Milo recalled the dwarrow’s declarations of his plans and damning proclamations before he’d fled in Georgia. Given the power his magical creation had in enthralling the minds of men, it was within the realm of possibility that he could enslave an entire community in a night. But to what aim? Nothing good, that he was certain of.
“We have all sorts of questions about what is going on out there but no answers,” Jorge summarized, both hands opening in front of him as though waiting for solutions to land in them. “I need you three to go there and find me some answers.”
“Have you extracted any more information from the prisoner we brought in?” Ambrose asked, not hiding his sidelong glance at Milo. The wizard didn’t begrudge him the look, though he had to batter down a surge of annoyance. They both knew it was a sore subject.
“Stalin’s interrogation results have been strictly mundane thus far,” Jorge said, looking at Milo and Ambrose in turn as though trying to keep them both in his sights like creatures that might attack.
Milo supposed if the colonel was going to make the effort, he might as well oblige.
“Which is exactly why we should be handling the interrogation,” he said flatly, staring into Jorge’s weathered face. “He has reason to fear us, and we know what sort of questions need to be asked. The general staff hiding him so they can keep up this game is ridiculous.”
Jorge slowly took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“The responsibility for Stalin’s interrogation was transferred to Nicht-KAT two weeks ago,” he declared quietly, a man sighing under a heavy burden. “The Ludendorff was concerned about members of the general staff sympathetic to the Reich interfering to protect Röhm from the part he played in allowing Stalin’s forces to move freely through German territories.”
Milo and Ambrose sat silently for a moment, chewing the news like gristle.
“Two weeks ago? Two?” Ambrose said slowly, clearly on his way to the same revelation Milo was chasing. “The magus put in a request with the general staff to debrief Stalin four days ago.”
“A request they immediately rejected,” Milo said through clenched teeth. “Without one word about him being transferred to the custody of the very division we serve in.”
“The general staff does have ultimate authority,” Jorge reminded him with a shrug. “Even over Nicht-KAT operations.”
Milo spat a short string of curses to make it clear how little he thought of the answer.
He got a gentle warning squeeze on his shoulder from Rihyani.
Careful, Milo, her thoughts whispered to him via the Art. There may be much here that we don’t understand.
Then how about someone starts explaining? he shot back as Jorge leaned forward, looking at Milo and Ambrose from under his eyebrows.
“The decision to restrict access to Stalin was mine,” the colonel said, not flinching from the angry stares both men gave him. “And it was made for a variety of reasons I am not inclined or able to share with either of you at the moment.”
Milo tried to remember the closeness he’d felt with Jorge only moments before. He tried to recall the relief and pride he’d felt as Jorge had swept in and stood against the most powerful men in the German Empire on his behalf. He wanted to focus on that, but all he could think of was the name Stalin had whispered.
“Stalin will give us everything in time,” Jorge said, a sharp note of finality in his voice as he snapped the folder in front of him closed and slid it toward Milo. “In the meantime, your business is with an abandoned town, not a humbled warlord. It’s as simple as that.”
Ambrose opened his mouth to argue, but another quick look at Milo changed his mind.
Visibly seething, the wizard leaned forward and took the folder off the desk with trembling fingers.
“You’re making a mistake,” Milo murmured as he rose and made for the door, thinking he should leave before things escalated irreparably.
“You are dismissed,” the colonel called after him.
5
These Memories
The train rolled on through the rainy night, the churning throb of the engine giving a voice to the undercurrent of tension in the compartment where Milo, Rihyani, and Ambrose now sat.
After the meeting with Jorge, Milo and Ambrose had retired to their room at the hotel, with Rihyani joining them a little later. She’d arrived via the window and informed them that Jorge had arranged for a train to take them east. Both men acknowledged her news, but neither felt much like talking. Ambrose had gone to bed rather quickly and was soon snoring. Milo had sunk onto the bed with his thoughts and stared at the ceiling. The fey had laid next to him, one hand resting upon his chest while she ran long fingers through his hair.
Milo couldn’t remember when he’d fallen asleep, but at some point, eyes burning and shoulders knotted, he’d slid into a sleep where there was nothing but doors arrayed along a dark corridor. He felt with certainty that one of these doors was an escape from something, something chasing him, and so he’d raced over and tried the first knob. The knob wouldn’t turn, and the door didn’t so much as rattle when he threw himself against it. He saw that the name “Volkohne” was carved into the door. Something, not a sound but a feeling, told Milo his time was running out, and he rushed to another door.
Again, no movement, and he looked up to see “Volkohne” engraved into the pitiless portal.
His fear growing as something neared, he’d rushed to the next door, checking for what letters were carved into the wood. Volkohne…Volkohne…Volkohne over and over, until near-blind with panic, he came to a door into which Petrovich had been scored with a smoldering chisel. Knowing that whatever was coming was at his heels, he twisted and pulled. The door opened, and black fire sprang forth to embrace him.
Milo had awakened in the same position, Rihyani still lying beside him. He’d looked into her dark eyes and saw the question, but he brushed it away as he stood and went to the bathroom.
