Knowledge Aforethought, page 12
“Wait, this guy is supposed to be a plague victim? Oh, no. There’s no way I’m going anywhere near him.” Mary shoved her charcoal into her belt purse and folded her arms, looking for all the world like an impetuous teenager about to put her foot down.
“You will come,” Charlotte said, her voice brooking no argument. “We are fulfilling our side of the bargain with Cal. However, if you so wish, you can remain outside and keep watch.”
“Keep watch for what, plague doctors?” Mary snapped.
“Death, or Life,” I said. Mary’s expression twisted into a scowl; obviously that was not a much better option. “Alright, Niccolo, where are we going?”
Machiavelli took a breath, as if he, too, were about to argue about this plan, then shook his head. He turned and started walking along the cobbled streets of Florence. We followed behind him, passing squares and courtyards. We passed near the wealthy section of the Medici and their like, then turned down a different street.
“Many of the merchants live in this area,” Machiavelli explained. “Though I do not know if Giovanni Abrami is among them. Surely, though, someone will know of his whereabouts.”
“And what are we going to do once we find him?” Mary grumbled. “Kill him if he’s not already dead?”
“That would be one way to make sure the appointment stays on track,” I said, blinking a little at the obvious cheer in my voice. Was that from the prospect of returning home or from preparing to kill a man. I wasn’t certain.
Charlotte paused and narrowed her eyes at me. “Cal, are you certain of this plan? There seems to be a great deal that is left to chance. We do not even know for certain that this man is meant to be Death’s appointment.”
“It’s him, alright!” I snapped. “And there’s nothing wrong with my plan. This is the best way to make sure that I do what I was sent here to do. I helped you get your Eye thing, didn’t I?”
Charlotte took a deep breath through her nose. Mary folded her arms and glared at me. But the half-giantess nodded and released her breath. “Yes, you did. And as I have said, we will help you fulfil your end of the bargain. I just…question the prudence of this plan. There seems to be little evidence of—“
“Look, I know that there’s not a lot of evidence,” I said. I waved my phone at Charlotte. “But I have the internet, and it’s telling me that Giovanni Abrami is someone who would be potentially problematic if he were to remain alive. There is no one else. So we’re going to go in there and we’re going to make sure that he meets Death.”
My three companions exchanged a look. Machiavelli sighed and shook his head, but said nothing. Charlotte, too, remained quiet, her expression hard. Mary had none of the qualms of the others; she asked the question that seemed to be on everyone’s mind. “And you’re just going to kill the man?”
Maybe if I still had my soul, I would have hesitated. I would have considered the cost of killing a man. Potentially an innocent man, but still one who had to die. As it was, my lack of emotions said nothing about the ethical dilemma. I just weighed the options, and nodded. Firmly. “If it’s the only way, then yes.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Mary said. She turned on her heel and marched onwards. Charlotte moved after her, throwing me a frown over her shoulder. Machiavelli put a hand on my shoulder.
“It is good that you have us with you. I am not certain that you should be doing this alone,” he said. Whatever that meant.
“Let’s just get this over with, okay?” I grumbled, hunching my shoulders. He nodded and moved off after Mary and Charlotte, exchanging a few words with them before taking the lead. After a while, Machiavelli stopped in a square to ask directions. I stopped paying attention to the splendour of the city, the statues, the art, the carvings, the greenery. I just wanted to find this Abrami and get back to my normal time. We were pointed to a section of the city farther inwards. A few twists and turns and then we were there.
Only…something wasn’t right.
The house upon which we looked had been closed off, presumably to keep people away from a victim of the plague. I didn’t know a whole lot about the quarantine practises of the time, but I imagine the windows being boarded up and the upper ones being covered with black cloth weren’t a good sign. However, the people carrying a stretcher with a body was the current problem. They wore the heavy black robes that I had come to expect from the modern idea of the plague doctors; there was even that funny mask that looked like a bird beak. But if this was the right house—and I trusted Machiavelli’s guidance on that—then the body being carried out was that of Giovanni Abrami. And if Giovanni Abrami’s body was being carried out, then he was dead. Death had kept his appointment here.
