Powers of Detection Read online

  “The light globes haven’t worked for weeks,” the castle mage said, glancing up at a flickering torch.

  “It’s him,” Justinian said, pointing at Reg.

  “Me?” Reg exclaimed. “I’m no bloody mage.”

  “We’ll see about that,” the duke said, gesturing to his guards to seize Reg.

  “No, Reg is right, your grace,” Justinian said, waving the guards back. “He’s no mage. He has no magic whatsoever. Probably born that way. He’s what we call a magic null.”

  “A what?” the duke said.

  “A null-he cancels out magic by his very presence. Like water and fire. Pour water on a fire, and it fizzles out. Pour water on gunpowder, and you can’t even light it. That’s what he does to magic. Snuffs it out like a candle.”

  “Explains why the warding spell wasn’t working, but not how he killed my prisoner,” the duke said. “Unless you’re trying to tell me that anarchist was a mage. Which doesn’t make sense; they hate mages. Besides, you aren’t harmed by him.”

  “It goes back to that wound your prisoner got five years ago,” the Maestro said. “The one his confederate here says their captured mage healed. They probably had a knife to his throat, poor man. But he was clever. He didn’t perform a healing spell at all.”

  “That’s rot,” the remaining anarchist said. “I saw it. One minute he had a great bleeding wound, and the next he looked perfectly fine.”

  “Precisely,” Justinian said. “You said he escaped the city that same night? Healing spells don’t work that fast. What I suspect your captive mage did was cast a stasis spell just along the outside of the wound, to stop the bleeding.”

  “Like the one my spellcaster did before you came?” the duke asked.

  “Precisely,” Justinian said. “And probably finished it off with an illusion spell, to hide the wound.”

  “Now I’m not sorry we offed him,” the surviving anarchist muttered.

  “With a stasis spell, the wound wouldn’t bleed or fester,” Justinian explained. “It also wouldn’t heal. It would stay just as it was the moment that poor captive mage cast his spell. And he probably conjured better than he intended; his stasis spell remained in place these five years until our magic null here walked into his cell and erased it. Reg was there, wasn’t he, when the prisoner died?”

  “Yes, he was,” the duke said.

  “So it wasn’t really murder after all,” Justinian said. “Your prisoner was wounded by the king’s guards in the lawful dispatch of their duty. It just took five years for the wound to kill him.”

  “Of course, we still don’t know who sent him to me,” the duke said, staring at Reg with narrowed eyes.

  “Sent?” Reg said, looking worried. “Nobody sent me. I just needed a job.”

  “Maybe,” the duke said. “Or maybe someone wanted all my magical defenses to fail. We’ll see what a little questioning reveals.”

  “Oh, not much use doing that,” Justinian said.

  “Why not?” the duke said. “You’d be surprised how well a little close questioning works.”

  “Yes, but whoever sent him probably bespelled him to make sure he was impervious to torture,” Justinian said.

  “Torture?” Reg squeaked.

  “But Maestro, if he’s a magic null,” Gwynn began, then stopped herself.

  “Then I’ll just hang him and be done with it,” the duke said.

  “Hang him, when he’s merely an unwitting tool of something else?” Justinian exclaimed.

  “Unwitting? I’ll do him one better,” the duke said. “Unbreathing-that’s more like it.”

  “And when, with a little effort, the College might discover who sent him… and how to turn his abilities to your benefit?” Justinian continued.

  “Hmmm…” the duke said, looking thoughtfully at Reg, whose earlier smug manner had vanished entirely at the first sign of danger.

  It took all of the Maestro’s considerable powers of persuasion, but the duke finally agreed to turn Reg over to the college for study.

  “We’ll waste no time getting him at a safe distance from your wards,” Justinian said, beckoning to Gwynn and Reg to follow him as he bowed his way out of the room.

  “Thanks,” Reg said, when they reached the corridor. “You never know when the old goat will change his mind. Best for my safety if we leave as soon as possible.”

