The Interminables (4 page)

“I bloody hate frostbite,” he said to no one in particular. He traced his fingers through the wounds. “Someone get this jacket off – the man's been clawed and the wounds are contaminated.”

Roberts and his team began hooking up all manner of diagnostic devices and life-sustaining apparatus, moments before others arrived with warming blankets and precious doses of the appropriate drugs. They had all been so relieved to get the electricity working, five years ago.

Istvan remembered trying to save lives with the medical equivalent of a rubber band and a toothbrush. He'd operated before penicillin. Before blood types. When the vaccination of diphtheria was the news of the day, along with the exciting idea of using Röntgen rays to see inside the body. Surgeons had operated without washing their hands a mere generation before.

The blood was still congealed.

“Did you pull him off a bloody mountain?” Istvan demanded.

One of the medics shook her head. “We responded to a call. Some sort of animal, they said.”

“Yes, I can see that, but the cold?”

“We don't know.” She shrugged helplessly. “We thought it might be something escaped from the spellscars, or a Conduit, or something.”

Well, now. The spellscars suggested a monster that had gotten past the patrols, while a Conduit... oh, that was another matter entirely. That was someone coursing with strange power, burning up with it, at the mercy of some outside source of one kind or another. Ordinary people, most of them, irrevocably transformed during the Wizard War. They were fantastically rare.

Grace had been one. Unnaturally fast, unnaturally strong, wreathed in lightning. Istvan had set one of her arms after she broke her own bones punching through concrete. She had never agreed to let him study her, mostly because she hated him, and Edmund, during their not-infrequent quarrels, had never been able to convince her otherwise.

Edmund had once suggested that Istvan was a sort of Conduit as well, linked as he was to the Great War. Istvan had disagreed: Conduits, unlike him, were alive
...
though for how long was anyone's guess.

He busied himself with circulation, nudging chilled fluids along their proper course. The claw marks weren't deep, at least, though their recipient would have some impressive scars to show off later. “I suppose we'll have to ask him.”

She blinked. “Now?”

He chuckled. “No, of course not. He'll stay under until we're sure he won't have a stroke or a coronary.” He patted the man's hand, fingers smeared with the memory of blood. The pain of frozen tissue reviving was more than familiar, at turns sharp and mellow, a languorous blossoming as frustrating as it was exquisite. He sighed in appreciation. Perhaps it would be a tolerable evening after all. “Roberts, you recall how many men I lost in the mountains?”

The nurse didn't glance up. “You've mentioned it a time or two.”

“Spread across three regiments, guns setting off avalanches, ridges full of bloody Italians... I don't know if anyone here has ever fought in the cold, but it dampens the pain terribly. Give me summer in the valleys, heat exhaustion, holding a river that isn't frozen. None of this natural anesthetic business.”

Roberts rolled his eyes.

“After all, what good is war if you can't appreciate the full measure of a bullet tearing through your ribs, hmm?” Again, he chuckled. One of the monitors sounded, a long, low, solid tone, and he reached over to revive the man a second time. Something was clotted... ah, there it was. The medication ought to help with that, once it took effect. “Gently, now, we don't want to thaw him out so quickly he shatters.”

“Working on it, Doctor.”

Istvan nodded, checking the man's brain for additional clots. Oh, his people really were quite skilled, all of them. More than capable. “Someone start a… ah, you already have. Room temperature, normal saline? Good. I'd like a bit of plasma warmed, just in case. I'm not seeing any other thromboses and I do believe his heart has finally decided to cooperate.”

“They aren't dead until they're warm and dead,” quipped one of the nurses.

Istvan pressed a hand to his chest. “Why, Mrs Torres, where ever does that leave me?”

“Beyond the scope of medical science, Doctor. Nothing we can do for you.”

He laughed. There wasn't.

There really wasn't.

