Magic Shifts Read online

  Cuddles snorted.

  “I don’t like it either,” I told her. “But you’ll love their stable. It’s to die for.”

  We passed a parking lot filled with slick, expensive vehicles and I steered Cuddles to the stable. Then the stable employee and I had a brief discussion about whether Cuddles actually qualified as a mount. However, I had twenty bucks and was willing to part with it, so I won by default. With Cuddles safely placed into a stall, I climbed the stairs to the front doors, where a security guard leveled an AK-47 at me. I gave him Saiman’s pass code and a few moments later the elevator spat me out on the fifteenth floor. They had replaced the hallway carpet since my last visit. The new one was midnight-blue, with ridiculously high pile. If I stepped into it, I’d probably sink in up to my ears. They should’ve equipped the elevator with a life vest just in case.

  I walked to Saiman’s door and knocked.

  No answer.

  He was home. Saiman was a creature of habit. Catching him at night was hit or miss, but no matter how adventurous he had gotten, he would return home in the morning.

  I stood by the door and waited. He’d heard my knock. Once was enough. Eventually his curiosity would get the better of him and he would open the door.

  A moment passed. Another crawled by.

  Saiman and I had a long history. We met during a Guild job. He managed to piss off some volhves and I ended up bodyguarding him for one very long night. Saiman was a polymorph: he could assume any human shape, any gender, any age, and any size within human norm. During the night, he declared that if he assumed the right shape, any person would have sex with him and then he propositioned me. I told him that sex required more than physical attraction. Saiman didn’t like being turned down. He gave me a large discount on his services in an effort to keep me around so he could keep trying to prove his point. Then he tried to use me to get back at Curran for some injury to his pride, and my sweet and understanding fiancé broke into Saiman’s warehouse, ripped an engine out of one of the luxury cars stored there, and used it to demolish the rest of Saiman’s overpriced car fleet. Since then they had somewhat buried the hatchet—lots of money was involved—but there was no telling what sort of reception I would get.

  The lock clicked as the deadbolt slid aside. The door swung open, revealing Saiman. He was wearing my father’s face.

  He’d duplicated it perfectly, from the elegant jaw to the straight nose and the masterful sweep of sable-black eyebrows, but he couldn’t reproduce the eyes. Roland’s eyes shone with barely suppressed power. Hugh once told me that facing him was like looking into the eyes of the sun. I had done it, and the magic emanating from my father was like an avalanche. It caused me to back down for the first time in a very long time, not because I was afraid I would die but because I was afraid that everyone I loved would die with me. This “Roland” had Saiman’s eyes: sardonic, conceited, and resigned to coexisting with idiots who had a fraction of his intellect and weren’t worthy to share the air he breathed.

  I laughed.

  Saiman pondered me, clearly knocked off his stride. He must’ve planned to intimidate or unsettle me. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t have looked less like my father if he’d been an eighty-year-old woman.

  I tried to look at him again, lost it, and laughed louder.

  “Come inside,” he snapped.

  “Yes, Dad.” I followed him in, snickering.

  Saiman’s face acquired a lovely purple tint. “There is nothing humorous about this.”

  “You’re going to have to do something about your new outfit. You keep cracking me up.”

  Saiman’s face crawled. My stomach forgot it was inside me and tried to flee in horror. His bones moved, stretching the skin in a vomit-inducing, grotesque jig as if tennis balls were rolling under his skin. His hair disappeared, absorbed, his build slimmed down, and finally a new man stood in front of me. Bald, of medium build, his face neither ugly, nor handsome. A blank canvas of a face studded with sharp eyes. This was his neutral form, the one he wore most often.

  “Much better,” I told him, trying to persuade my stomach to keep down breakfast.

  Saiman invited me to sit down with a sweep of his hand. His apartment was an ultramodern oasis: curved futuristic lines, steel, glass, black walls, white plush furniture. It was a bit soulless.

