The Interminables (14 page)

The crater wall rose in the distance, glassy and striated, a hulk of ruined towers and broken fangs crumpled across it like a landslide. Beyond that… the river. Dammed.

Edmund looked away. Providence. All of Shokat Anoushak's forces congregated in one place, looking for something she'd never found. Never would find.

He'd never wanted to come back.

“How can anyone live there?” Istvan breathed.

“Work,” said Grace. She drew up before them, leaning on the rail of the catwalk. She didn't look at the wastes. “Hard work. Industry is a virtue, I'm told, even if you don't realize you're doing it and sometimes drop dead without knowing why.”

“What?” The specter stared at her, appalled. “Why don't you stop it? Why don't you help them?”

“What do you think we're trying to do?”

“They're on your bloody doorstep, woman! Can't you go out and haul them in, one by one, or build more of those pylon devices, or–”

“Istvan.” Edmund waved him into silence. “Istvan, we don't know the situation. Grace, if the Susurration goes to all this trouble to collect people, why would it work them to death?”

She shrugged. “As far as it's concerned, people are a precious commodity, in bulk. Individuals tend to get lost in the shuffle. It doesn't intentionally mistreat them, as far as we can tell. It just... well, it's a harsh environment out there. Everyone has to do their part. Everyone gets the minimum required to survive, and everyone's happy – that's what matters, right?”

Edmund winced at the bitterness of her tone. If she could save them, he knew, she would have. The old Grace would have. Before. “What about the outside agents? The smilers? How many are out there?”

“We don't know. It seems to keep the majority here, but we've found smilers operating in Triskelion and as far away as Tornado Alley.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” She turned to him, even as he turned away. “Do you see what we're doing out here? What we're trying to stop? What the Twelfth Hour should be marking as Number One on the Things We Should Take Down list?”

He stared at a point just behind her. The barrel of the turret. What was there to shoot at, he wondered. “You've made a convincing case.”

“Good, because your Magister never even bothered to listen. We need her to do something for us. You were Magister yourself, once – she listens to you, right?”

Edmund rubbed at his face. He preferred diplomacy any day, but usually he wasn't hit in the head before talks. Usually the women he loved didn't come back from the dead with no explanation of how or why or when. “Sometimes.”

“What do you mean Magister Hahn didn't bother to listen?” Istvan demanded, “You've approached her before? You've told her of this... this Susurration creature?”

Grace crossed her arms. “I didn't, Diego did.”

“Well, in that case, she clearly did listen, Miss Wu: weren't you aware that Barrio Libertad is on our blacklist?”

“Yeah, but did she ever tell anyone why?”

“Perhaps she thought it would cause a panic! You certainly never tried to–”

Edmund held up a hand. “Grace, what was it you needed?”

Anything. Everything. How can I make this right?

Grace, I don't make promises, but if you want one...

“The Bernault devices,” she said.

“What?”

She looked out at the wastes, then away. Fixed her masked gaze on him, eye to goggled eye, bold and beautiful and grim. “I'm sorry, Eddie. We need those Bernault devices you intercepted.”

“
Y
ou certainly do not
,” snarled Istvan.

“Grace,” said Edmund, light-headed and leaden-stomached, “you realize what this sounds like.”

“What, the rogue state asking for weapons of mass destruction? Believe me, Eddie, I–”

Istvan advanced on her. “What sort of ploy is this, woman? Wait until Edmund is the one targeted, drag us here through that horror, play on our sympathies, and then beg for a shipment of the very same weapons the Twelfth Hour has tried for years to bring under control?” He slashed a hand at the sorry shelters beyond the wall. “What were you planning to do? Deal with your little problem by blowing Providence to bits a second time?”

Grace didn't budge. “That shipment is ours, you idiot. The whole trade is ours.”

Oh, hell.

Edmund put on a pleasant smile. “I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I heard right. Did you just admit responsibility for the Bernault smuggling ring?”

She set a hand to her forehead. “We're the good guys here, OK? We collect them off the streets, pay a fair price for them, keep them from falling into the wrong hands, the whole deal, and without them that–” She pointed at the wastes. “–gets out.”

“So Barrio Libertad is the buyer.”

She levered herself off the rail. Reached for him.

Istvan snapped a wing open between them, a wall of decaying feathers and bent wire. “Don't you bloody touch him.”

She slapped him. Wing, shoulder, and part of the specter's arm blew apart with a crack.

Edmund shielded his eyes – too little, too late. He blinked away spots. “Grace!”

Again she reached for him and this time caught his shoulder as Istvan slumped against the rail, cursing, bleeding mist and poison. Her grip tingled through her glove. Electric. Literally electric.

Edmund shivered, not from pain. The current wasn't strong enough for that. Not anymore. “You didn't have to do that,” he said.

She snorted, steering him towards the inner wall of the fortress. “I didn't have to, no.”

Wire snaked around a new framework of replacement bone, a wing already reforming. Istvan didn't follow.

