The Hanged Man

by K. D. Edwards

  “But . . . I shouldn’t be dragging you into my messes. This isn’t your problem. You’re a scion of the Crusader Throne—I am creating complications for you and your family.”

  Anger—genuine, real anger—sparked in his eyes. “I call you hero,Rune, but you do not own the concept. This young man is in danger. I am a scion, as you said. A scion of Justice. I have a duty here too.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, then snapped it shut. I was smart enough to know there was no good response. Especially when dealing with someone like Addam, who was painfully noble, and lived in the world that should be, not the world that actually was.

  And Addam read every single one of these thoughts on my face.

  “There are situations where I find your arrogance massively endearing, Rune,” Addam said.

  He left the but unspoken, turned, and slammed into the stairwell that led to the parking garage. I went back into the apartment. I pointed at Max, Quinn, and Corinne. “I am pissed at you. I am pissed at you. I am pissed at you. There was a better way to handle this.”

  “But we’re going?” Max asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “This is what’s going to happen,” Brand added. “You will drop us off and drive a mile away. You will sit in a public parking lot, with lots of light and people, with your hands in your fucking laps. If and when we need you, we’ll call. Quinn, if you feel you need to come after us, you’ll tell Corinne, and she’ll make a judgment call. We’re burning night, people. Let’s fucking move.”

  Translocation magic and teleportation magic are fraternal twins: closely related, but not identical.

  Teleportation is a smaller type of magic—like the portals that Lord Chariot operates that provide easy access from the island to the rest of the world, or allows rivers to magically appear and vanish in a restaurant.

  Translocation magic is more practical for the enormous, hulking expenditure of moving entire buildings across the planet. It actually relies on the motion of the planet itself to ease the burden of casting. Imagine two global-sized abacuses, laid perpendicular to each other, with thousands upon thousands of rows each. You can slide the clay balls up and down—the longitude; and sideways—the latitude. The movement up and down would be powered by the talent of dozens of spell-casters, unified in a Greater Work. But the sideways motion, across the face of the world, relies on the turning of the actual planet. That’s why it could take up to twenty-four hours to bring a building from there to here.

  Studying translocation history, especially the ruins that were brought to the resettled island of Nantucket, was a hobby of mine. Yet for all that, I’d known little about the Sathorn Unique Tower before researching it today.

  Sathorn Unique was one of the most recent acquisitions, from the end of the last millennium. It wasn’t open to the masses—and truth be told I hadn’t even known the Gallows owned it. It appeared to be their only translocation on record, which was unusual for an Arcana court.

  I knew Sathorn Unique came from Bangkok, and had been abandoned with the Asian market collapse in the late 1990s. It had started its life as a forty-seven-story residential skyscraper, targeted for a very rich clientele. The architecture had both modern and Greek influences—unattractively at odds with each other, in my opinion. It bulged with columns, balconies, and railings, narrowing in increasingly smaller square-footage to the smallest floor of all: the roof.

  It had been built on a graveyard. Bangkok had nicknamed it the ghost tower.

  It was there we would find the mushroom farm. Which made sense, because our luck pretty much kept us from anything named after rainbows and puppy paws.

  “A goddamn minivan,” Brand muttered, and not for the first time, as Corinne drove the six of us in the Dawncreeks’ wheezing car toward Sathorn Unique.

  “It draws less attention than a town car,” Corinne said through gritted teeth.

  “Sure, look at all the fucking soccer moms casing joints after dark,” he said.

  I held up a shush hand as the corner of the building approached. I dropped the control I kept over my senses, letting them ripple outward. “Damn,” I whispered, as my magic scraped over a thick lace of wards. “It’s locked down. He’s put a lot of work into the building’s defenses.”

  “Let’s get closer,” Brand said. “Do you think you can drill through the wards? Like you did on the battleship?”

  I shrugged, saying nothing as Corinne drove two blocks past the building.

