Immortal Architects
Page 35
Which… she wasn’t, of course. They would have known if she were. She would have already started destroying the world again. That was what she did, after all.
“What was that melting cannon?” Istvan asked.
“Your tech people sent me the location,” Grace admitted.
They looked away from each other.
The helicopter rose on whining rotors, lifting them back up and out of the fog. Something clunked below them: the cannon’s mechanism perhaps, retracting.
“I tried calling Eddie,” said Grace. “Never picked up.”
“Can’t you find telephones?” Istvan asked. “Janet could.”
Grace shook her head. “Either his phone’s dead or he pulled the battery out.”
Kyra frowned, watching the other Conduit. Then she twisted around in her seat to look at Istvan. She had very dark eyes, and some of Triskelion’s restless, artificial energy seemed to have drained from them. “We have to go,” she said. “We don’t got time for this.”
“We would if Edmund were here,” Istvan snapped.
She flinched.
He didn’t have to taste the hurt to know it was there. He was getting better at reading her, however slowly. He sighed, looking out the window. “I’m sorry.”
She turned back around. She didn’t reply.
Istvan twisted his wedding ring around his finger. Edmund ran. He always ran. Istvan had always been there for him. The man could stand to be more consistent in returning the favor. Edmund had chained him away for thirty years, after Istvan had murdered his friends in front of him. The right thing to do. Istvan couldn’t begrudge him. Kyra couldn’t understand.
“We need him,” Istvan said. “Kyra, Edmund has been dealing with this sort of mess for much longer than you’ve been alive. We don’t know how to counter anything we might find. We don’t know enough about this cult’s magic.”
“I do,” Kyra muttered.
Istvan froze. Did she? Could she?
“I got myself out,” she continued. “I can get you and Ms Wu in.”
Grace glanced over her shoulder at Istvan – a measuring glance – and then reached up to flip an overhead switch. Dark traceries etched themselves over the glass before her as though they had always been there. Map lines. “OK, kid,” she said, “you’ve got yourself a job. Show me where to thread the needle.”
“This is a cool helicopter,” said Kyra.
Grace throttled up. “It’s pretty great.”
Istvan watched Harbor’s waves roll past as they sped towards Toronto.
* * *
His boots crunched on the snow. Cold pricked at his flesh, wind cutting past his collar. His own breath steamed his goggles. He kept his hands in his pockets. He’d gotten the blood out of his coat, at least. Much better than having no coat at all.
This was it, then. This was where to find her.
Edmund peered up at the mirror-bright walls. They tilted at uncertain angles, outwards and then inwards again, strange angular towers clustered together. He couldn’t tell if they had windows or not. It was like the building couldn’t decide if it was one structure or several. Like it couldn’t decide whether or not it wanted to fall over. It was trapped, suspended mid-catastrophe.
He took the stairs.
When the beasts crawled down from the towers, and the railings rose up like serpents to block his path, and the space between sculptures opened empty eyes, he smiled. His lips cracked in the cold.
“I’m here for the Immortal,” said the Hour Thief. “Would you mind sparing me a few moments?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
They rushed at him.
He was faster.
The railings erupted and he ducked just in time. Ice crackled along their metal length as they uncoiled. Frost tumbled over his cape. Three stairs passed beneath his feet. He reached the first landing, spun away from claws that gouged the stairs behind him, and spotted a pair of glass doors ahead. The entrance.
Something blazed green in the corner of his vision. The air thrummed around him. A shadow fell over the stairs. A crack, like broken bone–
He snapped his watch. The world rewrote itself. The atrium rose three or four stories above him, a maze of stairwells and walkways that crossed at uncoordinated angles. One of the nearer ceilings reflected his own face a dozen times. Some were older than others. He tipped his hat at them.
“I know,” he said. He glanced back at the door to see its handles unwinding, frost crackling across its threshold. “Care for an audience?”
The faces blurred and rippled. A black shadow appeared inside the mirrored surface, swimming, skeletal.
Glass became water.
Edmund hurled himself away. It crashed down beside him, liquid that returned to glass and then became molten, a corona around black bones. Don’t look at them. The space between them hurt to look at.
Spattered glass burned holes in his cape. He burned time taken from dead men, interposing minutes where they had no business being: enough to cross the atrium, flee past a gallery of colored shards, and pause for breath between water fountains.
He needed to go down. She would be down, surrounded by rock and ore and clay: the stuff that statues were made from. She might have been a rider, and an archer, one who favored flying steeds, but in the end, she was a maker of monsters. A monster herself. An immortal architect of her own creation.
Go to the source.
He only had to go through this once for answers. He only had to run a little while longer. He’d stolen knowledge he shouldn’t have once already.
“You can’t catch me,” he shouted down the hall. “She might have been the first, but she isn’t the only one. You can’t stop me from reaching her.”
A smooth skittering answered him, like marbles on tile.
Edmund readied his pocket watch. “Believe me, you can’t.”
The guardian rounded the corner.
