Immortal Architects

by Paige Orwin

  Edmund gave her a look. “The roads out here are straight lines.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t want to be poking around at old guy speed.”

  “I drove a car once,” offered Istvan.

  Neither of the two so much as glanced at him. “No.”

  Istvan crossed his arms. He had, briefly. The machine had sat on three wheels and moved at about ten miles an hour, but he had. That had been an exciting day. Not everyone got to drive a car. Pietro had spent ages setting up the opportunity.

  “I’m driving,” said Edmund. He looked to Clark. “Did you have any thoughts on the supposed intelligence of this storm?”

  She shrugged. “We haven’t gotten close enough to know.”

  “Not for lack of trying, I hope.”

  “Sioux City by Union,” said Lockhart. Her voice echoed like an announcement in a train terminal. “Five. Eight. Three. Due north-northwest. Gale five and rising. Range Thursday-Saturday, four hours allowance. A friend in need is a friend indeed; remember to iron your pants.”

  She resumed staring at the wall.

  Clark noted that down on a pad of paper. “Don’t mind her.”

  Istvan frowned. Lockhart was a wizard, then, together with Rosales. There was always a price, Edmund had told him. You weren’t a wizard until you regretted it. What had she done to herself?

  The woman’s aspect boiled, then settled, a dull worry mingled with… surprise?

  “Right,” said Edmund, seeming somewhat unnerved himself, “we’ll take the truck and get to the bottom of this. Thank you for the help, and for all you do.”

  Clark touched the brim of her cowboy hat. “Likewise. It was an honor to meet you. All of you. Drive like the wind.” She glanced at Istvan. “Or fly, as the case may be.”

  Istvan debated with himself a moment. Then he flared rotten wings, feathers scattering over the machinery. “I might.”

  She stumbled backwards with a curse. She pointed at him, wordlessly. Then she started laughing. “That! That’s it!” She put her arms out and hooked her fingers again, a facsimile of the same wings. “That’s what Rosales was talking about – he was there, in Chicago. That’s what he saw!”

  Istvan drew back, something almost unfamiliar bubbling in his chest. A sighting? An eyewitness? All this time and they still remembered him, possibly fondly?

  Chicago. What had he done in Chicago? There was that great monster, of course, that he’d chased from further east, and that bridge…

  Edmund put his hat on. “Stop terrorizing the locals, Istvan. Let’s go.”

  “But I haven’t–”

  Edmund tugged the door open. Heat washed through, with the smell and grumble of an engine running. The shadows of windmill blades rolled along the grass.

  “Let’s go before you do.”

  The truck was a pickup, its bed loaded with enough equipment to make the back end sag visibly. A satellite dish made up the greater part of it – though it equally may have been a swiveling ray gun, for all Edmund could make out the finer details – and boxes of what looked like batteries lined the sides. A forest of radio antennae bristled from near the tailgate. Strings of feathers fluttered over the wheel wells. Spars welded to the cab presumably kept the vehicle from cracking in half.

  “We can follow the road most of the way,” said Rosales, crouching improbably in the midst of the mess. “All you have to do is aim for the clouds.” He leaned out and dangled the keys.

  Edmund took them before Grace could. “Right.”

  Grace rolled her eyes. “Biofuels?” she asked.

  “You bet,” said Rosales. “Gotta get around somehow.”

  Edmund climbed into the cab. It still had the basics: wheel, pedals, shift. It was an automatic, but that was fine: he’d just have to remember to leave well enough alone. The rest of the console looked like something out of a fighter jet, but he didn’t think he’d need all that to get moving.

  It started easily enough once he found the right key.

  Istvan peered through the passenger-side window. “There isn’t much room, is there?”

  Grace opened the door and hopped through him into the seat. “Nope.”

  Istvan stiffened.

  She buckled her seatbelt. “You can fly, can’t you?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it, and then swung into the back. Ghostly barbed wire wrapped around the mirror on Edmund’s side.

