The Watchmage of Old New York (The Watchmage Chronicles Book 1) (22 page)

Another dove at me from above, but I was ready. He couldn’t stop when I vanished, and his body made a deep trench in the sand where he crashed.  I waved my hand and the ground beneath him turned to wet concrete, trapping him as it hardened.

One of the beetles took flight again.  I met him head on, sword to jaws.  It took three passes, but I found the soft spot between his mandibles.  He fell to earth, crossing the Veil in agony.

My mistake was that I flew too low.  Beshir swung upwards and connected with my leg.  It was but a glancing blow, but the magic of his scimitar cancelled my own.  My flight spell unraveled, along with my strength, speed, and even my shields.  I hit the sand and tumbled like a broken wagon wheel.

Scrambling to my feet and looking around, I saw dire straits.  The remaining Eshu all morphed into giant scorpions and advanced from the sides.  I turned to one and raised a cage of sandstone to trap him.  Beshir took advantage of the distraction.  He grabbed my right hand with his left and punched me in the eye with his pommel.  I dropped my cane, and he kicked it away.

Beshir came on again.  “If you surrender, I will grant you a clean death.”  His sword twirled faster than my bloodied eyes could follow.

My spells gone, my eyes blinded with blood, my flanks harried by scorpions, I did what any rational man would do.

I dove back through the portal.

Jonas

Shadow had the baby and he had Hendricks.  I had no idea what he was planning to do, but I knew that he earned a serious anointing from me.

I stopped a carriage and showed my badge.  “I need to reach The Bloody Knuckle in Corlear’s Hook.”

The driver made a face. “I’m not goin’ down there.  I gotta livin’ to make, and dyin’s no way to do it. I got five kids to feed.”

I reached into my pocket a pulled a quarter eagle, far more than the trip was worth.  “Here’s your living.  You want it, you’ll take me there.”

He let the coin fall into his hands, and bit it.  “Chatham Square, no further.  I don’t care if you’re a Leatherhead, I don’t care if yer Mayor Wood.  I ain’t gonna risk my neck for ya.”

To his credit, he drove fast enough and didn’t run over any newsboys.  I reloaded my barker while he drove and plotted my attack.

He let me off at the south end of the square and snapped the reins on his horse as soon as I stepped out.  I walked the rest of the way through the darkness, lit by the occasional gas lights and lamps coming from the salons and brothels.

The Bloody Knuckle was half standing and even that half was blackened and smoke-stained.  The warehouse where the fights took place burned to ashes.  The front of the tavern proper was smashed in and smoldering, and much of the second story had fallen into the first.  Only the storeroom remained.

I crept up to the broken tavern, trying to stay unseen.

“Willis!”

I recognized Smokestack Sullivan’s voice from the other side of the street, in front of a once-competitor’s bar.  He called me again, and I grudgingly walked over.

“Smokestack,” I said.  He was drunk, well and truly sluiced.  He leaned against a post, a bottle of gin in his hand.  He stunk like a rotting pig, and his clothes were covered in soot and dirt.  “You need a bath.”

“I’m ruined, Willis.” He looked at one of his rings, the one Hendricks said was magic.  “So much for a lucky ring.  It didn’t do my brother any good either. Everything’s gone.”

“Not everything.  The back room’s there.”

“It’s all trash now.” He choked back a sob. “What happened to your accent?”

I confessed my charade to Smokestack.  He took the news better than I expected.

“Preacher too?”

“No,” I said. “He’s a,” I paused, thinking of the right word to explain our relationship.  I failed.  “A friend of mine.”

His eyes lit up, an inner flame probably fueled by all that blue he’s been drinking.  “So he can still fight? Then we can rebuild, bigger and better, with Preacher as the star.  It doesn’t even matter if you’re a Leatherhead.  It’s good, you can keep them from raiding us.”

I didn’t have the heart to break his, but I had the heart to use it.  I pointed to what was left of the Bloody Knuckle. “Right now Hendricks and Shadow McGuirk are in there,” I said.  “Shadow’s going to kill him if we don’t get in.  If I kick open the door and start firing, I’ll have a half dozen new holes in me. Do you know a better way?”

Smokestack scratched his sniffer.  “There’s an old cellar. Haven’t never used it, and it’s likely all rats and cockroaches.” He slurred out directions as best he could.

I thanked him and clapped him on the back, nearly knocking the poor fella over. There was a grocer nearby where I bought a lantern and oil.  I was going where no man had been in years.  It was a good idea to see where I was going.

The cellar doors were half rotted and a good stomp smashed one in.  I lit the lamp and descended the worn stone steps.

The steps were littered with rocks that spilled from a burlap sack.  The sack had a rope tied to it, but my stomp undid the other end.  Someone had weighted the door down from the other side.

Rats and roaches skittered away from me, and I felt the tickle of spider webs on my face.  I walked along the dirt floor, trying not to think about the generations of dead buried under my feet.  Every building in Manhattan holds a secret underground.  The wealthy can afford graves.  The rest wait for Judgment Day in the cellar.

