The Philosopher's Flight

by Tom Miller

  “This is insane,” Jake said.

  “You always said you can fly with anything,” I replied.

  I lashed the tube to her side and pointed her toward the hospital.

  “Brian, darling,” Jake said to Mayweather. “If you try to look up my dress, I’m having Robert eunuchize you.”

  Mayweather blew her a kiss.

  Jake launched and nearly sputtered out before her flight sigil caught and flung her toward Mass General at 190 miles an hour. She cleared a chimney by four inches. Drunk and with a cardboard regulator.

  “Fucking hell!” I breathed.

  “Black lace,” mused Mayweather, on whom the narrowness of her miss had been lost.

  I had no time to reconsider the wisdom of the homemade rigging: the fourth floor of the Castle Club was burning now, too. The firefighter who’d found us the straps helped me into a coat and helmet and handed me an axe with a spike on the back.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Dar asked me.

  “People trapped on the sixth floor,” I said. “I’ll fly up, break a window, search.”

  “No, you won’t. Robert, they’re—”

  “I have to. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the highest—”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Danielle said.

  I tied the powder tube to my hip.

  “Christ, Robert,” Danielle said. “If you’re really going to do this, then fly in, draw a destination glyph, and let me transport a bunch of firefighters inside. They’ll cover a lot more ground more quickly. Then I’ll get everyone out together.”

  That was a much better plan. The fire chief, who’d heard about Dar’s action at Gallipoli, was willing to try it. He gathered half a dozen men to transport in with her.

  “What do you want for a destination glyph?” I asked Dar.

  From her purse, Dar pulled a little black book—an official transporter’s log of one-of-a-kind destinations, each in duplicate. She tore out a perforated sheet and took my index finger, tracing it over the figure. “That’s a Lily chatterbox with double staves, slow six on the back end. Got it?” I traced it out again under her critical eye. “Close enough,” she said. I stuffed the paper in my pocket.

  Dar pressed a vial of aluminum into my hand. “For the destination glyph. And take this, too. I found it in her kit. In case you meet an unhappy Trencher.”

  It was a tube of sulfur and bone meal. I stuck the vial and tube in my waistband. Then I took two big strides, pinched the regulator tip open, and launched.

  The force of my sigil caught me by surprise, kicking me back ten feet as it threw me upward. Too much flow. I drew hastily to correct, shooting up past the roof and then trying to burp my way back down. I evened out and aimed for a window.

  Everyone on the ground was yelling.

  “Quiet on the ground!” I screamed. Worst possible moment for a distraction.

  “Sixth floor!” I heard Mayweather shout. “Down one! That’s seven.”

  Well, I thought, with the blissful stupidity of a young man who’d never attempted something like this before, at least I got my one mistake of the night out of the way.

  I aligned myself with the correct window, switched the reg to my left hand—thank you, Gertrude—and swung the axe with my right.

  The handle twisted in my hand and the blade bounced off the glass. The recoil spun me backward and I reflexively tightened my grip on the reg, pinching off the powder flow. I dropped hard.

  I heard Dar’s scream above the rest.

  I redrew frantically, fighting for altitude, as the reg did its best to hurl me into the side of the building. I maneuvered back up to the window and took a second swing, this time with the spiked end of the axe. The glass shattered.

  I knocked the rest of the fragments out of the window frame and edged closer. The window was too small to fly through—I should have considered that while I was still on the ground. There was not going to be a graceful way to do this.

  I let go of the axe. Then I grabbed the frame with my right hand, let go of the reg, and grabbed on with my left, sagging toward the ground as my thrust died. I pulled myself up and partway through, but got stuck on my powder bag. My legs flailed over the six-story drop. I wriggled my hips through and then the rest of me followed as I fell onto the glass-strewn floor.

  I began choking before I could even stand up. The smoke was thicker than it had looked from outside. I used a sigil to ball up some smoke in my hands, flatten it into a sheet, and scoop out a shell around my face. Once I could breathe, I began rolling back the smoke around me and found that I was at the end of a long hall. I drew sigils wildly, squashing the smoke against the walls so that there was a tunnel of clear air.

