Immortal Architects

by Paige Orwin

  “You’re a… priest?”

  “I am Banner-Bearer, Lord.”

  “Oh, good heavens,” Istvan said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Edmund sat at a round table in an equally round, airy room which was covered with murals. He tried not to look at them. He kept his hands folded. Before him was a false window that looked into a garden with climbing vines and tropical birds, silent but full of simulated motion. He’d been in here before. The design on the ceiling was a circle of interlocking hands. He knew that, at any moment, the floor might move, or the magic that kept him alive might suddenly fade and die. Diego could do that. Just because he hadn’t yet didn’t mean he wouldn’t.

  The nine current members of the Barrio Libertad’s People’s Council sat evenly spaced around the perimeter, consulting the surface before them. Occasionally they exchanged brief mutters. None of them seemed to hold a clear leadership position over the others – Diego, always watching, already filled that post – and none of them seemed pleased to see Edmund, despite the fact that he’d once saved them from being forced to watch the mass murder of the half-million people that now formed the majority of their populace. They probably had been just as pleased to see who Grace had brought home.

  Kyra. Kyra Stewart.

  They were voting now to see what would be done with the kid, which they wouldn’t have had to do in the first place if Istvan hadn’t done whatever he did to the Demon’s Chamber and Grace hadn’t butted in where she didn’t belong.

  Edmund maintained a tight, pleasant smile. The balcony level, crowded with spectators, remained mercifully quiet.

  As Mercedes instructed, he’d begun by reminding the People’s Council of the scope of their own population: the largest, by far, in Big East. If Kyra somehow got out of control, those people would be at risk. Diego was powerful, sure, but they couldn’t rely on him for everything. They had to act on their own judgement, and, regardless of Kyra’s age or condition, the kid was the kind of threat best kept far away from major population centers. He belonged somewhere he wouldn’t pose a danger, kept under constant watch by an agent that couldn’t be accidentally killed. Somewhere secure and, above all, remote.

  Somewhere like Niagara.

  The Twelfth Hour had been secretly working on getting such a place operational all this time, keeping quiet to avoid anyone – or anything – taking advantage during reconstruction. The Demon’s Chamber had been an unfortunate stop-gap and nothing more. It was after the end of the world, after all. Edmund had done the best he could with what he had. Now that Niagara was ready, the Twelfth Hour could handle people like Kyra properly, and they were more than willing to assist Barrio Libertad.

  After all, the fortress had never asked for this. Grace Wu was never officially dispatched to deal with the storm in Tornado Alley. The problem was a Twelfth Hour problem first and foremost.

  The lies ate at him less than the truth.

  He knew that the birds in the murals were watching.

  Finally, Councilor Rothchild slid her hand across the unseen display on the table before her. “The vote is clear,” she said. “Resistor Alpha acted on her own initiative to secure Kyra Stewart from a foreign power, knowingly bringing a significant public threat into our city. Such an action was never within the scope of her duties.”

  Edmund nodded. A bit legalistic, but workable.

  The councilor went on. “Additionally, we have a vested interest in maintaining mutually beneficial cooperation with the Twelfth Hour. We would like to reiterate that the recent distribution of brochures in your jurisdiction was the doing of a splinter group not affiliated with the People’s Council.”

  A splinter group. Right. He’d believe that when they turned the perpetrators over and stopped doing their damnedest to replace the Twelfth Hour’s curation and peacekeeping duties with artifact destruction and propaganda.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “However,” Rothchild continued, “due to Kyra Stewart’s treatment at your hands, we cannot in good conscience release him to you.”

  Edmund spent a moment to gather his thoughts. He could afford that now. He could cheat to maintain his composure, to come up with an on-the-nose and compelling counterargument, and no one would ever know.

  He didn’t have a compelling counterargument. “I understand,” he said.

  “Let us remind you…” began an ancient black man sitting across the table.

  Great. Edmund tried not to be too obvious about squinting at the man’s placard. Councilor Durand. They’d probably planned for him to speak.

