by Paige Orwin
If the residents of New Haven suspected any connection to Magister Templeton, they kept quiet. Istvan’s erratic presence had proven a remarkably effective deterrent.
Edmund was left alone with his cat and his thoughts.
He should have known the day wouldn’t work out. Should have expected it. Just like the mercenaries seemed to have expected him.
Today hadn’t been Istvan’s fault. It was Edmund’s, for not being able to handle it. For doing nothing. For panicking. For running. For giving in to something his own mind manufactured, something that wasn’t even real.
Edmund reached for his glass and finished it off.
Istvan had gotten carried away, sure. Istvan could have tried harder, sure.
But it had been Edmund’s job to get to the Bernault devices. Edmund’s job to find and secure them. Edmund’s job to make sure they were hitting the right place at the right time. Edmund’s job to not panic when things went wrong.
He had planned that operation, not Istvan.
He considered a third drink, and then reminded himself that Istvan would be arriving that night for chess.
Let it go.
Water under the bridge, the whole smoking wreckage of it. What was done was done. It was all something to deal with later.
Tomorrow. After the memorial visit.
Seventh anniversary of the end of the Wizard War. All those people, watching the Hour Thief – watching him – make that trek up the stairway, probably in the rain, carrying that lily to...
Edmund reconsidered that third drink.
Grace wouldn’t have liked it. She had been an engineer, a pragmatist, a firm believer in “real problem-solving”, and the very notion that every problem could actually be solved. She hadn’t believed in magic until magic happened, and when it did, she immediately decided it was some unknown branch of science.
There was no forbidden knowledge. There was no question that shouldn’t be asked. There was no damnation.
In Grace’s eyes, everyone could be saved.
Don’t you dare give up, Eddie.
Punch it in the eye.
But Grace wasn’t here. Explosions of that size didn’t leave much to bury.
No. No, if he had another one, he’d have more than just another one, and Istvan would never let him hear the end of it. Istvan was coming for chess after midnight. New rule for the knights, he’d said.
Beldam headbutted him again.
“Sorry,” said Edmund.
He put his glass down, opened his book, and scratched her ears.
* * *
Istvan hurtled through the wall, chains burning.
Double doors slammed shut, the converted meeting hall that served as the Twelfth Hour’s infirmary echoing with a yelp, a crash, and hastily receding footsteps. A number of lingering earthquake patients sat up, startled. The ordinary staff took no notice.
A nearby nurse sighed, kneeling down to pick up an overturned gurney. “Was that really necessary, Doctor?” he asked.
Istvan folded wings that dissipated into wisps of gas and wire, the memory of artillery dulled back to silence. The pain at his wrists and neck faded: he was present, now, and on duty. “I was in a hurry.”
“You could have used the door in a hurry.”
“Was that another applicant?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Istvan ran a hand across the reformed flesh of his face. “Well. If he truly thinks he’s up to the task, Roberts, he’ll be back. Now,” he continued, sifting through the infirmary’s usual dulled yet pleasant ambiance of misery and pain, “are you certain this was all the patients we had? No one at all nearly died today?”
Roberts patted the gurney, retrieved his clipboard, and looked it over. Istvan wasn’t a small man, but Roberts was a head taller and broader twice over, young and round and descended from the native inhabitants of some tropical island or other. More importantly he had a good head on his shoulders and a remarkably steady disposition, which was why he’d made the cut several years ago. “Not that I can see. It’s been a good day so far.”
“Rather bland, yes.”
Istvan looked over the rows of pallets. The infirmary was a makeshift one; dividers built of cloth, machinery cluttering every alcove that would fit it, a hum of activity bustling below more grand pillars, sweeping arches, and gilded paneling than the Vienna Court Opera. The wizards had discussed grand plans here, once; now the order of the day was making sure those remaining lived to see any plan to fruition. Much cleaner than the muddy field hospitals to which he had grown accustomed, it was an altogether agreeable facility that would have been ideal had it only been just that tiny bit more disagreeable.
Every so often he found himself missing the trenches, the tunnels, the splintered timber, the occasional excursions to enemy lines that he could never remember as anything more than a euphoric blur of brilliant sensation; massacres permissible and even laudable because that was how war worked.
Istvan rubbed at his wrists, where the chains weren’t visible. He’d hoped for more cases, more suffering. Something to take the edge off what had happened with the mercenaries and Edmund. “When do you suppose we’ll have another shock?”
Roberts flipped some of the pages on his clipboard over. “Dunno. They’re wondering now if some of the city-monsters aren’t quite dead, or if the earthquakes might be some kind of gradual settling.”
“Oh, it’s always a gradual thing,” Istvan sighed. “It starts small and then you find yourself invading Italy.”
“Yes, Doctor. Did you sign off on Martha back there?”
Istvan glanced at the clipboard. “She should have full control of all six limbs in another few weeks. I told her to be patient.”
“Right.”
“I’m not a wizard, you know – eight years isn’t enough time to become an expert on the fallout. Not for me, not for anyone. I did the very best I could and she’s lucky to be alive at all.”
Roberts held up his hands. “I wasn’t saying anything.”