The aching silence had followed them from the car Jorge had sent to take them to the station to the compartment where they now sat watching rain streak across the window as the engines churned. The pressure of the silence weighed down the air, muffling everything and making time a slippery thing. Sitting there, Milo was unsure of how long they’d been traveling and had no idea how far they had gotten in their travels. He couldn’t even have said he knew for certain when the storm had started. Each moment seemed a cramped eternity, yet he knew things were passing him by without his notice.
Would he look up from contemplating the worn compartment floor to discover they were disembarking into the Russian forest? And what was keeping them all silent? Anger? Distrust? Fear?
Wasn’t morale something an officer was supposed to address? To make certain his men were ready for whatever lay ahead?
Milo didn’t think he was a good speaker, certainly not the type to rouse the troops. He supposed he ought to do something, but what? What words could he offer either of them or even himself that weren’t hollow platitudes and lies? Some people might appreciate such sentiments, but not these two. How do you encourage a Nephilim nearly two hundred years old and a fey older than most civilizations?
Milo looked down at his black coat and felt the card in his breast pocket. He shouldn’t have felt it, the card not being big enough or his clothes thin enough to explain it, but he was aware of it all the same.
Quietly, Milo reached inside his coat and drew out the folded card. His fingers played over the ragged edges he knew better than he did his own body, and he felt a terrible certainty steal over him. Like a crank gaining momentum, his thoughts worked around and around, coming back to the same point faster and faster.
If he couldn’t say something encouraging, at least he could say something true.
“I’ve got something,” he began, his voice a horrible bleat in his ears. “Something to show both of you.”
Ambrose and Rihyani both stirred, looking first at Milo’s downcast face and then a
t what was in his hand. Ambrose recognized the tarot card, and a mixture of interest and bemusement played across his face. Rihyani, to whom he had never shown the card, narrowed her eyes at the object in Milo’s hand but said nothing.
“I know we are heading into what could very well be the belly of the beast,” Milo said, the words clumsy things tumbling from his tongue. “And if that is the case, my head shouldn’t be back in Berlin, stewing over the choices Jorge is making about Stalin.”
“It wasn’t right for him not to talk to us about it,” Ambrose offered helpfully, offering Milo a supportive nod.
Milo’s head shook slowly, and Ambrose’s face contorted into a frown.
“Jorge is the superior officer, and he sees things differently than we do,” the magus said, catching Rihyani’s eye. “And it's nobody’s fault that he makes the decisions he does. We need to respect and trust him.”
She bowed her head slightly in appreciation, then her head rose, and he felt her appreciative will brush aetherically past him as her head tilted to one side. She’d felt something in that brief contact, and it gave her pause.
“But?” she asked slowly.
“But Jorge has his concerns and perspectives and I have mine,” Milo continued. “I want access to Stalin, not just because I think I can get him to talk about Zlydzen, but because when we captured him back in Georgia, he said a name in reference to me. A name that proved he knows something about…about where I come from.”
Milo took a deep breath, feeling more uncertain than ever about this confession.
“He called me Petrovich,” the wizard said as he unfolded the tarot card and held it out for them to examine.
The card was a woodcut, its dark lines leaving distinct marks pressed into the stock. The entire card was framed in domino diamonds that encased whorled spirals which gave the impression of a storm or possibly a fire. At the center of the card, a figure sat upon a throne whose legs were tree roots and whose armrests were human bones. Over the back of the throne a banner hung, with the words Petrovich Burned in Russian script. The banner was held by a fine, delicate hand on the right and a bestial black claw on the left. On the throne sat a man in dark princely furs, a broken sword across his lap and wounds on his hands.
The features of the figure, wrought in the woodcut’s strict lines, were Milo’s.
Ambrose and Rihyani squinted at the face on the card, then back up at him, then down again.
“When Roland and I were picked up by German soldiers, this card was my only possession.” Milo quietly told them what he’d told only one other human being. “Only the person on the throne was me at five.”
He took a shaky breath.
“Like me, the picture didn’t stay a child.”
His companions exchanged concerned looks, then Ambrose slid back in his seat while Rihyani held out her hand, long fingers scant centimeters from the ragged, curling edge of the card.
“May I?” she asked, looking into Milo’s face.
Milo wanted to say yes and hand the card over, but he found that his mouth wouldn’t form the words and his arm was locked. A thrill of fear rushed through him at his sudden paralysis, his eyes widening in horror that his body would not obey him. For an instant, he wondered what new and insidious magic he was facing, but a hurried examination of himself using what he knew of both the Art and necromistry revealed nothing. Yet he hung there immobile, even as Rihyani continued to look at him with beseeching eyes, fingers extended.
“Milo?” she said softly, leaning forward as she studied his face, fingers drawing closer to the card. A surge of panic that was almost painful gripped his chest, and an instant later, he felt a corresponding flood of low, burning anger and resentment.
Didn’t she know what she was doing? Didn’t she understand how this made him feel? To think she could snatch something he’d hidden in fear all his life! How dare she!
