IN WHICH NARCISSE VIVANT, JAZZ THAUMATURGE, LEAPS OUT OF PROVERBIAL FRYING PAN INTO PROVERBIAL FIRE

[little_lady_d]

The night of the raid, Narcisse Vivant played at the Alexandria Club. Monsieur Vivant, the rumor ran, Wonder-Worker, Syncopator, the Orpheus of Jazzland.

Friday night thaumaturges flocked to the floor, laughing-eyed in beaded frocks and brass amulets, betting slivers of destiny at the cartomancy table, tracing conjuration circles in cigar smoke and incense. They traded their secrets, their stories, their dog-eared grimoires, their homespun incantations. They did it for knowledge's sake, for progress, or for business, or they did it to show off.

 

"Look what I can do," cried a girl decked in pearls, and she spoke a word, snapped her heels, and flew. Pearls flung back like a pair of wings, she spiraled up and around a Deco pillar; she danced on air as though air were her element. She made it so, in the moment of her speaking, and when the moment passed, she crashed into the cartomancers and sent their destinies spinning.

 

Narcisse set the stage. He circled its center, chanting songs half-heard by the press of patrons. As he went he flecked river water from a flask and his fingertips, marking the four points, cleansing the ground. Contrary wills flashed through the Alexandria Club, which didn't make it special — different people wanted different things. But he sanctified the space for his will alone.

 

That made the next bit more impressive. He crossed into the circle and turned to his audience, tailcoat flaring. Heads turned, but most remained huddled in conversation, clusters of cloches and high hats. The cartomancers cursed the would-be aviatrix, and she threw their curses back at them. Then Narcisse raised his wand.

 

"A-one," he said. "A-two," he said. "A-one, two, three, four .."

 

The circle's four points shone. Red as dawn, blue as midday, green as storm's warning, gold as godlight. A flick of his wrist, and constellations blazed to life above him, night spreading like a spill of ink. Starborn beings shimmered and swayed, shadow-bodies cut from the ersatz sky — goat-horned Capricorn with the cornet, Libra light-fingered on the keys, Sagittarius the strumming bass, Gemini on dueling drums. The stars sang. The stars swung.

 

Amid the many, many voices of the Alexandria Club, Narcisse held his circle of something else. There, he kept the beat

 

That is, until the warning-sigils began to blare.

 

"The Bureau —"

 

"Witch-hunters —"

 

"You said the place was warded —"

 

Around the room, warning-sigils burned the pillars that bore them, and the stone cried they are coming, they are coming. The stone cried flee.

 

No doors, no windows opened into the Alexandria Club. Nothing could enter it, except through summons-circle. Nothing could reveal it, except a word of power. Yet new circles opened across the floor, like Narcisse's own upon the stage. Like Narcisse's, they shone.

 

"You said —"

 

"Shut up, run."

 

The starbeings played like they didn't know the club was chaos. Cornet soared, drums crashed. Patrons fled to the circles, fled to escape, but out of the summons-circles came tall, clanking creatures, iron-wrought men whose ribs were prison bars. One snatched a cartomancer into its chest, and locked him inside itself. Though he screamed his will, woke the power in his cards, his will and his power did nothing. Over his screams, Libra rose up the scales.

 

"Cage-golems!"

 

Flee. Narcisse needed telling once, not twice. Conducting still, he spun his hand to the sky, and arched his back like Sagittarius's bow. He prepared his wand for a downbeat, but not until night filled his eyes and flooded his soul, and he forgot there was a world outside the world of music. The flourish of brass was city lights at sundown, the strings were the steps of Harlem girls in dancing flats. In the circle, his will was power, and his will was not in the Club with the cage-golems. He floated on high —

 

— and stumbled out of his mind, out under the stars, and on to the roof's edge. Very nearly he spilled over the edge and into the waiting alley. But he wheeled back, caught his breath.

 

Dangerous. Dumb. When some thaumaturges escaped through their minds, they didn't come back again. Narcisse ran a hand through his oil-slick hair, and tried not to think, tried to laugh instead.

 

Dangerous, dumb, but he did it. He opened a door to the sky. It shivered above him like northern lights.

 

Then the lights tore, and a streak of iron came clattering through. He realized: he opened a door for a cage-golem. Realizing, he bolted as fast as he could, before the gaping gateway of cage-golem's chest could close in on him.

