The Hanged Man

by K. D. Edwards

  “You’d be insane to go there!” he hiss-yelled. “They’ll catch you, and they’ll make you talk, and they’ll know you’ve talked to me. I’m dead.”

  “Where is there,” I said.

  “No. Absolutely fecking not. I’m out of here.” He grabbed the crystal geode off the table and tossed it on the bed, then opened a drawer filled with T-shirts and jeans.

  “You’re going to tell me where this leads to,” I said.

  “There’s nothing you can do to me that’s worse than what he can. I’ve told you what I can. Go away. You can’t get blood from a stone.”

  “Of course not,” Brand said, and I could tell by the tone that he’d given up on good cop. “That’s stupid. You get blood from people.” He pulled out his knives.

  “Brandon,” Addam said softly. “There are other—”

  “Sherman, I need you to listen to me very closely,” I said, and softly, in a tone of voice that got all the attention in the room. “I know you think there’s nothing I can do to you. You work past the red door, don’t you? You’re used to pain? What you need to understand is that if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’m going to bring something much worse than pain down on your life.”

  I picked up the bottle of calamine lotion. Rotated it in my hands. “I haven’t met many drug users who treat their addiction with such care. It’s obviously very important to you.”

  “You want to take my stash? Fine. There’s a hole in the bottom of the crystal. Take it.”

  “You’re not worried. Because you can find more, yes? You can find other drugs? It won’t matter. They won’t work for you ever again.”

  Sherman stopped, a wad of clothing in his arms. He gave me a confused look.

  I held out an arm. My sabre was curled in its wristguard form. I fed enough willpower into it so that fat, garnet sparks drifted to the ground. “I can make it so that you’re never high again. I can make it so that no drug, no alcohol, no substance in the world will work on you. I can make it so that you never feel the euphoria. You never feel the rush. You never escape.”

  The clothes fell from his arms, one ratty T-shirt after another. His face first froze in shock, and then slowly tightened into fear.

  My sabre, of course, could do no such thing. Not that that mattered. The show of power is more important than power itself, nine times out of eight.

  “Tell me what I need to know,” I said, “or I will trap you in the sober remains of your pathetic life. Tell me now.”

  “It gets you past the portal. Or into the portal. The pocket dimension.”

  “Which is?”

  “The place where the parties were held.”

  “Where is the pocket dimension anchored?” I said, because they almost always were.

  “The . . . he . . . The Gallows has a ship. There’s a ship at the end of the Green Docks.”

  “Which ship, Sherman?”

  He closed his eyes and started shaking. “If they know that I know, I’ll never be safe again.”

  The sparks coming out of my sabre began to hiss and leave scorch marks on the wooden floor. Sherman jerked. He said, “A battleship. They always blindfold us—they never let us see it, but . . . After enough times . . . You learn things. There’s a battleship. An American battleship. It’s hidden behind spells. The spells confuse you. I’m not even sure where on the ship they take me—I couldn’t even tell you if it’s up or down. But there’s a portal on it that leads to a pocket dimension. That’s where Layne met . . . him. That’s where I last saw Layne.”

  “Is it guarded?” Brand asked.

  “I don’t know. I think so, but there aren’t many. There’s a caretaker, too. An old man. The spells are meant to confuse you, I told you—I don’t know more.”

  “What’s the name of the ship?” I asked.

  “The USS Declaration.”

  I heard Addam suck in a breath, and flicked him a surprised look. Whatever shocked him about that name immediately thawed into confusion, and then a sort of anger or grimness that was probably the most startling thing I’d seen yet from Addam. He shook his head at me: Later.

  “The ship is at the end of the Green Docks?” I said.

  “Yes,” Sherman said. “The northern piers. As far as you can go.”

  “Is there a party tonight?”

  “I doubt it. Not sure. I haven’t been invited back—not since Layne became . . . special. But they only met on a full moon, the entire time I’ve known of them. That’s weeks away, isn’t it?”

