Ink

by Hal Duncan

  It is a centrifuge, I think, as much as a vortex: souls being stripped apart, the light sucked in toward the center, while the dark smears out around the room. But as ghost fingers clutch at me, as voices gibber in my mind, I start to hear the fear that's in the flitting shadows, terror underneath that rage. It is the sound of men being dragged out of their beds and out into the garden, naked, cowering, as the bullets punch into the backs of their heads. It is the sound of children crying in their beds in the night because something is wrong with them that they can never fix and so they must be braver, better, stronger, fiercer. It is the sound of these men, these thugs and murderers, being stripped of all that glory, all that blinding fire. And that darkness scattered round the room, I realize, is not the evil in them. No, it is the weakness, the self-pity and the shame, the dark and hidden shame of their humanity.

  While the glory of their atrocities gathers around my brother.

  “Johann, for the love of God.”

  Before him, on all fours, the young lad Thomas crouches like a dog before its master, like an acolyte before the statue of his god; and something gold and black and iridescent blue-green, every hue under the sun—a beautiful wraith, a glorious, hideous angel; something human-shaped but alien, utterly inhuman—hangs above them in the air, as still as death.

  I scream his name.

  He glances over his shoulder, smiling and saying something, the casual grinning comment of a child saying, Look at this, look here, isn't this great? Look what I've done. But his words are as lost as my own, drowned in the torrent of noise. Blasted back against the books by this dervish, at the same time I can feel it try to suck me in toward the center, and I stand there torn, transfixed, with terror urging me to flee, but with a mad drive to leap right into the abyss almost as overpowering.

  I have to stop this. For the sake of all that's good I have to stop this, break the circle, break the ritual, break the sickening chain of moments that can only lead one place. Do it, God in Heaven, man, just do it. Stop him. Drag him back from this terrible splendor that he's loosed. He raises the knife to shoulder height and from the fire in my brother's eyes I know, I know what he's about to do. But crucified by my own fear and awe, all I can do is watch in horror as my brother drops into a crouch. The dagger falls and slices, under and around, and up again, blood spraying in its wake. And as the boy's slit throat gouts blood into the whirlwind, to be blown into a mist of red, I watch his body slump, dragging that strange etheric creature down. I watch my brother stepping forward, dagger circling his head, slicing the air and gathering it around him.

  Blood sprays across my face, burning and blinding, and the struggle in my body suddenly dissolves as something breaks within me. My will or my fear? I don't know. Am I trying to halt this horror or to be a part of it? God, I don't know. I have no idea what deep compulsion I am answering. I only know I'm stepping forward into the storm, to where my brother stands … and where the creature stands, in the same space, limb around limb as a ghost image superimposed over another. A hundred images, a thousand. It wears his SA uniform one second, the black trenchcoat of a Futurist the next, the flying goggles of an airman, khaki denims torn and bloody, a scarf around his neck—all checks and tassels now, and then white silk—black woolen balaclava, British army cap, the jacket of some drummer boy. It wears a hundred different uniforms with glittering insignia, the Iron Cross and other medals I don't recognize, a hundred different uniforms with bullet holes and rips and tears.

  I step into the pentacle of chaos and strike out, my open palm across his face as ineffectual as my wordless cry. He smiles at me, beatific and bemused, even as I grab his bloodied hand to wrest the dagger from him, hurl it down and to one side. It's too late now. It's done.

  The bloodstained patchwork demon god of war, dressed in the armor of all those it's claimed, wraps itself around us, through us, in between us and within us. I can feel it trying to push me from him, claim him for its own, but I hold on to him. I clamp my hand onto his shoulder, leaning in and cursing, screaming in his face. It tries to drown his answer in this river of voices that our souls are being swept into now, carried away and lost among the maelstrom of new memories and ancient knowledge, but I can hear it as a whisper in my head.

  It's too late, Fox.

  And I can hear the creature bonded to him howling. I can see it struggling to get its fingers into his, to use his arms to slap my hand away, to use his mouth to spit its rage at me. I don't belong here. No, I'm not like him. I'm not a warrior, not a soldier, and I don't belong here. I don't belong to it. It has no hold over me.

