by Paige Orwin
Edmund coughed. Harbor. Not harbor, Harbor.
The monster in the lake. It had a name.
“We had a reason,” he said. He turned to get Kyra to the fore. The kid knew her Shokat Anoushak stuff. If any time was a good time to explain things in gruesome detail – or show off that symbol again, preferably with a few intentional errors – it was now. He looked around. “Kyra?”
The doors swung slowly on their hinges.
“I’ll find her,” said Istvan. The ghost shot through the doors, half-airborne, his feet barely touching the floor.
Edmund was left alone with the owl. It folded flaming wings, crouching on its perch.
“So,” he said. “Can I get a name?”
Chapter Twenty-One
The Conduit hadn’t gone far. Perhaps she feared running into another of the beasts: one of many prowling the mansion, unpredictable, sometimes indistinguishable from decoration. They had captured her, she claimed. If not these, then others. It had to be a trial to endure their presence now, friendly or not.
Even so, that was no excuse to run.
“Kyra, you can’t leave,” Istvan informed one of the couches in the next room over.
“Ain’t leaving,” came a voice from behind it, where she had somehow wedged herself. She seemed fond of small spaces, which was odd for such a large and lanky frame.
Istvan sighed. “Get out from there.”
“No.”
A strange thrumming came from the door. Istvan glanced over his shoulder. One of the golden birds peeked around the frame. He tried to shoo it away. It stayed put.
Well, at least Kyra couldn’t see it. He crouched near where she had hidden. “You were excited to meet these creatures, weren’t you? You know that they’re odd. You’re the one who asked to see their leader, remember?”
“But…” she began.
“What if he’s offended?” Istvan asked.
Kyra burst into tears. “I don’t know! I don’t know! I messed up everything and now we’re stuck under a glacier and they’re everywhere, and if they haven’t beaten her yet how are we supposed to do anything?”
Well. This was inopportune.
Istvan checked to see if the bird was still there. It was. Now there were two of them. He held up a wing, spreading it across the gap between couch and wall for privacy’s sake. “Kyra–”
“They got that big thing in the water, and they still can’t win?”
Istvan grimaced. They couldn’t afford this right now. The proper time to fall apart was after the crisis was over, not while trying to determine precisely what it was and certainly not while in enemy territory. The Conduit had been doing so well for her age, too – she hadn’t destroyed anything, yet, and that was nearly a miracle.
Granted, no one had been expecting the sculpture to set itself alight and speak. Edmund could take it in stride, of course, but Kyra was new to this business. Istvan had dealt with young people before. Not this young, usually, but… sometimes.
“Remember,” he said, “this was only an expeditionary jaunt. None of us knew what we would find.”
“What if William’s dead? It’s my fault if he’s dead!”
“We don’t know that yet. You yourself wanted to see if these beasts would help us. You can still do that, you know.”
Silence.
Istvan tried to make out better detail in the tumult: fear, of course, but of what shade and seasoning? It was so much easier to hold conversations like these when he knew the trouble. Was it… shame?
Oh, it slipped away – whatever else the Shattering did, it seemed to tug impulses in a hundred different directions, magnifying common woes into overpowering tides and splitting confusion into self-canceling paralysis. To be young, and so damaged; perhaps Edmund had a point in humoring her eccentricities. Her.
Though that did seem to be one of the few things she was certain about…
“There was a burning one there, too,” Kyra mumbled.
Istvan frowned. “There?”
“The other place. Toronto. It asked me things. It pulled stuff out of my head.”
Ah. Well. That would make the owl creature even more off-putting.
“I shall make certain it doesn’t try anything,” Istvan said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. “And if it does, I expect that it won’t for long.” He reached a hand towards Kyra’s hiding place. “Come along, now.”
Something in the Conduit’s tenor changed. “Could you kill it?”
Istvan found himself wondering if the owl had a hollow inside or if it were solid wood. Or was the creature proper the fire itself? “I don’t know. Possibly.”
“Would you? If you could, I mean. You said you killed tons of people.”
He had. So what if he had? So what if it were less murder and more slaughter, so great was the disparity between what he could do and what an ordinary man could do – that it wasn’t fair at all, that as much as he told himself that they had been soldiers, that they fought well, that they died bravely, they had still died and it had been easy to kill them.
Kyra still wasn’t coming out from behind the couch. They couldn’t afford this. Edmund had to be wondering where they were. Edmund hadn’t produced any results on his own. Breaking the siege was what Kasimir had asked in exchange for Niagara. Istvan had wanted somewhere to keep Kyra that wasn’t the Demon’s Chamber. Magister Hahn had been adamant that Edmund find something, and find it quickly. Nowhere else could have been won in so short a time.
Niagara was a prize, and now it was theirs. That was what mattered. If Istvan had been chained, he couldn’t have solved that problem, now could he? He would have had to think of something else. He would have… he would have thought of something else.
What was that idiom about a hammer?
Istvan’s outstretched hand was fleshless and bloody. He couldn’t manifest wings in any other state. “Kyra,” he said, “Edmund needs you to help him negotiate.”
