Christopher - Thierry's Big Score

[Thy Dungyeon Maestyr]

I'm writing something at a leisurely pace that may someday end up on the Kingfisher website. Enjoy.

***

THIERRY'S BIG SCORE

-a Kingfisher Tale,
by Christopher Shelton

         Over the last few centuries, Harlan had grown out and up to where it was now like multiple cities glued together. It had two separate financial districts, seven red light districts, a dozen international districts, eight industrial neighborhoods, and much more. Of its two dozen slums, Betanheim had developed a bit of cachet among the stylish and decadent for the exotic entertainers in its night clubs. Those catering to such villains had become exclusive - off limits to the poor folk of Betanheim, unless they were able to get a job there.
         Betanheim's exotic entertainers were the descendants of West Soari and other immigrant populations, victims of industrialization who formed a new culture combining the old ways with the lower class despair of Harlan's poor. People who had learned music for church ceremony corrupted that soul to express dark humor and wild abandon. In a few years, they'd be called jazz players.
         Thierry Chartrain was becoming an expert too quickly, as he always did, and it was ruining his fun.
         “This,” Inka Lepponen said, “is nice and peppy!”
         “This,” he replied, “is frommage! A dance number with no soul, no darkness at all.”
         “I suppose we should return to that dismal club on Reuben Street, and listen to the gravel-gargling frog men sing.”
         “As ever, you can do what you want, maman.”
         “Tch. I cannot if what I want is for both of us to be happy.”
         He leaned back, slouching in his chair, and let the ambient cigarette smoke fill his indifferent lungs. Through the haze of heat, he saw a few shadows near the door - man-sized beings lacking the internal light of a living metabolism. Bredes. They ought to move back to Weston, before Dragomir gets serious.
         He let his eyes roll across the ceiling. Ugly wood and iron, like a Sinksian longhouse. The narcotic fumes were too heavy to reach it, and it had a halo effect above him, like looking at the night sky through a fog. The emcee's affected high voice nagged at his ears like a flock of starlings.
         “Thank you, thank you. That was The Mockingmen, and I assure you we won't be mocking them! Next to the stage tonight we have Fleming Mbeke and his Flamers, men and women of unusual talent. You won't have to bend your ears to these players. You could run uptown and hear them playin' straight to your bones!”
         That is, word for word, what he said about The Mockingmen two weeks ago. Inka acts like it's perfectly delightful. Is this how it's always been? Does no one in this world but me long for originality? Oh, and good, Fleming's players include three - no, four - of The Mockingmen. It's like they went for a glass of water and came back with a different name.
         A young man offered them drinks again. Thierry grunted, “Put them on the table.” Two new glasses joined a crowd on the cheap brocade tablecloth, clinking. A totally standard dance number began, with that low-tempo fake out that stopped being funny last year. Then, unexpectedly, a new voice cut through the smoke.
         A tall young woman waved her coffee-colored arms sinuously as she sang, creating little whorls in the heat wisping around her. Thierry sat up again. Inka looked at him with satisfaction.
         “Aha! Not so boring now, is it?”
         “I'm trying to find out for myself, if you don't mind.” She pouted, but they both turned back to the stage and trained their ears on the singer. Her voice was strong and remarkably clean. She moved up and down scales like she was dancing on them, moving her notes like she moved her arms. It didn't matter what the words were, the insipid ode transformed into an instrument - the best one on the stage. The vampires sat raptly, Inka bobbing her feet and lolling her head slightly to the gentle swing of the music. Thierry sank his chin into a clutching hand and considered the experience deeply.
         The song ended and Fleming came on the microphone to do his little rap about the players. Inka looked at Thierry. “Admit it! It was very good!”
         “I liked Cherry Swan better.”
         “You damned rascal! Heeheeheeheehee!”

***

         Fleming's little cousin Florence Whitney was a smash! Anybody in the family doing well was good for everybody. She perched on a leather chair backstage trying to collect her wits, while people rushed around her trying to undo that effort. Shrill ladies passing by stopped to shriek out some words of praise and excitement. She nodded and smiled. Danny and some skinny Hanian guitarist stopped by to give some praise and left her feeling creeped out. She smiled and nodded.
         Fleming, M.C. Twill, and the Dunce came by, all white collars and black jackets, sweat beading at their necks and temples. She managed to shake the paralysis out of her right arm and wiped a bit of sweat from her own forehead.
         Fleming said, “You've made the scene, cuz. It's about time!”
         “I still think da is gonna kill me.”
         “Not when he sees the money!”
         “When is that, exact-”
         The Dunce chimed in. “It's bad luck to talk money in the club, baby!”
         Twill said, “He's right. But I hope it'll assuage your concerns to hear that you will see it. Word of mouth on tonight's show will bring up the take on the next, and so on. It's how it works.”
         “That's what I heard, bu-”
         “Hush now, cuz. You need to freshen up now for the party. We have to make sure that word of mouth happens.”
         The party. The part she was warned about. Oh boy.