  Durand held up a withered finger. “First, you knowingly took a Shattered boy somewhere you knew he couldn’t be treated.” Another finger. “Second, you kept that boy in a forced coma for several days. Third, you left him open to attack by one of your associates.”

  “Actually–”

  “Let me finish. Fourth, you physically restrained him in an underground stone chamber with no amenities. Fifth…” Councilor Durand shook his head. “Mr Templeton, I don’t care who you are. You put a child – a black child – in shackles, and you ought to be ashamed for not knowing your history.”

  “I was there for the Civil Rights movement,” said Edmund.

  “Not if you could bring yourself to do that, you weren’t.” Durand folded hands that trembled. A hummingbird whirred around its perch on the seat beside him, its feathers shimmering iridescent blue. “The Twelfth Hour might not have the facilities, Mr Templeton, but at Barrio Libertad, we can always afford luxuries like basic human decency.”

  Edmund looked down at his own hands. He was probably older than Durand. He’d slept maybe three hours last night. He had no idea where Istvan was or what he might be doing. Mercedes had been so sure that the People’s Council would give Kyra up. Things had changed, after the Wizard War. Times were hard. You did what you had to do.

  Unless you were Barrio Libertad. They were the richest enclave in Big East. They could afford whatever they wanted. Edmund wouldn’t have done what he did if the Twelfth Hour had any other options. If Grace hadn’t been there.

  He wasn’t any good at politics. He wasn’t racist. He was doing the best he could. This was Grace’s fault for pressuring him.

  His phone went off like a submarine dive alarm. The People’s Council stared at him. He found the “off” button and held it down. “Sorry.”

  “We are finished here,” a rasping voice replied, somehow carried along in the hum of wings. “Diego will show you the way out.”

  “Right,” he said. That was it. That was all. If something happened to Barrio Libertad, at least he couldn’t be blamed.

  He gathered himself and stood. “Thank you for having me.”

  “Of course,” said Councilor Rothchild.

  Edmund put his hat on, turned, and strode from the chamber. The doors opened at the slightest touch: a courtesy, maybe, from the one who controlled it. That was how Diego made his presence known, usually. Small reminders that you were watched.

  Edmund switched his phone back on as he descended the broad flight of steps outside. Strings of lights hung between Spanish-styled colonial buildings in a broad plaza far below. More ran upwards in an elaborate web that lit tier after massive circular tier of brightly painted shanties, streets so steep that they mingled seamlessly with stairways. Fields sheltered under transparent canopies. Gantry cranes shuttled boxes from one level to another. Cable cars slid precariously along paired wires that dangled hundreds of feet in the air. Above it all rose fortress walls, their buttresses the size of neighborhoods, reducing the sky to a grey afterthought above the half-closed roof and the dead horror that clung to it.

  Most of the buildings looked to be made of wood, plaster, and corrugated steel, built piecemeal and worn with hard use. Wires creaked and swayed. Rust spotted the enormous wheels and bearings that supported the roof. It seemed like it might all tumble down at any moment.

  It was the most advanced city in Big East. Maybe anywhere. Maybe ever.<
br />
  “Missed Call,” read the warning on his phone screen, which wasn’t a sentence he ever thought he’d deal with in the Fifties. It listed Janet Justice’s number.

  He dialed back. What did she want? If it was about the kid, he wasn’t having it. “Hello, this is Edmund Templeton. Sorry about the delay, I was in a–”

  “Edmund!” came Istvan’s distinctive accent.

  Edmund ducked.

  A flurry of dark wings and wire shot past him. The specter quickly corrected course, wheeling around above Barrio Libertad’s lower tiers, and landed on the stairway beside him with a crash like thunder. “Edmund, you missed it!”

  “I was trying to take a call,” Edmund informed him. The line had gone dead; whatever Janet had to say, she wasn’t saying it now. He dropped the phone back into his pocket. “What are you doing? Why are you here?”

