Page 23 of The Devils

Talking Heads

Wood scraped on stone, and Jakob watched with a bitter jealousy as Baptiste hopped breezily across to the steps. The boat heeled hard as Vigga planted one big bare foot on the side, then rocked wildly as she took the stride to dry stone, leaving Marangon struggling with the pole to hold it steady.

Jakob gritted his teeth as he wobbled up to standing, all the usual joints aching with the effort of keeping his balance. No one wants to see doubts. He thrust one boot out boldly, but as it reached the step he felt a brutal sting in his groin, and with a helpless groan lost all momentum. He ended up trapped with one foot on the steps and one in the boat while the two drifted gently apart, windmilling his arms to try and keep his balance, the agony between his legs sharpening with every moment.

‘Ah,’ he grunted. ‘Fuck. Fuck it—’

Sunny caught his arm, leaning right back, teeth gritted, to haul with all her weight, and finally managed to drag him onto the steps.

He bent over to catch his breath, gently working his hips to check for damage. Sunny was still holding his arm with both hands, and he pulled it free.

‘Thanks,’ he grunted. As if thanking her quietly meant he hadn’t really needed the help.

‘You say it like you didn’t need the help,’ said Sunny.

‘I didn’t,’ he snapped, then added, even more quietly, ‘I could’ve just torn in half.’

Marangon was staring up at Sunny. ‘Where did she come from?’

‘Before this I was with a circus,’ she said.

‘I love the circus,’ said Marangon. Mild surprise at an elf appearing from nowhere was the most feeling Jakob had seen him display during their entire acquaintance. ‘Why’d you leave?’

‘It’s not as much fun on the inside.’

Marangon slowly nodded. ‘What is?’

The illusionist’s house didn’t look much fun on the outside as Jakob limped up the steps, its gloomy facade coated in dead creeper and its narrow windows tightly shuttered.

Baptiste stood at the top, hands on her hips. ‘Think I’ve found the first problem,’ she said, waving towards the door.

There was no door.

There were steps, a porch, a little roof. Everything to suggest an entrance. But no door. Jakob ran his hands over the stonework where it should have been. A little clammy, like everything in Venice, but very firm.

‘This is going well,’ said Sunny.

‘No worse than usual,’ said Vigga.

‘Not even in the building,’ said Baptiste. ‘Already we need the sorcerer.’

‘Magician,’ said Jakob, and winced. ‘Bastard’s got me doing it now. Best bring the head out.’

No one looked delighted at the idea. Vigga reluctantly swung the sack off her shoulder and the four of them gazed down at it. ‘Well, I’m not touching the bloody thing,’ she said, wrinkling her nose.

‘If there was one woman comfortable around bits of corpses,’ said Baptiste, ‘it should be you.’

‘It’s not so much dead bits that bother me as them coming back to life,’ said Vigga. ‘No doubt you’ve got experience with this sort o’ stuff?’

‘I’m not touching the bloody thing,’ said Baptiste with a shudder. ‘You’re a walking corpse, Jakob. You do it.’

Jakob was busy pressing two fingers into his groin, which was still throbbing, and not in a good way. ‘It’s not so much the corpses or the necromancy that bother me,’ he said, ‘as the bending down.’

‘Tsk.’ Sunny squatted beside the sack and took the head out by the ears. Its hair was a grey tangle. A leather patch had been sewn over its neck stump. A circle of crabby runes had been drawn on its forehead with a silver nail hammered into the centre.

‘Balthazar?’ asked Sunny. ‘Are you there?’

‘Of course,’ said the head, ‘where the bloody hell else would I be?’

‘Ugh,’ said Baptiste, taking a step back. The mouth moved but the face stayed horribly slack. The whole thing was about as pleasant as you’d imagine talking to a severed head would be.

‘It’s not his voice,’ mused Sunny, ‘but somehow you can tell it’s him.’

Vigga glared up towards the balcony of the crumbling building where the others were waiting. ‘I can smell an arsehole a mile off.’

‘I heard that,’ said the head.

‘Good,’ said Vigga, ‘then it didn’t go to waste.’

