The Interminables (30 page)

“This is your plan?” demanded Grace.
– chained for good cause
–

“Out of the question,” said the Magister. –
no future but the lonely thunder of guns –

“Mercedes,” said Edmund, “it's what I have. It's all we have.”

Do you think I'm afraid of you?

“Mr Templeton, do you realize what unchaining him while the physical and Conceptual are collapsed together will do?”

That honor falls to the one you love most.

“I do.”

Istvan fled.

A
long the rail
. Back across the bridge. Into the alleys.

Edmund raced alone, Grace and Mercedes left where they stood. There were walls now where there hadn't been walls before, sudden turns and dead ends he didn't remember. Something beneath the streets rumbled.

“Istvan,” he called, “Istvan, stop!”

The specter arrowed upward. An awning swung out to intercept him, striking one wing with a shockingly audible crack.

Solid. Just like the armor, before. What the hell was everything made out of?

Istvan spun sideways and slammed into a window. The mural of white birds scattered into clear sky. More awnings closed in overhead, roofing the alley in cheerful filtered reds and yellows.

Edmund caught up to him as he tumbled to street level in a confused heap. “Istvan?”

The ghost rolled onto his back, staring upwards through a canopy of his own broken feathers. “Those were thinking beasts,” he said.

“What?”

“During the Wizard War. Shokat Anoushak's creatures. Slave soldiers, all of them.”

Edmund let out a breath. Great. “If that's the case, you didn't know it then.”

“You know it wouldn't have mattered. I would have enjoyed it anyhow. I always do. You, of all men, ought to know that.” He shuddered. He was flickering again. “You, of all men.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Edmund, how can you ask this of me?”

There was a bench nearby. There hadn't been before, but now there was. Edmund sat on it. A flock of painted white birds settled on a painted wire above him.

Fire to fight fire. Suffering to put an end to the end of suffering. I'm sorry, but all you can do is what you'll hate and regret. That's all you're good for.

He didn't have enough time for the evacuation, he knew. There was only one way to get more.

I'm sorry.

Edmund shut his eyes. “I need someone to cover my back and keep the Susurration occupied, and when it comes down to it, two powers can't occupy the same metaphysical space. It's like Mercedes said, and I hate to say it, but you are what you are. All it takes is one shot to trump peace, and you represent enough firepower to level Europe.”

Istvan mumbled something.

“Your war left survivors,” Edmund told him. “It won't kill the Susurration and if I miss anyone – and I'm sure I will – they still stand a chance of coming out of it. We'll be crippling. Badly, but only crippling, and then Mercedes can do what she needs to do.”

“I asked if you had any idea what you're proposing.”

“It isn't a proposal.”

A metallic rush: the specter staggered to his feet, barbed wire scraping phantom wounds into supposed brick and steel. “Edmund, you can't.”

Edmund felt that familiar hollowness settle in his stomach. They had less than two days. They didn't have time for this.

He was the Hour Thief, and even he didn't have time for this.

“There's no other way,” he said tightly, “This is it. This is all we can do before they pull out the band and the banners and end it just like you said they would.”

Istvan rounded on him. “Why are you trying to convince me? What have you to prove? I've no bloody choice in this and you know it! I never do! No one listens to Doctor Czernin, oh no, he's no idea what he's talking about, it's perfectly fine and well to use
the
Great bloody War to assault what is literally a living embodiment of peace and happiness–”

“Istvan.”

“–that is perfectly moral and right, isn't it, and damn whatever he gets up to afterward, unchained, free to do as he likes, just as he's done for the last century of murder–”

“Istvan–”

“Edmund, have you ever seen half a horse dangling four months dead and twenty feet up in half a tree, and thought to yourself, ‘well, at least he's holding up well'?”

“Istvan!”

“Oh, no, you're far too good for that, you're far too busy martyring yourself for the cause, you… you bloody, blinkered
vampire
.”

Edmund shot to his feet.

“Quiet.”

