The Night Watch

by Sean Stewart

  “You don’t have the right to be forgiving anybody, girl.”

  “General, I do. And I will.” She held his eyes.

  He shrugged. “Winter can decide that for himself. Come inside.”

  “No.”

  “What was that?”

  “No. I’m not coming inside. Grandfather can come here.”

  “You’re pushing your luck, Emily.”

  “It’s not luck, Mike, and I’m not pushing it. I have no interest in going inside and maybe not coming out again. I like a nice public place, even if it is a bit damp.” She raised her voice so that it carried clearly to the crowd and the soldiers stationed around Government House. “I am here to announce the end of the war!”

  Soldiers cheered.

  “Emily! You can’t, you don’t have the authority—”

  “We can all go home!” More cheers.

  Emily smiled. “Lighten up, Mike. I’m getting you out of this tactical nightmare.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What you’re saying is that you have a little army of your own.”

  “General, my army is exactly as big as you care to make it.” They locked eyes again, but it was the general whose gaze dropped first. “Oh, by the way, General, I should introduce Ensign Lubov, my second-in-command.”

  The general snorted. “Second-in-command! Christ, girl—I’m your second-in-command.”

  “Mike, that is my dearest wish. My current second would still be a private if I hadn’t given him a field promotion. He’s a little over his head.”

  “I’ll bet.” General Beranek looked at the ghosts. “And them? Are they sworn to you too?”

  “They are mine,” John Walker said. “And for a little while longer, until the North Side thaws, your dead will follow me. Enough talking. Bring Winter to me or I will come to him.”

  “John Walker. Nichols said, but I didn’t…” General Beranek stood a long time silent. He laughed once. “Emily, you are without a doubt the sneakiest, ballsiest…Runs in the family, I suppose.” He smiled and regretfully shook his head. “Emily, I know a little bit about honor. I won’t be part of any palace coup, no matter how charming the plotter. I am Winter’s man sworn, and I will not betray him.”

  “Nobody is asking you to betray him,” Emily said impatiently. “I just want to talk to him. I give you my word no harm will come to him. I think he can still be brought around to see reason, but he won’t listen to me if he doesn’t have to, so…”

  “So you thought you’d demand the surrender of his army to make your point?” General Beranek chuckled. “What a pair. You deserve one another. All right. This is what I will do. I’ll send a runner to let him know you’re here, and that you want to talk with him outside, and that in my professional opinion hauling you in by force would cause a hell of a riot and maybe more trouble besides. But if he sends back word that you are to be dragged in by your hair, then that is exactly what I will order done. Do you accept?”

  “I do not,” John Walker said. He stepped forward, and the line of dead men behind him stepped with him. General Beranek’s bodyguards paled and raised their railguns. John Walker smiled at them, a little sadly. “Are you ready, then, to march with me?”

  Private Nichols forced his way through the crowd, breathing hard. “He’s gone, General! Winter is. Left half an hour ago in a chopper with Major Oliver and a little girl.”

  “Gone?” Claire said, mystified. “Where?”

  “Lark! Christ have mercy,” Emily whispered. “Oh no, Claire. Don’t you see? If he can’t have my angel for a sacrifice, he has to offer something else.” What do you suggest I do, Emily? Deliberately sacrifice a real human child? “He’s going to the Bridge.” Claire looked at her in horror. Emily swung around. “Mike, could we catch him? Is there any way to get back to the Southside ahead of Winter?”

  “No, not if he has thirty minutes on you. He can take his pick of planes. Besides which, I am in no hurry to let you go until I get some orders. Would you mind telling me what in hell is going on?”

  “We’ll never make it. Blessed Mary!” Emily’s voice grew frantic. “Even if we had a jet parked here in the street we couldn’t catch him now. Oh Mike, he’s taking a little girl down to the High Level Bridge to be sacrificed. I’m sure of it. And God only knows if either one of them will come back.”