         Ten minutes later, the upstairs of the club was brilliantly lit with chandeliers and gas lamps. People stood or lounged on high quality furniture from a few decades ago, all upholstered in the same cheap brocade that the club used for everything but the curtains. Smoke filled the air, glasses clinked, women laughed falsely, and rich people felt daring. The first sound Florence heard that cut through the babble was the snorting of cocaine. A man pushed himself off the silver tray theatrically, his red moustache now sporting a white stripe. People laughed around him and he felt good.
         She nodded and smiled and nodded as people moved around her. Fortunately, she wasn't the only thing people came to see, but she definitely caught more attention than she preferred, and Fleming just left her to flounder on her own. A brown-haired man with green eyes excitedly walked straight to her.
         “Florence Whitney? From the Flamers?”
         Nod and smile.
         “Brilliant! Smashing! I'm Winston Sapmore, of the Jameson Court Sapmores. I've taken it upon myself to know everything there is to know about the Betanheim style, and you are a star, let me assure you. May I?” He kissed her hand. She was glad she wore gloves. “Tell me, are you from Soari yourself?”
         “Does Whitney sound Soarian to you?”
         “HAHAHA! Yes, of course, hm, quite. Is your father Glennish then?”
         “Yes. He's a minister at Betanheim Repentant.”
         “Of course he is! A voice honed in schismatic choirs!”
         “Mm.”
         “And you've rejected all that to enjoy the racy lifestyle of true freedom, eh?”
         “Er, I was in church four days ago. What do you think we're like here?”
         The man's eyes were twitchy. He was a little confused, and apparently the thing to do when confused is laugh like a creepy animal. Suddenly, he jerked back and to the side, and a new arrival stepped in front of his pants. It was a tiny woman in a hat that was twenty years older than she was. An auburn-haired kid stepped in, improbably forcing the larger man out of view completely.
         “Salutations, Ms. Whitley!,” the little woman said.
         “H-hello, um, Whitney.”
         “Florence,” the boy said, “May we call you Florence?”
         “Mm, and you are?”
         “Thierry, and this is Inka. We've lived in Harlan a few years now and are interested in the music of Betanheim, on an intellectual level these aristocrats couldn't understand.”
         “A few years? You've been listening to Betanheim players since you were in baby dresses?”
         He stiffened and widened his eyes. Little Inka laughed like a pixie.
         “Thierry is older than he looks. We just wanted to say, well, it's true we have a deeper understanding of music than is typical here, and even by our refined standards, you are a gem. Get out of this smoke when you can!”
         Florence smiled and nodded, and Thierry looked away, obviously rather angry. What a snot. Florence was swept away from the pair in a tide of tuxedos. Thierry was glaring at the tall woman's back when Inka tugged at his coat.
         “What?!”
         “You can go free tonight. I feel like it's time to hunt. Perhaps you can calm yourself with opiated blood?”
         “Perhaps. Very well. You can probably guess where I'll be.”

[Thy Dungyeon Maestyr]

***

         An orange cat scurried impossibly up a wall and in the window of The Corpseflower. It didn't like wasting time at the door since it had secured an invitation a few months ago. Inside, it rose in shadows to the height of a young man. Thierry walked the floor quietly - just another ghost in a place where no one wanted to be seen.
         The floor had once been divided by five foot walls into a few hundred booths, but half the walls had been taken down, the remainder dividing the space at random intervals. Half the tables had been made from large cable spools. There were small candles on them that one could light, if one wanted service. He did not. He assumed a seat along one of the outer walls, but with an only slightly obscured view of the stage.
         Pumelo Petey tonight. Could be worse. The man on stage played in a style typical of Glennish Soari gospel, but sang nihilistic tracks about death and daring. His voice was like a hard comb being run over burlap. Thierry let himself enjoy it more than he usually would.
         “Wudn't got a woman for a life of me,
         Woman wanna gotta be the wife of me.
         Here dey come wittall dem chains.”
         Oh, Pumelo. You know all about les femmes. He stopped himself short of thinking about what it would have been like to live, to grow mature, learn about what it really means to be a man. He stopped the train of thoughts from crystallizing into words, but the feeling was there.
         He sat still as death for hours, listening to the music. The darkness never changed. The quiet sounds of patrons coming and going, partaking of furtive sex and drugs in the blinds - these changed in an ebb and flow like a tide. It was winding down into the deepest part of the night.
         A cry sounded in his mind. THIERRY COME.
         Was that strictly necessary?
         He turned into the cat again and left.


