Curse the Dawn
Page 42

“Now, this is a real find!” He took out a tattered piece of black cloth about the size of a handkerchief and threw it into the air. Instead of falling, it drifted upward and began expanding. Within seconds, a bedsheet-sized undulating wall of darkness fluttered overhead—before suddenly dropping down on us, blocking out all light.
I heard Marco swear, a pissed-off sound that echoed faintly against the nothingness all around us. But his voice’s timbre had changed; every sound seemed to undulate, fading in and out from screamingly loud to whisper quiet, sometimes within the same word. I could no longer tell if he was standing right beside me or had moved halfway across the room.
The salesman’s cheerful tones drowned him out anyway and still sounded perfectly normal. “The Shroud of Darkness,” he said dramatically. “Excellent offensive or defensive aid. Drop this onto an enemy and watch them stumble about whilst you attack with impunity or slip away unnoticed!”
The darkness wrapped around me like a wet blanket, moist and wool warm, almost smothering. The air I managed to draw in was musty and soup-thick on my tongue and strangely tacky, as if it was sticking to the sides of my throat going down. I don’t suffer from claustrophobia, but in the Shroud’s humid embrace, I felt it anyway.
Useful the thing might be, but it was dark, too, in more than just color. I scrubbed at my arms, trying to get the oddly solid blackness off and fighting panic when nothing I did helped. I bit my lip, but it wouldn’t be long before I could no longer choke back a scream.
“Black magic,” Francoise muttered, her voice echoing strangely.
“Get us out of here,” Marco hissed. “Now!” His last word sounded loud enough with the Shroud’s odd magnification to shatter eardrums. But a second later the dark lifted as abruptly as a sheet being pulled off my head. I stood gasping and blinking in the suddenly glaringly bright showroom, waiting for my eyes to adjust, while the salesman had the Shroud ripped from his hand by an angry vampire.
“Was that supposed to be funny?!” It looked like Marco wasn’t a fan of sensory deprivation. Vampire eyes usually work even better in the dark than in daytime, so why was I getting the impression that he hadn’t been able to see inside that thing any better than I had?
“I do apologize,” the salesman said hurriedly. “But the Shroud is very old, very rare. Most people have never even heard of it. Spells are often used to fool the senses these days, but they are far simpler to throw off. With such an unusual item, it is easier to demonstrate what it does than to attempt to explain—”
“Explaining will do fine,” I interrupted, and Francoise nodded emphatically.
“As you like.” The salesman looked disappointed that his demonstration hadn’t been well received.
“What kind of illegal crap are you selling?” Marco demanded.
“Everything we carry is completely legitimate,” the salesman assured me, ignoring Marco. “No need to concern yourself about any trouble with the authorities.”
“I generally don’t,” I muttered. The authority policing magical weapons was the Silver Circle, and I couldn’t really get in more trouble with them if I tried.
The salesman gave me a sly look that contrasted oddly with his Santa Claus face. “However, we do have some antique pieces that don’t, er, come under the more modern bans.”
“Such as?” Maybe there was some esoteric antique that even the Circle wouldn’t have heard about—something rare enough or weird enough to gain me an advantage.
“There’s this lovely item. It comes from the estate of, how shall I put it, an adventurer?” The small off-white statue he handed me turned out to be of a Buddha-type figure with a jaunty grin. Miniature cracks zigzagged over the figure’s fat little belly and were slightly darker than the rest of it, like old ivory. “Daikoku, one of the seven Japanese gods of fortune!”
“And?”
“It’s a netsuke,” Marco said, peering at the little thing. “I used to know a guy who collected them.”
“A what?”
He shrugged. “Kimonos didn’t have pockets. Traditional Japanese guys wore a sash around their waist with a purse tied on it. Only they didn’t call it a purse, because they were guys, you know? Anyway, the netsuke held the two pieces—the bag and the belt—together.”
“This isn’t a netsuke,” the salesman sniffed. “Admittedly, there were a number carved depicting Daikoku, but that’s all they were—mere depictions.”
“And this would be different how?” I asked.
“Because this is Daikoku.”
I blinked. “That’s a god.”
The salesman didn’t like my tone. “An ancient being,” he correctly stiffly. “The medieval Japanese peasants didn’t know how else to refer to him.”
“And you keep him in a closet?”
