Free Trickster by Jeff Somers Page A

pass out. I pulled the pack out anyway and shook one out to buy time. I didn’t have a light, and waggled it between my dry lips for a moment, giving Hiram back his blank stare.
    “I can’t let that happen, Hiram.”
    For a moment, everything in the room was still and silent as we stared at each other, and then he shrugged, turning away. “You don’t have a choice in this, Mr. Vonnegan. I am going to collect her now. If you think you can stop me, please do. But I won’t fight you unprovoked. You’re still my apprentice, after all.”
    There were consequences for going against the oath of urtuku . All of them theoretical for me, so far. Taking on a gasam bound you to your master. In one way, this was tradition: Magicians had a loose set of rules. Easily forgotten when convenient, but in general, once you were bound to a gasam, no one else would teach you. You could seek a new master, and they’d take one look at you, see the binding, and refuse. It was just common courtesy. In another way, this was a function of the oath: I could never stray too far from Hiram. If I tried to leave the city, I would suffer for it. Fever, convulsions, coma—eventually death, if he wished.
    I was tied to the fat thief until he freed me. Or until one of us died. And Hiram was still, after all these years, so angry with me, I had little hope he would ever let me go.
    He turned for the bathroom. Mags, who’d been ping-ponging his head back and forth between us, trying to keep up with what was happening, leaped for the old man. Tried to envelop him in a bear hug, simply stop him from leaving the room. Mags thought of Hiram as his grandfather, and wouldn’t hurt him on purpose.
    The second Mags moved, Hiram brought his hand out of his pocket, straight-razor extended, and in a well-practiced move slashed it down across his own palm, a superficial, wet wound. Blood welled up and Hiram was hissing out a spell as he spun away, and suddenly Mags froze in mid-leap, one foot the only part of him still touching the floor. Without a sound he toppled over, still holding the leaping position.
    The spell would last only a half hour or so, and Mags’d come out of it without any permanent damage. Hiram and I locked eyes for a moment, and then he spun and was out the door. I ran after him, cursing. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do—I didn’t have enough strength to start throwing spells at Hiram Bosch, and Hiram had fewer scruples than me. And played dirtier.
    “Dammit, Hiram!” I shouted as I chased him down the hall. “I came here for help !”
    “You ungrateful shit, I am helping you!” he shoutedback, stopping in front of the bathroom door. He reached forward with his bloodied hand and turned the knob, pushing the door inward . . . and then stood there.
    I almost crashed into him, and then turned to look in through the doorway.
    The window was open, a classic image of the drapes fluttering in the chill wind blowing in. The tub gleamed with the shiny kind of clean only a constant, unhealthy obsession could purchase, and the only sign that anything had happened in here at all was the slick of blood Hiram had left in the sink.
    She was gone.
    To my surprise, the old man put his arm around me. He smelled like pipe smoke and liquor. “Well, my boy—the girl has spirit, doesn’t she? Not my best work, perhaps, but I haven’t had someone shrug off one of my spells that easily in years .” He sounded admiring. “And she’s killed us all!”
    I stared at the window and thought of her, bound and gagged, kicking and screaming, her eyes flashing. Thought of her calm and quiet, answering our questions. Thought of the runes all over her body.
    And I smiled.
    Keep running, I thought. Don’t look back.

7

    I inspected the brown paper bag Mags had left on the dresser and frowned. “Jesus, Mags,” I said over my shoulder. “All you bought was liquor. Liquor,” I added wearily, “is not groceries .”
    He didn’t say anything. Mags was in