by Paige Orwin
Civil? It was the truth! It wasn’t Istvan’s fault that Kyra was hysterical – the boy had to learn, one way or another, and the sooner the better. The alternative was nothing but suffering, and they both knew it. Istvan held out a hand. “Betrayal so soon?”
“Out,” Edmund repeated. “Go cool down. You’re not thinking straight.”
The pressure in the air mounted. Edmund winced. Blood trickled from one of his nostrils. Something cracked; something that sounded like glass. The windows?
Istvan backed away. He hadn’t fought for this place only to see it destroyed, as satisfying as that might be. How could Kyra withstand the forces he wielded? How could Kyra turn on him like this, after Istvan had tried to free him? After he had defended him?
Ready to be civil, indeed. This was intimidation. No more, no less. Kyra would have to learn that force didn’t always work.
Oh, yes, let Edmund see to the boy. He’d done a wonderful job thus far.
“You can’t fly,” Istvan informed him.
The wizard nodded. “You’ll just have to come back later, then, won’t you?”
Istvan spread rotten wings and shot through the nearest window. Out. Up. Skidding past the impaled mockery on the towers outside, and a dive down to skim along the brush-choked river. He didn’t need either of them, anyway. Not civil, was he? Not thinking straight, was he?
And yet… he knew he wasn’t. They were right. Both of them.
He hated that. He hated that he could be manipulated, that he had to be awful, that he couldn’t stop himself, that he was what he was and yet he couldn’t rely on that as an excuse forever. It wasn’t fair.
Why did Kyra have to be deviant? Why did the boy have to know about Pietro Koller?
Hadn’t the Susurration tortured Istvan enough?
* * *
Edmund’s head was imploding. He was almost sure of it.
“Kyra,” he said, voice distant to his own ears, spots dancing before his vision, “Kyra, can you shut that off?”
The Conduit collapsed onto the counter. The pressure – air, gravity, mental power, whatever it was – collapsed with him. The winds spun out and faded. Merchandise fell like rain. Kyra clutched his head where metal prongs met flesh, shaking, his eyes screwed shut as tears ran.
“I thought they were done chasing me,” he croaked. He swallowed, and as he trembled, the air trembled with him. “Where are we? Was that some kind of magic that brought us here, and am I dead?”
Edmund patted his pocket. Watch. Needed his watch. “Niagara Falls, yes, and no. That isn’t how it works.”
“It is, though,” said Kyra. “Teleporters take you apart, atom by atom, and then make a copy of you. The original ends up dead. That’s the only way for it to work.”
“That isn’t how mine works,” Edmund said.
Kyra mumbled something unintelligible into the counter. His shoulders shook. Blue lights sparked across the headband he wore: the same deep sky color as the guiding lines at Barrio Libertad.
Edmund wiped at his nose and found blood on his fingers. Great.
The most powerful Conduit in Big East was now his problem, the most powerful city-state in Big East would be discovering that shortly, and Niagara was a death trap just across from a cult given direct access to Shokat Anoushak’s secrets of immortality. Also, Istvan wasn’t going to come back. That had been it. It was over. Thirty years of friendship, thrown away. What was Edmund supposed to do now?
Statues. He’d been so stupid.
He looked to Kyra. “I’m sorry,” he said. It didn’t seem like enough. “I’m truly sorry. Just about everything we’ve done lately has been… in a word, fubar.” He leaned on the counter beside the kid. “That means messed up. Worse than messed up. You didn’t deserve to be in the middle of this.”
“I’m the one who got me here,” Kyra mumbled.
Edmund squinted at the cracked window. Another thing to fix. Right now, it didn’t seem like he’d ever get to it. “I studied Shokat Anoushak,” he said.
Kyra stopped trembling.
“I studied her for twenty years,” Edmund continued. “I have copies of the earliest Innumerable Citadel records, in the original Arabic, brought over here from Iran. If anyone this side of the Atlantic can call themselves an expert on her, it’s me.” Edmund thought back to the cult report outside the New York City zone, the block of concrete propped up and crudely chiseled, and concentrated on breathing.