“’Ow deed you obtain ’im?” Francoise broke in. She actually looked like she was buying this.
Then salesman must have thought so, too, because he brightened. “The soldier of fortune I mentioned acquired him some years ago in Fukushima,” he explained. “I believe he stole him from another traveler. It was believed that if you took a statue of Daikoku from its previous owner, it would grant you good fortune in the form of a wish—as long as you weren’t caught in the act. The old folk tradition probably arose from stories of the real statue’s exploits.”
“Like a génie.” Francoise was regarding the little thing thoughtfully.
“Indeed. Except djinn are not known for benevolence. That is a dangerous old wives’ tale. Should you ever come across a trapped djinn, I strongly advise you to leave it so.”
“Shouldn’t we leave Daikoku alone, too?” I asked skeptically.
“Oh, no,” the salesman hurried to explain. “He isn’t trapped. Not at all. This is simply the form he uses to carry out his mission.”
“And that would be?”
“To bring abundance, wealth and happiness into the world.”
“Then why don’t you make a wish and get wealthy?” Marco asked pointedly.
We all looked at the shopkeeper. “Er, well, because Daikoku doesn’t always understand . . . That is, you have to be extremely cautious about how you phrase your request. There have been instances in which miscommunications have taken place.”
“Like what?” I didn’t know a lot about magic, but I was beginning to learn that everything always had a catch.
“Simply that he does grant the wish but perhaps not always in the way the wisher intended. The person from whom I acquired the item had such an experience. The former owner of the statue hired a group of mercenaries to retrieve his property, and they trailed the adventurer to a village in Tibet. They surrounded it and were closing in when, on the theory that it couldn’t hurt, the man asked Daikoku to help him get out of there.” The salesman broke off, looking vaguely uncomfortable.
“Did it work?” I prodded.
“Of course it worked. After a fashion. He was alive to sell it to me, wasn’t he?”
“So what was the problem?”
“Well, you see, the mages knew what the man looked like. Daikoku therefore reasoned that changing his appearance would be an easy way of fulfilling his wish. But merely laying a glamourie or some such on him wouldn’t work because the men chasing him were mages, with the knowledge needed to strip such a thing away.”
“What deed ’e use?” Francoise asked, her forehead wrinkling prettily.
“Nothing. Or, rather, no mere disguise. He actually changed the man’s form. And considering that the consequences would be death if the man was discovered, he made the change as . . . dramatic . . . as possible.”
“Meaning what?” Marco demanded.
“He changed him into a woman,” the salesman admitted in a rush. “An old Tibetan woman, to be precise. And of course, once the wish was granted, there was no way to change him back. There were no more wishes and the man, er, the former man, hadn’t specified any conditions, so . . .”
“He was stuck?” Marco sounded horrified.
“I’m afraid so.”
“And what ees so bad about being ‘stuck’ as a woman?” Francoise demanded. “Eet was preferable to dying, non?”
“Speak for yourself.” Marco self-consciously adjusted himself. “I got things I would miss!”
“Just for the sake of argument, how much?” I asked the salesman. I needed to know what price range I was looking at here, or discussing any of the other objects was a waste of time.
He named a price that had my jaw dropping in shock. “How much?” I asked in disbelief.
“With the war on, prices have increased substantially,” I was told. “Everyone wants to be properly armed.”
I sighed, looking around at all the things I couldn’t buy. “I don’t suppose you have layaway.”
He shrugged, catching sight of another customer. “My dear, I don’t mean to offend, but unless you are unusually powerful, a magical tap would take decades to result in that kind of a return.”
He bustled off before I could ask what he meant, but Marco caught my eye. “Don’t even think about it!”
“Think about what?”
“You know damn well what. Once those leeches get their claws into you, there’s no telling where it’ll end. They may say they’re only taking five percent or whatever the legal limit is, but how do you know? Unless you faint and fall over, most people aren’t going to miss more, maybe even a lot more. Then you get in a fight where you need your magic, and, surprise, you got nothing. And you end up dead for what, a couple of bucks?”
“It’s true!” The other bodyguard, another new guy, piped up. “I got in a fight with a mage once, and he said that was why I’d beaten him. Not that I wouldn’t have anyway, but he said he was weak because some shysters had jacked him. And he was telling the truth—he tasted flat. No zip.”