  Edmund looked for a window crank.

  “Problem?” asked Grace.

  “I’ve got it.” He found the right switch and rolled his window down. “All set?”

  A thumbs-up from Rosales appeared in the mirror.

  Grace rolled down her own window and propped an elbow on it, eyeing the storm that loomed in the distance. “Giddy-up, cowboy. And remember, power steering.”

  Edmund put the truck in gear. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Grit blew into his goggles. The gravel beneath the tires sounded like ripping paper. The steering skidded and shuddered. A shrieking maelstrom bore down upon them, spanning more than a quarter of the horizon, a hurricane of dirt, nails, shredded plant matter, and wire. The ground at its base was a canyon in the making. Violet lightning flashed within its depths.

  Edmund gripped the steering wheel grimly, knuckles white.

  It was fine. It was all fine.

  “Can’t you go any faster?” asked Grace.

  He didn’t dare look at the speedometer. “No.”

  “OK,” shouted Rosales, “we’re almost ready to go off-road!”

  Edmund swallowed. Great.

  * * *

  “There’s something in there,” said Rosales, once the truck had stopped and the storm boiled a safe if not comfortable distance to their left. He tapped at his equipment. “Something in the eye of it, hanging up there.”

  Istvan peered over his shoulder at a mass of colored lines and couldn’t come to that same conclusion. “Hanging?”

  “Floating. A long ways up.” Rosales took hold of a pair of handles and adjusted the aim of the device, then checked the panel again. “Traveling with it.”

  “How big is it?” asked Grace, sitting half-in and half-out of the truck window.

  Rosales shrugged. “I can’t tell from this distance. I wouldn’t have found it at all if we hadn’t made that run.”

  “Do we need to take another look?” asked Edmund.

  Istvan glanced back at the side mirror. Edmund was still leaning on the steering wheel, though he seemed less shaky than earlier. He had kept the vehicle more or less straight, to his credit. His hat had blown somewhere back into the cab. His face was scratched, thin lines of grit and sweat around his goggles.

  “I’ll drive this time,” said Grace.

  “I can do it,” said Edmund.

  Istvan swung himself onto the roof of the truck. “I’ll be back,” he said.

  He took two steps and launched himself towards the storm.

  “Wait…” called Edmund.

  Istvan didn’t. He couldn’t hear anything after that, either, the wind picking up immediately and buffeting him sideways. He tumbled – it was like the powerful currents that circled the Earth much higher up – and righted himself, wingbeats bringing him about in a long arc towards screaming columns of grit and dust.

  Then he was through, and he couldn’t see.

  A flash of violet, searing and jagged.

  He spat a curse he couldn’t hear. He covered his face.

  It felt like sandpaper, tearing through him. Like bullets. It felt like he oughtn’t have any feathers left; flesh already gone, uniform in tatters…

  Another arc, blinding. Thunder. Sparks played across trailing streamers of wire. Oh, he hoped he was still going the right way. He thought he might be moving sideways more quickly than forward. He grasped for something familiar and found it: Edmund’s worry, taut and bittersweet, and the lesser presences of Grace and Rosales. They were all much further away than he’d expected. He flapped harder.

  A boulder whirl
ed past.

  Up, and up. He tried to follow the winds as best he could. Some had to be spiraling around the center, hadn’t they? That was how storms worked, wasn’t it?

  Perhaps he should have asked.

  He covered his eyes at more lightning, sparking from shreds of airborne sheet metal and tatters of iron gratings and nearly burning through a wing. He couldn’t even hear the thunder anymore. He could barely hear himself think.

  Oh, why was he the only one who could fly?

  Perhaps he ought to go back, and–

  He tumbled into total calm. No wind. No sound of wind, even. Instead, a clear shaft like that of a mine, perfectly circular, walls of whirling dust and light drawn down from a distant sun.

  A small figure floated far below him, arms outstretched and head thrown back, surrounded by orbiting motes of absolute darkness.

  Istvan coughed. It made no sense to cough.

