The Interminables (29 page)

He sat on a bench across from Magister Hahn, cradling his steaming cup in his hands, the glass table drawn up before him. His goggles were off. He looked perfectly composed, smooth-faced save for the expected creases of thought and concern, but was still nervous, still prone to sudden flickers of a more powerful fear. The tea had helped. Distractions always did.

Istvan sat beside him, cleaning his glasses for the third time.

“We wouldn't make a parade of it,” mused the Magister. She adjusted one of the pens in her hair. She had dressed while Edmund busied himself in the kitchen, darting into one of the many doors and reappearing less than a minute later in her usual men's garb, the Twelfth Hour emblem affixed once more to her throat. “I think, if we were careful, most of the trouble would be the Susurration itself. You realize, Mr Templeton, that you wouldn't have nearly so effective a defense as Doctor Czernin.”

“I know.”

“He's native to the plane. Part of this world, part of that one. You aren't. Last time you visited the Conceptual, as I understand, you weren't there for long and you weren't under attack from anything living there, much less anything like the Susurration.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Being able to perceive and communicate with it doesn't mean you can fight it.”

“I think we're all aware of that,” Edmund muttered. He blew at the steam.

Istvan sighed, holding sparkling lenses up to the light and feeling immensely useless. He wasn't a wizard. He didn't know anything of rituals or celestial conjunctions. He wouldn't be able to help the Magister with whatever she meant to do, and Edmund refused to hear of him facing the Susurration again. No. No, I can't ask you to do that. Not after what happened.

Istvan couldn't bring himself to argue with him.

Worse, he kept getting distracted.

The Man in Black was the logical one for the task. Edmund was. The man couldn't be killed. Knew what he was on about. Bravery in spades, enough to face the worst and come out of it, and keep going, damaged but dauntless. If anyone could infiltrate Providence from the Conceptual realm and shut down those ritual sites, it was him.

It was foolish – he knew it was foolish – but Istvan almost yearned to go with him. It would mean facing the Susurration again, yes. Facing Pietro. Facing… all of it, yes, but how was that any different than usual, really? Edmund strove for what he'd become every time he put on that cape.

Oh, he'd been magnificent. Istvan wished none of it had ever happened.

“I could do it,” the Magister said. A strange certainty filled her presence, tinged with terror. “I'd be able to get a better idea of the Susurration's current state if I did. Besides,” she added with a tight smile, “I suspect I'd hold its attention better than both of you put together.”

Edmund shook his head. “If anything goes wrong, I'd prefer to have you in a position where you could do some good. You're the only one who knows the Susurration like this.”

“Diego,” she pointed out.

“A lot of help he's been.” He gazed out at the room. “I appreciate what you're offering, Mercedes, but before anything else, you're the Magister. We can't afford to risk you.”

She picked up her cup, fear receding, self-hatred rushing into its place. Steam rose in whorls. “I thought you might say that.”

Edmund didn't reply.

Istvan jammed his glasses back on, trying to get the memory of a bloodied blade and the taste of the pain that accompanied it out of his head. Pain suffered willingly. Suffered for him! “Is there nothing I can do?”

“You could go with Mr Templeton,” the Magister said shortly.

“I–”

“You don't require a ritual circle to accompany him, you've fought the Susurration three times now and emerged sane, and – whatever else you might be, Doctor – you are a one hundred and fifty year-old Conceptual avatar of trench warfare.”

He swallowed, suddenly acutely aware of the knife hanging at his side and sickened by the idea of drawing it on Pietro. “I'm… aware of that, Magister.”

“Damaged or not, given the proper orders and enough incentive, I think you would pull through well enough. Mr Templeton may not agree with me, but Mr Templeton is convinced he can single-handedly evade a mind-controlling, memory-stealing, psyche-eroding extraplanar genius loci by
running
from it.”

Edmund didn't respond to the goading. Something new churned within him, the glimmerings of a deep uncertainty and horror. It didn't seem like the start of another episode, but...

Istvan eyed him. He was staring at the chess board atop the bookshelf.

“Mercedes,” the wizard said after a moment, “You play chess?”

She shook her head. “It's ornamental, is all. Now, I know the state your friend was in when we summoned him back, but–”

“We need to play chess.”

