Ten years ago, Fahriye Budak had a secret relationship with the most powerful woman in the world. And that secret has just walked through the door to her office, asking for a favor.
By Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Devi Lacroix
Ten Years Ago
It’s not often a beautiful woman walks through my door. In fact, as far as this specific woman is concerned, the frequency of her appearance in my office should be never.
I stand up so fast it nearly makes me dizzy. I dive toward the door, easing it shut behind her while she looks on, amused. In height she is hardly imposing—I’m much taller and much bigger than her—and her pear-shaped build does not look the sort to intimidate. And yet everyone who has ever been in her presence would describe the experience as paralyzing; it has taken me near on two decades to be barely functional around her.
Elizaveta Hua is the warlock of her age, the most powerful woman in the world. Once, many years ago, I saved her children at great personal risk to myself, and from that moment of heroism has sprung the most important and dangerous relationship of my life. The Huas, as a general rule, have a nasty reputation, and Elizaveta Hua is persona non grata with the magical enforcement organization I work for, Sealing and Containment—to the point that they very well might have a kill-on-sight order out for her. And they would probably kill me, too, if they knew how frequently she and I slept together.
And here she is, standing in the belly of the beast, as if she doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Liz,” I say, my tongue tangling over itself. I nearly bite down on it. “Why are you here—did anyone see.”
“It looks like you finally earned that corner office.” Elizaveta’s small, full mouth is drawn toward a smirk. “A promotion, I hear; climbing up the ranks, are we?”
“Did anyone see—”
“Tell me, Inspector,” she says as she crosses the room and seats herself, uninvited. “Do you think the warlock of her age doesn’t know how to conceal herself?”
“You just walked through a place full of scryers and seers!”
She dismisses that with a flick of her hand. “Were they aware a Hua had slipped past them, every alarm would be on high, every gun would be drawn and every automated routine of destruction put to work. As this is not the case, you may rest assured that I have successfully hidden myself. I would point out the holes in your wards, but improving S&C’s walls is not my job.”
And it is true: my organization hates her family to the point of obsession, so much so that they’d have let vampires feast on her children when they were little. They have grown now: Viveca and Olesya are in their twenties—excelling at their respective studies, according to their mother, when she tells me of them at all. She rations out information with the utmost care, for all that she trusts me. A barrier must exist, always, between our lives. Between what is public and what is private.
Which makes her decision to appear here of all places…
“I have not come for a trivial reason,” she says, as if hearing my thoughts. “There’s something I would like to ask of you that I suspect only you can do. Though—we haven’t had dinner together for a while, have we?”
“I have to work for ten more minutes.”
She spreads her hands, magnanimous, an empress granting her permission. “I can wait.”
By that she means she’s sitting right there as I put papers into folders, organize my notes, all the things that I do when I’m winding down and getting ready to leave. It makes concentrating on these mundane, mindless tasks unaccountably challenging. To feel her eyes on me, on every movement; to know that she is studying my face, my fingertips. Maybe she’s thinking of how my mouth might feel on hers, very soon—
Stupid. From the start, I’ve been embarrassingly libido-led with this woman. Even now I still can’t identify what I was thinking when I asked her out to dinner that first time (and why in the name of all did she say yes?). All right—I was standing before a woman who’s not just the most powerful in the world, but very beautiful and older, and exactly my type.
I wonder what she can see with those black eyes of hers; whether she receives the world in ranges beyond the visible light. Perhaps as I try to tidy my desk and wrap up the day’s paperwork, she can see blood moving through me, flushing my cheeks with heat. Or else she is watching power run in my veins, the natural ebb and flow that moves within any mage. A tide, in a practitioner of great power; a brook, in those less so. I have a full awareness of which category I belong to; only through constant training and the tutelage of the world’s greatest warlock has my little stream been martialed in to something respectable.
“You seem done,” she says after eight minutes have passed.
“You’re usually more patient than this, Master Elizaveta.”
Her head cocks. “Where would you like dinner?”
The problem of a relationship—or a fling, or whatever this is—with an incredibly powerful woman is that she has next to no familiarity with consequences. But if nothing else, the food is always excellent. “Sapporo.”
