Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles - eARC

by Larry Correia

  Faye knew she was a danger to be around. All the time these poor Grimnoir had the Spellbound around was like keeping a rattlesnake in the living room, and they’d never even realized it. But Sullivan’s expedition was surrounded by rattlesnakes, so what was one more? Besides, she knew they’d have no chance at all without her.

  She was still rather bad at spellbinding. Sure, she had more magic than anybody else in the world now, but that still didn’t mean she could draw it very well. She was still clumsy at making the designs, nothing like Lance or Mr. Sullivan. It took her several tries, but she finally got one to connect. She tried to reach Francis’ Grimnoir ring first, but hadn’t gotten a response. That worried her to no end, but she figured he was just busy. She had wanted to warn him about what she’d seen in the pictures about the skinless man in disguise who was whispering to the president. She didn’t know who that skinless man was pretending to be, but Zachary’s pictures told her that back before his body had been taken over he had built lots of fancy buildings.

  Jane, Dan, or Mr. Browning would also know what to do there, but she knew that she really needed to get to Shanghai, so then she tried Mr. Sullivan’s next, and hadn’t been able to raise him either . . . Maybe he was preoccupied. He was, after all, leading a dangerous mission deep into Imperium territory. Then she tried Lance, and that link was completely dead too. It wasn’t just that she didn’t get a response from his ring, but like there was nothing to get a response from. Now she was really starting to worry . . . Hours passed as she kept trying to get the communications spells to take, and she cursed her clumsy hands. Heinrich’s connected, briefly, but then his was gone too, like he was too busy to stop and make a spell.

  This frightened Faye. Something bad was happening to her friends in Shanghai. She was preparing another spell, intending this one for Mr. Browning, when someone contacted her. Before, when the magic would activate her Grimnoir ring, she’d just felt it as a terrible burning sensation. Now, her much finer head map clearly recognized the magic as coming from Mr. Sullivan’s ring before the connection had even built up enough energy to make her ring finger tingle. Sullivan’s ring still felt like Black Jack Pershing, since he’d worn it for so many years before Mr. Sullivan. Everybody left a little stamp of themselves on everything they touched. Regular folks couldn’t hardly see it, but Faye could now.

  It took a couple of tries, but Faye got the spell to take, nice and clear. That was good, since she intended to hop right through it and go all the way to Shanghai, just like she’d once gone from Tennessee to Virginia in a single Travel. Only it wasn’t Mr. Sullivan on the other side, it was the weathered old face of Captain Bob Southunder, and his brow knit in confusion.

  “Where’s Mr. Sullivan?” Faye demanded before the Captain could even speak.

  “Indisposed. . . . I sensed the summons coming through his ring. Is that . . . Faye?” The nice old pirate was a smart man, but like everybody around her, his brain seemed to work infuriatingly slow.

  “Of course it’s me.”

  “I’d been told you’d died.”

  “It’s either me, my ghost, or a really clever Imperium trick.” She focused her head map down through the spell, like shining a powerful spotlight through a pin hole. This was only the second time she’d tried this trick, but she figured at worst she had like a one percent chance of dying badly. “Hang on. I’ll be right there.” Clear.

  Travelling wasn’t about distance. When you took two bits of far-apart space and smooshed them together, it really didn’t matter how far apart they were on the flat, since the distance you actually Travelled was the same every single time, just the space between the smooshing. It was just like how she’d solved Jacques’ tricky mazes. He’d thought of it as cheating, but to Faye, that was just how the universe really was. It wasn’t her fault if nobody else could wrap their slow brains around the truth. She didn’t know if she had the technical terms right, especially since smooshing didn’t sound particularly scientific, but that was pretty much how it really worked. The hard part about Travelling was being able to see in your head map far enough to not get yourself stuck into something when you got there. Most Travelers never even figured out how to work their head maps at all, so they could only go as far as they could see. Not Faye, and right now she could see right into the insides of the airship Traveler.

