Stonecast

by Anton Strout

  I walked away from him and leaned back on the reading table in the middle of the room, careful not to knock over one of the gorgeous green banker’s lamps on it.

  “This should be interesting,” I said.

  The man let out a long sigh and straightened his long brown coat while he collected himself. “I did break into your building,” he said, “but that’s not something I want the Libra Concordia to know.”

  “Oh no?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not really part of them,” he said. “I’m more of a freelancer. Yes, I do a lot of jobs here for them, but there’s much I do on the side, some things I suspect the Concordia would not like to hear about. By the way, thank you for that save out there with Locke.”

  “Why wouldn’t they like to hear about your other jobs?” I asked, ignoring his thanks. I wasn’t quite sure whether or not I was going to regret that decision just yet.

  Caleb paused, and I saw him struggling to find the right words.

  “They would consider much of my life outside them a bit too proactive in the magic department,” he said. “They’re more of a watchdog group. They generally shy away from, you know, actually interacting with the arcane. Me? I’m much more of an . . . interacter.”

  “And Desmond Locke trusts you, a freelancer?”

  Caleb held his hand out flat, moved it back and forth. “They trust me well enough,” he said. “Locke and his people are not really fans of getting their hands dirty. So they hire freelancers when it comes to their more arcane or shady dealings.”

  “And breaking into my building isn’t shady dealings?” I asked.

  Caleb’s face screwed up into a look of indecision. “It is, and it isn’t,” he said.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “So tell me how breaking and entering both is and isn’t shady.”

  Caleb walked past me to the other side of the table and settled himself into the large leather reading chair there. “It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose. Eight months ago, your family’s lot on Saint Mark’s was a pile of collapsed rubble, and before that it was a building no one had touched in decades. It was vacant. No one lived there, but there was something special to be had at that location for someone in my line of work.”

  “And what exactly is your line of work?” I asked.

  He pulled open his coat, revealing tubes and vials lining it in a well-stitched array up and down both sides.

  “Alchemy,” he said.

  Hearing the word actually gave me pause.

  Many of the roots of Alexander’s Spellmasonry were in alchemy. Despite Caleb’s having been an intruder in my home, I couldn’t help but soften a bit, focusing on the fact that I was dealing with a fellow practitioner of my solo endeavors in an arcane art. I couldn’t help but smile at that.

  “Is there a secret handshake I need to know?” I asked.

  He smiled back.

  “We could make one up, I suppose,” he said, “but as far as I know? No.” He closed his coat and leaned forward. “So here I am, a year ago, an alchemist who discovers an unguarded, unattended stash of one of the great lost alchemical properties in the world. Kimiya. Do you know what a find that was to an alchemist? It changed everything as far as my profit margin was concerned. It’s a universal conductor in so much of a specific line of magic. Finding that stash of it on Saint Mark’s made a lot of my freelance work child’s play comparatively. Potent stuff, that.”

  “And in limited supply,” I remind him. And mine, I thought to myself.

  “And in limited supply,” he repeated with a nod, leaning back in the chair. He crossed his hands over each other. “And here we are.”

  That smug look was back on his face, only this time I was more curious than angry. “So what now?” I asked.

  Caleb shrugged. “Well, you heard Desmond Locke,” he said. “He wants us to work together. He and the Libra Concordia are concerned with this ‘angel’ that watches over your family, but we both know that’s no angel.”

  “It isn’t?” I replied, not wanting to give anything up too willingly.

  The man shook his head. “I’ve seen things in this city,” he said. “I’ve seen your golem, your winged stone man. When your building collapsed on Saint Mark’s months ago—cutting me off from my supply, by the way—I watched that site with a very vested curiosity for some time. I’ve seen you and your friends there, including that flying automaton of yours. Yes, I’ve seen him, too.”

  My heart jumped. He’d seen Stanis? I tried to keep my face reactionless. He stared at me in silence, and all I could do was meet his eyes, not talking. I still didn’t trust this stranger. I already felt violated enough that we had been spied on.

  When I offered him nothing, he sat up and spoke once more. “Look, I don’t care about whatever that golem is to you,” he said. “Frankly, I was glad he was around to help you clear all that rubble, which made it possible for me to once again access the Kimiya kept in that impervious room of yours. But I’m imagining right about now you and I share a very similar problem, alchemically speaking.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “I haven’t been able to figure out how to make Kimiya,” he said. “And I bet you haven’t, either. The Concordia has some notes on Alexander Belarus, but they are speculative, incomplete . . . They don’t provide a recipe or the ingredients I need to create that elixir. I’ve thought about trying to reverse engineer it, but there are too many unknowns. Your great-great-grandfather has kept this secret well, Alexandra.”

  “The man loved him some puzzles,” I said, a pained smile coming to my lips as I recalled the shattered statues and boxes back in the art studio.

  “Between the two of us, I sense potential for some real genius happening,” he said. “I’ve got access to a lot of information here at the Concordia, and I’m sure you’ve got some family knowledge, right? I can feed Locke some dead ends looking for this angel of his, and the two of us can find your great-great-grandfather’s secret. Think about it. We won’t have to rely on what little Kimiya is left in Alexander’s legacy. I wasn’t lying when I said I was a big fan of his work.”