Istvan choked.

Mercedes strode up the street, the much taller Grace keeping pace on her left. A lone white bird flitted across the wall beside them, landing beside the ones perched on the wire above, preening its painted feathers, and then halting as though it had never moved.

“Doctor Czernin,” Mercedes said, waving further down the alley, “a moment?”

Istvan gaped. Coughed. Slashed his hands through the air before him, fingers clawed in frustration.

“I'd rather not make that an order, Doctor.”

The specter stomped away.

“I'm not a vampire,” Edmund muttered. He glanced back at Istvan. “Grace, Mercedes, I'm sorry, but I knew he wouldn't take it well. Please, let me explain.”

“We know,” said Grace.

Edmund sighed. “A little bird told you?”

“Actually, a huge robot fortress, but yeah.”

Mercedes waited until both muddied bootprints and loops of bloody wire had vanished, the booming of artillery faded to little more than a rush of wind. Then she looked to Edmund, one hand resting on the strap of her shoulder bag. “Mr Templeton, I would call your friend a dangerous man, but that would be doing the magnitude of what he is a disservice. It took eighty years for anyone to identify, track and capture him; nothing I would care to retrieve from the vault can destroy him; and the same force that drew Shokat Anoushak and her forces to their deaths has only managed to hurt his feelings. If this is our only option, it's our only option, but I need to be very, very certain that cutting him loose isn't a terrible, terrible idea.”

Edmund remembered fleeing down that riverbed, the last survivor for the first time in his long career. The knife that barely missed. Assisting in the capture of that same horror, years later, and watching it… him…
Istvan
freeze at the sight.
You
, he'd said.
I've thought about you often. I remember you. The impossible soldier. I never miss, but I missed you.

Then they'd bound the dread Devil's Doctor tight and left him shackled alone in the Demon's Chamber, only an invitation to remember him by:
if ever you'd care to drop by for coffee, Mr Templeton… we could have a lot to talk about.

Almost thirty years ago. Edmund had never known him when he wasn't chained.

“I trust him,” he said.

She closed her eyes. “Mr Templeton, I hope you're bearing in mind that I'd hate to be the Magister who lost the fine china.”

He fingered his pocket watch, not looking at Grace. “Don't worry about it.”

Nothing had changed. Nothing would change. Istvan would still be Istvan and a little time lost wouldn't matter in the long run. He had to believe that. The alternative was… was nothing he should be thinking about now. Not if he meant to go through with this.

“Don't worry about it,” he repeated.

“You know,” said Grace, “this isn't the kind of mercy plan that nets you a Nobel Prize, Eddie.”

“I never expected one.”

Mercedes checked her telephone. “Will I have to encourage Doctor Czernin to do as he's told?”

Edmund looked to the ghost, pacing far down the alley. No choice. He knew he had no choice. Not while he was chained. “He's a military man, Mercedes. I think you can answer that one yourself.”

“That's that, then.” She put her telephone away. “If this goes as planned – and if I can be provided with the necessary materials, Ms Wu – you will have the honor of witnessing the largest contractual circle I've ever drawn in operation. If not, I suppose we get to test your contingency plans.”

“Yeah,” said Grace. “We've got those.” She didn't sound happy about it.

“I'd like to have everything up and ready by tomorrow. Mr Templeton, I'll need you to help me move a few things from the Twelfth Hour, and after that... do what you have to do.”

Edmund swallowed. Right.

That.

I
stvan wouldn't want
to talk to him. Istvan would probably never want to talk to him again.

He couldn't blame him. The only one to blame was himself. The only one to ever blame for what he'd done was himself.

A few moments. Some time. A little while. That was what his ledger said, how many phrases of time he had stored away. To move half a million people, he would need more than that. He would need enough time. Enough for everyone. More than enough.

All he had to do was collect.

I
stvan paced around a corrugated rooftop
, silent despite the hobnails in his boots. He'd never been in the fortress for so long. Hours upon hours. Rage boiling off every surface. He couldn't pick out anything, anyone, through the miasma anymore. Couldn't concentrate long enough to try.