  We were on the edge of the skyscraper district of New Atlantis. The crowds were thin, mostly random couples and small groups dressed for the nearby restaurants and nightclubs. Corinne found us a quiet side street, barely the width of an alley, and shifted into park.

  “Give me a second,” I said. “Corinne, can we talk outside?”

  She left the motor running and stepped out. I had to climb over Addam, who was still mad, but not so mad he didn’t offer me his arm for support. I eventually stumbled through the sliding door onto the pavement, and joined Corinne on the other side of the car.

  “I’m not going to like this, am I?” she asked.

  “I have no plausible defense if I’m caught. I open us to retaliation.”

  “You’re trying to find my boy, who may be buried in there,” she seethed.

  “Your boy. Now I need you to make him my boy.”

  Whatever she expected, it wasn’t that.

  “Layne has not reached his age of majority,” I said. “You can swear him into my service. That means if I’m caught, I’ll have a defense. Not much of one—and it may not keep the Hanged Man from coming after me directly—but at least it means I’m not entirely unprovoked.”

  “What does . . . what does this mean, exactly? Swearing him into your service?”

  “It means that you trust me.”

  She ran her hand along her leather holster, fingering the worn bits. After a few moments, she nodded.

  “I need you to say it,” I told her.

  “As the legal guardian of Layne Dawncreek, I swear him into your service.”

  “I accept his service. Harm to him is harm to me.” And I felt the small frisson of magic, as the universe recognized the vow. Not much of a defense, no. But something.

  The passenger side window rolled down. Brand hauled himself through the opening and peered above the roof of the car. “What did you just do?” he demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  Brand tapped his head, because he’d felt it through our bond.

  “What needed to be done,” I amended.

  “I’ve grocery shopped with you,” he said. “I know exactly how you convince yourself you need things.” But he pulled back into the car and rolled up the window.

  In due order, Addam and Brand disembarked, and Corinne returned to the driver’s seat. Quinn and Max glanced at us through the back seat, their eyes a little wide around the edges.

  Addam paused, then went over to the sliding door and leaned in to say something to Quinn. Quinn’s eyes filled with tears a half-second before he launched into his brother’s arms.

  Brand and I decided to give them a moment. I tapped my knuckles against the glass in front of Max’s face, wondering if we were supposed to have a heartfelt moment too. I ended up giving him a thumbs-up.

  “What about that research they did on the mushrooms,” Brand murmured as we headed to the cross street.

  “I know,” I whispered back. “I didn’t want to brag in front of Addam. Maybe we really do need to start training them.”

  “You’ve had worse ideas,” Brand said.

  “I’ve had many worse ideas,” I agreed.

  Addam joined us with a curt nod. We took a backstreet toward Sathorn Unique, away from the busier main street. As we approached the building’s cornerstone, I felt the wards surrounding it inch across my skin like curious gnats.

  “Keep walking and stay alert,” Brand said in an undertone. “Head to the alley on the other side.”

  I kept the building in my
peripheral. The first floor was sealed stone. No windows. A metal door as thick as a bank vault. I wanted to look up— toward the higher floors—but it would have been too obvious.

  We rounded the far corner, into an alley that ran between Sathorn Unique and its neighbor. It was swept clean, empty except for a fire hydrant and two dumpsters.

  “Rune,” Brand barked in a whisper. “Three-sixty.”

  Which meant I wasn’t looking up or down, something he constantly needled me about. The ground was unbroken asphalt, so I looked up, and saw a man in black observing us from the fire escape of the adjacent building.

  The man, spotted, walked down the metal stairs slowly and without making a sound.

  Mayan was tall, and impeccably dressed in a black suit, with brown hair tied back by braids. He had the Tower’s dark complexion, though while the Tower veered toward Spanish ancestry, Mayan’s people had roots in North Africa.

  “Quick spot,” he told Brand, finally, walking up to us. “You haven’t forgotten everything I’ve taught you. That’s something, I suppose, even if you keep letting your scion walk into situations like this.”

  Brand said, “Give me a fucking break. Like you let the Tower do anything. He says jump and you build a fucking bridge.”