Statues. Of course it would be statues. So much of the Immortal’s magic revolved around the inanimate, warping and blurring the distinction between creature and construct, granting life where there was none. Her monsters were proof enough of that. If she could somehow transfer her own soul – linger, just long enough, to find a new vessel sculpted in her likeness…
During the Wizard War, she had always ridden personally into battle. She’d been impossibly strong, never tiring. Fearless. Inhuman. Was what Edmund had seen of her – her skin, pale and weatherbeaten, dark paint masking deep-set eyes of brilliant emerald – nothing more than wax and crystal?
He grimaced. “Kyra, what’s in Toronto? Your cult?”
“Yeah,” came the response. Then, a moment later, with more conviction, “but it ain’t mine. We gotta stop them. And if they bring her back, we gotta figure out how to kill her again.”
Edmund hoped he was wrong. All they had on this was Kyra’s word, and maybe a few mockeries. The kid could still be delusional. There was still a chance. “Why is this so important to you?” Edmund asked him. “You don’t have to do this. You escaped. Why do you want to go back?”
Kyra let out a breath. He pulled himself up, an awkward operation given his height and lankiness, and brushed his fingers across the milky covering of his headband. The lights had died to a mere flicker, just visible under the surface. “Why do you think?” he said.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“She destroyed the world, Mr Templeton! She took away everything! And they want to use me to bring her back? They went through my head. They got it all jumbled up. I hear things sometimes. Smell things. If Shokat Anoushak hadn’t done what she did, I don’t know where I’d be, but it wouldn’t be here, OK?” Kyra looked down at the counter, his hands flat against it. “Who are you guys, anyway?”
Edmund tried not to fixate on the anger in the request. After what he’d been through, the kid deserved the benefit of the doubt. “I’m the Hour Thief,” he said. “I’m part of the–”
“How come you can do whatever you want? You said that you’re the Twelfth Hour, and the Hour Thief, and all these other things – what does that mean? And what’s the deal with Dr Czernin? Are you two… friends, or what? You don’t even seem to like each other, and I don’t know what’s wrong with him, either. Is it because he’s a ghost? Did you really lock him up, too?”
Edmund held up his hands. “One thing at a time.”
Kyra flinched. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“Why not? I messed up your building.” He looked away, all bravado suddenly drained, and leaned on the counter again, seeming much older than he was.
Edmund studied his features, in profile. He was darker than the Barrio Libertad councilman; darker than Janet Justice, even. His face was long, narrow, and sunken from malnutrition, as lean as the rest of him. A few wispy hairs sprang from his chin. The bruises from earlier – one on his jaw, another on his left cheek – still hadn’t faded. The angry scarlet of recent burns circled his neck.
The kid was in it for revenge. Pure and simple.
“I’m the Hour Thief,” Edmund began again. “I’m a wizard, and I work for the only group of wizards in Big East. That’s the zone from Boston to DC. I don’t know how you know Istvan, but he’s a friend of mine. Or was. I hope he still is.” He shook his head, staring down at the counter rather than at the mess of toppled souvenirs and broken glass. “And, yes, we had him chained up once. He’s what we call a sundered spirit – he’s mor
e than the ghost of a person, he’s the ghost of a war. He’s dangerous. We didn’t know if we could trust him.”
Kyra watched him out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t say anything.
“That’s the same reason I put you in that place,” Edmund continued. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was part of it. “We thought you might be dangerous. We didn’t trust you. We haven’t seen a Conduit like you before.”
“That’s what you call it?” asked Kyra.
Edmund nodded.
“Am I one of hers? Did the Immortal make me?”
Oh, boy. Now that was a question. That was a good question. There hadn’t been any Conduits before the Wizard War. Grace had never said anything about being experimented on, or targeted: she had simply changed, maybe in the same second that Mexico City fell.
Edmund hedged his bets. “We don’t think it was deliberate.”
Kyra sighed. He turned around, his back to the counter, and clasped his hands together before his chest.
