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

by C. A. Sanders

  “I built a shield to keep them inside, but they’re pushing its limits. It won’t be long until they break through,” Tom said.

  “I warned you,” I said as we pushed through the labyrinth. Puppies still too young to fly ran underfoot, while full grown Flerriers clumsily flew above the hedges, playing games that only flying dogs can understand.

  “The original pair live in the center,” Tom said with slumped shoulders. “Look what they did to my statue.” We turned a final corner and approached the center.

  The minotaur statue stood proudly, but the many nests on it said otherwise. The body was covered with feces and feathers. Resting between its horns was a large nest. The mother flerrier lay inside it, curled into a furry ball. Three lumps grew on her back, no larger than robin eggs.

  “I tried to alter the spell so that they couldn’t reproduce, but something went wrong. Her skin started to bubble, and when each bubble broke off, it became a new puppy. They’re aging at an amazing speed.”

  “How many?”

  “At last count, a dozen, but there could be more.” He laid a hand on the side of his face and moaned.

  I conjured a floating ball of light to illuminate my upcoming work. “Gather them here, and hurry.” Tom scampered off.

  I sat cross-legged on the grass, trying to find my center and deduce how much power I could afford to lose. I didn’t have the heart to kill them, but the Law demanded a solution. I had an idea for a temporary fix, but it wouldn’t be easy.

  Tapping once again into the Chaos Seed, I slowly raised my hands. A small pit opened near the entrance to the center garden. Molten iron seeped to the surface. Through force of will, I stretched the molten iron into a river. It ran along the border until it joined itself in a perfect circle. I charged Water energy inside of me, and released a spray of icy water to chill the iron into a solid ring. By the end, I was gasping.

  I summoned and covered the iron ring with a layer of quicksilver, and then a layer of argent. The key was getting the quicksilver to stay between the layers, and yet be free enough to move within the circle.

  I stopped to rest. Unlike the binding circle that I used against the Fire Elemental, this required several steps. The Elemental was from another plane, and its essence wanted to return. Moving an unwilling creature with the precision I required—and without hurting them—was more difficult.

  Tom returned with a raw steak and fourteen Flerriers. He tossed the steak to the minotaur statue and the pups flew after it. They wrestled and snapped at each other in their frenzy for the meat. Tom looked at me with mournful eyes and disappeared behind a hedge.

  I reached for one of the Flerriers and brushed off some fur. I placed the fur onto the sending ring, and it melted into the metal. The ring began to glow like a ribbon of moonlight on a lake. With a small twig, I sketched the intricate runes necessary for precision into the ring.

  The eastern sky grew pale by the time I was done with the runes. Tom returned with two more Flerriers. Once inside the ring, they wouldn’t be able to leave. I made sure that Tom, rhe mother, and I were outside of the ring.

  “Nathaniel, I’ve been thinking.”

  This couldn’t be good. “Go on.”

  “Some other wizards and I have been talking. Maybe,” he paused as if looking for the right words to sooth my disposition. “Maybe letting the Flerriers loose isn’t such a calamity. Maybe it’s time people believed in magic again. Maybe…maybe we can change the world.” He brought his hands forward like he was offering me something. “Maybe we can save it.”

  I stared at him, and he grinned. “Are you mad?” I grabbed him by the vest and shook him until his head wobbled. “You’ve never listened to a single thing I’ve said! Master Sol would kill you without hesitation if you said that to him!” I shook him again. “Magic is not a toy. Magic is a responsibility.”

  Fear in his eyes, he tried to step away from me, but I didn’t let him go.

  “Do you even know the madness I’ve had to deal with this week? New York is going to Hell, and here I am dealing with flying puppies…flying goddamned puppies!”

  “I’m sorry. It was a thought and nothing more.”

  I released him. “I could name a half dozen civilizations that thought the same. The Pharaohs, the Gomorans, the Babylonians, the Atlantians. They ruled their people with magic, and some ruled well. The end was always the same. The Chaos overwhelmed Reality and the Warp destroyed them. They died horribly, cursing their magic as it shred their souls apart. Is that what you want? Is it?”