“Magus, what’s wrong?” Ambrose asked, sitting up in his seat. Both of them were staring at him with looks of concern.
Milo realized his chest was heaving with rapid breaths.
What was happening to him? Why did he feel this way?
Rihyani’s hand withdrew even as she leaned closer. Milo felt rigid lines of tension he hadn’t noticed before melting along his shoulders and neck.
“Milo, it is okay. I am not going to take it from you,” she said softly. “I just wanted to look at it. I’m sorry.”
His breathing began to slow and his arm, almost vibrating with tension, throbbed as he reflexively drew the card to his chest. He cradled it there like a child, the urge to fold and squirrel it away sweeping him again. It brushed aside his thoughts and desires in a tide of mental programming rooted in fear.
“I…” he began, but his throat caught as shame and years of fear bore down.
Ambrose and Rihyani exchanged looks of open concern before gazing at him with sad, knowing eyes. They realized what Milo did: that this wasn’t a magical malady or eldritch possession.
Milo had been hiding this secret, this burden since he was a child. The psychic architecture he had constructed to protect himself and ensure the concealment of it was not easily breached. Years of habit, years of terror about others learning the truth, years of quietly but ferociously dismissing something that could not be had brought their full weight to lock his body down. Confessing it was one thing, but handing it over was another. Having another person take hold of the wicked thing had been a fear similar to death for as long as he could remember.
“This card, this thing…” Milo said, glaring down at what he was still cradling. “I’ve been trying to hide it from others for so long, I... “
He took a steadying breath, hating how Ambrose and the fey stared at him with such concern and pity.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think it would be this hard,” Milo explained, forcing himself to straighten and pull the card away from his chest, though only so it hovered over his lap. “This card has been the only hint about where I came from and who or even what I am. I knew if anyone ever figured out its magic, fear, pain, and death would follow.”
Ambrose’s mouth tightened beneath his mustache for a moment before he spoke.
“How would anyone know it's magical?” Ambrose asked. “I mean, I understand you figuring it out, but anybody who didn’t know your story about the card aging with you wouldn’t know it was anything but an old tarot that looks like you, right?”
Milo nodded. He understood the confusion, but the effort of formulating an answer was monumental. Instead, he reached inside his coat to the carefully shaped edge he kept in the lining and nicked his scarred thumb. He then held the card in one hand over the bloodied thumb.
“Because of this,” Milo said and snapped to ignite the blood-catalyzed magic. The green-tinged flame danced across the edge of the card, kindling it almost instantly. The card began to roll in on itself like a dying spider as the emerald light lapped across every surface, leaving nothing but black crust and a tracery of sullen orange fire. Milo let it fall to the bare floor of the train compartment, where it quickly crumbled into a few black curls that gave up a few pitiful wisps of smoke and then nothing at all.
Milo met Ambrose’s and the fey’s bemused faces with weary boredom, face slack and lids drooping as he pressed a foot down on the floor, turning the remainders of the card into a dark smudge. Still looking at his companions, he bent down and ran a finger through the stain, and then held his darkened fingers up for inspection.
Satisfied that they’d seen absolute proof of the card’s destruction, he reached into his breast pocket and with clean fingers, he drew out the folded card. He unfolded it as he had done upon his initial confession, holding it out for them to see. He then pointed at the floor, which showed no sign of the dark smear from a moment earlier.
Ambrose gave a long whistle.
“On my first day in Dresden, one of the orderlies took it out of my pocket and ripped it to shreds before tossing it into the trash bin.”
Milo looked down at the card, a swirling amalgam of anger and nostalgia simmering in his eyes.
“I found the card in my pocket, completely whole before I’d been shown to my room. It was inescapable.”
Milo stared into his own face on the card, the woodcut’s expression, as it always had been, one of royal stoicism, vaguely dismissive and utterly remote. He remembered practicing making the face in a mirror sometimes when no one was looking, but every time he came close to achieving it, he’d shivered and run away from the mirror.
“My attempts at getting rid of it have always been unsuccessful,” the wizard said, looking up at them, forcing himself to meet their eyes. “It’s been a curse I couldn't escape and also the one hope I had of knowing my past. In a strange way, I love and hate it at the same time. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Rihyani said, and to Milo’s immense relief, he saw something other than pity reflected in her dark eyes. The fey’s expressions were not as transparent as humans’, but Milo had learned enough to know that he was looking at understanding. She was no longer looking at him with pity or concern or even curiosity. She was knowing him.
Somewhere within him, Milo felt something long broken heal.
He looked down at the card, shook his head once, and held it out to her.
“Go ahead,” he said, unable to believe what he was saying. “You can look at it. It’s okay.”
As Rihyani’s hand stretched out to take the card, the compartment lurched around them, and all three of them were thrown to the floor.
Ambrose bounced back to his feet and tore open the compartment door as Milo and Rihyani were still struggling to disentangle themselves. From where they were on the floor, Milo realized the sudden jolt had brought on a rapid decrease in speed, but the humming vibration of the rails under them could still be felt. The engineer must have spotted something that caused them to slow.
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 71