Istvan crossed his arms across his bandolier, gazing over his spectacles at the far corner. They kept all the worst cases there, people with afflictions he’d never seen before the Wizard War, never known were possible. They likely hadn’t been before Shokat Anoushak appeared with her beasts and her spellscars and her ancient brand of madness, ripping apart the possible and rampaging across the results of her handiwork until that last terrible convergence at Providence.
“I suppose I ought to have another look,” Istvan admitted. Was it petty of him, to wish that a hundred and forty years of medical experience counted for more? “Perhaps I…”
He paused. Over the background pain and worry of the infirmary, and the minor annoyances typical of any human gathering, something else was approaching. An ache, dulled and clouded. Fear, sharp and urgent, but not overpowering; a complex medley of motivation and restraint. There was a smoothness to it, a confidence he recognized.
“Roberts…” he began.
The nurse set his clipboard aside. “On it.”
Istvan was already at the doors when the team rushed through. The man on the gurney was young, clad in jeans and a thin jacket. Pale, brown-haired, clean-shaven. Barely breathing. The front of his jacket was torn into bloody ribbons. His skin was blistered with frostbite.
It was June, and the man had frostbite.
Istvan cursed. That was the one mundane thing he couldn’t treat in confidence.”Severe hypothermia and frostbite, wounds to his chest, very weak vitals,” rattled off one of the medics as Istvan confirmed those details for himself. “Recommend–”
The man’s heart stopped. Istvan forcibly restarted it, reaching through bone and muscle to the organ itself. “Go on, then,” he snarled. “I can keep him bloody stabilized but I’m not helping the cold!”
All present scattered before he finished the sentence. Roberts and three others were already setting up the nearest machine in a flurry. Istvan could keep nearly anyone alive through nearly anythi
ng that didn’t kill a man instantly, but cold... oh, his own presence only worsened it, chilling flesh and spirit alike until it wore down to attrition. The human body could only be revived so many times.
“I bloody hate frostbite,” he said to no one in particular. He traced his fingers through the wounds. “Someone get this jacket off – the man’s been clawed and the wounds are contaminated.”
Roberts and his team began hooking up all manner of diagnostic devices and life-sustaining apparatus, moments before others arrived with warming blankets and precious doses of the appropriate drugs. They had all been so relieved to get the electricity working, five years ago.
Istvan remembered trying to save lives with the medical equivalent of a rubber band and a toothbrush. He’d operated before penicillin. Before blood types. When the vaccination of diphtheria was the news of the day, along with the exciting idea of using Röntgen rays to see inside the body. Surgeons had operated without washing their hands a mere generation before.
The blood was still congealed.
“Did you pull him off a bloody mountain?” Istvan demanded.
One of the medics shook her head. “We responded to a call. Some sort of animal, they said.”
“Yes, I can see that, but the cold?”
“We don’t know.” She shrugged helplessly. “We thought it might be something escaped from the spellscars, or a Conduit, or something.”
Well, now. The spellscars suggested a monster that had gotten past the patrols, while a Conduit... oh, that was another matter entirely. That was someone coursing with strange power, burning up with it, at the mercy of some outside source of one kind or another. Ordinary people, most of them, irrevocably transformed during the Wizard War. They were fantastically rare.
Grace had been one. Unnaturally fast, unnaturally strong, wreathed in lightning. Istvan had set one of her arms after she broke her own bones punching through concrete. She had never agreed to let him study her, mostly because she hated him, and Edmund, during their not-infrequent quarrels, had never been able to convince her otherwise.
Edmund had once suggested that Istvan was a sort of Conduit as well, linked as he was to the Great War. Istvan had disagreed: Conduits, unlike him, were alive... though for how long was anyone’s guess.
He busied himself with circulation, nudging chilled fluids along their proper course. The claw marks weren’t deep, at least, though their recipient would have some impressive scars to show off later. “I suppose we’ll have to ask him.”
She blinked. “Now?”
He chuckled. “No, of course not. He’ll stay under until we’re sure he won’t have a stroke or a coronary.” He patted the man’s hand, fingers smeared with the memory of blood. The pain of frozen tissue reviving was more than familiar, at turns sharp and mellow, a languorous blossoming as frustrating as it was exquisite. He sighed in appreciation. Perhaps it would be a tolerable evening after all. “Roberts, you recall how many men I lost in the mountains?”
The nurse didn’t glance up. “You’ve mentioned it a time or two.”
“Spread across three regiments, guns setting off avalanches, ridges full of bloody Italians... I don’t know if anyone here has ever fought in the cold, but it dampens the pain terribly. Give me summer in the valleys, heat exhaustion, holding a river that isn’t frozen. None of this natural anesthetic business.”
Roberts rolled his eyes.
“After all, what good is war if you can’t appreciate the full measure of a bullet tearing through your ribs, hmm?” Again, he chuckled. One of the monitors sounded, a long, low, solid tone, and he reached over to revive the man a second time. Something was clotted... ah, there it was. The medication ought to help with that, once it took effect. “Gently, now, we don’t want to thaw him out so quickly he shatters.”
“Working on it, Doctor.”