She takes my hand, and then we are away.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
Immediate and visceral: cold buffets my skin. My breath steams in the frigid air. A cantrip quickly takes care of that, warming me against this island’s climate. Elizaveta herself evinces no discomfort, either not feeling the cold—possible, given what she is—or already having woven basic temperature protection into her clothes.
Sapporo is a beautiful city: the air blue and very sharp, the mountains white and shadowed in the distance. I know something of its history, that it is a site of brutal occupation, evidence of what the powerful will do to those they perceive as powerless. And it’s hard not to think about that in the company of Elizaveta; I know something, too, of her family’s history. There have been chapters of incredible savagery, and more than once a Hua warlock has been the most cruel of despots. The hatred with which my institution regards her family has some historical basis. But she is not her forebears, and to the best of my knowledge she’s never been more destructive or murderous than most mages.
We come in to a ramen bar; she takes care of the ordering, her Japanese fluent where mine is at best of the touristic phrasebook sort. It’s an unassuming place, neither owned nor frequented by practitioners. I like these better than mage-owned establishments: leave me my little escapisms, and Elizaveta knows it too. Maybe, I like to think, she shares my enjoyment. That, despite her might and station in high society, sometimes she also wants to get away. Between the two of us she blends in better, here, but I pass as a tourist just fine, if an inadequately dressed one.
The miso broth is rich, complexly flavored. The noodles are excellent. Elizaveta orders seconds.
“There’s something I would like to find,” she says in Turkish. A recent acquisition—she claims to have taken to it as a matter of practical security, something to flummox would-be eavesdroppers. Her reasoning is hardly sound: while in isolated Sapporo there may be no Turkish speakers save us, it’s not as if it is a rare language. But she uses it to communicate with me, and it makes me—no, I refuse to pursue that line of that, refuse to entreat with those feelings.
Whatever her motivations, she has an incredible ear for it. I don’t know whether that’s her natural talent, a neurological advantage, or if it’s been obtained through magic. There are no spells, really, that will translate languages perfectly, but there are ones that can enhance the mind, augment comprehension.
I put down my bowl and gaze, longingly, at the slices of chachu the cook’s preparing. “And I’m the best tracker you know.”
“Cocky.” Her voice is rounded with amusement—she herself has said as much, granting me that title as a monarch might make a knight of her retainer. “But you are, and it’s good that you know your strengths. Nor is it the only thing you’re good at.”
I try to tell myself all the heat’s just from the ramen. “How are the—” I stumble here. There is a boundary, I think, and I don’t want to cross it, to become overfamiliar. “The girls?”
“They’re doing very well. Viveca will succeed me.” Elizaveta’s tone is warm with pride; her sclerae turn dark, as they occasionally do when she feels intense emotion.
“No struggle?” Too forward, but many houses have come to ruin when scions fight over who will be the heir—in long, prestigious lines especially, the stakes are too high to be second-best, and sisterly love disappears fast when it comes to seizing the throne.
“No. My daughters adore each other, and Olesya is genuinely more interested in transfiguration than summoning rituals. Flesh-crafting, particularly, and she’s a prodigy at it.”
On my non-practitioner side of the family—estranged from me, for the usual reasons when one’s relative is a mage—there are cousins who’d trade anything to have access to the flesh-crafting that mages take for granted. I imagine that Olesya does not know how fortunate she is, and then quickly dismiss my uncharitable thought. It’s not her fault that she has next to no acquaintance with outsiders; most thaumaturges don’t, and see no need to bother. What can non-mages offer them?
The second servings arrive. I tuck into it, appreciating the extra chashu. It’s not fancy food, but many steps above the hurried meals I get every day in the S&C cafeteria, of varying quality. And we are in Sapporo. If only there was time to sight-see, but our arrangement is such that I can never truly disappear for long with her, cannot be seen with her; even from her children we must hide this thing.
It shouldn’t matter. I entered this knowing it would need to be this way, half-real. This thing between us has lasted nearly two decades precisely because neither of us have tried to put a name on it, because both of us have different priorities, different needs. Ultimately it’ll end when finally she tires of me or I ask for too much.
But it is Elizaveta that asks first, once more reading me like an open book. “Do you have a little time?”
“A day off.” That I should spend in my locality, so as not to rouse suspicion. Promotion or not, I’m scrutinized more closely than most officers of my rank and seniority.
