Immortal Architects

by Paige Orwin

  Istvan turned. “Ah! There we are!”

  The clunk of a latch. The elevator trembled. Blue lights scribbled themselves across the wall, outlining sketched details: a blinking indicator above two large panels, a pair of circular windows, a warning to watch one’s step, a wash of paint that faded from blue to striped red and yellow and then ceased to glow at all.

  The new doors opened.

  Kyra flashed a wide grin. “Dr Czernin!”

  Words fled Istvan’s tongue.

  The boy was tall. Much taller than Istvan. It hadn’t been nearly so obvious while he was shackled, or floating. He looked somewhat healthier than before, but still thin to the point of starvation. Circular prongs pressed against each of his temples, etched with silver detailing, attached to a milky-white band that vanished into his roughly-braided mass of gravity-defying hair. Burns marked his neck and wrists.

  He stepped into the elevator from a small elevator of his own, a floor-length red skirt over black leggings swirling in his wake.

  “I ain’t staying,” he said. “I know they wanna keep me, but they ain’t listening to me about Shokat Anoushak and there ain’t nothing wrong with me and the AI – Mr Espinoza – says he don’t never keep anyone against their will.” He squinted through Istvan. “Who’s that guy?”

  Edmund looked away.

  “Cool hat,” said Kyra.

  “‘Don’t ever,’” muttered Edmund. “It’s ‘don’t ever.’”

  Istvan stepped sideways so the boy wouldn’t be looking through him. Dreadfully impolite, looking through people. “Why are you wearing a dress?”

  Kyra grabbed hold of the elevator rail. “They incinerated my other stuff,” he said. “They didn’t even ask – they just took it and burned it.” He brushed at the fabric. “This looks OK, though, right?”

  “It might, on a woman,” said Istvan.

  Kyra stared down at him a moment, something faltering behind his gaze. The boy’s aspect was still faint, scattered, difficult to make out properly. Any procedures Barrio Libertad might have done to treat his condition didn’t seem to have worked. Even they couldn’t cure the Shattered in a matter of days.

  “I am, though,” he said. “I told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “Miss Kyra, remember? When you were trying to get me out of that… that dungeon, at the Twelfth Hour.” He rubbed at his wrists, and the burns that still marked them. “That place is messed up,” he added. “I hope there’s some other wizards we can talk to.”

  The elevator began moving again. Its smaller counterpart receded downwards, its doorway already melting back into blank metal.

  Istvan rubbed at his own wrists. “Actually–”

  “We’re with the Twelfth Hour,” said Edmund.

  “You are the Twelfth Hour,” Istvan corrected him.

  “I am not.”

  Kyra stared at them. The taste could have been dismay, or surprise, or disgust; some mixture of all three, perhaps, filtered through alien experiences and muddled beyond easy recognition. It was like trying to sift between the reactions of a dozen different people, mired in the rage of Barrio Libertad, to boot. “You’re what?”

  “I’m–” Edmund began.

  “This is Edmund Templeton,” said Istvan. “The Hour Thief, he calls himself.” He threw an arm around the other man’s shoulders, a wild feeling gripping him: a recklessness, an opportunity. “He’s the one who put you in chains, just as he did to me. The same ones, even. Isn’t that something?”

  Kyra shot a look at the ceiling, or perhaps one of the elevator’s upper corners. He edged away. “Uh,” he said.

  “Twenty years,” Istvan added. “Twenty years down there. You’re lucky – you only stayed five days or so, and you had the best doctor in the world to mind you.”

  “I said I was sorry,” muttered Edmund.

  “Oh, I know. But you can always say it again.” Istvan grinned at the wizard: his discomfort, his shame, his impotent anger at being caught out and being unable to defend himself; Istvan, at least, had a proven record of massacre, while Kyra had nothing of the sort. It was wonderful. Oh, it was almost a shame the Demon’s Chamber was broken, now, and couldn’t be used for further abuse.

  Almost.

  Istvan turned back to Kyra, the shadow of wings flickering in the air. “I’ve been considering revenge, you know,” he told him. “Would you like to help me plan it?”