Couldn't leave, not with the Susurration still out there, lurking behind the great dark shadows of the walls, waiting for its next chance at kindness.

Trapped.

Bloody Edmund. He'd known.

Even the Magister hadn't once come by to give him orders beyond “tomorrow.” What would be the point? There was nowhere to run. No other option.

A cannon, he was, waiting to be loosed.

Granting leeway, as in the Wizard War, was one thing. That had allowed him only a greater range of motion and specific permission to combat a specific foe. Facing the Susurration again was another matter, one he wished he were more opposed to, one that promised another glimpse of the Man in Black as well as other, worse, unspeakable things, but at least he'd done it once already. As he was.

Unchaining the Great War outright was something wholly different.

And Pietro!

Oh, Pietro. How could anyone expect him to... to…

But he couldn't tell anyone about that. No one could know anything about that.

He shook away traitor thoughts – the Susurration would listen, it already knew everything anyhow; that was where Pietro was, even if he wasn't – and took wing, swooping to a higher terrace and alighting atop a gantry crane. There he sat, one leg swinging free, fuming because that was better than any weaker alternative and his embroidery was still at Edmund's house. Beyond the walls. Unreachable.

He retrieved his trench knife instead, turning it over and over in his hands.

It wasn't his. Not really. He'd found it, back in those early days, a point of deceptive safety to hold onto when he blundered into barrages fired by his own side and startled at the sight of his own wings, and a weapon to drop in terror when he realized he didn't remember how he'd gotten where he was and that no one else could have killed all those Serbian soldiers. It was fine steel, but shouldn't have been able to rip through tank treads or tear the wings off fighter jets. It didn't look at all as though it had seen a hundred years of use.

He balanced it on a finger, and that, too, was far easier than it perhaps should have been. Hadn't he proven, over and over, that he was what he was?

And now Edmund planned to use that same blade to unchain him.

Don't worry. The cause was just. It would be all right.

It would be over by Christmas.

He flipped the blade over and stabbed savagely at the gantry crane. It struck with a concussive crash, sinking to the hilt. Sparks spun away and fell to the roofs and walkways below.

Istvan froze. He tugged the knife back out. No damage.

He looked to where he'd struck. The wound was already gone. Blue-white hexagons flickered across the surface and faded.

he demanded.

“Hey!” called a familiar voice from below.

He peered over the edge of the crane. Grace Wu. Grace bloody Wu.

She waved her arms. “Get down here, will you?”

He debated the merits of refusing, staying where he was, and perhaps suffering a visit from Magister Hahn. He sighed. He sheathed his knife. Then he swung both legs off and tumbled into the air again, circling once and landing beside her, wings only half-folded. “What do you want?”

“I want you to go find Eddie.”

Find him? He wasn't here? He hadn't said anything, just like he'd done before, after all that had happened, and now Grace Wu, of all people, wanted Istvan to go find him?

He turned away. “No.”

She frowned. “What do you mean,
no
?”

“Precisely what I said,” Istvan snapped. “Whatever he's on about, I'm sure he doesn't want me following him. He never does.” He eyed a higher terrace. “If you're so worried, you go find him. You have legs.”

“What? No, listen, I–”

He took off, two wingbeats to reach the terrace and the third to bring him to the top of what seemed to be some sort of radio tower, its joined steel spars a decent replacement for the gantry crane. He took hold of the nearest bar and swung around it to a landing. Away from Grace Wu. No further from the fortress's seething rage.

Find Edmund, indeed. The man had the freedom to go where he pleased and the plan to justify it. He was probably out patrolling. That was what he did, after all. Tear away time from others and then use it for his own ends, year after year after year, justifying it with a hat and cape, so terrified of telling anyone how he'd done it that he'd come to the edge of panic just
thinking
of telling the Magister of that bloody ritual, that goat-sacrificing young man's mistake he claimed to regret.