  “Bother your safety,” Justinian replied. “I just want to get home as soon as possible so I can be sick in peace and quiet. I’ve never seen such a drafty castle.”

  –

  “A genuine magic null!” Radolphus said, wide-eyed, when Gwynn and Justinian had finished telling the headmaster about their expedition. Although Gwynn did most of the telling, while Justinian lay back in his chair, wrapped in three blankets, announcing at random intervals that he’d probably caught his death on the trip back. And, Gwynn noticed with dismay, toying idly with the miniature catapult he’d filched from the duke’s model castle.

  “I didn’t even know there was such a thing,” Gwynn said. “But I knew there was something odd about Reg.”

  “I’m not sure I’d have figured it out all that quickly myself,” Justinian said. “It’s easy to identify something you know about, and a damned sight harder to deal intelligently with the unknown.”

  Gwynn glowed at the implied compliment.

  “And at least the duke is happy, and can probably keep the king happy,” Radolphus said.

  “For now,” Justinian added.

  Gwynn could see that both of their faces looked somber for a moment. Then Radolphus smiled.

  “Now’s good enough,” he said. “And the magic null-they’re quite rare! I don’t think anyone here has seen the like for a century! Think of the opportunities for research! Of course, we’ll have to find him someplace to stay where he’ll be harmless. At the very edge of the grounds. But that won’t be any trouble, really; not when you consider the benefits.”

  “Yes,” Gwynn said. “To start with, the benefits to Master Justinian.”

  “To me?” Justinian said, puzzled.

  “You’ve been having such an awful time with this cold,” Gwynn explained. “Especially when you sneeze.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry to be such a burden,” Master Justinian said, flourishing his handkerchief dramatically. “It’s not fair, asking you to take care of me this way.”

  “I don’t mind, Maestro,” Gwynn said, suppressing a smile. “Only the, uh, side effects of the sneezing do seem rather dangerous. But if Reg were around, you could sneeze all you wanted, and nothing at all would happen!”

  “I don’t know,” Justinian said, taken aback. “I’m not sure I’d want having him around all the time. It would be like having a dead squid in the room. And besides he-he-he-”

  The Maestro sneezed. It was a loud, hearty sneeze, and both Gwynn and Radolphus ducked and covered their heads by instinct.

  “Oh, all right,” came a squeak.

  Gwynn and Radolphus opened their eyes. There, sitting in Master Justinian’s chair, almost lost in the pile of blankets and robes, was a tiny blue goblin with watery eyes and a red, chapped nose.

  “Change me back, quick!” squeaked the goblin Justinian. “And then bring in Reg. Anything’s better than this!”

  The Nightside, Needless to Say by SIMON R. GREEN

  The Nightside is the secret, sick, magical heart of London. A city within a city, where the night never ends and it’s always three o’clock in the morning. Hot neon reflects from rain-slick streets, and dreams go walking in borrowed flesh. You can find pretty much anything in the Nightside, except happy endings. Gods and monsters run confidence tricks, and all desires can be satisfied, if you’re willing to pay the price. Which might be money and might be service, but nearly always ends up meaning your soul. The Nightside, where the sun never shows its face because if it did, someone would probably try to steal it. When you’ve nowhere else to go, the Nightside will take you in. Trust no one, including yourself, and you might
get out alive again.

  Some of us work there, for our sins. Or absolution, or atonement. It’s that kind of place.

  –

  Larry! Larry! What’s wrong?

  The sharp, whispered voice pulled me up out of a bad dream; something about running in the rain, running from something awful. I sat up in bed, looked around, and didn’t know where I was. It wasn’t my bedroom. Harsh neon light flickered red and green through the slats of the closed shutters, intermittently revealing a dark dusty room with cheap and nasty furniture. There was nobody else there, but the words still rang in my ears. I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to remember my dream, but it was already fading. I was fully dressed, and there were no bedsheets. I still had my shoes on. I had no idea what day it was.

