The Interminables (32 page)

He shrugged.

“How long?” someone called. “How long is this wizard plan going to take? If it doesn't work and the Susurration takes them both over…”

“We should just set off the bomb,” called someone else.

The whispering exploded into a cacophony.
Let the wizards try – why are we letting wizards dictate what we do – the Shift was their fault in the first place – we can't just kill everything if we have a choice, we discussed this – us or them, isn't it – we were them – we were all them, don't you remember – what if it were us
–

Edmund covered his ears.

“Order,” crackled Diego's voice, echoing from everywhere at once, “The vote is decided. Order or r- removal from the chamber.”

The walls turned. Shifted, somehow – something to do with the acoustics – and the shouting faded, diffused. Foiled, some of the spectators departed. The rest stayed. Their mouths moved, no sound reaching the table.

“Grace,” Edmund muttered, “I'm sorry, but your ‘friend' is frightening as hell.”

“We really did vote,” she muttered back.

“Yeah? Who tallied it?”

A different councilman held up a hand. “Hour Thief. Doctor Czernin. We're all aware that there is no further decision to be made here. There is no aid we can offer you. I can't even assure you that the idea of ‘letting the wizards try' was popular, but it seems to be the best plan we have, and we called you to this summit to wish you both good luck.”

“Thank you,” said Edmund, rather wishing they hadn't.

Istvan said.

The councilman nodded at Mercedes. “Magister Hahn, the People's Council holds contingency plans three and nine on standby, as you suggested. We're as ready as we'll ever be. Lord Kasimir?”

The warlord waved a hand. “All requisitioned forces are in position,” declared his herald. “The bold and cunning Lord Kasimir awaits only engagement, should we have need of it.”

Mercedes looked to Edmund and Istvan. “Gentlemen, it seems the rest falls to you.”

Istvan stood, snapping to automatic attention as he did. “Magister.”

Edmund rose to his feet more carefully, picking up his satchel of equipment and slinging it back across his shoulder. Getting up too fast would only make him dizzy. “Do we parade off somewhere or does transport come to us?”

“Remember where I showed you?” asked Grace.

“Below the fortress?”

“That's it. You need to go there. Go, jump off, do whatever you need to do.”

Something boomed beneath their feet.

“Right.”

“No matter who or what you see,” Mercedes said, “don't stop until you're finished. Don't stop. The Susurration won't play fair and it won't pull punches. If it can use anything you've done or lost against you, it will.”

Edmund glanced at Istvan. The specter was staring at the wall.

“The smilers should be translated into the Conceptual individually, according to their own self-images,” Mercedes continued. “When you find them, you'll know, but
don't linger
. Make one circuit of the fortress, offer escape once to whatever you see, and then cut Doctor Czernin's chains. You'll have to use his knife on the last link, remember.”

“Right.”

Istvan would be up to it. He had to be up to it. All he had to do was keep the Susurration occupied, just long enough... Edmund reached for his pocket watch.

Someone grabbed his wrist. Grace. He didn't remember her getting up. She took his hand in hers and pressed something into it. It tingled. “Good luck.”

He looked down. Her headband. She'd given him her headband. It was warm. “Grace,” he said, “you know I still love you, right?”

She sighed. She didn't look at him. “I know.”

He took his hat off and put the headband on. If it helped, it helped. It was over.

He could collapse when this was over.

Grace stepped back. “Keep some names off the walls for me, will you?”

Edmund fitted his hat back over the headband, fixing on half-remembered impressions of a vast pit, crackling with blue-white lightning. The Hour Thief and Doctor Czernin.
Make way
, Lucy had said.
Make way.

No need for that now.

“I will.”

I
t was
to the brink he took them. That sickly pale light strung through tubes, an illumination dead and almost underwater. That humming, teeth-gritting, oil-tasting, that shivered up his neck. Those enormous vertebral constructs stretching down, down, down, dizzying, forever. If any machine could collapse what wasn't real into what was, this was it.

Don't stop until you're finished. Don't stop.

Istvan stood beside him – as he always did, as he always would – tracing spectral fingers through his bitten arm. The pain could wait. The hangover could wait. There would be time for that later. There would be time.

He had to trust that there would be time. He always had time.

“Zero,” crackled Diego's voice. “Collapse.”

Nothing changed. Edmund swallowed back oil. They were jumping.

Of course, it would be a jump.

“Istvan,” he said, “you'll be all right?”

Istvan touched his shoulder. “Oh, Edmund,” he replied, “I have wings.”

“Right. Well. Istvan, I…” He held tighter to his pocket watch. It should have been harder to breathe. “Watch for me, all right? I'll finish this and cut your chains. Last link, your knife. I promise.”

“I promise,” the specter echoed. He lingered, a phantom pressure, fingers the barest whisper of sensation –

– and then turned, and dove.

Don't stop. Don't stop.

Edmund had jumped out of an airplane before. This wasn't an airplane. This was nothing like an airplane. This was crazy.

His lungs hammered. Nothing for it.

He clutched his satchel to his side and leapt after Istvan.

A
rmies stumbled
their blind and groping way through Peace.