The Magister looked at him oddly. “Mr Templeton, I said I don't play.”

He leaned forward, setting down his cup. “No, no, we need to play chess. That's what the Susurration's done. That's what we need to do, too.”

Istvan frowned. Edmund enjoyed the matches, but he wasn't a compulsive player by any means; he enjoyed metaphors, but this one made no sense. “If the creature is playing chess, Edmund, I should like a rematch with better oversight. It hasn't played a fair game at all – it's always bringing in new pieces and changing the rules to... Oh.”

“Right?” said Edmund.

Istvan sat back. “Oh,” he repeated.

“Istvan, we need a zeppelin.”

“I should think Barrio Libertad was the zeppelin.”

“Is it?”

“It's the largest single piece, the primary object of terror among a confined civilian populace, and a wholly civilized means of waging war so long as you pay no mind to what you're actually doing.”

The Magister looked back and forth between them. “Zeppelin?”

Edmund held up his hands, tracing half-formed pieces in the air. “Right, if that's that, then we… We need... your knights. Istvan, your knights. Same piece, acts differently, more powerful.”

“Yes, but what–”

“Park the zeppelin, give it different munitions, modify the terrain to our advantage, and instead of taking corners, we charge straight. What was it you said that time you fielded fifteen cannons?”

“Something about ‘desperate times call for more cannons.' But Edmund, we don't have…”

Edmund leapt to his feet. “We have a zeppelin and a
battleship
, Istvan. A dreadnought. We just have to flood the field.”

“Gentlemen,” said the Magister, “I'd say this is no time for games, but I'd dearly love to be mistaken.”

Edmund turned to her, eyes wild for all their permanent look of exhaustion. “Mercedes, if this works, I think we can pull off Grace's evacuation, Istvan will get his chance to press for surrender, and we can cripple the Susurration badly enough that you might be able to bind it properly.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Go on.”

“Yes,” echoed Istvan. An evacuation? A dreadnought? He had never used a piece like that save for shore bombardment and he could only think of one possible equivalent. Surely Edmund didn't mean to raise one of Shokat Anoushak's monsters himself.

“Mercedes,” the wizard continued, “you know how to bind the Susurration but can't weaken it or stall it enough because you can't hit it on the right scale. Diego can. The weapon itself might be lethal but some part of it collapses the physical and the Conceptual together, and that would put
everyone
on the Susurration's level, wouldn't it? All the smilers. Who, like you said, can't fight it, necessarily, but might be able to resist it long enough to get themselves out of Providence.”

“How long is long enough?”

“Let me worry about that.”

She set her cup down. “Mr Templeton, are you saying–”

“I am.”

Istvan stared at him. An evacuation. All of those people. All that time. He couldn't, he'd said. That would burn through everything he had. He couldn't risk it.

He couldn't.

“You weren't so eager to volunteer your time earlier,” said the Magister.

Edmund shrugged. It was a loose shrug, broad and exaggerated, the type of shrug Istvan had seen from airmen in the days before parachutes. “It won't kill me.”

He didn't know that. How could he know that? He'd never done this before! Thirty-five for seventy years, and he'd never–

“Edmund, you can't.”

The wizard brushed at his shoulder, and Istvan realized that he'd grabbed at it, that he was half-standing, that he was trying to shake him but of course it wasn't working. He sat down again. He couldn't bring himself to let go. “Edmund, think, please. You can't know what–”

“It won't kill me,” Edmund repeated, “and I'm not done.” He turned to the Magister, almost conspiratorial, caught up again in that strange surge of desperate vitality. “Mercedes, you have to talk to Diego. See if the collapse can be separated from the weapon, or stalled, or reversed, or whatever else would give us an intact Providence merged with the Conceptual. No killing. Just the collapse. I don't know anything about how that works and I don't want to go any further with this until I know that's possible.”

The Magister glanced from him to the chessboard. One hand dropped to her jacket pocket, where she kept her telephone. “What guarantee do you have that Barrio Libertad will agree to this?”

