Immortal Architects

by Paige Orwin

  The circlet. Had Grace Wu used that circlet on him?

  The angles between pillar and chains and ceiling curved sickeningly. A stone wrenched itself free of the wall, wind of a different sort whistling from beyond. A blackness–

  A blackness that watched–

  Istvan looked hurriedly away. Kyra was going to bring the roof down before he ever broke those chains. He was going to bring down the Demon’s Chamber, and Istvan had no idea what lent it its power.

  Not even the flowers had worked. Not even the flowers…

  Istvan darted for the boy, catching hold of hanging chains as the wind swept him sideways, beating wings he’d meant to keep hidden. Smoke seeped from the cracks in the floor.

  Kyra saw him. He tried to scream again. He choked, drawing breath in a gasping stutter. He pulled away as far as he could. Tears streamed into his collar.

  Istvan clung to the pillar. “I want to help you,” he shouted over the crack and rumble of more stones falling, “I’m here to help you. I’m sorry it happened like this, I truly am. I’m Dracula. I’m… I…” He cursed. “I’m Doctor Czernin. You’re Kyra, aren’t you? Kyra? We talked, didn’t we?”

  He couldn’t hide his own thunder. His bloodied hands. The feathers torn from him, barbed wire coiling down the chains to wrap around one of Kyra’s wrists.

  It was too much. Istvan knew it was all too much.

  The light snapped back to normal. The wind fell, salt and mortar pattering like rain. The boy collapsed, breath heaving, wrists raw, shaking in convulsive spasms of anguish that tore through his whole body.

  “What did I do?” he sobbed. “What did I do?”

  Istvan found purchase on the floor again. He didn’t dare look for fallen stones. He wished he didn’t feel so emboldened by the boy’s terror – that he wasn’t tempted to shout again, to posture, to laugh – of course he frightened him; he frightened everyone! – and he stopped himself from touching him even though that may have helped because it likely wouldn’t.

  “You didn’t,” he said. “You haven’t done anything.”

  Kyra hunched his shoulders as though trying to huddle inwards; the chains brought him up short. He said nothing more.

  He wept.

  A cold wind hissed across the stones.

  Istvan stood, locked in place, not knowing whether to go to him or stay away from him or to depart the room entirely. He folded his wings; they dissipated in wisps of gas and wire, streamers drawn to the gaps in the walls before fading.

  The high security vault lay in a realm beyond the world, carved into a space larger than the whole of the Twelfth Hour and the city that held it. Dead bone the size of continents, drifting. Was the Demon’s Chamber the same? Was something beyond it?

  Could that something emerge? Could it slither through those holes, and–

  They couldn’t stay in here.

  Istvan drew his knife.

  A clatter: Kyra gasped a strangled breath.

  Istvan held up a hand, knowing the gesture to be less reassuring than he hoped. “I’m going to get you out of here,” he said. He flipped the knife around, blade downwards.

  The nearest chain burned when he touched it. He cursed.

  Kyra jerked away. Dust sifted from the ceiling. Salt whirled across the floor in scattered arcs.

  Istvan turned the chain, gingerly, and slid his blade into the center of one of the links. He’d never had leverage before to try cutting them. He wasn’t sure if it would work.

  “Did I hurt someone?” asked Kyra. The boy’s voice was hoarse. “Is that why I’m here?”

  “You’re here because people are foolish and afraid,” Istvan replied, more harshly than he’d intended. Yes, Kyra had torn him apart. But the boy had looked as though he hadn’t eaten or slept in days, and he’d been worried about a cult. He’d been more than willing to speak! He hadn’t tried to attack until Istvan had startled him. He knew Istvan, somehow, thanks to the Susurration, and they had nearly had a pleasant conversation. It could have gone so much better.

  Istvan shifted his grip on the chain. “You haven’t done anything,” he repeated, “and it isn’t fair, and I’m sorry it ever happened. You won’t be staying.” A thought struck him. “Er – where are you from?”

  Kyra mumbled something.

  “Pardon?”

  “Rochester,” came the quiet response.

