The Kill Society. Richard Kadrey

This man is useful to the cause. I don’t know exactly how, but it will reveal itself.”

      “How do you know that he isn’t lying about everything?” the Magistrate says. “From where he came from to his alleged friendship with Death?”

      “Because I knew him.”

      “When you were alive.”

      “Yes.”

      “How do you know he is the same man you knew then? Perhaps he’s gone mad. Perhaps he’s a spy.”

      “Excuse me,” I say. “What time does the buffet start? The service here it terrible.”

      “Stop it, Pitts,” snaps Traven.

      The Magistrate shakes his head.

      “Yes. Stop it, Mr. Pitts. We will know everything when Mimir gets here,” he says.

      Fuck. The oracle. I’d forgotten about her.

      “But for my own curiosity,” the Magistrate says, “what is the new Death like?”

      “Is this part of the interrogation or are we just dishing?”

      “It is simply a question.”

      I look at him for a minute. He didn’t poison me and he could have. He also hasn’t let Daja shoot me and I know she’d love to.

      I say, “Death is pretty much like he was when he was Lucifer. He didn’t much like that job either, but he was good at it. Truth is, I haven’t seen him much since he’s become Death. It’s like being a cabby. Long hours.”

      “You were friends, then?” says the Magistrate. “Confidants?”

      “Why not? I’m a people person.”

      The Magistrate aims a finger at me.

      “The Devil had many secrets. What was his greatest?”

      “Now it’s twenty questions? Fuck you,” I say. “That’s his secret and mine.”

      Daja moves again. I’m getting really tired of this.

      “Please answer the question,” says the Magistrate.

      “Please answer,” says Traven. There’s something in the bastard’s eyes. It takes me a while, but then I recognize it: now that he’s seen a familiar face, he doesn’t want to be alone again. I can’t blame him.

      “There are a couple of things it could be,” I say. “But what I think you mean is the wound. The one Dad gave him during the war in Heaven. The one that never healed. Until recently, at least.”

      “You are saying the wound is healing?” says the Magistrate.

      “Healed. It started getting better when he went home.”

      The Magistrate stays silent for a minute. Then he whispers, “Interesting,” and looks at Daja.

      When no one else says anything, I say, “Now I have some questions for you.”

      “I am sure you do. Father, would you bring in Mimir?” the Magistrate says.

      “Of course.”

      He gets up and goes outside. I lean my head back and look up at Daja. She doesn’t look any better upside down. Her dark, dusty hair is long and she wears it tied back. Her leathers are light and worn. She’s strong. She could wear heavier leathers, but she likes the light ones because they let her move faster, so she’s down for a gunfight, a knife fight, or fists. I smile up at her wondering which one she’d like to start with on me. She scowls back.

      Traven comes back in with Mimir in tow. She’s still in her ratty fur coat, but she’s taken the bandanna off her face. Turns out it was hiding a respirator attached to a small oxygen tank under her coat. She sits across the table, next to the Magistrate. I can hear her labored breathing all the way over on my side.

      The Magistrate gently takes her hand.

      “Thank you for coming, Mimir.”

      “Of course,” she says, her voice muffled by the oxygen mask. “How can I help?”

      The Magistrate looks at me.

      “Mimir, I am concerned that Mr. Pitts here might be a spy or intend to harm us in some other way. He says that he found himself on the mountain and that he was placed there by Death himself. Is he telling the truth?”

      “Do you mean, did Death leave him or that he believes Death left him?”

      “How did he get onto the mountain, Mimir?”

      She opens a canvas Safeway shopping bag (Have I mentioned recently that they bootleg a lot of our stuff in Hell? They steal cable, too. Don’t tell anyone.) and lays a whole spook show on the table. At the center is a bowl made from the skull of a Hellion with three horns that make three perfect little legs for it. She pours in powders, a few drops of a potion, a seed pod, and a lot of other crap I can’t identify. As she grinds it all together, I wish Vidocq was here. I bet Vidocq wishes he was here. The alchemist in him would be going nuts right now. He’d know what kind of moonshine Popcorn Sutton here is brewing. All I know is that I don’t want to drink it when she’s done. Things might get tense soon.

      When she’s finished, I put my hands on the table, ready to push back and try to knock Daja off balance before she can shoot me.

      But Mimir doesn’t come up with the glass. She pulls a match from her bag and lights the mess in the bowl. Just as it starts to stink, she unhooks her respirator from the oxygen tank and puts the tube over the Dumpster fire she’s started.

      I start to say something stupid, but Traven’s hand closes on my arm in a goddamn death grip.

      Mimir sucks in the smoke and suddenly I want another Malediction. Her eyes roll back in her head. She begins to shake. She mumbles something unintelligible, like she’s chanting or speaking in tongues. It’s your basic oracle carny act. I’ve seen a million of them. They always look like they’re about to have an aneurysm. If they didn’t, the rubes wouldn’t think they were getting their money’s worth.

      After a long moment, Mimir pulls out the tube and puts a lid on the skull bowl. She blows a long trail of smoke from out of the tube, clearing her wheezing lungs, and hooks her respirator back to the oxygen tank. She takes several long, deep breaths.

      “What did you see?” says the Magistrate. He looks at me. “Is he telling the truth, Mimir?”

      I get ready again to bash Daja.

      Mimir takes one more long breath and nods her head.

      “He is not a spy?”

      “He is not,” she rasps.

      I hear a rustle of leather behind me and the quiet click of a small hammer being lowered onto a small gun. Daja was playing me all along. She knew what I’d do if things went bad. I was ready for her to pull her pistol, but she had a little pocket gun—a Derringer or something—on me the whole time. Suddenly I hate and like her even more all at the same time.

      “How did he make his way up the mountain?” says the Magistrate.

      “Death placed him there,” says Mimir.

      “Why?”

      “Death’s reasons are his own. To look too closely is to risk having his gaze fall upon you.”

      “I understand,” the Magistrate says.

      He pats Mimir’s shoulder as her breathing returns to its normal wheeze.

      “I have one more question for you,” he says, and looks at me. “The gentleman that Death so graciously brought us calls himself Mr. ZaSu Pitts. Is that, in fact, who he is? And if not, who is he really?”

      I tense again. This time Daja pulls her big pistol. The barrel brushes my ear. It tickles, which pisses me off. I don’t want to