“So we ask around town,” Pun’kin said.
Garret countered, “Do you speak Sarajevan… I mean Sarajevite… uh, Saroje—?”
“Serbian,” Velvet corrected. “None of us do. Besides, you don’t ask around town if there’s a hundred thousand people.”
“A hundred thousand!” Pun’kin burst out as if it was the largest number he’d ever heard. “That’d take all day!”
Velvet sighed. “And we don’t have all day, do we?”
“So what are we going to do?” Fishy interjected calmly.
They all stared at each other, at a loss. Even Butterworth took his eyes off the road long enough to turn and raise his eyebrows. Pun’kin played with Velvet’s grasshopper, which had landed drunkenly in his lap.
“Wonderful,” Velvet said tonelessly. “This should be fun.”
Fishy shook his head, leaned back in the wagon and put his hands behind his head. He was asleep in moments. Garret did the same.
Chapter 36
You know who you are, Garret. You need to make peace with it. You think it’s bad, but it isn’t. It will set you free.
Garret sat upright in the back of the wagon, flinging sleep away from himself as if it were a snake, slithering up his chest towards his jugular. Pun’kin grabbed him before he toppled off the back of the wagon. It was well into the night, and the countryside around them was all soft shadows and starlight.
“You alright?” Pun’kin asked.
Garret nodded and exhaled. “I’m fine.”
“We was just about to wake you up,” Pun’kin said. “You were tossin’.”
“I’m fine,” Garret said again, and it was true. It hadn’t really been a nightmare, just a dream that was a little invasive.
“What’s it like?” Fishy asked. He was still laying back with his eyes closed.
Garret got his breathing under control and raised his head. “What?”
“That thing you do,” Fishy said conversationally. He was laying back against the side of the wagon nonchalantly, legs sprawled, hands behind his head, but Garret felt a weight behind the question.
Garret frowned, then shrugged. I thought we were past this. “I dunno. It doesn’t hurt, if that’s what you mean.”
Fishy’s shoulders rose in a nonchalant shrug, but he came back levelly. “I don’t know many people who can turn into animals. Just wondered what it was like. We were talking about it while you were asleep.”
The other guys looked immediately embarrassed.
Garret felt a bit betrayed, though there was no reason for it. The wagon was jouncing along the road, which was rising into the landscape of serried black rocks, but other than that, there was only sleeping fields around them. In the distance, a small cluster of white buildings with steep rooves stood out palely, marking a farm. No one could have overheard the guys talking about Garret.
Garret looked away over the Serbian countryside. “It’s like being two things at once,” he answered. “I’m never without the wolf when I’m human, and I’m never without the human when I’m a wolf.”
“So you’re kind of the wolf right now?” Velvet asked. He was picking at something on his Serbian shirt in a distracted way. From the wooden bench seat in the front of the wagon, Butterworth was facing ahead, but he was obviously listening.
Garret squirmed. “Yeah, I guess. What are you asking me?”
“Well…” Velvet said, trying to maneuver deftly around whatever they had been discussing while Garret was asleep. “We were just wondering what it’s like.”
“Fishy already asked that,” Garret said.
“I mean on the inside,” Velvet said, suddenly meeting Garret’s eyes. Velvet wasn’t afraid or suspicious. He was openly, honestly curious. Garret relaxed.
“I mean, what does it feel like to have teeth and claws and a sense of smell like that,” Velvet asked.
Garret thought about the question. To Velvet, it was a simple question of sensation. What did it feel like to run around on four legs? For Garret, it was a lot more complicated.
“I was born human, at least as far as I know,” he said hesitantly. “The wolf feels… like freedom.” He hated to say that because his Pa had lost himself so fully to the wolf that he’d forfeited the ability to return to human form. Garret knew that possibility might always exist for himself as well.
“I don’t know, Velvet” Garret said at last, fully honest, even though Velvet’s question hadn’t been nearly so deep. “I don’t know what I am.”
Garret thought he saw Fishy nod just a tiny bit, as if that was the answer he’d been looking for. The conversation lapsed.
For a span of minutes, there was nothing but the sound of the squeaking of axels and the sound of clopping hooves.
After a time, Velvet said quietly, “We never did give Burl a nickname.”
“Nobody wants their Navy nickname,” Fishy said.
A little more time went by.
“I think Burl did,” Velvet replied.
W
June 28th, 1914. Vidovdan
It was just before dawn. The sky was rimmed with pale light, growing slowly over the distant city of Sarajevo. Maxwell stood on the edge of a dusty road on a mountainside. Before him sat a forgotten house. Its white walls were turning grey, its goat pens were tumbling down, and though the front yard had once been used to raise farm animals, it had been unoccupied for long enough that the field grasses and flowers had begun to encroach upon it. Though the house was a mile from the edge of Sarajevo proper, Maxwell fancied he could hear the first few stringed instruments on the wind, commemorating the martyrdom of St Vitus. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking.
There was no one in sight, but Maxwell knew he was being watched, because this was the place he had been told to come. He’d approached the old house from a roundabout route, so he knew the hillside behind the house had sheared away into the river below. As a result, the foundation of the house had begun to slip, hence the reason it was abandoned. Maxwell dropped his pack by the fence, making no effort to hide it or anything else he was doing. Keeping all of his motions slow and deliberate, he paced towards the front of the decrepit structure.
