Free We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle) by Jeff Somers Page A

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 on to the ugly green stone. An Artifact—an actual, real Artifact. Long ago, before machines, the old masters had 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 a new breed of 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 silly magicked coins. None of themwere going to summon a fucking demon , dominate it, and trap it inside something. Or at least, none of them were 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 pass out. I pulled out the pack anyway and shook one loose 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 no mage would teach you anything until you were bound to them. Not a single Word. 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 that 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