The Effaced: Chapter Fourteen

The Contractor and I sat across from one another at a small, but lavish, wooden dining table as a servant who I thought was probably a demon, but wasn’t entirely sure, poured us drinks. I held up my hand. 

“Non-alcoholic for me, thank you. I need my wits about me after I leave.” 

Of course, I also needed them for this talk, but I wasn’t going to openly insult the Contractor by insinuating he would cheat me. He probably wouldn’t, but there was always a chance…

The servant nodded and started mixing fruit juice, sparkling water, and mint, then passed it to me. 

“I presume you want to know everything I know about the killing of Senator Ermonte, and the general hiring of competent hitmen and abjuration mages in the undercity?” the Contractor asked.

“Exactly,” I agreed. The Contractor took several long moments to sip from his own drink, which was alcoholic, and a tiny back of the part of my brain wondered if he might be immune to the effects of alcohol. If he was taking a drink with every person he spoke to, he should be sloshed at the end of the day. 

I was pulled out of the idle curiosity when he spoke. 

“I can think of four assassins other than you who could have done it,” he said. “At least, in theory. You shouldn’t be able to, not with Odril dead, but if she’s just been hiding–” 

“Let’s handle that in a moment,” I said, holding up my hand. 

“Very well,” the Contractor said. “Of the four I can think of, I can speak with certainty that one of them is innocent. They were with me in the Fallen Void during the time period.” 

I was tempted to ask questions, but I didn’t want to get too off track. 

“And the other three?” 

“Bleeding Eyes, Egress, and Horse.” 

“Horse? Egress?” I asked. 

“You’ve been gone from the Undercity for a long time, Mist,” the Contractor said. “Times have moved on. There are new hotshots in the city. Horse is a powerful abjuration mage who’s killed several of the Concrete Crown’s high ranking gang members. With time to study the wards, and an enchanted rifle to make the shot, he absolutely could have done it.” 

“Why’s he named horse?” I asked. 

“He got his start working in a brothel,” the Contractor said. If I’d been a teenager, I probably would have turned red, but instead I just sighed and rolled my eyes. 

“Of course he did. So, horse. Where can I usually find him?” 

“The White Rooms,” the Contractor said, and I nodded. 

“The other two? I’m familiar with Bleeding Eyes, but unless he’s gotten really into abjuration.” 

“Bah, no. The blood witch is skilled though. I wouldn’t put it past him to use a blood spell to kill the senator in a manner similar to a gunshot, then pay off a constable to plant a bullet.” 

I hummed, considering it. Bleeding Eyes was a good witch, but would he be good enough to slip around the wards protecting a senator’s house without setting them off? It would explain why the window’s wards hadn’t been trapped, but there would still be other protections in place. 

“Egress?” I asked. 

“A portal expert. She has a demonic contract, and carries multiple blood and hunting boons from faerie courts. I believe she could have portaled into the apartment, then shot the senator, arranged the scene, and portaled away.”

I raised my eyes. I didn’t know much about druidry, but portals were expensive and difficult magic, with a high degree of unpredictability. If the Contractor thought the kid was good enough to portal precisely enough to arrive inside of someone else’s room, that was impressive. 

“And where can she be found?” 

The Contractor made a frustrated sounding noise. 

“That’s precisely the reason I don’t like Egress. She only takes jobs that she thinks will be interesting.” 

He made quotation marks with his fingers at the word interesting. 

“She only shows up when she wants to?” I asked. 

“Exactly. I can leave a message requesting a meeting, but there’s no guarantee. There is another option, though… If the Arenamaster is involved, Mist might be too. Not you, the new child who she’s been pressing dozens of experiments into.”

“But part of how I did it is Odril. She couldn’t be that lucky.” 

“Unless the child has another way around it,” the Contractor said. “Even ignoring Odril, you could shoot through most force magic. If she got something like your sister’s familiar power to hide the power going through a ritual, she could have messed with the wards and made it appear they hadn’t been. Or she could have gotten another experimental rune bond. The Arenamaster doesn’t care if it kills you, after all.”

“True,” I said, brooding in silence.

A Moment later, a new servant, one who was definitely a demon this time, emerged from the back and placed down silver plates covered with a spread of roast chicken covered in a slightly steaming sauce, a salad of mixed greens, and tiny potatoes that had been roasted with a finely grated salty cheese. 

I popped a bite of potato into my mouth and nodded my appreciation. It was really good. Much better food than I’d eaten in a long time, truthfully. I wasn’t a cook.

The Contractor ate several bites of the chicken, then looked up at me. 

“I had avoided the topic, but… If Odril isn’t dead, where is she hiding?” 

“I don’t think she is hiding,” I said, giving a brief run-down of the battle with the druid who had done… something… to Odril. 

“I see,” the Contractor said. “Contrary to what most believe, demons and angels are not opposites, not in the sense that most assume. I don’t see why angelic magic would harm her in such a way. What do you know of planar theory?” 

“Not much,” I admitted. “I can name the eight planes, but that’s about it. I know demons use aura magic.” 

The Contractor made a slashing motion with his fork. 

“All beings capable of active magic are using aura. Demons use soul magic. I can see the confusion, as the aura is a manifestation of the outermost layer of the soul. Do you know what magic angels use?” 