Edmund tried to concentrate on something other than her touch. Now wasn't the time for that. “Grace…”

She stopped. She didn't take her hand off his shoulder. “Look,” she said. She waved at the opposite wall, the city tiers, the massive machines ringing the perimeter. “How do you think we're powering all this? How do you think we keep that monster pinned down? Eddie, Barrio Libertad is the only reason the Susurration has borders. We're the only thing standing between civilization and happy, friendly, eternal stagnation with a side of regrettable death. You didn't think Lucy tipped you off to the jackpot because you're pretty, did you?”

Edmund reached for one of the catwalk rails. Shocked himself. Bit back a curse of his own.

Barrio Libertad, behind Big East's most dangerous trade. Barrio Libertad, surrounded by a mind-controlling monster, claiming that they needed weapons of mass destruction to keep it in check and hiring Triskelion mercenaries to acquire those weapons. Losing them to the Twelfth Hour because of a tip from Lucy. Lucy, controlled by the Susurration. No devices, no power, and the monster would get out.

Barrio Libertad wanted him to hand over enough firepower to destroy Providence twice over, so the monster wouldn't get out.

No. No, the woman he loved – who wasn't dead, who was maybe with someone else now, who was still as stunning as ever – was asking for the equivalent of twenty nuclear warheads in a gift box and it wasn't even Christmas.

How was he supposed to explain this to Mercedes?

He shut his eyes, then opened them again. “Did Magister Hahn know about this?”

She let go of him. “I don't know what she knows. But it's a lot more than she's telling you.”

Istvan stalked across the catwalk towards them, reformed wings flickering, flaring and fading and flaring again. “More than she's telling us? What about the truth about this place? Springs up out of nowhere, stockpiles dozens of superweapons, we haven't even met the bloody architect–”

“You have,” she snapped back, “and if he wasn't willing to–”

“–forbids teleportation, trapping Edmund where you want him, and what about the
rage
, Miss Wu?” He pointed at the turret behind them. The accent he'd stopped trying to hide struck the first syllable of every word like a nail hammered into a wall, sentences hanging skewered in even cadence. “This fortress of yours is seething! Fury, unwavering, unnatural, leaking from the bloody walls! Did you think I wouldn't notice?”

She clenched her fists, sparks crackling through her hair. “Did you think I wanted you here in the first place?”

Istvan bared his teeth. “I never abandon my own, Miss Wu.”

“Oh, so you're staking claims now? Eddie, did I miss something?”

“Miss something? Miss something? Only the last seven years of his life, you… you evil, heartless, brazen hussy!”

She lunged.

Edmund caught her wrist, yelped as shock jolted up his arm. Twisted sideways, sending her into the rail, fingers gone numb. She struck with a snarl and spun around. Istvan drew his knife. Another moment spent – another blow expected –

Edmund interposed himself between them, nerves jangling. “Are you out of your minds? Are you both really out of your minds?”

“Me? You're the one who just lets him get away with this stuff, Eddie!”

“She comes back after seven years faking her own death and suddenly I'm the mad one? Suddenly I'm the one who can't be trusted?”

“Suddenly you're allowed to commit war crimes and never pay for it?”

“I never–!”

“You were allied with the Nazis!” Grace spat. “You've personally killed more people across more continents than anyone in the history of ever, and I'm supposed to just sit here and be OK with that?”

“You, Miss Wu, are supposed to be dead!”

Edmund stayed where he was. This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening. Not again. Nothing he ever said had worked – arguments that Grace was a good person, really, to Istvan, that Istvan wasn't a monster, to Grace, that both of them should try talking to each other for once rather than skipping immediately to worst impressions – all of it, useless.

They'd always hated each other. Always.

Then Grace had died, Istvan remained, and it had been over... until now. Until it wasn't. Until they made him choose, again. Until they forced him to weigh up a friendship that would last against a love that was mortal. Assuming Grace would ever take him back. He'd missed her. He'd missed her so much.

He stood there as they yelled at each other, and tried to swallow back the oil in his throat.

He couldn't lose her again. Couldn't bear even the thought of…

“I'm sorry,” he said, pushing them apart as best as he was able, “but we should be going.”

Grace threw her hands up. “You're leaving? Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“I'm not even finished!”

“I'm sure we can meet again at a later date.”

“There won't
be
a later date. You go out there, Eddie, and the Susurration will come after you again. It doesn't stop, do you understand? It doesn't stop, ever, until it gets what it wants!”

“Oh, now you worry about him,” snarled Istvan.

Edmund brushed a wing away, or tried to. “That's enough. We're leaving.”

Grace shook her head. Wonder. Disbelief. Disappointment. “You really haven't changed, have you?”

“You have.” Edmund flipped open his pocket watch with his free hand and then remembered: no teleporting in or out of the fortress. He started off down the catwalk. “Istvan, come on.”

Artillery thudded over the rush and boom of wind and fortress. Wire whispered across steel. A moment later, the specter fell into step beside him, trembling with a rage that loosened feathers and sent them drifting down behind him. “You're still in love with her, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“Edmund, you can't! You can't let her do this to you!”