  Kyra swallowed. He looked as though he were trying to sink through the wall himself, solid or not, dress and all. “You’re not Dr Czernin,” he said.

  Istvan tilted his head. His surname was far from common, here. He was reasonably sure that he was unmistakable. “Oh?”

  “You’re not the same guy,” Kyra said. “You can’t be the same guy. I… I remember…” His eyes flickered from Istvan to Edmund to Istvan again, and every so often upwards. Perhaps seeking affirmation from an uncaring God that wouldn’t answer? “Before the noise started, there was this church, and… and dancing, and Mr Koller, and–”

  He yelped.

  Shattered, the boy was. Memories not his own scattered in a wild jumble through his head. A victim of the only enemy Istvan had faced in over a hundred years that had ever – ever – mentioned Pietro Koller by name. If he knew…

  If he knew anything…

  Istvan leaned on the wall beside him, knife half-drawn. “Go on.”

  Kyra trembled. The elevator trembled. Metal creaked. The air grew uncomfortably close. It wasn’t heat, or humidity. It was something subtler, a stirring and a drawing-down, a pressure that clung and smothered.

  “OK,” said Edmund, “That’s far enough.”

  “Yes,” agreed Diego.

  * * *

  A panel sprang from the wall and slammed into the opposite side, cutting the space in half. The elevator jolted to a halt. Edmund caught his breath – he was on the same side as Istvan, the walls weren’t moving any further, there was no water flooding in – and then flipped his pocket watch open.

  He was done. It was time to go.

  “Wait for the d- deliberation,” ordered Diego. He spoke with a steady, if heavily accented baritone, and would have made a good show of sounding human if he didn’t stutter at odd junctures and forever seem filtered through three different intercoms – even in person.

  “I will not!” shouted Istvan. He slashed at the panel, blade trailing jagged rents that closed themselves again in traceries of glowing blue. Sparks tumbled across Edmund’s shoes. “I need to know what he knows!”

  Edmund pictured his own house, made the requisite calculated offering – sans Istvan; Istvan could stay at Barrio Libertad – and snapped his pocket watch shut.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again. Same result.

  “I can’t teleport,” he said.

  Istvan continued battering at the wall.

  “I can’t teleport,” Edmund repeated, trying to choke down panic. It had always worked before. Diego had been able to block Shokat Anoushak’s branch of magic, but not most of Edmund’s. Evidently, not yet.

  Of course he’d figure it out. Of course he’d–

  Edmund struck the nearest wall with a fist, knowing intellectually that they weren’t moving but feeling like they might any second. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. “Istvan,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “you’ve done it now.”

  “I haven’t,” the specter shot back, inanely.

  “You have! There isn’t anything you can’t make worse, is there?”

  Istvan turned on him, hazed and bloodied, a horror half-veiled in mist that burned. Rotten feathers pressed in around him, cracking and splintering: wings, suddenly manifest, unable to pass through Barrio Libertad’s unnatural materials. “Me?” he demanded, “I make anything worse?”

  Edmund stuffed his pocket watch back in its place, trying not to think of that same horror waltzing over slick and stinking corpses. “I didn’t ask for your help with Niagara,” he informed the one who al
l but existed to make things worse. “I didn’t want your help. I didn’t need your help, no matter what you say, and now I’m going to have to live with what we did. Forever.”

  “You had no better–”

  “Forever! That’s a hell of a long time, Istvan!”

  “It wouldn’t matter if you stopped stealing time,” Istvan snapped.

  Edmund could work on that level. “I thought you loved me too much to risk losing me,” he rebutted.

  The mists grew close, and choking. “I never said that.”

  “You did.”

  “I never said that!”

  Edmund flashed a grin, well aware of the likely results. “Truth hurts, doesn’t it?”

  Istvan lunged for him.

  Paint rippled along the rusted metal of the barricade, slithering across the surface the way no real paint should do. It formed an image. A painting that moved. A window. A short, stocky man, emaciated, who turned from whatever project had occupied his attention, a red T-shirt hanging loosely from his shoulders. Faded tattoos of flowers and hummingbirds covered brown arms and hands marred by extensive scarring.