Istvan winged among them, wreathed in chains and wondering. He was bone and wire, mud and poison... they were whatever they thought themselves to be, a strange cavalcade of self-concepts translated in one broken instant to something real. Pride in Simple Things was there, as was Lost Tableware and Wishes She Could Remember. The Tall One, and The Wants-To-Be Taller One. The Animal. The Animator of Dust.

Smilers, translated to the Susurration's own level. Half a million of them.

Providence had become greater than itself: a maze of glass, molten when he wasn't looking, the ghosts of trees hovering on the edge of memory. Mountainous skeletons slouched through the ashes, destroyers themselves destroyed. The walls of Barrio Libertad towered amidst the fading shades of a demolished skyline, exactly the same as they were in the normal world.

Beyond that, distances dissolved. The Great War lurked just beyond an unseen divide, as it had done since he was chained.

No sign of Edmund. No sign of the Man in Black.

No sign of Pietro.

Istvan couldn't decide between dread or disappointment. He alighted on the misted ground, set a hand on the hilt of his knife; couldn't draw it. “Edmund?” Glass whispered. Rain. Coffee. Old leather. Tendriled ripples, like waves on the ocean, somehow frantic. The Susurration, reeling at a blow struck by what it couldn't understand.

Footsteps. Istvan turned.

Pietro hurtled across a garden path that hadn't been there before, the pond behind him rippling as though from several thrown stones. he cried,

Istvan stepped backwards and almost tripped over a park bench.

He buried his face in Istvan's collar, an embrace that shook. Dead leaves blew over the path.

Istvan hugged him back. He couldn't help himself.

That voice; that beautiful voice. Istvan blinked back tears. Oh, he missed him so much. he said,

The grip drew tighter.

Providence had gone. There was only the park, now, deep in the grip of autumn... but the sun still shone, and not all of the leaves had fallen. They rustled, red and gold.

Istvan tried not to remember. Remembering only made it worse.

He trailed off. He stared at his hand, clasped around Pietro's shoulder. Fleshed. Living. The usual pale grey of his sleeve now had proper blue in it, its piping gone brilliant scarlet. No shackles.

A whisper in his ear.

Istvan closed his eyes.

came the soft reply. The embrace shifted: a brush against the back of his neck, fingers playing through his hair.

Istvan was the stronger of the two. Always had been. Broader. Taller. A duelist and brawler, with the scars to prove it. He could escape any time he wanted.

Any time.

Where was Edmund?

Pietro broke away.

Istvan refocused. “I…”

Delicate fingers caressed the scarred side of his chest, his neck, his face. The voice trembled.

Istvan tried to close those fingers in his. “No, Peti, I–”

Pietro drew back, clutching at his breast.

“No!” Istvan reached out a hand… and froze, staring at bloodied bone, bound and shackled in blazing calligraphy. Oh, God.

Oh, God.

Istvan caught his wrist.

A shell burst between them. Istvan reeled backwards, blinded and then buried, mud oozing through his bones. Something rolled over him; a heavy, ugly thing, steel that screamed; crushing – and then he breached the surface, gasping, and it was a waste, all of it, no trees left and a severed hand lying crab-like beside him, blown off at the wrist. It had a ring on.

Istvan floundered. He couldn't find him. Whose hand? Where was he?

He tumbled into a trench, wire ripping at his uniform. The mud stung, caustic with the residue of a gas attack, wisps swirling at his landing. Not tear gas. Phosgene. This was phosgene. He struggled to his feet, slipping. The shock of another strike hurled him sideways.

Something soft. Wet.

said the dead man, slumped, shrapnel-torn, against the barricades. His eyes were soft and brown, flecked with yellow, irises ringed with a darkness like oak.

Istvan scrambled away, his front smeared with blood. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. He could… he could go flying later, he could hide, he could…

Something. Oh, God, something.

He held up his hands, chains dragging in the mud.

Pietro said.

Artillery thundered.

Istvan staggered. Sat down, hard, on a worm-eaten ledge.

Those soft eyes gazed at him, pity and hatred and pain.

E
dmund fled
.

Chasms yawned beside him. Below him. Above him. Before and behind. Storm winds lashed his face. He stared down, at his feet, without trying to look down. He couldn't – down would look back, and pull him under. It was water, he knew it. Like the lake. His shoes slipped on a knife-edge, a strand barely wide enough to balance, cutting into his soles.

There was a pun there. The worst pun.

Istvan hadn't… he wouldn't…

A shadow fell overhead. Edmund skidded, backpedaled, and dove away as one of Shokat Anoushak's terrors spun into the ground, crumpling, seams bursting, rotors snapping off, mantis claws curving like descending sickles, its scream reduced to a labored, moaning howl. Its tail stabilizer was gone.

A pale horror plunged after it. Before it. Veered around at an impossibly sharp angle, ripped a long, jagged, sparking gash through its metallic flesh – and shot away, turning a barrel roll and then vanishing into the storm. Grinning. Laughing. Violence for the sake of violence: gleeful, prancing, and delivered with the explosive brutality of a bronco. Nothing personal, but nothing better.