“I don't. But it's been seven years since you and Diego last exchanged words, so I think it's about time for a good conversation between you two about the Susurration.” Edmund picked up his cup again, glanced at its contents, and then tossed the remainder down his throat. “I mean, hell, it's worth a shot.”

It was tea, not gin, but the similarity in the act was unmistakable.

He'd done this before. During the last days of the Wizard War, he'd been little more than a driven husk. Nothing to do but what had to be done. Nowhere to go but forward. No one and nothing to dissuade him, like a tank rolling into battle over wounded men: allies, enemies, anyone who couldn't get out of the way, smashed into the mud with all the others.

Istvan knew that had happened. He remembered it. He knew their names.

His grip tightened on the man's arm. Through it. Into it. Blood pounded past his fingers like the stroke of an engine, burning hot. “Edmund,” he said, “there are hundreds of thousands of people in Providence.”

“That's right.”

“Diego didn't come to the conference,” said the Magister.

Edmund smiled. “I know how to find him.”

T
hey teleported
into Barrio Libertad from the Magister's office. Edmund could do that. He wasn't supposed to be able to do that, but a combination of enemy negligence and past power could lead to a great deal of possibilities that weren't supposed to be.

It won't kill me
.

That was all. That was all he would say. Over and over, like a mantra.

And that smile… oh, it was the one he wore when he fought, when he distanced himself from himself, and Istvan didn't like that at all. He changed when he smiled.They stood atop the wall, that tremendous barrier that separated Barrio Libertad from the Susurration, and from Providence. Fields of dust. Fields of glass. An orange sun setting over the jagged spines of dead beasts. Hundreds of thousands of innocents trapped, unaware, pawns in the same great game played between well-meaning powers since the dawn of time.Hearts and minds. Bodies, if that didn't work.Istvan clasped his hands tightly behind his back, trying to focus through the choking fog of ambient rage that seeped from every surface. There were so many of them. How could Edmund think to evacuate so many?The Magister crossed her arms over the strap of her messenger bag, staring out at the crater walls, the canvas shelters, the great skeletons heaped like mountains, the only remnants to survive the blast. If there were any pride mixed with the rest – the grief, the dread – Istvan couldn't detect it.

“Well,” she said.

“That's about right,” said Edmund. He turned, eyeing the turrets and walkways, cape swept in the wind. “Now, let's see if this works.” He knocked on a nearby railing. “Diego?”

Something clanged. It wasn't the railing.

“Diego, I'm sorry about the short notice, but Magister Hahn would like to speak with you and–”

The clanging struck like a train, a rush and clatter. The air turned to crystal.

Magister Hahn disappeared.

The clanging faded.

A path of glowing blue lit up beneath their feet.

“Right,” muttered Edmund. He started off down the line.

Istvan trailed him, wishing the fortress' ambiance didn't make it so difficult to concentrate. It was like forging through clouds of acid, and he wondered how in the world no one else noticed it. “That was the mercenary teleport.”

“Yes, it was.”

“What do you suppose will happen to her?”

“No idea. Hope for the best.”

“How did you know that would happen?”

Edmund walked faster. “I made a mistake once.”

The light led to a cable car. It was difficult to pick out the fortress populace with much precision, but they seemed to be on a wartime footing: crowds milling far below, fire teams setting up defensive positions all across the walls and walkways. What for? Was something looking to get in?

Istvan peered out the nearest window as the car began to move. Given the way the fortress was built, anyone or anything who appeared in the central plaza would be an immediate target for the upper terraces, provided anyone could shoot properly, and it took hardly any imagination at all to picture craters punched into the mosaics, steel roofs and adobe walls toppled into rubble, defenders manning makeshift emplacements that fired with a flash, a shock; short-lived suns that burst with scorching fury. Such an enclosed space would be ideal for gas: the wind couldn't blow it away, and thus trapped it would spread, and settle, seep down into all the warrens dug out below…

Whatever else you might be, Doctor
…

He felt sick again. He stared down at his hands instead. Then he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his left sleeve. The burns on the underside of his arm were there, rough and taut and twisting – as he knew they did – up and across shoulder, chest, neck, face. A reminder of the one war he'd fought in life. How it really was. What it really did.

Franceska hadn't recognized him. Pietro was dead.