We had the wrong person.
And I had no idea who else it could possibly be.
“This isn’t right,” I said, taking a frantic step forwards. Charlotte held out an arm to hold me back, more than strong enough to keep me contained. “No, he’s not supposed to be dead! We were supposed to remind Death of his appointment and then he was supposed to die. He has to be the missed appointment!”
“He is not,” Charlotte said, her eyes hard and her mouth pulled into a tight line. “We must look elsewhere.”
“You don’t understand.” I pulled my phone out of my belt purse and showed it to her. “There is no one else. There is nothing else that makes sense.”
“Then we have failed.” The words fell to the stones at my feet, plain as day. I felt the last few days catch up to me. Even the absence of my soul could not manage to keep away this sudden weariness, this horrible sense of loss. I swayed on my feet, looking between my three companions and the body of Giovanni Abrami, being carried far away.
“Come,” Machiavelli said, clapping me on the shoulder. He looked about as pleased as I felt, which was to say, not very. “I believe it is time for a drink.”
Between Charlotte, Mary, Machiavelli and I, we scrounged up enough money to wallow in self-pity for a good long while. We camped out at a table practically covered in bottles and jugs of wine, the only break a platter of breads and meats and cheeses with some grapes. My mortal companions dove for the food before drowning themselves in wine. I, on the other hand, lingered over another makeshift sandwich, alternating bites with sips of wine. I would never get drunk this way, but I was unlikely to feel the effects of the wine anyways.
Just another lovely byproduct of having no soul.
“I should never have shaken his hand,” I said, laying my head on my arms. “All of this would be a distant dream but for that.”
“What are you talking about?” Mary asked, dropping a hand on my shoulder. I shifted enough to be able to look up at the journalist and sighed.
“Death,” I said, sounding far more morose than I intended. Machiavelli snorted into his third glass of wine. I guess he was moving towards that lighthearted buzzed drunk feeling. Good for him. I propped my head in my hand. “About a year ago, I was walking to a dinner through the park and got shot. Ah, um, a fast moving projectile object—“
“We are familiar with guns,” Machiavelli said, an amused gleam in his eye. “We have had cannons and even smaller guns for nearly a century, now.”
“Right,” I groused. “Apparently I need to read more. Anyways, I got shot. And then Death appeared, offering me a job. He said that he could only have appeared to me in the Instant of Death, in his realm. But he also said that there was a slight chance I could survive, or something along those lines. I was too stupid, though. I decided that adventure and immortality were much better than potentially dying and living in a whole lot of pain. If I hadn’t been so stupid, then I wouldn’t be caught up in this mess. I wouldn’t have been thrown into a world of magic, where everything is as dangerous as you could possibly imagine, where half of the world wants to kill me, where my own boss is like the biggest nightmare people have, and I wouldn’t have been sent back in time to this…this…technological backwater!”
There was a beat after my rant. Charlotte clapped at my frustrations, her expression flat. Mary, though, burst out laughing. “You would give up all of this for being normal?!” she chuckled, wiping moisture from her eyes. “What an idiot!”
I straightened and downed the rest of my glass of wine. Feeling a proper rush of anger, I jabbed a finger in Mary’s direction. “You think that chasing after that adrenaline rush, that addiction, is so good? What happens when you end up in a terrible situation, one of your own making, and you can’t get out of it? Or worse, what happens when the adrenaline no longer gets your heart pumping? This world is messed up, no question. All I want is my quiet little corner of it, that keeps me from going insane, alright? I don’t need dragons or rock trolls or air spirits or giants or anything! I’m a PR agent, okay? I know when a ship is sinking, when there’s too much craziness for people to handle. And this ship, it’s sinking. You know why? Because we’re up against Life and Death, two entities that could level the entire planet, let alone you or me. So, yeah, I would happily give all of this up if I could return to normal. It was a mistake, trusting Death. All it’s brought me is failure.”
