The Interminables

by Paige Orwin

  Artillery thudded over the rush and boom of wind and fortress. Wire whispered across steel. A moment later, the specter fell into step beside him, trembling with a rage that loosened feathers and sent them drifting down behind him. “You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Edmund, you can’t! You can’t let her do this to you!”

  “I’m sorry, Istvan, but you don’t get to choose who you fall in love with.”

  Distant guns faded to silence.

  “Now,” Edmund continued, “do you remember the way out?”

  A blue strip of light appeared before them, running over catwalks and around turrets and, ultimately, to the hatch where they’d arrived. It glowed through the metal, like part of the surface had turned to glass. Edmund glanced over his shoulder. Grace was leaning on the rail, staring out at the wastes. If she was responsible for the light, she didn’t take credit.

  Edmund closed his eyes and turned away. He’d never wanted to know anything less in his life. “Never mind.”

  * * *

  “We aren’t diplomats, Edmund. This entire matter is out of our jurisdiction. Out of it entirely unless the Twelfth Hour decides to either appoint us or go to war. I sincerely doubt the former, and the latter... well, it has been some years – we’ve the manpower again, or at least enough of it to make a good showing, and I wouldn’t mind a good fight between powers.” Istvan laughed bitterly, the sort of bursting expulsion between a laugh and a sob, the sort that should have hurt. “Oh, Edmund, it’s been so long. No one fights proper wars anymore. Of course it won’t happen.”

  Edmund wasn’t answering. He sat at the righted kitchen table, holding a fork and staring at a plate of pasta he’d made and not yet touched. His hat, cape, and goggles were off. The record player in the other room played the heathen music that he liked but the noise didn’t seem to be helping. No cat; Beldam had fled the kitchen long ago.

  A cold wind leaked in through the cardboard pasted over broken windows.

  Istvan paced back and forth across the tile. What a terrible day. He hadn’t had such a day since... well, since Lucy appeared, but today was far, far worse than that. Grace bloody Wu. She’d been nothing but trouble. Mocked him. Insulted him. And now... and now she...

  Oh, he hated her. It frightened him, how much he hated her. Beyond words.

  He fidgeted with the top buttons on his uniform, feeling shrapnel twist in his chest. “How many Bernault devices are sitting in that fortress, do you think? Dozens? Hundreds? And all for... for what, electricity?” He reached the end of the kitchen. Turned around. Started back the other way. “Edmund, that fortress of hers – the whole construction – that was fury, Edmund. No, that was if someone took fury and strained out all the flavor and then bottled it, alone, nothing else. Flat. Ah... oh, it’s difficult to explain, it was...”

  “Mechanical.”

  Istvan threw up a hand. “Yes. Mechanical. Run through a press. Just as unnatural as that Susurration creature, and certainly not the sort of feeling associated with peaceful purposes. Electricity.” He snorted. “Edmund, I don’t believe that for a second.”

  Again Edmund was silent. He pushed the pasta around his plate. He had thrown out what was left of Lucy’s pies, cleaned off the walls and ceiling, swept up the glass, dusted the whole house, and written a report to Magister Hahn before making dinner. Now the completed document lay beside him, three pages of excruciatingly well-formed lettering that could have been produced by a typewriter. There was nothing in it about Grace Wu.

  “She hasn’t come back for you,” Istvan told him for the fifth or sixth time that evening. “She wants those weapons, Edmund, and I would bet a month’s wages if I were paid that she wants to vanish those poor people outside the walls. Any means necessary to control the beast, hm? Living with that sort of horror for that long can do that to a person, Edmund, believe me. I’ve seen it.”

  “I need to talk to her again,” said Edmund.

  “No, you don’t. It’s over, and once you turn in that report, it’s out of our hands.” Istvan pulled out his chair and dropped into it. “I don’t understand why you can’t accept that.”

  Edmund set his fork down. “Think about how insular Barrio Libertad is, Istvan. Don’t you think there’s a fair chance she had to disappear because she was given no other choice? Couldn’t leave? Couldn’t be permitted to talk to a wizard? This could be the first time she’s been able to do what she always wanted, and I can’t take any chances that it isn’t.”

