Immortal Architects

by Paige Orwin

  Edmund gripped his pocket watch. He kept his expression neutral, pleasant, unsmiling. Hunting. She could have chosen any other word. “I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”

  “I don’t see where it isn’t. I know how your magic works and I know how lacking you are, even now, after dealing with the Susurration. You’re spending more time on trying to restock than on anything else, am I correct?”

  “No.”

  “Mr Templeton–”

  “I’m spending more time on living, actually.”

  She pressed her lips together. Her gaze searched him, probing, condemning, like every Magister before her. He was the Hour Thief; somewhere beyond the chain of command, the Twelfth Hour’s only member on indefinite probation. He’d outlasted five Magisters now and each one had seemed more afraid of him than the last.

  That was why he wore a cloak. A mask. He stood there and he waited, and he concentrated on not being Edmund Templeton.

  The Hour Thief hunted, not him.

  “If I gave you permission to take time from certain problematic populations,” Mercedes began, “would that–”

  “No.”

  “Mr Templeton, we don’t have time for moral quandaries.”

  “I do. I’m not letting you legitimize it.”

  She regarded him a moment longer, then turned. She adjusted one of the pens in her hair. “And yet you’ll keep on as you’ve always done.”

  Edmund realized he was gritting his teeth. He forced himself to relax. Couldn’t force a smile. “Mercedes, I came here to report. That’s all. Are we finished?”

  She dropped her hand back to her side, thumb twisting between her fingers in maimed repetition. “We’re finished. I expect you and your team to have a base of operations by the end of the month.”

  “Thank you, Mercedes.”

  “You’re welcome to show yourself out.”

  “I will.”

  He did.

  * * *

  Barrio Libertad seethed.

  Not the original populace, who were suspicious of Istvan, or the refugees, who were afraid of him, but the fortress itself. The plazas seethed. The terraces seethed. Every string of lights, every color of every mural, every wall of every shanty stacked atop yet more shanties made of more walls that also seethed: an inhuman anger that seeped from them like lava from the earth, viscous and choking in its intensity.

  It never slowed. Never subsided.

  Barrio Libertad was built like a coliseum. Its walls looked to be made of crumbling concrete and corrugated steel, rust concealed by bright red and yellow paint, badly patched and creaking… but those walls were eight hundred feet high. They were surmounted by turrets that wouldn’t have been out of place on a battleship. They held enough space and resources for one and a half million people, concealed at least one superweapon, and supported a roof that could seal the fortress off from all outside assault. Part of that roof had remained closed for over a month now, locked in place, lit by floodlights.

  Over its edge splayed monstrous claws of steel and serrated glass.

  The creature was dead. It was also too heavy to move. The arcs of green lightning across its corpse had mostly ceased. The nightmares from proximity, less so.

  Istvan wished Barrio Libertad’s “People’s Emergency Hospital” hadn’t been built so high up, so close to it. Not that he’d had any say in the matter. No one had. The infirmary had built itself.

  Barrio Libertad’s master, after all, was Barrio Libertad. He called himself Diego Escarra Espinoza, but everyone knew the truth. There was no appreciable difference.

  Every surface was under his direct control and every surface seethed with rage.

  Istvan tried his best to ignore it.

  “You’ve a terrible lot of scar tissue,” he said to a patient trying very hard to not shiver, “but no more lesions that I can find. How is your breathing?”

  “Hard,” came the wheezed reply.

  Istvan pulled his hand out of the man’s lung, phantom blood flickering across his fingers. “Now?”

  The man clutched at his chest, as though reassuring himself that his flesh was still whole, that a specter poking around in his innards hadn’t just happened. He edged away, further up the bed, and Istvan couldn’t blame him. He took an experimental breath. “Easier. Maybe.”

  He was shivering less, now. Thunder rolled outside, and he flinched.