  “I had to find you,” Istvan replied. “I went to the parade, and the feast, and then Niagara, and then I came back and you weren’t at home, and you were so angry the last time I waited for you, so I flew about for a few hours and then just a little while ago I asked Miss Justice where you were, and she knew how to find you by your telephone, and so I came straightaway.”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, Edmund, you ought to have stayed!” The specter threw himself back against the railing beside him, far too close for comfort. “They had fires, and food, and I couldn’t eat it so you could have had my portion, and–”

  “Istvan, can this wait?”

  “–I’ve started a religion, as well, and–”

  The weight in Edmund’s chest hit rock-bottom. Oh, hell. “You what?”

  “Lucy thinks I’m some sort of god-king, can you imagine?” The specter laughed. “Says I ought to conquer everything, and–”

  “Later,” Edmund said, quickly. He glanced around: the walls were listening, always, and whatever they heard, they told Grace. “Istvan, we can talk about this later.”

  “But–”

  “Later.”

  A line of blue light appeared beneath their feet. It glowed through a thin layer of what had seemed to be concrete moments earlier and now more resembled glass. That was the cue. Edmund hoped that Istvan hadn’t said too much already.

  “What’s that?” Istvan asked. “Where are we going?”

  Edmund followed the path down the stairs. “Out.”

  Istvan trailed after him. “Lucy asked why I put up with you at all, you know. She said that you order me about, and don’t listen, and that while you’re a fine enough warrior, you’re a poor statesman and rely far too much on your reputation. You oughtn’t have imprisoned a god-king, either.”

  Edmund walked faster. “We’re not talking about this right now.”

  The ghost kept up easily, flitting from stair to stair. “Do you think I ought to take some sort of revenge?” he asked. “I thought I might have deserved being chained up, but what if I didn’t? What should I do?”

  This wasn’t good. If Istvan returned to the way he’d been, hopping from war to war, that would be bad enough. With some kind of mercenary cult backing him up, putting ideas into his head…

  Edmund pulled open the door to a cable car, focusing on the faint creak of hinges that no doubt had been added for the aesthetic. Istvan was still drunk, he told himself. The specter wouldn’t be asking questions like that if he wasn’t drunk. He’d come to his senses, eventually. Istvan had been the one to argue against violence when they’d dealt with the Susurration: he wasn’t like this, not at heart.

  “I can’t kill you, after all,” the specter continued, skipping after him. “I’ve tried already, and while I suppose I could again, and it would be marvelous, I love you far too much to ever risk it. Lucy said that I ought to renounce attachments, but I’m not a Buddhist, Edmund – I’m certainly not doing that.”

  He swung in through one of the windows rather than use the door and leaned back shoulder to shoulder beside Edmund – again – with the contented air of an undead horror who had murdered possibly thousands of people over his long career and was, for the moment, perfectly fine with that. He seemed completely oblivious to the stench of chlorine filling the cable car.

  “Have you any ideas?” he asked.

  Drunk, Edmund reminded himself. Very drunk.

  “Not at the moment,” he said.

  Istvan sighed. “Well, do tell me if you come up with something. I’m not about to go after the Magister, Grace is all full of lightning, and it seems terribly petty to kill Beldam, even if she doesn’t like me at all.”

  “Very petty,” agreed Edmund. He kept his voice level.

  No one was touching his cat.

  * * *

  Edmund didn’t want to talk about Triskelion. He didn’t want to talk about Lucy, either, or ending spirits, or the statue in the mountain, or how careful Istvan had been to leave him people with enough time to take. The man wasn’t interested in hearing about the feast, or Kasimir’s plans, either.

  “You can’t pretend that nothing ever happened,” Istvan told him.

  “I’m not,” said Edmund, but he was. He couldn’t hide it. Not from Istvan. Oh, it was wonderful, the guilt. It cut through Barrio Libertad’s usual flat rage in the most pleasing way, like a chaser.

  They reached the elevator; a thunderous, industrial thing with flashing scarlet caution lights. When the doors closed, Edmund went directly to the far end and put his hands in his pockets, leaning his head back against the wall. Istvan followed him. Edmund edged away along the rail.