  And for all his madness, all his blind, brutal delusions of the warrior ideal, I'm still Jack's brother. I think it hates me for the hold I have on him. I only pray it's right.

  seven

  RETURN OF THE COLUMBINE

  God Save Us from Our Dreams

  wake up in a ditch that runs alongside the winding country road between the village of Strann and our family house. I pull myself out of the grassy mire, hardly thinking as I pat at my ruined clothes, wipe off this splatter of blood, brush at that streak of soot. I fiddle with a rip in my trousers as if, by pinching it together with my thumb and forefinger, it might magically mend itself. Of course it doesn't and after a while I abandon that, start wiping at the mud all down my right side with a pocket handkerchief, succeeding only in smearing it with my ineffectual dabs.

  Everything stinks of smoke.

  Around a bend of hedgerow and beyond the thicket of oak and pine that walls the estate, a thin and solitary trail of dark gray rises into the predawn. Günther must be up already getting the fires stoked throughout the house, ready for Father to come down for his breakfast and then disappear into his study before the rest of us have even risen from our beds. I have the strange notion that the smoke is actually the smoldering remnant of a terrible blaze. But that is absurd, of course.

  I stagger down the road toward the village. Herr Heidelberger's inn is only a short walk from here, and it wouldn't be the first time that I've borrowed a clean suit from him. I simply can't go home in this shambolic state; Mother would be horrified and Johann would give me such a ribbing. Johann?

  Herr Heidelberger stands in the empty barroom. Why is he looking at me that way?

  “Von Strann,” I am saying, confused by his question.

  He has his photograph of Hitler on the wall behind the bar again, I see. Another new recruit for Futurism, I suppose. Strange, though; he seemed so bitter about Hitler's betrayal of fascism.

  “Your name is Johann von Strann?” he's blathering.

  “No,” I say. “Reinharit von Strann. My brother is Johann. But you …”

  I tail off. I realize I am … not myself. Still woozy from the night before, it seems, I must be babbling, incoherent.

  “And you live in the big house?”

  Frau Heidelberger pushes her husband to the side, haranguing him for grilling this poor stranger. Can't he see the man's in shock? She clucks around me. Am I all right? Am I injured? Was I in an accident? She probes my hair with her fingers like some amateur phrenologist reading the bumps. Did my car come off the road? Go call the doctor, Werner.

  “I don't own a car,” I say.

  “There's not a sign of any car,” says the policeman to Dr. Volkaert.

  I shake my head. I'm trying to explain again that there was no automobile accident but the policeman's talking to Herr Heidelberger now about a fire up at the old place. Do they mean the house? I ask. Is everyone all right?

  “Gypsies, do you think?” Herr Heidelberger's saying. “They were camped there all last summer. Wouldn't have thought there was enough in that old shell to burn.”

  The house just seems so empty these days, I explain to them, just Günther now and the few staff that … Wait. The brandy is helping to clear my head. Günther's gone as well. My dear mad brother let him go.

  “Johann,” I say. “There was a fire? Johann was … I was going to visit him. I was going to …”


  Herr Heidelberger's pushing me back down into my seat—relax, sir, just relax—and Dr. Volkaert and the constable talk now in hushed tones about hospitals, concussion and delirium, and Dr. Volkaert's saying, no, he's never heard of anything like this; amnesia he's seen, but not like this. Head traumas can have strange effects though, yes, so best to get a specialist to look at him. It's not his own blood, you know.

  I realize they have no idea who I am, not one of them (I should get out of here), not Heidelberger, even though I virtually kept the man in business through my younger years (I should get out of here), not Volkaert, who delivered me (I should get out of here), and not the constable, who should certainly have heard of the old baron's wayward son. I should get out of here. I'm just a stranger to them, filthy with mud and the blood of…

  Oh, dear Christ.

  A river of voices starts to roar inside my head.

  Reynard looks puzzled.