  Istvan had no idea where that was. “We’re in New Haven,” he said. “Massachusetts. Is Rochester closer to that, or to Kansas?”

  Kyra shook his head, an almost imperceptible gesture. “It’s in New York. The state, not the city. Everyone always gets that wrong. It’s on Lake Ontario.”

  Istvan tried to remember what went where on the map. New York City was near enough, and it did lie within a state of the same name, which stretched over to the Great Lakes, which were…

  …part of the spellscars, now.

  Rochester would have been consumed when the Wizard War broke. Either Kyra hadn’t been there at the time, or he wasn’t truly from that city at all. The Susurration had gripped him, and – ever well-meaning, in its blind, cruel way – the Susurration could rewrite a person’s past as thoroughly as it deemed necessary for their happiness. Kyra would know only what it had decided to “gift” him.

  Did he remember the Wizard War? Did he know that his memory of the past eight years was a pleasant fiction? His life, his home, his family… not only gone, but never real?

  Why had he been in Tornado Alley?

  Istvan shot a glance at the edge of the chamber, the missing bricks, the hissing from beyond the world, and then hastily looked away again. Oh, they couldn’t wait any longer. “Well, Mr Kyra, I–”

  “Miss.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The boy nodded at him. “Miss Kyra.”

  Istvan stared at him. He stared back.

  Shattered. How much of Shokat Anoushak’s memory did he carry? How many lives now swam in his head, male and female both? How long would it take him to recover?

  “Well,” Istvan finally said. He fixed his blade more firmly into the chain link, and braced himself. “I do need to get you out of here. I’m going to try cutting this, all right?”

  Kyra gritted his teeth. “OK.”

  Istvan drew a false breath – he could do this, he’d sliced apart tank armor before, somehow – then tore at the link as hard as he could. His blade bit into it with an unnatural shriek. Sparks showered across the floor. The chain’s calligraphy flared into burning scarlet, the hiss of the wind louder, the urge to look back at the gaps in the walls more powerful than ever–

  He was scratching the iron. It was faint. It was working.

  “Wait,” gasped Kyra. “Wait.”

  Istvan paused, gasping a bit himself. “What?”

  Kyra looked at him, eyes wide. “It’s magic. This stuff is magic.”

  “Er, yes, that’s–”

  “It’s actually magic! You ain’t never said you had wizards, Doctor Czernin! You gotta tell them! She’s coming back, OK? Our Lady. Shokat Anoushak. They figured it out, and she’s coming back.” He twisted around, trying to get a closer look at the calligraphy on the chains. “I was looking for wizards,” he continued, “I… I just got lost, is all. They got her last time, right? They can do it again!”

  Istvan hesitated. No cult he knew of had ever come close to such a feat as resurrection, and while Kyra seemed sincere, the boy was also quite clearly confused. “That’s all very well,” Istvan told him, “but this chamber might collapse and I would rather we not be here, first.”

  Kyra closed his eyes. “OK. OK, do it.”

  Istvan nodded. He set his blade against the scratches and drew it across with another grating shriek. Deeper. It was working. “Hold on,” he told Kyra, and then he began in earnest, sawing at the metal, the flesh of his gripping hand burned away, bones blackening, salt whirling around him, and all the while he tried to ignore the strangled keening of a boy trying not to scream.

 
It was working. It was working.

  The door burst.

  Splinters sailed away from its upper hinges. A kick twisted it off the lower ones. A blurred figure of red and yellow hurtled through the gap, electricity crackling around her armored fists.

  “The chains,” Istvan started. They’re metal, they’re conductive, please, be–

  Grace Wu hit him like a thunderbolt.

  Everything went white. He dropped his knife. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t think of anything but the mistake he’d made, long ago, morphine-addled and fast-weakened and hopeless, with those pagan tales and that generator. Electricity was the future. Electricity could do anything. Electricity could let a man talk to God.

  He’d burned to death.

  “Get away from the kid!” Grace shouted.

  Istvan found a wall. Cold winds whistled through him.

  Other people arrived, two or three of them. They milled around the pillar.

