by Anton Strout
The gates of the Brooklyn shipyard, locked at night, were nothing when you had a gargoyle in tow. Stanis landed us on the inside of them and we hid among the stacks of cargo containers near the main entrance while we waited for Rory and Marshall to show. Ten minutes later, a cab dropped them off a block away and they skulked down the street toward us. Their skulking was so obvious I had to laugh.
“Go get them, please,” I said to Stanis, “before someone calls the cops on Mr. and Mrs. Obvious.”
Stanis nodded, then leapt up into the air in flight, arcing high above and coming down behind them. He wrapped an arm around each of them. Rory startled but remained quiet, but Marshall let out a yelp that sounded like a small dog barking. Stanis rose, gliding soundlessly back over the fence, and extended his wings fully to bring all three of them down softly. It amazed me how utterly graceful stone could be in motion.
“Thanks, Stanis,” I said, as he walked over to me. Marshall and Rory were busy pulling themselves back together, Rory adjusting a strap across her chest that connected to an artist tube on her back like the one I owned. I looked up at the gargoyle. “Now I want you to position yourself on the highest point of the ship. You’re our backup.”
“Backup?” Marshall asked, nervous laughter escaping him. “Why don’t we just send him in first? Then we can mop up after him.”
“I told you what happened here last time I brought him,” I said. “Even my brother was stronger than him. In a straight fight, we’re screwed. That’s why we need to go in stealthy and use him only as backup.”
I reached into my bag, pulling out the two charms I had made earlier.
“You get a talisman,” I said in my best Oprah voice, “and you get a talisman.”
“Thanks,” Marshall said. “Does this have Protection from Evil on it?”
“It should make you a little stealthier in there,” I said. “I wouldn’t test out what the line is by running out waving your arms at anyone we find on board, but it should help. Not sure how long it will last, but it’s something.”
Rory put hers on but her eyes were looking over at Stanis. “You sure you don’t want to go gargoyle first?”
“I do not mind dying,” he said, “if it would mean your safety.”
My stomach clenched at the words, and I surprised myself by finding tears fighting to leave the corners of my eyes, but I held them back. “I appreciate that,” I said, turning away. “But let’s try our sneaky approach first, okay?
“They’re expecting you to be our first line of attack, but that’s not what we’re giving them. We need to rescue Devon. He promised us the three books he stole from Alexander’s library and we need them back to help us with finding the last soul stone and answering some of the questions I have on the Spellmasons and alchemy. Then I’ll be able to build…more of you to defend us.” I blushed a little, trying to ignore the fact I caught myself avoiding the word companion.
“As you wish,” he said. He hesitated as if he might say more, and I secretly hoped he would, but after a moment he leapt up into the sky and was gone.
Rory undid the strap across her chest and took the artist’s tube from her back, unscrewing the end of it. She pulled two short lengths of wood—one plain and one with a hooked blade at the end of it—and snapped them together where they met at a metal coupling. She slung the empty tube back across her body. The pole arm twirled through the air in front of her before she set it down, the bladed tip up.
“Holy crap,” I said, pulling her into the shadows of the cargo containers so the light didn’t shimmer off the blade. “You actually found a pole arm.”
I turned to check the nearby boat docked there, the one I had been on with Stanis the other night and Rory a few days earlier. Other than the movement of crew members up on deck, there didn’t seem to be any awareness of us.
“I had a little help,” she said, jerking her thumb at Marshall, “but yeah. I told you I’d get one. You have no idea how good that one at the museum felt in my hand.”
Marshall gave a small smile. “I know a guy down in Chinatown who does all the weapons for the Tuxedo Park Ren Faire. My group uses him, too, although this weapon hasn’t been dulled down like the ones we use for LARPing.”
“LARPing?” I asked. “Do I want to know?”
Rory waved a hand at me. “Don’t get him started on live-action role playing,” she said. “He’ll spend an hour talking about his character and how his friends dress up and act like they walked off the set of Lord of the Rings.”
“You said you wanted to know,” he said to her, hurt.
“When we first became roommates and I asked, I was just being polite,” she said. “I didn’t think you were going to actually embark on a whole lecture series on gaming culture.”
“Guys!” I said in a hushed whisper. “By all means, keep it up. Let’s really lose the element of surprise here.”
The two of them fell silent. Marshall joined me, checking the ship out for himself, then turned to Rory. “You’re not going to use the pointy end, are you?” Marshall asked.
Rory shrugged as she looked where we were focused, her eyes shifting among the signs of movement on the boat. “Depends, really.”
“Those guards,” he said, pointing. “They’re human.”
“So?” she said, her eyes narrowing. “These people aren’t the same as the ones at the museum. Those people were just doing their job, protecting art. But these minions here, well, they’re…minions, in league with our enemies. If I see one of those hand tattoos or a white-handled knife, I’m not holding back on any of those Servants of Ruthenia assholes. If they get in our way, they’ve earned what they get.”