  I got up and turned on the bedside light. The room wasn’t improved by being seen clearly, but at least I knew where I was. An old safe house, in one of the seedier areas of the Nightside. A refuge I hadn’t had to use in years. I still kept up the rent; because you never know when you’re going to need a bolt-hole in a hurry. I turned out my pockets. Everything where it should be, and nothing new to explain what I was doing here. I shook my head slowly, then left the room, heading for the adjoining bathroom. Explanations could wait, until I’d taken care of something that couldn’t.

  The bathroom’s bright fluorescent light was harsh and unforgiving as I studied my face in the medicine cabinet mirror. Pale and washed-out, under straw blond hair, good bone structure, and a mouth and eyes that never gave anything away. My hair was a mess, but I didn’t need a shave. I shrugged, dropped my trousers and shorts, and sat down on the porcelain throne. There was a vague uneasy feeling in my bowels and then a sudden lurch as something within made a bid for freedom. I tapped my foot impatiently, listening to a series of splashes. Something bad must have happened, even if I couldn’t remember it. I needed to get out of here and start asking pointed questions of certain people. Someone would know. Someone always knows.

  The splashes finally stopped, but something didn’t feel right. I got up, turned around, and looked down into the bowl. It was full of maggots. Curling and twisting and squirming. I made a horrified sound and stumbled backward. My legs tangled in my lowered trousers, and I fell full length on the floor. My head hit the wall hard. It didn’t hurt. I scrambled to my feet, pulled up my shorts and trousers, and backed out of the bathroom, still staring at the toilet.

  It was the things that weren’t happening that scared me most. I should have been hyperventilating. My heart should have been hammering in my chest. My face should have been covered in a cold sweat. But when I checked my wrist, then my throat, there wasn’t any pulse. And I wasn’t breathing hard because I wasn’t breathing at all. I couldn’t remember taking a single breath since I woke up. I touched my face with my fingertips, and they both felt cold.

  I was dead.

  Someone had killed me. I knew that, though I didn’t know how. The maggots suggested I’d been dead for some time. So, who killed me, and why hadn’t I noticed it till now?

  –

  My name’s Larry Oblivion, and with a name like that I pretty much had to be a private investigator. Mostly I do corporate work: industrial espionage, checking out backgrounds, helping significant people defect from one organization to another. Big business has always been where the real money is. I don’t do divorce cases, or solve mysteries, and I’ve never even owned a trench-coat. I wear Gucci, I make more money than most people ever dream of, and I pack a wand. Don’t snigger. I took the wand in payment for a case involving the Unseelie Court, and I’ve never regretted it. Two feet long, and carved from the spine of a species that never existed in the waking world, the wand could stop time, for everyone except me. More than enough to give me an edge, or a running start. You take all the advantages you can get when you operate in the Nightside. No one else knew I had the wand.

  Unless… someone had found out and killed me to try and get their hands on it.

  I found the coffeemaker and fixed myself my usual pick-me-up. Black coffee, steaming hot, and strong enough to jump-start a mummy from its sleep. But when it was ready, I didn’t want it. Apparently the walking dead don’t drink coffee. Damn. I was going to miss that.

  Larry! Larry!

  I spun round, the words loud in my ear, but still there was no one else in the room. Just a voice, calling my name. For a moment I almost remembered something horrid, then it was gone before I could hold on to it. I scowled, pacing up and down the room to help me think. I was dead, I’d been murdered. So, start with the usual suspects. Who had reason to want me dead? Serious reasons; I had my share of enemies, but that was just the price of doing business. No one murders anyone over business.

  No; start with my ex-wife, Donna Tramen. She had reasons to hate me. I fell in love with a client, Margaret Boniface, and left my wife for her. The affair didn’t work out, but Maggie and I remained friends. In fact, we worked so well together I made her a partner in my business. My wife hadn’t talked to me since I moved out, except through her lawyer, but if she was going to kill me, she would have done it long ago. And the amount of money the divorce judge awarded her gave her a lot of good reasons for wanting me alive. As long as the cheques kept coming.