Edmund rested his elbows on the window beside him. “Istvan?”

He rolled his sleeve back down, wanting to touch him again, to feel that blood burning beneath his skin, to remind him how precious it was and demand to know how he thought he could save all of those people by himself – Edmund, you mad, brave, selfish
fool
. He didn't. “What dreadnought did you mean, back at the lighthouse?”

“It doesn't matter until we know the fortress can play its part.”

Istvan tugged his cuff straight, brushing away fraying hems. The buttons had gone dull. He shined them. “Glory is all fine and well until you find yourself hung rotting on a wire, Edmund, do you understand?”

Edmund stared at the strings of lights as they flowed past. He was close, but so distant – again like he had divorced himself from himself, and someone else was speaking. “It won't be like that,” he said. “I'm far too much of a coward for that.”

“How can you propose a plan like this and then claim to be a coward?”

“Leave it, will you?”

“If anything, this is precisely the opposite. This is… This is recklessness, Edmund, and you–”

“Leave it.”

The cable car came to a stop and he stepped out of it, cape fluttering.

Istvan called after him. “We don't even know where that line goes!”

He didn't stop.

T
he line
of light led along deserted streets, narrow, vertiginous, hemmed in by mismatched sheets of corrugated steel. They passed a mural of white birds painted around someone's door. Wind chimes twirled above their heads, hung from strings of globular lamps. It was as though the fortress purposefully led them away from the crowds, away from preparing citizen-defenders who might otherwise halt their work, whisper, stare.

Edmund tried not to look for ducks. Tried not to wonder where Mercedes may have been taken. Tried to follow the line to the letter, because it was something to follow, and tried not to think about what he would have to do to the man who followed him.

If this worked.

That was leadership, wasn't it? Convincing people to trust you and then convincing yourself, when the day was done, that it wasn't betrayal. That you did your best. That the candles were enough.

He walked. Istvan followed. They crossed a bridge and came to a domed structure, its doors propped open. The light darted up narrow stairs, glowing beneath the metal, and halted, pulsing. A stuttering command crackled somewhere inside, drowning out the quieter murmur of other voices. Five people? Six?

Istvan hesitated. “Edmund...”

The reply was automatic. “Don't worry about it.”

He started up the steps –

– and Grace strode through the doorway. Her cowl was pulled down, her goggles dangling about her neck, her articulated harness whirring with each swing of her arms. She descended three steps and then halted, propping a fist on her hip without much conviction. “Eddie.”

“Grace,” said the Hour Thief, noting distantly that Istvan had drawn up beside him, “I don't know what you've been told, but we might have an alternative to your superweapon.”

She blinked. “
Now
you come up with this?”

He nodded. There was a smile playing around his lips that seemed to have put itself there. Part of the act. Put people at ease. The Hour Thief was a charmer; everyone knew that.

Grace descended the rest of the stairs in a near slide. “I was just talking to the People's Council about artillery strikes and mass kidnappings and militia defense – we don't know if it has your teleport, either, we don't know if it can raise more monsters, we don't know
anything
anymore – and if you've got something better, I'm all ears.” She swung closer to him, voice dropped to a low mutter. “Diego's reporting a pleasant teatime chat with your boss, Eddie; that was quick. Who's running this operation?”

“She is.”

“Riiight.”

“Grace, if I am, we're going to collapse two planes of reality together, evacuate everyone from Providence, and hurt the Susurration so badly Magister Hahn will be able to chain it down like she should have done years ago.”

She stepped back, incredulous. “On whose time?”

“Mine.”

“But you said–”

“I know what I said.” He realized he had retrieved his watch, and spun it around by its chain in the most nonchalant fashion he could. “It won't kill me.”

He didn't feel quite as concerned as he thought he should, and he chalked that up to the nature of the beast. He wasn't going to execute this plan, the Hour Thief was. That was how the Conceptual realm worked. It took what you were and made it more so, and for better or worse, that's exactly what the Hour Thief was.

That's what he was for.

She stared at him. Then at Istvan, who crossed his arms and looked away. She mouthed something under her breath. “Eddie, when I asked about using your time, I didn't mean all at once. We had the Bernault devices. I figured we could space it out, we could give you time to–”

He shook his head. “No. Never from allies.”