‘It’s leaking,’ said Sunny.

And there was indeed a kind of goo dribbling from the corner of the mouth. Sunny held the head with one hand, pulled out a handkerchief with the other, and started dabbing it like the face of an elderly relative who’d lost their faculties.

‘Why do you have a handkerchief?’ asked Baptiste, as if that was the strangest part of this situation.

‘For wiping things,’ said Sunny. ‘Why else would I have one?’

‘Is it monogrammed?’ asked Baptiste. There did appear to be an ‘S’ neatly stitched into the corner.

Sunny turned up her nose. ‘An un-monogrammed handkerchief is just a cloth.’

‘What’s that?’ asked the head, dribbling more goo. ‘Handkerchief, did you say? Everyone’s talking at once! Are you inside the house?’

Jakob gritted his teeth as he tried to shake one leg out. ‘Not … entirely.’

‘You’re either inside or you’re—’

‘There’s no door.’

‘There’th no door,’ said the head, which was propped against a stack of books on the table in front of Balthazar. Whether the mild speech impediment had afflicted it since birth or only since death, it was hard to say. Honestly, that was far from the most serious of Brother Diaz’s concerns.

‘Sweet Saviour protect us …’ he breathed. The blackest of Black Art practised right before his disbelieving eyes. The most solemn strictures of the Church not merely stretched but entirely ripped to bits, then those bits flung down and trampled gleefully in the filth. It certainly put his own youthful indiscretions into sharp focus. Perhaps, as Cardinal Zizka said, one must sometimes use the weapons of the enemy against them, but if the righteous will stoop to any depths, what separates them from the wicked? Where was the line ? Was there a line? Brother Diaz really didn’t want to live in a world without lines and yet, through no apparent fault of his own, here he was, wondering if a severed head had always had a lisp.

Perhaps there had never been any lines. Perhaps the whole idea of lines was a consolatory fairy tale it had suited him to believe.

‘Ugh,’ said Alex, almost as disgusted as he was, ‘is it leaking?’

‘No more than expected,’ grumbled Balthazar. Here was one detail Brother Diaz would definitely be leaving out of his letters to Mother. His letters left out almost everything, mind you. It was likely a blessing for all concerned that he had so far found no way of sending them. ‘Does anyone have a cloth?’ snapped the magician.

‘I’ve got a handkerchief,’ said the head, and then, ‘she doeth, it’th fucking monogrammed.’

‘Not you!’ snapped Balthazar at the head. ‘How could I wipe my head with your handkerchief, you’re not here!’ He gave a groan of frustration. ‘How much longer must I suffer these wretched creatures?’

Brother Diaz rubbed at his sweaty temples. ‘I have been asking myself the same question for some time now.’

‘Safe to say that none of us is in our chosen company.’ Balthazar twitched up his sleeves, stretching out his hands as though to pluck the strings of an invisible harp. ‘Already they need the magician.’

‘I would expect you to be pleased,’ said Baron Rikard, sprawled on his battered couch. ‘A golden opportunity to demonstrate your formidable arcane skills.’

‘ Please ,’ said Balthazar, though he seemed to have turned even more smug at the word formidable . ‘Dispelling one asinine illusion is no test of my powers.’

‘Though you need the stock of two junk shops to get it done,’ said Alex, looking over the magical paraphernalia covering the table and spilling onto the floor.

‘Who knows what arcane obstacles our hapless colleagues might face?’ snapped Balthazar. ‘What separates a true magician from witches, sorcerers, hedgerow fairies, and those most self-important pedlars of empty superstition …’ and he curled his lip at Brother Diaz ‘… priests , is thorough preparation for any eventuality.’

There was a pause. ‘Shouldn’t you have a cloth, then?’ asked Alex.

Baron Rikard sank back with a chuckle and Balthazar sourly worked his mouth. ‘Amuse yourselves, by all means.’ He reached out again, with all the drama of a conductor about to summon a grand harmony from a choir. ‘Some of us have work to do …’

‘I was hoping for fireworks,’ grunted Vigga.