  Part of Caleb’s needs were the same as mine. I was going to need more Kimiya; Rory, Marshall, and I were going to need it if we were ever going to push through the arcane creative wall of creating other large-form animated statues. All we had was Bricksley to stand against Kejetan and the Servants of Ruthenia. Spirited though he was, I didn’t think he was going to cut it as the “army” Stanis had instructed me to prepare in his time-buying absence. Trusting an admitted thief went against my grain, but Caleb might prove helpful both in figuring out how to produce Kimiya and in using it to move past our army of one.

  “No more breaking and entering?” I asked.

  Caleb shook his head. “Consider your home off-limits,” he said, crossing his heart. “Besides, I’m pretty well stocked up right now.”

  The smile faltered on my face. “Don’t remind me,” I said.

  He leaned over the table, lowering his voice. “And it’s probably best if we don’t let Desmond in on any part of this plan of ours.”

  I looked to the door, making sure it was still closed. “I would prefer he not know anything about our family’s ‘angel,’” I said. “For now, anyway.”

  “Locke is going to want something from you,” Caleb said. “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

  I nodded, conceding the point. “I figured that out when he pulled the gun on me earlier tonight,” I said. “But there’s some bones I can throw him, some leads in our family’s private archives about actual angel statues that Alexander carved in Manhattan. That should keep him misdirected for a bit.”

  It felt strange choosing to trust the guy who had broken into my great-great-grandfather’s guild hall. Still, it beat trusting the man who had brought me to this church at gunpoint.

  Ca
leb was the first active practitioner of any kind of alchemy that I had met, and that went further in the trust department than a secret organization working clandestinely within the confines of organized religion to gather magic and keep it on a shelf.

  “Let’s get to work,” I said. “Do you keep an alchemy lab here?”

  Caleb rose and went to the door, checking to see if anyone was around. When he seemed confident we were alone, he turned back to me. “We can’t set up here,” he whispered. “They frown on actual magic use on the premises.”

  “So you don’t you have a lab for all this?”

  “I had a lab,” he said, a bit testily, I thought. “But somebody made the building it was in collapse.”

  I thought about calling him a squatter in my family’s building but decided to let it slide. Chastising could wait. We needed a place to set up, and although I trusted him more than I did Desmond Locke, I did not trust him enough that I wanted him back in my home again.

  “Come with me,” I said, heading over to him for the door. “I think I know a place.”

  Caleb pulled the door open with a low, gentlemanly bow. “After you, m’lady,” he said.

  I couldn’t help but smile at that, continuing out into the church proper.

  “Will it be safe?” Caleb asked, falling in step at my side.

  “Based on my personal lack of prowess?” I said. “Probably not, but we can worry about that later. We’ve got enough to worry about now.”

  “Why?” he asked. “What do we have to worry about now?”

  “Right now?” I said, my mind still trying to absorb the totality of the evening’s events so far. “Right now I need to convince Marshall that he won’t need to take out an extra fire-insurance policy to cover us.”

  “Hope you’re convincing,” Caleb said.

  “Hopefully, I can fake it.”

  Eleven

  Stanis

  Days had passed within the darkness of the freighter. There were two voices in my head—my own suppressed true voice and what I had come to call the new dominant one. This new voice tried to discover what game my true mind was playing, but when it could not, its will to dominate me quieted to a steady truce with my true voice.

  Despite the downpour of rain tonight, my true self even found a bit of pleasure in the freeing act of flight while the voice that dominated my mind saw it only as a means of accomplishing the tasks set upon me by the Servants of Ruthenia.

  I flew over Manhattan in the singular pursuit of Kejetan’s task at hand. The humans down below seemed to mind the falling rain, always running from it or covering their bodies against it, but I welcomed it.

  Coolness overwhelmed my senses as I flew higher and higher through the night sky, the air and rain refreshing me in a way my mind could not. I was far too busy walling up the two sides of my thoughts, keeping the dominant voice in my head away from my first contact with Alexandra after long months away.

  Given the control the new voice had in my head, I dared not let it put me back in proximity to her. It had been struggle enough that first meeting to bend the new rules set upon me. Who knew what harm might come to her if we should meet again?

  Instead, I flew on in search of Kejetan’s other objectives. The large park at the center of Manhattan spread out before me, and along its west side, I found what I needed on one of the buildings below. Spreading my wings as wide as they could go, I dove toward my target.

  The skyline of Manhattan was not where one expected to find the depiction of an epic battle with a sea creature, but that was the stone tableau I found atop this particular building.

  Swirls of tentacles rose from an enormous, carved monster that served as a base for my target. Perched on one of its thick tentacles was a grotesque similar to me, locked in battle with two of the lesser tentacles before it, its clawed hands midswing. As I closed with the statue, I could see the craftsmanship of the grotesque itself, strikingly similar to my own though its facial features were more demonic than mine.

