Broken Contracts, page 15
“You can sit up,” Slate told him, and the creature actually hesitated before rising. “You may not touch me, with matter or magic. You may do nothing to harm or mark me.”
With no sign of stiffness or discomfort, the Gestalt shifted into a cross-legged pose, his hands resting on his knees, his wings folded almost primly behind him.
His nakedness didn’t seem to bother him at all, as he sat there regarding Slate with reserved curiosity. His dark eyes were a rich brown under the spotlight, clear and bright with no sign of what had happened with Arabelle.
“You’re new,” the Gestalt said, by way of introduction.
“We’ve met before,” Slate reminded him. “When you arrived here.”
“Oh. My eyes didn’t work then.”
“I would assume not,” Slate said, thinking of the dripping carnage that had been ejected from the gateway, new passenger tucked safely inside. “Your body was pretty torn up.”
“I fixed it. I can fix it, now,” the Gestalt said. Then, wearily, “Are you here for a demonstration?”
“No,” Slate answered. He’d seen what he needed to, on that front. “I want to know what you saw.”
“My eyes weren’t working,” the Gestalt repeated, and Slate shook his head.
“Not with your eyes. I want to know what it was like in the between.”
He half expected the angel to claim ignorance, to refuse to speak to him, to hurl insults until each bracing syllable was dragged out of him by force. Instead, the creature looked thoughtful.
“It was . . . dark,” he said, frowning slightly. “And there was no . . .” He paused, regarding one of his hands closely. He rubbed it vigorously against his naked thigh. “What is this? When you feel this?”
“Heat?” Slate guessed. “Friction?”
The Gestalt shook his head, then repeated the motion on the floor. “No. When you are aware of . . . of realness. Of being interacted with by—” the angel waved his hand through the air “—things that touch.”
Slate wondered if the limited vocabulary was a shortcoming of the creature’s, or if the man he inhabited had been equally ineloquent. Though, to be fair, the angel did get his point across. The space inside the gateway was dark and empty. It made sense that the place in between realities would not be, in a matter of speaking, a place.
“What about the world you come from?” Slate pressed. “What was it like there?”
The Gestalt peered up at him, seeming, for the first time, to really look. “You’re the first to ask.”
“I’m not surprised the others don’t care. Tell me.”
The silver bands flashed but not brightly. The creature wasn’t resisting the order.
“I don’t know,” he said simply.
Slate frowned, lowering himself to the Gestalt’s level to get a better look at his face. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember,” the Gestalt said, rubbing one palm against his face. “But I cannot . . . tell you.”
“Tell me,” Slate repeated, a hard edge to his voice. The bands flashed again, even dimmer this time.
“I do not have the words,” the Gestalt said. He tapped the side of his head. “They are here, inside, but I cannot find what I don’t know to look for. It is slow. Tedious. They are arranged in metaphors, paths through a labyrinth. I don’t know which reference to follow.”
“Try,” Slate told him, and the bands barely glowed. Slate had come prepared to fight the Gestalt for this information—he hadn’t considered that the creature wouldn’t be able to tell him.
The Gestalt let out a slow exhale. “My home is bigger than here. And I am bigger. But I do not take up more space, I am simply more of the space. Do you understand?”
Not even a little bit. Slate switched tack. “What does it look like?”
The Gestalt’s expression was pained, and Slate cherished it. Not because it was making the creature miserable—but because what must it be like, this place so alien that it couldn’t even be described?
“It does not look. We do not see,” the Gestalt said slowly. He raised a hand, watching his fingers as they flexed, then relaxed. “We do not use ourselves to feel. We understand, because we are.”
Slate let out a slow exhale, trying to imagine.
“I want to go through,” Slate told him, deciding against his better instincts to use honesty as his first tactic. The creature only blinked at him, and Slate didn’t try to explain the need he had, to find something outside of his own, tiny world. To find something that was worth looking at, to see something he didn’t instantly understand all too well.
“There are places beyond,” the Gestalt said slowly. “There are many others, to be from. But you will not see them. It is dangerous for you. I can make . . .” He rubbed his arm again. “I can make skin have thoughts. But your thoughts are skin. You cannot take the skin with you.”
“Then I can learn,” Slate insisted. “If you can learn to exist here, then I can learn to exist somewhere else.”
The Gestalt gave a very practiced, intentional shrug. “Maybe. You know yourself more than I do. I don’t think it will be safe for you. I think that even if you are able to exist, you will be made . . . wrong. By it. But I understand why you would want this. To understand where I come from.” He exhaled, then held up his arm, pressing a fingertip to a place above his wrist. “This. You see this place, and then this place?”
Slate leaned in, looking closer. The Gestalt was pointing to a birthmark, a small round patch that was darker than its surroundings.
“The mark?”
The Gestalt nodded. “Yes. That is what I am from. The distance between marks. Between . . .” He paused, looked around, and then pointed to a gradient in the marble tile. “This. I am from this.”
It was nonsensical, and it was incredible. Slate could almost hear his heart beating faster as he tried to conceive of it. What lands had grown a creature who believed he existed in the distinction between colors?