Istvan nodded, checking the man’s brain for additional clots. Oh, his people really were quite skilled, all of them. More than capable. “Someone start a… ah, you already have. Room temperature, normal saline? Good. I’d like a bit of plasma warmed, just in case. I’m not seeing any other thromboses and I do believe his heart has finally decided to cooperate.”
“They aren’t dead until they’re warm and dead,” quipped one of the nurses.
Istvan pressed a hand to his chest. “Why, Mrs Torres, where ever does that leave me?”
“Beyond the scope of medical science, Doctor. Nothing we can do for you.”
He laughed. There wasn’t.
There really wasn’t.
Chapter Four
“A beast that claws and freezes its victims to death? I’d say it was one of Shokat Anoushak’s creatures, but I hadn’t heard of any perimeter breaches and I don’t recall ever meeting one like this.” Istvan turned a captured black pawn between his fingers. It was past midnight and that awful jazz wailed from the living room again, but he felt quite chipper after the surgery and anyhow, it was Edmund’s house; a bit of saxophone could be forgiven. “Why didn’t it attack anyone earlier? Have you ever heard of a beast like that?”
Edmund propped his goateed chin on a fist, regarding the chessboard with narrowed eyes. He wore a clean shirt and suspenders and smelled much better. “Can’t say that I have.””Really? I thought you’d seen everything.”
“Are you moving or not?”
“That depends. Have you fortified those three squares?”
“Last I remember, yes.”
Istvan grinned. “That is a terrible shame.” He pushed a piece forward.
Edmund frowned. “Is that the cannon from the Monopoly set?”
“It most certainly is, and as my armored cavalry has your infantry formation quite flanked–”
“Hold up, I thought we agreed that in this match the knights would move like proper knights. In Ls. You can’t do that.”
Istvan waved a hand. “No, we agreed that knights would move like proper knights. These aren’t knights, Edmund, and they haven’t been for the last two minutes.” He plucked a cornered black rook off the board, followed by the pawn behind it and the bishop behind that.
They sat at the kitchen table, Edmund’s chair facing the front door and Istvan’s opposite, surrounded by flowered tile, flowered wallpaper, and avocado-green cabinets. Edmund’s hoard of tin cans, glass jars, sugar packets, dental floss, and other items deemed useful or reuseable occupied every shelf not playing host to something else, arranged in neat rows. Newly-canned tomatoes sat atop the refrigerator. The pair of bowls for Beldam, the cat, lay near the entryway to the den. Beldam herself hated Istvan on principle and had fled down the hall when he arrived. The house itself was bare of photographs and packed with books, and Edmund refused to get rid of the horseshoe nailed sideways above the door.
“That was a hill,” Edmund objected.
“Which was?”
“The middle square. You can’t fire a conventional cannon like that through a hill.”
“Hm.” Istvan traced a finger across his scarring, considering. They were his rules, though they seemed to have developed on their own in the years before the Wizard War and had grown more and more elaborate once he had finally been permitted to leave Twelfth Hour premises. “Not yet and not at that angle, no.” He put the bishop back. “I’ll deal with you later.”
Edmund skated his lone surviving rook past Istvan’s knights and balanced a penny atop it. He seemed better – cleaner, certainly – but preoccupied, wounded and tired and wonderfully apprehensive, and perhaps a bit resentful, if the sharper edge of the medley were any indication. He had led armies once, seven years ago tomorrow, and still hadn’t quite recovered. “Istvan,” he asked, “just how bloody was your shift in the infirmary today?”
Istvan blinked. “Oh... not terrifically. Why?”
“You’re awfully cheerful, is all.”
“Am I?”
Edmund shrugged and stacked two more pennies on the rook. Quick, precise motions, those of a man who had spent a lot of time turning pages.
“That would explain what happened at the mercenary convoy, wouldn’t it?”
Istvan flinched. “Edmund, I’m sorry.”
The wizard rubbed a hand across his face. “Your move.”
“Edmund, I promise that we’ll find the devices. They can’t be far, not through that terrain and not with the need to remain hidden. In fact, I spoke to Janet Justice earlier: she will be watching from the satellites for anything odd, and after we’ve finished this game, I’ll–”
“Your move.”
Istvan reached for his queen.
The next several turns passed in relative silence, save for another brief dispute over Istvan’s entirely legal straight-galloping armored cavalry. It was ridiculous, perhaps, but chess was, at its heart, a war game. Istvan had simply updated it and made it just as unpredictable and unfair as war actually was.
It was better than the alternative.
“Edmund, bishop or not, he’s far too visible and I’ve a clear shot this time.” Istvan removed the offending piece and added it to his collection of black foemen, improvised artillery, and plastic battleships. “Oh, and my zeppelin is still bombing your king.”
Edmund sat back in his chair. “That’s fine, because I just added defenses.”
“Ah, incendiary rounds. What range?”
“What?”
Istvan rattled off a diatribe on raised flight ceilings as compensation for opposing ground-based emplacements and the much-inferior endurance of heavier-than-air craft. It was information more memory than knowledge, remembrances of engineering meetings and flight crews, of turning out on lawns and balconies to watch as great behemoths burst flaming in the sky like fireworks.