  “My name is Reynard Carrier. I'm not sure what you mean.”

  “Not Reinhardt von Strann?” says Pickering.

  He can't help the amused tone in his voice as he crosses the room, takes his cap off and lays it on the desk. There's no need to stand on ceremony here. He sits down, shaking his head, gives Reynard a look that says, I'm sorry about all this nonsense.

  “What are you on about?” says Reynard.

  “I know. I know,” he says. “Please, humor me. I know this is absurd, but we have an informant who claims your name is Reinhardt von Strann, that you're a German.”

  Reynard laughs.

  “How long have you known me, Joseph?”

  Pickering throws his hands up. Of all the people to be fingered for a Futurist agent … this has to take the biscuit. The man's a bloody hero for the intel he brought back on his escape. Christ, Pickering was with MacChuill as they sat there feeding the Frenchman paper and pen, watching him draw map after map after map. Munitions dumps, factories, barracks, anti-aircraft batteries.

  And some bloody halfwit fingers him for this Guy Fox character.

  “I know,” he says. “Look, between you and me …”

  Pickering tries to find the right words. The Circus is changing since the “Peace”; Berlin may be flattened but there's still Moscow, and a new breed of agents are coming into MI5 to fight this colder war of quiet moves in the shadows, in the no-man's-lands between East and West. It has to be done, of course; there's no question that Britain's security demands a firm resolve. But it's getting a little … irrational for his liking; just the other day they had him interview this mathematician who worked at Bletchley during the war—suspicious behavior, secret meetings and all that. Turns out the chap's a queer, broke down in tears and stutters after just half an hour. That's considered high-risk these days, open to blackmail. Surveillance recommended, house arrest discretionary.

  “It's just… some of these new chaps are a little zealous,” says Pickering. “If it were up to me, old chap,” he says … “but orders are orders. It's only a few questions—shouldn't take too long.”

  Reynard shrugs.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” he says.

  “Not at all,” says Pickering. “Light?”

  “Thank you. Where were we?”

  HALF MAGDALENE AND HALF CENTURION

  “There's not a single birdcry in the glade. Even the leaves of grass hang still, under a hushed and empty sky. But every maiden's on her feet behind the Princess Anaesthesia, Phreedom, yes, our Columbine, our queen. We peer ahead, uncertain. It would be so neat if it is his voice that we hear? It would be peachy keen.”

  “Just shut the fuck up, sisters,” Phreedom hisses. “Let me listen.”

  One of the girls gives her a strange look and Phreedom taps at the tattoo on her arm. The girl gives a wry smile and nods her understanding. Nanite narrators for your every action. They all admire her all right, but nobody envies Phreedom.

  “The voice echoes. Now we daughters of old Pantaloon are sure it is our Jack, Iacchus Bacchus, spirit of the pack, that calls. And so we start. We dart in haste through flooded valleys, over giant standing stones, race on toward our love, inspired by the spirit of his madness, swift as doves.”

  She splits them as they run and crouch and run and crouch. Four this way, four that. She's moving forward, heading for the cover of a rock, when the blast turns grass beside her feet to dust.

  “Down!”

  Phreedom hits the ground and rolls, comes up with her rupter already raised. The sniper angel, perched up on a high branch of a fir tree, takes one look at the sheer number of them and scrabbles for a clear branch to take off from. Silvery-steel wings spread wide. No fucking way.

  “Hailfire!” she shouts. “Nail that fucker to the wood!”

  The charges hit the angel's wings like old-school dumdums, like the rapid-fire staccato of Kalashnikovs or Uzis, too light to penetrate his synthe armor but enough to tear thin wings to shreds. He grabs on to a branch to stay upright, dropping his own weapon, and she flicks a thumb across her rupter's switch. Long bolts streak at him like tracers through the air now. Others flick their rupters to boltfire, ripping limbs off the tree, making the angel dance under the sheer force of the assault. It's good target practice, but it's fuck-all use. He may be helpless, hopeless, up there, but he's out of reach.