“I told you I studied Shokat Anoushak,” Edmund added. “There’s more to that story. When she came back, the Twelfth Hour made me Magister. Kind of like the wizard president. I didn’t beat her, but I fought her until someone else did. Her name is Mercedes Hahn. She’s the Magister now. She’s the one who summoned the Susurration, which is what lured Shokat Anoushak and most of her armies in Big East somewhere where she could be destroyed.”
“The robot fortress,” said Kyra.
“Providence. That’s right.”
“They told me that the wizards were responsible for the Susurration. That you guys made it, and didn’t tell anyone.”
Edmund glanced back at the broken glass. He didn’t want to talk about that right now. He’d said enough. “That’s about right. Say, how about I find a broom?”
The kid shrugged.
Edmund stepped out around the counter, brushing past the register. There had to be a broom closet somewhere. More to the point, he had to figure out where Kyra was supposed to sleep. If the kid was going to stay here – unless and until the People’s Council fought to get him back – he had to have somewhere decent.
And then there was the fact that Kyra couldn’t stay here alone, either…
Edmund concentrated on not slipping. “Sit tight,” he called.
“OK,” came the unenthusiastic response.
Edmund rounded the corner to the bathroom, stepped inside, shut the door, pictured his own living room, and snapped his watch.
He had a pair of spare blankets in the hall closet. He didn’t need two pillows, when it came down to it. He could give up one of those spare toothbrushes he’d packed away in the stash below his sink, as well as a box of dental floss, a travel tube of toothpaste, and some hotel soap. It wasn’t his original stash, of course – he’d given most of it away in the early days after the Wizard War – but he’d made it a point of good practice to pick up toiletries wherever he found them, and he ranged further than most.
Food… well, he hoped Kyra liked potatoes.
He rolled it all up in one of the blankets as Beldam watched him suspiciously from the couch, and then teleported back to Niagara.
Kyra jumped when he walked through the front door. “Hey, I thought you–”
“Don’t worry about it,” Edmund said. He still wasn’t familiar enough with the layout of the museum to teleport inside; better safe than sorry. He adjusted his grip. “I did see a broom closet back there. In the meantime, this is for you.” He set the rolled-up blanket on the counter. “Pick a spot to hang your hat.”
Kyra stared at him.
“To sleep,” Edmund said.
Kyra looked down at the blanket, which was already doing its best to unroll itself.
“You’re staying here,” Edmund explained.
“Oh.”
“I’ll be staying here, too. There’s a lot of work to do on this place and I don’t want to leave you by yourself.”
The Conduit swallowed, blinking like he was holding back tears. He nodded.
Edmund watched him gather up the blanket and its contents, feeling a little at a loss. The kid looked overwhelmed. It had to be overwhelming. Magic, and everything it implied, had been almost too much to handle when Edmund himself started. Going from the Susurration’s false paradise straight into the arms of a Shokat Anoushak cult, after the end of the world as anyone knew it, was hard to imagine.
He thought of the lake on the back forty, a puddle compared to the one that Kyra wanted him to cross. He sighed. “It won’t get any easier,” he said.
Kyra froze.
Edmund ran a hand through his hair: the left side, where the grey was recent, and shouldn’t have ever been. “It never does. You just get tougher.”
Kyra brought a hesitant hand up to his chest, clenched in a fist over his breastbone as though holding back his heart.
“I’m sorry,” Edmund said. “We got off to a bad start. I know you have no reason to trust me, and I know you have your own demons. I’m sorry this place isn’t much, and if I could take you anywhere else, I would, but…”
The words died on his tongue. He had somewhere else. He could. His house hadn’t had any guests but Istvan in years. The only thing stopping him was fear.
No – fear, and practicality. He couldn’t afford any accidents. Not that close to the Twelfth Hour. Not after seeing what Kyra had already done here, and to the Demon’s Chamber, and to Tornado Alley. The kid couldn’t be trusted. He couldn’t be taken anywhere else.
“How old are you?” Kyra asked.
“Thirty-five.” The words were automatic. They felt hollower than usual.
“Oh.”