  Istvan sighed. “Edmund–”

  “You were married! You can’t sit there and say you don’t understand what I’m dealing with here!”

  Istvan turned his ring around his finger. Poor Franceska. A banker’s daughter, over a decade his junior. He had told her family that he waited so long because he wanted to become well-established before proposing to anyone. That while there was a palace carrying his name in Vienna, he hailed from a distant bastard offshoot with no titles: what he had built was his alone.

  Her family accepted. They both had hoped he’d done it for love.

  He left everything to her when he bought that ticket to South Africa. When he returned from the Ceylon prisoner-of-war camp, years later, she hadn’t recognized him.

  She’d found someone else. She’d deserved better.

  “It wasn’t the same,” he said.

  Edmund set both elbows on the table. “What do you mean it wasn’t the same? Look, I know you don’t like Grace, but I do, all right? Can’t you believe for one second that she might be someone worth fighting for?”

  “She doesn’t want to be fought for, Edmund.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  Long-denied betrayal swirled over and after the old regrets. The wizard wanted her; knew he shouldn’t; knew it was a bad idea to pursue her, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to admit it, couldn’t concede, couldn’t surrender. Even drowning, all those years ago, he hadn’t given in. Oh, he was so stubborn.

  Istvan sighed. “I can, and I do. Would I lie to you about something like this?”

  “About Grace?” Edmund picked up his fork again. “Yes, I think you would.”

  “Edmund, after what she did to you–”

  “Just drop it, all right? That isn’t your business, I don’t want to think about it, and I’m trying to eat.”

  Istvan eyed his plate. “You haven’t been eating for the past half-hour.”

  He stabbed a noodle. “I can’t eat while you’re talking.”

  “Then what would you have me do?”

  “Stop talking.” He bayoneted another several noodles and ate them, chewing like a machine himself. Not looking at Istvan. Not annoyed so much as tired, afraid of what might happen, afraid that he might seem afraid. Almost the usual, if it weren’t for Grace Wu. The hurt was rough and bitter, dark with the subdued richness of repetition, salted chocolate and smoke. Denial cupped and distorted it like glass. Ever the stoic.

  Istvan held up his hands. He rose, pushed the chair back in, and retreated to the sitting room. Beldam the cat sped away from him with a hiss. Trumpets squealed from the record player. That bloody stupid horseshoe hung above the front door, tilted sideways so the luck wouldn’t run out or some nonsense. The bookshelves were full – it was Edmund’s house, after all, the lair of a librarian – but turning pages wasn’t motion enough, and Istvan had already read everything in English and German, among other things struggling through every volume of Sherlock Holmes. The rest was all French, Chinese, Sanskrit, Russian, Arabic, Latin.

  He hated Latin. He’d always hated Latin.

  He circled the coffee table, tried sitting on one of the couches, and then circled the table again. Clinking from the kitchen meant Edmund was indeed eating, which was good. The man didn’t always eat enough. Drinking was another matter.

  Istvan sighed. Oh, this mess was only going to make it worse.

  He went back to the kitchen. “Edmund, if I were to find a different
investigation, would you–”

  The wizard dropped his fork on his plate. “I’m done.”

  “No, you’re not. You’ve barely touched–”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Istvan trailed him as he stood and scraped his food into a bowl. “Edmund, Miss Wu isn’t even the question here!” He pointed at the report, sitting on the table. “That is! That whole business with Barrio Libertad, the Bernault devices, and that bloody monster that set Lucy on you. There is a terrible force out there hunting you and it knows where you live – that is what you ought to concern yourself about. Not chasing after a hateful woman who loved you so little she might as well have left you for dead.”

  Edmund put the bowl in the refrigerator. “I said I’m done talking about this.”

  “Once you give that report to Magister Hahn, it’s out of your hands. Even if you are assigned to the fortress, you’re always needed elsewhere and you have no obligation to Miss Wu. Don’t you forget that.”