  She raises a hand, stands up. The rupters fall silent. She takes her sighting.

  “Aim for the base of the tree,” she says.

  ——

  “Come gather round, my pack, and grab the tree.”

  And little sister Phree swings up onto the wagon's roof, stands underneath the rigging where her onetime captor hangs, half Magdalene with her red hair now loose and wild, and half centurion in the Duke's own breastplate, worn over the biker's jacket that I gave her, shit, when she was still a child. The Duke stills for a second on his cross, then starts to thrash again.

  “We'll catch this beast who thinks he's sitting tight,” she says. “He will not spread the secrets of the rites of Harlequin.”

  The bitmites rise out of the shadows, swarm across the rig, a thousand hands of darkness. Metal groans as they tear at its base. I shuffle back, hoping that Phree and her bitmites aren't going to bring the rigging crashing down on top of all of us. But, no, they scour the metal here, devour it there, like loggers using the angle of a cut to shape a tree's fall.

  The mock Pierrot crashes down on his high throne, to the audience's screams and his own muffled moans. He knows his hour has come. She tears his hood off so that he can see her face, that she's no mother but a priestess now. For a second though I almost think that she might spare him, as she reaches out to touch his cheek, to wipe a tear.

  “Mother.”

  The voice is Joey's, from offstage, relayed into the speaker jammed between the Duke's teeth, underneath the gag.

  “It's your own son Pierrot,” says Joey Narcosis. “Me, the child you bore in Aching's halls. Have mercy, Mother. Don't you see?”

  Under the gag, the Duke begins to whine.

  “Don't murder your own son for any sin of mine.”

  I imagine this bastard using every trick of Cant that's in the book, the first time round. Look, honestly, look in my eyes, look in my soul. You're not deceived. I'm what you're looking for, your Jack. Believe. All that you have to do is take my hand. Come back. With me.

  I think of all these Dukes, building pipe-dream Havens for the souls who lost their selves out in the Hinter after Evenfall. I guess it's what they've always offered, though. Locked gates. High walls.

  Phreedom begins the bloody deed. His own sword rises in her hand, over his head. And falls.

  An Eternity of Second Chances

  The angel scrabbles on the ground. He scrambles away on all fours up the slope of scree, and Phree takes a few bounding steps to grab him by the blond rag of his hair. She almost tears his head right off his shoulders as she yanks him back.

  “It's me,” he's screaming. “It's Jack.”

  She drags him back down the slope by h
is hair and plants herself on him, knees on his upper arms, the talons of her right hand at his throat. His blue eyes look so right, so much like the eyes of the child she once cradled, crooning to him in that stinking alley of New York with the heroin in her veins letting her sink into that blue, that beautiful blue, an ocean of anesthesia where it didn't matter that the world was falling apart, it didn't matter that the Evenfall was sweeping in to turn the cities into nightmares torn by angels, demons. Just as long as she had Jack and just as long as she could go from fix to fix, they'd be OK. The Covenant was broken and the bitmites swept across the world and Thomas was lost and Seamus disappeared, but she had Jack. They could escape it all, just run away into forever.

  And then they came, through the white-noise hiss of the bitmite blizzard, wearing clean suits or synthe armor, army khakis or police uniforms—Social Services, UN peacekeepers, CTC agents. She didn't know who or what they were—in the DT shakes of the poisoned Vellum, maybe they were all of those things, or something deeper that could manifest itself only in those known forms—but they were taking her Jack away from her, and her speech was too slurred with junk to use the Cant against them.

  She doesn't know how long she sat there.

  “Urye a'right, missus?”

  He'd said his name was Don, the young man who had found her shivering in the alley and attached himself to her—or her to him. They'd walked out of New York together among the horde of evacuees on foot, made a break for it together when the rumored camp came in sight—an angel with a rupter among the sentries at the gate; they didn't want to go there, she'd said; and Don had simply nodded, trusting her. Hiding in the snowy wilderness of pine barrens, he'd held her as she shivered the junk out of her system. Cold turkey in the cold winter. The cold Hinter.