The Interminables (23 page)

H
e couldn't look away
.

There was no other route to use. He had done the best he could. It was all for good reason, and better than the alternative. It was the last sympathetic connection between bone and spirit, and Mercedes knew what she was on about. It all made perfect sense.

That didn't change the fact that Edmund had just helped condemn the only friend he might be able to keep for all of forever to a second agonizing death. Sundered spirit. Torn to pieces. His soul left shredded and drifting, awaiting the terrible energies of a world war to pour between its cracks and settle, solidify, revive him whole and forever changed from what and who he might have been.

Edmund owed it to him to not to look away.

Electric arcs flashed and spat across the specter's remains, the pitiful bit of bone twisting and jerking in the air like a living thing. Ash whirled through the storm – more ash than the box had ever contained – collecting along distinct and disturbing lines like iron filings across a magnet. A spine. An upheld hand. A full skull, now, jaw agape in what Edmund knew to be a scream. He couldn't hear it over the sizzle of killing current.

He didn't look away. He couldn't. He wouldn't.

Smoke and flames stung his eyes. The stench of charred meat assailed his nostrils. A complete skeleton now writhed within the circle, shackled, wreathed in the burning remnants of its own flesh.

Mercedes opened her hands, as though in greeting, and spat a final phrase in Greek.

Barbed wire snaked around the ashes, binding together each bone. It was translucent as they were not, and where it touched they ignited and vanished, power spent. Electric arcs gave way to ragged fabric and tattered wings. The storm sputtered out. Istvan tumbled to the ground, form flickering wildly between man and avatar, shuddering like an invalid. The chains that bound him glittered just at the edge of vision, contractual links trailing back to toothed shackles. Only a small part of his jaw was solid: the bone used to bring him here, re-affixed to its proper place even as it crumbled.

Mercedes lowered her hands. Done. It was done. She nodded to Edmund, then tottered to the nearest wall and sat down.

Resigned to what would come, Edmund knelt beside the circle. “Istvan?”

The specter mumbled something in German, wheezing. Edmund couldn't make out the words: they were too faint, weak and slurred by shock and pain.

he told him,

A shuddering cough. The sickly smell of chlorine mixed with the lingering stench of charred meat. Istvan was still mumbling, still shaking.

Edmund switched back to English. When he'd been at his worst, for all those months, Istvan had spoken to him in German, and that small extra effort it took to change tracks had sometimes helped bring him back. “It's all right,” he said. “It's over. You're here now. It's all right.”

Istvan stared up at him, recognition flickering somewhere far back in his eyes – then flung himself at him, burying his face in his shoulder.

“Peti,” he said, repeating, over and over. “Peti... Peti... Peti...”

Edmund tried not to pull away from the cold. A name. It had to be a name. Istvan had mentioned his wife a few times over the years. Franceska. A petite, patient woman, he'd said, over a decade his junior. Common enough, in his day. Edmund knew almost nothing else about her. If she'd had any nicknames, pet names, private names... he had no idea. It wasn't his business. He hadn't asked.

Istvan hung off him, twisting his fingers through the front of his jacket.

Sobbing.

Edmund extended his good arm, awkwardly. Patted where the other man's back would have been. His fingers brushed only air, numbed by a chill both more and less than physical. “It's all right.”

Mercedes rose. She moved bent, holding her bandaged hand, and stepped over the lines of ash, salt, and iron filings with a weary heaviness Edmund understood all too well. “I'll be back in a few minutes,” she said. “Have an errand to run somewhere convenient.”

E
dmund got him home
. Established him on the couch. Saw the bottle left behind from earlier, and put it away where it belonged. Took a few moments to return to the Twelfth Hour, run to the infirmary, and retrieve what embroidery equipment he could find. Istvan didn't sleep. He couldn't. Edmund had always been a bit envious of that, but now he wasn't sure. The specter seemed grateful for the offer, when he returned, but didn't touch any of it. Just sat. Stared at nothing.

