Immortal Architects

by Paige Orwin

Oh. Oh, dear. Istvan had heard that phrase before.

  The boy had fallen in with a Shokat Anoushak cult. He’d come from some awful coven, somewhere, that hoped to make use of her magics for their own ends – to revive the Immortal, to finish what she had begun. He wasn’t out of his mind, or on some sort of rampage. He was running.

  Or… was he?

  Why create such a vast scene? He was travelling in the most obvious way imaginable. If someone were looking for him, wouldn’t he want to hide? One could never be certain with the Shattered. Some could seem quite lucid.

  “Well,” Istvan continued, awkwardly, “it’s, ah… rather loud up here, isn’t it? Why don’t we…”

  The boy smoothed his jacket.

  Was he carrying something? An artifact? Preparing some sort of spell? What if there were another mockery, hiding in the storm?

  Istvan dove for him.

  Kyra yelled. He tried to backpedal. He dropped, flailing.

  Wind blasted Istvan sideways. Stone and pebbles and shredding grit showered through his wings. And something else – something that wasn’t wind, that tugged and tore, smearing together rock, branches, brief glimpses of sun and sky–

  Istvan held an arm before his eyes, beating his wings as hard as he could. “Kyra!” he called, or thought he did. He couldn’t hear it. “Kyra, stop it! I only meant to talk!”

  There seemed to be a flicker of terror – there – a feeling that slipped away as soon as Istvan caught hold of it, dissolving into the howl of the wind. Istvan tacked towards it–

  –and ran into the boy.

  Through him.

  Sickening wetness, the hot rush of blood pounding through an overstressed heart, a look of horror in brown eyes, bloodshot, bruised skin and broken veins…

  Istvan tumbled. The storm pressed in around him. He couldn’t right himself, couldn’t orient up or down. Wherever he turned, the storm had become a hall of mirrors, his vision twisted, a terrible pressure twisting through him, like hooks trying to tear out his bones. Rubble fell towards him from above and below, careening at impossible angles.

  What on earth?

  How could anyone rip holes in the air?

  He didn’t know where he was falling, or if he was moving at all.

  Rock rushed towards him.

  * * *

  Edmund tackled the airborne figure from behind. He wasn’t about to ask why the storm had twisted itself around from a spinning hurricane to a blast that left its center exposed, blazing with sheet lightning, hazed and strangely mirage-like. He was afraid he already knew the answer.

  He could feel ribs beneath the jacket.

  No time for courtesy: Edmund held tight, triggered the return teleport, and – as the field near the truck rushed towards them – twisted around and slammed the other man flat on his back.

  The Conduit tried to yell. What emerged was more akin to the squeak of a deflating balloon. He was black. Very black. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in weeks. He scrabbled at Edmund’s jacket front, trying to either get up or pull Edmund down.

  Edmund hit him in the stomach. He buckled.

  “The tiara!” shouted Grace. “Get the tiara!”

  Edmund snatched up the circlet she’d given him. It was hers. She’d done something to it. Be careful, she’d said. It was a trick to get it over the unkempt mane, but Edmund managed, and Grace hadn’t been kidding – a flash, and it was all over.

  The stormbringer toppled, limp.

  Edmund stood over him, breathing hard.

  “Got it?” called Grace.

  Edmund swallowed. He knelt down, checking for breathing. Whatever the circlet did, it had done it: the other man was out like a light, no blunt impact needed.

  The other man…

  “Grace,” Edmund said, going over the last few moments in his mind with a kind of dread and wondering how he’d missed something so obvious, “he’s just a kid.”

  Grace knelt beside him. She pressed a silvery capsule against the downed Conduit’s neck, paused, and then put it away in one of her many pockets. “Jeez,” she said. She tapped the circlet, as though checking for something. She shook her head. “Jeez.”

  “That’s about right,” Edmund agreed.

  Thunder shook the horizon. The ground trembled.

  Edmund’s insides froze. Not here.

  He turned around. A wall of dust and grit filled the sky, rushing towards them, roaring like a wave. The storm had fallen apart.

