The Stringer by Jeff Somers Read Free Book Online Page B

squawked, which made me feel good, and there was gas in the air almost immediately—a gush of it, as if her blubbery standby had just opened an artery. Which made me panic, and then I was through the door and moving as fast as I could, stumbling as I made the turn to head into the kitchen and the open window. I heard Grandma speaking Words but tried to outrun her—my slim experience with enustari was that they tended to be long-winded, luxuriating in their endless supplies of blood, using three impressive Words where one basic Word would do.
    I was halfway to the window when the floor drifted away. There was a hand on my collar and I was lifted up, my legs still working for a moment.
    â€œNo dumb Collector for you ,”Grandma hissed into my ear. She was holding me up over her head, her grip like iron, magically enhanced. I could sense the gas pouring into the air; her Bleeder would be dead in a few seconds unless she did something about it. “You’re skilled, yes? A lucky find. Something a bit more capable for you, I think.”
    She carried me one-handed and wasn’t even out of breath. We didn’t head back to the tiny study. Instead she took me back into the narrow hall, slung me over one shoulder as if I weighed nothing, and bounded up the stairs. I found myself wishing I’d heard the spell she’d spoken so I could steal bits and pieces of it, maybe cut it down to Trickster length, something I could cast on my own gas and not pass out. I was good at that, stealing the ideas of ustari .
    The second floor had the same floor plan as the first, and she took me toward the room above her den.
    â€œI’m older than I look, you know.”
    Archmages tended to be. There were many ways to slow down time if you were willing to bleed people for them. A guy like Evelyn Fallon, who looked to be a thousand years old, was likely two thousand years old.
    â€œI saw it happening. I saw those busy little monkeys in their labs and their factories. I saw our influence and power being matched—exceeded, perhaps. We might summon our Bleeders and assemble our forces and unleash terrible rituals, but the monkeys would arrive in their tanks and their planes, and what? Their three-dimensional printers and their worldwide communication networks. I saw it happening and I tried to warn the rest, but no one listened. And where are we now? Hiding, like insects. Don’t cast in public! Don’t be noticed .”
    She paused to kick a door in.
    â€œEven someone like you, idimustari ,Little Magician that you are, even you must see how humiliating it is. This is our world. And we have allowed primitives to steal it from us.”
    The room was empty of furniture, but six beefy guys in black hoods stood against the walls, confirming the old bat’s status: Only enustari had so many Bleeders just standing around waiting to open a vein.
    â€œA little chaos now and then . . .” she said in a singsong as she dropped me in the middle of the room. The floorboards were stained a dark reddish brown and felt soft and damp under me as I crawled backward away from her. “. . . is a tonic for the best of men.”
    Gas in the air, another flood. I turned to look at her Bleeders: Two of them had slit their wrists silently. No command, no sign from her. They’d just done it. The gas was sour and golden in the air, the most beautiful sensation in the world, pure power curdling my stomach and making my throat gag.
    â€œYou will be host to Lugal,” she said. “His brothers are lesser lights—savage, eager, stupid. They will continue to tear down the infrastructure, to sow chaos, uncertainty. They will claw at the foundations of this mechanical world. You will assist Lugal with a higher purpose. Together we will tear this world down and reassert the proper order. People will crawl to us when we are revealed, begging us to save them, to rule them.”
    She smiled at me. It