Edmund turned, suddenly feeling very alone. “Let me go get that broom.”
Chapter Seventeen
Istvan winged over New Haven, streaming bitter poison. The sun shone down on him, harsh and distant, little comfort to those buried in sudden snow below – the crashing front of a grey storm rolled in from the Atlantic. The first snow of winter, well before winter was due.
It didn’t matter anymore. New Haven wasn’t home to him. It had never been anything but a prison, the anchor that held him back. First, the Twelfth Hour, and then…
Get out.
Niagara wasn’t Edmund’s. Istvan had done most of the work. Edmund had no right, none at all, to demand that Istvan leave.
Get out. Don’t come back.
It hurt. It oughtn’t to have hurt, but it did. Istvan was invincible – he didn’t have to take any of it, he didn’t have to listen, or care – and yet here he was, aimless, already back to New Haven without thinking about it. Like he were reporting back. Like he were under order. He’d always returned to New Haven, to Magister Hahn, to the infirmary that wasn’t truly his but that he’d claimed. Did he truly know how to do nothing else?
Had he been enslaved for so long?
Edmund had won. Edmund always won, in the end. He was always right, especially when he was wrong. And now Kyra – poor Kyra, confused, tormented, scarred by Istvan’s own impotence in the face of the wizard’s cruelty – would trust him.
Istvan snapped his wings shut and dove. Mist gave way to the shock of freezing cloud, ice sleeting jagged through him, snowflakes buffeted in great whirling gusts like flocks of sparrows disturbed. Breaking through to the world below revealed a scene smothered: the storm had come rapidly, and thoroughly. The stone spire of the Twelfth Hour sped towards him and then past, light spilling from its windows. The courtyards bustled with frantic figures pulling down drying racks, shooing chickens, ducking in and out of doorways that slammed. Others fled the fields, hauling carts that left doubled trails in the sudden white.
No one was prepared. Some probably wouldn’t live through the winter, just like last year. Of course they dreamed of Barrio Libertad – what had wizards ever done for them, but mitigate the misery the greatest wizard of the age had caused?
Past Edmund’s house, sheltered only by the distant shores of Long Island, the fishing fleet t
umbled and tossed in the waves.
Istvan flew a broad circle around them. Some of the crews spotted him, and pointed – shouted, pleas and curses – but he couldn’t do anything to help them. He wasn’t Edmund. They would have to make it back on their own.
He turned back towards New Haven, towards the bonfire set burning on its shore, and alighted on the sand. Those hurling driftwood on the flames waved at him. Had he seen the fleet, they asked. Could those at sea make out the fire?
“I’ve no idea,” he said.
He turned away. He walked down the beach. No one followed him.
The stones were still there, of course. The children weren’t. The tide was out, which meant he could walk further down towards the water than before. He passed the carved monolith of a head without comment.
He picked up a stone.
Not thinking straight. Not himself. Not civil, and not suited for company. Too many memories, and robbed of the ability to hide those he most cared about. Kyra could name Pietro Koller. That alone was a revenge more thorough than Istvan had ever suspected the Susurration could enact. The only thing worse would have been telling Edmund.
Unless, of course, it had. Unless, of course, he somehow knew already, and was only pretending that he didn’t, smiling that pleasant smile to hide his revulsion.
Istvan threw the stone at the water. It tumbled through his hand, instead, and clattered onto the rocks.
He shouted the worst curse he could think of.
A wave rippled. Something beneath it, something sleek and immense, with the flash of a staring eye. Krakens, they said.
Istvan leapt at it. Stare at him? Mock him? Attack those boats who were turning back already, whether they could see the fire or not? Live in the harbor, slapping back stones and smug about it while New Haven starved and Edmund was infuriating and Istvan couldn’t be at ease without murder–
He hit the water. Dull reddish-purple flesh flashed white, tentacles rolling and twisting around him, a gout of blue spilling from the creature’s mantle where his blade bit into it. Not real blood at all. It spread like a cloud. The water dropped off this far from the shore, dozens of feet down, and that was where the creature lunged.