“Enough to enjoy a few more good meals together, unless you’re in a hurry to go home.”
It’s just one day. “All right.” I try to make myself smile past all the worry.
“I have already booked us a hotel. Two beds, to preserve your chastity, Inspector.”
I might be turning red. Really I should riposte, but it’s never been easy to, somehow, with her. Well: a first time for everything. “As if you won’t be the first to make that moot.”
She cants her head back and laughs. It is as if I am enspelled: it becomes impossible to look away from the sight of her, to not fall into the gravity of her all over again. She is exquisite. She is singular. Not just the most powerful in the world, but the most beautiful.
And in that moment it becomes obvious, too, that I’d do almost anything for Elizaveta Hua.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
The hotel—the ryokan—she’s picked for us is located in Minami Ward, a construct of red wood and warm illumination. Lanterns in the public area, and a few fireplaces; simple but elegant furniture, the occasional marble to interrupt the wood. There is a lovely, quiet minimalism. Our room has its own private bath, small and traditional, and a window that looks out to the mountains. It’s a quiet night, snow and frost on the outside. By all rights, we should be curling up together, sinking into the quiet, into each other’s warmth.
Instead Elizaveta is briskly unpacking; she has, incredibly, brought a change of clothes for me. A suit, the jacket and trousers deep brown with undertones of red, the shirt pale gold. “I trust it will be bearable for a day,” she is saying. “I have your measurements and took the liberty.”
I don’t ask how she has my measurements. “It’s very nice.” The tailoring is much, much finer than anything I could afford. Probably she has a couturier she patronizes—the wealthy truly inhabit another world. Equally incredibly, she’s prepared for me a set of sport bras and underwear. “I wear lace sometimes, you realize,” I point out.
“I was saving that for when we go shopping for it together.” Her voice is deadpan. “Silk in antique gold or burgundy will look good on you. Expensive lingerie under a suit is an especially intoxicating combination.”
I open my mouth. I sigh. I smile. “It’s just as well we will never live together. You’ll dictate all my wardrobe, and probably all my meals.” Not that I would not like it: I’ve been a creature of grim independence, and the thought of being lavished with such care…
“Why never, Inspector?”
Her expression has hardly shifted. It’s impossible to tell whether she is joking. “Well, I mean, for all the obvious, usual reasons.”
“Such as,” she prompts.
“I’m not going to leave S&C,” I say quickly. To become her kept tracker. “This work is important to me, Liz.”
“Who said anything about you leaving?” Her hands still in her lap. Her gaze grows remote. “In a few years, I will no longer be the Hua warlock.”
Nearly I drop the dress shirt. I hurriedly put it back down, on top of the luggage. “I think I understand what you mean. But—openly?” My superiors, and High Command in general, will never regard one of their officers associating with any Hua as value-neutral. I might as well be consorting with demons myself.
Elizaveta’s eyes meet mine, searching my face. “It was merely a thought, Inspector.”
I’ve disappointed her in some way. Or, worse, she has disappointed herself. It has been a long time since our arrangement began, and yet there’s still so much I don’t know about her, the way she thinks, her personal philosophies. She has been my lover and mentor in sorcery too, plugging the gaps of my threadbare education, teaching me spells that would normally stay within her family. What I cannot figure out, even now, is her motive. Why give me so much, offer such largesse, when I cannot possibly benefit her in any way? Does she hope that one day I will protect her children again, speak up for them when S&C finds an excuse to go after the sisters, mitigate the harm?
But we have done so much together. She has fought evil beside me, when it did not benefit her; has bled to save the world, has bled to save me from a wound. I cannot believe that she is solely motivated by selfish goals, that I am but a means to her eldritch ends.
And I have had the same thoughts—what it would be like, about what I would be willing to give up, to wake beside her every day; to know, for once, what she looks like at peace. So I believe, I must believe, that the same thoughts have occurred to her. And still I say, coward that I am, “It’s a good thought. Only—”
“Only it’s improbable.” Still her expression gives away nothing. “Yet in my life, Fahriye, I’ve accomplished many improbable things. Don’t rule it out yet.”
The bathtub, I discover, is meant for two—but with me in the equation, it’ll only fit one of us at a time. “Get in,” she says; it is an order.