  I took a seat on the white couch. “For a man steeped in magic, you seem very fond of technology.”

  “I like its civilizing influence.” Saiman sat across from me.

  “And the fact that it’s getting more and more expensive to obtain has nothing to do with it?”

  “That’s beside the point, Sharrim.”

  Sharrim. Of the king. That was what Roland’s people called me. Saiman wasn’t just a magic expert. He was also an information broker. Secrets were his stock-in-trade and he was trying to rub my nose in mine. That was okay. Two could play this game.

  “I think it’s perfectly relevant to this discussion, Aesir. Tell me, does Loki ever come to visit his grandson? What does he think of your crib?”

  Saiman sat up straighter.

  “Let me save you the trouble,” I said. “Let’s stop pretending that you hadn’t figured it out prior to me claiming the city. This is what you do. You saw the words on my skin, and you went with us to the Black Sea and wandered around Hugh d’Ambray’s castle. There is no denying that I look like my father. You figured it out and you chose not to do anything about it. You played dumb, because you wanted to know how it would all shake out. Now we know. You have to make a choice, Saiman. Would you rather talk to Sharrim or Kate Daniels? I can be either, but you have my guarantee you will like one much less than the other.”

  “And if I say Sharrim?” Saiman asked carefully.

  I leaned back. “Then we can discuss why you failed to support me in my stand against my father. You have contacts all over the continent. You knew Hugh d’Ambray would be coming. You knew Roland would follow. You did nothing to warn me. Now you are in my city and you have the gall to wear my father’s face. Was that a joke or were you trying to make a statement, Saiman?”

  I leaned forward and fixed him with my tough stare.

  Saiman sat very still.

  “I would very much like an explanation.”

  Saiman opened his mouth. “And if I take Kate?”

  I pulled out the plastic bag with the dirty glass in it. “I need this analyzed. I’m looking for a missing shapeshifter. You might remember him: tall, large, turns into a buffalo. His name is Eduardo Ortego and he came with us on our fun Black Sea vacation. I found his vehicle with a ring of this glass around it. The ring was about twelve feet in diameter and half a foot wide. The glass registers copper on an m-scanner. Anything you can tell me. What mythology, what brand of magic, anything. Our usual rate.”

  Saiman blinked. “That’s it?”

  “Yep.”

  He looked at the ziplock bag as if it were a scorpion about to sting him. A feverish calculation was taking place in his head. “And if I say no?”

  “Then I will take it somewhere else.”

  Saiman plaited the fingers of his hands into a single fist and leaned on it, looking off into the distance.

  “Take your time.” I leaned back on the couch.

  “Are you trying to communicate that you have no intention of influencing events within the city?” Saiman asked.

  “Not unless I judge them to be in need of my influence.”

  “It is not an evaluative but a factual question,” he said. “There can be only one of two answers: yes or no. Do you intend to rule?”

  “No.”

  Saiman pondered me. “I can’t decide if you can’t comprehend the precarious nature of your situation or if you choose to deliberately hide from it like an ostrich thrusting its head into the sand.”

  “You always come up with such flattering me
taphors. The last time we had one of our little talks, you compared me to a cactus.”

  Saiman frowned, wrinkling his forehead. “Kate, it is not just about who you are and the merits of your particular deeds. It’s about Nimrod. You are his daughter. You claimed a territory independent of him. Everyone who has an axe to grind against him will come here.”

  They will be coming after me? You don’t say. “Thank you, Captain Recap. Your summary of the things we know was most impressive.”

  “You will be tested. You will be challenged. You will need a base of support. If you simply walk away from it, the city will turn into a free-for-all as various powers try to tug it away from each other for the privilege of ousting Nimrod’s daughter.”

  “I intend to protect the city. There will be no free-for-all.”

  Saiman paused and stared at me again. Something I’d said had obviously broken his formidable brain.