  Istvan humored him. It was odd for him to be here in the first place: Edmund hated Barrio Libertad. Istvan hadn’t seen him inside in months and months, not since they had dealt with the Susurration.

  “Why were you here, anyhow?” he asked.

  “Magister’s orders,” came the curt reply.

  The elevator rumbled. The floor jerked and then began moving smoothly upwards.

  “But you’re Director, now,” said Istvan. “You can refuse.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Yes, you could. You’re the Hour Thief, aren’t you? You can do anything you like, and no one can stop you.”

  “Istvan–”

  “Unless, of course, that skull on the bookshelf in the Magister’s office does do something, after all, in which case perhaps Magister Hahn could stop you, but you don’t know for certain that it does anything, hm?” Istvan edged close enough to elbow him. “Have you ever tried testing it?”

  “No.”

  “What were you ordered to do, then? It isn’t about Grace, is it?”

  Edmund hunched his shoulders. “Kyra.”

  “Oh!” Istvan had almost forgotten about him: the storm-bringer, the one who’d torn him apart. Quite a feat, that. They might have to see if he could do that again or if it were an odd fluke – it would be good to know, either way. “Are we getting him back, then?” he asked. “We had only begun talking when Grace came in and exploded my ribcage and took him away. I was going to get him out, you know – I wasn’t hurting him, not on purpose, and he was looking for wizards, Edmund. Did you know that he’s running from a Shokat Anoushak cult?”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Edmund.

  “She really is terrible,” Istvan continued. “Grace. She never asks about anything before charging into it, all lightning. I’m glad that you two are finished.”

  The wizard stared at the opposite wall and said nothing. He was always irritated when it came to discussing Grace, for no real reason: it had been years since their affair, after all, even if she had faked her death and then he had only discovered it a matter of months ago. They had only gotten together because of the Wizard War. They weren’t actually compatible in any way.

  “She wasn’t good for you,” Istvan added. “And you knew it wouldn’t last, anyhow – that’s how you’ve always gone about things. You’ve never been in a committed relationship once in your life.”

  Edmund gritted his teeth.

  Istvan sighed. “A
t least not that you–”

  The elevator stopped. Something crashed beyond the walls.

  Surely they weren’t at ground level already? It had only been a matter of moments.

  Istvan looked around. “Edmund, you were leaving, weren’t you?”

  The wizard tensed. He was holding his pocket watch now. “I was.”

  Nothing opened. Nothing started moving again. Istvan checked to be certain that the door hadn’t changed places somehow. It hadn’t. He stepped to the other side of the elevator – what if the floor opened into a chute? – and waited.

  Nothing.

  “Mr Espinoza,” he called to the walls and their paint-and-paper announcements, “Edmund did say that he was leaving, and if you mean to keep him, you and I will have words, I promise you. Don’t you know who I am?”

  “Wait,” ordered the accented voice of Diego Escarra Espinoza.

  “For what?” Istvan demanded. “We have important things to do! We’re important people!”

  Edmund pressed himself against one of the walls. His eyes darted around the elevator, uncertainty flowing smoothly into worry, sweet panic clawing at the periphery.

  “Don’t worry,” Istvan told him. “If Diego takes away your magic and kills you, he’ll have me to reckon with.” He set a hand against the wall and tried to push through it. The metal remained stubbornly solid. Hm. A new form of reckoning would be in order, one that didn’t rely on cutting his way in.

  Perhaps the battlefield…

  He stepped back. He knew it was out there – the wastes, the echoes, the forcible imprinting of the past on the present, where shells fell from empty skies – and if Lucy were correct, well, he was more than only himself, wasn’t he?

  “Edmund,” he began, “you won’t believe this, but I’m terribly dangerous.”

  The wizard recoiled. “Istvan, whatever you’re thinking, don’t–”

  Another crash came from beyond, followed by a slow churning – like gears crunching against one another, drawing closer, wheeling something into place. It was coming from the opposite side.