The Interminables (22 page)

So soft. So gentle. It was wholly sincere, in Pietro's voice, and only wanted to help.

It had to know that he'd tried. Once. In life. After he'd lost his closest friend, his constant companion, the man who he had betrayed in the name of respectability. The man who had forgiven him. The man he'd loved more than anything.

In a matter of days Istvan had found himself aboard a passenger ship, signed up as a volunteer fighter in a war on another continent he knew nothing about, having given up everything he'd owned, and signed away the rest. No warning. No goodbyes.

He wouldn't be coming back.

But then, when he had... when the British had sent him home years later… scarred and destitute, addicted to morphine, fevered and angry and desperate and with no one to blame but God himself...

He still didn't know if the Susurration had Edmund.

Istvan threw himself off the mountain.

H
e was home
. He flipped on the lights. Nothing happened.

That was enough.

Hours later, Edmund lay on the couch, candles burning on the table beside him, a bottle he hadn't touched through some heroic effort toppled on the floor below him, Beldam purring thunderously as she sprawled on his chest. He'd thrown up until he couldn't taste oil anymore and now he'd finally stopped shaking. No Istvan. The specter had obviously given up on him, just like Grace. After all, who would bother being around a guy whose entire existence came at the expense of others? Who survived only because he stole time from its rightful owners, and squandered it on fits of nightmare, on terror, on self-loathing so powerful he wished he'd drowned... and then he remembered there was nothing there for him, either, there was no way out even at the extremes of torment. He was damned. No way out. He would be the only one left, over and over, forever, and it was his fault. His stupid fault.

Shokat Anoushak herself had confirmed that, hadn't she?

Run. Forever.

That was it. That was all. So much for being a hero.

He looked dully down at the bottle again. He hadn't touched it. Somehow, he hadn't touched it. He'd promised he wouldn't, not over Grace, and yes he'd slipped up with the tiger but this time...

Well. That was something.

Beldam twitched. He scratched her ears. “You're squashing me,” he told her.

She purred louder.

Istvan was... he was probably at the Twelfth Hour. He usually was, at this hour. That made sense. Besides, there was that whole matter of Barrio Libertad being one enormous bomb built by the camera-headed aberration who had singlehandedly killed Shokat Anoushak and didn't have any qualms about repeating the process.

That was kind of important. Someone had to hear about that. Someone who had ordered him not to look into the matter. Someone who was sometimes up and about this late, in an office she may have won through a barefaced lie.

Edmund reached down and picked up the bottle.

Just a little. Just enough to wash out his mouth, and maybe a few memories. Istvan wasn't around. He wouldn't notice.

Really, if any situation merited a drink, this was it.

He nudged Beldam. “Let me up.”

The cat didn't move.

He put the bottle back down. “I appreciate it, I really do, but I can't stay here.” He prodded her again. “I have things to do.”

She grumbled something obscene and slouched off, tail switching side to side.

Edmund got up and away before he could reconsider. He shucked his rumpled civilian clothes in the washroom, brushed his teeth, and put on the black. Gloves, cape, aviator goggles. His top hat hung on its peg by the door, and after he set it on his head he checked himself over in the mirror. None of the stitching was visible. That was good. Bum arm still, but that couldn't be helped.

He tried a smile. He was the Hour Thief.

The Hour Thief could do this.

“I'll be back in two shakes,” he told Beldam. She sniffed at him. He pictured the Twelfth Hour, ran the right almost-calculations, and vanished.

Istvan wasn't in the infirmary. In fact, he wasn't anywhere in the building, and his staff had no idea where he'd gone. Out sulking, maybe – he wasn't taking events well, either. The note probably hadn't helped. Taking advantage of a loophole in direct orders probably hadn't helped. Grace, more than anything, wasn't helping.

Yes, the ghost had to be off burning steam. There was still a lot of earthquake damage out there and the combination of fear, pain, and flying was just the ticket. Flying always helped, he'd said. The one undeniable positive of his condition.

That left Mercedes. The matter of Barrio Libertad. The revelation of a weapon that could kill hundreds of thousands of innocents along with their eerie jailer, its trigger in the hands of an entity just as inhuman and frightening as the presence outside the walls. One who had broken the back of the greatest sorcerous army the world had ever seen. No wonder the Susurration was so desperate to escape.

Now all Edmund had to do was fess up to his visit.

He strode down the picture hall, eyed the Magister's door, and tapped it with a shoe. “Mercedes? This is…”

It swung open.

“…Edmund.”