  “No.” He hung his head. “I want to help.”

  “The Star of Nine was created to prevent such catastrophes from happening. They are far more ruthless than I.” A bitter taste in my mouth made me swallow hard. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need a moment. Take the mother out of the circle.”

  I turned to the center garden, now awash in flying puppies. I let the Chaos Seed bloom inside of me, and I stretched out my hand. A flash of blue-white erupted from my fingers and struck the sending ring. The light spread across the ring until the entire garden glowed blue-white. It flared to blinding levels, and vanished.

  Everything was gone. The hedges, the statue, the Flerriers, even the ground underneath. There was a pit twelve foot deep in the center, and nothing more.

  “Where did you send them?”

  “To a farm upstate. With all the troubles in Manhattan right now, I have to put the Flerriers aside for another day. Give me the mother. I’ll find a remedy through her.”

  “I feel terrible about this,” Tom said as he handed me the bird-dog.

  “You should.”

  “Let me make amends. You’re still looking for the Vanderlay’s baby. Come to the Hellfire Club tomorrow, at dusk. One of us must know something.”

  “Somebody always knows something. Goodbye, Tom. Do anything this stupid again, and it’ll be your last.”

  “But of course.” He grinned.

  Yet I knew it was his last regardless. I had to inform the Star of Nine, and I knew their response: The Law must stay unbroken. My heart ached for my friend, but it was my weakness in letting him fly so close to the Sun.

  Jonas

  Given a certain article in the Tribune, it didn’t surprise me when Roundsman Leary called me into his office.

  “Dammit Hood, yer gonna be the death of us all.” He emptied his pipe on the edge of his desk and pinched more tobacco into it.

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “I mean this.” He tossed a copy of the Tribune in my face. “We’re trying to keep this Vanderlay thing quiet, and yer givin’ damn interviews. Did you hear what happened in the Seventh Ward? Some fools went down there for Hebrew blood, ended up burning down two blocks. I don’t care much what happens to the Christ killers, but I’ll be buggered if the city burns down again.” He cleared his throat, but it sounded more like a growl. “This comes from Mayor Wood. Don’t talk to the damned papers!”

  I looked at the front page. Jim wrote an entire story about the police investigation, using me as a source. We didn’t look bad in it, but you can twist anything with the right amount of force.

  “It won’t happen again.”

  He took out a note and passed it to me. “But it worked, ya’ bastard. This came for you earlier,” he said. “Yer lucky it worked.” He stood up and shoveled more coal into the stove. “It’s damned cold in here. Maybe a nice fire wouldn’t be bad.” He chuckled. “Start it in Five Points, burn it out and work from scratch.”

  I read the note and stood. “I should go.”

  He waved me away with his hand. “Yes, go track this person down.” He turned his attention back to his pipe. “A good smoke’ll warm me up. Maybe a belt o’ the blue too…”

  The lady that wrote the note, Lily Johns, lived in Seneca Village, one of the Negro shantytowns where the city wants to build that big park. Her house was across from the reservoir, but no carriage would bring me there. I retrieved Tumbler from the stable and rode him instead.


  In the papers, Seneca Village is little more than a collection of shacks held together with wooden nails and prayers. The well water was brown and smelled like death. The streets are little more than pig runs, with mud up to your knees. It’s a place you don’t go on pain of death.

  To my surprise, the village wasn’t a shanty at all, but quite pleasant. The houses are well built and uniform. The streets are well kept, even with the snowflakes turning them to mud. There’s a small apple grove next to an outcropping of granite. Children played on the tree branches and brushed snow onto a smaller child below. The sodden child cried and ran to a nearby house. The other children saw me and leapt away, leaving footprints in the slush.

  Despite the village’s charm, I couldn’t help but think about what a first-rate park they could build here. It’d be a good field to play some base-ball.

  An old man with one leg leaned under the awning of one house and smoked a corn cob pipe. I asked the man for directions to Lily’s house.