  He had no face. Instead, a set of four mismatched sky-blue lenses clicked and turned in a dented frame, a roughly skull-sized apparatus of squared steel with fans whirring to either side, struts and tubing plunged into his neck and collarbones. A speaker grill occupied where his vocal cords should have been.

  “A r- request,” said Diego Escarra Espinoza.

  Istvan’s knife clanged into the side of the elevator, a hair’s breadth from Edmund’s neck. Edmund had time, now. The specter should have known better than to try.

  It hadn’t worked in 1941, either.

  Istvan spun around to face the painted image. “For what?” he demanded.

  Diego’s image shifted sideways, a view of the other side of the elevator appearing beside it. No sign of Kyra. If the kid were there, he was standing or sitting somewhere out of sight.

  So that was what this was about. There was no way Kyra had snuck out on his own: Barrio Libertad didn’t work like that.

  Edmund crossed his arms, trembling only a little. “Diego, your own People’s Council already voted,” he said. “I don’t know what your stake is in this, but I’m inclined to listen to them. We’re not taking the kid.”

  “Interrogation one,” came the reply, which wasn’t much of a reply at all. “Are there – other – wizards who can be reached within Big East?”

  “Not at all,” grumbled Istvan. He put his knife away. He retreated to the other side of the elevator, not looking at Edmund.

  “We’re not taking the kid,” Edmund repeated.

  “Interrogation two,” Diego continued. “Are you willing to visit Toronto, in the Greater Great Lakes fracture?”

  Istvan frowned. “Toronto?”

  “It’s a city in Canada,” said Edmund.

  “I’ve never been to Canada.”

  “You wouldn’t have.”

  The speakers crackled. “Are you willing to visit Toronto, in the Greater Great Lakes fracture?”

  Edmund rubbed at his eyes. They’d found Kyra in Tornado Alley, a thousand miles off from Toronto. Was he not from there? “We’re not–”

  “There isn’t any reason not to,” Istvan huffed. “If it’s Kyra asking, and he came all this way for it, why wouldn’t you? It’s a chance to redeem yourself!”

  “You just want to go fight whatever’s there.”

  The specter sprouted wings. “Did I say that? I didn’t say that.”

  The speakers crackled again. “Are you willing–”

  “Yes,” said Edmund. “Fine. We’re willing.” Like all fracture zones that weren’t Big East, the Greater Great Lakes still had monsters in it. Lake Ontario itself was probably full of monsters. Edmund had never had good experiences with things that came out of lakes. “Toronto’s particularly stunning this time of year, I’m told,” he added.

  Beside the false window, Diego’s mismatched lenses whirred and spun in their mountings. He stood as though he were about to throttle someone, and his every motion was a lunging jerk, just on the edge of coordination, as though the connection between machine and body only functioned half the time. It was impossible to make out what exactly lay behind him: a vast sheet of ribbed metal, and little else.

  “Interrogation three,” he began.

  “The Council voted against handing Kyra over, Diego,” Edmund reminded him. “Your own Council. I thought you listened to your people.”

  The cyborg ignored him. “If the Shokat Anoushak has r- returned, can you stop her?”

  Edmund opened his mouth. He closed it.

  Shokat Anoushak.

  It had only been eight years since the Wizard War. Almost nine. They were standing, even now, over the very place that the Immortal had been defeated. Destroyed. The mystics of the Innumerable Citadel, fifteen hundred years ago, hadn’t had access to weapons that could leave a crater like Providence. Her latest death had to have been final, no matter what the cults believed – no matter if they had figured out how to animate mockeries and whatever else. Shokat Anoushak was beyond the pale. She had to be.

  That hadn’t been true, at least once before.

  “It would be a pleasure,” said Istvan.

  “You were serious,” Edmund muttered. “The kid’s serious, isn’t he?”

  Unseen speakers crackled: a different voice, whispery and wavering. Kyra’s. “She.”