         Thierry came into a rain-soaked alley as a boy. The carriage driver was pinned to the wall by an invisible force (Thierry could see the ghostly outlines of a thirteen foot tall reindeer with human hands), his mouth open in a silent scream, his legs kicking at the air. He stepped lightly, quickly through the debris to find Inka. She was clearly still in control of the spirits, if not the situation.
         She paced in furious circles around the fallen body of the young singer. Only the third corpse he'd seen this month. Not so distressing. Why was Inka losing control?
         “Maman, you called? Why are you tormenting your driver? I don't mean to disturb you-”
         His monster mother froze in place, and turned to him with wet gobbing eyes. Her face was blood-flecked and white as a mask.
         “Luukas? Oletko elossa?”
         “Not this again. THIERRY! Je m'appelle Thierry, folle!”
         Her body broke in three places, stretching into a hideous amalgam of human, insect, and beast. She neared his height, compound eyes glinting green in the moonlight.
         “Désolé, désolé! Calm down, please! Inka!”
         The creature took a halting step toward him, staggered, fell, and looked up again. Its face was a little more recognizable, pleading, mad.
         “Inka, please. What has you like this? This is just a hunt. Wake up, please!”
         She was normal again - manageable. “Please! I just thought... Tomasz said... A sister.”
         “You meant to turn her?” He thought about it. Of course, Inka's problem was always about this … perverse relationship between motherhood and murder. The thought of turning a vampire - gaining a child - brought all of that back to the front her mind. Difficult.
         “Yes? Yes! Thank you for reminding me, Thierry! I... forgot what I was doing. Yes! I'll turn her and you will have a nice sister!” She bore a desperate smile.
         “I do not want a sister, and we both know you should not have children! Please, have sense. Let her lie.”
         “No! Thierry, it makes sense. Listen. Tomasz said. Therefore, it is good! Is she not beautiful?”
         She was dead meat. He didn't want to think of her as anything but dead meat. Merde!
         “Oui, she is beautiful. Let her lie.”
         “Don't be silly, silly!” She wiped her tears with tiny fingers, then stood over the corpse with hands on her hips. “Dismiss Porominen with my blessing and fetch me that driving man.”

***

         One month later.

         Inka wandered the estate in a panic as the day threatened to subdue her. Something was amiss.
         I don't have a daughter. I never had a daughter. What was that man talking about?
         Her night gown threatened to trip her up so she just lifted her toes off the ground, gliding swiftly like she was standing in an invisible wheelbarrow. A scraping sound followed her. Where is it? Is there someone here? There was someone near by. She could smell it - a room prepared for a woman. Who would do that? She came upon it. She was inside.
         A dark-skinned woman, an Aegenian maiden sleeping, tight curls pushing the hair up in soft bunches around her fine, slender face. She looks like a daughter. Somebody else's daughter. Why can't people keep track of their children? She isn't mine! I never had a daughter!
         She did, however, have a longsword. That's what was making the scraping sound when she floated down the hall! Well, the right tool for the job, right there. It would be quick work indeed. She effortlessly hoisted the large steel blade in the air.
         “I will see all your babies in hell!”
         An angelic face loomed from the world beyond, silver light and a voice like the vibration of a million insect wings. It looked on her with sorrow. It was judging!
         “Leppo! You... You told me to... I can't? Why do you torment me?!”
         Florence stirred from her sleep to see a spirit at the edge of her bed, the vampire dwarf just beyond, crying and babbling. She jumped and scurried to the back wall in a panic, and collapsed there vertically, as if it was the floor. Inka flew away like a thing from a nightmare, leaving only the spirit.
         It was that little woolly thing with a horrible skull head and rolling eyes. It looked back at her, shrugged, and vanished. Dawn broke and she fell to the floor.
         “God WHY?!”

[Thy Dungyeon Maestyr]

***

         One year later.

