Immortal Architects

by Paige Orwin

  …but the wind began to stir.

  Not like before. Not near them, not wildly, in every direction. The waves in the lake began to lap sideways. The grass behind them rustled, bending and waving in the opposite direction. Edmund’s hat stayed where it was. The Tyger’s fur barely ruffled.

  A startled shout reached them.

  Edmund squinted at the fog bank where Istvan had gone. A trail of green-yellow gas led to the ghost himself, whipped sideways and whirled in an arc that sucked the fog after it. The leading edge of the wind drew up water, tore up sand and reeds, dragged both over land and then over the lake again, rapidly building into a tornado of frightening speed. The rush of blown grass became a roar.

  Kyra kept up her strange samba, moving her arms in wider and wider circles. She was mouthing something – counts? beats? – to herself, sometimes adding snatches of a tune, and seemed oblivious to Istvan’s distress.

  Edmund edged closer to her, careful to stay just out of accidental collision distance. He knew that Conduit abilities came easily, even naturally, channeled from somewhere or something else. He knew that they could erupt with immense force when under duress. He knew that controlling them was a matter of concentration and conscious restraint more than anything.

  He’d never seen Grace dance. He’d never even seen her try to link any kind of art to what she did. She was an engineer: she’d set up experiments for herself and tested her limits during the Wizard War. She had her gauntlets to make sure she didn’t go overboard. She’d described the mindset she needed as “awesome mode.”

  This was… different.

  He held onto his hat.

  Istvan clawed his way out of the storm and landed beside him. “I’ll wait, then,” the ghost said, irritably shaking out wings missing most of their feathers. He glared at Kyra. “What does he think he’s doing?”

  “She,” said Edmund. “Don’t distract–”

  Kyra made a sound that suggested a trombone fanfare, or something else with the same downwards slide. She flung out both arms straight in front of her, spun around like a top, and then jumped.

  Edmund’s feet left the ground. His stomach lurched. He tried to catch himself – it felt like he was falling backwards – but there was nothing to grab onto.

  He found himself upside-down and accelerating upwards.

  “What,” said Istvan, somewhere below him.

  Edmund checked: he was still holding onto his hat. Good. His cape was blowing up and sideways. A turn of his head revealed the Tyger in a similar predicament, slowly tumbling end over end.

  “OK?” called Edmund.

  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasxdf, typed William.

  Edmund had to agree with that. He tried to get himself back upright, but miming an astronaut didn’t work and he wasn’t anything with wings. At least it didn’t seem like the blood was rushing to his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting down the urge to throw up.

  “Yeah!” shouted Kyra over the howl of the storm. “I told you! Hey, Dr Czernin, go ahead, OK? I got them.”

  “They’re upside-down,” said Istvan.

  “They are? Oh. Uh.”

  “I’m all right,” lied Edmund. If the Tyger had a response, he couldn’t see it.

  This was going to be a long trip.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I took lessons,” Kyra explained, arms held out in a mid-air balancing act, “Miss Murphy’s School of Dance. I went every Friday.”

  Istvan frowned, keeping easy pace with the eye of the storm. They were still going the right way – he had flown up and out three or four times now to check their position – and the entertainment of the hour had turned to idle conversation, shouted over the wind. “The Susurration gave you dance lessons?” he asked.

  “No, Miss… yeah. I guess.” The Conduit went silent a moment. What looked like half a ship sped by in the whirl of water that surrounded them. “I guess it did lots of things.”

  Istvan glanced at Edmund, who was now canted over sideways like he was riding a palanquin – the best he’d managed the whole way. The wizard shrugged, looking only slightly ill. “What the Susurration tried to pull on me was ideal,” he said, “not perfect.”

  “I went to school and everything,” Kyra continued, sounding much less sure of himself. “I went camping. I went to a space museum, and did a practice mission, and got to be on the astronomy crew. I went to church, and I was in the choir, and…” He trailed off. “Anyway, the dance thing: it helps, is all. Once you get the beat going, it’s easy.” He waved at the storm. “All I got to do is keep count, now.”