“
A
beast
that claws and freezes its victims to death? I'd say it was one of Shokat Anoushak's creatures, but I hadn't heard of any perimeter breaches and I don't recall ever meeting one like this.” Istvan turned a captured black pawn between his fingers. It was past midnight and that awful jazz wailed from the living room again, but he felt quite chipper after the surgery and anyhow, it was Edmund's house; a bit of saxophone could be forgiven. “Why didn't it attack anyone earlier? Have you ever heard of a beast like that?”

Edmund propped his goateed chin on a fist, regarding the chessboard with narrowed eyes. He wore a clean shirt and suspenders and smelled much better. “Can't say that I have.””Really? I thought you'd seen everything.”

“Are you moving or not?”

“That depends. Have you fortified those three squares?”

“Last I remember, yes.”

Istvan grinned. “That is a terrible shame.” He pushed a piece forward.

Edmund frowned. “Is that the cannon from the Monopoly set?”

“It most certainly is, and as my armored cavalry has your infantry formation quite flanked–”

“Hold up, I thought we agreed that in this match the knights would move like proper knights. In Ls. You can't do that.”

Istvan waved a hand. “No, we agreed that knights would move like proper knights. These aren't knights, Edmund, and they haven't been for the last two minutes.” He plucked a cornered black rook off the board, followed by the pawn behind it and the bishop behind that.

They sat at the kitchen table, Edmund's chair facing the front door and Istvan's opposite, surrounded by flowered tile, flowered wallpaper, and avocado-green cabinets. Edmund's hoard of tin cans, glass jars, sugar packets, dental floss, and other items deemed useful or reuseable occupied every shelf not playing host to something else, arranged in neat rows. Newly-canned tomatoes sat atop the refrigerator. The pair of bowls for Beldam, the cat, lay near the entryway to the den. Beldam herself hated Istvan on principle and had fled down the hall when he arrived. The house itself was bare of photographs and packed with books, and Edmund refused to get rid of the horseshoe nailed sideways above the door.

“That was a hill,” Edmund objected.

“Which was?”

“The middle square. You can't fire a conventional cannon like that through a hill.”

“Hm.” Istvan traced a finger across his scarring, considering. They were his rules, though they seemed to have developed on their own in the years before the Wizard War and had grown more and more elaborate once he had finally been permitted to leave Twelfth Hour premises. “Not yet and not at that angle, no.” He put the bishop back. “I'll deal with you later.”

Edmund skated his lone surviving rook past Istvan's knights and balanced a penny atop it. He seemed better – cleaner, certainly – but preoccupied, wounded and tired and wonderfully apprehensive, and perhaps a bit resentful, if the sharper edge of the medley were any indication. He had led armies once, seven years ago tomorrow, and still hadn't quite recovered. “Istvan,” he asked, “just how bloody was your shift in the infirmary today?”

Istvan blinked. “Oh... not terrifically. Why?”

“You're awfully cheerful, is all.”

“Am I?”

Edmund shrugged and stacked two more pennies on the rook. Quick, precise motions, those of a man who had spent a lot of time turning pages.

Istvan looked away, fiddling with his wedding ring. “Perhaps my tolerance is lower than I thought,” he suggested. “You know it's only gotten worse since things have started getting better.”

“That would explain what happened at the mercenary convoy, wouldn't it?”

Istvan flinched. “Edmund, I'm sorry.”

The wizard rubbed a hand across his face. “Your move.”

“Edmund, I promise that we'll find the devices. They can't be far, not through that terrain and not with the need to remain hidden. In fact, I spoke to Janet Justice earlier: she will be watching from the satellites for anything odd, and after we've finished this game, I'll–”

“Your move.”

Istvan reached for his queen.

The next several turns passed in relative silence, save for another brief dispute over Istvan's entirely legal straight-galloping armored cavalry. It was ridiculous, perhaps, but chess was, at its heart, a war game. Istvan had simply updated it and made it just as unpredictable and unfair as war actually was.

It was better than the alternative.

“Edmund, bishop or not, he's far too visible and I've a clear shot this time.” Istvan removed the offending piece and added it to his collection of black foemen, improvised artillery, and plastic battleships. “Oh, and my zeppelin is still bombing your king.”