  “You will protect the city, but you don’t intend to rule it.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is the point of protecting it? You gain nothing. You put yourself in physical danger for no actual benefit to you. Is it because you want your father’s approval?”

  “He can take his approval and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine for all I care.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I claimed the city. It’s my responsibility to keep it safe.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I live here,” I said. “I like Atlanta. I don’t want this to be a terrible place where people are ruled by assholes and afraid. You live here, too. Don’t you want this place not to turn into a hellhole?”

  The silence stretched.

  “Everyone you come in contact with becomes temporarily insane.” Saiman slumped on the couch. “Your father, Nimrod, the Builder of Towers, has nearly godlike power. You’re a child of a woman who betrayed him and you clearly have no desire to serve him. Your power, your very existence, is a direct challenge to him. Instead of killing you, he’s allowing you to operate autonomously, presumably so you can mature into a real threat to him. That savage you decided to take into your bed built a Pack for seventeen years. His very identity was wrapped up in being the Beast Lord, yet he walks away from it all to live with you in the suburbs, even though his retirement was never part of the bargain you struck with your father. And the Pack allows it to happen.”

  Where did he get his information? “Curran loves me. He walked away because he wants to be with me.”

  “And your father?”

  “He hasn’t had a child in a very long time. I’m his firstborn in this age.”

  Saiman raised his eyebrows. “That tells me nothing.”

  “He is intrigued by my existence.”

  Saiman opened his mouth, then closed it. “I won’t be part of this insanity.”

  He picked up the ziplock bag and pushed the glass back to me.

  “It’s the wrong move,” I told him.

  “Your father will kill you,” Saiman said. “Perhaps not today, but certainly soon. If he doesn’t kill you in the near future, then whatever power tries to overrun the city next will. When this happens, everyone who ever supported you will become a victim of a purge. You are a leper. Everyone you touch is tainted.”

  Wow.

  “Being your ally is a death warrant. I gain nothing by supporting you. I run the risk of angering you by refusing service, but you left the Pack, so you are no longer in a position to wield it against me, and you won’t take any actions to punish me directly, because you are shackled by your own morals.”

  Okay. At least we knew where we stood. I picked up the ziplock bag and walked out.

  • • •

  I WALKED THROUGH the doors of Kadam Arms at half past nine. The smithy occupied a sturdy building in the southeast part of the city. Seven years ago, when I came here for the first time to buy a blade, it was just Arnav and his son, Nitish, and daughter, Neha. Over the years, the business grew and the smithy grew with it. As I stepped inside today, I saw two journeymen, one showing a blade to a customer, the other restocking a shelf. An apprentice, barely fifteen, ran up to me to ask me what I wanted. I asked for Nitish and five minutes later was shown to the back, where Nitish was quietly examining several blocks of steel.

  Nitish glanced at me. He was an average-size man, with thick dark hair, bright dark eyes, and a smile that lit up his whole face. Nitish’s family came from Udaipur city, in India, the district that had supplied Mughal rulers with weapons of war since the sixteenth century. Koftgari was in his blood. It was a precise art, especially when it came to lettering. Even the slightest change of a curve in the Arabic inscription or the wrong angle of a stroke in a Celtic rune on the blade could alter its meaning. Nitish was the best in the city.

  I unwrapped the kindjal and put it on the table. The smile died. He reached over and quickly threw the cloth over the blade.

  “This is one of yours,” I said.

  Nitish shook his head.

  “It is,” I told him. “That’s your koftgari on the blade. There is only one smithy that does work of this quality and I can tell by the pattern it’s not your father’s. Who was it for?”

  “This is not a good conversation,” he said quietly.

  “I know the buyer was a man, probably a follower of Islam.”

  Nitish shook his head.

  “My friend is missing. I found it in his office. I know it’s not his. He was going to get married.”

  “I am married. I have children, too,” Nitish said.