Edmund sat beside him. Tried talking to him, like Istvan had talked to him so many times before. Not about anything in particular. Just talking. Istvan clung to his arm, fingers sunk deep inside to a pulse, but that was all.

Edmund kept talking.

At some point – he didn't know when – he fell asleep.

I
stvan twisted thread
between his fingers, unable to hold a design in his mind. Unable to start. Unable to concentrate on anything but the presence beside him, the gentle rhythm of living breath, the warm, sleep-dulled pain of a recent wound and the merciful release of almost all else to smooth, drifting blandness, undisturbed by nightmare. Edmund, sprawled where he had fallen, stretched lazily across the greater portion of the couch like the cat he kept. His mauled arm rose and fell with his chest. His neck was tilted at an unfortunate angle, propped against the arm of the couch. Both legs dangled off the side. He had never taken off his shoes.

Istvan sat apart. Not far away – not in full retreat, not pressed against the opposite arm – but far enough to keep the hideous, unnatural chill of his presence to himself. He had turned the lamp off hours ago. A candle burned on the table, but of course its heat wasn't enough and its light barely sufficed to see by, work by... if only he could start.

Edmund breathed beside him. He didn't seem nearly so weary when he was asleep. So remorseful. So ancient. Pietro, too, had been something of an old soul, a man of deep and placid intensity, a seeker of bones who drew wonderful pictures of terrible beasts long gone. We both return life to the dead, he'd said once. The only difference is that my patients have more teeth.

He'd wanted so much to go to America. Wyoming. South Dakota. Colorado. He didn't know English, of course – he wasn't very good with languages, not like Edmund, but...

Istvan realized that the thread had become a cat's-cradle. He wiped at his eyes. He couldn't untangle it if he couldn't see.

Oh, this was all Edmund's fault. Bloody Edmund, chasing after that bloody woman. He should never have gone back to that fortress. If he hadn't he would have never left that note, and Istvan would never have found it, and wouldn't have gone to find him. Hours of worry, all night, all morning, worrying. Waiting to see him again. Hoping he was all right, that he hadn't done something stupid.

He was so smart, but... but that didn't keep him from being so stupid.

So...

Istvan dropped his head in tangled fingers, forcing regularity on lungs that didn't exist. He couldn't get the thread off. He couldn't see to get the thread off. Oh, Pietro. Peti, Peti. Fifteen years, thrown away. He didn't know why. Over a century of battles and he still didn't know why. He would never know. He had died trying to pry the answer from God, struck down and torn apart by a power he hadn't realized he had called, and he would never know.

That last memory the Susurration had revived in him burned his eyes as Edmund breathed.

Dear Edmund. He was so foolish, so thoughtless, a man placid and incurious and dull, brave and indomitable, beautiful in the quiet, the one who now had saved him twice. Embraced him willingly. Once. Under extreme duress. He was so like Pietro. All unknowing.

Istvan wanted so badly to touch him. He loved him so much, and he couldn't touch him.

It was all Edmund's fault.

A
kettle whistled
.

Edmund sat bolt upright. Eighteen fishhooks sank themselves into his flesh. He yelped. Cursed under his breath. Clutched at the furry mass clinging to his jacket front.

Cat. Cat on his chest. Cat not letting go.

“Beldam,” he told her, unhooking her claw by claw, “Beldam, ow.”

She oozed sullenly onto his lap and stayed there, folding her weaponry beneath her. He was forgiven. This time.

He took stock. He was still fully dressed and still on the couch. Istvan was nowhere to be seen. Laid across the far arm of the couch was a length of gauze, attached to a frame but almost untouched, a needle jammed into the side of a single, jagged, unfinished red petal. To Edmund's untrained eye it looked as though the stitches had been ripped out more than once.

He looked to the kitchen. His tie had come loose in the night; he pulled it off, patting Beldam in chastened apology. “Istvan?”

The whistling petered out.

Edmund leaned to the side to try and get a better look. “Istvan, are you…”

The ghost appeared at the divider between the two rooms, bare of cap, belt, and bandolier, rigid collar unbuttoned. The fabric of his uniform was stained and threadbare, as though he'd been on muddy campaign for months. He didn't look at Edmund. He brushed at a line of bullet holes across his chest and they vanished. “I put the water on,” he said.

