I walked her through what I knew about M-vale’s various pitfalls, as gleaned from tales of other past break-out schemes (sadly truncated in their execution, most often), then sat there while Samaire walked me in return through what she’d decided on when she first heard the verdict read out on her and Dionne, and why it wasn’t quite coming together the way she’d thought it would.
“I usually practice hierarchical magic,” she said. “But that’s pretty tool-heavy for in here—not least since they took all my supplies away, before we even went to trial…”
“Uh huh. Good luck gettin’ hold of ‘a hazel-wood wand new-peeled’ on the black market, not to mention the steel caps, lodestone and virgin cock’s blood you’d need to consecrate it.” Adding, as she stared: “What? You think just ‘cause I ain’t been to university, I don’t know my basics?”
She kept on staring a second, then shook it off. “okay,” she said, finally, pointing to a sinuous double line of text snaking up around her right-side humerus. “If you’re really up on your rituale magiciae componentum, then—what’s that?”
I just grinned: Man, far too easy.
“Why, that there’d be protection against demons if you read it one way and a binding on your own demon blood if you read it the other, written in the language known as Crossing the River—Transitus Fluvii, as the dead Roman tongue would have it. Y’all don’t know everything just ‘cause you read a book or two got written before Gutenberg made up his first Bible, Princess.”
Dionne, impatiently: “Look, so you know some shit, and she obviously knows some of the exact same shit…was there gonna be a plan in here somewhere, or what?”
“Like you say, wizardly workings tend to take the sort of accoutrements our current position renders pretty much inaccessible,” I told Samaire, ignoring the unsolicited commentary from the peanut gallery. “So why not go the opposite route?”
“Such as?”
“Holler magic. Y’all might have heard of it.”
“Sure. That’s the tradition where every spell involves wearing your materiel in your crotch for a day or so.”
I nodded, unoffended: “Ain’t fancy, I’ll grant you, but it’s simple, cheap—”
“If you don’t count the boiled-down human body parts you usually build it from,” Dionne muttered.
“—and it does work…‘specially so when you got two qualified people doin’ it, ‘stead of just the one. And that’s my main point, Princess: You ain’t ever gonna get where you want to by exactly when you want to, not without help from another worker. But if you was to lay your high-class hexation next to my gutter witchery and let ‘em cross-pollinate—feel on ea
ch other awhile, or such—might be they’d both end up movin’ a tad faster, to our mutual improvement.”
“Like a sort of a…really skanky…feedback loop.”
“Well, I never did go too far through school…but metaphorically, sure. Why not?”
The Cornishes exchanged another glance. “Look, Sami, you already know what I think,” Dionne said, at last. “Witches are witches.
Plus, word on the yard is, banking A-Cat here’ll do anything more’n lie right to your face, then kick you down and fuck you ain’t gonna get you anything but kicked down and fucked even harder. But we both already know you’re gonna do what you want, just like always.”
Samaire nodded. To me: “So, assuming everything she’s said is true—how could I ever trust you to hold up your end of the bargain? What do you want to get out of here for, anyhow?”
Never you mind, kin-killer, I almost snapped back. But said instead, out loud—
“You kiddin’ me? I want to be out of here to be out of here, Princess, same’s anyone else. ‘Cause it’s cramped, your options for fun are substantially limited, and I been here more’n long enough already. ‘Sides which, you sure don’t have to trust a person to work with ‘em. That’s half the fun, ain’t it?”
She looked at me then, long and level, eyes hard.
“Tell you what,” she said, at last. “If it turns out I do find I need you for—anything—I’ll go ahead and have Dionne let you know.”
I nodded, thinking: That’s all I ask.
—
That night, in the slice of space between count and lights-out, Maybelle’d already laid there pouting for quite a bit before I finally wised up enough to look over and notice. She’d seen me getting what looked like up close and personal with Dee and Samaire, and that made her nervous; guess she was a bit too well-used, at this stage of the game, to think goin’ back on the market was a good idea, particularly if she wanted to trade up (rather than down) from where she was right now. So she wanted some token show of reassurance she really wasn’t in immediate danger of bein’ thrown over for a newer model, which I—truth be told—was more’n happy to provide.
“Them Cornishes got each other, darlin’; they ain’t plannin’ to be in here long enough to need anybody else, even if they either of ‘em swung that way. Not like I need you, anyhow.”
“You need me, A-Cat?”
“Let me demonstrate.”