 

He came to the Alexandria Club to play. It's not like he hurt anyone. All he wanted was a moment on stage, a song of his own.

 

And to remake reality to suit his whims, yes, yes, but that’s art, isn’t it?

 

The cage-golem reared on iron limbs, and seized the air with iron claws. Its scrying-eyes gleamed. Narcisse didn’t think the force kept its cage-golems, not since Prohibition, not since the law set itself against thaumaturgy and even the police-augurers forswore their arts.

 

Not that Narcisse knew much about cage-golems. The only way he knew to animate a golem was by daemon-pact, though a once-friend, once-colleague claimed it could be done by semiotics alone. Cage-golems borrowed scraps of will and willpower, the raw intention released in a thaumaturge's spell, conducted from inside the bars of its body. Lucky thing, then, that this golem lacked a prisoner. Or would that make it hungrier for one?

 

"Fine." Narcisse spun on the rooftop, and raised his wand. He spoke in a language that wasn't English, or French, or Latin, but the language of influence. He said, "Show me what you've got."

 

Sigils lit the cage-golem's bones, or what it had for bones — perhaps that was what it had. Easy enough, to convince them to show. Self-willed creatures sometimes held their cards close to their chests, but most wanted to talk about themselves, and writing wanted to be read. Narcisse could read the stipulations that made up the cage-golem, what it could do and who it could hold (— not authorized to use lethal force, good to know —) and who in the end it answered to.

 

"Really? They filed the truenames off of you?"

 

Scrying-eyes reflecting power, the cage-golem came barreling toward him. Only barely did Narcisse roll out of the way, scrape his hands through his gloves and his knees through his trousers. Stars swum above his head, but he pushed himself upright. He could run, fast, or he could think, faster.

 

Cage-golems would be signed off to the Bureau of Thaumaturgy Prevention — and the better for him, if someone did a hash job of it. They filed off the truenames, and left the departmental cartouche of an inherited title.

 

"Hey," he said. "Hey, it's me. Recognize me?"

 

Step by shuddering step, the cage-golem advanced. Narcisse pulled his off glove with his teeth, held out his bloodied hand. He spoke again in power's language.

 

"By my blood, by the blood of my father, by the blood of his forebears and the first of our name. She, whose truename was stripped by white men's magics, whose pacts and powers failed her on foreign shores. She, who forged her name anew — forged it of fire, furies leashed to her hand — and left that name in legacy. I am an Inheritor, and by my Inheritance, I invoke you and bind you. By your contract, you answer, you recognize me."

 

He spoke his truename. He spoke it thrice. He let the cage-golem come to him, and sealed his hand to the gap in its sigils where truename should be, above the iron lock of its heart.

 

Creaking, the cage-golem lurched toward him, and he lurched back. This time, he slipped off the roof's edge. This time, he fell into the night

 

His blood glowed red, from his hand, from the cage-golem's heart. He reached out, and up, and its scrying-eyes peered down at him.

 

"I invoke you," he gasped. "I bind you. Answer me."  The alley loomed. "Save me!"

 

Shadows grew in the cage-golem's body. Shadows swelled, until the bars burst, and shadow and iron streaked together from the rooftop, meteor-like in their arc. As they fell, they changed. No longer could Narcisse see the man-shaped prison, the prison-shaped man. He saw a great cat, its jaws of gleaming metal. He saw a knight in sigil-armor. He saw a constellation.

 

Arms reached out of the shadow. While Narcisse fell into the night, the night caught him, and fell with him.

 

Something held him, and slowed his descent — some starborn being, but not an empty fancy conjured for the stage. It had a purpose of its own, an intelligence, a will. Its feet shattered concrete, and still it held Narcisse, cradled against a body that was all shadow and suggestion.

 

"Daemon," Narcisse called it. "Thank you," he told it. "That was ... unexpected, let’s say. Inspired, let’s say. You should be a syncopator, with your improvisational skills — I forgot what it’s like to share a stage."

 

Wordless, the daemon set him down in the alleyway. Narcisse found it blessedly dark, blessedly quiet — no warning wail of sirens, and one thing left to do.

 

"It’s been swell. Daemon, by our contract, I release you."

 

He expected shadow to melt back into night, and iron to clatter inert to the ground.

 

The daemon spoke. "No," it said. "Not yet."