The Necromancer's Gambit: Burger Time
Nicolas Wilson
Burger Time
“What was that you said about trade?” Rook asks as soon as I hit the freeway.
“We make our money the old fashioned way.” I tell her.
“Prostitution?” she asks with a wry grin.
“Taxation. We collect dues from local mages, witches, what have you; fees for certain trades, tariffs for specific imports. A lot of people pay in trade- alchemists provide elixirs, herbalists reagents. There’s a functioning magical economy in this city. Most of them appreciate the stability and security a Gambit brings, so they pay in, however they can.”
I hit my turn signal. “I thought you said Castle’s cabin was out past Clackamas.”
“It is. But I’m stopping for a burger.”
“What happened to our all-important rush to possible death and dismemberment?”
“If I’m going to be killed, it won’t be on an empty stomach.”
I’m walking through the door into Mike’s Drive-In before her boots hit the pavement, and I hear them clack frantically as she rushes to catch up. It turns out she’s a vegetarian, which figures; fucking witches- heaven forbid they do anything to admit they’re part of a world where there are things they want to eat and that want to eat them. She orders a patty made out of beans, and a large Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup shake.
I pause between bites to ask her, “How’d you get into this?”
“Your little suicide mission- and by that I didn’t mean the food, though I probably could have?”
“Magic. And government. Two things very few little boys or girls want to dabble in when they grow up.”
“I think Harry Potter would disagree with you.”
“Kids are fascinated by magic- adults, too; that’s because to people who feel powerless magic seems like a remedy. But that doesn’t mean many people see a future in it. So why did you?”
She hesitates. It could be she thinks I’m testing her, to see if she’ll volunteer anything; or maybe she’s just not sure how much she wants to tell. “I was… going to be a composer. I played the piano my whole life, and I was going to school for it. But the program was pretty rigorous, including boards. I developed tendonitis, and I couldn’t keep up with my practice. So I got kicked out of the program. But the tendonitis just kept getting worse; I couldn’t hold down a patisserie job, even. So I ended up back at home, doing whatever I could for the Circle. Mom was a witch- and even though we don’t get along, she had a lot of contacts in our coven.”
She pauses to take a sip from her shake, but the straw is clogged, so she pops off the lid and takes a swig instead. “I got real depressed. Music had been my life. I loved to perform- and I still miss it. The Circle gave me something else to get lost in. It distracted me, when obsessing over what I’d lost was tearing me apart. And before I realized it, I was just as heavily involved in the running of our coven, its sisterhood and practice.”
“Magdalene,” I say, and sigh. Rook cocks her head at me. “I… visited the Circle in Salem, for maybe ten months- years ago. Back then it was an intense place, kind of like the 60s for mages in the northwest, only instead of experimenting with drugs it was magic. For personal reasons, Maggie decided she didn’t like operative magic. As a personal choice, I say more power to her. But as a community leader, roping off entire fields of study, deciding to commit cultural hari kari- it was the main reason I left. I mean, I never thought she could accomplish it, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around and find out.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the Wiccan religion. But I hate to see talent wasted. And there was a lot of talent in the Circle when I was there. And please, don’t take offense, but if you’re their candidate for Rook, then they really have fallen quite a ways.”
“How could I possibly take offense at that?”
“Honestly, you seem smart. And I think you’ve got skill, somewhere in there, but your teachers have been squandering it. Meditation, purification, all that pseudo-Buddhist ritual magic crap, it’s a waste of time; it’s only the really big spells that need that kind of stuff, and most magic isn’t about big changes- it’s about the little stuff. Edging the percentages a little in your favor. And the big stuff- well the big stuff never works- summoning dragons, taking over the world.”
“So you’re a mystical cynic?”
“Aren’t you? Aren’t we all? I mean, when was the last time somebody stopped the rotation of the earth? Could plausibly claim changing the weather? Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with Wicca as a religion. And I think that, cumulatively, the power of thousands of Wiccans, just like millions of Christians and Muslims, concentrating on specific, beneficent goals, can change the world- or at least move the dial a bit. But I also think the power of positive thinking is almost always overwhelmed by happenstance. The Vietnam War didn’t end because the peaceniks wanted it badly enough; it ended because Nixon’s silent generation lost patience with it.”
“But didn’t that happen because the peaceniks were endlessly protesting?”
“Most hippies just wanted to do drugs and screw- and I don’t begrudge them that at all. But we’ve romanticized the granola crunchers into a movement that was a minority; it would be like in ten years lumping the existing civil rights movement into hip hop- ludicrous, right?”
“Is that a rap joke?”
“Hip hop’s purpose is simply making money, and generally speaking it has the side effect of reinforcing negative black stereotypes; the fact that there’s a vibrant civil rights movement in the same community that hip hop is targeted at doesn’t make them one and the same endeavor. But maybe a cleaner example would be the Korean War: it wasn’t a billion Buddhists that ended it- it was the threat of unleashing atomic hell on Southeast Asia- and that weapon itself was another bit of historical happenstance, dating back to a single madman who wanted to use nuclear weapons for genocide, which spurred less crazy and more resourceful people to actually build one. There’s plenty of room for dreamers. I’m just biased towards people who actually get things done- if on the microscale.”
“You sound like a cop.”
“I have been accused of doing police work now and again.”
“No. I mean. I’ve known a few cops. And the smart ones- the good ones- they aren’t bogged down in the day to day. They recognize the things that keep the status quo in place, even if they don’t have the power to change them.”
