Read Online The Devil You Know by K. J. Parker - Free Book Online Page B

industry.
    * * *
    “I’d like you to do something for me,” I told him. “But I’m afraid you won’t want to.”
    Ever since we’d had our brief chat about alchemy he’d been different; wary, nervous, unsettled. “Your wish is my command,” he said. “You know that.”
    “That’s all very well,” I said. “But I’ve given you a lot of anxiety and stress over this alchemy thing. I don’t know. I’d better think about it some more.”
    “Please,” he said wretchedly. “My feelings don’t enter into it. Tell me what you want me to do.”
    “Well,” I said. “I’d quite like you to raise the dead.”
    His eyes rolled, but he didn’t say a word.
    “It’s just,” I went on, “I’d quite like to see my wife again.”
    “The one you may or may not have murdered.”
    “I’ve only been married once,” I said, a little frostily. “And I always tell people I murdered her, but really it was all her fault.” I sighed. “We parted on bad terms, obviously. And it’s been on my mind. I don’t like to think she actually believes I killed her on purpose.”
    He’d turned a sort of pale grey, like a dove’s stomach feathers. “First alchemy, then necromancy,” he said. “You realise—”
    “The two worst things a human being can do, yes, thank you. Though personally, I would interpret them as making some money and talking to my wife. Believe it or not, people do that sort of stuff every day and nobody gets particularly worked up about it.”
    The look in his eyes was more reproach than anything else. “You twist everything,” he said.
    “Guilty,” I said. “Though I prefer to think of it as a form of art.”
    * * *
    Which I couldn’t really deny. Creativity—the ability to make something out of nothing; no, because we can do that, proverbially. The ability to take something and turn it into something else; that’s more like it. The thing humans can do and we can’t. Art. Alchemy. Fiction. Lies.
    Raising the dead, however, is something quite other. There’s nothing artistic about that. It’s just wanton rule-breaking, pure and simple.
    So I looked him in the eye and said, “When do you want to do this incredibly stupid, ill-advised thing?”
    “How about right now?”
    I shook my head. “It takes time,” I said. “There are procedures, protocols, that sort of thing. You’ll have to give me at least a week.”
    He laughed. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “You exist outside time and space.”
    He was starting to annoy me. “Quite. Even so. I’ll need a week.”
    “Not if we do it my way.”
    I was so stunned I couldn’t speak. If I needed to breathe, I’d have choked. “Your way—”
    He nodded. “Maybe I’ve been a bit economical with the truth,” he said. “The fact is, I want to talk to my wife.”
    “She’s dead.”
    “Well.” He pursed his lips. “Maybe, maybe not.”
    I very nearly lost my temper. “She’s dead. You killed her.”
    “Sit down,” he said. I interpreted that as an order. “She died from drinking an alchemical potion.”
    “Yes. One that you—”
    “Quite. Let’s not harp on too much about that.” He sat down opposite me. “She thought I’d managed to concoct the serum of perpetual youth.” He smiled sadly. “She was always a bit obsessive about staying young and beautiful. I think that’s why she married me, because she thought I could do this elixir of life thing. Can’t think of any other possible reason.” He fell silent for a moment, then went on; “She was convinced I’d succeeded and was holding out on her. In fact what I was working on was your basic dross-into-gold process. She gobbled down half a pint of cinnabar and aqua regia, among other things. I’d told her it was poison. She didn’t believe me.”
    I frowned at him. “That’s all in your file.”
    “Indeed, I’m sure it is. But here’s the thing.” He hesitated, I don’t know why. As though he were summoning up his courage. “The work I’ve been doing