The Native Star Read Online Free PDF

threatened to topple over.
    “What the devil is he doing?”
    “He’s doing a Cassandra,” Emily muttered. She hated Besim’s Cassandras. The old man had once been a charm maker in Dutch Flat, and in his better days he’d been Pap’s biggest rival for custom. But the rivalry had faded as Besim slid into drunkenness and its concomitant poverty. These days, the only money he got was from his impromptu liquor-lubricated prognostications. These were doubly embarrassing to one of her profession in that while they tended toward the ridiculous, they proved right about half of the time—which was about the same success Pap had with his scrying.
    “Fascinating,” Stanton said. “He’s a dervish.”
    “What are you talking about?” Emily asked. “Pap always said Besim did Indian magic.”
    “Rubbish. That man’s no more an Indian than I am. He’s a Turk. He was a Sufi holy man once, or he studied with one.” Stanton pointed to Besim’s hands. “See how his right palm is turned upward and his left is turned down? Power comes down from Heaven into the right hand and returns down to the earth from the left. All that energy rushing through the dervish’s body supposedly endows him with supernaturally clear insight into the true nature of all existence—past, present, and future.” He took another bite of the chicken leg. “I must say, though, the addition of a pint of whiskey tends to undercut the rite’s spiritual element.”
    At that moment, Besim fell with a great crash in the middle of the floor, and lay moaning and writhing, holding his gut. Words began slurring out of his mouth.
    “Emily … Emily Lyakhov” Emily froze. Besim wasn’t going to Cassandra about her, was he? She didn’t recognize the name Lyakhov, but she didn’t have time to think about it before Besim spoke again. “Emily, you have been doing bad magic.”
    A few people turned to look at Emily curiously. She wished she could sink through the floor, except there wasn’t any floor, just dirt. Shut up, Besim , she whispered to herself, clenching her hands tight.
    “You have bewitched someone for your own good. Someone who has not asked for it.” Besim spoke with the slurry slyness of a very drunk man, waggling a finger. “You have woven a fine little net, Emily. But it will not catch you what you want …”
    Dag stepped forward, his hands balled into fists.
    “You quit talking about … You just shut up , Besim!” There was odd, hesitant anger in his voice—anger that didn’t know where it came from. “Miss Emily wouldn’t do anything like that, and you know it! That’s not the kind of Cassandra-in’ we want.”
    “You get the Cassandra you get, you cow-eyed fool!” Besim flared back. But drunk as he was, he knew which side his bread was buttered on. He fell silent for a moment, staring into space, apparently searching for a more satisfactory message from the ether. When the next message came, however, it was worse than the first.
    “The Corpse Switch!” Besim shrieked, his face contorting with sudden horror. “The Corpse Switch up at Old China has failed! The dead … the dead will rise from beneath the earth!”
    There was a storm of muttering. Emily stared at him, confused and appalled. Besim’s Cassandras were usually light-hearted revelations about which young scapegrace had stolen a pie from which matron’s windowsill. They were never this dire. Corpse Switches controlled the zombie miners that the mine owners bought to work their most dangerous mines—the ones that live men wouldn’t work in for any money. The zombie workers had been paupers, criminals, and other dangerous and unsavory types. Certainly not the sorts one wanted roaming the mountains without the control of a properly sorcelled Corpse Switch.
    As if that weren’t bad enough, Besim was crawling across the floor toward Emily. He stopped, kneeling in front of her, clutching the hem of her dress and pressing it to his tear-slicked face.
    “The