There was a sick sort of irony that it should all end this way, with directions scribbled on the back of a train ticket. For twelve years, Maxwell and the Betrayer had hunted each other in silence. Fortunes had been squandered. Governments had been fractured. Good men and women had been butchered like animals. Families had been lost.
The dead had piled up around Maxwell and the Betrayer until Maxwell felt the weight of their corpses even as he slept. The dead followed him into his dreams, tormenting him, demanding justice, but every time Maxwell made a move to end the Game, he was too late. The Betrayer was already gone.
United States Naval Intelligence had been hunting this man since before Maxwell had joined them. The Betrayer was a ranking officer in the US Navy. Beyond that, they knew little. For years he had operated inside their own military, hidden in plain sight, signing their papers, giving orders to their men, drinking their coffee. All the while he was undermining, maneuvering, and murdering to his own ends. Yet after fifteen years they had no more clue to his identity than they’d had on the day he’d organized President McKinley’s assassination.
Now that same man had scribbled directions on the back of a train ticket and left them for Maxwell to find. Twelve years of cloak and dagger had ended with the Betrayer giving Maxwell an invitation.
However, the Betrayer hadn’t exactly done so of his own free will. Maxwell had finally found a way to force him into a corner. That was why Maxwell had wrested the old Kearsarge from the Navy. That was why so many of the innocent young men under his command had died. That was why Maxwell had lost everything in the world that he held dear.
Maxwell had finally realized that, because this man was everywhere and nowhere, not even Naval Intelligence could be trusted. Against one man who was absolutely dedicated—completely ab
andoned to his purpose—all the weapons and machinery in the world were useless.
One single man, alone and hidden, was nigh invincible. He could only be destroyed one way—by another such man. So Maxwell had become that man. He had commandeered the Kearsarge and left without telling a soul of his true intentions. That was why he had sent the German storm troopers away. That was why he had done everything, because to end this, Captain Maxwell knew he had to do it alone.
His reasons were not complicated, because, despite all appearances, Captain David Maxwell was not a complicated man. He had done all of this because he believed that some things are so horrible that they simply cannot be allowed to happen. There are some men like the Betrayer who cannot be allowed to live, because they exist simply to kill, destroy, and ruin.
Such men set the course of the entire world on fire. They cannot be made to understand faith, or goodness. All men and women suffer. Some suffer greatly. The distinction between heroes and villains is merely what they choose to do with that suffering.
Men like the Betrayer often come to the conclusion that they cannot have faith in anything other than destruction—that death is the only true master. Once a human soul falls prey to that belief, the last embers of hope within that soul flicker and die.
A person who has given himself to darkness in that way becomes warped beyond the mind of a serial killer, because if a soul contains no light at all, then that soul will eventually decide that it has no purpose other than to seek out the limits of its own depravity. Unfortunately, there are no such limits. One such man, with the power of that endless darkness in his hands, can bring the world to its knees.
For twelve years Maxwell had sought to end this man. At times, Maxwell felt as though he knew the Betrayer better than he knew his own wife. With each new assassination or “accidental death,” Maxwell’s imagination painted a more and more grotesque visage for the Betrayer until, when his wife and daughter were killed, Maxwell began to see the man as Satan himself.
As Maxwell approached the front of the building, the door opened, and a man stepped out, shotgun up, aimed at Maxwell’s chest. Two more slipped around the corners of the building, guns also trained on Maxwell. When Maxwell slowly pulled his pistols, they tensed, but he simply held the guns out for them to take.
After a hesitation, the man with the shotgun snatched them out of his hands. “Who are you?” he demanded in English. He was American. From Kentucky or possibly Tennessee by his accent.
“Take me to him,” Maxwell said simply. “I’m the one you’re waiting for.”
W
Garret trailed through the morning, staring around in awe at the city of Sarajevo. In Garret’s hometown, the streets were dirt, the boardwalk really was made of boards, and nothing was taller than one story. It was a rough-hewn place where a handful of gristly folks had wandered out into the mountains, chopped down a stand of trees, and then refused to leave no matter how bad things got.
Sarajevo was a different sort of place altogether. Garret wasn’t sure exactly what Velvet meant when he talked about “decent society and culture,” but if such a thing existed, Garret suspected Sarajevo would be the place to find it.
Regardless, Sarajevo was old and grand. The streets were cobbled, worn smooth from centuries of life. Sarajevo’s tan stone work, some of which looked as though it had stood since the middle ages, rose high enough into the summer sky to make Garret gape. Minarets poked even higher than that. Octagonal buildings with mint-green domed rooves occupied entire blocks. Some structures had stone arch ways and carvings, others were of a Grecian style, and for all Garret knew, might have been there since the Greek Empire fell. Sarajevo was a place of solidity and time-worn loveliness. The city had a sense of permanence that Garret suspected he couldn’t have found in America no matter how long he looked.
