Foreign Devils by John Hornor Jacobs Page A

Quintilius, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis
    That afternoon bad weather blew in over the mountains and we took to our tents to wait it out. A shelf of dark clouds rolled in like gravy poured on a blue plate and the light patters of falling droplets soon began deluging us in earnest. There was a quick scramble to get the Lomax gear inside their tents before it could get drenched. The wind picked up and made the dun-coloured fabric of our tents bluster and whip, but Maskelyne’s slaves had done a fine job in their assembly and we had no issues with the wind. But the temperature dropped and I pulled on my oilcoat and remained in the tent with Fisk, sitting upright, watching the foggy shore pass dreamlike beyond the slightly open slit of tent. I whittled a branch I plucked from the Big Rill. Softened by water, the wood curled away under my knife like seconds from a clepsydra. Fisk sat hunched, his shoulders tense at the opening of the tent, his breath coming in hurried puffs. He didn’t have to say it for me to know he was thinking upon a certain engineer. While spring was nearly finished and summer close at hand, we still travelled in the shadows of the White Mountains. It could get cold and even snow a long ways into summer.
    ‘Ia dammit, Shoe. Ia dammit all to Hell and Damnation,’ he said, softly.
    I said nothing.
    By afternoon, the sky cleared and the rain stopped, though it remained cool. Wasler came by our tent to apologize.
    ‘I’m sorry, Mr Ilys, but I won’t have the tint finished on your portrait until tomorrow. With the rain, I chose not to expose our rendering to the moist air. By tomorrow, I think, I’ll be able to complete it.’
    ‘That’s fine, Mr Lomax. It was your picture to begin with,’ I said.
    ‘Yes, but many people are very … shall we say … fixated on their own image. It becomes important to them beyond all measure,’ he said.
    ‘That ’cause of the daemon jiggery that goes into the likeness?’ I asked.
    He looked at me closely. ‘There is something of that to it, Mr Ilys. You haven’t been feeling any overwhelming need to look upon it, have you?’
    ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Got my proof in one of my satchels, I think. It’s interesting, but I ain’t had any trouble sleeping.’
    ‘That’s good,’ he responded and looked a tad relieved. ‘It’s just—’ He stopped, chewing his bottom lip.
    ‘It’s just what?’
    ‘Nothing,’ he said, and then smiled wanly. ‘Nothing.’
    I placed my hand on my Hellfire and made my eyes go hard. ‘Mr Lomax, if it is nothing, then there’s nothing stopping you from telling me.’
    A startled expression crossed his face. Fisk turned from where he’d been sitting, sharpening a longknife, and raised an eyebrow at Lomax.
    ‘It’s just that there’ve been a few—’ He stopped again. Swallowed. He clasped his hands in front of him, realized he was doing it, and then stuffed them in his pocket.
    ‘A few what?’
    ‘A few possessions,’ he said, nervously removing his hands from his pockets again. ‘That’s all.’ He turned to go.
    ‘What?’ I said. I may be small, but I’m not slow or weak. I snatched his elbow and turned him back, pulling him inside the tent. ‘What do you mean, “possessions”?’
    ‘Well, it’s complicated,’ Wasler said. ‘I should not have said anything since it is not even an issue here, Mr Ilys!’ He looked at us like that ended it but when we said nothing, he sighed and then gave a little nervous chuckle. ‘The daemon and the subject become linked – for just a moment – during the sanguine phase of image capture. Sometimes, when the person opens his or her eyes, it’s not them staring out of them any more.’
    Fisk sat up. Alarmed. ‘You mean there’s folks toddling about out there with daemons inside of them?’
    Both Fisk and I have a little experience with this. But in our case, the daemon – a real pesky sonofabitch – was bound in a severed hand. And even then, it was enough to almost destroy