  I pulled the cloth back, revealing the dagger. “I just need a name. It won’t get back to you. Somewhere my friend is still alive. He is a good person and his fiancé lost her arm protecting a pregnant woman. They deserve the chance to be happy. I just need one name.”

  He didn’t look at me.

  “What if it were Prema who was missing?” I let the name of his wife lie there between us like a heavy rock. I would go straight to hell for doing this to him. “Nitish, I wouldn’t have come to you if I had a choice.”

  Nitish pulled the cloth back over the blade and leaned closer. “Come with me.”

  I picked up the dagger and followed him through the smithy, past the heat of the forge and the sound of hammers, to a room in the back. He swung open a heavy door, flicked on the lights, and closed the door behind us. Four walls filled with weapons looked back at me.

  “I don’t know his name,” Nitish said quietly. “But I know what he buys.” He pointed to a knife on the wall.

  Eleven and a half inches long, the single-edged blade started straight at the hilt and then curved ever so slightly to the right, tapering and curving back to the left at the point. The tip of the dagger, triangular and reinforced, was almost needle narrow at the very end. Wicked sharp edge. Strong spine so the blade wouldn’t break. Plain hilt, bone wrapped in leather. A pesh kabz. It was seventeenth-century Persia’s equivalent to the armor-piercing round. That reinforced tip parted chain mail like it wasn’t even there. It would slide in between the ribs, and if you angled it up, it would hit the heart. Crap.

  We looked at the blade quietly.

  “No watering on the blade,” I said softly.

  “No. He doesn’t usually want Damascus. This is oh-six steel,” Nitish said, his voice flat. “A bitch to grind.”

  The 0-6 was tool steel. It held its edge forever and would outcut the best Damascus every time. It was also untraceable. He’d chosen tool steel because that was what this knife was, a tool. This blade wasn’t made to hunt monsters. It was meant to hunt people. It belonged to a man killer.

  Nitish stepped forward, took a big, three-inch-wide folder from the table, and leafed through the pages. He paused, showing me the page. Throwing knives. Not the fancy blades, but utilitarian, simple strips of steel, ten inches long, inch and a half wide. Thick enough so the blade
wouldn’t bend, double edge at the point for the first inch and a half, then single edge. No treatment on the hilt, just plain steel. Contrary to what movies suggested, killing a person by throwing a knife was really difficult. Even if you managed to sink a blade in, it would be unlikely you’d hit anything vital. Most of the time knives were thrown to piss the opponent off so he’d do something stupid, to distract, or just to bleed him and cause some pain. These knives would go into the body like a hot knife into butter and they’d be hell to pull out.

  Nitish flipped the page again. Another dagger, straight edge this time. Same plain, workmanlike aesthetic. Same killer blade.

  The smith closed the book.

  “Any swords?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  That meant either the buyer didn’t use a sword, which was unlikely considering all the magic crap Atlanta threw at us on regular basis, or he had a favorite blade and he was good enough not to break it.

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Dark hair. Beard. Large.” Nitish raised his hands. “Tall. Wears glasses. Soft voice. Calm. He doesn’t look like a man who would buy this.” He indicated the blade.

  “What does he look like?”

  Nitish sighed. “Like a man of peace.”

  “When is he coming for the pesh kabz?”

  “I don’t know,” Nitish said. “Sometimes he comes the day after I tell him it’s done. Sometimes a month. He never calls ahead. He pays up front and then shows up without warning.”

  “Will you call me after he comes to pick it up?”

  “He might not pick it up at all,” Nitish said. “A year ago he spoke with my father and had him work on this.”

  He flipped the book to the last page, where half a page was glued down to form a paper pocket, and pulled a photograph out of it. A round box of blackened steel a little smaller than a soccer ball with a circular lid. At first glance, it looked like a random decorative koftgari pattern had been worked into the dark surface of the steel, but the close-up of the lid made it clear: the pattern wasn’t random. Spider-thin Arabic script decorated the steel.