W
Inside the old house, Maxwell walked quietly in front of the two men. There were no signs of men living in the house. No food, no gear. Nothing. Either the house had been chosen specifically for this meeting, or it had been recently cleared out. They were headed for a set of stairs, so Maxwell took them. At the top stood two doors. One to the left, one to the right. Maxwell took the one to the right without being told. He had never been in this place, but he didn’t need to. Everything was happening now as if it had been fated to occur.
The Game had drawn to its precipice. Maxwell did not know how it would end, only that the end was now inevitable. But now, after everything he had done, he found that millions of lives could not motivate him to take the final steps. His motivation came from the remaining handful of people whom he loved, and one person in particular.
Ironically, after everything Captain David Maxwell had done and everything he had lost for humanity, he was unable to finish it for them. But he could finish it for that one person.
And perhaps that, truly, was the way it was meant to be.
Emery.
Maxwell stepped through the door and stopped short. The room had the appearance of having been recently cleared. There were still shadows of unfaded paint where cabinets, now gone, had stood. There were two windows, but none of that mattered.
In the middle of the room sat a relic from another age, a giant desk, French, probably dating back to the 1600’s. It was exquisitely carved. Gargoyles supported its corners. Three relief panels, one of men and women, and two of falcons, covered the front. The top was inset with leather.
The desk didn’t surprise Maxwell. Neither did the United States Admiral’s uniform. What surprised him was the man wearing it.
It was Admiral Colson.
Maxwell and Colson regarded each other across the small room. Colson was a flabby, flattened man in his early sixties.
The guards stood to either side of Maxwell, tensely pointing their pistols at him as if he was suddenly going to explode out of his own skin and go for Colson’s throat.
Colson made the slightest dismissive twitch with his right index finger. One of the guards began to protest, but Colson silenced him with a mere lowering of an eyebrow. Both of the guards went, closing the door behind them.
Maxwell watched Colson, and Colson studied Maxwell.
“You are not,” Colson said, “the man they sent.”
“No.” Maxwell replied. “But I am the man you have.”
W
Garret gazed at the front of a building as he passed it. Stone archways ran the length of the front, supporting the roof of the portico. The arches alone were more than thirty feet tall. There were no carvings of men or beasts on this building, but the front of it was inlaid with mosaic tile.
Despite the grandeur of the architecture, in Garret’s mind, none of it compared to the people. Sarajevo’s streets, cafés, buildings, and fountains were bursting with the beginnings of celebration. The colorful clothing, dancing, music and mouthwatering smells fresh baked goods made Garret wish he knew what they were celebrating.
He turned a corner where a trio of old men were playing music. He stopped to watch. One of them was playing a stringed instrument that looked a bit like a round, small-bodied guitar, but he was playing it with a bow of some sort. The other was playing a wooden instrument that looked like a flute, but was at least twice as long. Despite the frivolity around them, the music was solemn, and the third man, the one who was singing, seemed to be recounting something, a ballad of some sort, perhaps.
Garret wasn’t in the mood to be solemn, so he slipped the rest of the way around the corner and found himself on a market street. The buildings here were lower, with long sloping roofs of tile and sometimes wood.
He stepped into the first shop and bought a small loaf with a cross baked into the top. He wasn’t hungry, but it smelled so good that he didn’t feel like he really had a choice. The woman at the counter took the money he handed her, then handed him change. He had to assume it was correct.
As he stepped back out into the sun, he took a bite. The roll was stuffed with some sort
of sausage. It was one of the best things he’d ever put in his mouth. The street was brimming with people, chattering, laughing, handing over money, some snacking on pastries or finger foods like the one he had. A little girl jostled past on her mother’s arm. The girl was eating something that appeared to be made of hundreds of paper-thin wafers and nuts, held together with a sticky sweet substance that she had gotten all the way up to her elbows. Is that honey? It was topped with a squirt of chocolate icing.
Gotta find one of those, Garret thought.
He squeezed through a clot of people who were laughing over something, then he almost tripped over a bin of potatoes. An awning had been set up all along the front of the next shop, and bins of vegetables packed it from one end to the other. The onions looked normal enough, but there were more varieties of peppers than he’d ever seen in his life, as well as a heap of large, dark purple, sinister looking vegetables and some oblong green oddities.
Behind the bins was a little old woman with a scarf wrapped around her head. She appeared to be in three or four places at once as she flitted up and down the bins to snap up any money that was extended her way. Garret tried to flag her down with a bill, but before he could get her attention, he got shoved back against the bins by someone behind him.
Garret almost dropped his sausage roll thingy, which would have upset him, but when he turned, no one else was annoyed. The vegetable shoppers had crowded back against the bins to make space for a small group of dancers who had materialized out of nowhere.
Garret took another bite of his sausage roll. Then he caught sight of what the man standing next to him was eating. It was a thin pastry of some sort, but wrapped into a roll and filled to the brim with cream. Garret could smell the warm sugar from where he was standing. He’d have to get one of those too. Pun’kin had divided up the money between them, and judging by his own bulging pockets, he had more than he could have spent in a month.
But at the thought of Pun’kin and the money, Garret again remembered why he was there and what he was supposed to be doing. Given the festivities, his real purpose was easy to forget.
Ironclad Page 66