Marshall didn’t argue, and neither did I. Getting my brother out of there, grabbing the missing books, and restoring that fourth soul stone were all that mattered at this point. Then we might really get to the bottom of why they were after my family. Still, the less bloodshed, the better.
“Try to avoid using the sharp end…if you can,” I suggested. “Ready?”
Marshall sighed. “I haven’t been ready for any of this,” he said.
I squeezed his shoulder. “You’ve been doing fine,” I said. “You brought rope. You got us through the museum; you even found the chest…You, sir, are a brilliant tactician.”
“Just leave the fighting to me,” Rory said, tapping her pole arm on the dock. “And the gargoyle, if it comes to it.”
I reached out with my mind at the mention of Stanis, feeling the pull of him nearby, but I immediately forced myself to remain focused. “Just keep an eye out for any of the books from my great-great-grandfather’s library,” I reminded them.
“Will do,” Marshall said, seeming to snap out of it with a strong-armed salute with his fist across his chest. “And you try not to be crushed by giant rock men.”
“I will definitely try not to,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Old abandoned docks at night were an almost perfect place for sneaking around, once I got over the sheer creep factor of it. There were plenty of shadows and hiding places among unloaded shipping containers, and Rory started for the docking tower and its gangplank, but I stopped her. The direct approach hadn’t paid off so well last time. The ship itself was long enough that it was easy to find a spot along its side that was unlit, and that was where I led my two friends. Marshall dropped to his knees and rummaged through his bag, pulling out a thick coil of rope.
“Ha!” he said. “Rope, bitches! Paid off twice! And you mocked me…”
He stood, twirling one end of it, and after several attempts, he got it over the railing of the ship that sat about thirty feet above us. He worked the line until the other end came all the way down to us and he began knotting them together.
“You are not serious,” Rory whispered, giving an uneasy look up the side of the ship.
“Hey, you’re a dancer,” he said. “You’ve at least got a shot at it. I failed climbing the rope at gym class, but I don’t see any other way to do it.”
“We could have used the gargoyle,” she said.
I looked up and down the dock, but Marshall was right. Other than walking up the gangplank past the crew, we weren’t getting on any other way. “We can do this,” I said, feeling a rush of adrenaline hit me. “We don’t need Stanis for everything. We can do this.”
“You first, then,” Rory said, collapsing her pole arm back down to slide it into the artist’s tube.
“Fine.” The sheer challenge in her words made me determined. I checked the straps on my backpack, then wrapped my arms and legs around the rope. The tension in my arms was intense, but I started up the rope while repressing the thought that I might just slip down into the ice-cold November ocean water below. My arms burned by the time I reached the railing, but I still took time to make sure the coast was clear before hefting myself up over it.
Rory came up next, having a much easier time of it, but when it came to Marshall, it quickly became evident we were going to have to help him. He clung to the line like a tensed-up yo-yo at the end of its string, and we had to pull him up. His hands clenched white-knuckled over the railing and he pulled himself up over it, landing on the deck of the ship hard. I looked around, but with all the other sounds out on the water, we hadn’t drawn any attention.
We took a moment to gather up the rope and for Rory to put her pole arm back together before making our way down into the bowels of the ship. Navigating around the comings and goings of the crew was easy enough. We could hear them approaching from a mile away and there were plenty of corridors clearly meant for the passage of the large stone men that we could hide ourselves away in. My memory of what led where was still fairly fresh, just not wholly accurate, but soon enough we found ourselves back in their makeshift throne room, which I had barely taken in when it was full of stone men. Thankfully this time it was empty, at least for the moment. Several oversized tables sat in the center of the room with piles of books in a variety of languages spread out all over them.
“These have seen better days,” Rory said as she ran her fingers over the gouged and scratched-up wood of the tables.
“You try flipping pages with rocks for fingers,” I said, starting through one of the piles. “Let’s hurry. Then we can find my brother.”
The three of us tore through the books scattered across the table, Marshall and Rory pausing every now and then to show me one when they weren’t sure what to make of them. After several minutes of searching, I came across a familiar title mentioned in my great-great-grandfather’s notebook. “Found one!” I said, and scooped it up into my arms.
“Awesome!” Rory said, continuing her search.
“Great,” Marshall said, moving to the next table. “Two to go!”
A third voice called out in a language I almost recognized, something Slavic, but I doubted it held any level of congratulations in it. Two men had appeared at the doorway we had come through and they called out into the corridor behind them.
“Shit,” I said.
“Keep looking,” Rory said, dropping the book in her hands and scooping up her pole arm from the edge of the table. “I’ll keep them busy.”
“Thanks,” I said, but she was already running across the room, swinging the weapon around her in an ever-widening circle. She struck one of the men with the blunt end of the pole, knocking him over, but five more poured into the room behind him.
“Help her,” I said to Marshall.
He looked up at me, stopping his search with two books in his hand. “How?!”