  Fallen.

  He found words. “Grace, take a moment to–”

  “Not taking your time!” Grace slung the kid over her shoulder like a decorative scarf and launched herself away. “Get to the truck!”

  Edmund looked around. Spotted the truck. Snapped his watch.

  He stood by the truck. Grace wasn’t there yet.

  “Get in,” shouted Rosales, now in the driver’s seat.

  “But–”

  Grace leapt into the back. “Go, go!”

  Edmund swung himself into the passenger seat. The truck lunged forward as he slammed the door. The engine howled. His respect for whoever had rigged the vehicle’s suspension rose significantly: he hadn’t thought it could accelerate this fast over such bumpy ground without throwing riders out the back.

  He twisted around to make sure Grace was still there. She was, crouched over the kid to shield him from the debris, one gauntlet locked in a death grip on an equipment handle. The lower half of her face was the only part of her left exposed; the rest, armored and buckled and booted, seemed to be holding up much better than Edmund’s own ensemble. She looked like she wasn’t going anywhere. She looked like, if worst came to worst, she’d uppercut the storm herself.

  Her eyes caught his.

  All right, he mouthed.

  Her lips quirked in a faint smile. She gave him a thumbs-up.

  Behind her rushed the wall of dust. It was much closer now.

  Edmund turned back around, slowly. His hat rolled on the floor by his feet; he picked it up and put it on, trying not to look at the side mirror.

  Where was Istvan?

  “Rosales,” he said, “are you sure we need the truck?”

  “We need the truck,” confirmed Rosales, without turning his head. He nodded: the rapid up-down-up-down affirmation of a man who had other things on his mind. “We definitely need the truck.”

  “I don’t think we’re going fast enough, then,” said Edmund.

  “We’re going pretty fast,” said Rosales.

  “We are.”

  Rosales glanced at the rearview mirror. He paled. “Hey, Hour Thief, you think your girlfriend back there will–”

  “Not my girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, right, right. You think she’ll be OK if we try something?”

  “Probably.”

  “OK.” Rosales reached for the key in the ignition. “Don’t breathe too much.”

  Edmund sat up. “Wait, wha–”

  The key turned one notch beyond where it should have.

  Edmund found himself staring at the fossil tied to the keyring. Just a bit of bone gone to rock. Strange coils scrimshawed onto it.

  Back and forth it swung, twisting in the jolts that no longer came.

  Dust washed over them, the engine noise gone, grit and stone and bits of torn-up wire quieted to a clouded whisper that streamed through the cab like it and all its occupants weren’t there. Boulders tumbled gracefully to the earth around them, breaking to pieces. Grass whirled upwards in great rushing spirals. Topsoil followed, more and more of the earth blown away beneath them.

  Edmund could feel the dust whistling through his skin.

  What? he mouthed.

  Orange flashed along the storm front, the crack and whistle of something familiar echoing through the muffled quiet. Broken feathers whipped past. Lengths of barbed wire tumbled away and vanished into the dust.

  Edmund touched the window. “Istvan?”

  His voice emerged muted.

  A piece of wire caught on t
he mirror, winding around the frame as though seeking purchase before it, too, tore away and was gone.

  Another heartbeat and the front had passed them.

  The key turned back with a click.

  The engine roared to full strength… and the truck dropped at least two feet. When it hit the ground, it knocked Edmund’s hat off and did nothing for his tailbone, and when it took off with all its prior acceleration and almost skewed over onto its side before coming to a sudden halt, it threw him against the door.

  “Sorry!” called Rosales.

  Grace pounded on the back window.

  Edmund rubbed at the side of his head, devoutly wishing a vehicle had never been involved and trying to remember if he had any spare jackets left. Or pants. Or shoes. Or anything else. Maybe he should have done like with his hat and left it all in the truck.

  Something seemed to be smoking. The tires?

  What had happened to Istvan?

  Rosales rolled down his window. “Sorry!”

  Grace swung down out of the back. “Some warning would’ve been nice.”