         Thierry came into the parlor twisting a gold watch chain in one hand. Florence was laughing with Inka. That was a recent development. The table had magic ingredients and symbols laid out all over it. Tiny shoe prints had been left in spilled ink.
         “What delights have you learned of today, sœur Fleur?”
         “It's what I've learned,” Inka said. “I've never seen all the little Glennish spirits the way Florence can. It is strange what wonders hide right beneath our noses!”
         “Fairy-folk? Those things are everywhere. You did not see them in Bribeaux? I saw, and chose to ignore them.” He dropped the watch chain in a pocket, pulled gloves out, and started pulling them on.
         “Pooh," said Inka, "Don't be sour, mon petit.”
         “I am not petite!” He paused to shake a gloved fist, and was immediately embarrassed.
         “Maybe just a bit?,” Florence jibed.
         Thierry knew he stepped into that one. Ingrate! He glared at her. She looked at him blithely, cute like a doll, no trace of the trauma of her new life.
         She really doesn't know. Amazing. He resolved once more to let her stay ignorant. If she ever recognizes what's going on, pays me proper respect, I'll respect her. Until then...
         “Enjoy your company, ladies.”

***

         One decade later.

         Betanheim lost its identity, then its name. A confluence of economic and legal forces caused migration within the city. The poorest moved to other slums, and the west two thirds of the neighborhood were gentrified under the auspices of a development baron that slapped his name on half the buildings - Garland Wilhelm. The last third of residences had been re-purposed industrial buildings and were mostly deconverted or demolished.
         Finally, the Betanheim style reached the phonograph industry. As the sales blew up, the neighborhood everyone was talking about in the papers was “Wilhelmtown,” and the style was called jazz. No one remembered the once promising singer Florence Whitney, her tragic disappearance coming before fame was even possible.
         And Thierry hardly thought of her as a singer. She had become just another of the awkward nuisances populating Dragomir's “Circle” - also joined by some paralyzed lamb of a man, mostly kept in seclusion by old Sombreta. They were all so fragile. Who knew how long they would last? Pathetic. Mortally uninteresting.
         The city stood in a vapor of filth, smoke, and sea water. Plateaus, hills, and canyons of brick, stone, concrete, and glass. People in fashionable black shuffled their feet in the thousands, the night still young for them. And in their company, predators walked.
         Thierry moved his legs automatically, his feet clicking. He was thirsty, but tried to distract himself with thoughts on the idea of power.
         Power. It had always been denied to him, but as the Revolutionary Cycle had shown, no one and nothing can hold it forever. The weak can become strong. I can become strong.
         Hunger was good for mortal sorcerers, tilting them toward death and visions of the beyond. For Thierry, it weakened his Will - and thereby his ability to work magic. Fortunately, a certain amount if his lineage's talent with magic was from an inborn ability to sense the unseen world. It took no special focus to open his eyes to the world human mystics strove for.
         Focusing on the spirits - and letting his vision of humanity blur - soothed the distraction somewhat. The mortals on the sidewalk became so many shadows in an orange river of cool fire. Among them, spirits walked, scampered, floated, and otherwise moved about. These things had no blood, no true life of their own. Seeing their stupid faces calmed his appetite. He smiled.
         Abruptly, that all changed. A human bumped into him roughly, spinning him around. The burst of rage welling up in him fed his hunger, and then

         He noticed something he had never seen in his one hundred fiftyish years of death. A spirit in tandem with his own. Opposite the man, half-concealed by his body, a brown tabby cat stood with its back in a high arch, tail erect, crawling with lentil-sized insects. It urged him in thoughts, KILL THE RUDE MAN, HIS LIFE IS YOURS.

[Thy Dungyeon Maestyr]

         Pourquoi, mon chat?
         The human snorted and kept on its way. The spirit flickered and disappeared. The vampire didn't let it escape his notice, pouring his senses into chasing it. The thing had disappeared, but he knew where it went.
         What are you doing inside me?

***

         Thierry considered his purpose in the evocation he was about to attempt. He was tampering with his own substance. Could this be the end of him? Doubtful, but still risky. He looked over the magic diagrams he had inscribed all about the floor. He levitated into the middle of them, and came to rest in a half-lotus position.

         "Claude, Dumbella. Observe. Should my soul try to escape, catch it for me."
         The tiny demons looked at each other, then back to the vampire. He began his incantations.
         He called out the order of the local cosmos, enumerated the spirits present, the restrictions he willed upon their movements, the names and secrets they possessed, the power of his will over them and himself. He called the powers of the world into his vessel. He burned the images of the symbols and words around him into his mind. He felt the substance underlying it all - the symbols that dictated the form of everything. And at last, he called out the thing he willed the most in this moment.
         "ANY SPIRIT WITHIN THE CENTRAL RING THAT WAS NOT OF A KIND WITH THE MORTAL THIERRY CHARTRAIN, I ABJURE THEE AND SEND THEE TO THE THIRD CIRCLE!"

