Hardly recognisable now, which is a useful trait in a wanted man. Wearing a dark uniform borrowed from Banders, walking like he’s seen soldiers walk. The jut of his chin, that officers have, letting them cleave the world like a shark cleaves the water. Jack, come back to camp one last time.
The Fellow-Inquirer from Political Oversight left her wagon just as full of himself as he’d arrived, despite what he’d bestowed on her demons. Mother Semprellaime decided that was probably it for the night and settled up with the girls. She’d had three conjured up tonight, and busy. There was a curious mood in the camp. The majority of her clients had been officers, scarcely a John of lower than Companion rank. A delegation was being organised for tomorrow evening and everyone who was anyone wanted to be on it. She’d listened in to a lot of bitching from those excluded and ambition-talk from those who’d scored a place. Most of Higher Orders seemed to be jockeying for it, certainly. It wasn’t often that a Pal got invited to a royal reception. Mother Semprellaime would advise the new king of Bracinta to count the spoons, honestly.
Her demons stood there, their shapes slowly melting off them. A working girl from the Realms Below could be shaped to fit the dreams of her mark, that was part of the art. They’d been wives and sweethearts, fantasies, sometimes monsters. They fed off the living essence of the men, off the world they were called into, off the magic that Mother Semprellaime put into their summoning. They fed off a reprieve from Below, where things were worse.
Each took her due, a final gift from the world, a lingering connection that would allow her to find them, rather than just casting a broad net and ending up with enslaved dross from the Kings. And was it better, this service rather than that? She told herself it was and didn’t look too carefully under each stone as she turned it over.
And, of course, once the girls were gone and she’d started taking her face off, there came another knock. She coughed, made her voice old, said, “Tomorrow, come tomorrow. No more tonight. The circle is empty.”
More quiet knocking, not the loud rap of an officious senior officer or the provosts. And she paused, somehow cued as to who it was. Bundling herself up in her coat so she could let a slice of her face appear in the crack of the door without giving away her cover.
“Jack?” She hurried him inside quickly, before anyone could patrol past and pay undue attention. “How are you here? They said you’d run. They’re going to hunt you down, they said.” And that was revealing that she’d been interested enough to ask. That she’d been worried for him. Not something a woman in her position should show, really, but he was Jack. He was the world’s most harmless man.
“Banders snuck me in,” he explained. “I need your help.”
She gave him a look. “Do I need to warm up the circle?”
“No! Not that. I need to consult. An expert. You. Just a few questions. About how it works.”
“Caeleen again?”
Something fractured in his face and was hastily repaired. She felt bitterly sad for a moment and then went and pragmatically put some water on the boil for tea. “Jack, Maserley doesn’t need any more reason to kill you.”
“So you’re saying there’s nothing to lose then?” His smile was terribly fragile. “She said she can’t live without a contract. There’s no way…?”
“Oh she can, just not here. Below. And you can bet that there’s a clause that sends her right back into the hands of the Kings so they can sell her again. She’s high value, for a demon. You could almost take her for human, hm?” Stealing a look at him as she sifted the leaves into the strainers. “Do you think she feels for you?”
“I don’t know. I can’t control that. I only know what I feel,” he told her.
“And if you feel that because she made you, and if she made you, it’s because Maserley told her to?”
“Then I owe him a drink because I have never felt like this for anyone in my life. What happens if Maserley’s dead?”
Her hands stilled on the cups. “Jack—”
“Hypothetically.”
“Probably it’s the same as if there’s no contract. Straight back home. Sometimes there’s a clause to assign service to someone else.” And, seeing his sudden leap of hope, she shook her head. “I wouldn’t believe it of Maserley. Not like him to care what happens after he’s dead. Especially with her. She’s not a military asset. The usual boilerplate won’t apply. She’s his. And besides, you’re going to kill Maserley?”
“I didn’t say that.” He took the steaming cup from her, failed to hold her gaze and looked down. “I guess not. I mean, not that I could anyway. But no.”
She sat down opposite him, feeling for once exactly as old as she pretended to be. “Jack, look at me. I trained in Allor to be a votaress. A sacred intermediary between worlds, formalising agreements for the benefit of my people. And now I’m a bawd for the Palleseen army because they invaded and smashed all that.”
“What’s your point?”
“Sometimes you can’t have things.”
He sipped the tea, sighed, fidgeted, went to speak and reconsidered, sipped again. A man with something to say who was finding it hard.
“I don’t want to have her,” he said. And, because she gave him a very old-fashioned look, “Oh I want. Damn me but I want. I bloody ache with it. Never wanted anything as much in my life. But not to own her. Not like he does. But I want her to be free of him. And to stay where she wants to be. Look, I’ve got a… another hypothetical for you, please. It’s going to sound really stupid, but I imagine you’re used to that by now, from me.”
She looked at him through the steam. When he’d asked her, she considered that it was a very stupid question. Not even the most tyro conjurer would have asked it. Obviously not a scenario that would ever come up in the trade. Which meant she had to think really quite hard about what would happen, and couldn’t really give him a definite answer.
“But even then,” she said, “it won’t help you with this. I mean, the contract is already drawn up. Between the Kings and Maserley and Caeleen. The ink was dry years ago.”
Jack drained his cup. “Where does he keep his contracts?”
“Jack it doesn’t work like that!” Mother Semprellaime was working hard to keep her voice low. “You can’t just go in with a pencil and scribble stuff out.”
“Where, please.”
She pulled off her wax nose in frustration, perilously close to throwing it at him. “His military ones? A strongbox in his tent, no doubt. But hers? On his person, I guarantee it. Jack, you can’t kill him but he can kill you, and take his time over it too. Please don’t do this.”
“I swore an oath,” he said, with a shrug. “And what am I for, exactly? Even God doesn’t need me any more. I actually have the right to throw my life away if I want. First time ever. Nobody depending on me any more.”
“Fine.” She pulled off her wig, dragged hands across her face to smear all the wrinkles. “You go, Jack. Go throw it away. Just…”
“I’ll take a ‘good luck’ if you’ve got one for me.”
That almost got the cup thrown at him too.