  “She,” Istvan reminded himself. He was to use “she.” Think of the matter in terms of a misplaced spirit, rather than a delusion or a sickness. Edmund, at least, was wholly convinced that was what it was. Istvan wasn’t so sure, but… oh, he was tired of being corrected.

  “What church?” asked Edmund.

  “Baptist,” Kyra replied.

  “That so? I was raised Methodist, myself.”

  n/a, typed the Tyger, passing by in a slow orbit meant to keep him and his wintry presence at, if not a comfortable distance, at least a more comfortable one from everyone else.

  They all looked at Istvan.

  He sighed. Of course the Susurration would have omitted certain lessons from her religious instruction. Not a word about how her peculiar mannerisms ought to be stamped out: that would have been distressing, and the Susurration hadn’t permitted distress. “Catholic.”

  Kyra tilted her head. “They do everything in Latin and stuff, right? How was that?”

  “Dreadful.” Istvan glanced up at the rushing top of the funnel, where the sun peeked just over the edge. It was getting to noon, and they had been travelling for some time; surely they had to be close. Perhaps the fog had finally burned away? “I’m going to go check our heading again.”

  He pulled up, spiraling around and around with wind that buffeted ever fiercer. The top spun into clouds and spray, water drawn up hundreds of feet in the air and then hurled outwards together with mud and weed and bits of fish. If the level of the lake were still the same as before, he would be surprised. He was almost certain that they had run over at least one finned monster.

  The funnel finally spat him out, a true waterspout that roared along at a pace that a motor vehicle might have been proud of. Rain fell around it for almost a half-mile.

  Istvan flew higher up above it, trying to get a better view. The fog had cleared, finally, and…

  Goodness.

  He averted his eyes from the far shore, just to be sure that he wasn’t imagining anything, and then looked at it again.

  A tower. Toronto had its own tower. Just as Big East had the Black Building, the Greater Great Lakes offered a pale white spire: an immense, ridged, pearlescent structure that might have been carved of marble, with light sparkling off faint, glistening filaments that trailed down off it.

  The city itself stretched across the shoreline, mirage-like, its structures difficult to count or hold in mind but always stark against the snowy bulk of a vast advancing sheet of ice: a glacier that Edmund, nor Kyra, had ever mentioned.

  The Greater Great Lakes. A fracture zone.

  A deep fracture zone.

  Istvan dove back towards Kyra’s storm. They couldn’t make landfall so close to the epicenter. Even approaching what was left of New York City was dangerous; if Toronto had its own tower, it might be the same way.

  All this time, he’d thought the Black Building was the only one.

  “Edmund!” he called, “Kyra! There’s another tower! We have to turn…”

  The storm sank lower beneath him. What was Kyra doing? He trimmed his wings closer to his sides, falling faster to keep up. The central eye opened before him, a great whirlpool in the air, and he managed to reach the others just as the storm jerked off course, suddenly wheeling hard left. Edmund zipped past him with a yell, tumbling end over end.

  Istvan beat his wings furiously to keep from being slammed into a scream
ing wall of wind and water. “Kyra! Did you hear–”

  A bridge rose before him, water cascading from concrete pillars. An acid green glow lit up the storm. Istvan careened through a row of suspension cables, shot over the broken hull of an oil tanker, and swerved around the sudden jutting face of a clock tower with most of its roof missing. Wreckage, in motion. Ruins, drawn together and crushed into shapes resembling vertebrae, radio antennae for bristles, slabs of glass and concrete for scales.

  Green lightning boiled across its surface. A shoulder rolled below, impossibly vast.

  The Greater Great Lakes hadn’t lost all of its monsters.

  Istvan sped through one window and out another and caught up to Kyra. He – she – floated in the central axis of the storm with clenched fists, hunched like a prize fighter, directing its path with great windmilling sweeps. The Tyger and Edmund sped around her like errant moons, turned and tossed like leaves, the former clawing ineffectually at the wind with all four paws and the latter tangled in his cape and hunched into a ball of abject terror: Edmund had never, ever managed well around this much water. That he was still here at all was a miracle.