Like most things, magic was never quite the fun you’d been after. The stones didn’t slide away or drift apart like smoke. The door was simply there of a sudden. A studded one covered in flaking paint with a tarnished ring for a handle.

‘My turn.’ Baptiste rubbed her palms together as she knelt beside the lock, wriggled her fingers, slipped out a set of lockpicks, and started to prod away. She must’ve had a dozen of ’em, bits of wire all toothed and hooked, so fiddly it made Vigga’s hands ache just watching.

‘You sure you can open it?’ asked Sunny, dropping the head back in the sack.

Baptiste made an annoyed tsk . She was good at sounds. Could tell a whole story with a sigh and eyebrows. ‘I’ve teased open tougher locks than this. Did I tell you the one about that wine merchant’s safe in Ravenna?’

‘At least twice,’ muttered Jakob, who was gripping his groin, and not in a good way.

Baptiste slid another pick into the lock. ‘What about that time I blackmailed the Bishop of Calabria?’

‘One of your best,’ said Sunny.

‘Do you have a door yet?’ came muffled from inside the bag. ‘Are you in the house yet? Could someone answer me?’

‘Patience,’ purred Baptiste, dragging the word out so long you needed patience just to listen to the end. ‘This takes … clever fingers … and patience—’

Two things Vigga never had, even before the bite. She grabbed the ring and wrenched it around. It turned and the door swung open with a loud creak, leaving Baptiste frozen, four picks still in her fingers and a couple more gripped in her teeth.

‘The Chapel of the Holy Expediency has its drawbacks,’ said Sunny, ‘but I take pride in being part of an elite team. Including the man who can’t step off a boat and the woman who can’t unlock an open door.’

‘Guess sometimes you need clever fingers and patience.’ Vigga shook a hand through her hair and tossed it out behind her as she swaggered in. ‘But sometimes only a beautiful fool will do.’

Like most things, her first look at the inside of an illusionist’s house was on the disappointing side. A shadowy hallway with a floor tiled black and white, like a chessboard. Olaf tried to teach her chess once, but Vigga couldn’t work it out. Little horsies and bishops and castles and queens, all things she didn’t like full size. Even thinking about the different ways the fiddly pieces had to move made her want to slap the little bastards into a fire. A smug woman with a weasel in her hands smirked down from a cobwebbed painting. A couple of tarnished suits of armour stood to wonky attention.

‘This it?’ she muttered as Sunny slipped around her. ‘I was hoping for—’

‘Less dust?’ The elf ran her finger down the panelling, then blew a grey fluff of it from the tip.

‘More magic, I guess. Maybe it gets more magicky further in?’ Vigga started walking but Jakob caught her arm.

‘We should go carefully.’ He frowned down the hallway, drawn sword in his fist. ‘We know the place is dangerous.’

‘But it ain’t a swordsman’s house, is it?’ Vigga flicked the blade’s point with her fingernail. ‘You going to sword an illusion? You’ll likely do more harm than good.’

‘Swords always do more harm than good,’ murmured Sunny, already padding down the corridor on her silent tiptoes. ‘That’s the point of them.’

‘Come on!’ Vigga yanked her arm free and gave Jakob’s cheek a pat before he jerked away. ‘What’s the use of never dying if you’re not going to live a little?’

‘Charge off, then,’ said Jakob, slapping his sword into its sheath. ‘Won’t bother me when we all fall in a spike pit. I can’t die.’

‘You could be stuck down a pit for a decade with a spike up your arse …’ Vigga trailed off. Sunny stood a few steps on, head cocked to the side. ‘You hear something?’

‘Flies,’ said the elf.

It was a grand dining room with a high ceiling, a gallery all the way around, and a chandelier with a dozen candles. A long table was lit by a shaft of light like an actor on a stage, sixteen chairs around it, one knocked over as if someone had jumped up in a hurry. Dinner had been served but never eaten, laden plates crowding the tabletop and a carving fork still sticking from a mould-furred joint. Flies crawled about the rotting banquet, zipped and swam in the overripe air, their buzzing almost painful on Sunny’s ears after the tomb-like silence of the hallway.

Vigga showed her pointed teeth. ‘ Bad meat.’