  The Tornado Alley wizard shrugged. “No time.”

  Grace looked to Edmund.

  He held up his hands. “I didn’t know.”

  She sighed. “Look, I’ve got some more tranquilizers, but I can’t keep our new friend there out of it forever.” She took a step onto the wheel well to peer into the truck bed, then lowered herself back to window level. “Jeez, he’s like… he can’t even be sixteen yet.”

  Edmund rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Is this why you wanted to come, Grace?”

  “I’ve never heard of a Conduit this powerful,” she said.

  “You said you had theories. Would any of those happen to include a Conduit creating a superstorm and–”

  “Sustaining it,” said Rosales. “Not creating it. It wasn’t following the normal paths, but other than that it seemed like a regular storm to me.” He propped a hand on the steering wheel, watching the dust recede. “Without the kid I guess there was nothing to keep it together all the way out here.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” said Grace. “We have to get him back to Barrio Libertad.”

  Edmund put his hat back on. “Excuse me?”

  “What? Where else were you planning to put him?”

  Nowhere came to mind.

  Somewhere else. They could put the kid somewhere else. Somewhere not Barrio Libertad. Maybe the Demon’s Chamber could hold him – it had held Istvan, after all.

  This was his investigation. His mission. Grace wasn’t even supposed to have come.

  The mirror on his side seemed blown out of alignment. Edmund rolled down his window to adjust it.

  “In case you forgot, Eddie,” Grace continued, “I’m a Conduit, too. We’ve done research. Maybe we can–”

  Edmund jerked around. “Research, Grace?”

  “Of cour–”

  “Yes, of course you’ve done research. Of course. Seven years of it, and not a word to anyone. Is that how you got those gauntlets tailored, Grace? Is that how Diego’s always listening? What did you do, let him cut you open?”

  She opened her mouth. Closed it.

  Edmund pressed on, knowing he shouldn’t. “Grace, when we first met, you said you’d never let anyone dissect you.”

  She took hold of the window frame. Pushed down. The truck tilted, creaking. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know what I heard.”

  “No one,” she said, “cut me open.”

  She let go. The vehicle frame rocked back to an even keel. She turned around and climbed back into the truck bed.

  Rosales looked at the window frame. It had dents in it. “I think we should get back to headquarters,” he said, in a tone that suggested sudden, serious doubts about his traveling companions.

  Edmund crossed his arms. “I agree.”

  “I’ll drive.”

  “Thanks.”

  Rosales put the truck in gear. “No problem.”

  Edmund propped his elbow against the window as they started moving again, feeling sour and bruised and tired. He tasted grit in his teeth. He couldn’t spit. It wouldn’t be polite to spit.

  Where was Istvan? He should have been back by now. Complaining about his uniform, probably, and how Edmund didn’t get to his target on the first try, and about how he’d had to go all that way over a boring field to get back to them, and retorting with his own opinions whenever Grace said anything, and fussing needlessly but at least genuinely over Edmund’s scrapes and other minor injuries.

  It would have been easier with Istvan.

  “Seatbelt,” said Rosales.

  Edmund sighed. “Right.”

  He buckled up.

  * * *

  Barely aware, he drifted. Flashes of memory. Mist over fields.

  The storm had passed, now. Whatever strange force had torn him apart was gone. The boy. The Conduit. Kyra.

  Edmund had taken him. Edmund was there, still, a lingering disquiet, rich and graceful and familiar, passing further and further away every moment.

  So like someone else.

  War called. Battles stalemated on a mountain, waged up and down roads blasted into its peaks. Great doors trembled under siege. The dead slid down into smog-choked dust.

  Istvan followed. Drawn, inexorably, to the east.

  To Triskelion.

  * * *

  The door to Landsea flew open as they parked the truck.

  “It’s gone,” said Clark, running out to meet them. She waved a printed piece of paper. “The storm up and vanished! I knew you were supposed to be good, but…”

  She trailed off as Grace hoisted the kid out of the back.

