The exchange was brief. Most knife fights are. Daniel, the taller of the two, had the advantage of reach, somewhat negated by the length of the sorcerer's blade. He wore armor over his torso and was stronger, but Aristedes was the faster of the two, even without magic-and he had a lot more experience.
Hands and knives flashed, all whip-crack speed and whispering violence as they parted the air. I couldn't keep track of the individual cuts. There were just too many of them. I saw Daniel's mail shirt turn aside another pair of strikes, one of them hard enough to send a titanium ring tinkling across the floor. A flicker of red fanned through the air, where one of the fighters lost a splash of blood.
Daniel let out a short grunt. Then another. Aristedes barked out a sound of both pain and satisfaction. The two parted, both breathing heavily. Combat taxes a body's reserves like nothing else on earth. Seconds of it can leave you exhausted, even if you're in great shape.
Daniel staggered and went down on one knee, letting out a grunt of surprise.
There were wounds on both of his legs-punctures, deep stabs. Neither wound had hit one of the big arteries, or he'd already be unconscious, but they were right through the quadriceps muscles, and had to have been agonizing.
He snarled and attempted to rise. Halfway there, he faltered and went down again. Training, courage, and fortitude get you only so far. A deep enough wound on either leg could have taken Daniel out of the fight. He had them on both.
Aristedes hadn't come away clean from the exchange, though. There was a deep cut on his right arm, where Daniel's knife had caught him hard. Flesh hung from a flap of skin. Blood flowed, but his arm still seemed to work. If Aristedes lived long enough and if he kept the arm, he was going to have one hell of a scar to show off later.
But that wasn't going to matter much to Daniel.
The sorcerer switched his knife to his left hand and stared at Daniel with flat eyes. "Kids like you. Haven't learned the price of doing business. When to trade pain for victory."
He blurred into motion again, and Daniel lifted his knife. Then the younger man cried out and fell to his side, clutching at his right arm with his left hand. His knife landed on the floor and spun away from him, eventually coming to rest against Aristedes' feet.
The sorcerer took his time transferring his own knife to his left hand and picking up Daniel's. He tested the blade's balance and edge and said, "Serviceable." He carefully wiped the blood from Daniel's blade against the leg of his trousers, closed it, and slipped it into the pocket of his bathrobe. Then he fixed the young man with a nasty smile, raised his own blade over his head, so that Daniel's blood dripped down it and fell on his upraised arm.
And he started to chant.
I felt the magic gathering at once. It wasn't particularly powerful, but that was by my own standards. Magic doesn't absolutely require a ton of horsepower to be dangerous. It took Aristedes maybe ten seconds to summon enough will and focus for whatever he was doing, and I stood there clenching my fists and my jaw in impotent fury. Daniel saw what was happening and found an old can in the detritus on the floor beside him. He threw it at Aristedes in an awkward, left-handed motion, but came nowhere close to striking the sorcerer.
Aristedes pointed the knife at Daniel, his eyes reptilian, hissed a word, and released the spell.
Michael's eldest son arched his back and let out a strangled scream of agony. Aristedes repeated the word and Daniel contorted in pain again, his back bowing more than I would have thought possible.
I stifled a furious scream of my own and looked away as the sorcerer bent and twisted the energy of Creation itself into a means of torment. Looking away was almost worse: Aristedes' young followers were watching with a sick fascination. Daniel screamed until he was out of breath, and then began to strangle himself as he tried to keep it up. One of the kids bent suddenly and began retching onto the floor.
"This is my my house," Aristedes said, his expression never changing. "I am the master here, and house," Aristedes said, his expression never changing. "I am the master here, and my my will is-" will is-"
Butters appeared behind Aristedes, from around an upended vat of some kind, and swung three feet of lead pipe into the side of the sorcerer's knee.
There was a sharp, clear crack as bone and cartilage snapped, and Aristedes screamed and went down.
"That sound you just heard," Butters said, his voice tight with fear and adrenaline, "was your lateral collateral ligament and anterior cruciate ligament tearing free of the joint. It's also possible that your patella or tibia was fractured."
Aristedes just lay there in pain, gasping through clenched teeth. A line of spittle drooled out of his mouth.
Butters hefted the lead pipe like a batter at the plate. "Get rid of the knife, or I start on your cranium."