“You’re different,” Gestalt said, resting his arms across his knees. “You do not seem angry about what I did to your friend.”
“He’s an asshole,” Slate said, shrugging. “I’m guessing he forbade you from trying to kill or injure him?”
The Gestalt’s smile was wicked. “The wound healed as I struck it. Hardly an injury.”
“It took me some time to figure out,” Slate admitted. “I didn’t realize you could perform your magic on us, even at a distance.”
“None of you did. You are trapped inside skin, and so you assume that I am too. But you are smarter than the others. And so I will tell you a secret.” The Gestalt leaned in, lowering his voice. “I can heal the bloodlettings, if ordered to. Remove the marks the others have left on me. All but the one who gives the order. Now, I am shared. I belong to—” He gestured at the line of lacerations down his side. Slate’s eyes flicked to his chest, the tiny half-moon scars that had been his first binding. He remembered Christopher’s nails digging deep into shredded flesh—
“I can be free of them,” the Gestalt was saying. There was an edge to his voice now. “Allow me to heal, and I will belong to only you. I will take you through the nothing between. I will show you the things you wish to see.”
“You said it wasn’t safe,” Slate countered, humoring him.
“It isn’t. But I think that you will go either way,” the Gestalt said. “I think there is a pull in you that cannot be put down. Maybe I can help.” He hesitated then. “Please.”
“The doorway is broken,” Slate said. Finally, after all of it, his real reason for coming to meet the angel tonight. Almost six months of experimentation and guesswork, and that was the conclusion he’d come to. He wasn’t just a terrible magician. The gateway didn’t react the way it should because there was something wrong with it. “It’s open, but when I look to the other side, there’s nothing.”
The Gestalt peered at him, considering what Slate had told him. “The doorway is closed, then,” he said slowly. The satisfaction on his face was almost imperceptible. Almost.
Slate remembered the way the air had gone out of the room, the terrified expression on Christopher’s face, the freezing emptiness in his blood as the Gestalt had battered at the gateway. The angel blinked innocently at Slate now, as though the silver bands around his body weren’t the only thing that had kept Slate alive that day. Of course there was damage. The Gestalt had damaged it.
“Can it be repaired?” Slate asked. “Do you know how to fix it?”
“Maybe,” the Gestalt said. “If I am allowed near, I can work my magic on it. The way I work magic on you. Maybe I can fix.”
“You can send me through safely?”
The Gestalt exhaled slowly. “I will do what I can.”
Slate reached out, his fingers bare millimeters from the scars along the Gestalt’s side. He could feel the heat radiating off the creature’s body as the Gestalt froze, refusing to recoil. “And you will do this for me if I help you? Free you from them?”
The Gestalt nodded, slowly. “Please.” His voice was soft, the desperation beginning to leak through. “You know what they do to me. I am not safe here.”
“I know,” Slate said. He withdrew, and his knees protested as he stood, leaving the Gestalt on the ground. He switched focus, watching the dark energy roiling around the creature’s body. There were two connections now, tethering him to Coffey, who saw him as an object, and Godfrey, who saw him as a hobby. Slate gave him a smile. This creature, who had been dragged across worlds, shoved into a corporeal form and tortured, still assumed the best of him. Of him.
It was precious.
“The marks stay. You’ll help me either way.”
The Gestalt’s face hardened. “Then you are like the others.”
“No. The others have the playthings that I give them. Now tell me the truth. How do I repair the gateway?”
“I don’t think you can,” the Gestalt sneered back. Slate almost laughed. Truthful, but unhelpful. It was going to be fun playing games with this thing.
“Tell me how you would do it,” he ordered, and the bands flashed a bright silver.
The Gestalt laughed, a single, bitter sound. “Your language does not have the beginnings of what it would take to bind me to that truth. But as a gift . . .” He stared bitterly up at Slate, his face a mask of anger and hate. “I hope you try. I would like you to see the between place.”
Slate smirked down at him. He had six months until the solstice. Six months before the year’s only opportunity to reach through again.
He had until then to wring the truth out of this tricky beast.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” he said, changing tack. “And you tell me if I’m close, hmm?”
The Gestalt said nothing. Slate didn’t waste a command, just carried on speaking.
“I’ve been testing it for months now, trying to see what you did when you came through. And the problem I’m having is that the damage is irregular. Some days worse, some days better, but always changing over time.” Slate paced around the perimeter of the light. The Gestalt turned as slightly as possible but was clearly unwilling to let him out of view. The creature did little to conceal his frown as Slate described what he’d seen within the gateway. “I thought maybe I was measuring wrong, until it occurred to me: what if the damage is inconsistent because it’s still being inflicted?” Slate stopped before the Gestalt, crouching down again. “What do you think? Am I on to something?”
“I only know some of those words,” the Gestalt said. “So this is only a guess, but—” he let a Cheshire grin spread across his face “—it sounds to me like someone is still interfering with your plans.”
“Someone who can do magic remotely,” Slate said, his voice hard.
The Gestalt’s grin got wider as he stared defiantly up into the light. “Someone very good at magic,” he said. “Better than you. Probably working spells you’ve never even heard of.”