She didn’t respond. A sniffle suggested that she was finished with her outburst, at least. Oh, she ought to have stayed at Barrio Libertad. Istvan and Edmund could have done this themselves much more easily, save perhaps for the journey across the lake, which would have taken much longer. Perhaps the encounter with the bat-like mockery may have gone differently, as well. It was too late to speculate.
“Kyra,” Istvan repeated. “See this through, hm? I know that we haven’t always been the best of allies, but in that room, with that flaming creature, I’ll be right behind you.” He thought back to their unfortunate second meeting in the Demon’s Chamber, and sighed. “With my knife ready, if that helps.”
The couch shifted, scraping an inch or two away from the wall. Istvan stood as the Conduit rose from behind it, all elbows, not looking at him. She re-buttoned the top button of Edmund’s coat. The remaining bag she slung over her bony shoulder with a clatter. The birds at the door chirruped and fled.
“Sorry,” she said.
“No, I understand,” replied Istvan, thinking of the young men and, occasionally, women he’d met in Indochina, fighters no older than Kyra herself. More often than not they hadn’t fared well, either. He’d done his best.
Kyra grimaced. “You’d be fine whatever happens. You’re a ghost. You’re bulletproof. They can’t kill you.”
“I wasn’t always.”
“You are now.”
It was true. It had been true for a long, long time. Istvan shrugged. “That does help, yes,” he conceded. He waved a hand towards the door. “Let’s find Edmund, hm?”
Kyra wiped at her eyes, jaw set. “Don’t tell him.”
“I won’t.”
She stumped off.
By the time Istvan saw her back to the room with the owl, Edmund had retreated to the far side of the room and the flames had blazed nearly to the ceiling: a great bonfire in the shape of the statue that was, those huge pale eyes swiveling in a smoldering head at every motion. Heat haze shimmered across the windows. It was blinding.
&nbs
p; “That wasn’t us,” Edmund repeated. He had taken off his hat and looked ready to remove his jacket, as well. His hair stuck to his forehead, sheened with sweat. “Even if it was, we’re not looking to do it again.”
“Not looking?” spat the fiery owl, its voice hissing sparks. “Would you? Could you?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Diego. He’s the one who built the weapon, and he’s the only one who knows how he did it. We’re not here to destroy you or your people.” The wizard looked over at Istvan and Kyra, relief breaking over his face. “There you are!”
“Yeah,” said Kyra, faintly. She leaned against the frame of the door, face turned from the heat. “Yeah, we’re back.”
“We’re all right,” Istvan offered.
Edmund nodded. “Good.” He looked to the owl. “Marat, this is Kyra Stewart. She’s your storm. We’re here on her initiative.”
Marat hunched its head on its shoulders, fluffing burning feathers as its eyes remained blank and unblinking. It stared at Kyra.
She swallowed. She tried to say something, but no words emerged. She shrank away, her breath coming harder than before, her limbs trembling.
Istvan set a hand against her back. She flinched. She could have retreated further, backed up through him… but the cold of his touch seemed to be enough, and he was glad for that. “You aren’t alone,” he said.
Kyra wiped at her forehead. The heat was getting to her already.
“We had a rough trip,” Edmund explained to Marat.
The creature’s talons dug glowing cracks into its perch. “Why return?” it hissed, its gaze still fixed on Kyra. “The south is a haven for your kind. You are no exile. There is no place for you here.”
The south? Big East? Any true haven for humans would have been anywhere but a fracture zone – out past the spellscars, in the sparse expanses, where most had fled and relative normality yet reigned. Places like Tornado Alley, where the most anyone had to worry about were storms.
Though… Big East was the only fracture zone cleared of monsters…
Istvan looked to Edmund, the shock of a new idea rattling in his mind. Big East had no monsters. If the creatures of the Greater Great Lakes knew that, and knew that Shokat Anoushak was killed there, and didn’t know how it happened, why, they must be terrified of their southern neighbors. “Edmund, is that why they haven’t invaded?”
“Hsst,” Edmund replied, motioning for him to keep his words to himself and glancing nervously at Marat.
The great owl ignored them both. It waited for Kyra, its flames lapping at the edge of its ash-piles, staring as only a creature with no eyelids could.
Kyra mumbled something.
“Speak,” ordered Marat.
“’m here for her,” Kyra said. She stared down at the floor a moment longer, took a breath, and then tried to make eye contact with the fires. “I’m here for the Immortal. She’s coming back, and I’m here to find her and kill her.”
Embers showered through the air. “You?”
“Yeah. Me. And these guys. They’re a big deal.” She pointed at Edmund. “That’s the Hour Thief. He fought her in the Wizard War. He’s magic, he has super-speed, and he knows all her weaknesses, because he studied everything she left.” She jerked a thumb behind her. “And this is Doctor Czernin. He’s unbeatable. He can come back from anything, and fly, and kill entire armies.”
“I’m also a surgeon,” Istvan added, feeling that her assessment wasn’t quite fair.
“Yeah, he’s that, too.” She indicated her headband. “And this is from Barrio Libertad. They’re the ones who vaporized her with a superweapon. It’s pretty neat. They can see you right now.”