  She appeared directly behind Pirate Bob. He jumped in surprise. His communication spell was shining back on an empty cabin. She was in a pretty big room for an airship, with lots of crates and boxes and a gigantic weird-looking magical machine with lots of spinning balls and cones on it, so it had to be the cargo hold, and there were eight other people in the cargo hold, mostly working on the big machine or getting guns ready for some manner of excitement.

  “Hey, everybody.”

  She must’ve surprised them, because a whole lot of guns got pulled out at one time and pointed at her. To be fair, it wasn’t like strangers suddenly popping into existence in the middle of your secret pirate ship was very often a good thing.

  “Stop!” Pirate Bob shouted. He wasn’t the type of leader who raised his voice a lot, but when he did, it certainly got everybody’s attention. “Lower those weapons.”

  Faye felt a nervous, hot tingling building on her skin. Magic was gathering, hesitating on the border of igniting. She recognized the feeling right away. “Hey, pirate Torch lady. I forgave you for setting me on fire last time because that was all a big misunderstanding and you thought I was a ninja, but if you set me on fire again, I’m likely to get real mad.”

  The Japanese woman stepped out from behind the big machine. She hadn’t so much as lifted her hands, but she’d been ready to make Faye combust. Apparently this Torch wasn’t as flashy with her magic as Whisper had been, with all the hand waving, but then again, Whisper had always been the dramatic sort.

  “It’s fine, Ori,” Pirate Bob said.

  The tingling magic on Faye’s skin drifted away. “Thank you. So where’s Mr. Sullivan?”

  “Recovering,” the captain answered. “Now hold on just a second.”

  “I need to go—”

  “I said hold on,” he said, and the way he did it showed that even though he looked like a kindly old grandpa, he was actually a pirate captain and that she’d better remember it. “You’re on my ship—”

  “Francis’ ship,” she corrected.

  “He’s the financier. I’m the captain. So it’s my ship, so you’ll explain what’s going on to me, missy. Is that clear?” Captain Southunder knew darn good and well that she’d killed the Chairman, and a small army of Imperium Marines, and he maybe even knew about her blowing up the God of Demons, but he wasn’t about to take any guff off anybody on his boat, super powers be darned. “Because otherwise you can get the hell off my ship.”

  “Ooh, will you make me walk the plank?”

  He sighed. “We’re not that kind of pirates.”

  Lance was dead.

  Faye couldn’t believe it. She just couldn’t believe it. Pirate Bob had broke the news nice as he could, but he might as well have stabbed her right in the heart.

  Lance Talon was one of her best friends. He’d taught her, helped her, treated her like an equal, saved her life, even given her the Grimnoir oath. It was Lance who had taught her how to drive a car, how to shoot a gun better, how to make spells. The first time they’d met, she’d thought he was a profane squirrel. Lance was family.

  She’d wanted to disbelieve. Lance was tough. He’d been everywhere and done everything. He was a thrillseeker and he was too smart to die. But she remembered the feeling when she reached out for his ring, and now she knew it was because that ring had been burned and melted and buried under tons of charred wood and ash.

  There was no escaping the truth, and Faye simply cried her eyes out.

  Lance’s death hadn’t been in any of Zachary’s pictures, and that made Faye question everything. Were the possibilities spiraling out past what even the Fortune Teller could have seen? Wha
t did that mean for everything else?

  The Traveler had been parked near a little Chinese village on the coast. The whole ship had been covered in ropes with leaves tied to it to make it look like more forest to anybody flying overhead or any ships on the ocean. The fact that the villagers had big camouflage nets ready to go told Faye that this was a village was often visited by smugglers and pirates like the Marauders. There were a bunch of little boats in the cove. Most of the UBF folks and some of the pirates from the Traveler were down there, loading their personal belongings. They’d be taken to one of the other Free Cities, which were just a bit freer, and boarding cargo vessels heading to America. Captain Southunder was sending them home so that they wouldn’t get killed along with everybody else. That was noble of him.