  Istvan nodded. “It will get better as time goes by. I don’t know that you’ll ever recover full function, but–”

  “This kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen.” The words fell from the man in a rush. “Gassed. No one’s supposed to be gassed anymore. I can’t… I don’t…” He coughed: a racking, painful sound that at least was no longer bloody.

  Istvan wished it didn’t trigger a great deal of nostalgia. “You would be surprised, I’m afraid.”

  “Leave me alone. I just…” Another cough. The man curled around himself, turning away, his fear a raw sweetness whorled in the warmth of the pain. “Leave me alone.”

  Istvan looked to his bloodied fingers. They flickered to bone.

  He wiped them on his uniform sleeve and departed, trailing barbed wire. Oh, it was only the long-term patients now. Those who were lost were lost; those whose needs were simple had departed. Each bed he passed, occupied and not, reminded him anew of the old days. How wonderful they had been. How terrible.

  The annex boasted a long window, and here he paused. It overlooked a rolling field of wildflowers, mountains in the distance, sunset casting rosy fingers over their peaks.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Istvan sighed.

  The rage never changed… but the window did, its edges burnt black, rain spattering fitted glass. Outside, rimmed by a crater wall, stretched a field of muddy trenches, broken trees, and shell-pocked mires: relics of a battle fought over a century ago. Memories made solid. Ruin that couldn’t be undone. Here and there flapped shreds of tattered canvas, reminders of the rows of sorry shelters that had been there before.

  All changed. His fault.

  Istvan crossed his arms on the sill. They were saying now that the battlefield was claiming new victims, that it wasn’t static, that sometimes shells tumbled from a clear sky…

  “Admiring your handiwork?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Grace Wu stood there, a messenger bag slung over one shoulder. She wore her peculiar uniform, as always: brightly colored plates buckled over that dark undersuit, a curious mix of soldier and show performer. The bag was wet, but no water seemed to have clung to her. No mud, either.

  It wasn’t right that she could cross such a waste and remain perfectly dry.

  Istvan sighed. “What do you want?”

  “Just making conversation. Finished my rounds, thought I’d stop by. Done any embroidery lately?”

  He had – he’d even taught a few patients who had nothing better to do – but he wasn’t obliged to discuss that with her. He turned from the window. “Miss Wu, I’ve never known you to ‘stop by’ unless you had some pressing purpose in mind.”

  She hitched the bag around, casual to the point of acted intent. “Well, I was thinking about earlier, how we saved the day and all, and I thought to myself: you know, Grace, you’re one person who can be in only one place at once, and the Susurration was definitely not like that.” She rummaged through the bag, still talking. “It can’t just have distributed the Shattered across Big East, can it? What keeps it from having agents in… I don’t know–”

  She produced a roll of what likely wasn’t paper and snapped it open.

  “–anywhere else on the planet?”

  A map. Icons glowed red on three continents.

  Istvan folded his arms to keep from flickering. Overseas. Away from Big East. He wasn’t chained; he wasn’t restricted; he could go anywhere, now. Anywhere he liked.

  And the sorts of places he liked, oh…

  “I do hope you aren’t asking for my help,” he said.

  “What,
me?”

  “Or Edmund’s, either.”

  She rolled the map back up, resentment bubbling into her affect. “You helped with the Susurration once, remember.”

  Istvan glanced at the window. The waste. The battlefield that shouldn’t be. “Yes, and I bloody well know what you think of that.”

  She crossed her arms as well, articulated plates sliding across one another with faint clicks. She was even more afraid of him now – more than she had ever been – and yet still desperate not to show it. “Maybe it doesn’t matter what I think. Maybe there’s something out in, I don’t know, Tornado Alley that we can’t reach fast enough, and–”

  “–and you want us to go do it for you?”

  “Look, Doc–”

  Istvan flared wings that were barely there, wisps of gas and broken feathers. “We have our own assignments, Miss Wu, and we are not retainers of Barrio Libertad. You seem to be doing perfectly well on your own.”

  She took a step back. She shoved the map back into the bag. It didn’t crumple like paper ought. “Oh, come on, you can’t still be sore about earlier.”