  Time for the destination glyph. I laid the page from Dar’s book on the floor and used the powdered aluminum to trace out the ornate figure. Then I retreated to the window, well outside the radius of the bubble Dar would be using.

  “Hey!” I screamed.

  Everyone below was shouting and pointing, but not at me. Between the noise of the crowd, the pumps on the engines, and the water hissing as it turned to steam on the flames below, no one heard me. Dar had several firefighters crouched about her. Someone had found her a helmet and waterproof coat to wear. I flung the empty powder tube out the window to catch her attention and waved my arms. She didn’t look up.

  Mayweather noticed me, though, and called to Dar. She and the firefighters vanished.

  “Took you long enough!” Dar said from behind me.

  “What could possibly have been more interesting than watching for your boyfriend in a burning building?” I answered.

  “Man on top of the turret,” one of the firefighters said.

  “Goddamn it, I thought they were here!” I said as the firefighters fanned out to search the corridors and rooms beyond.

  “Maybe some here, but one on the roof for damn sure,” said the firefighter.

  I still had plenty of corn powder left. I couldn’t not try.

  I levered my legs out the window and worked my hips and powder bag through. My whole body revolted at the notion of throwing myself into space. But it should work. One second for the sigil to take, during which I would fall sixteen feet. Plenty of room. Easy, even.

  Dead if you misdraw your glyph.

  “What are you doing?” Danielle shouted behind me.

  Too stupid. Too reckless. Climb back in and let her transport me out with the rest, man on the roof be damned.

  “I’ll grab the one up top,” I called back. “See you on the ground.”

  I pushed myself out and fell.

  My sigil took.

  The thrust flung me up and I fought to trim, level, dip, even as I rocketed up to a hundred feet. I eased back down, buffeted by the columns of hot air rising from the flames. The whole building looked like it was burning.

  I pulled hard for the roof, then pinched off my powder flow, tucking and sliding as I hit. I spotted the man on the opposite side from me, peering over the edge. There was a trapdoor with a ladder near him—he must have run up instead of down when the fire broke out. But I wasn’t about to risk taking him back inside and negotiating my way down two flights of stairs to rejoin Dar.

  “Hey, there!” I called to him. “I’m here to help.”

  A shrunken, elderly man, his head framed by wispy hair, turned toward me. His face was thin and pockmarked, his cheekbones prominent, as if his many years had stripped away all the fat and muscle. He frowned and pointed an old cap and ball revolver in my direction.

  I froze. I tried to keep my breathing regular. Steady hands. I could launch, I could be gone in a second. Hard to hit a moving target at twenty feet with a pistol.

  “You’re with the fire department, then?” he asked, eyeing the fire coat I was wearing over my suit and tie.

  “Yes,” I said, desperate. My face would give me away. My naked fear, the high pitch to my voice. “Off duty.”

  Against all reasonable expectation, the man lowered the gun. A
s he moved, I spotted a black onyx ring in place of a wedding band. From bad to worse. It was a mark worn only by the most irreconcilable Trenchers—you won it by murdering a philosopher.

  He said something I couldn’t hear for the thudding of my heart. I pivoted so that I was facing him side-on. If he shot me, the bullet would tear into the flesh of my left side, leaving my right hand free to draw. Or was it possible he couldn’t understand what I was? Was he blind to the powder bag that was even now spilling a trickle of corn dust?

  “I said, how do you propose to get me down?” he asked. “I don’t see a ladder.”

  “Pulleys,” I stammered. “We have a system of ropes to lower us to the ground.”

  He gave a weary, sad smile.

  “I offered up a prayer,” he said, “and salvation came. I said, ‘Heavenly Father, was it not your will that I should scour these philosophers from the earth? Did not your prophet Isaiah preach to them of their destruction?’ ”

  He put the gun in his pocket. I resumed breathing.