  I glanced at Brand, who didn’t seem very happy with what I was absolutely, positively thinking. There was a lot of swearing in our near future, because we were going to this battleship.

  Brand and I were at the door when I realized Addam hadn’t followed. I turned around to see him handing Sherman a card.

  “Call this number tomorrow,” Addam said. “They’ll provide a safe location, food, and a small supply of drugs. You can wean yourself off them, if you’re committed. But you must not stay here. You’ve become a liability to very dangerous people. One that they cannot comfortably ignore.”

  Brand and I exchanged a look, which we ended before Addam registered it.

  * * *

  We left the Chained Rock. I threw the slave device on the ground at the manager’s feet as I passed him. The only thing I regretted as we headed down the plank outside was the ocean roc. I couldn’t free it, not until I figured out who owned it, and how much shit I’d be in for interfering. I filed it on a very discrete “to-do” list in the back of my brain.

  “You’ve heard of this Declaration,” Brand said to Addam.

  “I have. More than that, I suppose. Do you remember that trip Quinn and I took a month ago? We invited you, but you were busy. Quinn wanted to visit America, and he picked North Carolina. While we were there, he insisted we tour the USS North Carolina every day. It’s a battleship—a museum now.”

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Brand said, already seeing where this was going.

  I felt the next few questions pulse in my head like migraines. I’d hoped we were done with surprises like this from Quinn.

  “The Declaration is the sister ship of the North Carolina and the Washington,” Addam said distractedly. “There were only three of its type made. The Declaration was lost at sea not long after it launched, on its way to Asia during World War II.” His frown tightened into a look of extreme displeasure. “Quinn didn’t provide any context when we visited it. He didn’t mention it was important.”

  “Brand, call Corinne, and have her email as much as she can on this ship and how it allegedly sank,” I said. “Addam, get Quinn on the phone. Let’s find out what he knows before we get there.”

  “Please tell me we’re not going,” Brand said, more than halfway resigned. He’d want to retreat and do research first, so we knew what we were walking into.

  “Think about it,” I said. “We’ve caused a scene. We need to assume the Hanged Man or Jirvan may learn we’ve been here. Sherman said the ship isn’t used outside the full moon—and I think he was telling the truth. This is a good plan.”

  “Is it?” he demanded. “Is it a good plan? Maybe we should write it down. Here, I’ll give you a crayon.”

  “Brand,” I said. “We’re out of time. There is no more time. With the formal notification period over, the Gallows can move on Max.”

  He made an unhappy sound, but pulled out his phone to get in touch with Corinne.

  THE BATTLESHIP

  Between Corinne, her email dumps to our phone, and Addam, we were able to get some quick information.

  The North Carolina, the Washington, and the Declaration had been built from the same military blueprint. They were commissioned in the 1930s, back when Germany’s nationalistic rumblings mustered into tank tracks and ammunition assembly lines. With Japan also poised to enter the mess, the USA realized it needed to sharpen the edge of its naval superiority.

  The Declaration, like its siblings, represent
ed a technological leap in ocean warfare. It was a floating fortress—able to withstand an atomic blast; armed with guns that could flatten harborages; staffed with the best veteran officers and newly enlisted men of its generation. The ship single-handedly rewrote the narrative on what it meant to be an American sailor.

  It sailed out of the oil slicks of Pearl Harbor in the fall of 1942, passing the Marshall Islands in good time. Before it reached Midway, though, it sank in a typhoon. The wreckage was never recovered, and there were no survivors.

  And that? That stank of Atlantis. It stank of altered memories, translocation, and the sort of general mind-fucking we got away with before we went to war with humans in the 1960s and, beaten, limped to Nantucket as a consolation prize.

  Addam said, and not happily, “Quinn is not answering. It is very unlike him.”

  I thought about that, thought about Quinn, and pulled out my phone. I texted: “I’ll send Addam and Brand back home, and go onto the ship myself.”

  Three seconds later my phone practically vibrated out of my hand.