Another beat of silence. Mary slumped back in her seat, glaring at me, but she thankfully said nothing. Charlotte’s flat expression shifted as she quirked a single brow, but she took a sip of wine and, too, said nothing. Only Machiavelli bothered to speak and I should have known that his words would be the worst of the three.
“It seems to me, Cal, that you are pining for something that will never come to pass. We cannot go backwards. You are, whether you like it or not, an employee of Death. And you are, like it or not, here in this time and this place. It is your own fault if you do not see the boon in that. You would give up wonder for ignorance. Perhaps you need to rethink your priorities.” He looked at me over the rim of his cup, then shook his head. “This is not my world, either, Cal. Or have you forgotten?”
I sighed, perhaps melodramatically, but it was enough to clear my mind just a touch. “Look, I appreciate everything that you all have done for me. But the fact of the matter is, I just want all of this to be over so I can go home. Is that so wrong?”
Machiavelli studied the wine in his cup. Mary rooted around in her bag for some charcoal, though she didn’t actually pull any out. Charlotte, though, sighed and shook her head. “I once thought as you did. It is not easy being a half-giantess thrown into the world with no defences. I had just enough connection to the magical world to travel and find the artefacts, but my resources in the human world were limited. Yet here I am, having successfully retrieved the Eye of Carteria.”
“With help,” I pointed out. Charlotte shrugged.
“I would not have it any other way. You must come to terms with your place in this new world. You must stop thinking of the danger and of your own failure. Everyone fails, Cal. That’s what Life is about. Failing. And then learning and moving on. So what if you misdiagnosed the appointment that Death is meant to keep? There were two parts to your task, were there not?”
“Yeah.” I pushed away my plate of food and looked longingly at the wine. I wanted to drown my sorrows in drink. It was never really my thing, truth be told, but now that the option was taken from me, I longed for it. Instead, I forced myself to sit up and felt my bones creaking as I did. Maybe I was more tired than I thought. Perhaps I shouldn’t push my limits with my lack of soul. Perhaps I should take it easy…well, easier, at least. After this pity party, I decided I was going to go take a nap.
“Life was to, what, refuse Death something?” Charlotte prompted.
I perched my glasses on top of my head and rubbed the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Yeah. Um, Life was going to refuse Death a mortal who was meant to die. I’ve never heard of that happening. I mean, she gets pissed at him for taking people, but she hasn’t ever stopped him that I know of. It’s not like a person can avoid Death, right? Besides, he doesn’t actively kill them, he just…you know. Anyways, I wouldn’t even know how to go about figuring out who—“
I was cut off by a scream, high pitched and terrified. In my experience, that usually meant something was going really, really wrong.
As one, the four of us abandoned our drinking binge and ran outside to see what was going on. What faced us was, in a word, bad.
The centre of the square, which had previously been a nicely tended little garden around which people could sit while talking or resting, was now nothing but rubble. The plants had withered and died and been strewn with rocks pulled from the wall surrounding the garden and the cobbled streets. The pedestrians and lookie-loos were backing away from the scene of destruction, but the two figures facing off across the square prevented them from going too very far.
Life and Death were standing there in all their glory and power, glowering at one another. Given the screams from the people now trapped, I had a feeling that everybody could see them. And that was really not good.
“You cannot,” Death snapped, his dark power slithering forwards, insidious and terrible. Life tossed her head back and laughed, brushing his power away with a flash of her own tempting and overwhelming power.
“Why not?” Life demanded. She spotted me and pointed accusingly in my direction. “You have this one, do you not? You have bent all the rules!”
“That was an accident,” Death said, holding up his hands. He took a step towards Life and was rebuffed. He glared at me instead. “I am working to remedy it.”
