Upstairs, Croyd was introduced to a group of old and middle-aged men and their bodyguards. He declined a drink, just wanting to give them the name and get out. But it occurred to him that giving them the money's worth might entail stretching the story out a bit to show that he'd earned it. So he explained things, step by step, from Demise to Loophole. Then he told them of the attempt to take him out following that interview, before he finally got around to giving them Siu Ma's name.
The expected question followed: Where could she be found?
"This I do not know," Croyd replied. "Chris asked me for a name, not for an address. You want to hire me to get that for you, too, I suppose I could do it, though it would be cheaper to use your own talent."
This drew some surly responses, and Croyd shrugged, said goodnight, and walked out, stepping up his pace to the blur level as the muscle near the door looked about, as if for orders.
It was not until a couple of blocks later that a pair of such street troops caught up and attempted to brace him for a refund. He tore out a sewer grating, stuffed their bodies down through the opening and replaced it, for his final bit of subtlety before closing the books on this one.
The Hue of a Mind by Stephen Leigh
Wednesday, 9:15 A.M.
For seven days, since Misha had arrived in New York, she had met nightly with the joker Gimli and the abominations he had gathered around him.
For seven days she had lived in a festering sore called Jokertown, waiting.
For seven days there had been no visions. And that was most important.
Visions had always ruled Misha's life. She was Kahina, the Seeress: Allah's dreams had shown her Hartmann, the Satan who danced puppets from his clawed hands. The visions had shown her Gimli and Sara Morgenstern. Allah's visions had led her back to the desert mosque the day after she'd slit her brother's throat, there to be given by one of the faithful the thing that would give her revenge and bring Hartmann down: Allah's gift.
Today was the day of the new moon. Misha took that as an omen that there would be a vision. She had prayed to Allah for well over an hour this morning, the gift He had bestowed upon her cradled in her arms.
He had granted her nothing.
When she rose from the floor at last, she opened the lacquered clothes trunk sitting beside the rickety bed. Misha took off her chador and veils, changing into a long skirt and blouse again. She hated the light, brightly colored cloth and the sinful nakedness she felt. The bared arms and face made her feel vulnerable.
Misha covered Allah's gift with the folds of the chador she didn't dare wear here. She had just hidden it under the black cotton when she heard the scrape of a footstep behind her.
Mingled fear and anger made her gasp. She slammed down the lid of the clothes trunk and straightened.
"What are you doing in here?" She whirled around, not even realizing she was shouting in Arabic. "Get out of my room-"
She'd never felt safe in Jokertown, not once in the week she'd been here. Always before there had been her husband, Sayyid, her brother, the Nur. There had been servants and bodyguards.
Now Misha was in a country illegally, living alone in a city full of violence, and the only people she knew were jokers. Only two nights before, someone had been shot and killed in the street outside these ramshackle sleeping rooms near the East River. She told herself that it had only been a joker, that the death didn't matter.
Jokers were cursed. The abominations of Allah.
It was a joker standing at the door of her dingy room, staring at her. "Get out," she said in shaky, accented English. " I have a gun."
"It's my room," the joker said. "It's my room and I'm taking it back. You're just a nat. You shouldn't be here." The thin, scrawny shape took a step forward into the light from the room's one window. Misha recognized the joker immediately.
Gray-white rags of torn cloth were wrapped around his forehead, and the grimy bandages were clotted and brown with old blood. His hair was stiff with it. His hands were similarly covered, and thick red drops oozed through the soaked wrappings to fall on the floor. The clothing he wore over his emaciated body bunched here and there with hidden knots, and she knew that there were other seeping, unclosing wounds on the rest of his body.
She'd seen him every day, staring at her, watching. He would be in the hallways outside her door, on the street outside the tenement, walking behind her. He'd never spoken, but his rancor was obvious. "Stigmata," Gimli had told her when she'd confessed his fear of him the first day. "That's his name. Bleeds all the fucking time. Have some goddamn compassion. Stig's no trouble to anyone."
Yet Stigmata's sallow, drawn stare frightened her. He was always there, always scowling when she met his gaze. He was a joker, that was enough. One of Satan's children, devilmarked by the wild card. "Get out," Misha told him again.
"It's my room," he insisted like a petulant child. He shuffled his feet nervously.
"You are mistaken. I paid for it."
"It was mine first. I've always lived here, ever since-" His lips tightened. He drew his right hand into a fist; the sopping bandages rained scarlet as he brandished it before her. His voice was a thin screech. "Ever since this. Came here the night I got the wild card. Nine years ago, and they kick me out 'cause I don't pay the last couple months. I told em I was gonna pay, but they wouldn't wait. They'll take nat money instead."
"The room's mine," Misha repeated.
"You got my things. I left everything here."
"The owner took them, not me they're locked in the basement."
Stigmata's face twisted. He spat out the words as if they burned his tongue, almost screaming them. "He's a nat. You're a nat. You're not wanted here. We hate you."
His accusations caused Misha's masked frustrations to boil over. A cold fury claimed her, and she drew herself up, pointing at the joker. "You're the outcasts," she shouted back at Stigmata, at Jokertown itself. She might have been back in Syria, lecturing the jokers begging at the gates of Damascus. "God hates you. Repent of your sins and maybe you'll be forgiven. But don't waste your poison on me."
In the midst of her tirade there was suddenly a whirling, familiar disorientation. "No," Misha cried against the onslaught of the vision, and then, because she knew there was no escape from hikma, divine wisdom: "In sha'Allah." Allah would come as He wished, when He wished.
The room and Stigmata wavered in her sight. Allah's hand touched her. Her eyes became His. A waking nightmare burst upon her, melting away the gritty reality of Jokertown, her filthy room, and Stigmata's threats.
She was in Badiyat Ash-sham again, the desert. She stood in her brother's mosque.
The Nur al-Allah stood in front of her, the emerald glow of his skin lost beneath impossibly thick streams of blood that trailed down the front of his djellaba. His trembling hand pointed at her accusingly; his chin lifted to show the gaping, puckered, bone-white edges of the wound across his throat. He tried to speak, and his voice, which had once been compelling and resonant, was now all gravel and dust, choked. She could understand nothing but the hatred in his eyes. Misha gasped under that baleful, accusing gaze.
"It wasn't me!" she sobbed, falling to her knees before him in supplication. "Satan's hand moved mine. He used my hatred and my jealousy. Please…"
She tried to explain her innocence to her brother, but when she looked up, it was no longer Nur al-Allah standing before her but Hartmann.
And he laughed.
"I'm the beast who rips away the veils of the mind," he said. His hand lashed out, clawing for her as she recoiled belatedly. Like talons his nails dug into her eyesockets, slashed the soft skin of her face. Blinded, she screamed, her head arced back in torment, writhing but unable to get away from Hartmann as his fingers tore and gouged.