Aristedes kept on gasping but didn't look up. He tossed the creepy knife away.
"The one in your pocket, too," Butters said.
The sorcerer gave him a look of pure hatred. Then he tossed away the knife he'd appropriated from Daniel.
"Sit tight, Daniel," Butters called. "I'll be with you in just a second."
" 'M fine," Daniel groaned from the ground. He didn't sound fine. But as I watched, I saw him winding pieces of the slashed cloak around the wound in his right arm, binding them closed and slowing the bleeding. Tough kid, and thinking under pressure.
Butters focused on Aristedes. "I don't want to hurt you," he said. "I want to help you. Your knee has been destroyed. You will never walk again if you don't get medical attention. I'll take you to a hospital."
"What do you want?" Aristedes growled.
"The priest. Fitz. These kids." He bounced the lead pipe against his own shoulder a couple of times. "And this really isn't a negotiation."
"Yes!" I said, clenching my fist. "You go, Butters!"
Aristedes eyed Butters for a moment more. Then he sagged and let out a soft groan of pain.
Oh, crap.
"You win," the sorcerer said. "Just ... please ... help me."
"Straighten it out," Butters said, never quite looking at the man. "Lie back and leave it straight."
Aristedes fumbled with his leg and let out another, higher-pitched moan of pain.
Butters flinched at the sound and his eyes were tortured. In a sudden flash of insight, I realized why he cut up corpses for a living instead of treating live patients.
Butters couldn't handle seeing people in pain.
That was what he'd always meant when he said that he wasn't a real doctor, when he said that treating living patients was messy and disturbing compared to extracting individual organs and cataloging them in autopsies. Dead people were just a pile of meat and bones. They were beyond all suffering.
A physician needs a certain level of professional detachment if he is going to best serve his patients, and Butters just ... didn't have it. The little guy couldn't bring himself not to feel something for the people he worked with. So he had sought a career where he practiced medicine without trying to heal anyone-without involving himself with actual patients.
Aristedes had seen it, too. He probably didn't understand it, but he saw the soft spot, and he went for it ruthlessly.
"Don't," I breathed. "Butters, don't."
"Dammit," Butters said finally, gritting his teeth. He bent to help the man. "Hold still. You're just making it worse. Here." He tried to keep a wary distance as he lent the man a hand, but it just wasn't possible to help him and and stay out of reach. I saw it on his face as he realized it and began to withdraw. Then, as the man continued his low moans of pain, Butters gave his head a little shake and moved to help Aristedes straighten his leg. stay out of reach. I saw it on his face as he realized it and began to withdraw. Then, as the man continued his low moans of pain, Butters gave his head a little shake and moved to help Aristedes straighten his leg.
I saw the sorcerer's eyes narrow to slits, an almost sensual pleasure contained in them.
"Dammit!" I said. "Butters, move!" I vanished and appeared beside Butters, shoving my hands into his chest, willing myself to push him away.
I didn't move him-my hands just passed into him, insubstantial-but a sudden frisson seemed to run through him, and he began to pull away.
Too late.
Aristedes' left arm blurred and struck Butters squarely on the chin. If he hadn't been drawing back, the blow would have caught him just under the ear, and the sorcerer's hand was moving fast enough that it might have broken Butters's neck. Even so, the sharp thump of impact snapped Butters's head to one side, hard enough to rebound when it had reached maximum torsion. He did a brief bobblehead impersonation on the way to the floor and landed in a boneless heap.
I wanted to scream in frustration. Instead, I poked at my brain, demanding it to come up with something.
To my considerable surprise, it did.
I vanished straight up to the ceiling and spun in a quick circle. There. I spotted Fitz, moving in a low crawl toward one of the exits from the factory floor, keeping a modest pile of junk between himself and Aristedes.
"Fitz!" I bellowed. I vanished and reappeared right over him. "Fitz, you've got to turn around!"
"Quiet," he hissed in a frantic whisper. His eyes were white around the edges. "Quiet. No, I can't! Leave me alone!"
"You've got to do it," I said. "Forthill's here in the camp, hurt bad. There's a freaking angel of death standing over him. He needs help."
