Read Online The Broken Lands by Kate Milford - Free Book Online

What’ve you got inside it these days?”
    â€œKentucky cheroots. Why?”
    â€œLet me have one.”
    Walker produced his case, and handed Christophel one of the cheroots. He took the parchment with Walker’s list of words and wrapped it around the little cigar. Then he lit and smoked them both almost completely down to ash in a single, impossibly long pull. He let the ash crumble into a saucer. After that, Christophel dropped the smoldering end into his still-coated right hand, peeled the tallow from his palm, and folded it around the remains of the cheroot. He placed the odd little parcel in the center of the table.
    Inside the tallow envelope, the red butt of the cigar glowed for a moment, threatening to melt through its enclosure, then died.
    â€œHoodoo conjurors do much of their work through the of­fices of spirits,” Christophel said as he watched the embers go out. “When a spirit does a conjure doctor’s bidding, it’s because the doctor has a relationship with the spirit. He’s asked for the spirit’s good graces and, having received them, can bid that spirit to do good works or bad, so long as the bidding’s done with complete faith. Mr. Bones, be so kind as to bring me that purple candle by your elbow.”
    Christophel took another thin china saucer from one of the pigeonholes in the cabinet and two bottles from another. “But faith is a slippery thing. I never did like the idea of trusting in spirits that way. Mr. Walker, you should find a feathered monstrosity of a hat somewhere on the desk over there that I believe has a hatpin stuck through it. I need the hatpin.”
    Walker retrieved the pin, and he and Bones looked on as Christophel uncorked the bottles and poured liquid from each onto the dish. The smells made them easy to identify: vinegar and bitters.
    â€œHatpin, please,” Christophel said to Walker, and rolled it in the vinegar-and-bitters mixture. “What I wanted was something I could control completely, something with a logic that would make its workings perfectly predictable. Candle, please.”
    â€œIs there such a thing?” Bones asked, handing him the purple taper. “Seems rather a lot to ask of anyone or anything, that kind of obedience.”
    Christophel ran the length of the pin through the candle flame, making it spark and sputter. “There’s a trick to it, of course,” he replied. “The key that sets praxis apart from conjury. The thing, Walker, that enables
my
kind
to work this sort of art.”
    He circled the table, drawing jagged boundaries in the tallow surface with the hatpin, boundaries that slowly resolved themselves into a rough outline of the map beneath. “The key is not to let the daemon know it’s being asked.”
    â€œThe demon?” Bones demanded. “You’re talking about messing with demons
?
Are you utterly mad?”
    Christophel shook his head. “These are not the sort of thing you mean when you use the word.”
    â€œI told you,” Walker said tightly to Bones. “I warned you.”
    â€œStop behaving like children,” Christophel snapped. He pointed the pin at Walker. “You’re one of the last of the race of the High Walkers. He’s a goddamn . . . what the hell
are
you, anyway, Bones? And I’ve been roaming this earth since before the walls of Pandemonium were built. We aren’t humans, afraid of our shadows.”
    The pin shook in Christophel’s hand, but neither Walker nor Bones noticed. Something else was happening to the conjuror. Across his brow, beads of dampness, like sweat, had begun to form. Only it wasn’t sweat. The beads were watery red.
    â€œIt’s a fair question,” Bones said softly, staring at the red droplets on Christophel’s skin.
    â€œDo you know who I
am?
” Christophel snarled. A large drop slid down his face, leaving a crimson line between his eyes and down his