“I will do that once I’ve seen you disrobe, madam.”
“Giving orders now, are we.” She reaches over to tap me on the nose. And then she does, indeed, take off her clothes.
It’s not the first time I have seen her naked, but I don’t see it often enough. She’s small next to me, slight of shoulders and limbs, round and soft in the places where I am angular and hard. Her breasts are full, brown-tipped, touched with blemishes that are an inevitable part of life. Fool that I am, I cannot get enough of her breasts—I have, a few times, woken up with my face against them, much to her amusement. The urge to kiss her all over seizes me: the soft swell of her stomach, her thighs and what lies between them.
But she makes me get into the tub, where the water’s heat verges on this side of discomfort. She gathers my hair in one hand, murmuring that I seem due a cut, do I not usually keep it shorter? And she bends to kiss my ear, then the back of my neck. Each contact is electric, taking my breath away as surely as the scalding water.
Elizaveta stops there, though. She pours out the shampoo and massages it into my scalp, working slow and meticulous. It’s the first time we have bathed together, and it’s such a mundane thing, and yet achingly intimate. We fall into silence; there is only the sound of water and her small, elegant hands in my hair.
I ask her, shy, if I can return the favor. She says yes, and soon we have switched positions, her in the water and I standing like an attendant of old. Some part of me wants to ask why she’s decided to do this, come with me on a day’s getaway, allowed me into her intimacy. But I’d rather not ruin the moment, and so I concentrate on her hair. A fine, thick mass. It is going gray but very slowly, either good genetics or thaumaturgy, and she has maintained it in incredible condition. Long, but pinned up most of the time so it doesn’t get in the way; unbound and wet, it looks as dark as spun night, touched here and there by snow. I’m careful as I sweep the shampoo through the strands, as I rub conditioner into her scalp. It’s not that she is delicate—for all that she is far smaller than I am—but that I want to show her that I cherish her; I wish to express it in every motion as she has done for me.
We towel each other off, wrap a robe around one another. I stay still as she ties the sash for me, and remain unmoving once she’s done. Her hand stills on my stomach. “Is something wrong, Inspector?”
“No.” I find my throat hitched. “We should do this more often.” I can hardly say what I mean: that I wish we could do this every day, every night. To enjoy one another in the most ordinary ways. I think of her disappointment at my answer earlier, and try again: “It isn’t that I want to stay with S&C, Liz.” I am very close to admitting to her things I have not ever admitted to myself. “It’s just that I like to do good. I can’t retire from that.”
“And S&C is where you can do the most good?”
No. “Yes.”
Her lips crook into a smirk, making it clear she heard the unvoiced answer. “I’d like that. The ‘doing this more often.’” She’s serious now, no longer teasing. ”But there’s some ancient business to attend to first.”
Back in the room, she takes out of her luggage a long case. Inside its velvet lining is a slender strip of metal; it is perfectly white, whiter than platinum or rhodium, and certainly denser and stronger than both. “What I am seeking,” says Elizaveta, “is not an object demons can search for. They cannot perceive it; they cannot touch it; they recoil from its nature. One of them did bring this back for me, at least, which is a start.”
I take the metal piece. As I thought, it’s far heavier than it looks. “What is it?”
“The fragment of a sheath, greatly warded and augmented, that should—in theory—still be holding a sword.”
“A sword,” I echo, trying to imagine her wielding one. And why not; Elizaveta, a warrior in armor.
“An object of some importance to me. I wish to locate it, and return it to safe keeping.”
“To seal and contain it?” I can’t help the joke.
She cuts me with a withering look. “To bring it within the security and wards of my family. Here are the other pieces, should you require them for the tracking.”
A piece of wood, burnt completely black. A swirl of molten metal. A gemstone cut flat, one side scorched. They all come together to form what seems to be the remaining debris of an arson, or a terrible house fire.
“I will need a little information,” I say. “Dates would be nice. Historical or thaumaturgical context. The name of the sword too.”
“The name of the sword is the name of the entity contained within it.” Elizaveta’s mouth draws tight. “Its name is Nuawa.”
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
As it turns out, the matter isn’t as simple to resolve—or trace, as it were—as either of us was hoping for.