  “You ‘saved the day,’ didn’t you?” he retorted. “You don’t need us. You certainly don’t want us.”

  She snorted. “You just now realized?”

  “I’ve known long enough.”

  “Then you know that we need psychiatrists and not surgeons, right? You know that you’re scaring people? You know that you’re keeping Susurration victims who need help from coming in to get help?” She hitched her bag around. Motors whirred in her gauntlets. “You’re sitting around here doing things we can do ourselves, and for what?”

  Istvan folded his wings. “I’m volunteering my services,” he muttered.

  “We don’t want you here.”

  “I don’t care! I don’t want to be here, either!”

  “Then leave!”

  “No. Not unless and until Mr Espinoza himself deems that I ought, and I haven’t noticed any signs of displeasure, Miss Wu – not yet.”

  They both paused. Nothing appeared on the walls. The window stayed as it was. The only sound was the faint creaking of the fortress in usual operation.

  “There,” said Istvan. “You see?”

  Grace shot a reproachful look at the nearest surface. “Diego doesn’t have anything to do with this, anyway.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t?”

  “Well, it’s not like he summoned the Susurration or anything… wait, that was Magister Hahn!”

  “Miss Wu–”

  “‘Hey,” she continued, “‘let’s summon something that can take over the world, to save the world and then do a bad job of it and let someone else clean it up!’ Good job, wizards. Bravo.”

  Istvan tried to think of something to stay to that. It was, strictly speaking, true. All the same, no one else had come up with anything of use against Shokat Anoushak, and even Edmund had only managed a series of holding actions. The Magister had done what seemed best at the time.

  “That’s war,” he said.

  “It’s still war, Doc.”

  “Then you’ll have to go to Magister Hahn to request our services. Edmund, at the very least, wants nothing to do with you.” Istvan hooked a thumb into his belt. “Was there anything else or ought you be on your way?”

  She sighed, her disgust for him an acrid greenness that never seemed to abate no matter what he did. “You jumped awfully quick to ‘we,’ Doc.”

  Istvan turned back to the window.

  What if we unchained him, Edmund had said.

  He’d used Istvan. Deployed him like an artillery piece. Broken what kept him in check, in the name of what was expedient, and now this was the evidence. The Susurration locked away and a field of bloody trenches made real.

  Good job, wizards. Bravo.

  “We’re friends,” Istvan said. “Great friends. You know that.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Grace. “Sometimes I worry about that.”

  Istvan took hold of his bandolier. Barbed wire twisted itself into rusty knots at his feet.

  “Look,” she continued, “I get what you’re trying to do. I really do, all right? But you’re not helping here. Not anymore.”

  “If you want to get rid of me,” Istvan replied, “ask your council.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “I want to see a written order.”

  “You’ll see one.” She turned on her heel. “Later, Doc. Have fun body-snatching cultists.”

  She departed.

  Istvan shuddered. She was more tolerable than she had been, but not by so great a margin. Not for the right reasons, either.

  The gall. He was trying to make amends, wasn’t he? He had volunteered more hours than any other person here, hadn’t he? Every night, through the early morning. At least half of every day. She said that she understood it, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.

  He set a hand against the window pane. Cold, but not so cold as his own touch. The storm outside had broken with a sudden fury that didn’t seem out of place, torrents washing loose planks and rusted wire into the earth. Burying them.

  He clenched the hand into a fist and drove it through the glass. Nothing shattered. Nothing happened at all.

  He snarled something to himself – he wasn’t sure what or why – and dove through it. Away from it. Rain sheeted through his wings as he fell, rolled, pulled up again, skimming the earth. Mud spattered in his wake, new trenches opening where they hadn’t been before and then collapsing under their own instability. The thunder sounded like something else; something newer and older and better and worse all at once, something he found himself missing when he wasn’t paying attention, a roar of killing shock he knew firsthand.