About ten feet away, I saw a lit candle on the floor. I heard shuffling to one side as I cocked my pistol and turned.

My lantern showed a small, dirty face that looked down the wrong end of the gun.  He couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. The lad had a small knife in his hand and was ready to stab until I faced him.  Now he wobbled like a newborn colt.

I heard more footsteps around me.  I grabbed the stunned lad and wrapped my lantern-holding arm around his head, pulling him in front of me and putting my back to the roughhewn wall.  “Who’s here?” I said.

“We’re here.” The candle moved closer and then someone lit a lantern.  There were young, dirty faces connected to skinny bodies all around me.  I doubt any of them were more than fourteen years.  They were all armed with knives or brickbats.  One of them spat tobacco juice at my feet.

They spread out around me.  The biggest one held the lantern in one hand, a sharpened broomstick in the other.  He was big for his age, and broad, with a finger-full of curly chin whiskers just beginning to darken. Someday—if he lives to someday—he might be a shoulder hitter for one of the bigger gangs.  “We’re da ‘Off Da Boat B’hoys.’ Yer in our house.  We don’t like that. Don’t like bein’ found. Have ta kill ya now.”

I counted the faces.  There were six, including the squirming one in my arm.  I pointed my barker at the big one.  “There are six of you.  I have five bullets.  Why don’t you decide now which one of you buries the one other five.”

The big one took a step back as they all looked at each other.  The one under my arm let out a sob.

“What’s your name, son?” I said to the big one.

“Ain’t yer son,” the boy growled.

“Then tell me what your name is, so I can speak to you proper.”

He lowered his makeshift spear a hairsbreadth. “Don’t have a name.  They call me Beelz.”

I nodded. “Beelz. You see the badge on my coat, you know what that means.  If you croak me, more’ll come.  If any of you are left, that is.” He narrowed his eyes and altered his grip.  Maybe I should avoid threats.  “I don’t want to fight, but I will.  I have business above that has nothing to do with you.”

I aimed my gun at a child that took a step forward, freezing him in place.  “This could end with all of us dead.  Or I can give you the money in my pocket, and you let me pass.”

“You know where we live,” one boy said. Beelz cuffed him on the ear.  “Ya’ won’t tell anyone?” Beelz asked.

“Honor bright.”  I let the boy under my arm go.  He ran to Beelz, sobbing.  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, everything I had.  Keeping my gun ready, I tossed the coins to Beelz.  They clinked on the ground, and the boys dove on them.  I took the opportunity to slip away.  As I suspected, they didn’t follow.  They didn’t want to fight, they wanted to survive.

Smokestack said that the trap door was in the far corner.  I navigated around broken furniture until I was underneath the door.  While looking for the latch and hoping that there wasn’t a keg of beer on top of it, I heard a voice above.  It was gruff and garbled, and it wasn’t English.  It was the old language, the one Pop once said was “the one before Babel.”  Something very bad was about to happen.

I found and tried the latch, but it was stuck.  I couldn’t kick this door in, so I cocked my pistol, stepped back, and fired.  The latch and part of the door fell to the ground.  I heard one of the boys yelp from the other side of the cellar. Gun at the ready, I pulled myself into the room.

Shadow was ready.  He held Hendricks in almost the same way I held the boy in the cellar, except Hendricks was a much better shield.  Behind him was a large oval—at least seven feet from floor to top—that shimmered like a puddle of lamp oil in sunlight.  Tied over his shoulder was a blanket with the baby slung inside like a powder horn.

I dove behind a barrel before he fired.  The bullet ricocheted off the back wall and a piece of wood struck me.  I pointed my gun, but there was no way I could shoot without hitting Hendricks or the baby.

“Don’t try to follow,” said Shadow.  “You don’t wanna know what’s on the other side.”  Shadow dragged Hendricks into the shimmering oval, and they both disappeared.

The problem for him was, I knew what was on the other side: a baby, a friend, and a man that needed my fist in his bone box.  I dove through.

Nathaniel

Something was wrong. I knew it as soon as I went through that portal.  Maybe it was the scimitar’s magic, maybe it was that I blasted through the wall on my way in.  All I knew was that I floated somewhere between the tent palace and Astor House.  I was in the Veil with no way out.

I glided for what felt like hours or days.  It may have been minutes, I don’t know.  Inside of the Veil, where the mist swirled around me like an endless morning fog, time was an illusion.  My wounds were gone.  I didn’t feel my body.  I had no earthly form, and floated like a feather on the wind. 

My studies with Master Sol barely discussed the Veil.  I knew very little besides it being the membrane between our two worlds.  Master Sol told me to avoid it, as it was ‘too dangerous for little boys to play with.’  Dwellers can navigate the Veil, but not humans. Yet there I was, adrift on Queequeg’s coffin.

I despaired that I would never return home to my city and my son.  How long would I float through the mist until death took me, or did it already? 