No one sat at the Magister's desk. Candles ringed the moons-and-clock emblem set into the floor, three clustered at each cardinal point. A labyrinth of chalk lines crisscrossed the floor, offering bowls spaced wherever they intersected, most of them filled with the usual odd knick-knacks and one or two with blood. Some of the flames flickered into signs and sigils as he watched. Mercedes' phone lay in the center, resting atop a seven-pointed star made of cables and wire. Someone was chanting, long slow syllables in a tongue he recognized as ancient Aramaic.

He frowned. Since when were phones standard summoning foci? “Mercedes?”

The chanting stopped. Mercedes stuck her head out from the window seat. “Don't stand there,” she said, “you're letting in a draft.”

He stepped in and shut the door behind him, making sure not to scuff any of the lines. “Mercedes, were you aware that Barrio Libertad is actually a transdimensional superweapon designed to wipe out the Susurration and all half a million people trapped in that crater with it?”

“Is it.”

Not a question. She didn't sound surprised.

He waited for her to ask what he'd been doing there. Why he'd gone there. What authority he thought he possessed, to pursue a forbidden investigation against direct orders. He was the Hour Thief. Fine china. An heirloom passed from one figure of power to the next, one who should never have taken up the Magister's mantle, even once.

The skull of Magister Jackson stared at him.
You damn fool Templeton. Learn your place.

Mercedes said nothing. She stayed in the window seat, barely visible.

Edmund edged around the circle's perimeter. He didn't like having that phone in it. That meant part of the ritual was new, and innovation in magic was akin to innovation in falling. You could only try so many times from so many heights. Sometimes it was the first one that killed you.

Not for the first time, he wondered about her missing finger.

“Mercedes,” he began again, “I understand that I shouldn't have been at the fortress at all. That was a mistake on my part. I'll accept whatever sentence you dictate.”

She wrapped a scarlet-stained bandage around her left hand. Her jacket was rumpled, its sleeves rolled up and a coffee stain spilling down the front. The pens remained in her hair, but strands had come loose, frizzing about the sharp angles of her face. She looked like she'd slept about as much as he had. “But?”

No buts
, he wanted to say.
None at all.

But... why wasn't she surprised? Why wasn't she laying down judgment? What was she doing so late at night with a ritual circle like this?

Magister Jackson stared. Edmund looked down at a chalk line running before his shoes.

Barrio Libertad put an end to Shokat Anoushak and her armies, Mercedes. Not you. Not unless someone else is lying here. If you didn't, why claim it?

You became Magister after all this, Mercedes. You declared Providence off-limits. You barred further investigation.

A telephone as a focus, Mercedes?

“Spit it out, Mr Templeton.”

He steadied himself. “Barrio Libertad was built from dust by what I dearly hope isn't some kind of nascent machine god. It – he – goes by Diego Escarra Espinoza, and if what I've learned is true, he's responsible for both the Susurration's confinement and the blast that wiped out Providence. He finished off Shokat Anoushak. Now, you claim to have done that. You were elected Magister after that. You've done a fine job and I'm not looking to reclaim the position, by any means, but...”

The chalk line lay before him.
Don't ask. The wizards who survive are the ones who don't ask.

He stepped over it. “Mercedes, I'd like to know what's going on here.”

S
he tied
off the bandage with a wince. “An explanation, Mr Templeton? I thought you knew better than that.”

“Frankly, Mercedes, I don't think the Twelfth Hour can afford to sit back on this one. If that weapon goes off, we're losing a lot of innocent people, and right now that's the best outcome on the table. If you know something – if you can refute any of what I heard – I'd be grateful to hear it.” He turned his hat in his hands, wishing Istvan weren't off... wherever he was. Some backup would have been nice. “I'm looking for a solution, not a witch hunt.”

“Mm,” Mercedes replied. She waved at the lines, the candles, the sputters of sigils in the fire. “What do you think this is?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“Mr Templeton, I can assure you that I'm aware of the delicacy of the situation. I don't blacklist entire nation-states without reason. If I had authorized wizards to enter Providence, years ago, what do you think would have happened?”

He shook his head. “I can't say what might have been. I can only say what might be.”

“What might be,” she repeated. She swung her legs around to face him, waves rolling behind her. It was night on the Atlantic, moon-lit, droplets of salt spray rolling from the window panes. A studying gaze – he knew the routine – and then she clasped her hands together, a maimed gesture, uneven. “What do you expect me to do, then?”