Life guffawed, the sound sweet and piercing. I saw Machiavelli sway, eyes closed as he tried to shake off the desperate need to go to Life. I had experienced that sensation before; it was not easy to resist her. Even as we stood there, a woman with a basket of fruit on her arm stumbled towards Life, reaching out to touch her, eyes wide and beseeching. Life brushed her away with an impatient flick of her hand. The touch of her skin was quite deadly, though, and the woman let out a shrill scream as a ghostly fire consumed her.
Charlotte stepped forwards, teeth bared in a snarl. “No!” she said, drawing that ridiculous sword.
Life turned her head to stare at Charlotte. I would have sworn that I saw a flicker of lust in Life’s eyes, but it was impossible to pin her true emotions down. “Yes,” Life hissed, sidling towards the four of us. “Fight me, champion. Fight me and take your place!”
“You cannot have her,” Death said, moving towards us as well. He stretched out his hand and sent a rippling dark wave towards us. Mary squeaked and shuffled backwards. Charlotte caught her, waved her hands furiously while angry-whispering, and shoved her into the tavern. She cast a hard glance at Machiavelli.
“You can either help us or join her. I would suggest you join her,” Charlotte said, voice firm. Machiavelli looked at the two titans standing in the square, glaring at each other and moving closer and nodded before, he, too, vanished inside the tavern.
Charlotte looked at me and raised her brows. I swallowed, nodded, and strode into the square. “What the heck is going on here?!” I demanded.
“Get out of the way,” Life snarled. “You have interfered too much already!”
Before I could even think of a response, Life waved her hand and I was quickly assaulted by her power. It was sharp and poignant, filling my lungs as I took in a breath and making everything seem far less interesting. Life filled me with energy; I was eager and interested and nothing could stop me. All I had to do was enjoy everything that came my way. There was no need to fret about lost technology or people left behind. So what if my normal life had been dropped by the wayside? I had adventure and intrigue and wonder right within my grasp. Who wouldn’t want to live as I did? I just needed to embrace it. Embrace my life. Embrace Life.
“—Cal!” Charlotte slammed into me, knocking me to my knees. I looked around and saw that Life was staring at Death with wild, uncontainable fury in her eyes. He returned the look with coldness and emptiness and utter, soul-deep calm. He would not be ruffled by her tantrums. He was Death.
“I thought you were immune,” Charlotte hissed in my ear, helping me to stand. I shook my head.
“I can shake it off, and I won’t die if either one of them touches me, but I’m far from immune. I haven’t been hit by that sort of power for a while. It hurts,” I said. I pressed my hand to my head. The people still in the square stared at Charlotte and I as though we had just experienced some sort of horror. Death and Life ignored us, preferring to face each other.
“We have to stop them,” Charlotte said.
“Or they’ll level Florence,” I agreed. I stood fully straight and nodded. “Alright. Come on, let’s go do some serious relationship counselling.”
Charlotte gave me a strange look, but said nothing. That was probably a good thing. My poor sense of humour was at best a half-step away from hysteria. The only thing preventing me from screaming or giggling was the fact that my soul was very, very far away and I couldn’t feel things as I usually did.
“Death!” I yelled, projecting my voice as best I could. Death spared me half-a-glance, which was still strong enough to make me queasy. “Enough!”
“Be quiet, tiny human,” Death said in a voice that echoed through the air like inevitability. Life chuckled darkly.
“Why don’t you listen to your plaything, husband dear?” Life sneered. She danced forwards and snatched at me, laughing as I jerked away. “Oh, scared are you?”
“You bet your left eye I am,” I said, taking a few more precautionary steps away. Charlotte had vanished into my peripheral vision; I hoped she was doing something clever and preparing an ambush or something. “What is wrong with you people?” I said.
Life snorted and shook her head. She backhanded me before I could do anything but blink and I crashed into the remains of the garden. The plants around me withered further as Death’s power surged forwards. I felt the air around me tighten, the light darken. I was still able to breathe and move easily, but I saw some of the people around turning grey, their eyes wide as they struggled for life.