Edmund tried to look at a spot just to the left of the being rather than figure out where it began and where it ended. “That’s right. I’m the Hour Thief. I spoke to Shokat Anoushak before she died in the Wizard War. If she’s back – if your Lady of Life has truly risen again – I want to meet her.”
He swallowed. He could see himself reflected even at the edge of his vision, distorted mirror-images that lengthened and vanished along skull and ribcage as the creature moved. “Always have,” he said.
Molten glass hissed.
Water dripped, trickling in thin rivulets around his boots. The fountains. Some part of the creature was coming through the fountains. Oh, hell. He might be talking to a being that occupied the entire building: anywhere touching glass or plumbing. No wonder it had found him again so quickly.
Edmund didn’t dare turn his head. “I’m not here to fight. I’m here for answers. If you want to keep this up, we can, but I’d rather not waste your time.”
“I know. I’m here anyway. Is she?”
No reply.
Other creatures appeared further down the hall, peering around the corner. One lizard-like being clung to the ceiling.
Edmund focused on the pocket watch he held ready in his right hand. One wrong move, and he could be back home. No one the wiser. This wasn’t the bad idea it seemed to be. He had to know. That was it. That was all. It wasn’t a crime to be curious.
He had to know.
“If I’m in the wrong place,” he said, “all you have to do is say so. If Shokat Anoushak isn’t here, I’ll go. That’s a promise. I don’t make many promises.”
The creatures looked to each other. Some traced signs on the floor or in the air. The guardian remained where it was, implacable, molten glow dimmed but not gone. They had all been human
once. How long would they live, now? How long would those bodies last? How long would it take them to go mad?
They still weren’t answering. If they’d done it, if they’d really resurrected the Immortal, wouldn’t they be proud of it? Wouldn’t they be shouting it from the rooftops?
Instead, nothing.
Nothing.
Edmund took a breath, mostly steady. It wasn’t true, then. She was dead. She wasn’t coming back. There was no other way. This had all been a fool’s errand, and he was a fool for thinking anything good would come of it. A fool for hoping. Istvan would never approve. Istvan wouldn’t understand.
If he found out that Edmund had done this – if he found out that the Hour Thief was looking for a way out, another way to cheat Death her due… well, Edmund had gone too far once already. Knowing that he would again would be too much. The last straw. Istvan hadn’t chosen what he was. Edmund’s predicament was of his own making.
Cowardice. It all came down to cowardice.
Shokat Anoushak was dead, and there was nothing more for it.
Edmund held up his hands. He should have been relieved. If he’d been a better man, he would have been. “All right,” he said. “That’s fine. I was mistaken.” The words felt like he had to drag them out of a pit. “I’m sorry,” he added.
He flipped open his pocket watch, knowing all the while that he’d be back. He’d only promised to go, not to never return. Kyra was still on her mission. He couldn’t leave the kid high and dry. Not again.
No one would have to know.
The creatures from down the hall ceased their debate. The glass guardian rippled, the forms of its fellows sliding across its mirrored surface. Then it stepped past Edmund and into the wall, melting into the surface with a hiss, black bones receding and vanishing as though sinking out of sight into the ocean. The stink of molten rock seared his nostrils.
His own voice echoed through the building.
Edmund’s pocket watch fell from nerveless fingers.
The cult swept him up.
* * *
Grace Wu landed the helicopter in what had been a city park, touching down between oaks and playground equipment. The skids sank into deep snow. They couldn’t take the machine any closer without risking detection, and without Edmund, they couldn’t afford direct confrontation. Not with Kyra wounded. Grace was a fine fighter, but she couldn’t catch bullets. Istvan, of course, couldn’t catch anything at all. No Edmund meant no insurance. No Edmund meant no hope of escaping disaster.
Kyra could level buildings, but she wasn’t immortal. She wasn’t a weapon. All she wanted was to see this through – to finish her mission – and it was up to Istvan to help her do that.
And Grace. Grace always made everything her business.
Toronto’s white tower spiraled heavenward above them as they unloaded supplies, its smooth and strangely scalloped sides occupying an unnerving stretch of the horizon and ascending beyond sight. It was close – perhaps too close – and Istvan hoped that even a cult of monsters wouldn’t want to risk operating too near the heart of a fracture zone. Their names hadn’t changed yet, had they?
They had set down as far away as they could…
Istvan scanned the sky again from his position atop the helicopter. No mockeries. If they’d been spotted, the cult was being quiet about it.
“OK,” said Kyra. She slung a duffel bag over her good shoulder, visored helmet flashing in the sun. Much like Miss Wu, she cut a colorful figure against the snow: they wouldn’t be losing track of her anytime soon. “We have to look for the hole I left.”
“The hole,” Grace repeated, picking up a bag of her own.
“Yeah. In the ground. They dug tunnels all under here. That’s how we get in.”
“Uh-huh.” The older Conduit slogged her way towards the edge of the park, pushing through snow that was thigh-high to her and knee-high to Kyra. “What makes you think they haven’t sealed it? You’ve been gone, what, two weeks? More than that?”