“Improvise,” I said, and continued on, my hand landing on a promising book. I flipped the cover open to see Alexander’s familiar handwriting. “That’s two. One more…”
Marshall still looked stunned not knowing what to do, then looked at the books in both of his own hands. He hefted them, feeling their weight, then turned to the men streaming into the room. He posed like some sort of book-wielding ninja, then launched the books. One hit the wall next to one of the men uselessly, but the other caught a corner against another one’s head, drawing blood and knocking him down.
“Holy cats!” he shouted, then grabbed a couple more books before charging forward. I couldn’t watch anymore. I had to find the third book.
The sounds of battle raged from the far end of the room as I continued my search. It grew as I continued on, and, feeling the press of time, an idea struck me. I called out one of the lesser spells I had memorized, directing it at the table in front of me, the same one that had helped me turn my great-great-grandfather’s secret tome to and from stone. As I spoke them, I searched the table for any signs of change and was rewarded when a dark blue bound book reacted, shifting into a gray slate state.
“Found it!” I shouted, pulling the heavy book free from the pile. Now that my head was no longer lost in the tables full of books, my heart wanted to pop out of my chest. Twenty or so men had come in since I had looked up last, and I found myself backing away toward the farthest wall. Rory, to her credit, was holding her own, but the odds were against her and decreasing every second, and from the sound coming down the hall, the stone men were en route.
Well, stone man, anyway. Stanis came through the door, popping his wings to the fullest and using them to take down several men at once. Marshall backed off from the pile of books he had been using at the end of the farthest table, turning and running toward me. Rory had to dance herself around several of the men Stanis had flung aside, but she was nimble enough it almost looked choreographed, violent poetry in motion.
“Something’s not right,” I said, trying to assess the situation.
“You notice something?” Marshall asked, joining me against the wall. “What is it?”
“I’m noticing lots of things,” I said as I watched Stanis crumple another guard to the ground with one of his clawed hands. “Anything specific?”
“Rory!” Marshall called out. “To us!”
Two men stood between us and her. She drove the pole arm into one of them like a joust charge, toppling him onto his back. She continued forward, planting it like a pole-vaulter and gracefully launching herself feetfirst into the second man. They slammed with force into his chest and she righted herself midair, her last steps toward us a landed, stumbling jog.
“What?” she asked, winded.
“Notice anything odd about this fight?” I asked.
Rory looked around. “Yeah,” she said with a smile. “We’re winning. A girl could get used to this.”
“That’s part of it,” I said, “but not all.”
“Where are all the stone men?” Marshall asked, getting it.
“Exactly!”
“They’re not here,” Rory observed, stating the obvious.
“None of them,” I said. “Not my brother. Not the men he said were threatening him.”
“So where are they, then?” Rory asked.
“I have no idea,” Marshall said.
“I do,” I said. “They’re with my brother.”
“And where is he?” he asked.
“On his way home,” I said.
“What?” Rory shouted. “On Gramercy?”
I nodded, my face turning red, a combination of anger and embarrassment. “He didn’t call me here to save him,” I said. “He called to distract us.”
Thirty one
Stanis
After the maker’s kin told Marshall and Aurora to hurry back to the Belarus building as quick as they could, Alexandra and I flew off across the night sky back toward Manhattan, over the river. Anger and frustration radiated from the woman like a fire as she sat cradled in my arms with one of her newly acquired books clutched to her chest. It took much of my concentration to keep her emotions from washing through and taking over my own senses, making flight more difficult, and I found myself fighting not to swerve like a leaf blowing in a storm. I pushed my heavy wings hard for a few seconds to gain more height before finally stretching them out to their full extension and steadying myself into a controlled glide.
&
nbsp; “Alexandra,” I said, looking down at her grim face. “Please. You must relax yourself. Unless you wish us both to fall into the river. Your mood is…distracting.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just so pissed at myself.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I fell for it,” she said. “Here I was racing to help my brother, and all the while he was playing me. I’m a fool.”
“You are, perhaps, being far too judgmental about your own actions,” I said as I fought to keep control of my glide.
Alexandra laughed. “You mean I’m being too hard on myself.”
“You are not the ‘fool’ you say you are,” I said. “Your frustration with yourself speaks more of the good in you and the ill in him more than anything else.”
“That is some small comfort,” she admitted, pulling the book away from her chest, attempting to read it by the light of the moon. “Still, if they get to the building before us and my family comes to harm over Alexander’s alchemy notes and books…I’ll never be able to bear it.”
I felt her trying to lessen her frustration, making my flight easier, and I pushed my speed until I was just beyond the river and heading past the bridge they called Manhattan.
“Fly over the building first, please,” she said. “We’ll look for signs of forced entry, then straight to Alexander’s library and studio. If they’re looking for his notes and books, that’s where my brother would take them first.”
“As you wish,” I said, and angled myself toward the growing patch of green of Gramercy Park, darting down between the buildings as I came in low over it. Scanning the building showed no signs of forced entry and I landed on the terrace, Alexandra lingering in my arms before stepping down and heading through the French doors into the library.