She smacked her forehead. “I mean, wait for you to pull it off in installments, or something. Eddie, there's half a million people out there! You're planning to get them all in one go? Alone?”

“Istvan's coming, too,” he said.

The specter started. “I'm what?”

“Oh, that's real helpful, I'm sure the dead guy's got lots of time to spare.” Grace spun on her heel, throwing up her hands. “Eddie, this is…”

“This is what, Grace?”

“It's just… this is
you
we're talking about. You don't
do
things like this.”

He maintained a brittle smile. “Things like what, Grace?”

She spun back around and jabbed his sternum. “Listen, if you're still trying to get me back, pulling some kind of stupid sacrificial stunt isn't the way to do it.”

“That's precisely what I told him,” Istvan muttered.

“See? Even Doctor Awful agrees and we never agree on anything. And what do you mean he's coming? Remember what happened at the conference?”

Edmund tried to push her hand away. “You don't know the whole story.”

“He's compromised! You can't risk–”

Istvan caught her wrist. “Risk what?”

They both looked at Edmund.

He backed up a step. “I didn't say this would be easy.”

“You haven't said hardly anything,” said Istvan.

“You've said,” Edmund corrected him.

“He's said what?” demanded Grace.

He was done. He was done with this now. He'd been done with this for eighty years.

“A double negative!” he shouted, “That was a double negative! ‘You haven't said hardly anything' should be ‘you've said hardly anything' or it isn't right, and I keep telling people things like this and they never listen and they should know better anyway! I'm doing the best I can!”

He jammed his watch back into his pocket. Faces peered from the doorway at the top of the stairs. He glared at them and they vanished.

“Really?” said Grace.

“Do you want a way out of this or not?”

She sighed.

Istvan crossed his arms again, rusted wire tangling around a nearby railing. “Edmund, I should like to know my part in this.”

Edmund lifted his goggles so he could run a hand across his face. “No, you don't.”

“I believe that I do.”

“No. Trust me, you don't. Not until we're sure that the fortress can come through.”

“Oh, we're sure,” said Mercedes.

Well. That was that.

“Great,” he said woodenly.

Mercedes took the steps down from the domed structure two at a time. “Remarkable place. I hadn't realized that its layout followed such familiar principles, though turned about and run through several additional dimensions than is usual. This architect isn't a god, Mr Templeton, but there comes a point when the difference is in some ways academic.”

He frowned, well aware that said architect was listening. “What do you mean by that?”

“She means you need to read more science fiction,” said Grace, stepping around him. She propped her armored fists on her hips. “So, Magister Hahn. I'm told you had a change of heart and you're running things here. What's the plan?”

“That depends.”

“Depends on what?”

Mercedes grinned a tight grin. “According to Mr Diego Escarra Espinoza, this superweapon is nothing more than an abrupt end to the planar merger. Collapse two paradigms together, immediately cease any attempt to make them agree with each other, and watch them turn local truth into Swiss cheese.”

Grace goggled. “You understood him?”

“I summoned the Susurration. Of course I understood him.”

“But–”

Mercedes held up a finger. “He says that abrupt end is optional. He can mitigate it – monitor every corner of the merged plane and adjust as needed to maintain stability, if you can imagine – but he can't weaken the Susurration for us. That weapon is all or nothing.”

“So…”

Mercedes nodded at Edmund. “That's your flooded chessboard, Mr Templeton. Let's see that dreadnought.”

Edmund pointed at Istvan.

H
azed
. It was all hazed. So hard to concentrate.

“I can't,” Istvan said.

The Magister turned a pen between her fingers. “Mr Templeton, we discussed this.”

“No, we didn't.”

“Last night. Ash and lightning. I'm sure you both remember. While I still believe he could cover your evacuation, and I'm touched by your confidence in his abilities, the problem remains one of scale. Doctor Czernin would be impossibly outmatched.”

No inflection in Edmund's voice. “I'm unchaining him.”

Devil's Doctor. War to End All Wars.

Istvan backed away. To the railing. Partway through the railing, a fall beyond. “What?”
– a house of bones bound by barbed wire, dancing to the pull of bloody strings –