The form of the Art that I, and now you, use is le symbolisme.
It has been the specialty of my bloodline all the way back to the time of the First Word, long before the Beton family existed.
There are other disciplines of the Art. All are held in higher regard than Symbology. Know that for every other discipline but one, this belief is fatally wrong.
You will be most at risk from others who understand this truth.
Keep your friends close. Keep your family closer.
At least Angelique doesn’t kick the front door off its hinges when she enters my flat. But she does put her shoulder into it and charge in like she’s ready to deliver a beatdown.
What she’s not prepared for is a nubile young woman wreathed in cigarette smoke with her legs spread wide. Anje skids to a halt on the other side of the living room and slowly lowers her fists to her sides.
“Huh.”
Then she turns to me with a cocked eyebrow and a hint of a smirk on her face.
“Why is there a crotchless lingerie goblin sitting in your kitchen, Cass?”
“Angelique, that’s Mathild,” My voice comes out too much as a growl. I need to get my feelings under control, or my grandmother will have me right back in her grip.
“That’s your Mémère?” Anje takes an involuntary step backwards. I’ve told her the stories. More importantly, it’s now clear she heard them.
I know the smoke is already inside Anje’s head, working on her senses. I just don’t know what Mathild plans to do with that and I can’t afford to wait and find out. Every second is a risk.
“Oh, Cassius, you’ve brought me a plaything to—”
“NOT ANOTHER WORD!” I scream at her as I manifest every physical-enhancement tattoo I carry.
I’ve lost count but there are hundreds and there’s not enough space for all of them to surface at once. My skin becomes a canvas of hotly glowing moving images boiling in and out of view. A nimbus of light surrounds my body, dispelling Mathild’s smoke patterns wherever the two intersect.
My skin bulges outward and steam rises from it as my body struggles to compensate for the sudden explosion in muscle mass. The boards creak dangerously beneath me.
I am doing real damage to myself and it will become irreversible within minutes. Whether or not I can hurt her is almost beside the point.
“Mathild, if you harm Angelique, I swear on Phillipe’s Bible, one of us isn’t leaving this room alive.”
The cigarette haze dissipates from the room instantly. Mathild demurely crosses her legs and reaches for another strip of licorice. “Men. Always getting puffed up over the slightest things. Fine, I won’t harm your little friend.”
“For the next twenty-four hours. On Phillipe’s Bible.” It’s a strain to get the words out through the swollen muscles of my face.
“Yes, yes...I swear on that silly book of fables he carries.”
Even oaths made in mockery have true power. I release my tattoos and my muscles and skin begin to shrink to normal size. The pain from massively overcharging every muscle in my body hits me. It takes all of my willpower not to scream. I settle for grunting and panting like a dog. My twin, Dahlia, might overlook a bleeding head wound, but she’s not going to ignore this. She’ll certainly make me pay later.
Angelique raises one of her hands. “If we’re all friends now, I have questions.”
Intentionally or not, Anje has already zeroed in on Mathild’s biggest weakness. Curiosity.
Mathild smiles. “This will be interesting. I am feeling generous. I’ll grant you three questions.”
To Mathild, interesting and dangerous are the same thing. I hope Anje understands that.
“First question, can I have that last beer?”
Bemused, Mathild nods at Anje, who moves to the table, takes the bottle from the carton, twists off the cap, and drains about a third in one pull. I wouldn’t be surprised if she belches in Mathild’s face.
She doesn’t. I have learned to be grateful for the small things.
“Second question, how many ‘greats’ belong in front of grandma? This will help me decide whether I want to murder your incestuous ass or just gab with you about your skincare routine.”
“Forty-three, though the Beton family has never been especially reliable about paternity,” Mathild says, turning to me. “Oh, I do want to play with this one now, Cassius. Threesome?”
I ignore her. “Mathild is over a thousand years old. She won’t tell us exactly when or where she was born.”
“Dearest, there is vulnerability in the moment of birth and there are Artists who can reach back and harvest you if they know the exact time and place.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Are my sisters and I at risk? The hospital has our birth records.” It’s possible she’s making all of this up to fuck with my head. Possible.
Mathild instantly looks bored. “You need not worry, Cassius. You and Dahlia are petits poissons. I do not think anyone would make the considerable effort required to spit and roast you.” It’s subtle, but I see this affect Anje in exactly the way that Mathild intended.
“And what about Adia?”
“We will speak of your younger sister soon. But this one gets one last question first.”
Anje’s pissed. “Did she just call you a ‘little fish’?”
Mathild answers for me. “Tiny fish. Barely a morsel. Something you’d put on a cracker.”
“Didn’t ask you. So that doesn’t count.”
Whatever Anje had planned to ask next, I can see her mind working on a new idea now.
“Cass, is she bound to answer my questions? By your Art or something else?”
“Dear me, where did you find this girl, Cassius? Is there a catalogue I can order one of my own from?”
I ignore Mathild again and answer Anje. “Yes. Three questions is its own sort of oath. All the fables and fairy tales you’ve read are based in truth.”
“That’s what I thought. Is it like genie wishes or monkey’s-paw shit where she can bend what I ask to screw me over?”
“No. She’s bound by the promise her words actually make. Spoken words are symbols and symbols have power. She has to answer truthfully.”
“Good.”
I’ve seen that look on Anje’s face before. What she’s planning is absolutely not going to be good.
“Okay, Grandma, question three. Exactly when and where were you born?”
Mathild doesn’t move, doesn’t even breathe for well over a minute. Then she blows a single wisp of cigarette smoke out of her mouth. It stretches towards Anje without thinning and silently wraps itself around her neck twice before Mathild finally speaks.