  “I never let it get to the point where I need to influence him. I just keep it from happening in the first place.”

  “Okay,” I said, and stepped between them. “Mayan, why are you here?”

  “Because he thinks he knows you better than you know yourself, and he doesn’t. You forced his hand, and now he’s changing plans on the fly, and I don’t think those plans will work. They will backfire, and he will need to step in. Do you have any idea what it will cost Lord Tower if he supports you?”

  “I didn’t ask for his support.”

  “You never ask, but you’re a liar if you’re telling me you don’t expect it.”

  It was honest enough to have me clicking my mouth shut. But as Brand started to muscle around me to get at Mayan, Mayan abruptly held up a hand, as if in apology, and rubbed at his eyelids. “Sorry. I’m just as mad at him as you. He just had to be so clever, feeding you those mushrooms, didn’t he?”

  “But he did give me that clue. I’m not entirely sure this isn’t what he wants.”

  “He knew all along, even before breakfast, that you’d blunder forward regardless of what he said. So now he’s trying to lead you in a new, narrow direction where you learn what you need to; get caught; and are taken off the game board. Bonus points when he swoops in and saves you from jail. Only I’m not convinced the Hanged Man will put you in jail. I think he’ll pin you right to the game board and force Lord Tower to make a wholly unexpected move.”

  “Layne Dawncreek doesn’t have time for games.”

  A muscle moved in Mayan’s cheek. “Chances are the boy is dead. You know that.”

  “Do you know what we’re going to find in there?” Brand demanded. “What aren’t you sharing?”

  “Lots of things. Mostly the parts I don’t want screwed up. Is there anything I can say that will keep you out of this building? Until we’re ready to move on it?”

  “No,” I said.

  Mayan pulled an item from his pocket, and handed it to me.

  I saw a plain brass ring in my palm. It nearly vibrated with magic.

  “He’s keyed that sigil to you,” Mayan said. “Use the spell.”

  I locked gazes with him. And knew that if I couldn’t trust Lord Tower or his people, I was fucked.

  I swiped my thumb across the surface of the ring. The stored spell flooded out, twining up my arms, wrapping around my torso, sending tendrils down my legs—and then again, and again, and again, and again—a mummy’s wrap, a continuing roll of magic.

  “Extend it to them,” Mayan ordered.

  “This is a mass sigil,” I gasped. The power kept flooding me, pouring from the million-dollar artifact in a never-ending stream. I reached out and grabbed Brand’s arm, transferring the flood to him; and when I sensed Brand fully wrapped by the spell, took Addam by the hand.

  “You have two hours. It will get you past wards, but won’t physically hide you from guards or guardians. Destroy anyone or anything you come across. Do not allow word back to the Hanged Man that you were here, or that Lord Tower helped you.”

  When the three of us were sealed, I handed the mass sigil back to Mayan. My fingers shook, and I nearly dropped the ring. I’d had rare opportunities to use mass sigils in my life, and the experience was a knife’s edge balance between heady and frightening.

  “It wasn’t as easy to arrange this as it seems, and I called in a lot of favors with the Tower,” Mayan told me. “You need to understand how dangerous this is. You are playing a political game with a creature older than politics. His civility is only a veneer. He is toying with you.”

  “I know,” I said. “But that doesn’t change that I need to go inside and find Layne.”

  “And what else will you find? And what will that discovery set in motion?” Mayan grimaced and pocketed the mass sigil. “You owe me, Brand.”

  Mayan walked out of the alley, while Brand stared after him, upset on a level I wasn’t entirely sure about.

  “It works,” Addam said. He’d gone over to the building, and was running a hand across the molded cement. “I feel the defensive spells parting around my touch.”

  “Let’s try the door,” Brand said, pulling lock picks from a pouch on his ammo belt. “Can you sense anything on the door except for the wards?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I felt only the same sensation Addam had: the rippling, slick evasiveness of whatever spells defended the building. No traps.