  He was insane, maybe. But if I needed to play the part of angel sent by God for two minutes to get him to safety, I was willing. I put an arm around his shoulders and guided him to the edge of the roof.

  “It’s all there,” he told me. “Written twenty-six hundred years ago, all of it prophecy for today.”

  “Sure it is,” I said. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

  I had a reasonably good idea for getting him down.

  “If you’d be so kind, could you step up onto the ledge, Mister . . .”

  “Gannet,” he supplied.

  28

  Disaster will come upon you, and you will not know how to conjure it away. A calamity will fall upon you that you cannot pay off with a ransom; a catastrophe you cannot foresee will suddenly come upon you. Keep on, then, with your magic spells and your many sigils, which you have labored at since girlhood. Perhaps you will succeed, perhaps you will cause terror.

  Isaiah 47:11–12, The New Trencher Bible, 1916

  THIS MAN? THIS SENILE, decrepit, used-up excuse of a man? Mastermind and assassin? The subject of a thousand childhood nightmares? The one who’d kept me up nights as a grown man, imagining how he was plotting to kill Mother, kill Dar. Imagining how I might track him down and murder him. This man?

  “Maxwell Gannet?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  My hand dropped to the tube tucked in the waistband of my pants.

  Sulfur and bone meal.

  The sigil was just five sharp lines. Kill him myself, know it for certain, witness it. His bones would dissolve and his brain would shut down almost instantly from the sudden release of calcium. Merciful, even, compared to leaving him.

  I popped the cap off the tube.

  No one would ever know. Leave the body for the flames to consume.

  Mother would do it. Had done it.

  I grabbed hold of his shirt. As I moved, the chain with the vial of silver chloride brushed across my chest. If you can get close enough to kill a man . . .

  But Beau and Vivian had killed. They would understand. Lew Hansen and Bertie Synge would understand. Ms. Addams would understand. Dar would—

  I glanced down at the tube in my hand. Never. She was a minister’s daughter, not a soldier’s son.

  A simple, simple glyph: On an open count, central spine with pierced end cap, then three dropping left-to-right barbs.

  I caught Gannet’s head in my left arm and pulled it roughly to the side, exposing the flesh of his neck. He looked at me dumbly, uncomprehending.

  “From Beau Canderelli,” I growled.

  I tore the chain off my neck, twisted open the vial of silver chloride between my thumb and forefinger, and slapped a stasis sigil on Gannet’s throat.

  His body went stiff in my arms.

  “From Emmaline Weekes,” I added, and kicked him in the back so that he tumbled off the roof. His insensate body hit the ground a few seconds later.

  I launched myself, too. In trying to avoid all the people in the street below, I made a hash of my landing. I hit hard and rolled, bloodying my nose. Gannet’s body, by contrast, didn’t have so much as a scrape on it.

  Mayweather ran up beside me. “What did you do to him?” he cried.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You pushed him off the roof!”

  “He’s in stasis. It didn’t hurt him.”

  “Jesus,” Mayweather said. “Everybody saw you. We thought . . .”

  He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me away from the bystanders, who were pressing in around Gannet. Dar was nearby, talking to a detective, still wearing her fire helmet and coat over her velvet dress. Beside her, the police were interviewing several soot-covered old men—the Trenchers she’d rescued. Newspaper photographers circled, snapping pictures.

  “I should add that Jake messaged,” Mayweather told me. “She made it to the hospital.”

  “Thank God,” I said. “She’s okay?”

  “Perfectly well, though your rope harness ruined the sequins on her—”

  The Castle Club’s roof collapsed, sending up an enormous, spiraling column of sparks.

  “Damn!” I said. If I’d been a minute slower, I would have gone with it.

  Dar saw me. She flung her arms around me and pressed her face against my shoulder.

  “Don’t ever!” she sobbed. “Don’t ever again! I couldn’t bear it.”

  I held her tight.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

  Dar came away with blood from my nose running down her borrowed coat. We watched for several minutes as the building collapsed on itself.

  Mayweather, who’d ducked back into the restaurant to rescue his bottle of wine and a clean glass, rejoined us. I scowled at him.