         He fell forward at the waist, paralyzed, his eyes wide, unable to see. Dead? He felt his body trembling on the precipice of a fall into corruption.
         But he also sensed the power of his mind - for now still intact - and the presence of the abjured spirit in the specially prepared area of his inscription. I have you. He couldn't speak, so he commanded it through the power of pure will.
         SPIRIT, TELL ME YOUR NAME.
         "...No name..."
         Pest! What is your nature?! He could feel the corruption beginning to happen. His muscles tensed in rigor mortis, sealing him in the awkward position.
         "A need. A life."
         I satisfy your need and you sustain my life?
         "Yes."
         Are you that which makes me a vampire?
         "I am you."
         So you say, but clearly you are also distinct from me.
         "I am a part of you."
         He felt other parts of him, dead yet living, rapidly clotting, swelling, and threatening to burst into liquefaction.
         SPIRIT... RETURN TO ME.

         The cat thing leapt into his body and he lurched forward, stretching out face down in his magic circle, smearing rot across the carefully prepared symbols. He was dead.
         Woolly fur and claws gripped his left ear and forehead. Tiny palms and fingers gripped his right ear and forehead. They little demons wrenched his head back, so that his chin rested on the floor. Pus flowed out of his bulging eyes, returning them to their normal size. The sagging eyelids tightened, let out little streams of blood, fluttered, and opened, revealing bloody pink eyes. Thierry choked and spit out a wad of rot and blood, and finally spoke.
         "Well. That was enlightening, non?"
         Claude and Dumbella shrugged.

***

[Thy Dungyeon Maestyr]

 

***

         Another night...
         The vampire wizard considered the animal before him, more than usual. It was a white dove, dying. Désolé, bête stupide. It was possible he could devise a less cruel ritual to accomplish this mystic feat, but it could take years.
         You are the last. Its eyelids closed with an unusual dignity and its life ended. Blood already slightly cooled by death spilled into the consecrated silver vessel. His chant didn't make sense anymore, having slurred into an incessant stream of rhythmic syllables. He moved in a practiced way, the arms repetitively sliding through the incense, symbol to symbol, tool to tool.
         At last he used the tongs to pick up the focus of most of his work - a dead white mouse stuffed with locust wings, mirror shards, and spices, wrapped in poppy petals. He dipped it in the vessel, pulled it out a moment later, and rolled it end over end in the air, keeping the blood that wanted to drip away from escaping, until it congealed enough to move safely to the brazier.
         The fire was hot in that sinister way where it wanted to leap free of the brazier and did so at the slightest provocation, where even toppling it into a pool of water would take several seconds to quench it. Its heat threatened to melt the brazier, instantly weakened the tongs, moved the molecules in Thierry's hand.
         But it went no further, did what it was told, and sealing his ingredients into a case of carbonized blood. He dropped it carefully into a silver charm, brought his chant back to a more formal structure, and began the final call.
         "My will, my flesh, my spirit, my flesh, my will..."
         It worked. He could see the power congealing in the talisman. Of course it worked. Once this sorcerer's will was set in motion, the only thing that could stop its might was a distraction, and his sentries and wards had kept such things at bay.
         He levitated and stretched his dead muscles, bare feet coming to land on waxy symbols and the bare concrete foundation of the building. He was wearing only pants, and with the belt loosened for comfort during the ritual, the legs bunched at his feet. He rubbed the tautness of long concentration out of his face with overworked hands and relaxed, standing in the basement full of dying candles.
         He knelt, picked up the talisman, dangled it about his neck on a silver chain, and put it to use. From his perspective, the world changed, falling to pieces around him. From outside his body, he seemed to be fading from existence like a ghost. He stepped forward, becoming less substantial with each step, vanishing into the wall.
 
 
         He stepped into the city street, barefoot, ignored by the streaming thousands of intensely weird residents of Harlan's soul. Snakes with eyeballs for heads and hundreds of tiny human arms for legs slipped this way and that past his feet, lambs in fieldball shirts pranced past his thighs, glowing orbs the size of marbles and green flies and naked orange pixies tumbled through the air about his head.
         He rolled his eyes at the garish display. Why did the things bother with form at all? They were but motes of ideas and fancies of animals, given life by chance, to dance about this world for lifetimes measured in seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, or centuries. These faces they assumed could not conceal their nature from his piercing Lepponen vision.
         Of course, they didn't exist just for him. They existed for themselves, and whatever diversion they enjoyed. Still, he didn't care for any of these lesser beings. His business was with demons...

***