Free Trickster by Jeff Somers

Renar can burn the two of us out of existence, do you understand? She could remove us from history, she is that powerful. All that limits her is blood, harvesting enough.”
    Harvesting. I was reminded, suddenly and forcefully, why I’d left.
    Hiram had not released me from my apprenticeship, so I could not seek another teacher, nor could he take on another apprentice. We were locked in a cold war.
    He smiled suddenly. “And if you were removed from history, where would your dim-witted friend here be?”
    Mags looked up, realizing he’d been referred to, working through the last few words to try to get the context. He grinned at me, sheepish.
    “He’d be dead,” I said flatly. Mags had the spark, he could work a spell. But he couldn’t remember much and fucked up the half he did remember.
    I was idimustari, a Trickster, by choice. Mags would never be anything but. And he’d never survive on the streets alone.
    Hiram nodded. “So, we return Renar’s property. Immediately. Before she has to come find us.”
    I shook my head. “She’ll be slaughtered. Along with who knows how many others.” I pointed at the body. “This asshole has been collecting them for Renar for months now. We return the missing link, we’re condemning them all to death, Hiram.”
    I saw the girls again. They were of a type, twins upon twins. Darker skinned, skinny. I flipped through the Skinny Fuck’s greasy memories. The girls were getting younger. The first ones had been in their thirties. Over time they’d gotten younger and younger, until we got to Claire in his trunk, the youngest yet.
    “Lemuel,” Hiram said, pushing his hands into his pockets and pushing his little round belly at me. His voice was cold now, authoritative. Hiram was no joke; he kept his magicks small, but he had ability, if you pushed him. And while he was no murderer—or at least not much of one—he didn’t share my distaste for other people’s blood.
    I put my hands in my own pockets and grasped the switchblade, all the unhealed cuts on my hands and arms throbbing with my pulse.
    “You brought this shit into my house. My house .Even if I let you take it all away, the trail will come through here. Renar will come here, or send her apprentice, and once they have proof of our involvement they will level this house to the ground, and kill you. And possibly me.” He shook his head. “We will bring her and the udug and offer our apologies, and perhaps we’ll survive this.” He looked at me again. “In spite of you.”
    Udug. My education was incomplete, but I knew the word meant demon, and my eyes latched onto the ugly green stone. An artifact—an actual, real artifact. Long ago, before machines, the old masters created objects of power using organic materials. Stone. Metal. Carvings and such—some small enough to carry with you, some huge, monstrous. Not easy to do. A few hundred years ago some of the smarter enustari had started working with machinery in making artifacts. Devices, large and small. More powerful, because they could be varied depending on their internal workings. Fabrications.
    I studied the udug again. I’d been careful not to touch it. Ancient, Hiram had called it. I believed him. I didn’t know how many people you had to murder in order to create something like that, how many hearts you had to rip out of people on top of pyramids, but I imagined it was a number I didn’t want to know. I didn’t think there was a Fabricator alive who could make something on this level today. Fabrication was a skill that had seen better days, and most of your Fabricators were assholes making love charms and sillymagicked coins. None of them was going to summon a fucking demon, dominate it, and trap it inside something. Or at least, none of them was going to do it successfully and not end up torn to pieces.
    I thought about a cigarette. I had a crumpled pack in my jacket pocket, but I thought in my current dry condition a single cigarette might make me