“It isn’t our place to change the world, but it’s wanting to that makes us human.” She stares at me after that, and I ignore it and shove some fries in my mouth. She’s still looking at me when I finish chewing, so I ask her, “Do you think you can handle being a Castle?” That gets her to break eye contact. “It’s a tough question- but it’s a hard job. And it would be cruel of me not to ask.”
“I… I think so.”
“Why the hesitation?”
“Because I don’t think I can know what it’s going to be like. I don’t think I’ve been properly prepared to even address the question, let alone do the job.”
“That’s, not a bad answer, actually. What have you been told about the job?” She shrugs. “A castle’s duty is two-fold. First, you protect the royals, King and Queen. Most of the time that means standing between them and violence; sometimes it means cracking skulls. A castle’s secondary role is jailer; the people I arrest have to go someplace. Really, it’s all in the name: a castle is fortification and prison; consequently, castles tend to be the toughest members of a Gambit.”
“And your Castle?”
“The toughest.”
“So that wasn’t just bravado when you said you weren’t going to die on an empty stomach?”
“I think in a stand-up fight, I’d give Castle even odds against me, Pawn, King and Queen; I’d put him and Bishop about even. So if they’ve set up a trap for us, this is our last meal. But… we’d be foolish not to expect trouble at Castle’s cabin. That means, if someone set up an ambush, they think I’m foolish, which shows poor judgment. And since they took out Castle, odds are they’re smart enough not to set up an amateurish ambush.”
“My head hurts.”
“That’s because you’ve been shotgunning that milkshake. You probably sucked a peanut butter cup into your brain.”
“I was hungry.” She furrows her brow and take a bite from her ‘burger.’
My phone beeps to let me know I have a text. “Shit.” Her eyes ask what her mouth can’t, as it’s full of been curds and possibly cowshit. “I have a, friend, in Portland Police- homicide. She knows about the body- and that we stole it. But she’ll have to wait her turn.”
I reach for my burger, but it’s cold, and my stomach’s a mess from a night of nothing but coffee and Voodoo. I probably don’t need the damn calories, anyway. “You ready to go?”
“To my likely death? Am I ever supposed to be ready for that?”
“In this job, yeah. But if you want you can wait in the car.”
“You’ve pretty much made it clear I’m not ready for this job, yet. So why did you bring me along.”
“You’re an unknown quantity. Castle, me, Pawn, we’re local, and visible. Figuring us would be easy. There’s no way anyone could gauge you- not this quickly. As far as anyone’s concerned, you could be the second coming of Merlin.” As I get up I put my hands on my jeans, and realized they were slicked with burger juices. “I’ll be right back,” I tell her, and walk to the men’s room. I wash my hands, slap water on my face. I’m not prepared for my haggard self staring back out of the mirror, and I look away and put it out of my mind; it’s been a long night, and it’s going to be a longer day.
When I get out, I see Rook between painted characters on the window, standing out by the car, and still sucking on that milkshake. A bell on the door jingles as I walk through it, and I look up at the sky, and the few clouds the sun hasn’t burned off yet as I walk out to her.
I let her in, and walk back to my side. The lock sticks, then there’s a springy “doing” and it opens. I slide in, start up the car, and turn down the heat. “Let me ask you something everybody’s got a specialty, even coming out of Salem they have to have at least told you what yours is.”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“I haven’t studied in any particular school of magic. Just picked up things along the way, bits and bobs.”
“If you want me to tell you you’ll have to do better than that.”
“I’m a serviceable alchemist, but there’s not much to that; anyone who can bake a cake out of a box and gets their hands on a decent grimoire can do the same. I have no skill with divination. None. I can’t even work a Ouija properly- and I’ve been known to interfere with others’ divining by just standing in the room. Mostly, I’m good with sigils, symbols, anything requiring ceremony and precision.”
“Sympathetic magic,” she says, like it’s nothing.
“Really.”
“Yeah. In covens it’s pretty rare.”
“Pretty rare, everywhere, at least any real talent in it. That why you were excited by the Botono at Voodoo?”
“So there is a Botono there?”
“A gentleman never asks- unless somebody ends up dead.”
“I’ve never met one. Vodun is unique. I mean, all magic is connection, but Vodun takes it to this extreme, where the lines between two things almost disappear.”
“You should be careful who you admire.”
“Vodun gets a bad name because of the dolls that are associated with it, but most of it isn’t about domination- there are a lot of positive aspects of it. And what, are you afraid I’m going to pull a Darth Vader on you, Obi-Wan? That I’m not bewaring the power of the dark side enough?”
“Human beings are biologically biased towards the path of least resistance. In a very real way, at least in the beginning, we are our mentors. We take on their proclivities, and their faults. The lucky among us outlive the mistakes we’re taught to make.”
“What about you? How’d you get into this?”
I’d prefer to keep schtum, but given the danger she’s accepting, I figure I owe her something. “I was raised here, in the city. Dad was a independent protoscientific researcher, mom was his apprentice. I fell into it. I was in the right place, at the right time, to help the Queen with something- that long story about Pawn. They threw me in at the deep end of it, and I worked out.”
“They still live here?”
“I had just made Pawn when there was an accident in their lab. The short answer’s ‘no.’” It comes out harsher than I meant it, but it quiets her, and I’m thankful for that.