“I'm sorry, Istvan, but you don't get to choose who you fall in love with.”

Distant guns faded to silence.

“Now,” Edmund continued, “do you remember the way out?”

A blue strip of light appeared before them, running over catwalks and around turrets and, ultimately, to the hatch where they'd arrived. It glowed through the metal, like part of the surface had turned to glass. Edmund glanced over his shoulder. Grace was leaning on the rail, staring out at the wastes. If she was responsible for the light, she didn't take credit.

Edmund closed his eyes and turned away. He'd never wanted to know anything less in his life. “Never mind.”

“
W
e aren't diplomats
, Edmund. This entire matter is out of our jurisdiction. Out of it entirely unless the Twelfth Hour decides to either appoint us or go to war. I sincerely doubt the former, and the latter... well, it has been some years – we've the manpower again, or at least enough of it to make a good showing, and I wouldn't mind a good fight between powers.” Istvan laughed bitterly, the sort of bursting expulsion between a laugh and a sob, the sort that should have hurt. “Oh, Edmund, it's been so long. No one fights proper wars anymore. Of course it won't happen.”

Edmund wasn't answering. He sat at the righted kitchen table, holding a fork and staring at a plate of pasta he'd made and not yet touched. His hat, cape, and goggles were off. The record player in the other room played the heathen music that he liked but the noise didn't seem to be helping. No cat; Beldam had fled the kitchen long ago.

A cold wind leaked in through the cardboard pasted over broken windows.

Istvan paced back and forth across the tile. What a terrible day. He hadn't had such a day since... well, since Lucy appeared, but today was far, far worse than that. Grace bloody Wu. She'd been nothing but trouble. Mocked him. Insulted him. And now... and now she...

Oh, he hated her. It frightened him, how much he hated her. Beyond words.

He fidgeted with the top buttons on his uniform, feeling shrapnel twist in his chest. “How many Bernault devices are sitting in that fortress, do you think? Dozens? Hundreds? And all for... for what, electricity?” He reached the end of the kitchen. Turned around. Started back the other way. “Edmund, that fortress of hers – the whole construction – that was fury, Edmund. No, that was if someone took fury and strained out all the flavor and then bottled it, alone, nothing else. Flat. Ah... oh, it's difficult to explain, it was...”

“Mechanical.”

Istvan threw up a hand. “Yes. Mechanical. Run through a press. Just as unnatural as that Susurration creature, and certainly not the sort of feeling associated with peaceful purposes. Electricity.” He snorted. “Edmund, I don't believe that for a second.”

Again Edmund was silent. He pushed the pasta around his plate. He had thrown out what was left of Lucy's pies, cleaned off the walls and ceiling, swept up the glass, dusted the whole house, and written a report to Magister Hahn before making dinner. Now the completed document lay beside him, three pages of excruciatingly well-formed lettering that could have been produced by a typewriter. There was nothing in it about Grace Wu.

“She hasn't come back for you,” Istvan told him for the fifth or sixth time that evening. “She wants those weapons, Edmund, and I would bet a month's wages if I were paid that she wants to vanish those poor people outside the walls. Any means necessary to control the beast, hm? Living with that sort of horror for that long can do that to a person, Edmund, believe me. I've seen it.”

“I need to talk to her again,” said Edmund.

“No, you don't. It's over, and once you turn in that report, it's out of our hands.” Istvan pulled out his chair and dropped into it. “I don't understand why you can't accept that.”

Edmund set his fork down. “Think about how insular Barrio Libertad is, Istvan. Don't you think there's a fair chance she had to disappear because she was given no other choice? Couldn't leave? Couldn't be permitted to talk to a wizard? This could be the first time she's been able to do what she always wanted, and I can't take any chances that it isn't.”

Istvan sighed. “Edmund–”

“You were married! You can't sit there and say you don't understand what I'm dealing with here!”

Istvan turned his ring around his finger. Poor Franceska. A banker's daughter, over a decade his junior. He had told her family that he waited so long because he wanted to become well-established before proposing to anyone. That while there was a palace carrying his name in Vienna, he hailed from a distant bastard offshoot with no titles: what he had built was his alone.

Her family accepted. They both had hoped he'd done it for love.

He left everything to her when he bought that ticket to South Africa. When he returned from the Ceylon prisoner-of-war camp, years later, she hadn't recognized him.

She'd found someone else. She'd deserved better.

“It wasn't the same,” he said.

Edmund set both elbows on the table. “What do you mean it wasn't the same? Look, I know you don't like Grace, but I do, all right? Can't you believe for one second that she might be someone worth fighting for?”

“She doesn't want to be fought for, Edmund.”

“You can't know that.”

Long-denied betrayal swirled over and after the old regrets. The wizard wanted her; knew he shouldn't; knew it was a bad idea to pursue her, and yet he couldn't bring himself to admit it, couldn't concede, couldn't surrender. Even drowning, all those years ago, he hadn't given in. Oh, he was so stubborn.