  “Kyra,” called Istvan.

  The Conduit spun them away from looming claws the size of ships. The storm shuddered. Great splashes came from below, parts of the monster or parts of their own conveyance falling, Istvan didn’t know.

  They were still losing altitude.

  He darted above her. “Fly up,” he shouted. “Fly up!”

  Kyra flailed desperately at the air, eyes wild.

  A shadow fell over the sun. Another roar – somehow even deeper than the storm, crashing, shattering, like an avalanche given voice – thundered through the funnel, louder and louder, splitting it from the top down in a shower of rain and cloud and descending fog.

  Kyra clapped her hands over her ears.

  She fell. The others fell with her.

  Istvan dove after them. They couldn’t fly. None of them could fly but him and Kyra, and she’d be hard pressed to survive the impact. Edmund couldn’t operate in such blindly disorienting conditions; unless the wizard somehow managed to pull himself together at the last moment, it was up to Istvan, and Istvan couldn’t catch anyone.

  Only Kyra could do that now.

  Istvan grabbed at her wrist. He shouted at her to follow him, though he doubted she could hear him. He did his best to drain off as much fear as possible in so few moments.

  Then he pulled up as hard as he could.

  The Conduit stared up at him, blinking as skeletal wings beat around her. She was still falling, of course – Istvan couldn’t lift anyone, no matter how he tried – but a new clarity sparked in her eyes. Perhaps she was reminded of their second meeting, in the Demon’s Chamber. Perhaps the uselessness of a ghost’s wings momentarily slipped her mind. Perhaps he had given her just enough room to breathe.

  Or perhaps the jaws rushing down at them were encouragement enough to move quickly.

  She closed her eyes. Her lips moved, a silent beat – one, two, three, four – and then she whirled her free hand in a circle and yanked it upwards.

  The wind surged. The funnel spun itself back together, collecting fog and foam, tearing pieces off the horror that loomed around them. Kyra’s fall slowed, halted, and then reversed, accelerating upwards, straight for the jagged vastness of the descending maw. Istvan looked down just as Edmund and the Tyger shot past him, sucked along in the Conduit’s wake. He hadn’t known that tigers could make sounds like that.

  A wall of water rushed after them. It was as though Kyra were dragging the entire lake into the sky. There were fish in it.

  Istvan flew back up after her. “Kyra!”

  Kyra made a fist and punched upwards.

  * * *

  Edmund soared through the air. He didn’t know how high he was, he didn’t know where the others were, and he wasn’t sure what had happened. The horizon tumbled around his head. The crash and roar of storms and monsters fell behind him, replaced only by the rush of wind. He couldn’t feel his fingers. He clutched his hat in a death grip. His stomach debated whether or not to throw up again, even though there was nothing left to throw up.

  Sunlight shone down on him. Sunlight, instead of endless water.

  Well, at least he could be sure that the fall wouldn’t kill him. It would probably break most of his bones, but it wouldn’t kill him. Maybe he’d even fall on land instead of into the lake.

  He squinted through fogged goggles. The grey expanse rushing toward him looked like it was probably lake.

  Dammit.

  He was still here, though, wasn’t he? He hadn’t run away this time. He’d stuck it out. He’d been useless, sure, but Istvan couldn’t tell him off for running away.

  He’d stuck it out.

  It was… it was something. It was really hard to think.

  A sickly yellow-green contrail sliced across the sky, accompanied by distant thuds and booms: artillery fire, where there shouldn’t be any. The contrail looped up, then turned a circle and…

  Istvan dropped down from above like a fighter jet, barely moving his wings. “Are you all right?” he called.

  “No,” Edmund said truthfully.

  The ghost pointed. “Aim for that beach. We’ll meet you there!”

  Beach?

  Edmund tried to get his eyes to focus. Beach. Right. That was probably that strip of white, where the water stopped. That was a big tower. Had Toronto always had a tower? He pried some fingers off his hat and rummaged around for his pocket watch.