“No,” I admitted, taking a bite of the salad. 

“Life magic,” the contractor said. “Demons are, in essence, bundled up knots of soul, bound to resonate with the soul-deep desires of the Throne that created us. If we switch the Throne we work to, our outermost two layers of bindings are reworked. Most magic has elements of this, of course. Faeries can change courts. But it’s only a simple conversion of their concept, not a reworking of their entire soul’s framework.” 

“I still don’t see how angels come into this,” I admitted, taking a bite of chicken. “They use life magic. She died, or close to it.” 

“Precisely. The magical lifeline that exists in every human’s body? That is nothing more than a trifle to an angel. They are beings of pure life energy, in the same way we are beings of pure soul. The two have crossover – few don’t. But I wonder how an angel was able to do this to a demon.” 

“Do demons not have a lifeline at all?” I asked. 

“Odril shouldn’t,” he responded. “She was spawned of the Throne of Battle or Violence, or something of that sort, and became a member of the Throne of Gambling.” 

I resisted the urge to put my head in my hands and groan. Why did we have to be dealing with a bunch of metaphysical nonsense? Why couldn’t he have just said that this was easy? 

“Demons can make fire and stuff,” I said, looking up. 

“We can, by expending our excess soul-stuff to transform an auric construct into reality,” the Contractor said. “As can angels, by doing something not entirely dissimilar with their lifeline. Which leads me to the point I’m making. We do have a mind, so the attack from the magic of the dreamscape makes sense. Perhaps her mind was torn apart. The second… I don’t know. You didn’t recognize the feel as it slid into your soul, and used the link to touch Odril’s existence. But the angel? I suspect that it used your life force to place a curse on you.” 

“An angel put a curse on me?” I asked, raising an eyebrow skeptically. 

I didn’t want to hope. If I could get Odril back, then that would be amazing. But it wouldn’t help me in my current situation, and more than that…

I wasn’t sure what it would be like. I’d lived almost twenty years without Odril. I wasn’t the seventeen year old killer. Would we even still get along?

“Bah. I blame their PR department,” the Contractor said, a faint smile playing across his features at his own joke. “There can be angels who’s lifeline can only be expressed for power in battle, just as there are demons spawned by the Throne of Battle, or fae belonging to violent courts. I suspect the angelic magic bound Odril’s soul to your lifeline. Perhaps she cannot return to the Fallen Void until you die.” 

He gave me a tired smile. 

“More than a few angels have attempted to kill demons in that way. It never works, but it is an effective binding. Our own stronger than average contracts ensure that there’s not even a chance of it working, even if they can convert their life to soul.”

“I see,” I said, taking a deep breath. “And why are you telling me this?” 

“Two reasons,” the Contractor said. “First, I do not believe I have successfully repaid the debt to a successful level. Whoever contracted a killer did so with the utmost discretion. Which means they had a lot of money to spend.”

My mind raced at the implications of that. If the Contractor didn’t have any reasonable guesses, then that meant it probably wasn’t anyone in the Undercity. It was possible the Arenamaster was playing one of her games to do… something… but that had just gotten less likely. 

No, it was far more likely now that the reason he’d been killed would be found above the city, in the airships of the powerful and wealthy. 

“Second,” the Contractor continued. “I don’t want my great-niece to succeed.” 

I paused and glanced at him. 

“Alyphize,” the Contractor supplied. “I believe that she is caught up in this event, in some regard. But I confess that for all that I’ve worked with the Arenamaster and Alyphize in empowering the throne of gambling, I don’t want her end goal to succeed. And I believe that you will stop her. Perhaps you won’t even have a choice.” 

I studied him, frowning deeply.

“Can you tell me what her goal is?” I eventually asked, and the Contractor just smiled placidly. 

That was a no, then. Thrice-cursed demon… 

I shook my head and sighed, then ate in silence, until the Contractor and I had finished our meal. 

“If you are amenable to it, I would repay the debt owed to you with this conversation, and three other things. The first will be a contractor that I’ve collected from the Mindscape. If Odril truly is under a three-part binding spell where her mind is sealed, releasing this power onto her should begin to weaken that mental layer. The second is a maintenance key to the late senator’s apartment complex, which should allow you into his apartment. I suspect that the constables will have raided it already, but you should be careful regardless, and it may produce some results. And the third is a ride to the other side of the surface, far from Zone’s store and this place.” 

I considered it for a moment, then nodded. 

I had to. Even if he’d only offered me the chance to weaken the binding around Odril’s mind, that would have been enough to repay me, at least in my eyes.

“Deal,” I said, shaking his hand. He smiled, and magic flared around his hand, then spun into my aura. 

It dove into me, and into the spot where Odril had once been, and now wasn’t. Light began to settle down inside of me, and I tentatively thought at Odril, hoping to hear her voice. 

Nothing. 

“You’ll likely need time, and need to break all three layers of the seal,” the Contractor said sagely. “Now, shall we go?” 

“One last thing,” I said. “There’s a kid named Kelly, who was tossed in jail for shoplifting. Pay off his charges. Shouldn’t be much, just a couple hundred thin-panes. I’d do it myself, but my budget is tight at the moment.”

The Contractor blinked, then shrugged.

“Very well.”