  “Fine. She.” Edmund took a breath. This was a fool’s errand, even if Diego and the kid both refused to acknowledge it. If this cult, alone, had somehow hit on a method to return Shokat Anoushak to life, putting a fifteen year-old in the middle of it seemed like the worst idea imaginable. If it wasn’t true, which was far more likely, setting loose a powerful Conduit like this without dealing with his delusions and strange behavior wouldn’t do anyone any good.

  Shokat Anoushak couldn’t be brought back. She couldn’t.

  Edmund looked up at the roof. “If you can hear us, Kyra, then you should know: you’re what we call Shattered. It’s a mental condition. You might remember a lot of things, but those memories aren’t all yours, and–”

  “That’s what they said,” said Kyra. “That ain’t how it is.”

  “Listen to me. The world outside isn’t what you remember. This place is the only place that can help you. That’s why they want to keep you.”

  “I ain’t staying.”

  “I would, if I were you.”

  “You ain’t!”

  Metal groaned, popping and resettling. Edmund flinched away. The kid was going to break something. “Aren’t,” he corrected him. “It’s ‘you aren’t.’”

  “I ain’t making fun of your accent,” Kyra retorted.

  Edmund didn’t have an accent. He spoke the same way everyone else in Massachusetts spoke, unless he was putting on the Hour Thief, who used the cultivated Eastern Standard characteristic of President Roosevelt and Hollywood for effect. There was a difference between a style of speech and being wrong, and the kid was wrong. Ill-educated. Not a surprise, considering.

  He wished his teleport would work. He wished he could at least try again without being called out on it. He could swear the walls were getting closer. Something about the combined stench of chlorine and the sudden weight of the air dragged at him: he hadn’t been trapped like this for decades. Not since…

  Edmund swallowed.

  “He’s corrected me for thirty years,” grumbled Istvan from his side of the elevator.

  “Quiet,” said Edmund, knowing the implications and not caring. They’d have to have a talk later. A long talk.

  “The decision,” demanded Diego.

  Edmund wetted his lips. “I’ve told you, we’re–”

  Sound stopped. His voice vibrated in his throat – he could feel it – but the words seemed to dissipate before they got anywhere. Something about the acoustics. Something about the walls. Diego’s work.

  He glanced at Istvan, whose bind
ings had choked him into painful silence on command many, many times over the years. The specter only grinned at him.

  “I guess there’s no one else,” came Kyra’s voice, after a moment.

  “Yes,” agreed Diego.

  “OK. Please let us go. Thank you, Mr Espinoza.”

  No reply. Brushstrokes painted over Diego’s image, somehow leaving only bare metal. The barrier wall retracted with a clang. The elevator started moving again.

  Kyra – the kid, the Conduit, Shattered – sat against the far wall, arms hugging his knees, skirt just brushing the floor. “You’re pretty bad guys, then,” he said.

  Edmund tested his voice. “We’re something.”

  “The worst,” said Istvan.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They rode up towards ground level in an uncertain, stilted quiet. The elevator had four corners, and Edmund occupied one of them, Istvan another, and Kyra a third. Istvan was certain that Edmund was trying very hard not to comment on this. After all, if he did, perhaps Diego would silence him again.

  It was difficult not to be smug about the possibility.

  And Kyra! Oh, what a decision! The boy couldn’t know what he’d signed himself up for, agreeing to leave a fortress that could leap to his defense – however unwanted – in favor of the outside world, where he would most certainly be hurt, and not always at the hands of enemies, either. “She,” indeed. This was no time for nonsense.

  Istvan watched him speculatively. As for what he might know about what he oughtn’t, well… they would have to talk about that. Later. Alone.

  Kyra couldn’t quite seem to make proper eye contact with either of them.

  “So,” said Edmund. Something about his tone suggested dragging the word forth with a hook. “What’s this about Shokat Anoushak?”

  “She’s coming back,” said Kyra.

  Edmund sighed. “Yes, you’ve said that. I need more than that if we’re going to do anything about it. Is this why you want us to go to Toronto?”

  The boy nodded.

  Timidity didn’t become someone so tall as Kyra, attempted girlishness or not. Istvan crossed his arms. “You can talk, you know,” he said. “I’ll make certain that Edmund won’t interrupt you.”