Karou’s eyebrows went up. “Come on, their problem isn’t that they’re human. It’s that they’re subhuman.”
“True enough. Every race has its bad seeds, one supposes. Isn’t that right, beast of mine?” This last bit he said over his shoulder, and this time a soft response seemed to emanate from the air.
Karou couldn’t help herself. She glanced at the ground, where Izîl’s shadow was cast crisp across the tiles. It seemed impolite to peek, as if Izîl’s… condition… ought to be ignored, like a lazy eye or birthmark. His shadow revealed what looking at him directly did not.
Shadows told the truth, and Izîl’s told that a creature clung to his back, invisible to the eye. It was a hulking, barrel-chested thing, its arms clenched tight around his neck. This was what curiosity had gotten him: The thing was riding him like a mule. Karou didn’t understand how it had come about; she only knew that Izîl had made a wish for knowledge, and this had been the form of its fulfillment. Brimstone warned her that powerful wishes could go powerfully awry, and here was the evidence.
She supposed that the invisible thing, who was called Razgut, had held the secrets Izîl had hungered to know. Whatever they were, surely this price was far too high.
Razgut was talking. Karou could make out only the faintest whisper, and a sound like a soft smack of fleshy lips.
“No,” Izîl said. “I will not ask her that. She’ll only say no.”
Karou watched, repelled, as Izîl argued with the thing, which she could see only in shadow. Finally the graverobber said, “All right, all right, hush! I’ll ask.” Then he turned to Karou and said, apologetically, “He just wants a taste. Just a tiny taste.”
“A taste?” She blinked. Their tea had not yet arrived. “Of what?”
“Of you, wish-daughter. Just a lick. He promises not to bite.”
Karou’s stomach turned. “Uh, no.”
“I told you,” Izîl muttered. “Now will you be quiet, please?”
A low hiss came in response.
A waiter in a white djellaba came and poured mint tea, raising the pot to head height and expertly aiming the long stream of tea into etched glasses. Karou, eyeing the hollows of the graverobber’s cheeks, ordered pastries, too, and she let him eat and drink for a while before asking, “So, what have you got?”
He dug into his pockets and produced a fistful of teeth, which he dropped on the table.
Watching from the shadow of a nearby doorway, Akiva straightened up. All went still and silent around him, and he saw nothing but those teeth, and the girl sorting through them in just the way he knew the old beast sorcerer did.
Teeth. How harmless they looked on that tabletop—just tiny, dirty things, plundered from the dead. And if they stayed in this world where they belonged, that was all they’d ever be. In Brimstone’s hands, though, they became so much more than that.
It was Akiva’s mission to end this foul trade, and with it, the devil’s dark magic.
He watched as the girl inspected the teeth with what was clearly a practiced hand, as if she did this all the time. Mixed with his disgust was something like disappointment. She had seemed too clean for this business, but apparently she was not. He’d been right, though, in his guess that she was no mere trader. She was more than that, sitting there doing Brimstone’s work. But what?
“God, Izîl,” said Karou. “These are nasty. Did you bring them straight from the cemetery?”
“Mass grave. It was hidden, but Razgut sniffed it out. He can always find the dead.”
“What a talent.” Karou got a chill, imagining Razgut leering at her, hoping for a taste. She turned her attention to the teeth. Scraps of dried flesh clung to their roots, along with the dirt they’d been exhumed from. Even through the filth, it was easy to see that they were not of high quality, but were the teeth of a people who had gnawed at tough food, smoked pipes, and been unacquainted with toothpaste.
She scooped them off the table and dropped them into the dregs of her tea, swishing it around before dumping it out in a sodden pile of mint leaves and teeth, now only slightly less filthy. One by one, she picked them up. Incisors, molars, canines, adult and child alike. “Izîl. You know Brimstone doesn’t take baby teeth.”
“You don’t know everything, girl,” he snapped.
“Excuse me?”
“Sometimes he does. Once. Once he wanted some.”
Karou didn’t believe him. Brimstone strictly did not buy immature teeth, not animal, not human, but she saw no point in arguing. “Well”—she pushed the tiny teeth aside and tried not to think about small corpses in mass graves—“he didn’t ask for any, so I’ll have to pass.”
She held each of the adult teeth, listening to what their hum told her, and sorted them into two piles.
Izîl watched anxiously, his gaze darting from one pile to the other. “They chewed too much, didn’t they? Greedy gypsies! They kept chewing after they were dead. No manners. No table manners at all.”
Most of the teeth were worn blunt, riddled with decay, and no good to Brimstone. By the time Karou was through sorting, one pile was larger than the other, but Izîl didn’t know which was which. He pointed hopefully to the larger pile.
She shook her head and fished some dirham notes out of the wallet Brimstone had given her. It was an overly generous payment for these sorry few teeth, but it was still not what Izîl was hoping for.
“So much digging,” he moaned. “And for what? Paper with pictures of the dead king? Always the dead staring at me.” His voice dropped. “I can’t keep it up, Karou. I’m broken. I can barely hold a shovel anymore. I scrabble at the hard earth, digging like a dog. I’m through.”
Pity hit her hard. “Surely there are other ways to live—”
“No. Only death remains. One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Nietzsche said that, you know. Wise man. Large mustache.” He tugged at his own bedraggled mustache and attempted a smile.
“Izîl, you can’t mean you want to die.”
“If only there was a way to be free…”
“Isn’t there?” she asked earnestly. “There must be something you can do.”
His fingers twitched, fidgeting with his mustache. “I don’t like to think of it, my dear, but… there is a way, if you would help me. You’re the only one I know who’s brave enough and good enough—Ow!” His hand flew to his ear, and Karou saw blood seep through his fingers. She shrank back. Razgut must have bitten him. “I’ll ask her if I want, monster!” cried the graverobber. “Yes, you are a monster! I don’t care what you once were. You’re a monster now!”