  The rest of the crew were busy pulling off the camouflage nets and fake tree branches and getting ready to take off. Except for Sullivan, who was sleeping off having a huge spell bound to him, and Faye, because she wasn’t really part of the crew at all, and she was too sad and angry to be of much help anyways. The crew was muted and solemn as they worked. She wandered around, watching for a bit, but felt even more awkward when they saw how hard she’d been crying. So she’d popped up to the top of the dirigible to sit on one of the two huge gas bags to stay out of the way.

  A little later, the Japanese pirate Torch lady climbed up a rope and got on top of the bag, too. She was wearing dirty coveralls, and a dark red sash, and carrying her shoes in her hand so she wouldn’t accidently hurt anything. It was totally unnecessary on the futuristic high-tech skin of the Traveler, but it was probably a necessary habit picked up on their old ship.

  Now that Faye was paying more attention to the information the Spellbound curse was giving her, she could tell just how strong this Torch was. Her Power was amazingly developed, and that made Faye feel guilty, like she was peeking in on somebody’s secrets. A little, greedy voice inside her head said that much Power would be better served with Faye, but Faye just told that stupid greedy voice to shut up. The Torch saw Faye, saw that she was crying, and came over anyway. She sat down cross-legged on the bouncy surface across from her and didn’t say anything for a minute.

  Faye thought about Travelling away, but something in the Torch lady’s expression made it so that Faye didn’t.

  “I am sorry about Mr. Talon. He was a gentleman.”

  “Yeah, he really was,” Faye sniffed. She hadn’t expected to get all emotional and weepy in front of somebody who had once set her on fire, even if it had been by accident. “I’m gonna miss him.”

  “Of course.”

  “And I’m gonna avenge him.”

  Now the Torch gave her a gentle smile. “Spoken like a knight. Mr. Talon would be proud I am sure.”

  Faye couldn’t help it. She really started to blubber. The Torch lady scooted over and gave Faye a hug, and that made Faye completely forgive her for the whole accidentally setting her on fire thing. “I’m sorry. I forgot your name.”

  “They call me Lady Origami.” She had a gentle smile. She wasn’t very old, but she smiled like Faye thought a mother was supposed to. “It is fine, sometimes, to cry . . . Here . . . This is what I do when I am sad but do not want to be. This is how I got this name.” She unbuttoned one of the multitude of pockets on her coveralls and pulled out a sheet of soft paper. She began to fold it, one way, then another, then another, way too fast for Faye to understand. Then she crumpled it a bit to make it seem more natural and more alive, but even that was just another type of folding.

  She handed Faye a very lifelike bird. Faye marveled at it. Now that was magic. “How’d you do that?”

  “It is art. I learned from my father when I was a little girl. The folding changes things. Every sheet starts the same, until you fold it and it becomes new.”

  Faye studied the bird. It had been a plain, flat old piece of paper, and now it was a bird. That sure was neat . . . Faye used her head map and focused on the bird. It took her nearly two whole seconds to unfold the entire thing in her mind. It was all just connections on the same piece, but change the connections, smoosh together new ones, and you changed the thing. And then she realized something. “That’s what I do. I fold stuff.”

  “Yes. They all may look the same, but every sheet has a destiny. The artist shows that destiny.”

  This was intriguing. Faye focused hard on her head map, studying the bird in her hand. Faye smooshed together bits of space so she could step through them. This art of Lady Origami’s moved smooshed bits too, but kept them there, and once you did that, it turned the whole thing into something new and exciting. Faye reached down and began unfolding. Lady Origami just frowned, curious as to why her artwork was being mangled. Faye was clumsy, but she managed not to rip anything. “This is how magic works!”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Magic is all the same. They all talk about geometry and stuff, but magic is all the same at first, until it gets folded! Then it makes a new thing!” Faye’s mind was blown. Her magic kept track of the lines as the bird unraveled. She envisioned the flat sheet in her head map, and then viewed it in three dimensions and decided to make something new. She quickly thought through all the necessary connections, and began smooshing things back together.

  Lady Origami was perplexed, but she didn’t say anything as Faye kept folding and twisting things. It took her a whole lot longer to do it with her clumsy hands than with her fast brain. Faye proudly held up the rough thing that had once been a swan.