  “I’ll leave that decision up to Mercedes.”

  “You can refuse!”

  Edmund stalked to the door, snatching up cape and hat. “I’m going out.”

  Istvan grasped his arm so he couldn’t vanish. “What? Now?”

  “Better than sitting here wasting time. The rest of the world doesn't take a break just because I haven’t finished dinner.”

  “You aren’t planning to go out there alone, are you? With the Susurration lurking about?”

  Edmund pulled on his goggles. “That depends on whether you’re going to keep up a subject you ought to drop.”

  Istvan stared at him.

  Then he grabbed at a belt and bandolier that hadn’t been there before, dangling from one of the hooks. Habit, hanging them up in the house. It made little practical sense and he knew it.

  He’d half-expected to be denied, to be pushed away. To be told that he couldn’t come and that he’d been replaced. Instead... oh, Edmund was doing it again, knowing or not. That thing he did. He was the Hour Thief, immortal if not invincible, and once his mind was made, he wouldn’t be stopped. Not by anyone. He was the most delicate, most fragile, most inevitable juggernaut Istvan had ever met. The Man in Black made flesh.

  He’d been the real thing, once. At the loosening of Istvan’s chains.

  The bandolier was a relic from the Boer War, an affectation and a reminder of the few battles Istvan had fought in life. He buckled it over his shoulder and donned his field cap as Edmund retrieved his watch, trying not to feel so stupidly grateful. “I can’t let you take all the credit, you know.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “That’s it,” said Edmund, “That’s the flat. Six complaints about nightly disturbances, all centered here – fire, chanting, and robed figures. It’s been on my list for a while now. I’m surprised no one’s had a look yet.”

  Istvan watched him adjust his goggles. Water streaked the lenses, scratched from dozens of close calls. It was freezing cold and pouring rain and yet Edmund didn’t seem to mind. Didn’t even seem to notice. His cape pooled in dirty puddles as he kneeled, and while it was made of a heavy sort of material, Istvan knew it wasn’t waterproof. “I doubt anyone had the time.”

  “It’s lucky someone does, then.”

  They were on the roof opposite the flat in question, peering down at a window full of wilted plants in flower boxes. It was one of the more dangerous districts: Fourth and Black, a warren of dilapidated tenements controlled by an ever-shifting pack of gangs and lit by odd drifting filaments of pale cyan, wrapped around poles and power lines and trailing off luminously into the night. Behind the window pane flickered tiny fires, like candles... and wound all through the surrounding miasma of disgruntled despair was a thin, trembling thread of sugar-sweet fear.

  “Edmund, I think they’ve found themselves a captive.”

  “Ah. That would be the virgin sacrifice.”

  Istvan rolled his eyes. “Oh, of course. Nothing like kidnapping a hapless girl on a night with pouring rain and… Edmund?”

  Beside him lay only the fading golden glow of a teleport. He cursed. This was the third time.

  He unfurled bony wings, preparing to leap from the roof –

  – and then Edmund dropped out of thin air, mid-somersault and trailing fading embers, righting himself with a graceful pirouette that kept the ragged boy with him from falling off the edge. He straightened his hat. “Are you all right?”

  The boy nodded. His eyes were like dinner plates.

  “Good. If anything else comes after you tonight, go ahead and take a moment to get out of the way.”

  He vanished. A pair of figures ran past the window and then hurtled backwards in the opposite direction. What had once been a single thread of terror became six or seven.

  Istvan exchanged an exasperated glance with the boy, who shrieked and bolted behind the boxy metal shelter of a roof fan.

  “Stay there, then,” he grumbled. Pain sparked in his awareness, none of it Edmund’s. The bastard. Istvan dove off the roof, barreling through the closed window on folded wing. The sorry room beyond held a couch, a table, and a bewildering maze of colored chalk lines, scuffed out in places and centered around clusters of candles, feathers, bells, bones, and other offerings. Six figures in costume robes lay sprawled on the floor. The wallpaper smoldered. “Edmund…”

  A tattooed young man, hood askew, ran through him and into a right hook.