  Quinn didn’t even wait for the hello. “You never do that!” he gasped. “Don’t do that!”

  “Let’s chat,” I said.

  “I’m busy?”

  He sounded out of breath. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  There was a long stretch of him trying to muffle his panting. Then he said, “Max threw me down the stairway. All the way down. We’re looking for ice now.”

  I heard angry, outraged dialog in the background.

  “Max threw you all the way down a tight, narrow, spiral staircase?” I asked.

  “Did I ever tell you that sometimes you live in a palace and the stairway is made of pink marble?”

  “Quinn Saint Nicholas, you were told to stay at Half House. Max was told to stay at Half House. If I find you’re not at Half House, there will be war.”

  Addam stared hard at me.

  “I am not outside,” Quinn said, a little too carefully. “And we never get in trouble, even though there’s almost always a tidal wave or a fire if I look deep-deep-deep enough, but there’s no tidal wave or fire here, so that really says something about how safe we are.”

  Addam was going to have a fucking cow. I rubbed my forehead with my free hand and said, “Why did you go to the USS North Carolina with Addam?”

  “Why did . . . But . . .” He sounded genuinely confused. “You should know about the battleship now. Is this a trick question?”

  “I know about the battleship, but I don’t know why you went there with Addam, and why you didn’t tell me earlier, and what you still haven’t told me.”

  “I don’t know nearly as much as you think. There’s a battleship in front of you. You have to go through it. But it’s . . . cloudy. It’s in fog—it’s been locked in fog for years and years and years. It’s not a good place. I don’t like you being there.”

  “Max, please promise me you are not on the Green Docks,” I said. “Please promise me you have no intention of even stepping on the Green Docks.”

  “Oh, I can do that. That’s easy. I promise.”

  I thought about what I had said, and realized Addam was better at Quinn’s wordplay.

  Then I heard Max, in the background, say, “You’re sitting on the knife,” and Quinn hung up.

  “I am very, very unhappy,” Addam said, which was a feat, because his lips were pressed together so tightly they were nearly a vacuum seal. And I hadn’t even mentioned the knife yet.

  “What did he say? Are they not at Half House?” Brand asked. “Who threw who down a stairway?”

  “In no particular order, Quinn was bullshitting to cover up the fact that he and Max are on the move. Quinn promised that he won’t step on the Green Docks.”

  “Did he promise you he was not near or at the Green Docks?” Addam asked.

  I thought back.

  Addam closed his eyes. “He’s nearby.”

  “Then why didn’t he tell us earlier he’d be nearby?” Brand asked. “Why didn’t he give us a heads-up? Do you know what I could have done with more time? I could have pulled blueprints. Tidal patterns. Fucking satellite photos.”

  “It’s most difficult to explain,” Addam said, looking more than a little frustrated at having to defend Quinn. “His ability . . . Imagine it like this. Days before an actual moment—before this moment—there are a million possibilities. Hours before the actual moment, there are hundreds. But the closer he gets to where we are now, there are very few options, which is why he acts so impulsively. I strongly doubt Quinn planned this move until now.”

  Part of me said, Let it go. This wasn’t the time or place. But, unfortunately, the part of me that puzzles out tactful approaches usually works slower than my mouth.

  “Addam . . . I’m not so sure that’s a good assumption.” I didn’t realize until just now how much I wasn’t looking forward to this conversation, or how much I’d been deliberately putting it off. “He’s not a child anymore. Or at least, he doesn’t have the powers of a child anymore. I think he puts more into motion than you suspect. I think he makes judgment calls.”

  “Judgment calls,” Addam said. The words were cool. “You make my brother sound somewhat diabolical.”

  “That’s not what I mean. He has a good heart. But I wouldn’t rule out he made a conscious decision not to tell us about the battleship”

  “But the medication . . .” Addam tried to say, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  “He must be outgrowing it,” I said. “Or his powers are stronger than we thought.” Or, I added to myself, they always had been, and he’d neglected to tell us.