  “It’s an ’86 Château Lafite—it would be a crime to let it go to waste!” he said by way of explanation. He took a sip and then, looking immodestly pleased with himself, extracted an envelope from his pocket. “But more important, I found this on our table.”

  Dar’s name was typed on it. She opened it and nearly dropped the letter in reading it.

  “What?” I said.

  I looked it over with Mayweather:

  You have witnessed the power of American sigilry. Those who threaten us, we will destroy. Those who aid us, we will uplift. The Gray Hats deserve a place at the negotiating table. Tell Cadwallader-Fulton. Spread the word in the halls of Washington.

  Well, that certainly explained the professional-looking fire. They must have expected that we would enjoy basking in the glow of roasting Trenchers—or at least permit it to happen. Instead, we’d ruined the evening for some very deadly philosophers.

  “Let’s get out of here before they come back,” I said to Dar.

  And before Gannet woke up.

  • • •

  No, if it had been me, they’d be dead, Mother replied to the anxious message I sent that night from Dar’s apartment. This was showy and ineffective. Typical Gray Hat idiots. Jayhawks wld have don it right.

  Any rumors on whch faction? I asked.

  N, Mother answered. Hard to imagin they wld retaliate agnst Danlle or you, but possibl. I’ll mak inquiries. Quietly.

  Thnks. Sorry.

  Just shows I raised y right. Mayb one of thos Trnchrs will do y a good turn someday.

  Dar was reading over my shoulder. “Did you tell her that you saved Gannet?”

  I shook my head. “I left that out. It would have been hard to explain.”

  “Yeah,” Dar said. Her lip curled as she said it. “It is hard to explain. Pulling out a half-dozen Trenchers—sure, maybe one of them will change his ways. But him?”

  My anger boiled up.

  “Don’t look at me like that!” I snapped.

  “Like what?”

  “Like I did something wrong! Like I’m a coward.”

  “Jesus, Robert!” Danielle said. “I don’t think you’re a coward. I just said it’s hard to understand.”


  “He was a frail, broken wreck of a man!” I shouted. “I looked him in the eye. I had him at my mercy. You don’t tell someone you’ve come to help them and then murder them! That’s . . . it’s so far beyond wrong . . . it’s the lowest thing . . .”

  “Okay,” said Dar. “It’s okay.”

  “I don’t want to be a killer!” I said, trying to get the words out before I choked up. “It’s my whole family. And I love them. But I want . . . I want . . . to save lives instead of take them.”

  Dar stepped behind me and laid her palms on my shoulders. I lolled my head back against her. She’d had another long soak to wash off the smoke and was still in her bathrobe. I inhaled the scent of her jasmine soap.

  “Oh, love,” she whispered, her face buried in my hair. “I wish he were dead, but I don’t wish you’d killed him.”

  She stroked my arm.

  “I was so scared, Robert,” she said. “That’s the most frightened I’ve ever been. Gallipoli was me, alone. This was me watching you. How many times did you almost die? I can’t tell you which was worse—watching you try to get in through that window or sliding back out. Or when the roof caved in and I hadn’t seen you get clear.”

  She wrapped her arms across my chest.

  “You flew into a burning building to save people who hate you,” she said. “You did it because you’re you. It’s noble. It’s merciful. I love you for it. But it scares the hell out of me.”

  • • •

  I spent a sleepless night alone in bed.

  I’d let him live. How many more people would end up dead because of it? Was it simple weakness—had I frozen up? Or was it naïveté born of too many fairy stories about Rescue and Evac? Or was it true? Did you not kill somebody you’d approached under the auspices of rendering aid, not even if he was prophet to a whole generation of Trenchers?

  And then, remembering Danielle crying over me. How many times had I almost died getting in and out of that building? Six, I decided. Never again. I would be good, I would be careful, I would be wise.

  Not long after dawn I heard an apologetic knock at my bedroom door.

  “Robert?” came Unger’s voice. “You’re going to want to see this.”

  29