Providence. The last battle. A convergence of Shokat Anoushak's forces from across the globe, all searching for something never found, all destroyed in that blast. He had always thought it was Mercedes' work. She had taken advantage of the strange decision, was all. Shokat Anoushak was mad, pulling so much of her forces into one place, but... well, she was mad.

A lot of people had died at Providence. Too many.

He did his best to hold Mercedes' eyes. “As I said, I'd like to know what's going on.”

She shook her head. “Wouldn't we all.”

“Mercedes…”

“Mr Templeton, has it occurred to you how the Susurration operates? You were already targeted once. Compromised once. Led your friend Doctor Czernin into a fight with it once. You've just returned from Barrio Libertad – an explicitly unauthorized visit, during which time you could easily have been intercepted – and, after all that, Mr Templeton, you expect me to trust you?”

“No,” he said. “But one can hope.”

“Don't.”

Edmund tucked his hat under his arm, resigning himself to ignorance. That was that. The Magister had spoken; the Hour Thief obeyed. That was how it had always been. That was how it had to stay. The alternative was all too thinkable, and she had a name.

How much memory led to madness?

“One question before I go,” he said. “I've checked with the infirmary and no one seems to know where Istvan's gone off to. I was wondering if you might know where he is, or when he'll be back.”

“Doctor Czernin?” She frowned, glancing at her telephone. “You didn't meet him at the fortress?”

Edmund bit back a curse. He'd left a note, hadn't he?
Don't follow
?
Don't look for me
? He could take care of himself just fine, especially in something so personal. Istvan always worried too much. “I wasn't expecting to, and I didn't.”

Mercedes stood.

“Wait, are you saying he hasn't come back?”

She stepped around her drawn lines, making for the door. “How much do you care for your friend, Mr Templeton – on a scale of one to ‘would kill him myself'?”

<
I
never wanted to end them,> said Pietro. Said the Susurration, pursuing him through the pews.

Istvan vaulted the last wooden back, sprinted for the doors –

– and found himself again on the other side of the church, scrambling over the altar, back where he'd began. Three times, he'd tried. Three times, failed. There was something biblical in that, something damning, like all the rest. He was tired. He was so tired.

He set his eyes on stained glass. Ran again. Leapt, wings churning... tripped, tangled in his own chains, for how many attempts he couldn't remember. No escape. No end.

Pietro offered a hand to help him up, as he'd done a thousand times before.

Istvan ignored the hand. Struggled to his feet. Missed a stair. Stair?

Tumbled.

Landed with a thwack, skidding on his back through the dust, his glasses cracked, bullets pelting the hill beside him. Men shouted in a tongue he didn't know, a twisted cousin to German warped by long exposure to the South African frontier. The Transvaal. One of his own farmer-militiamen lay before him, a Boer, blood bubbling over weather-beaten flesh torn by British artillery fire.

Istvan couldn't stop the bleeding fast enough. He could barely see through the dust.

A whistle. Close. Too close. He threw himself over the wounded man before it hit.

Fire.

Faded lines of Arabic. Loops and dots. Words penned at the fall of the Sassanids, crumbling, a tale of ancient horrors wrought by the simple act of living too long for too high a price. The dust plugged his nose. He sneezed. The pages turned. A picture, flattened and stylized, painted by hands long gone, fell open before him: a man in a black cloak and top hat, a corpse in a bridal veil at his feet.

A smile, faint and pleasant. Eyes turning, remorseless–

Istvan yelled.

Pietro caught him. Leaned him against the park bench as he shook and shivered.

he said.

Istvan swallowed. Tasted dust. He couldn't breathe, for the dust.

pleaded Pietro,

E
dmund dashed
after Mercedes as she made a beeline straight for the vault. “Why didn't you tell me you'd done this earlier?”

“Would you have approved?”

“Has my approval ever mattered?”

“It was a case of need to know, Mr Templeton,” she called over her shoulder. “Need to know!”

They slid to a halt in front of the enormous circular door. Startled faces stared from further down the hall, bleary-eyed latecomers who hadn't yet made full use of the Twelfth Hour's coveted caffeine reserve. No worries regarding interference: Magister Hahn was involved in whatever it was, and if she were involved, it was Serious Business that shouldn't be interrupted.

She set her palm in the central depression and the door rolled back with a crash. “D Section,” she said. “Things We Really Oughtn't. Look for a mahogany case with scorch marks on it, about this big.” She held up her hands to indicate something roughly the size and shape of a lunchbox.

Edmund hesitated. “You aren't coming?”