He couldn't have enough time. Not for tomorrow.

If that was what he was doing, why…

Istvan shook his head. No. No, he wouldn't want Istvan along. Istvan couldn't keep up, after all. Couldn't help him at all. Wasn't needed.

Not for this.

The “Hour Thief” had made his decision. Now he had to live with it.

Don't follow me
.

No note. Not this time. Just as he had promised.

Oh, how had someone so supposedly intelligent brought himself to sacrifice a goat?

A crash. The tower rattled as though struck by a sledgehammer. “Doc, you get down here and listen to me, right now!”

Istvan sighed. The woman was far too quick for her own good. “No.”

“
Your best friend
took off the second the Magister didn't need him, he hasn't come back for hours, and in case you hadn't noticed, we need him for any of this to work,” she yelled. Another blow, harder. “This is the second time he's freaked out and run off like this!”

The second time
?

Istvan dropped away from the tower before she could hit it again. “What do you mean? What are you talking about? What did you say to him?”

She closed on him as he landed, electric arcs crackling between her clenched fists and the tower's metal supports. “What kind of cure have you been working, anyway? You claim to care about him, sure, but then you leave him like this?”

Istvan bristled. “Miss Wu, I–”

“He's broken! He's broken and he's hurting and you're a doctor, all right? A doctor!” She punched the nearest support, armored gauntlet striking with a deafening clang that reverberated as she turned, hair crackling like static. “Why don't you fix him?”

She was worried. She was genuinely worried. She had known Edmund before his relapse, when it was hardly evident at all that he suffered what he did, and the number of times she had spoken to him since could be counted on one hand.

She didn't know what it was. She didn't know how deep it ran.

Istvan stepped away from the sizzling arcs jumping across the supports. “I can't.”

“Then you should refer him to someone who can. A psychiatrist. Something.”

“He would never agree to that.” She tried to speak; he cut her off. “Never. I know shellshock, and I know Edmund, and I will have you know that he has made dramatic improvement from where he was seven years ago. That's all you can expect, is improvement. If you're looking for a cure, there isn't one.”

“Bullshit.”

“Miss Wu, last year was his hundredth birthday. As a veteran and a wizard both he's seen more awful things than I would wish on anyone. He still won't speak to me of what happened at the Great Lakes, much less what he did to attain his magic in the first place. I've done what I can.”

She looked at him for a long moment.

“If you can locate a functioning clinic with a lead on some permanent form of rehabilitation,” he said, “point me to it.”

She crossed her arms, partially, like she couldn't decide what to do with them, and then propped them on her hips instead. “So you'll go find him?”

Edmund hadn't had enough time. He'd left to acquire more time. Alone.

Once that gruesome task was done…

Istvan glanced up at the darkened sky, that invisible barrier that separated the choking ambiance of Barrio Libertad from the stars and the terrors. Part of him clamored to leave the man, let him suffer, let him stew in fears of loosing flame and genocide, but…

Oh, if Istvan couldn't do anything, it was turn away from suffering. Even now. Even if it were for all the wrong reasons.

“If I leave by elevator,” he asked, “that path we traveled – the one with the pylons – is it safe?”

This time she crossed her arms. Tightly. “As long as you stay on it.”

“Stay on it,” he repeated. He'd done it once. He knew, now, the consequences for attempting any other route. He readied to leave... and then paused. There had been a strange note in Grace's voice, a strange sourness in her veneer of confidence. He glanced over a wing. “Miss Wu, you're able to leave. Why come to me?”

She didn't look up at the sky. “Just go find Eddie, will you?”

Find him. He already had a good idea where to look.

Istvan stepped up onto the terrace railing and leapt off.

E
dmund claimed
that Charlie's was an old place. A piece of the past, he said. Exotic to most, home to him, the only place outside his own four walls and the Twelfth Hour where he could feel like he belonged. No one had stools like that anymore. No one had a mechanical cash register anymore. Drove automobiles like that anymore. Wore hats like that. Those electric lamps hanging from the pressed tin ceiling burned dim and yellow, smoke-fogged, a light worn and comfortable.