Fitz didn't answer me. He kept on crawling off the factory floor and into one of the hallways outside it. He was making desperate, small sounds as he reached the door and got out of any possible line of sight to Aristedes.
"Fitz," I said. "Fitz, you have got to do something. You're the only one who can."
"Cops," he panted. "I'll call the cops. They can handle it." He got up and started padding down the hall, toward what I presumed was the nearest exit from the building.
"Butters and Daniel don't have that kind of time," I answered. "The cops get tipped off by a runaway, we'll be lucky if a prowl car cruises by half an hour from now. All three of them could be dead by then. Your boss can't allow witnesses."
"You're the wizard," Fitz said. "Why can't you do it? I mean, ghosts can possess people and stuff, right? Just zap into Aristedes and make him jump off the roof."
I was quiet for a moment. Then I said, "Look, I'm new at this ghost thing. But it doesn't work like that. Even the badass ghost of a centuries-old wizard I know of can only possess a subject who is willing. So far, I've only been able to move into people who were sensitive to spirits-and they could have booted me out anytime they wanted. Aristedes is neither sensitive nor willing. I'd be like a bug splattering on a windshield if I tried to take him over."
"Christ."
"If you want to volunteer, I could take you over, I suppose. I don't think you've got the right wiring for me to use my power, and you'd still be in danger, of course, but you wouldn't have to make the decisions."
Fitz shuddered. "No."
"Good. It's weird as hell." I paused and took a breath. "And besides. It would be ... wrong."
"Wrong?" Fitz asked.
"Take away someone's will, you take away everything they are. Their whole identity. Doing that to someone is worse than murder; if you kill them, they don't keep on suffering."
"Who cares?" Fitz said. "This guy is an animal. Who cares if he gets something bad? He's earned it."
"Wrong is wrong, even when you really, really want it not to be," I said quietly. "I learned that one the hard way. It's easy to do the right thing when it doesn't cost you. Not as easy to do the right thing when your back is to the wall."
Fitz shook his head the whole time I spoke that last, and his pace quickened. "There's nothing I can do. I'm running for my life."
I fought down a snarl to keep my voice level. Time to change tactics. "Kid, you aren't thinking it through," I said. "You know Aristedes. You know him."
"Which part of running for my life running for my life didn't come across?" didn't come across?"
I grunted. "The part where you leave your friends to die."
"What?"
"He's busted up pretty bad right now. Weak. How long do you think it will take him to replace all your crew?"
Fitz's steps dragged to a stop.
"They've seen him weak now. Hell, he's hurt bad enough that he might be crippled for life. What do you think he'll do with the kids who saw him beaten? Who saw him get bloodied and smashed to the floor?"
Fitz bowed his head.
"Stars and stones, kid. You started showing signs of independent thought, and he was so threatened by it that he set you up to get killed. What do you think he'll do to Zero?"
Fitz didn't answer.
"You run now," I said quietly, "and you're going to spend your whole life running. This is a crossroads. This is where your life takes form. Here. Now. This moment."
His face twisted up as if he was in physical pain. Still, he didn't respond.
I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, to give him the reassurance of a human touch. The best I could do was to soften my voice as much as I could.
"I know what I'm talking about, kid. Every time you're alone in the dark, every time you go by a mirror, you're going to remember this moment. You're going to see who you've become. And you'll either be the man who ran away while his own crew and three good men died, or you'll be the man who stood tall and did something about it."
Fitz swallowed and whispered, "He's too strong."
"Not right now, he isn't," I said. "He's on the ground. He can't walk. He's got one arm. If I didn't think you had a chance, I'd be telling you to run."
"I can't," he whispered. "I can't. This isn't fair."
"Life hardly ever is," I said.
"I don't want to die."
"Heh. No one does. But everyone does it anyway."
"That supposed to be funny?"
"Maybe a little ironic, given the source. Look, kid. All that matters is the answer to the question: Which of those men do you want to be?"
Slowly he lifted his head. I realized that he could see his own reflection in the glass of an office door.
I stood behind him, looking down at him and remembering, with a faint sense of irrational disbelief, that I had once been no taller than the boy.
"Which man, Fitz?" I asked quietly.
Chapter Thirty-nine
When I faced my old master, I did it with newly made staff and blasting rod in hand, with the ancient forces of the universe at my call, and with words of power upon my tongue.