Istvan.

He was frightening enough standing still. He was frightening enough in his right mind.

“Edmund, do you know what you mean to unleash? You've seen it, Edmund, all those years ago, but perhaps you've forgotten?”

Another flier crashed down. The woods caught fire. Edmund tripped on a root that hadn't been there before, tumbling down a riverbank as he held onto his satchel for dear life, stones ripping the skin from his hands.

He couldn't breathe. It felt like he'd been running forever.

Laughter, somewhere above. “Shall I show it to you again, Edmund?” Thunder through the canopy; vulture's wings arrowed across the stars. “Shall I spark your memory?”

The Susurration had gotten to him.

Istvan was drunk.

He was drunk, and he struck with surgical precision.

Edmund scrambled away from the flash of a knife.

I
stvan covered
his eyes as another shell struck.

He never had choices. He was what he was: all else flowed from that, irredeemable. There was nothing he could do. Even his face was twisted, and the wire that followed him. He deserved to be hated. He did.

What would Pietro have said, had he known what he was now? What he had become?

Remember what you are, Pista.

Before everything else. Before anything else.

I can honestly say that I don't know where I'd be without you.

The last mud pattered down around him. Istvan whirled and threw his knife.

It thudded into Pietro's shrapnel-torn chest. His heart. A cleaner end than what had really killed him, so very long ago.

“I'm a doctor,” Istvan said. English. A language he and Pietro had never shared. A language he had learned later, from conquerors and jailers. A language less dear and less powerful. He tugged at the band on his arm, the red cross he always carried. “I'm a doctor, and Pietro knew that. If you mean to use his memory to keep me from helping others, as a doctor ought, then you're not even close to representing the man he was.”

The Susurration – it was the Susurration – looked down at the handle. Touched it, as though it couldn't believe it. Didn't fall.

Istvan gestured at the battlefield. “This is how you win my sympathy?”

“Yes. I am. I am your only ally and advocate, regardless of all that you've done, because you were brought here unjustly, trapped, and abandoned. I tried to speak for you at the conference. I tried to argue against what we mean to do now. I am trapped and chained, like you, and I am offering you one last chance to surrender. Give up those people you've imprisoned, and I'll see to it that the victors aren't the only ones who dictate what comes next.”

Pietro brushed at his chest, fingers coming away scarlet. he said, wondering.

Istvan stepped toward him, slowly, reminding himself: it wasn't Pietro. It wasn't.

It wasn't.

“Please. Even if this plan works, people will be hurt. Your people.”

“They're still yours, aren't they?” Another step. “You care for them, don't you?”

“Then let them go.”

Half the distance. A quarter of the distance. The mud clung to his shoes and sucked at the chains he dragged behind him. The guns seemed to have fallen silent. Pietro gazed at him, unmoving. Blood now soaked the entire front of his jacket.

Istvan reached out a hand, pretending it wasn't shaking as badly as it was. “If you care for them, let them go.”

Istvan stopped. He shouldn't have thrown the knife. He shouldn't have. Why had he done that? Oh, God, there was so much blood.

He struggled to find words. Couldn't. Looked away. “Pietro… my Peti, when he…” English wasn't good enough, not for this; Istvan switched back to German.

Istvan lunged. Before he could think. Before he could hesitate.

He grabbed at the knife handle and drove the blade deeper, twisting, an agony burning in his own chest. not
!>

Pietro hissed, A chuckle. It gurgled in his throat.

Istvan stared at him. Edmund. Edmund was here, too. Edmund hadn't ever faced such a foe before, and he was alone.

The Susurration was stalling.

“I like to think we're better friends than that,” Istvan said.

He tore out the knife.

The sound was terrible. It always was. Memory bubbled from the wound, glassy, congealing.

“In fact,” he added, wiping the blade on his uniform hem, “I think he would have liked you. He loves books, you know. Dreadful ones. You could have formed a club.”

A roar on the horizon. Incoming shells whistled.

Oh, Peti. It was high time this was over.

Istvan took wing.

“
T
he worst is living
with what you've done,” Istvan said, still grinning that deathly grin. He struck: once, twice, steel flashing faster than Edmund should have been able to follow.

Edmund jerked his head out of the way just in time to keep his left eye. The tread assembly of the overturned tank slid away with a crash, interior wheels spinning. Edmund ran around it and came face-to-skull with the specter again. Ducked.

The blade scored his cheek.

Couldn't spend time. He couldn't spend any more time. Couldn't move any faster.

Couldn't escape.

Istvan leered at him. “How is it, living with what you've unleashed?”

Edmund backed up against the tank, holding tight to his pocket watch. Don't. He needed all the time he could get. There were people that needed it. He couldn't spend it.

“You're not like this,” he tried, “I know you're not like this.”

“Oh, I'm not talking about me,” the ghost replied. He flicked the blood from his knife. It spattered across Edmund's jacket. “I'm talking about you. The Hour Thief himself! You're the man who decides who gets all the time and who doesn't, aren't you?” He leaned in closer, the stench of poison gas burning Edmund's nostrils. “Who gave you the right?”