  It took Brand less than a minute to open the lock. The door opened on oiled hinges.

  “Addam,” I said as we stepped onto dank, pitch-black stone. “You stored Night Vision?”

  I felt a sigil spell activate. Addam sent the magic over us, and the darkness began to lighten with staticky shades of tan and sepia, balancing into a daybreak gray.

  We got our first look at the inside of the building.

  “Shit,” Brand said. “Are we in the basement?”

  “No. This is the first floor.” I stepped forward and stared at the sight before us. Huge concrete pillars supported a ceiling at least two stories high. The floor was an expanse of cement covering a city block. The air smelled like leaf mold and dirt, and was very humid.

  “Our floor plans are useless,” Brand said in a resigned voice. “This is a complete redesign.”

  “Look there,” Addam said. He’d pulled out his sword, and now aimed it to a far corner of the room.

  My boot heels clicked as we walked in that direction, and the clicks echoed. We drew closer to a series of cylinders, larger than industrial water heaters. Brand pulled a penlight from his vest to augment our enhanced vision. He played a dusty beam across glass panels.

  Addam read a label affixed to one. “Nitrogen.” He moved down the line. “Carbon. Fresh water—with base and alkaline filters. These are biosphere ingredients, aren’t they?”

  “Raw materials,” I said.

  Brand played the penlight upwards, to the huge tubes and pipes leading to the floor above us. “There’s a ladder behind us, in the corner. Up we go.”

  “Would it make sense to attempt your Tracking spell?” Addam asked me.

  “It would,” I agreed, and patted my pockets until I remembered where I’d slid the swath of canvas.

  I’d had Corinne bring a pair of Layne’s sneakers to Addam’s condo. With her permission, I’d cut a large square from one. In the movies they always fed a coat or sweater to bloodhounds. For me, nothing worked better than shoes, especially from someone who didn’t have many of them, and wore whatever pair they owned to tatters.

  I concentrated on my thigh circlet next, the one I wore threaded through a leather band. The released magic left me light-headed for a moment—stretched thin, as if my atoms were scattering like marbles— until it balance
d. I squeezed the sliced piece of canvas and concentrated.

  “Anything?” Brand asked.

  I looked down. Looked around me. Looked up. No telltale violet traces. “No. But . . . up. Nearby. Up.”

  We headed to the ladder.

  “Rivers,” Addam whispered in awe.

  Brand said nothing. He’d unholstered his gun, and had it pointed to the ground as he turned in his own circle.

  The biosphere was lifelike. Bigger than lifelike. It was surreal. Everything above the ladder’s trapdoor skewed to gigantism—the trees, the size of their leaves, the atmosphere. I could not even see the ceiling. Nine stories above our head, the air simply ended in its own weather system, a low-hanging cloud bank. Whatever passed as a sun in the biosphere burned dully behind the mist.

  It was a European forest on steroids. It was crazy enough that—in a single unsettling moment—I almost wondered if it was us that had shrunk, and the forest remained normal.

  “You can see the walls at least,” Addam noted. They were covered in moss. We stood at the western end, by the alley we’d arrived in.

  “And my Tracking spell is showing something that way,” I added. “Let’s follow the wall back to the front of the building.”

  “You follow, I scout,” Brand said. “Try not to step on every fucking twig.” He took off at a quick walk, stepping first with his heel, and then peeling his foot onto—and off—every step.

  “Are you still mad at me?” I asked Addam, as Brand vanished behind a stand of giant oak trees.

  “We will survive a single fight, Hero.”

  “So the fight is over?”

  “I am not mad at you. Because I am not sure you’re wrong. And I am not sure I’m right. This is a very bad time for this talk, Rune.”

  “People keep saying that to me.”

  Addam bent toward me and said in my ear, “We will discuss how fights are supposed to end, between such as you and I. Later, and in private.” He walked off in the direction of Brand. Sweat popped out along my hairline. His voice sounded very Russian then. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to feel sexy or threatened. But my heart was racing.