  Istvan sat, or tried to. He seemed to be missing most of his ribcage. Blown apart. He prodded gingerly at where his heart should have been, bleeding mist and poison. There was barbed wire wrapped around his spine.

  “Get him out,” he managed to say. “Find a wizard.”

  “Found one,” replied the Magister.

  Istvan looked up, still clutching at his ruined chest. Kyra hung motionless in his bonds, the others standing around him, steam wisping from the chains. His head lolled sideways. Burns, bubbled and raw, stretched across his neck.

  Grace knelt beside him, tucking a silvery vial back into her belt.

  The Magister moved to block his view. She carried a leather bag over one shoulder. “Thank you, Doctor Czernin, but we won’t be requiring your services.”

  “But–”

  “I’ve notified the infirmary and help will be here soon. The members of your staff are competent, aren’t they?”

  Istvan coughed. He put a hand to the floor, trying to stand, and touched fabric. Stitched flowers, spread in a field with a small cottage atop a hill.

  The Magister eyed the artwork. She bent to pick it up. “I’ll see that he gets this,” she said, folding the cloth and tucking it under an arm. “Now go.”

  Istvan stood, twisting his fingers through his own reforming ribs. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him.”

  Magister Hahn turned from him. “Ms Wu,” she said, “I’m going to need some space.”

  “I’m going to need some answers,” snapped Grace.

  The Magister produced a key of rusted iron. “Space first.”

  “And what do gerbils have to do with anything, anyway?”

  Istvan departed like the shade he was.

  Chapter Twelve

  Edmund wasn’t home.

  It was three-twenty in the morning, according to the clock on the wizard’s kitchen wall. The box of documents sat on the couch in the living room. A stack of dirty dishes rested in the sink. The table bore a half-assembled chessboard, its pieces mixed with plastic battleships, a paper zeppelin taped to the ceiling. Beldam hissed from somewhere in the bathroom. A bottle of gin lay beside the bed, open and emptied into the carpet, abandoned where it had fallen.

  The man’s ledger lay open on his desk.

  Istvan switched on a lamp. Each page was laid out in columns, notated in increasingly shaky handwriting until the latest: little more than a scrawl, pressed hard enough to bleed through the paper.

  “Some time.” “A few moments.” “A little while.”

  He’d gone as far as Chicago. He was ranging over a wider area than he ever had.

  He wasn’t here.

  Istvan had no idea where to find him.

  It shouldn’t have mattered. This was all Edmund’s fault. If he hadn’t put the boy – put Kyra – in the Demon’s Chamber, if he hadn’t assumed the very worst, if he hadn’t made a habit of treating other people like tools, like weapons, like…

  Istvan slapped the ledger closed. “Vampire,” he told it.

  If only it were Edmund who craved blood.

  Istvan sat on the bed, fuming.

  * * *

  Edmund got back home just as the sun began to rise. He had the presence of mind to hang his hat on its hook and take off his cape; past that, he could handle later. Sleep first. Not enough time for anything else.

  Not enough time for anything.

  He meandered down the hall to the bedroom and pushed open the door.

  A pale figment rose from the foot of the bed.

  Edmund yelped. He slammed the door.

  Bloodstains blossomed across the wood, the grain gone muddy and brittle, bullet holes punched through it without any sign of the bullets–

  Istvan stepped through it. “Good morning to you, too,” he said. His skull and jawbone grinned visibly beneath his skin. His eyes flickered between anger and empty sockets. “Ought I leave, then?”

  Edmund caught his breath. “Istvan, you’re doing it again.”

  The specter glanced at one of his own hands, bloodied and skeletal, then back to Edmund. “It bothers you?”

  “It bothers me when you’re in my house, Istvan. In my room.”

  Istvan stepped past him, trailing gas and thunder.

  Edmund blocked the hallway. “What were you doing in my room?”

  Barbed wire looped around his pant leg. “I was waiting for you,” said Istvan. He touched the wall beside the bathroom. A line of bullet holes arced across it. “I didn’t want to roam the house, and scare the cat.”