  Claire looked around. “John Walker,” she said. “He’s taken his ghosts and gone.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-eight

  Unknown to the picket soldiers, David Oliver had his own spotters positioned on several building tops watching the burned-out barracks. When Emily came there to reclaim her dead, he knew within minutes. “She came out of the Forest,” he told Winter. “As close to the barracks as she could have. My guess is that Raining Terleski led her to the spot, but chose to stay inside the wood. There are two men with Emily.”

  “Identities?”

  “Can’t say yet.”

  “Do you think she’s returning with a heart full of contrition, David?”

  “No. She didn’t just find a sentry and surrender.”

  “I agree. She thinks she’s got an edge,” Winter said. “If you knew what I did about her motives, you would be doubly sure.”

  “I wish I did, sir.” Winter laughed at that. “Sir, the situation here is critical.”

  “David—”

  “No, let me finish, damn it!” And despite everything, David waited for Winter to stop him, but the old man let him speak. “Sir. Two more pickets were mauled an hour ago by some kind of minotaur. The locals say this never used to happen. They say it’s because the protection of the Shrouded Ones has been withdrawn. The men are talking, sir. They’re talking about what happened in the Lady’s Garden, the hand grenade that blew into flowers.”

  “David—”

  “We are fighting Powers now. Not people. Those things from Downtown, the ones the Silks called barbarians, they were just deformed men. This is different,” David said. “Sir, I don’t think we can win here. I don’t even think we can stay. The men aren’t in a military situation anymore. They’re in a religious one, a supernatural one. We came in here too ignorant, and that’s my fault, I know. We came in here and insulted the Powers of this place. It’s not like occupying the Southside, sir. It’s like marching across the Bridge to the North, and trying to hold that. There are some things flesh and guns can’t do.”

  “You think it’s time to retreat,” Winter said.

  David prepared to have his commission revoked. “Sir, I do.”

  “I agree.”

  “What?”

  “I agree. It is time for us to decamp.”

  “Sir?”

  Winter stood up from behind his desk and stretched. “Perhaps we could make a stand here. It’s not impossible. If we worked hand in glove with the Dragon, maybe. As for Emily—I still think I could outfox her. For all her poise, she is very young. But maybe she has something unexpected up her sleeve. I would love to find out which of us is craftier, but Emily wants to make a mistake too grave for me to risk.

  “We are awash in spirits here, David. I think that old man, Water Spider’s father…perhaps he got the best of us. Looking back, I think he sacrificed his son to draw us into provoking the Dragon and the Lady. A cruel man, to do that.” Winter nodded. “The more I consider it, the clearer the matter becomes. Let Emily have her way. Let her have the whole Southside. I trained her for it. She’ll do a hell of a job. I don’t want the power anymore. But there is one thing I must see done that Emily will not do.”

  “Happily, I have become used to suppressing my curiosity, sir.”

  “If I thought that were true I’d sack you, David. You need curiosity in Intelligence—But you need loyalty more. In a family or a city or an army. The world is a blind and separate machine; life is the only thing in it with meaning. Life is all that coheres.” Winter stretched again. “I have a number of boring speeches. Perhaps I’ll make them to you on the plane. We’re going on a trip, Major. No need to
pack your kit, we won’t be long. But pick up the girl for me, would you?”

  “The girl?”

  “Raining Terleski’s daughter.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “She’s the heir to a Power, isn’t she? Important, to a Power’s way of thinking. Surely, if we have learned anything in this spirits’ playground, we have learned that.” Winter picked his army jacket off the back of the chair where he had thrown it. “There’s a helicopter waiting on the roof to take us to a plane moored on English Bay. I’ve had them there since morning. I’ll meet you and the girl upstairs.”

  “Lark,” David said.

  “What?”

  “Lark. It’s her name. Lark Climbs Singing.”

  “Is it? Pretty name,” Winter said.