  Next up: angry or disappointed clients, where the case hadn’t worked out to everyone’s satisfaction. There were any number of organizations in and out of the Nightside that I’d stolen secrets or personnel from. But none of them would take such things personally. Today’s target might be tomorrow’s client, so everyone stayed polite. I never got involved in the kinds of cases where passions were likely to be raised. No one’s ever made movies about the kind of work I do.

  I kept feeling I already knew the answer, but it remained stubbornly out of reach. Perhaps because… I didn’t want to remember. I shuddered suddenly, and it wasn’t from the cold. I picked up the phone beside the bed, and called my partner. Maggie picked up on the second ring, as though she’d been waiting for a call.

  “Maggie, this is Larry. Listen, you’re not going to believe what’s happened…”

  “Larry, you’ve been missing for three days! Where are you?”

  Three days… A trail could get real cold in three days…

  “I’m at the old safe house on Blaiston Street. I think you’d better come and get me.”

  “What the hell are you doing there? I didn’t know we still had that place on the books.”

  “Just come and get me. I’m in trouble.”

  Her voice changed immediately. “What kind of trouble, Larry?”

  “Let’s just say… I think I’m going to need some of your old expertise, Mama Bones.”

  “Don’t use that name on an open line! It’s been a long time since I was a mover and shaker on the voodoo scene, and hopefully most people have forgotten Margaret Boniface was ever involved. I’m clean now. One day at a time, sweet Jesus.”

  “You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I need what you used to know. Get here as fast as you can. And, Maggie, don’t tell anyone where you’re going. We can’t trust anyone but each other.”

  She laughed briefly. “Business as usual, in the Nightside.”

  –

  I did a lot more pacing and thinking in the half hour it took Maggie to reach Blaiston Street, but I was no wiser at the end of it. My memories stopped abruptly three days ago, with no warning of what was to come. I kept watch on and off through the slats of the window shutters, and was finally rewarded with the sight of Maggie pulling up to the curb in her cherry-red Jaguar. Protective spells sparked briefly around the car as she got out and looked up at my window. Tall and slender, an ice-cool blonde with a buzz cut and a heavy scarlet mouth. She dressed like a diva and walked like a princess, and carried a silver-plated magnum derringer in her purse, next to her aboriginal pointing bone. She had a sharp, incisive mind, and given a few more years experience and the right contacts, she’d be ten times the operative I was. I never told her that, of course. I didn
’t want her getting overconfident.

  She rapped out our special knock on the door, the one that said yes she had checked, and no, no one had followed her. I let her in, and she checked the room out professionally before turning to kiss my cheek. And then she stopped, and looked at me.

  “Larry… you look half dead.”

  I smiled briefly. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  I gave her the bad news, and she took it as well as could be expected. She insisted on checking my lack of a pulse or heartbeat for herself, then stepped back from me and hugged herself tightly. I don’t think she liked the way my cold flesh felt. I tried to make light of what had happened, complaining that my life must have been really dull if neither Heaven nor Hell were interested in claiming me, but neither of us was fooled. In the end, we sat side by side on the bed, and discussed what we should do next in calm, professional voices.

  “You’ve no memory at all of being killed?” Maggie said finally.

  “No. I’m dead, but not yet departed. Murdered, but still walking around. Which puts me very much in your old territory, oh mistress of the mystic arts.”

  “Oh please! So I used to know a little voodoo… Practically everyone in my family does. Where we come from, it’s no big thing. And I was never involved in anything like this…”

  “Can you help me, or not?”

  She scowled. “All right. Let me run a few diagnostics on you.”

  “Are we going to have to send out for a chicken?”

  “Be quiet, heathen.”

  She ran through a series of chants in Old French, lit up some incense, then took off all her clothes and danced around the room for a while. I’d probably have enjoyed it if I hadn’t been dead. The room grew darker, and there was a sense of unseen eyes watching. Shadows moved slowly across the walls, deep disturbing shapes, though there was nothing in the room to cast them. And then Maggie stopped dancing, and stood facing me, breathing hard, sweat running down her bare body.