Edmund sat back in his chair. “That's fine, because I just added defenses.”

“Ah, incendiary rounds. What range?”

“What?”

Istvan rattled off a diatribe on raised flight ceilings as compensation for opposing ground-based emplacements and the much-inferior endurance of heavier-than-air craft. It was information more memory than knowledge, remembrances of engineering meetings and flight crews, of turning out on lawns and balconies to watch as great behemoths burst flaming in the sky like fireworks.

During the war itself, men had asked him how the Emperor was doing, where the enemy was, what the other regiments thought of their progress – and he knew, because he always knew, experiences that weren't his surging through him at all hours in a confusing flood of disjointed images, countless experiences seen through other eyes.

The Great War. The fate of millions – the means, the hopes, the ends – all poured into what was left of him, a Hungarian surgeon from Vienna who hadn't wanted any of it. What had seemed almost a strange omnipotence had ceased, suddenly and forever, at war's end. Now it was only history.

They'd just finished haggling a range compromise when Edmund cast a glance at the clean glass sitting next to the kitchen sink and sighed. “Istvan, what if they use gas again?”

Istvan paused mid-move. “You know what to expect now. You'll manage.”

“No, I won't.”

“Edmund, I've known you for thirty years and I know you can manage.”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Edmund.”

“Twenty-eight and some, if you must count the Ukraine.”

Istvan reached for him. “Edmund, please don't give up over this.”

Edmund jerked away, terrors roaring to the fore. “I'm not giving up!” he shouted. “I never said I was giving up. I can't, Istvan. You know I can't. Not now, not ever.” He pushed his chair back. He was shaking. “Not tomorrow.”

“Edmund–”

“It's been seven years, Istvan, and seven is a bad, bad number. I don't like seven. July is coming up, and that's another seven, and only seven days after that there's the seventh, and…” He ducked past the zeppelin hanging from its string and started for the hat and cape hung on their hook near the door. “I'm going to Charlie's.”

Istvan stood, cursing his choice of words. The pub. The anniversary. The memorial visit. Oh, he shouldn't have said anything. “I'll come with you.”

“Don't.”

A blink – and Edmund was the Hour Thief, his jacket donned and his hat straightened and his pocket watch in his hand, motion between moments, fueled by the time that he stole on his nightly patrols using methods he never talked about. A ritual, he'd said, performed long ago. A good idea at the time. Immortality... and a debt he could never repay.

“Don't,” he repeated. He flipped his watch open. “I'll be at the memorial in the morning.”

A snap. He vanished.

Istvan sat back down. Barbed wire knotted itself around the table legs. The zeppelin spun overhead, ponderous and ineffectual, its mission suddenly absurd.

Bloody Grace. This was her fault.

Far be it for Istvan to speak ill of the dead, but Edmund would have never suffered so, those fourteen long months in the watery dark, if not for Grace Wu.

N
o one bothered
him at Charlie's. Everyone knew who he was – the woodcut outside even had his image on it, signed, beneath the proclamation “So Vintage We're the Real Deal” – but Edmund had a booth of his own and everyone knew to leave him be. The deal was simple: he kept an eye on the place and allowed the use of his face, and, in return, gin was always on the house.

In return, he had a place where he could forget.

He sat in his booth, in a corner facing the door and opposite the piano. Other patrons drank and talked and sulked a safe distance away, surrounded by dark wooden panels and pressed tin, lit by hurricane lamps, the air smelling powerfully of tobacco. The bar stools had swept legs, designed to accommodate the brass rail footrest running along the bottom of the counter. Smoke-fogged chandeliers hung from the ceiling. The cash register was mechanical, and never used. Barter was the order of the day now.

Outside loitered men in suits and hats, lighting cigarettes beneath the street lamps. Cars rolled past with bulky lines and rounded headlights, designs that Edmund hadn't seen outside a showroom in sixty years. At Charlie's, it wasn't summer. It was spring. April, in fact.

April 11, 1939.

No one could reach the people in the windows. Step out the door, and you were back in Big East, back in the rain you couldn't hear falling from inside.