  It wasn’t there.

  His blood went cold. “Istvan–”

  The ghost peeled away from him. “The chain, Edmund!”

  Edmund looked down. “Oh.”

  He fished the watch back up from where it dangled, spinning, its chain attached to one of his lower buttons as always. It felt good in his hand. Good old chain, doing more than just looking decorative.

  Watch secured, he eyed the beach again. It wasn’t far, and was getting closer all the time. It looked like a stretch of yellowish sand, leading up to some bluffs with buildings on top. The skyline hurt to look at.

  Well, he had to land somewhere.

  He made the proper offerings to exchange the coordinates for there and here–

  –and then fell up and sideways and banged his back on rocks and rolled into a snowbank before finally coming to a stop, wishing he’d realized that the beach was both steeper than it looked and not sand. This was going to hurt tomorrow. This hurt now.

  “Mr Templeton!” called Kyra.

  Edmund coughed. He spat out snow.

  “Mr Templeton,” Kyra repeated. “You gotta go get Mr Blake!”

  No.

  Oh, no, no.

  Edmund tried to get up and only succeeded in falling onto the battered planks of an old pier. A finned reptile paddled by, eying him curiously.

  He was not going back out there again. If the Tyger was stuck in an iceberg, the Tyger was stuck in an iceberg. They could fetch him later. It didn’t have to be much later, but later. Besides, that monster was still out there – and probably worse.

  No, the lake could have him.

  Kyra sloshed through water that was only calf-deep to her. She’d somehow managed to hold onto her souvenir bag, which was impressive under the circumstances. “Mr Thorston–”

  “Fine,” Edward snarled. He hauled himself upright. Now he was even wetter, and even though the water wasn’t cold, it…

  …wait. Something wasn’t right.

  He turned to look up at the bluffs and wished he hadn’t. There was something frightening about seeing a glacier looming where there hadn’t been one before. Where there had been buildings before. Where, suddenly, there were buildings again, longhouses with racks of fish set up to dry.

  “I tried to tell you,” called Ivan. The ghost landed beside them in a rush of feathers and choking oil smoke. “We can’t stay here,” he said. “We’re terribly close to that tower, and if it’s anyt
hing like New Amsterdam–”

  Deep fracture zone.

  Oh, hell.

  Edwin looked around, picked a spot at random further down the coastline, and snapped open his pocket watch. Silver glinted in the sunlight. “Hold on.”

  It took four jumps before the landscape stopped changing.

  By the time they reached what had once been a ferry terminal, he had all of his names straight again, it was snowing hard, something they couldn’t see was screaming and circling above them, and he was on the verge of taking them all back home and vowing to never leave his house again. Istvan had been right. They should have stuck to Niagara. Kyra had no idea what she’d gotten them into.

  “What about Mr Blake?” the Conduit asked for the third time.

  Edmund finally managed to get the magazines burning. “He’ll be fine.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have dropped him!”

  Kyra flinched. She drew her arms to her chest.

  The fire flickered: there was a draft coming from somewhere. Edmund blew on the flames, wishing Istvan would come back from checking the perimeter. No one lived here, and if the tile ended up scorched no one would notice. The Greater Great Lakes belonged to monsters. That was it. This was no place for ordinary people, even if they were cultists. William hadn’t had to come. He shouldn’t have. Wanting to find more of his kind was understandable, but not when his kind was made by Shokat Anoushak. Istvan didn’t go around looking for more sundered spirits, did he?

  Edmund had told William that he wouldn’t let him fall. Edmund had been worse than useless in that vortex.

  “Kyra,” he said, “do you really have any idea where we’re supposed to be going, or was getting here the full extent of your plan?”

  The Conduit sat down on one of the cheap metal benches, not looking at him. Snow blew past the piers and passenger bridges of the terminal in a flurry. She muttered something.

  “What was that?”

  “We’re looking for the crystal building,” Kyra muttered.