Kyra followed her trail. “I don’t know, it was a pretty big hole.”
Istvan eyed the snow, imagining it slithering through his kneecaps. He could fly over all of this. He could be at the crystal building in moments. It would be easier, and faster – and, with Harbor on its way, they could use some speed.
But he couldn’t take the others with him. He would be alone, and Grace and Kyra would be stranded out here. Miles away. Walking targets.
Bloody Edmund. Didn’t the man realize how much they relied on him?
“You coming?” called Kyra.
Istvan sighed. He slid down from the helicopter. The snow sank through his legs, slithering through his kneecaps precisely as he’d feared.
To think, he could have brought an army instead.
Grace led them across the park, under an overpass crowded with rusting vehicles, and down a road lined with row after row of shops and malls. Not another soul to greet them. Faded pictures remained on display: smiling women in woolen hats, colorful drinks, children’s books and television characters with enormous eyes, advertisements for acupuncture, foods that Istvan remembered seeing in Indochina. Most of the signage was in Chinese. More cars lay under a thick covering of snow in vast parking lots, frozen to the ground.
He imagined the cult stealing outside to scavenge for parts, cutting up those vehicles to create mockeries of mockeries. “I thought this was Canada,” he said.
Grace averted her eyes from the frosted windows of a nearby truck and the still shapes inside. “It is.”
Kyra watched the sky.
Istvan wished Grace hadn’t come. She had been helpful, yes, but she was only part of this because she had forced her way into it. She hadn’t been with Kyra in the Demon’s Chamber. She hadn’t gone with them to investigate Toronto. She was a hero, an icon: a veritable national institution representing the region’s greatest power. She didn’t understand what it was like, being locked up. Being feared. Being hated. She had no stake in this.
He drew closer to her, dropping his voice. “Miss Wu, if you aren’t supposed to be helping us, why not deliver the warning and then depart? What’s going on at Barrio Libertad?”
“Politics,” she muttered.
“Oh?”
“I’m not leaving you alone with the kid again, and that’s not a popular opinion. Let’s go with that.” She checked the back of one of her gauntlets, knocking snow from between the seams. “Looks like we’re only another mile and a half out.”
Istvan squinted but couldn’t make out anything that looked like a map.
“It was by a river,” said Kyra. “I remember there was water. I flew over a river.” She shook her head, drawing a deep breath. She tripped over a buried curb.
Istvan threw out a hand–
–and Grace caught her. “Careful,” she said.
Kyra steadied herself. “You’re not my mom,” she muttered.
“Your mom told you to be careful running around in plate armor with spikes on it? Kid, I wish my mom was that cool.”
“I’m OK,” Kyra grumbled. “We can do this.” She smoothed her cape. “Ms Wu, I… I’m sorry. For running away from you. I know you didn’t have to come. You’re a big deal, too, right? Barrio Libertad’s own superhero?”
For a moment, Grace didn’t reply. She let Kyra go and checked her gauntlet again, a dark and resentful fear welling from her. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s me. Resistor Alpha.”
Istvan frowned.
Kyra resettled her duffel bag. “Thanks for coming. I mean it.”
Grace nodded and forged on ahead. Kyra trudged after her, favoring her left side. The sweetness – a subtle thaw, languorous and delicate – was unmistakable.
“Kyra,” Istvan said, “the painkillers are wearing off, aren’t they?”
She shook her head. “I’m OK.”
Istvan moved up to walk beside her,
snow or not. He knew lies when he heard them.
* * *
Down it was.
In the basement loomed the remnants of other exhibits. Cases of porcelain. The mask of a jackal. Hanging lanterns that cast no light. Strange tubes of painted glass. A more classical display awaited restoration, abandoned on a table, surrounded by brushes and oils: paintings crusted with the passage of time, never to reclaim the brilliance of their original colors. The others rested on shelves or lay half-packed in boxes, waiting for a curator that would never come.
Edmund reached down to pick up a fallen label. The item it belonged to was nowhere in sight. There was nothing sadder than a collection with no one to keep it.
He had to focus on the small things instead of what was actually happening.
Alive. Shokat Anoushak was alive. They’d done it. It could be done.
It felt as if the room were spinning. Shapes moved around him: fur and scale, stone and metal, chimeras that never spoke a word but watched him as they descended, pressed close as brothers. He was theirs now, and they knew it.
He put the label in a pocket. The beasts carried him away. Through a service door – another basement – and then into bare rock, a passage melted by acid or flame. Its surfaces glistened like wet bone. Like glass. Water trickled along the ceiling, a river running upside down that flashed hints of molten intelligence.
He reminded himself to breathe.
Alive. Alive.
The tunnel pitched sharply downwards. Edmund stumbled. Beaks and cables reached to steady him. Something too deep to hear rumbled in his chest. Phantasms flickered at the edges of his vision.
Shattered. Kyra was Shattered. Who had first coined that term? What was shattered had once been a whole, like a vase or a window: that was part of the definition. But who had been whole? Kyra? Or someone else?