Edmund didn't think about it too hard. All that mattered was that the stock in the back rooms reappeared every day. The same bottles, over and over, without fail. Nowhere else could match Charlie's for sheer consistency and utter lack of shortage.

He sat with gin in hand and booth solidly under him and listened to disjointed words smear themselves across a strange haze of arms and teeth. Already he wasn't quite sure how much of the day's stock he had put away himself.

A good start.

Seventh anniversary. Seventh month after that. Seventh day. Had to be careful at times like this, when it all converged. Had to watch the sky.

Couldn't have another Hour Thief. One was enough.

No more of that.

A shadow approached his table. It slid up and over the cracked wood, snuffing out reflections of the lamps that shone in empty glasses. When it went up the wall, it took the shape of a battered cowboy hat.

“Someone left this for you,” said an old man's voice.

A white box appeared on the table, pushed over to him by gnarled fingers.

“A gal,” the voice clarified. “Pretty, too. God help you.”

The shadow receded.

“Thanks, pal,” said Edmund. “You're a real friend.”

He stared at the box. It was paper. It was about the size of a pie tin. Pinned to it was a smaller piece of paper, with writing on it. A note. Beautiful cursive.

“Huh,” he said.

Mr Templeton
, it read,
I hope this note finds you in good health. I regret the recent loss of twenty Bernault devices as greatly as you do, and I would like to offer information on their whereabouts. Tomorrow, at noon, look for me. I know your booth. Come alone.

In hope and confidence, Lucy.

“Huh,” he said.

He got the box open. Pie. Apple pie, with the most perfect, straightest lines on top he'd ever seen.

He liked apple.

How had she known?

Clouds dimmed the night. The lights of New Haven, scattered like pearls, followed erratic paths to the coast, strung from the mountainous shadow of the Twelfth Hour. Fear of wizards had weakened, and fear of deprivation had grown: those that counted themselves under Magister Hahn's protection had swelled closer and closer to its walls as the years passed. Yale's crumbling Gothic towers hunched over irrigation ditches and plowed greens, wrought-iron gargoyles perched on its rooftops.

Istvan lingered by Edmund's chimney a moment longer, holding onto the rough siding. Harbor waves crashed over the old docks, slowly rusting away drowned storage tanks and smokestacks. There were highways sunk under the sea now, too, storefronts and homes and churches. Auroras rose from distant Manhattan, spitting and crackling, the outline of the Black Building's twisted spire silhouetted three miles high in their embrace.

Edmund wasn't coming back.

Istvan turned and leapt. Tattered primaries clinging tenuously to bloodied bone flared, caught. One wingbeat. Two. He rose in a broadening circle. Beyond New Haven's boundaries, the Generator district glowed like a beacon, pillars of steam billowing from curved towers. A storm rolled over it, dark and sullen. He couldn't see Charlie's from here, though that was where it lay, hemmed in between lengths of pipe and wire.

He tilted, streaming contrails of rusted wire – a maneuver more aircraft than bird – and spun into a straight vertical climb. Stray droplets scattered as he broke the cloud deck, flecks of muddied scarlet that dissipated into nothing.

The moon was waxing. The stars, at least, hadn't changed.

Edmund wasn't coming back.

Istvan swept his wings back and shot northward. The clouds below reminded him of coal-burning armadas, and in the moments after his passage they roiled with the remembrance of poison. Flying machines had first appeared in his war, and only grown faster since. Flight was his, just the same as massacre, mud, and grinding inevitability. Flight was the one undeniable positive of what he was. It had taken him months of tumbling off cliffs in the Italian Alps to convince himself he could do it.

Let Edmund not come back. Let him go to Charlie's and drink. He was the Hour Thief; he could do that. No one could stop him from doing that.

Let him go.

Istvan dove. Clouds whirled past and through him. Rain sleeted by like bullets. Lightning flashed with a crack and roar. He shot through a flock of geese that squawked and scattered, readjusted his course, and broke the lowermost cloud layer like a falling shell.