The Stringer by Jeff Somers Read Free Book Online Page A

something about how, if that was so, it hadn’t done me much good, but I just shrugged, holding the teacup stupidly. It felt incredibly tiny in my hands, as if I might snap it with a twitch. It was like a glimpse into what it was like to be Pitr Mags, the whole world made to a smaller scale.
    She picked up her own cup and settled back into her chair. “Now, this is very important, son,” she said, sucking on her teeth a bit. She leaned forward slightly and whispered, “Do you have any . . . devices on you?”
    I blinked.
    â€œA phone? A—” She winced. “A computer ?”
    Kerosene lamps, no outlets, the utter stillness—the source of the music was an ancient wind-up turntable, a thick black record on its green felt. Ustari as a rule didn’t care for technology, that was true; I’d toyed with the idea of collecting spells in some digital files, but the thought made me uneasy and I’d never gotten around to it.
    I shook my head.
    Her eyes were old and flat and heartless, and she kept them on me unblinkingly.
    â€œOh, good . That is good.” She sipped her tea with a slurpy relish. “That’s the problem with this world. Devices . Technology.” Her face took on a softer, dreamy look. “There was a time when this was our world. We summoned the peasants and they sent us their sacrifices. We directed the armies and they shed blood for us. The invisible hand.” She refocused on me. “I had an ancestor at Agincourt, you know. The tale is passed down to us to this day: Such glorious blood! Blood enough for any biludha ,for the most complex ritual! Mountains raised, seas drained, anything ! He stood beside King Henry V, and it was glorious !”
    Her cadence, energy, and unblinking stare were exactly what you encountered on the subway after midnight, people demanding that you stop following them, demanding that you admit the president was a robot. Except those people didn’t have a chunky Bleeder ready to gas up some serious spells, and I didn’t have Mags’s intimidating presence looming over my shoulder.
    She waved a hand. “Ahh, golden days of yore. It’s different now, isn’t it? Guns. Computers. All of it. Clever peasants have harnessed the forces of the universe—well, some of them — and here we are, scuttling about, hiding. We, the invisible hand!” She shook her head at the insanity of it all. “They discovered gunpowder and split the atom, and here we are.”
    I didn’t know what to do. There was no question to respond to, and I couldn’t speak anyway. So I sipped my tea. It was delicious. There was something fruity going on that was simply lovely. I thought of the pale swill Hiram used to make and added that as an extra black mark against the fat man: bad tea, and plenty of it.
    â€œSo!” she said, setting down her cup and leaning forward, sucking her teeth again. “What shall we do with you?” She laced her fingers together and supported her head on them. “You have a Vocabulary, so no dumb brutes like our clumsy friend Balahul, eh? Something a bit more subtle.” She peered at me for a moment longer, and my internal alarms lit up. The time for information gathering was over; it was time to go. I needed T-shirts that read TIME TO GO on the front. I could wear them everywhere and save everyone some headaches.
    The question was, did I hit an old woman in the face or not?
    She’d shut me up with a neat bit of Wordplay, so casting was out. I had a feeling that if I made a move to escape, her Bleeder would have some gas in the air before I had my ass off the seat; I doubted I was getting far before she brought some serious thunder down on me. On the other hand, the interview was getting creepy, and I’d left Mags unattended in Hiram’s house. Or dead.
    Time to go. I threw my cup at her face and launched myself at the door. Tricksters weren’t fancy.
    She