  He scowled at my hat and badge. “You here ta t’row dem out in de snow? You Leather’eads ‘ave no shame.”

  “I’m not throwing anyone out. Lily sent me a message. She wants to see me.”

  I could feel his eyes boring into me. “It’s bad luck t’ be fibbin’ to an ol’ man.”

  “It’s the truth. I’ve more to worry about than throwing folk out of their homes.”

  “Of course y’do. That’s the problem.” He puffed his pipe and exhaled three perfect smoke rings. They floated to the east, somehow staying together. “Follow de rings. They’ll take y’there.”

  True to his word, the rings held together all the way down the street. They struck the front door to one house and disappeared in the falling snow. More magic, but I’d never seen a Dweller like that one.

  I tied Tumbler’s reins to a nearby tree and knocked on the door. A young Mulatto woman near my age answered. She was curvy and pretty, with curled hair in a bun and fetching bonnet. She wore a stained apron over her dress.

  “You must be Officer Hood. I’ve been waiting for you.” Her fine diction surprised me.

  I followed her into the house. An older woman with ebony skin sat in a rocking chair and mended a stocking. A pot of tea was on a stove. We sat down at the kitchen table and Lily poured us each a cup.

  “About the Vanderlay baby,” I began. “Your note says that you were the housekeeper. You were there.”

  “I was. I was cleaning the first floor when poor Stewart vanished.” She shook her said. “I never saw a thing. No one entered, no one left. I never would’ve known that something was amiss if I didn’t go to the nursery.”

  “You found Molly.”

  She nodded. “The girl felt like she was on fire. I sent for a doctor immediately. He came right away. He probably thought that it was for the baby or he would’ve found some excuse to take his time.” She looked out the window to the reservoir across the way. “Did Molly survive?”

  “No.”

  “Ah…she’s in a better place now,” Lily said. “Couldn’t have been in a worse one.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Vanderlay’s the reason all of this happened. Stewart’s paying for his sins.”

  “The gambling and letchering?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “He’s made a lot of enemies. A couple of months ago, someone burned down the carriage house. He fired the stable boy, but the boy wasn’t even there.” She sipped at her tea, making little sound. “But that’s not the worst.”

  “Go on.”

  She took a deep breath and set down the tea. The cup shook ever so slightly, just enough to send concentric rings out from the middle. “He made us…all of us…do things. Horrible things. Things that ruined us for any other man. Some of us were already married, and he took them anyway. He defied the will of God—broke a holy sacrament—for his own lusts.”

  “Couldn’t you refuse?”

  She laughed, a sharp sound like a slap. “There was no refusing him. He’d have his way, and it was no use to go to the police against him. No one would believe us. You know the way these uppertens are, ‘servant’ is fancy talk for ‘slave.’”

  “Not all of them,” I began, but thought the better of it. “You’re a pretty, obviously well-educated lady. Why didn’t you get married when you could?”

  She held up her hands, presenting her brown flesh. “Isn’t it obvious? When my father was rich, no one spoke about my mother being Negro. I’m sure they whispered it in their parlors, but no one dared speak out loud. When my parents died, the city took my inheritance. They said that I wasn’t a true descendant because I didn’t look like him. One day I had all the world ahead of me, the next, some letcher is pulling up my skirts in the gardens.”

  “That’s tragic, sincerely.” Thinking about that bastard having his way on her made my muscles clench. I forced down my rage. “But that doesn’t tell me much about who took the baby.”

  “Oh no? Vanderlay had affairs with dozens of women.”

  “And?”

  “Where are the babies? Don’t answer, I’ll tell you. Vanderlay couldn’t get any of us with child. Not a single one. And yet, here’s little Stewart Vanderlay. Explain that, Officer. Explain that.”

  I knew after talking to Vanderlay the first time that there was more to his story than he was letting on. Lily’s tale, however, was more than I was expecting. A man like that makes enemies by the bale, but at least now I knew why they might hate him. The man and I needed another meeting.