“I heard that. Thank you.”

Istvan stayed there a moment, like he wanted to say something else, then turned stiffly back into the kitchen without another word.

Edmund took a breath, long and low. At least Istvan was up and walking. Talking, some. That was a good place to start. After that summoning, and after whatever the Susurration had done to him, it was a miracle he was functional at all.

The thought was no real comfort. Istvan was... well, he was Istvan. Invincible. Immutable. The unstoppable force behind Edmund's unstrikable object. A fixed point that Edmund would always be able to rely on, a friend who would always be there. Istvan. Full stop.

The Susurration had shattered him in a single night. He had fought it – and lost.

He'd lost.

How was anyone supposed to fight something Istvan couldn't?

Edmund convinced Beldam to let him up and walked into the kitchen himself. Istvan stood next to the stove, watching steam curl up from the tea kettle, hugging himself with arms tightly crossed. His expression was impossible to make out: all Edmund could see was the stretched grimace of his scarred side. The wire at his feet was just as tight and tangled, wound barrier-like as though to protect him from oncoming armies.

“I'll listen if you want to talk,” Edmund told him.

Istvan shook his head.

There was a tea cup and saucer sitting on the counter next to him. Edmund picked them up, reaching for the tea tin.

That name. Istvan had kept repeating that name. Edmund didn't usually care to pry – what was in the past was best left in the past – but Istvan was a ghost. Memory was all he had. Memory was what the Susurration twisted, tore at, blurred and rebuilt and replaced. If it had used some treasured part of Istvan's long history against him...

Edmund measured out a portion of curled tea leaves. He was running low; it had been some months since his last run. “You know,” he said, “it's all right if you miss her.”

Istvan stared at the steam. “Edmund, I don't want to talk about it. Please.”

“All right. I'm sorry.” Edmund poured some water, carried his cup to the table, and set it down. It was just past nine and his bad arm ached. He smoothed his sleep-worn jacket. “Before anything else happens, I think I'm going to get dressed. Will you be OK?”

“I'm dead.”

Edmund kicked himself for poor choice of words. “Right. I'll be back.”

Some hundred-forty seconds later, he had undressed, showered, seen to teeth and hair, dashed across the hall in his bathrobe, dressed again, removed the flag pin from his lapel, put it away, and tossed his rumpled clothes from last night in the hamper where they belonged. He strolled back into the kitchen clad in one of his Hour Thief spares. No sling. His arm still hurt, but it didn't have to look it.

Istvan sat in his usual place, form flickering. His glasses lay on the table beside him, his head in hands that wavered between whole and skeletal, clean and bloodstained. His shoulders were hunched, his wings raised: a curved wall of dark and ghostly feathers that didn't quite mask him from sight. No shaking. No sobbing. That was good. Seeing him once in such an unnervingly vulnerable state had been enough.

He had never maintained wings in the house before. Edmund wasn't sure if he even realized he was doing it.

He didn't ask.

A test revealed that his tea had cooled to something drinkable. He downed some of it and then went in search of breakfast. He still had that bowl of leftover pasta from a few nights earlier. That would be enough.

“Edmund?”

He paused in his search of the refrigerator. “Hm?”

“Will you grant that I am your closest friend?”

Edmund peered over the open door. Istvan hadn't moved. “Of course.”

Why was he asking a question like that? He knew that. His only possible competition would have been Dan and Esther Rose, but they had vanished in the late Seventies. Something to do with the Russians. The Cold War. Edmund had long resigned himself to the reality that he would never see them again.

And of course there was Apsara before that, Stella and Chiyuki and...

Well. The past was past.

Edmund pulled out the bowl, retrieved a fork, and made for his own chair. It was blocked by one of Istvan's wings – the specter's wingspan was enormous, eighteen feet tip to tip, and would have been very awkward if he were solid – and Edmund waited for him to draw it out of the way.