Marat jerked backwards on its perch.
Istvan stared at the headband. “They what?”
Edmund buried his face in his hands.
“It was just in case,” said Kyra, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. She squinted at Marat. “So. We got all that, but we ain’t here to fight you unless you’re with her, and your flying monster didn’t seem like it was. We need some help. We lost someone. Could you send one of your airplanes to go look for him?”
“Leave,” came the reply.
Kyra stared at it, bravado faltering. “But–”
Marat snapped its wings open, blazing to twice its former size. Ash billowed around it. The curtains caught fire. “Leave this sanctuary!”
Kyra covered her eyes. Blue traceries flashed across the surface of her headband. Edmund had said it was for her powers. He said she’d told him it was for her powers. It was supposed to help her control them, just as Grace Wu’s gauntlets guided her blows. Did it, really? Had it all been a ruse?
The Conduit turned, eyes wild.
“Don’t–” Istvan began.
She dashed through him, one arm held before her, swinging around the doorframe and slamming her back on the wall that now separated her and the inferno. She slid down against it, breathing hard.
Edmund hurried around to them, coughing.
Istvan said, in German. Edmund was so paranoid about Barrio Libertad; he had, surely.
Edmund replied.
The wizard turned to Marat, switching back to English. “Our friend is one of yours,” he said. “A blue bear-tiger with breath like ice. He fell in the lake when Harbor attacked us.”
Marat tilted its head.
Edmund put his hat back on. “We’ll be looking for him. Thank you for having us.”
The owl folded its wings, swiveling its head to the other side. It shifted on its perch. “Come,” it said. “Show us.”
Istvan thought of what Kyra had said. The other burning creature hadn’t only asked questions. It had “pulled stuff” out of her head. That didn’t sound like conventional interrogation. “Edmund,” he began.
“I’ll be fine,” the wizard replied. He took a breath, coughed again, and then approached the fire.
Marat lifted a glowing talon.
* * *
“This sucks,” said Kyra.
“You can’t make threats like that in the middle of a negotiation,” Istvan replied, “and you can’t reveal things like that without telling your allies first. How long has he been watching? I know that you don’t trust us, and there is no reason you ought, but we came all this way, and perhaps they might have told us more if you hadn’t gone immediately to the last option.”
Edmund watched the ghost pace back and forth across the ticket-taker’s office, a blurry figure trailing flickered wings. Everything hurt. His vision still wasn’t quite straight. Cold from the ferry terminal’s broken windows seeped under the door. They had been here for almost a half-hour now, after an uncomfortable return ride from the glacier, and only now did it feel like the lava was almost finished threading its way through his brain.
Marat, and all of its ilk, had been Shokat Anoushak’s information gatherers. Her mappers. Her interrogators. It all depended on where they were, and what form they took. When nothing more was needed, they’d burned evidence to the ground. No one had ever thought the glowing lights were anything more than clouds of quick and easy arson.
Kyra sat slumped at the desk, arms crossed on it, her chin propped atop them. She still wore her headband; which still had no obvious lens or anything else that would indicate its additional function. Possibly its only function.
“There’s… gradation, Kyra,” Istvan continued. Barbed wire wrapped itself around the nearby chairs, bloodied and coated in rust. “You have to be patient for diplomacy. You don’t say all of it all at once!”
“Yeah,” the Conduit said. “Sure.”
“Kyra, I know you were frightened, but–”
“Doctor, you’re telling me I did bad? I ain’t never killed anyone. I didn’t get you burned up, and I didn’t lock anyone up, and if I said I had a camera, you’d have said to get rid of it.”
Didn’t matter now. It was getting harder to keep secrets by the day.
“It isn’t the camera,” he told Kyra. “It’s who gave it to you.”
“Mr Espinoza was nice,” she said.
“Does the thing actually help regulate your powers?” Edmund asked.
Kyra didn’t reply.
Edmund opened his eyes again. The Conduit had her head laid sideways on her arms and was glaring out of the service window into the wrecked lobby, where snow fell through the hole in the roof. The fires from earlier had gone out long ago.
“You said you’d help me,” she said.
Istvan came to a halt. “We are!”
“No, you’re not. You keep asking me to do things, and I try to do the things, and then when they don’t work, you tell me I did bad. I don’t know how to do this stuff, OK? That’s why I got you guys! You’re supposed to be the best at this and then you don’t do anything!”
Edmund glanced at Istvan. The ghost threw his hands up.
Edmund pinched the bridge of his nose. What did the kid want? She’d had a plan – she said she had a plan – and so they’d let her run with it. Let Kyra give it a shot her way. It was the least they could do to make up for how they’d treated her earlier. Edmund was never going to live that down.
“What do you want us to do?” he asked.
Kyra sighed. She made a fist, pounding it slowly against the service window. “I don’t know. Make a plan, or something. I don’t even know what you guys can do or what all your deal is – you don’t explain yourselves, ever, and you keep talking in German or something when you don’t want me to hear. Don’t you have… you know, the other guys? The Twelfth Hour? Why aren’t they helping?”
Istvan leaned against the closed door to the office. “We haven’t told them.”