  “I am not sure what—”

  “It’s a Holstein!” Faye exclaimed.

  Lady Origami took it back, obviously confused. Now that she was looking at it in cold reality and not as the majestic animal she conceived in her head map, it was ugly as sin, but at least it was shaped right and had enough legs. “Ah yes. Of course.”

  “A cow!”

  “Oh.” She nodded appreciatively. “I can see that . . . That is one of the spotted ones? We crashed the Bulldog Marauder on some. Very nice,” she lied, trying not to hurt Faye’s feelings. “I did not know anyone from the West knew this art.”

  “Art? No. This is what I do when I Travel. I make connections. I can’t believe I never saw this before. Don’t you see?” Faye jabbered excitedly. “This is exactly how magic works! The whole world, the universe, that’s the sheet. Actives normally get to fold just one part to change the world! Maybe they can grow that bit, make some changes, but they don’t ever really unfold the whole sheet and make something new, but it’s the folds that decide what each part does! That’s how the Chairman could change between different kinds of magic. He unfolded his connection and made new ones.”

  Faye could tell that she’d completely lost her audience. Lady Origami just had a look on her face that said Faye had gone crazy. That was okay, Faye was used to that, but this was a big deal.

  “Do you got any more paper?”

  Lady Origami had a lot of pockets.

  Magic, a sharp knife, some demon ink, whiskey to dull the pain, and a steady hand . . . That’s all it took to turn a man into a weapon.

  Who was he kidding? Jake Sullivan had always been a weapon. It was just time to quit pretending he could ever be anything else.

  Killing. That’s all he’d ever been good for. Even when he’d tried to help, tried to be on the side of the angels, all he’d done was kill.

  As a boy, his head had been filled with big ideals about courage and sacrifice and defending the innocent. He’d lied about his age and joined General Roosevelt’s First Volunteer Active Brigade. He’d even talked his brothers into it. Think of the adventure . . . What horseshit. The Sullivan brothers’ grand adventure had turned into years of endless trench warfare, killing with bullets, gravity, and bare hands. He’d survived the biggest battle in history with his body relatively intact, while one brother had lost his life and the other had lost his mind.

  He’d come home to a country that didn’t understand them. All they’d known was that the First Volunteer had
nearly ripped the world apart killing magical Germans at the Second Somme. Some called them heroes, but he could see the fear in their eyes.

  Still, he’d tried to help, tried to make a difference. He was stubborn like that. Sullivan had liked puzzles, and what better way to solve puzzles than being a detective? Fixing people’s problems, and occasionally using his Power to right wrongs and take care of the dangerous types, and he’d been damn good at it. He’d fallen in love with a girl who had her own kinds of nightmares, and for just a little while, he’d thought he’d build a life for himself.

  That had ended in five minutes of blood, because an innocent person had been threatened, and he was just too damned obstinate to let that slide. He’d killed a crooked bastard, but it had been a crooked bastard of an elected lawman, and that life he’d thought he might build with Delilah had all came crashing down.

  Rockville. Six years of monotonous rock-breaking hell, and even in chains he couldn’t stop killing. The hardest of the hard had tried to prove themselves against his reputation, and he’d broken every single one. He never started anything, but he finished everything. His magic had always been strong, hard as his will, as forceful as gravity, but Rockville had given him time to think, and it turned out that was the most dangerous thing of all.

  He’d been freed early to be J. Edgar Hoover’s attack dog, and even when he was trying not to kill anybody, they’d left him no choice. Delilah had come back into his life, briefly, until he’d gotten her killed too.

  He’d been at war ever since.

  The brain of a scholar in the body of a thug with a history so hard it would make an Iron Guard flinch. In another time or other circumstances, he might have accomplished great things with his mind or built great things with his hands. Instead, all he’d done was tear down the world, chipping away, piece by piece, like methodically breaking rocks in a quarry. He could try to hide it in fancy talk, about how he was protecting the innocent from the evil, but those were just words to confuse the issue. Jake Sullivan was good at one thing, and that one thing was killing. Sure, it was always for a good reason, but that didn’t change the fact that he was born to fight.