Two corpses lay in the corner, flies busy about each mottled face. ‘There are dead people,’ said Sunny.

Jakob puffed out his scarred cheeks. ‘There are dead people wherever we go.’

‘And if not when we arrive,’ said Baptiste, wrinkling her nose at the table’s centrepiece of rotted flower stalks, ‘then surely when we leave. They Frigo’s men?’

Sunny squatted beside the bodies. Looked like they’d died in each other’s arms, which was sort of heartwarming, till she realised they were both holding knives, which was the opposite. Heartcooling? ‘They stabbed each other.’

‘That’s good,’ said Vigga.

‘Is it?’ asked Jakob.

‘Well, they won’t be stabbing us.’

Baptiste raised a brow. ‘I hear some people can get through a day without stabbing anyone.’

Vigga shrugged. ‘Some people, maybe. What do these mean?’ She waved at some symbols hastily daubed on the walls with streaky paint. ‘They look magicky.’

Sunny held up the sack. ‘Shall we ask the expert?’

No one celebrated the suggestion.

‘Let’s leave that till we have to,’ said Jakob.

‘Which way?’ Baptiste was considering the four doorways in the four walls, panelled hallways stretching into the gloom in each direction.

‘Weren’t you a navigator?’ asked Jakob.

‘A pilot. For a month or two. Hanseatic shipping, mostly. Know the Rhine delta like the back of my hand.’

Sunny glanced around the dining room. ‘Don’t think this is the Rhine delta.’

‘I do remember it being wetter.’ Baptiste pulled off her hat to give the back of her head a scratch. ‘And I did run a ship aground on a sandbank one time. Funny story, actually, the cargo was in part live pigs—’

‘So much for her sense of direction.’ Vigga strode off towards the nearest hallway. ‘How about this one?’

Jakob got a shoulder in front of her. ‘We need to go carefully, remember?’ He nodded towards the two bodies. ‘Clearly it’s dangerous.’

‘Then the quicker we’re out, the better.’

Jakob paused with his mouth half-open but couldn’t find a ready answer.

‘See?’ Vigga swaggered past him. ‘Some of us are leaders. Most are followers.’

‘You hear that?’ asked Sunny as they followed Vigga towards the light, between the old suits of armour, under the gaze of the mediocre portraits.

Jakob strained at the silence but all he could hear was the slapping soles of Vigga’s feet on the chequered tiles. ‘My hearing isn’t all it was …’ Along with his sight, memory, joints, bladder. Honestly, his ears worked far better than most of him. ‘What do you hear—?’

But by then he could hear it himself.

‘Flies,’ murmured Baptiste as they stepped into a grand dining room, a chandelier with a dozen candles hanging high above. The long table was laden with a rotten meal and one of the sixteen chairs lay on its back on the tiles.

‘How many dining rooms does one illusionist need?’ asked Vigga.

‘It’s the same room,’ said Sunny, squatting again beside the two corpses in the corner.

‘Huh. How did I not see that?’

‘Some of us are leaders.’ Sunny fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Most are followers.’

‘I asked for that.’ Vigga stared wistfully up at the chandelier. ‘I bent over and begged for it. It’s no worse than I deserve.’

‘What could be worse than you deserve?’ asked Baptiste.

‘We walked straight …’ Vigga peered into one hallway, then the identical one opposite, ‘… but we came a circle.’

‘I’ve been ending up back where I started for decades,’ said Jakob, wincing as he pressed at his groin again. If anything, it was hurting more with time.

‘How do we get further in?’ asked Vigga.

‘How do we get out?’ asked Sunny, still frowning at the corpses.

They all thought about that for a moment.

‘This is starting to feel a lot like sticking my neck out,’ said Baptiste.

‘Get the head,’ said Jakob.

It didn’t look out of place, balanced on its neck stump in the midst of that rotten food. ‘I take it you need me again,’ it said.

Jakob rubbed at the bridge of his nose. He doubted he would much miss Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi when he inevitably went the same way as all the other sorcerers, conjurers, witches, and wizards who had come through the Chapel of the Holy Expediency over the years.