“Mr Templeton, you can search far more quickly than I. Magister Jackson's mysterious countermeasures remain in place in the event you take anything you shouldn't, and I'm not accepting any of your ill-gotten time.” She jerked her chin at the blackness beyond. “Go. I'll set up the rest and have the vault open again when you reach the exit.”

Well. He couldn't argue with that. “Any labels?”

“‘Security Deposit.'”

“Right.”

He went.

The vault sections remained nearly constant, but individual locations could and did change with unnerving frequency: any attempt to re-locate an archived item was a monumental task in and of itself. Time, even considering Edmund's powers, was of the essence.

For three stolen hours he walked alone through the bones of a dead beast dreaming.

When he finally found the box, it was labeled, just as Mercedes had said, and closed with a brass lock, for which he was grateful. Locks had a way of removing options.

Mercedes was right: he hadn't needed to know.

He brushed the dust off the wood, picked it up – it was lighter than he'd expected – and tucked it under his good arm. A walk of any length with its contents wasn't an appealing prospect, but the vault had a way of being smaller on the way out. He reached the massive stone door within ten minutes. The Demon's Chamber was another five.

By the time he got there, Mercedes had drawn a familiar ashen summoning circle around the pillar in its center and activated the wards that circumscribed each wall. Salt, cedar, iron. The shackles that had once held Istvan fast gaped in their mountings, fangs etched with faint Greek inscriptions. They had been cast to control more traditional dangers, in the founding years of the Twelfth Hour, and looked it.

Edmund checked his watch. It had been about a half-hour, Mercedes' time.

“Put the box in that empty space,” she ordered, producing a brass key to match the brass lock.

He did so. “Anything else?”

“No. I'll get it open and we'll go from there.”

She kneeled beside it. No muttered words, no ritual incantations: the key turned smoothly and the lid opened with nary a creak. Inside, resting upon a bed of cushioned red satin, was a blackened human jawbone. Part of one. Edmund was no dentist, but if he had to guess he would have said it was from nearer the ear than the chin, and it was missing about two molars. The blackening was clearly from fire. Scattered around it was a few ashes, or pieces that had come off.

Concrete details. He had to focus on the concrete details.

Mercedes sat back on her heels. “There we go.”

Edmund remained standing just outside the circle. He didn't want to get any closer. Every moment spent staring at that sorry piece of bone was another moment reminding him that the man who was, at this point, his closest friend in all the world, was dead. That he had been dead for over a century. That he had died, in horrific galvanic agony, almost two decades before Edmund was ever born.

It was one thing to know that while trading jibes with Istvan's spirit-shadow. It was quite another to look at what little was left of him.

He swallowed.

All of his friends were dead.

<
N
o
,> Istvan said.

He pulled away.

Pietro caught his wrist. Memories long-faded flared like photographs given color.

Morning meetings at the coffee house, matches of chess that Istvan almost always lost. Pietro's total ineptitude at Hungarian. That perfectly awful flat they'd shared. Arguments over this matter of nationalism, the ridiculousness of that Freud character, and whether or not heavier-than-air craft would ever be viable. Istvan's struggle with Latin anatomy, assisted by relentless drills and bribery. Pietro watching, from the second row, Istvan's long-awaited betrothal to Franceska; Istvan watching, in turn, Pietro's wedding, and applauding as any good friend ought. That dreadful year of attempting to avoid one another, to do their respective duties, to forget and pretend and fail, and meet again as failures. They'd been failures for eight years already – why stop now?

Most of all, those precious, few, forbidden dances after public festivals, joking over who ought to take the woman's part and whirling, hands clasped, in laughing circles about the empty tables...

Istvan hugged himself, elbows tight against his sides. Like his own knife had split him open. Like ravens had ripped out his intestines, leaving nothing but a gaping, wind-whistled ache. His eyes floated in their sockets.

Arms encircled him, drew him close, like he were solid, like he were living. A warmth that didn't care he was disfigured, that he was awful. A warmth that didn't flinch away. A voice he hadn't heard in over a hundred and twenty years, that had told him his cheekbones were lovely. whispered Peti,

He broke.

M
ercedes raised her eyebrows
. “Mr Templeton?”

Edmund ran a hand across his face. His own jawbone was there, the muscles surrounding it clenched beneath his skin. “OK,” he said. He was acutely aware of his tongue against his teeth, the vibration of vocal cords deepened by past decades of smoking within his throat, the exhalation of a deep breath from living lungs. “Show me what I have to do.”