Old past. 1939. Edmund's place.

It looked like the future to Istvan.

A group of young revelers caroused and cheered around three tables pushed together as he walked through the doors. Something about a birthday, or perhaps a departure. One of them saw him, and all celebration ceased. Some darted glances at the far corner.

“Pardon me,” he said.

He walked past, trailing wire, to Edmund's booth. It was always the same booth. Always the same side of the booth. The left: the one that offered a clear view of the door.

Edmund wasn't looking at the door now.

Istvan came to a slow halt at the head of the table. He set a hand on it. “Edmund?”

The wizard sat collapsed, head pillowed in his arms. A glass of gin lay before him. His presence rushed and roared like floodwaters, ancient oaken bitterness burst through to despair and self-hatred, the rationality he prized caught whirling in old fears of failure, of death, of darkness, all distinction lost and drowning. His breath came in wheezing gasps. His shoulders trembled.

“Edmund,” Istvan said, “I'm going to sit down.” He switched to German.

Edmund didn't look up. He clenched both hands into fists.

Istvan slid into the booth opposite. The glass was almost empty; he pushed it aside and then reached a hand across the table to touch a shaking forearm, as lightly as he could. Edmund flinched, muffling a cry. He was sweating. Nauseous. His breath was sour, vomit washed down with gin and chased with more gin. It all tasted like oil, he'd said, sick during those long nights; the water was full of oil.

How long had he been here? Where on Earth had he patrolled?

How much time had he stolen?

Istvan touched his arm again, wishing he could think of any reassurance beyond “it's all right.” Edmund didn't take well to claims that he had no choice, or that it was necessary, or that it would go to good use, or that it wasn't his fault. It was his fault, he always insisted. He chose it. He had no right.

Istvan murmured what he could. “It's all right. It will be all right.”

“They're all going to die,” came the reply.

“No, they won't. No one's going to die. It's all right.”

Edmund crushed his eyes into sleeves darkened by the tears he couldn't show. “No, it isn't. It's all my fault. No one's ever going to forgive me. They'll all be dead. Istvan, they're all going to die. They're practically dead already. Istvan, Istvan, they're all dead.”

Some of the revelers were staring. Istvan threw up a wing to obscure the view. Nothing to do but keep talking, keep maintaining contact, and wait. He'd seen worse, though not in the last several years.

Oh, he should have insisted on accompanying him, terrible plan or not. Pure selfishness, staying where he had. Pacing. Brooding. Edmund had done all he could do. Done what needed doing. Tomorrow, again, he would be needed. He would always be needed.

That was the problem.

It's all right. It's all right.

F
inally
, Edmund stopped trembling. He didn't stop hiding his face.

“I can't do this,” he slurred into his hat, “Istvan, I can't do this.”

“You can.”

“It's too much. I've done too much and it's all in my head and I can't… Istvan, I can't give it back. It's too much.” He tried to rip a napkin out of the dispenser, ripped it in half instead, and didn't seem to notice. “I… I can't not think about it, and I can't think about it, and if I mess this up, it's all for nothing.” He wiped the general vicinity of his nose with the half a napkin, then prodded it gingerly into a pile of them on the edge of the table. Even drunk, he couldn't stand disorderliness. “It's all for nothing anyway, the punching. Doesn't help. Crime's an illness of society, that's what she said, and she's right. You're right, too, Istvan, I'm a… a vampire. On patrol. Don't even do it for the good fight.”

Istvan patted his hand. That much, at least, seemed to help. “Yes, you do.”

“No. No, it's all my fault. If I'd… if I'd done my job, Istvan, if I'd remembered the conjunction and the… the Bernault devices, Istvan, I messed that all up and you're never going to forgive me. She's never going to forgive me.”