After a time, I began to see patterns in the swirls of mist.  There was something there, and it was trying to speak with me.

“Hello,” I said, and realized that I had no voice. 
I am lost
, I said in my mind, and I saw patterns form in front of me.  The mist responded to my thoughts.

Hello, can you help me?  Is anyone there?
I thought.

The mist responded in kind, and I understood that I could read outside thoughts as well.

There were figures in the mist, darker forms of Man. 
Go this way
, said one.
No, don’t trust him, go this way
, said another. 
They both lie, they all lie.  Follow me.

Nathaniel?

Something touched me where my shoulders should’ve been, and then on the face, a gentle caress that I knew long ago.

Anna?

I am here.  I can feel you.
  I felt a deep sadness and a deeper joy coming from the spirit.  There was no confusing who it was.
You died. I didn’t think wizards could die. How did it happen?

I don’t think that I’m dead.  I’m lost. I need to get home.

You can’t, but you can stay here with me.

The thought was more comforting than she could ever know.  Not a day, not an hour, went by where I didn’t think of her.  I loved her enough that I married her, knowing that someday I would bury her, knowing that I would mourn her for a thousand years and more if God or the Devil deemed it so.  I wanted nothing more than to stay, to hold her again in the embrace so long denied to me.

How many times have I pleaded with God to bring her back and cursed him for not doing so?  How dare you bless me with such extraordinary, world shaping powers, and then make me stand by as the sole woman that I have ever loved died in my arms.  God, don’t make me leave her.

I had to.  I had a duty.

Anna, I have to go back.  They need me.  Jonas needs me.

Jonas…my baby.  How old is he now?  Time is…hard to…Time does not exist.  Is he well?  Has he married?

He’s twenty-two, hale and hearty, but has yet to wed.  He has a nose for trouble.  He needs me
.

It may have been a fantasy of the moment, but I felt the warmth of her body around me.  I wrapped what should’ve been my arms around her and we swayed, listening to music that didn’t exist, the past wisps of our past lives.  We stayed that way for a long time, but it would never be long enough. It would never be forever.

Finally, I let go. 
I need to go back the way I came.
I explained the situation to her, about the Vanderlay baby and the rogue mageling that Jonas was after.

I’ll take you there.
  We flew through the swirls of the mist.  I heard the other voices—spirits of the dead—taunting and pulling at me, but Anna held me tight and moved on.

After some time, we came to a stop.  There was no change in the landscape. I saw nothing other than mist.

The door is before you, Nathaniel.

I embraced her once again.  I wanted to tell her how much I loved her, how every day without her was a thousand agonies.  I wanted to tell her this, but my tongue refused to move, my mouth refused to speak.  I held her until she slipped away with one last kiss.

Once again, I stepped forward into darkness.

“Hendricks?”

My eyes must’ve been deceiving me.  I returned to the tent palace, but things were much different from before.  I saw the man I knew as Shadow McGuirk with his arm around the throat of my apprentice.  Next to him was Beshir, who held a baby wrapped in a blanket.  Everyone’s eyes turned to me.

I raised my hand, and the Watchmage’s Cane flew from the sand to my grasp.  “I hate to interrupt, but I’ll be taking back that baby.”

Beshir said something in Arabic, too fast for me to decipher.  He raised a hand and a sand storm engulfed him.  He reappeared at the far end of the tent, and then slipped into the room beyond.

McGuirk pulled Hendricks closer to his body.  Hendricks’ long frame was an excellent shield and McGuirk fired his pistol from behind him.  I brushed the bullets into the sand.  Without pause, I threw McGuirk into the air with a wave of my hand, freeing Hendricks from his choke hold. The ruffian landed hard a dozen feet away.  Magelings can be such a nuisance sometimes.

My sudden strike bought me a moment to think, and there was more than enough to think about.  I knew quite a lot about the Eshu.  Master Sol was born in the sands of Arabia countless years ago.  It was the reason why my magical language was the Old Tongue rather than Latin or Germanic like other mages.  Eshu, Xi, and Errakh were the Dwellers that Master Sol first encountered. 

Eshu are the lords of this land, but with an important difference. Unlike the exclusive Sidhe, Eshu usually join a tribe of the desert nomads that move from oasis to oasis.  They are chieftains, spiritual leaders, or warriors like Beshir.  They live their lives, fake their deaths, and move on to a new tribe.  In many ways, their lives are like my own.  That there were so many here, and all in service to some mystery pasha in the tent beyond did not bode well.

Another portal opened, and a figure in long coat and tall hat tumbled through, pistol leading the way.

“Jonas?”

He looked at me.  “Evenin’ Pop.  Fancy meeting you here.”

“Why are you here?”

“It seems the place to be.”

I looked around.  The Eshu were once again fanning out, this time there were more than before.  I drew Earth energy inside of me—enhanced by so much of the element under our feet—and focused my will.  A semicircular barricade of sand rose up before me, five foot high, with crenellations up to six. “You might want to get behind this.”