  I climbed back onto Tumbler and we picked our way eastbound. The ground was uneven and wooded here, and I had to walk Tumbler through the treacherous parts. She was a good horse, but used to the paving stones and not the thick mud and slush we were in.

  Pop loved to talk about the grand park that he and the other uppertens were planning for this area. It was true that people needed a place to escape the stink and smoke of the Lower Wards. I’ve seen couples courting in graveyards for lack of a proper park to picnic in. I feel for the people of Seneca Village. If they were Dwellers, Pop would find them someplace to live, but they have the misfortune of being born human, and worse, Negro. I don’t know. These high-minded thoughts are beyond me.

  I crossed into Yorkville, going over the train tracks on Fourth Avenue and turning north toward Harlem on Third. The street was alive with farmers driving hogs and wagons filled with turkeys, a last shipment into the city before Thanksgiving. I guided Tumbler under an awning to let a large herd of cattle run down the avenue. They clogged the entire road, and their handlers did little to push them along. A couple of angry patrons from a dry goods store shook their fists and cursed, finding themselves pinned by three hundred head of beef. A reformer wagon followed the herd. Two frowning men with shackles on their wrists shoveled the dung and tossed it into the wagon.

  I rode further up Third until the storefronts turned to farmland and the farmland turned to Vanderlay land. As I got closer, I saw that there was a carriage waiting by the gatehouse. I slowed Tumbler, not wanting to intrude, willing to wait my turn. Vanderlay and another man were arguing by the gatehouse. I couldn’t see the man’s features from this distance, even with a squint, but he raised his walking stick several times as if to strike.

  Vanderlay cursed and handed the man a large bundle tied in cord. When the man took it, I saw the patch over his eye and realized who it was. What was Wythe doing here? Forget Vanderlay, I’m following Wythe.

  Wythe stepped into his carriage and the coachman snapped the reins. I waited until he was almost out of sight, stuffed my hat and badge into a saddle bag, and we trotted down the road.

  The carriage turned left on One Hundred and Sixth Street, and I spurred Tumbler to catch up. The streets in Harlem are dirt rather than paving stones, and the carriage left deep ruts in the mud as it passed. Tumbler kicked up the same mud, laboring to keep up. We rumbled over the train tracks again, and then by Harlem Lake, where the carriage swerved to dodge a deep mud puddle.

  We turne
d left again, urgency in the tread, and now I was sure we were cutting through one of the Gansevoort estates. New York is cut up into blocks and tenements, but Harlem is still sprawling manors and old forests. On both sides of the road I saw great columned houses and thick oaks. From here I could almost imagine what the entire island must’ve been like when Pop was my age. Then again, no amount of trees could stifle the smell the tanneries and factories coming from the city.

  The carriage sped up again and made a hard right onto Ninety-Sixth Street. The street was more crowded than the others and I had to weave Tumbler through pushcarts and pedestrians. A pair of young men raced their own horses down the street, and Tumbler snapped her own reins, taking the race as a challenge. Meanwhile, I was losing ground on the carriage as it wove through traffic.

  Near Bloomingdale Road, Wythe turned north through a manor’s open gate. There were several carriages driving in, along with people on horses and on foot. They all appeared to be well dressed, but not in formal ware. They were journeymen, not gentlemen. I steered Tumbler between the gates and followed the stream of people.

  We trotted away from the manor house, a grand house in the New Roman design. Instead, we went to a large field with wooden risers in a V shape at one end. The risers were filling with spectators that eagerly watched the men on the field. I couldn’t see the ball, but I knew they were throwing one, warming up their arms against the November chill.

  Wythe and a companion exited their carriage and walked to the field, apparently unaware of my presence. I dismounted and tied Tumbler’s reins to a small tree.

  A young man with a smith’s shoulders passed me. “Who’s playing?” I asked.

  “The Knickerbockers came over from Hoboken and challenged the Gotham club,” he chittered. “Mayor Wood set the game up. It’s the last game of the year, before the snow gets too deep. I’m guessin’ ol’ Doc Adams strikes five or six aces on his own. Who’re you for?”