The art of conjuration is one of contracts and clauses and being very specific. And those conjurers who are careless with their drafting regret it. Either because they leave themselves open to retribution by those they conjure, or because their conjurations go on frolics of their own. There are reasons for all those stories you’ve heard about the denizens of Below and their treacherous ways.”
“Oh,” Jack said. “Oh, right.” And seemed to shrink three sizes within his uniform. “Yes. I suppose that makes sense.”
If she, Semprellaime, had also been making sense, then she’d have left it there. Half the story told, but surely the half he needed to hear. But from somewhere between how sad he looked and her duty to her profession, the words snuck out, “But conjuration is compulsion.”
He blinked at her.
“Ilmar, that’s your city, you said?”
His expression went blank. “Ye-es…?”
“They had an uprising, didn’t they? Year ago or so?” Not that she’d assiduously been learning about the place since meeting him, obviously. “How very malicious and wicked when you had agreed to be occupied by the Pals. Shocking.” And sipped at her tea.
He processed that. “I understand. But… what I really mean is, what is there? To a demon. Take away the contract. Take away the conjurer. What’s left that’s them? Can they… do they have a, a, a personality, a them-ness?”
“A self, you mean?”
“Yes, that would have been a better word. Sorry.”
Again she had the strong, wise urge to say absolutely nothing, or just lie. She could have said anything. He’d have believed it. Nothing other than a well-crafted lie would be good for him. She remembered her aunt’s harsh voice, telling her that no demon wanted to be Above, but that most of them didn’t want to be Below either. Each of them chafing under the clawed hands of the Kings Below, and no happier with the paper bonds of human conjurers. Held in a vice until nothing but malice remained. They always want something, her aunt had taught her. Our mystery is to give them just enough of what they want, and take just enough to receive what we need. Bargain hard, so that they respect you. Never cheat them, so that they resent you. The way that other traditions cheated them wherever possible, and called it canny. The way that Pal conjurers and the factory hellieurs and all the modern demonists did. Cheat them, or deal with the Kings for the massed labour of those who had no choice in it.
“Jack,” she said, “listen to me. What do you think a demon gains, when we contract with it? You think we pay them shillings and pence like you have there?” Pointing to his little pile of coin.
“I mean…” And he’d have heard a dozen different stories. That conjurers agreed to do wicked acts, or paid in the souls of children, or burned works of art as though they were offering them to gods, or swore to become the slaves of demons in the next life, or… And all of these things had been true, in one tradition or another. And they obfuscated the fact that a contract was in itself a payment. The connection to Above gave a demon strength, drained some essential thingness from the world that a demon could bank and draw upon, or use to pay its debts. Infernal currency, and what else had ensured that some enterprising powers of hell had made themselves kings in the first place? But there was more than that. Even the best Allorwen gloss couldn’t obfuscate essential truths.
“Demons feed on misery,” she said. “Not just that, and that doesn’t mean they’re obsessed with inflicting pain or the rest. All those things you’ve heard. But misery, Jack. Unless it’s through a properly negotiated contract, have nothing to do with them. Hell doesn’t respect an amateur.”
“But it’s their choice,” he said hollowly. “It’s by will, what they do. They’re people. Individuals.”
She had the depressing feeling that her words had almost entirely sleeted out the far side of his skull without touching anything. “No. They’re demons. And yes. They’re also people. Jack, the Worlds Below are not like ours. The truth of demons is not like us. But they are like us, yes.” And Allorwen had a whole vocabulary to split these demonic hairs more finely, and none of it translated into Pel.
She braced herself for the next question, the naked one, that would tear down the few veils he had left and make absolutely obviously clear the cleft stick he was in, but he never asked it. Perhaps he understood that, if he pushed further, she would just say no. She’d stub out whatever little ember he was husbanding, that would only burn his hands sooner or later. So he didn’t quite ask, and she couldn’t tell him. He finished the tea, and tried to give her the money. And she wanted to refuse nobly, but took a shilling off him in the end because money was money.
Then Banders was outside, shouting, “Oi oi, Jack, we’re off. Magnelei’s waiting with its cock in its hand and its legs spread, however you like it. Come on, slacker, or we’ll go without you!”
Jack bolted up and banged his head on the ceiling of the wagon. “It’s our leave rota,” he explained weakly.
“Good,” she told him. “Go enjoy yourself, Jack.” Go get all this idiocy pressed out of you before you do something stupid. But as he left, the words ‘I’m going to do something stupid’ might as well have been tattooed onto his back. She could only sit there in the dark, inside the shell of an old woman she’d crept into, and feel a young woman’s desperate worry.