  A person?

  It was a person?

  The storm… was a person?

  Then why couldn’t he–

  It struck him like lightning. He dove, wings folded tight. No. Oh, no.

  Not one of the Shattered.

  Not one like this.

  He burst from the storm much faster than he’d entered it, banking wildly, half-blind and deafened. Edmund. Edmund was over there.

  “Edmund!”

  The wizard said something Istvan couldn’t make out in response. He wasn’t in the truck any longer. He stood some distance off from it, with Grace. He was holding onto his hat. His cape strained at its buttons.

  “Edmund,” Istvan tried again, still not touching the ground. How could he alight with news like this? Poison rolled around him in great clouds, bringing thunder of its own. “It’s Shattered! It’s bloody Shattered!”

  What? mouthed the wizard.

  “There’s a person in it and he’s Shattered!”

  I told you, Grace probably said. That was the sort of thing she would say.

  “–ever told us anything,” said Edmund. He coughed, staring up at the storm. “You just came.”

  Istvan clutched his temples and shook his head. It felt like he was trailing pieces of himself, like he hadn’t left the storm at all. Afterimages cracked across his vision.

  Oh, it made no sense.

  “I saw it,” he said, and at least this time he could hear himself better. “There’s someone in there, and I didn’t know until I nearly tripped over him. He’s Shattered, I’m sure of it. He’s directing the storm, or making it!”

  “Magic?” asked Edmund.

  “Conduit,” said Grace. She gazed at the storm, sparks crackling between her fingers as she drew them across one another. “I bet you it’s a Conduit.”

  Edmund turned. “But that’s–”

  “Not impossible. We don’t even know the limits of what is possible.”

  Istvan did alight, now, uncertain. Grace herself was a Conduit, of course – one of that peculiar class of individuals who had changed when the world broke, their abilities manifested or called from somewhere not yet determined. Conduits didn’t seek out power, as wizards did: they channeled it through their very bones. What effect that might have on their physiology, their wellbeing, no one knew. They were so rare that no one could make an informed judgement.

  Istvan suspected that the vast majority had died the moment they changed. Grace was the only one he had ever met.

  He’d never heard of a Conduit powerful enough to direct a storm.

  “Why do you think that?” he asked.

  “We have theories.” She turned away, steady in the wind. “Let’s get back to the truck. We need to bring this hurricane in.”

  “But how–”

  She grinned a faint grin. “How do you usually do it?”

  “Not when they’re flying,” said Edmund.

  Istvan tried to fold his wings tighter. He was missing even more feathers than usual, dark and jagged shadows whirling away as the wind blew.

  Of course it would come to this. No one else could fly.

  “Edmund, can you catch someone?” he asked, feeling altogether like he would rather be somewhere else. “Mid-fall?”

  The wizard looked at him strangely. “You’ve seen me do it.”

  “Even when you can’t see?”

  Edmund frowned. He looked from Istvan to the storm and then back. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying–”

  “I can’t catch anyone,” Istvan told him. “You know that.”

  Edmund retrieved his pocket watch. “I’ll try.”

  “Hey!” called Rosales from the back of the truck. “It’s all good for another run!”

  “Good,” said Grace. She opened the driver-side door and jumped in. “We’ll try to aim you right, Eddie.”

  “What?” said Rosales.

  She shut the door. “We’ve got a wizard to launch.”

  Istvan exchanged glances with Edmund.

  “It’s better than nothing,” the wizard said.

  “The debris–”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Istvan traced two fingers across his facial scarring, wishing he could think of any other way to go about it. “I saw boulders in there. I can’t imagine what else it’s picked up.”

  The wizard shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll manage. You be careful, yourself. I don’t like this.”

  Istvan nodded. The Susurration had never employed Conduits before. It had tried, perhaps, but none of its victims had ever demonstrated anything beyond the mundane.

  Perhaps they ought to have asked why.

  Grace hung out the window. “You two ready or what?”