  Edmund shut his door and walked around the tailgate, acutely aware of how he must look. Not quite a tiger attack, but close. “It’s never that easy.”

  Clark blinked at him.

  He tried a smile. “Had to get him down somehow.”

  “Wasn’t my idea,” said Rosales.

  Grace lay the kid on the ground, gently. She set a hand on his forehead. She was wearing her own circlet again, reset to its usual function of countering unnatural mental influence. An important function, given that she’d spent her entire career as Resistor Alpha fighting the Susurration.

  “All right?” asked Edmund.

  Grace sighed. She patted at her pockets and withdrew another silvery vial, twisting at it as she kneeled. “He won’t be if he wakes up here.”

  Clark peered into the cab. “Where’s your friend? The ghost?”

  Edmund’s smile faded, despite himself. He glanced back at the horizon. No Istvan.

  It had taken more than two hours to get back, and still no Istvan.

  He couldn’t have been hurt – Istvan was Istvan, after all – and he wouldn’t have run off, no matter what he’d said about Triskelion and the fighting there and his worries about losing himself. Again. Like he’d done for decades before he was chained.

  Edmund tried not to think about the flash of a knife in the dark, a forest littered with burning Russian tanks. “I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

  Better than the alternative, if it came to that. If he had been hurt, somehow, if the kid’s power extended to tearing apart an avatar of war itself…

  Clark frowned. “What happened?”

  “The boy’s a Conduit,” said Grace. She tucked the vial away. “He’s also Shattered.”

  “Shattered?”

  Grace shrugged. “We had a problem back East with a mind-controlling extradimensional parasite called the Susurration – tried to swamp the Earth in eternal peace and happiness, stagnate civilization and destroy free will, that kind of thing. It managed to mess up a lot of people before we put it away. Kind of a final middle finger to human decency.” She brushed at the duct tape holding the kid’s jacket together. “His mind’s all mixed up with a thousand other people. He doesn’t know who or what he is. That’s what ‘Shattered’ means. That was him, directing the storm.
”

  Clark crouched beside her, hesitantly. “I didn’t know a Conduit could do that.”

  “There’s a lot we’re trying to figure out,” said Grace. She smoothed the jacket collar, then stood. “Poor kid,” she added.

  There was something more behind that statement – something in her eyes, the pause between explanation and opinion – but Edmund knew better than to ask. All Conduits had manifested simultaneously. A single day and night in 2012. The start of the Wizard War, when Shokat Anoushak’s ritual sacrifice of Mexico City shattered reality, and the world as it had been along with it.

  The circumstances hadn’t been ideal.

  Grace, at least, was already a grown woman when it happened. For a kid – a little kid, at the time…

  Edmund found himself dreading the inevitable next meeting with Mercedes.

  “Grace,” he said. “You don’t know what happened up there. You don’t know what he can do. You don’t know how long he’s been active or where he came from – and you still want to take him to Barrio Libertad?”

  “Better than the alternative,” said Grace.

  Edmund leaned against the tailgate, biting back a sharp retort. She always had to use that wording. Throw it back in his face. “Grace, Barrio Libertad is home to well over a million people now. Putting a Conduit like that in the middle of them doesn’t seem the least bit dangerous to you?”

  She jerked a thumb at her breastplate. “Eddie, I’m Resistor Alpha.”

  “Titles don’t solve everything.”

  “They’ll understand. Besides, you know what Diego can do. We’ll take care of him.”

  Edmund wondered if the vault could hold a storm. If the Demon’s Chamber would be a good place for a kid to wake up. If the Twelfth Hour had anyone who could handle the kind of trauma that Shattering caused.

  Istvan, maybe.

  Wherever he was.

  “Clark, Rosales,” he began, “Landsea wouldn’t happen to have anywhere to house a… person of interest like this, would it?”

  “There’s an old missile silo across the state line, I guess,” Clark said. She folded a corner of the paper over itself. “It’s full of… well, missiles, but…”

  Rosales, who had been inspecting the dents left in his truck, coughed.

  Edmund sighed. “Right.”