“You do not want to force me to answer that question, girl. I will erase you and accept the punishment for oath-breaking.” There isn’t a drop of anger in her voice.
“Then another bargain. I will release you from my third question if you swear to teach Cassius everything he needs to know to protect himself and his siblings from the birth harvesting you spoke of.”
Mathild wraps one hand around the weave of smoke hanging in front of her face and forcefully pulls it down to her waist. The smoke goes taut and Anje’s neck jerks forward slightly before she sets her weight to resist it. Not literally harming her. Not yet.
Anje isn’t going to give in. She is incapable of it. The thing is, she has an issue with being restrained.
And Mathild has the power to pull Anje’s spine out of her body if she decides it’s worth the oath-cost. What she does instead is to look at me and smile sweetly. “I’ll submit to the girl’s blackmail, Cassius, if you agree to take her on a little quest.”
“What quest?” Even across the room, I can see the trembling start in Anje’s hands.
“To recover your sister Adia and the other heirs of the Old Blood families.”
“From where?” Adia is missing. And Anje’s trembling is getting worse. I need this resolved now. But getting her involved in family business with the Old Blood? That’s a non-starter.
Mathild is visibly disappointed in me. “Why do you think I’m here? I know you put a compass rose tattoo on your family, so you can locate them whenever you want. I’m surprised you didn’t give one to your pet here.”
“Cass...,” Anje says, but it’s not a plea for help. It’s anger.
“Remember you gave me one too, right on my inner thigh. Such a pretty mark. I’m sad I had to remove it. But what woman would want to be tracked like livestock? So paternal.”
“A compass rose, Cass?” Anje has a thousand-year-old teenager tightening a rope of cigarette smoke around her neck, and yet she’s pissed off at me.
Mathild looks like she’s about to giggle.
“Anje, can we talk about this after we get the noose off your neck?”
“The noose is the only thing that’s keeping me from beating your ass right now.” The trembling is gone from her hands and she’s staring directly into my eyes. It’s almost like she’s consciously ignoring Mathild...
Sometimes I can be slow on the uptake. Anje’s anger is real. She’s also using it to hold off the fear. The least I can do is use the opening she’s created.
“Mathild, why do you want Anje involved? What does that accomplish?”
“It accomplishes my amusement.”
Mathild is the ur-hedonist. There’s no arguing her out of her fun. There are nooses around both our necks now.
“You win. Set her free. I swear I’ll bring Anje with me if she chooses to come.”
“Which she does,” adds Anje. “Your turn, Grandma.”
Mathild sighs. “All of these oaths are likely to attract...attention. But that is a problem for later. I swear I will teach Cassius everything he needs to know to protect himself and his siblings from birth harvesting. You see? I’m not a monster. Well, not that kind of monster. Now you, girl.”
“I release you from the third question.”
The smoke around Anje’s neck dissipates. But the other noose feels tighter now.
“I have questions, Cassius,” Anje says as she moves toward me. It’s funny when she does that to other people. It’s not funny now.
“I’ll tell you everything later, but what’s important now is I can find Adia using my tattoos.”
Mathild is lighting another cigarette. “I want you to find her now. Time is not our ally.”
“I don’t give a shit what either of you wants. I want an explanation.” Anje hooks two fingers into the left side of her neckline and pulls it down, exposing the compass rose tattooed just above her breast. “I thought this was just art, Cass. Needle and ink. Can you use this to track me?”
“Yes. Find, not track, but yes.”
“Save the semantics, Cass. Who the fuck gave you permission to put a baby monitor on me?”
“You did.”
“Then...you took the memory, just like the Brick?”
“Yes.”
“Also my choice?”
“Always.”
This is how it starts. She unravels things. It means we’re going to have to have the talk again soon. Tomorrow. But not now.
“Anje, I will tell you everything, je promets. But I need to find my sister now. Okay?”
She glances at Mathild and then does the count-to-five-and-breathe thing she teaches her students. Afterward, she gives me a single, solid nod.
I retrieve a plastic map tube from the old wooden chest in the living room. Just opening the chest is excruciating because of the muscle damage from earlier. I move to the kitchen and replace the empty beer bottles and licorice on the table with a sheaf of maps I pull from the tube.
Mathild leans over the table, her cigarette forgotten. “I’ve always wondered how you accomplished this. As far as I know, you’re the only living Symbologist with this ability.”
I turn off the kitchen lights. Shadows fill the room, but enough ambient light spills in from the living room for me to see what I’m doing. This particular working benefits from semi-darkness.
“The idea came from understanding that maps are symbols of locations and the Art doesn’t distinguish between a thing and its symbol. The Art can be made to treat the symbol as the place.”
I use the world map first. I spread it across the table, close my eyes, and surface the two Needle tattoos, one on each palm. I hold my hands open over opposite sides of the map and then use the Art to connect the Needles to Adia’s compass rose.
Both Needles spin on my palms. Each settles on a different bearing. Their glow tightens into two hair-thin lines stretching across the map from opposite sides.
The lines intersect over Austria. The Needles can only be as precise as the map beneath them.
I replace the world map with one of Austria and call on Adia’s Rose again.
She’s in the Austrian Alps. I’ll need to print more detailed local maps before I can pinpoint the exact location, but I have enough information for now.
“She’s in—”
“Hssssss!” Mathild’s head snaps up as she waves me quiet. “We have uninvited guests.”
Eight white-cowled forms silently drift out from the shadows around the edges of the room.
“Kin Slayers,” Mathild says as the air around her rapidly fills with cigarette smoke.
Anje steps to my side and drops into a ready stance. The damage from earlier has left me useless in a physical fight. I have different tattoos, but the cost—
One of the cowled figures addresses me.
“Where is Adia Beton? Tell us where the Dark Savant has been taken.”