Nuawa is, for one, not its True Name. Merely this is an appellation, though from what source even Elizaveta doesn’t know. “The being is not of this world, nor of hell,” she explained to me. “As I have understood it, Nuawa came from a plane of existence where there is always light, scorching and too bright for our world. Some would call her originating point heaven. I of course disagree.”
But she was vague on why she wanted her hands on this sword. It had been in her family for some time, apparently, and was lost to the Hua line some generations back. What does this sword do? She will not disclose that, either.
I refuse to assume the worst, that she is like any other mage, avaricious for an artifact of power—potentially dangerous, potentially destructive. Equally, though, I cannot put all doubt from my mind. She has done so much for me, and… and I like to think the care she shows me is genuine, even as a secret and rotten part of me wonders: has this been her scheme all along? She must have been looking for this sword for some time, and who better to find it for her than an S&C tracker she’s been courting, has been slowly turning to her purposes? For a mage of her power, even a twenty-year investment in talent would be considered a minor scheme.
No. I am not that gullible, and she is not the incarnation of evil my superiors believe her entire family to be.
So I study the pieces I’ve been given, holding them under the light of a lamp, the sun, the moon. Tracking is both an art and a series of intuitions; you develop the sense of the object, drawing in your mind its outline, its image. Elizaveta supplied me with a painting of the sword, and I incorporate that into my process. She’s given me a map of all the places the blade has been, and I concentrate on the lines joining the dots, looking up the locations as much I can on satellite and street maps. An undersea vault here, an ancient library there, several secure archives overseen by previous Huas. Elizaveta said the sword was lost some time between the tenth and eleventh generations, a period of tumult.
I’ve found gemstones useful in my work, and for the sword I choose—as an object of affinity—a cube of milky quartz. Ideally I would visit each place in which the sword has been, touch the plinth or slot in which it has rested, but many of those locations are no longer standing and some are outright inaccessible.
I am limited in other ways, too. Were this an official investigation, I’d simply avail myself of S&C resources. As it is not, I am reduced to making discreet enquiries and reading academic research. First I try to isolate, by process of elimination, what kind of thing this Nuawa creature is. I read papers that postulate that our world and others’ are spheres whose areas of overlap are miniscule, but which provide the path through which demons and other spirits can enter our realm. I pore over theories of worlds as yet uncharted by thaumaturges. The closest I get is that a few mages have encountered beings like Nuawa, and they have chosen to call those celestial entities—next to impossible, it appears, to bind and compel. A few have been worshiped as gods, in bygone times.
My official work continues, as it must, for all that I’ve become a little obsessed with Elizaveta’s task. It’s made me curious for my own sake, a puzzle that I must solve, and it brings me a joy that my daily work does not. At least most of the cases don’t take me out of the office. Normally something I’d chafe against—I’m a fieldwork woman through and through—but for once it is a blessing.
The only case that demands my presence has to do with a demon; with a dispirited sigh, I lock away all my research and buckle up my holster.
In Singapore I arrive—a nexus of magical power, the seat of many mages families. An island unto itself. I reach the site at a busy street, where I’m pointed to a worn tenement, red roof and gray stone. The interior smells of citrus and frangipani—rich, unique, and a very odd combination. Summoned beings can leave behind peculiar fragrances and emanations; the first team on at the site took the odor to be positive proof of warlockery and arrested the suite’s sole occupant.
That person now waits in a scorched vestibule of her own home, hands in cuffs behind her, her clothing blackened with soot. She has been made to stand in an inscribed containment field; it must have been for hours. But she shows no sign of weakness; her stance is steady, her legs straight. She is striking—the sculpted features of a statue, eyes of pale brown in a face of proud angles, her jawline slender and exacting. Not very many people would command undivided attention at a glance; she does so without effort, with the sheer force of presence. Elizaveta is more remarkable still, but this woman comes close.
“Inspector Fahriye Budak,” I say, introducing myself as I glance through the dossier I’ve been handed. “I understand you’re a mercenary, Mx…?”
A faint smile curves her thin lips. “Titling me correctly will not make your detainment of me any more righteous, Inspector. And in any case, I prefer to be addressed by my field title, which is colonel.”
“Colonel, then.” I spread my hands. “I still need your name.”
“Lussadh al-Kattan.”