  I landed behind this familiar figure and pulled up on it from beneath the grotesque’s arms, testing the stone. Though it bore the familiar hand of my maker and was therefore strong, I needed to know I would not destroy it in the process of removing it. Finding the statue itself solid, I rocked the figure back and forth on top of the tentacle beneath it, praying it would come free with little damage.

  The stone feet of the creature came free from their base with a loud crumble of stone, but even after I was done, the sound continued to grow, my feet slipping as the creature below me shifted into living stone.

  The tentacles the grotesque had been combating groaned and flaked away bits of stone as they came alive—flaring up and whipping toward me. Shielding my body from their impact, I pulled my wings in close, but the tentacles were quicker and caught my legs and arms, coiling hard around them. My grip slipped from the slick wetness of the grotesque as I was pulled into the air away from it, my muscles screaming out as the tentacles stretched me to the extent of my reach.

  Had I thought these tasks would be easy? No. These creatures were built by my maker’s hands, to be sure. A certain complexity filled them, as it did me. Had I been human, my body would surely have been torn into separate pieces already. Had Alexander meant to protect this grotesque against the strength of another of its kind? I did not think so, hoping that, at best, the tentacled creature was meant to restrain nothing more powerful than a human.

  I did not wish to harm it, but my body was giving out. I worked my wings—already spread wide—using the extra power they generated to pull me farther up and away from the monster. As I rose, I contracted my arms toward my body, using all my power. The stone tentacles wrapped around them held at first but then gave way to my superior strength and crumbled away in large, broken chunks.

  Arms free, I raised my claws, slicing down hard on the tentacles still bound around my legs. I tore through them with ease, and they fell away, writhing on the rooftop; but more were rising to take their place.

  I found it impossible to take further to the air, my wings failing to keep me in the sky, and I dropped, barely able to control my fall back onto the roof. I had my wings to slow my descent, but I still came down hard, driving one of my knees and one clawed foot forcibly into the stone below.

  The roof shifted beneath me, and I leapt up as it gave way, caving into the building itself. Landing, I centered myself for battle and stood ready, minding the remaining tentacles whipping back and forth all around me. I needed to reduce their number.

  Working my way across the rain-covered roof in a focused pattern, I let my claws loose on the tentacles, striking swiftly before moving along in haste. The pieces fell away, and the tentacles grew shorter and shorter as I went. The monster stilled, and what remained of its tentacles transformed once more to inert stone.

  I moved for my hard-won prize—the grotesque. My claws stood at the ready should it also spring to life. Closing in on it swiftly, I wrapped my arms around it, ready for a struggle, but I was met by nothing more than an inert stone figure.

  “Hey!” a voice called out from somewhere behind me. I turned, fearing that I had broken one of Alexander’s old rules—that I remain hidden from humanity. Even though I was no longer bound to them, they still pulled at me after all this time. But looking around, there was no one else on the roof.

  “Hey!” the voice called out again, and this time I homed in on where it came from—the hole in the roof. “Is anyone hurt up there?”

  A beam of light shone up through the hole, catching the fall of rain in a glimmering cone. Despite the old rules no longer governing me, my need to leave before discovery took over.

  I turned back to the grotesque, securing my arms around its chest. My wings strained hard as I forced them into action, pressing their limits in my effort to lift the extra weight. Burdened as I was, I rose into the night with part of my task
complete, heading high over Central Park and away from Manhattan and out to sea.

  • • •

  I came down hard on the deck of the ship, using my claws to grab at the wet metal beneath my feet and steadying myself as I lowered the grotesque. It rang out with a dull echo, lost to the sounds of the heavy storm and waves of the ocean.

  Kejetan, Devon, and the blond human met me on the deck, the one who had bound me immediately securing the new grotesque to the deck with chains.

  His hair, once a spiked muss, lay plastered to his head, but he did not seem to mind working in the rain, unlike the other humans on board, who had made themselves scarce. They might be the Servants of Ruthenia, but only this lone human dared work on the open deck, my father watching.

  When the man was done, he stepped away, and Devon walked over and gave me a rough slap on my shoulder.

  “Good,” Devon said. “Our dog can fetch.”

  I stood there, a silent sentinel. My true voice urged me to strike him for such an insult, but the new one kept me from doing so.

  Kejetan circled the figure I had brought him. Even in his jagged form, I could sense an air of approval coming from him.

  “Excellent,” he said, further confirming my suspicion. “This will do.” Halfway around the grotesque, he caught my eyes and stopped, shifting his focus to me. “And?”

  “And what?” I asked back, unsure.

  Kejetan stepped around the statue, heading for me, his face going dark. “What are you still doing here?”

  “Where should I take myself?” I asked. “Back to the chains in your hold?”

  We were face-to-face by then, the dark pits of his eyes meeting mine. “Are you mocking me?”

  “I do not understand,” I said.

  Kejetan grabbed my shoulders and pressed me across the ship’s deck before shoving me through the railings of the ship, snapping them like thin branches. My wings fought to take the air, but before I could, my father’s hand closed hard around my throat, holding me in place out over the water.