  They took the chopper to English Bay, where Winter’s jet sat bobbing gently on long pontoons. David had a bit of a struggle getting Lark to step from the dock to the plane; eventually he had to pick her up and hand her over to Winter. There were sixteen seats on the plane, arranged in clusters of four. David and Lark sat side by side. Winter sat across from them, watching.

  The computer gave them a smooth flight. There was a hail from Vancouver just as they reached the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, but Winter told the plane not to respond. Eventually the hailing ceased.

  “Are we going to see Mommy?”

  “Not right now,” David said.

  “Why?”

  David didn’t answer.

  “Why? Why aren’t we going to see Mommy?”

  “We’re going somewhere else right now.”

  “Where?”

  “Southside. Where your daddy lives.”

  “Are we going to see Daddy?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Daddy died,” Lark said.

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “Why did he died?”

  David didn’t answer.

  “Why did he died?” Lark wasn’t crying. She didn’t even seem upset. Of course, she hadn’t seen her father in a long time. “Am I going to died?” Lark asked. David didn’t answer. Lark waited. “Am I going to died?”

  “Someday. Not for a very long time.”

  “Why? Why am I going to died?”

  David looked helplessly at Winter. Winter was looking at Lark very carefully, like a man studying a scene he would need to remember. He said nothing. “It’s what happens to living things,” David explained. “All living things die some time. That’s what makes them different from things that aren’t alive.”

  “Are you going to died?”

  “Yes. Someday. Not for a long time I hope.”

  “Is he going to died?” Lark said, pointing at Winter.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” She frowned. “Can a plane died?”

  “No, it’s not alive. Only living things can die. Plants and animals and people.”

  “I’m a people,” Lark said.

  David got up and walked to the galley. He found some crackers and brought them back for Lark. Crumbs got into her chair and scritched her and she whined until he let her take off her safety belt. She stood and he brushed the crumbs off her seat. Then she didn’t want to put the belt back on. He insisted and they had a fight about it. He held her in the chair as gently as he could and buckled her in. She cried very loudly. The noise was amazingly loud in the small plane.

  When she finished crying she undid the buckle. He pretended not to notice.

  “Why is he looking at me?” Lark said, pointing at Winter.

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Don’t look at me!”

  It was a while before Winter spoke. “Would you like me to look somewhere else?”

  “No! Don’t look!” Lark said. She scowled and curled up in her seat. Then she held her hands in front of her face. “Don’t!”

  Winter looked away.

  Later she asked if Winter was a stranger. “I guess so,” David said.

  “Mommy says I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

  “You’re a stranger to me,” Winter said unexpectedly. “Had you thought of that?”

  Lark looked offended. “I’m not a stranger.”

  “You are to me.”

  She scowled and curled up in her chair again and covered her face.

  “Are we going to see Mommy?”

  “No, we’re going to the Southside.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  David was surprised he had admitted that. Maybe there were things to be learned about interrogation from the little girl. Think of her as a fellow professional and maybe it would make the trip go faster. Maybe it would ease the dread.

  He didn’t feel the dread. Not really. He observed it. As if noting the progress of enemy troops on a war map.

  The jet reached Southside eighty minutes after taking off. They were met on the ground by a curious sergeant who reported an urgent call from General Beranek. Winter said he would respond from the Tory Building and asked for a car. Lark wanted to ride in the front seat but wanted David to come with her, so all three of them sat in the front. Winter drove.

  It was fifteen minutes from the landing strip to the outskirts of town. Hundred-year-old grain elevators stood like sentries along the empty highway. Then they were at the city, driving past Southgate and Lendrum, down 111th. Winter didn’t go the usual way to the Tory Building. This made David very uneasy, he noticed. He had figured out something about what Winter was doing, that much was clear, but he wasn’t letting himself know what it was. Odd.