“Stop it,” Slate ordered, and the collar flashed brightly. “The magic you’re working on the gateway stops, now, and it does not continue.”
“Of course!” the Gestalt said, almost sweetly. “I solemnly swear that I’ll do no more magic against your gateway, ever again.”
Slate’s eyes narrowed. “So when I look tomorrow, the damage will be consistent? No more fluctuations?”
“Oh, no,” the angel said, mock concern falling over his features. “I expect that they’ll be as bad as ever. Maybe worse.”
“But I told you to stop,” Slate protested.
“Then it seems one of the words in your order doesn’t apply to the situation in the way you think it does,” the Gestalt said, shrugging. “Bad luck.”
Slate sighed, fingering Coffey’s blade, where it still waited in his pocket. “Then I guess I’ll have to figure out which one.”
December 2013
Slate almost begged out of the Saturnalia party this year.
Last year, he’d needed to attend, needed to build the social connections that would help him open the gate. This year, he had more than ever. The people he’d brought together now drew closer without his help, the webs between them growing thicker and more incestuous with each passing week.
Slate avoided them when possible.
He wasn’t opposed to the things they did. He just had no interest in being a spectator. He knew what they were seeking—that sense of control when their slave or creature stared out over an indifferent audience and knew, knew, that they were alone . . . there was nothing like it. But Slate didn’t need the audience. He could stand alone, and look, and know.
So he didn’t need to go. He had absolutely no reason to go. He had work to do.
Except . . . he couldn’t stop thinking of last year. A settled sort of satisfaction wrapped the memory, one that had nothing to do with the season.
He almost didn’t go.
He put up one of his slaves for the competition, just to stay in good standing. A nondescript man he’d picked up while Anthony was gone and immediately gotten bored with. Slate had more promising candidates at home. Anthony was freshly back from Arabelle’s, her signature still healing on his hip, and Micah . . . Slate was well on his way to having Micah trained exactly the way he wanted. Slate had sent all three ahead while he debated whether to go, had dressed them for the occasion and made sure they’d been given an entertainingly significant dose of his preferred mind-altering substance.
He put it in the food. He didn’t need to—he could have them eating it out of the palm of his hand, quite literally—but he liked coming at these things from an angle. He liked watching the security feed, the inner war as they considered not eating. Anthony spread his food around his plate, trying to minimize the dose, and the other one—Slate had forgotten his name—took three bites, recognized the taste, and dropped his tray in the trash. That was fine. He’d be getting an injection before he went anyway.
But Micah.
Watching the screen, Slate could see the exact moment that Micah recognized the taste. Apprehension flickered across his face, and there was the smallest tremor in his fingers as his fork hovered over his tray. He didn’t check to see what the others were doing. He simply schooled his expression, inhaled, and took another bite.
Slate exhaled deeply, taking a moment to picture what the rest of Micah’s night was going to be like. The drug wouldn’t make him delirious, not like it did at the higher doses Slate had used at first. But it would take his control away. The one thing that anchored Micah through the maelstrom of his life, and it was going to be taken away.
Slate decided to attend the party, after all.
Slate dressed in white for once, getting into the spirit of the thing.
Stewart was hosting, taking the opportunity to show off one of his most recent projects. It was a house, in theory, but it had clearly been built to entertain. It had not one but eight ballrooms, arranged in a fashion that Slate didn’t understand until he found a map of fire escapes.
Stewart’s designs didn’t burn down, of course, because he built magic into the very walls. These walls, Slate saw, were rounded, built into a network of concentric circles that he recognized immediately.
Slate wound his way through the crowd. He ignored the card games, not even checking on the nameless slave whose contract he had almost undoubtedly already lost. He had a different show to watch.
He went off in search of his slaves, keeping a drink in his hand so the various serving-slaves would stop trying to offer him one. It seemed like there were more this year, the draped roman costumes sheerer than usual.
Each room had a different theme. He didn’t notice until the third one, which was completely dark. It wasn’t just that the lights were off. The light stopped at the wide, arched doorway. Slate reached his hand out, watching it vanish into the shadows demarcating the threshold. He almost laughed. The other side was warm, humid with the press of bodies. Nothing like the door he spent his days peering into.
Exhaling, he stepped through.
Inside was utter blackness. He opened his eyes wide, but they didn’t adjust. There was nothing to adjust to. He could hear people moving around him, talking, murmuring, moaning. If he angled just right, he could see a speck of light on the far side of the ballroom. Above the black silhouettes of the revelers, the doorway to the next room shone a brilliant white.
Cautiously, Slate set off toward it.
A hand landed on his elbow, and he turned on instinct, peering into the impenetrable dark. The hand slid slowly, languidly, down his arm, nimble fingers skimming over the back of his hand before plucking his drink from his grasp. Mischievous laughter rippled out of the dark, moving away before Slate could even react.
He switched focus, thinking to follow the person through the crowd—but there was nothing. He couldn’t examine what he couldn’t see.
He shook his head with a wry smile and continued on. He didn’t get five more steps before he brushed against someone on his left. A woman, by the feel of it.