  “I’m coming,” said Edmund.

  Istvan took a false breath. Intercept the storm. At least this would be easier than trying to turn aside an entire weather system.

  Shattered. A Conduit, and Shattered.

  He leapt into the wind.

  Chapter Seven

  It was a boy.

  Istvan tumbled into the uncanny calm at the storm’s center, flayed near to nothing, and circled above him. He was more a young man, really – tall and thin and gangly, wearing a battered jacket and blue jeans more hole than fabric. He was African, or at least African-descended.

  He hadn’t spotted Istvan yet. Once he did, well…

  Istvan glanced at one of his own skeletal hands, each wingbeat marked by the reappearance of feathers torn away by the storm. Barbed wire twisted through his bones.

  Oh, there was no help for it.

  He circled lower. “Excuse me,” he called.

  No response. The wind tore his words away.

  Istvan descended still lower, trying to minimize his profile as best he could. “Excuse me!”

  The boy looked up. His face was dirt-encrusted, his hair a matted nest of debris and dust. He looked faint, as though he hadn’t eaten in days.

  “You,” he said.

  The storm roared a dull thunder.

  Istvan took nervous hold of his bandolier. Many of the Shattered seemed to recognize him, at least while he was like this. He was the last thing Susurration had seen before the end. The last person it had spoken to. He’d tried to help it, and couldn’t, and then it was ground under by the War.

  Those Shattered that seemed to know him often reacted with betrayed rage.

  “I’m Doctor Czernin,” Istvan replied, hovering at what he hoped was a safe distance. “I’m here to speak with you.”

  The boy simply stared, his eerie, multifaceted presence scattering whatever he might have felt in a thousand different directions. It was like facing a crowd. Like facing a jury. Was he a Conduit, really? Or was there some fragment of Shokat Anoushak lodged deep within his soul, teaching him the same secrets that drove her mad?

  “Are you really him?” the boy asked. “Doctor Czernin?”

  Istvan nodded. “Certainly.”

  He dared to edge somewhat closer, praying that whatever recognition the boy thought he had would keep him from panicking. Pe
rhaps he could talk him down?

  Talk him down, rather than…

  Rather than…

  Istvan shuddered, brushing at his sleeves. “What’s your name, then?”

  “Kyra,” said the boy.

  “That’s a fine name. Is it African?”

  The boy looked at him a moment longer. The storm trembled, stones dipping in broad arcs before the wind caught them up again. “You were there,” he said. “You fought her. You fought it. I remember.” He frowned. “What are you?”

  “Dead,” said Istvan.

  “Oh.” A long, long pause. “Like a ghost?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s weird.” Kyra shook his head. “That’s really weird. You ain’t supposed to be dead.”

  Istvan wasn’t sure what to say to that. What was he supposed to be? Alive? If he hadn’t become what he was, he would have died of natural causes long ago. He hovered, fighting to stay steady. Kyra, at least, looked every bit as confused as he felt.

  “How do you know me?” Istvan finally asked. “What do you remember of me?”

  The boy mumbled something, inaudible in the wind. His eyelids fluttered. The stones in the storm dipped lower again, falling and then righting themselves.

  Istvan thought of Edmund, far below. If the storm came apart now…

  Kyra took a deep breath. “I remember this… noise,” he said. “All over, that never stops and keeps getting louder and louder. And you’re standing there, watching. Just like that. Wings and everything.” He shook his head. “But if you’re Doctor Czernin, there’s… other things. I don’t know.” The boy balled his hands into fists, arms still outstretched. One of the cuts on his face oozed blood. “Listen,” he added with sudden urgency, “I have to find some wizards. She’s coming back. They got me, and they know how to make her now, and they’re going to bring her back.”

  Istvan tried to tear his mind away from the thought of the Susurration’s last moments. Pietro. Everything beloved, used against him. “Er–”

  “The wizards can kill her, right?”

  “Who?”

  Kyra looked away. “Our Lady.”