I startle—now that is a pedigreed family, and not one of the cadet branches either. I may not keep up with mage politics much, but even I have heard of her house, the clan of seers and soothsayers. Perhaps if I had reviewed her file sooner, I’d not have been caught out like this.
Colonel al-Kattan sees my reaction. “Come now, Inspector. Either I’m a prisoner or I am not; my name ought not matter.”
Her name most certainly does matter; the right family name is as powerful as any spell—more, even, than a True Name’s might. Be wed to the right word, wield the right blood, and certain doors will open, while others close forever. “You’re not a prisoner,” I reply, which is truer now than it was fifteen seconds ago. “But the current evidence points to you as responsible for having summoned a succubus that’s gone on a killing spree in this area for the last two weeks.”
“Ah.” She visibly draws a breath, filling her lungs. “This sort of business is always best over tea or coffee. I’d offer you some, but you are an uninvited guest, and I am currently indisposed.” Behind her back, she jingles her cuffs slightly. “Well, do I look like a warlock to you?”
“I don’t have a specific stereotype in mind for warlocks, Colonel.” I don’t add that I know the warlock. “We are only asking for your cooperation; my subordinates have searched your place and found—”
“They found whatever they wanted to find. It is how Sealing and Containment works; everyone knows this.”
I think about a retort, then sigh. She’s not wrong; I am aware of how some of my colleagues “find” evidence. They’re not paladins; they are not bound by oaths to preserve life and uphold justice. But truth should not taste like this on the tongue, should not fill you with innervating sadness, should not make you think of better days with more honest women in snowier climes.
“You have a prodigious collection of first editions,” I finally offer, having stolen a glance at the bookcases in her living room.
Al-Kattan smirks. “Normally there’s a caveat attached to that, like ‘for a mercenary’ or ‘through your family’s wealth.’”
I look a little harder at the person in front of me, discerning what life path would make one prickle so—a woman of letters who picked up the sword, perhaps, or someone eager to slough off their family’s legacy. “There’s no reason a personal library ought to earn such backbiting. Have you considered talking to nicer bibliophiles?”
“And this is a remarkably forward way to compel me to join S&C’s employee book club.”
I laugh; I think the noise surprises both of us. “Give me a reason to let you go, something I can take back to my superiors and say ‘Lussadh al-Kattan prefers the title ‘Colonel’ and also she provided invaluable service.’” I hate myself as I say it. The reasonable member of the heartless bureaucracy: the last refuge of a coward.
She answers with a knowing chuckle. “If anyone from your august organization had asked me, I would have explained that I didn’t summon the succubus. Quite the opposite, actually—my company was contracted to deal with the summoner, and matters have gotten out of hand. Not that the reality of a situation has ever impacted S&C’s conclusions.” She eyes me back. “Wait, you are actually here to stop the demon. I’ll be damned.”
I stay silent, unhappy at having been read so easily and annoyed at the damning assessment of Sealing and Containment’s motivations
“Well, this matter seems to be rather pressing for you,” she says. “But if I’m to help, I will have to be out of this containment field and out of these cuffs.”
The outline of it all is beginning to become clear: a mercenary company hired to deal with a powerful target, a demon summoned—either the reason for the contract, or a last line of defense. “Alright,” I say, trying to appear as if I have been convinced, not as if I am making the best of my colleagues’ poor, heavy-handed choices. “I think we can work something out. No reason Sealing and Containment can’t work with your company.”
“We have to be the one that kills the summoner; contract insists.”
“If we’re in the negotiating phase of this confinement, then…” I hesitate, on the edge of something. I have never sought personal aggrandizement from my position, never let this thing I have with Elizaveta interfere with my professional work. But buried in my thoughts is an intuition I cannot shake. I have seen the titles in al-Kattan’s personal collection, many rare to the point of singular uniqueness; I know of her travels, and where they have taken her. She is the next lead in my pursuit of Nuawa.
The colonel cocks her head. “This is always the fun part of imprisonment. What can I do for you personally, Inspector Fahriye Budak?”
I commit. “I have an original edition of the Liber Juratus Honorii, including the chapters redacted from later printings. It’s yours, but I need information about an artifact.”
Al-Kattan whistles. “You must care about that artifact very much.” I don’t reply. “Alright, color me intrigued. But demon first, book club later.”