‘We’ve found a dining room full of rotten food, but every door out seems to lead back here.’

‘How will you get further in?’ asked the head, which Jakob reckoned was Brother Diaz talking.

‘How will they get out?’ asked the head, which Jakob reckoned was Alex talking.

They all thought about that for a moment.

‘Is there writing anywhere?’ asked the head.

‘Runes on the walls,’ said Vigga, squinting at the sloppily painted symbols.

‘What runes?’ asked the head, as a fly settled on the goo at the corner of its mouth.

‘I can’t read,’ said Vigga.

‘I am all amaze,’ said the head. ‘Who can?’

‘I can,’ said Jakob.

‘So we’re making progress.’

‘But not runes.’

‘Do any of you know runes?’ The head managed to sound frustrated despite the bubbling monotone, three or four flies now buzzing around its mouth.

‘I know some,’ said Baptiste.

‘And …?’ asked the head.

Baptiste squinted up at the runes, lips pressed thoughtfully together. ‘Not these ones.’

‘God … damn it,’ muttered the head.

‘God … damn it.’ Balthazar pulled a long breath through his forcefully gritted teeth. If he was obliged to participate in this doomed quest for very much longer, and avoided murder at the hands of one of his repellent colleagues, and further avoided murder at the hands of one of their vast and constantly multiplying array of enemies, he would surely die of simple frustration at their monumental ignorance.

‘I could dethcribe ’em to you,’ the head was saying. ‘First one’s got two lines and a curly bit between, lookth thomething like a cock—’

‘Everything lookth like a cock to you,’ said the head.

‘Never mind!’ snapped Balthazar ‘You people – and I realise I am stretching the word beyond the fullest distortion of its meaning – can have a rest, or tell jokes , or kill each other. I doubt anyone will appreciate the artistry it will require, but Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi will handle this alone!’

‘You know what’s going on in there?’ asked Alex, with the innate suspicion of the practised swindler, always suspecting their own low character in others.

‘I could explain it to you, but I fear the details might … go over your head.’

She planted her hands on her hips and added obstinacy to her show of undesirable traits. ‘Try me.’

Balthazar gritted his teeth yet more forcefully. ‘As a person of Your Highness’s prodigious arcane expertise will have already deduced, the flies are the heart of it. They have, of course, six legs and two wings, eight being the number of stations on Geiszler’s lesser key, a base favoured by illusionists for its strong influence over memory and the senses.’

‘Obviously,’ drawled the baron, with a careless wave of one hand.

‘We are dealing with an insect-based warding involving a limited folding of space, fuelled by the harnessed energy of putrefaction. Clever, in its own way, but juvenile in execution and also rather pleased with itself—’

‘Now that is unforgivable,’ observed the baron.

‘The self-evident remedy is to destroy the insects, and with them the enchantment. So. ’ Balthazar twitched up the embroidered sleeves of the robe Marangon had procured for him, leaving his hands unimpeded to tap into the very essence of creation. ‘If the audience have no further questions, perhaps they will permit me to proceed?’ And without waiting for the ferret princess he began the somatics, hands weaving with practised grace the opening forms of the ritual he had been planning ever since their arrival in Venice.

A ritual that had, of course, absolutely nothing to do with this ridiculous illusionist’s house, and everything to do with breaking the cursed Papal binding. It was almost a shame that he would never be able to discuss the precise methodology, because it was one of which he was particularly proud. Once he was free, this would be an interlude no one would be permitted ever to mention, on pain of an excruciating death. Once he was free—

He burped again, another acrid tickle at the back of the throat.

‘Trouble with the stomach?’ asked Baron Rikard.

‘Merely the odour of these candles,’ grunted Balthazar. With a gathering movement he began to draw, the conjurer’s circles twitching at their screws and beginning to thrum with energy. He could feel the tickle in his fingertips, the buzz in the soles of his feet as he spoke the first words, a seven-movement incantation of his own devising.

In spite of his mounting digestive issues, he could barely suppress his smile. He was a magician once again. He had reclaimed his full powers, and soon enough all those who had dared wrong him would pay .