  Edmund tried to shake the wire away. It clung stubbornly, opening phantom tears in the fabric. He gave up and pushed the bedroom door back open.

  He did not need this right now. He could not do this right now.

  “I’m going to bed,” he announced.

  Istvan turned, a whirl of rotten feathers. “Oh, yes,” he snapped. “Run. You’ve always time for that, don’t you?”

  Edmund took a deep breath. He’d gotten into a fistfight with Istvan once and it hadn’t worked and it hadn’t solved anything. “I’m going to bed,” he repeated.

  He stepped into his room and closed the door, glancing around to make sure everything was where he’d left it. Bed, ledger, bottle…

  He picked up the bottle.

  “And when you wake?” came Istvan’s voice from beyond the door. “Where will you go, then? Because I’ve thought of that already, what we ought to do, and after what’s happened I think you might agree.”

  “Later,” said Edmund.

  He put the bottle on the nightstand. He’d have to figure out how to clean the carpet when he got the chance. It was going to smell.

  Poison rolled under the door, pale wisps seeping through holes that weren’t real. “The Demon’s Chamber is broken, Edmund,” said Istvan. “Kyra will have to be moved elsewhere, immediately – and I know where we can put him.” Barbed wire coiled up the bedstand, flashing bloody. “Edmund, I know where you can get all the time you need.”

  The lamp was on.

  Edmund hadn’t left the lamp on.

  And beside it, pulled closer to the edge of the desk–

  He spun. “You went through my ledger.”

  “You left it open,” came the reply.

  “You went through my ledger!”

  Istvan brushed through the door as though it were a curtain. “And you,” he said, broken feathers coalescing from the mists, “are at the end of your wits!”

  Edmund slid the ledger further behind him. Istvan wouldn’t have even noticed it if he’d remembered to close it, but even if he had left it open, Istvan shouldn’t have been poking through it. It wasn’t his business.

  None of this was his business.

  This wasn’t his house.

  “Istvan, did I say you could come in?”

  Wingtips brushed opposite walls. “You can’t stop me.”

  Edmund grinned a tight smile. “That eager?”

  Istvan drew up short. His hands trembled, then curled into fists. His features flickered, avatar to man and b
ack again.

  “Didn’t think so,” said Edmund.

  Istvan turned, wire tangling across the carpet. “I’m going to Triskelion at noon today,” he said. “I’m going to contact Lord Kasimir and break that siege. If you want time, Edmund, you can rip it from the defenders before I kill them.”

  A wingbeat – artillery flashing through poison – and he was gone.

  Edmund made it to the bathroom before he threw up.

  * * *

  He didn’t want to risk the crowds again. He didn’t want to be stared at, or interrogated, or asked what to do, and he couldn’t handle the day as anything other than the Hour Thief, which left only so many options. Edmund paced the bluffs above his house, steering clear of the pagoda out of early morning courtesy. The fishing boats had already launched. His phone still worked.

  He punched in a number and waited for the other end to pick up.

  “Mr Templeton,” said Mercedes.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” he demanded.

  “Would you have answered?”

  “Mercedes, I hate to say it, but you seem to have forgotten who you’re talking to. I’ve answered since before the Twelfth Hour had a telephone installed. I’ve dedicated more years to the cabal than–”

  “Whose years, Mr Templeton?”

  He briefly considered throwing the phone off the bluffs. Watch it tumble. “Don’t.”

  “You were on patrol,” she said, “we both know that.”

  “I would have answered, Mercedes.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He turned his pocket watch over in his other hand. “You’re wrong.”

  The line fell silent, and for a moment Edmund could only hear his own breathing, the waves on the rocks, the birds. He would have answered. He took the phone everywhere he went, just for that reason. He might not have answered immediately, and he might have had the contraption off at the time, but that was what voice mail was for.

  No one wanted to bother with voice mail anymore.

  He would have answered.

  “Barrio Libertad,” said Mercedes, her tone acid, “has kindly extended the offer to house our young Conduit for the time being. Temporarily. As a gesture of goodwill.”