  They had left the clouds back in Vancouver, and the lit streets and the throngs of people. Here the night was black and still. They rolled through the silent city. White lines flickered into existence in their headlights and went pouring back behind them. They drove down 109th Street and did not turn to head for the Tory Building there either, but came instead to the top of the High Level Bridge. Of course the road had not been plowed. Winter shifted to first gear and began to creep slowly down the hill.

  The terrible thing which was going to happen was now very clear and definite in David’s mind, only he didn’t know what it was. The sensation was like being in a dream where he had an urgent letter to read, but the words when he stared at them would not come, destroyed by a blindness that was not a blindness of the eye.

  They reached the bottom of the hill. They were on the Bridge.

  There was still a good deal of snow on the roadway, though clearly it had thawed several times while they had been in Vancouver. The top of the snow was icy, glinting and hard in their headlights. The whole road was slick with black ice. They crept along. When they were halfway across, David thought he saw a figure by the side of the road. A moment later Winter grunted and flicked on his high beams. A hundred meters ahead, a man stood on the roadway, watching. Winter slowed down further. The man began to walk toward them. Winter stopped the car and unbuckled his seat belt. “Time to get out.”

  David helped Lark with her seat belt and eased her out the passenger side door. It was cold outside. Not killing, but brisk. A few degrees below freezing. The icy snow crunched loudly underfoot and David found he had to be very careful stepping on the black ice. It was dark now that the car’s headlights were off. Faint starshine the only light.

  How hard it was to see the right course by that cold, distant light.

  It was time to act. It was definitely time to act. He stood holding Lark’s hand in his own and wondered what he was going to do. Winter came around to their side of the car and picked Lark up. “I’m going to carry you now,” he said.

  She looked scared. “Mister?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “He’s a stranger.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Winter walked to the right side of the road, ducked under a girder, and stepped up onto the cement sidewalk. He was now on the pedestrian walkway on the east side of the bridge. He started walking north. “Thank you, David. You should probably drive back now,” he said.

&nbs
p; The waiting man was now standing on the sidewalk about ten meters from them. He was wearing an ancient Southside greatcoat. He had a regiment of soldiers at his back. Many of them looked to be horribly burned, but they made no sound, and no steam curled from their mouths as they stood behind their commander.

  With the ease of a practiced grandfather, Winter stepped a little to his right and shifted Lark onto his right hip. Now he was holding her just above the rail at the edge of the Bridge. It was a long way from the bottom of his right arm to the cold river far below.

  David noticed his own hand was on the gun inside his jacket pocket.

  The stranger in the greatcoat took another step forward. “Stop,” Winter said. He looked more closely. “Oh. It’s you.”

  John Walker said, “It always is.”

  John Walker. The king of North Side’s dead faced them on the Bridge. An army of ghosts stood behind him, blackened and burned. The men who had died in the barracks, of course. David crossed himself. Holy God, Holy mighty, Holy eternal.

  He said, “I don’t know what your business with John Walker is, sir, but Lark isn’t part of it. She made her trip to the Bridge like everyone else and she came back.”

  “Sorry, son. Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Winter said. “I hope to hell nothing will be asked of her, but I don’t know what the North Side will demand. She is the heir to a Power and she does matter. She can’t help that, any more than Emily could, or I could.” He shrugged and looked at the angel he had cut from his own flesh so many years before. “Hello, John. You have been shirking your responsibilities, I hear. I hope you don’t blame that on me.”

  “I don’t blame you. Not for anything,” John Walker said. “Perhaps I did, once. When I was younger. But it is not for the child to judge his father. All I want now is to be with you. Let me come back across the Bridge.”

  “I made a deal, John.”

  “That was a long time ago,” John Walker said. “That was a long dark time ago. And I lived by your deal, Winter. Father. You were over there with warmth and light and love—but it was John who kept the other kingdom. John who walked the dark landscape. John who lived in the empty house. All the grim years of your reign it was I, the boy you despised, gave up, threw away, I that did the coldest work. It was I who kept the night watch for you.”