  The walls of Barrio Libertad loomed over him, spotlights burning, their tops wreathed in mist. Even from here, he could taste the unnatural rage that boiled from them. Unchanging. Mechanical. Judgmental.

  He veered away, and vaulted skyward.

  Below him stretched what had been Providence, Rhode Island. The fortress crouched at the former city center. The corpse of a monstrous beast with a crest of broken towers and uprooted bridges jutting along its back lay slumped across the half-closed roof, holes blown through its skeletal body. The ocean lapped at earthen bulwarks, contaminated with storm runoff, shattered piers, and the husks of other monsters hurled away by the same force that had left a crater fifteen miles wide.

  Eight years ago. The Wizard War.

  Oh, he missed it. The horror. The carnage. The haze that came from massacre, the sheer joy of indulgence without doubt or shame. He hardly remembered what he’d done; another blur in a history of blurs, opening salvoes he couldn’t recall and didn’t regret until months later. There was nothing like it.

  Nothing.

  Istvan hit the cloud deck, a shock he welcomed, the flash of lightning changed to shrapnel-choked orange, mists darkened to poison. Only for a moment. Only a memory. The sun was setting, the sky lit up like a firefight across the horizon.

  He wondered where Edmund was.

  He feared that if he left, seeking other disasters, he would never come back.

  * * *

  Edmund should probably have brought Istvan with him. He knew that. With the Shattered running around, and his badly-depleted time reserves, it would have been the smart thing to do. Even Grace had to admit that.

  But he hadn’t. He wouldn’t. He had managed just fine for decades by himself.

  He didn’t want Istvan to see.

  He didn’t want anyone to see.

  He smiled, because that was what the Hour Thief did, and he said, “If you and your men will give me some time, I’ll take care of it. I’ve dealt with constructs like that before.”

  “What, we show you where it is and you’ll just take it out?” asked Ten-Ton, leader of the Hammers of Boston. Edmund had made sure to ask for a name, even if it wasn’t a real one. Human beings had names.

  “That’s right.”

  “No questions asked?”
r />   “Only one,” said Edmund. “Are you willing?”

  The gang members looked at each other. They weren’t actively malicious, Edmund knew that. They were where they were and they did what they did because they knew nothing else. Victims of circumstance. Wrong place, wrong time. One bad decision that led to the next. A whole corrupt system and then the Wizard War to turn everything on its ear, making what was bad even worse.

  But they weren’t helping things get better, either. They’d done their fair share of evil. They maintained their hold on this bunker complex through intimidation and stolen firepower. As soon as Edmund had arrived and asked around for the local strongmen, he’d heard some stories.

  They’d tried to control some things they shouldn’t have.

  “Yeah,” said Ten-Ton. “Yeah. Just get it out of here.”

  Edmund tipped his hat. “Thank you.”

  Thank you all.

  Thank you for your time.

  Shokat Anoushak hadn’t done this. She hadn’t had to do this. Her immortality was different, and no one save perhaps the Susurration or one of the half-mad carriers of its revenge knew how.

  Not that Edmund would ever ask.

  He was making things better. He was this far afield because he’d exhausted all his leads closer to home, which meant crime was down. That was good. That meant he was helping. That was better than any alternative.

  Ten-Ton called after him as he left the bunker. “Hey, man, you cross us, all right, you’ll regret it.”

  The Hour Thief nodded. “I know.”

  Chapter Four

  The first thing Edmund did in the morning was check his ledger again. The entry from the night before read “Some Time x8” in the amounts column, with the usual notations on who, where, and any hazards encountered. The running total on the far right added up to nothing he was comfortable with.

  He flipped back a week, and then another. Barely holding even.

  He’d have to go out again tonight.

  He shut the ledger. He slid it away from him. He made sure there was no dust on the desk, anywhere, and that the locked drawers were still locked. The rows of old ledgers on the shelf above it were still in order, still distinctly uninteresting to anyone searching for them, and still intact – even the earliest.