  Brand had pulled out his phone and was scowling at it, thumbs dancing across the screen.

  “Texting Max?” I said, glad for a diversion. Brand grunted. “The phone still trying to autocorrect all your fucks?” He spared me a glare, which matched Addam’s glare, because Addam was not ready to let this go.

  I sighed. “Look. We can talk about this later. Let’s just try to finish what we need to do, and then find Quinn and Max. If they’re interested in the Green Docks, they can come back later with Brand. He’ll give them a guided tour.”

  Brand’s thumbs froze. I felt our bond slam shut for three full seconds before he opened it back up to an even, blank emotion.

  “I didn’t mean anything by that,” I said carefully.

  “I think you did,” he said.

  “I didn’t. I know you come here. And I know you don’t come out this far—to places that are out this far on the docks. I don’t care, Brand.”

  “You don’t care. That’s better?” he asked.

  “Do you want me to care?” I asked, and the first flickers of my own anger rose. “Do you want me to forbid it? Do you want me to bloody chaperone you? What do you want? Just tell me. I can’t say anything right today.”

  “Then don’t say anything,” he snapped, stepping right up into my space. “We’re on the job. This isn’t the goddamn time or place for you to keep bringing up goddamn Oprah moments. How about we just get our fucking heads in the game. If it makes you feel better, I’ll start a list for later about all the things you can’t say right.”

  “Maybe we should both stop saying things—” I started to yell.

  I felt a surge of magic, then I was in the air, turning around in a slow-moving somersault. I heard swearing next to me and saw that Brand was also floating and disabled.

  Addam stared up at us, hand raised, a sigil spell blurring the outline of his fingers. I saw—in rotating, Ferris wheel glimpses—a hard expression on his face.

  “The hell,” I said.

  “Addam,” Brand said, only he was suddenly very calm, and his diction very precise. “Put us down now. You’ve left Rune exposed.”

  Addam lowered his hand, and we bumped onto the planks.

  “Be silent and listen to me,” he told us in a quiet, intense voice.

  “Addam—” I started to say.

  He bowled right past my objection
. “I have never, in all my life, met two people who understand each other better. I have never met two people who protect each other better, who stand so closely against the horrors the world throws at them. I have never been so jealous about the relationship between two friends. And I say this as someone who has a remarkably close relationship with his own brother.”

  “Addam—”

  “You will listen to me,” he said angrily to Brand. He turned on me. “You. How can you not see what Brand is feeling? There is nothing more in this world that could possibly upset him more than your judgment. This is one of the few—one of the very few—things he does without you, and your reaction to it has scared him. Your brotherhood defines him, as it does you, and the loss of your respect would be most brutal.”

  “But I . . .”

  “And you,” he said, turning on Brand. “You know, more than anyone, that Rune refuses to see those things he does not wish to see. You have made it your very purpose seeing those things for him, and protecting him from himself. How can you not understand what this place must mean to him, even if he refuses to see? This is a place that trades flesh. It is a place that, the deeper you walk into it, disregards any polite fiction of consent and conscience. How can you not understand how that must trigger him?”

  “That’s . . .” I felt all my emotion drain into bafflement. “That’s not what I’m thinking. I’m not . . .”

  Oh, shit.

  I looked at my feet, and thought, Oh, shit.

  “Rune,” Brand whispered hoarsely. I looked up, and saw that his face had gone ashen. “Oh Rune. Oh fuck me Rune, oh, God.”

  “I’m n-not . . .” I stammered. “I wasn’t thinking . . .”

  He was so upset that he couldn’t control our bond. He couldn’t control what he was thinking, and I couldn’t control what I was sensing. I could tell that he was terrified that I would think—that by him coming here, without me—he was somehow condoning the violence that had happened to me.

  I shot forward and grabbed him by the head, hands like a vise. “No,”I said. “NO.”

  “I let you come here, and I didn’t even tell you what to expect,” he whispered. His blue eyes swam with tears. “I didn’t think . . . It didn’t even occur to me . . .”