"Where," Constantine said, staring at the watermelon, "did you get that?"
"Does it matter?"
"It's enormous. You pulled it out of a backpack."
"We've been walking for two hours." Jude finished the last of it and dropped the rind. "I'm fine, honestly. I'm more concerned about you."
Constantine took a long drag of his cigarette and squinted at the horizon — an endless flat expanse of sun-hammered gravel and rock, not a scrap of shade in any direction. "I'm only now remembering," he said, "that only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun."
"You really do love this country."
"Don't start." He exhaled smoke into the already-smoking air. "Noel Coward wrote that line himself. The man won an Oscar. Show some respect."
"I didn't know that. What's the song?"
"'Mad Dogs and Englishmen.'" A pause. "Which is, in hindsight, exactly what we are." He turned to look at Jude properly. "Why aren't you sweating?"
"This." Jude reached into his bag and produced a small frosted bottle — pale, almost white, beaded with condensation, a faint coolness radiating off the glass that was perceptible from half a metre away. He held it out. "Cold drink. A few mouthfuls, fifty minutes of heat resistance. Want some?"
Item: Arctic Draft (Travel Size) Cost: 30 AP Note: The guild was warned years ago that Zenny inflation was unsustainable. Crafting materials costing tens of thousands, then they set the exchange rate at 1:10. No one listened. This is the result.
Constantine took it, turned it over, brought it to his nose. A clean cold hit him — not menthol, not chemical, something purer — and his sinuses cleared immediately.
"What kind of magic is—"
"It's a drink," Jude said. "A very effective one."
Constantine drank. Several long mouthfuls, and the transformation was immediate — the brutal overhead sun dialled down, the air stopped pressing against his skin, his shoulders dropped from somewhere around his ears to their normal position. He stood there for a moment taking stock of himself.
"You know," he said, sounding mildly surprised, "I've always maintained that modern technology is better than magic."
"Glad you enjoyed it. Five hundred dollars when we're back in London."
Constantine lowered the bottle. "I've drunk from it."
"Yes."
"You're charging me for something I've already drunk."
"For the portion remaining. Which you'll want again in about forty-seven minutes."
Constantine looked at the bottle, which was still a third full, and then at the sky, which still had hours in it. He said nothing and kept walking.
Ahead of them, their guide glanced back at Jude. "First rank?" he said. "Fifth Uncle?"
"Five hundred," Jude confirmed. "You want some too? Half a bottle. On the condition you don't sell it."
The guide's expression became thoughtful. "You'd sell well out here," he said, with the breezy directness of a man who saw no reason to be subtle about commerce. "Out-of-towners are always suffering in this heat."
Jude had no response to this. The man had essentially described price-gouging tourists with the tone of someone announcing the weather.
"I'm just hoping we don't run into any guerrillas," Constantine said, lighting another cigarette off the one he'd just finished. "Plane, guide, car hire — I'm already in the hole on this trip. Get kidnapped on top of it and I won't break even."
We won't run into guerrillas, Jude thought, and said nothing.
Three hours later, as the sun hit the horizon and went red, they came over a rise and found the village.
It was a settlement — thatched roofs, mud walls, the whole structure squatting low against the earth as if trying to make itself small. The inhabitants moved between the buildings slowly: thin, dark-skinned, wrapped in cloth, the light of the dying sun catching the sharp lines of shoulders and collar bones. Some of the children playing near the outer huts had the particular shape that Jude didn't immediately understand — scrawny limbs, distended bellies, the contradiction of it somehow worse than either alone.
"What's wrong with them?" he asked, quietly.
"Malnutrition." Constantine kept his voice low and even. "They eat soil, grass roots, whatever they can find. The land's been desertifying for decades — farming isn't viable. The things they eat don't digest, and without protein, ascites sets in. The swelling."
He took a drag. "I've been here before. A few times. You can't fix it — not the way you're thinking. Every time I come to Africa I feel like I've landed somewhere that operates on completely different physics. Like being an astronaut."
Jude was quiet.
The three of them entered the settlement, and the villagers didn't come forward. They watched from where they stood — or sat, or leaned — in complete silence, tracking the newcomers with the specific vigilance of people who'd had reasons to be cautious and kept the habit. Constantine handed the guide Lester's sketch and waited while the man spoke to several of them in Dinka.
No one answered. But eyes moved — briefly, with practiced subtlety — toward a hut that stood apart from the others, up on the slope of a hill, a little distance from the main cluster of buildings.
Jude caught it. Constantine caught it. They exchanged a glance, left the guide to keep talking, and slipped away from the group.
The hut on the hill was smaller than the others and heavier with stillness. Constantine leaned toward the door to look through the gap — and before he could, a voice came from inside. Old, dry, unhurried.
"Come in. I expected you before now."
Constantine's eyebrows went up. Jude saw it — genuine surprise, the real kind, not the performed kind. They looked at each other once and went in.
The interior was dim, the only light a slant of blood-red afterglow cutting through a gap in the thatch and striking the floor. In the middle of it sat an Juden — cross-legged, completely still, shaved head except for hair at the sides, skin so cracked and dry it looked like the landscape outside. He wore armbands and a loincloth, nothing else. His ears carried enormous ornaments, and around his neck hung the skull of a bird Jude couldn't identify. The red light caught his face from below and made it strange.
He looked at them both with the trace of a smile.
"The goat's entrails," he said, "showed me you would arrive yesterday."
"Entrails." Constantine settled himself onto the ground with the easy familiarity of a man who'd sat in weirder places. "Well, divination's never a precise science, is it."
Jude looked at the Juden. "Where did you learn English?"
The smile widened slightly. "Is that what you heard?" He sounded genuinely curious. "I wasn't speaking English."
"Pentecost," Constantine said, to Jude, by way of explanation. "Fiftieth day after Easter — according to the Gospels, the Holy Spirit descends and the clergy start speaking in tongues. Every language simultaneously." He glanced at the Juden. "The United Nations has been looking for someone like you."
The Juden let this go unanswered. He turned his attention back to Constantine, studying him with the same half-smile. "I know you," he said. "The laughing magician. I've seen you in my dreams."
"What a coincidence," Constantine said warmly. "I've been in plenty of nightmares."
Jude clapped his hands once — not loudly, just enough to redirect.
"Gentlemen. I understand this feels like a reunion of kindred spirits, and I don't want to be rude about it—but one of your tribe's children is dead, the evil spirit that was bound inside him is loose in London, and people are dying." He looked at the Juden steadily. "What I want to know is why. Why did you do this? What were you trying to accomplish?"
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