Free Powers by James A. Burton

man’s burden” and all that. But it was catchy and stuck in his brain. The tale she’d spun sounded like one of Kipling’s, or part of it—a century, century and a half, past his time. Albert would have thought even those hills had moved a bit beyond it. But she’d told the tale as hers, not her grandmother’s or a memory of her tribe. Her knife, carving pieces from that Badakhi as he screamed and writhed and turned the dusty stones black with his blood.
    Most parts of this world moved at the same pace, existed in the same time. Some didn’t. Some were even farther away from “today” than that. Places where human slavery lived on, just for example, an example a lot of people wouldn’t believe.
    He’d seen it. He’d had people want to make him a slave. Like Legion, they had wanted to own the way he could talk to iron.
    He looked behind him, just in case she was following, gun or knife in hand. Bad memories did things like that to him. Not that he’d see her. She was just another demon chasing him, able to walk through locked doors or find him across gaps of space and time.
    Demons. Connections. He remembered the feather, a warning that might have come from Mother or might not have. He remembered the things that Legion knew about him, how the demon seemed to be playing around the edge of some kind of demon law in maneuvering him to the fire site and that wrought iron star. Legion hadn’t told him to fix the star, just made sure he would be where he could feel it. Wheels within wheels within wheels, the surface didn’t tell you much about what hid beneath the water. He had to be tangled up with more than one demon here, even if Legion was the one persecuting el Hajj as well as him.
    Legion knew a name for him that he hadn’t used in centuries. The damned demon or another of its kind might know Mother’s code, as well. He couldn’t trust anything. “What is Truth?” asked Pilate, and washed his hands.
    He shook his head at all the religious references, but this whole story boiled down to gods and demons, both the real ones and the ones men made for themselves. He lived with enough demons of his own making. He didn’t need outsiders screwing with his life.
    He made it home with thoughts still chasing each other through his head. His hip ached with so much walking—orthopedic shoes didn’t take away all the stress from his unequal legs. And his body was still paying for the forging, tired and hungry and headachy with a dull throbbing from toes all the way out to fingertips. Straight smithing didn’t cause it—he had to sink into the heart of forging, “become one with the iron” so that he was worked as much as working, before accumulating such a debt of pain. Zen blacksmithing, the arrow loosing itself into the heart of the target.
    The el Hajj woman had said she knew people who would hand over thousands of dollars for his cane. He didn’t think that was enough.
    He collected the day’s mail, more junk, no brown envelopes, and clicked his way through all the locks and reset them behind him. Plus the bolts and bars, of course, even though he had more than a hint they wouldn’t stop el Hajj or other demons. Or Mother, of course, because she knew the secret ways.
    Then up to his apartment, hip and muscles complaining about the steep climb of old stairways, dusty air more of a contrast than usual with the fresh spring breeze outside. He needed to open some windows, even on the second and third floors. He tended to treat his building like a cave.
    Into his kitchen, food at the front of his brain, and he found a new pheasant feather on the table. A hen pheasant, of course. Next to it lay a note:
    Don’t worry about Solomon’s Seal.
    Balkis
    Which was a name Mother sometimes used, as a joke and also as a code. No, she did not claim to have been the Queen of Sheba. That would have been extreme hubris even for her. She just wanted people to treat her as if she was.
    Well, he thought she was beautiful