Ink & Sigil (Ink & Sigil, #1)

by Kevin Hearne

I took a seat and waited, reflecting morbidly that my profession as a sigil agent basically made me akin to those hygienic shields in public toilets, what the Americans called an “ass gasket”: a thin tissue-like layer of protection between an arsehole on one side and a bowl of shite on the other. When it came to humanity and the Fae, I honestly didn’t know which was which, and I supposed it didn’t matter. My job was to keep them apart.

After all, there is nothing so deadly, so ultimately terminal, as being alive.

I can’t tell you how empty you feel after your love has walked the world with you and then gone home to sleep forever. It’s not the emptiness of youth, of never having loved; that’s different. That’s the sort of thing where you know you’re missing something but you’re not sure what it is, when you listen to love songs and think it must be fine but you don’t fully know what they’re on about. Naw, it’s more like suddenly losing a tooth and you feel the absence keenly, a hole in your body that used to be filled, except it’s much bigger than that. It’s an empty room, an empty chair, a pillow next to yours that doesn’t bear the soft round impression of the dear head who dreamt so many dreams by your side. It is an emptiness like no other, because even if it is filled with some other thing later on, it’s a final subtraction that no addition will mend.

To distract from the yawning nothingness, you keep busy. Gardening. Walking the dog, or just walking and petting other people’s dogs. Reading, smoking, and drinking. Doing your job. Finding a friend or three to have tea with or a morning gab over breakfast, where you can all agree that the world is shite—present company excluded—and if someone could only find a way to apply enough suction, maybe Parliament would finally get its heid pulled out of its arse and do something sensible for once. These aren’t solutions to the emptiness. They are merely harnesses, safety lines tethering you to the cliff face as your bollocks dangle over the abyss. Absolutely vital to survival, but never a replacement for the great lost love of your life.

There was no way to predict how people would take news that required them to shift their paradigms. Most of the time such news just bounced off them, the way horrific shite about a candidate bounces off a party’s faithful because they can’t face the fact that they voted for a monster and they may in fact be monsters themselves. Easier to just deny it all, call it fake news. No intro-spection required.

“Gods below, MacBharrais,” Buck said, appearing at my side and staring down into the pool. “He’s uglier than a splash of bird-shite on yer sandwich, in’t he?”

There is something about getting off a plane that brings out the worst in everyone. Violations of personal space and nudging, utter rudeness and lack of courtesy that sometimes leads to snappish behavior. But since I learned to think of it as arising from a dire need to go to the bathroom, it’s all made sense, and I can empathize and feel compassion for people rather than be annoyed with them when they get too close and huff and whine and so on. I recalled more than a few times in my life when I did not consider the needs of others when I had a dire need not to soil myself, and remembering those times in airports or in traffic has enabled me to entirely eliminate road rage from my life. Whenever someone shoulders past me or cuts me off, I feel like rooting for them instead of getting angry, and I hope they’re able to make it to the toilet before disaster strikes. I cheer for the steadfastness of their sphincters and wish them long life and clean underwear. People think I am patient, but not really; I just get it. We are ruled by our bladders and bowels.