  Istvan spun around. “Edmund!”

  The wizard caught and lowered his last victim to the ground, tracing a sign over his chest. “What?”

  “Would you stop it?”

  “I just did.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you–”

  Something dark, leathery, and with a number of wings he couldn’t quite count sprang out of nowhere, blazing like coal aflame. Istvan didn’t so much draw his knife as lunge with the blade already in his–

  A crack. It wasn’t one sound. It was at least five in quick succession, blows delivered so quickly Istvan could only make out the cumulative effect. The creature yelped. Staggered sideways. Lashed out with a tongue, or perhaps a tail. Missed what wasn’t there. Edmund darted from behind it, scuffing out the chalk lines. Had already scuffed them out.

  A shriek. The creature shattered like ice.

  Istvan shouted something wordless. Not fair. Not fair at all.

  Edmund kicked a piece aside, woefully massaging his knuckles. “Now I’ve stopped it.”

  “Edmund!”

  “I’m sorry, they were more finished than I thought. Did you leave the kid on the roof?”

  “I–”

  “You left the kid on the roof.”

  For probably the hundredth time that evening, he vanished.

  Istvan slammed his knife back in its sheath. Oh, for–

  “Edmund,” he snarled, alighting beside him in the rain, “If you expect me to–”

  The boy opened his mouth to yell. Edmund dashed forward. Both vanished in a gold-rimmed blur.

  Istvan threw his field cap down. No splash. Bloody hell. He picked it up again and sat against the fan, legs drawn up and wings draped around him like a ghastly curtain. Couldn’t keep up. Istvan was the Great War, the very embodiment of violent conflict, but try as he might he couldn’t keep up. Edmund was doing this on purpose. How better could he put the lie to the romantic notion of fighting side-by-side than ending battles before Istvan could draw steel? Before he could finish a bloody sentence?

  Edmund had always gone where Istvan couldn’t follow – given time, taken time, spent time where Istvan had none – but it had never felt quite so much like he was running away from him. Away from the one who’d stood by him. Away from the only friend that would never leave him. Monster that he was.

  Istvan slapped at a puddle and this time it splashed, clouded red.

  Bloody American children, anyhow. The country wasn’t old enough for ghosts. Girls and boys in Europe had come right up to him, tried to touch him, asked which wa
r he’d died in. But here? Oh, no. Not enough battles. Not enough respect.

  Edmund reappeared a short while later. “That could have gone better.”

  “Could it have? I wasn’t aware. How do you think it could have gone better?”

  Edmund brushed rainwater from his shoulders. “Don’t be like that.”

  “Like what? Utterly useless?” Istvan threw his hands in the air. “That’s three times, now, Edmund. Three bloody times!”

  “Would you rather people get hurt?”

  “I…” He did. He always did. As a particular someone kept reminding him, kept goading him. He hadn’t killed anyone since the Wizard War! Hadn’t fought in a real, conventional war since the Gulf! Soldiers, only soldiers, only ever soldiers...

  He took off his glasses. “Damn you, Edmund.”

  Edmund shrugged, a font of barely-concealed exasperation. “I never said you had to come. I can take care of myself.”

  “Like you did with Lucy?”

  The wizard clenched his fists. “Istvan, we are not talking about this again.”

  Istvan scrambled to his feet, jamming his glasses back on. “You don’t want me here at all, do you? You would rather I left and you played the hero alone, bait for that bloody monster, so you would have an excuse to go back to that bloody fortress and see that bloody woman again!”

  “The only excuse I need is a lack of information, and whose fault is that?”

  “She left you, Edmund! She left you years ago! She lied to you, she manipulated you, and she only came back because she wanted something from you, not because–”

  “We’re lucky she showed up when she did!”

  He was angry now. Oh, it was so difficult to make Edmund angry, but now he struggled to keep it from rolling off him in waves of spice and citrus. Istvan tapped the hilt of his knife on the man’s breastbone. “That’s what she wants you to think,” he leered.

  Edmund slapped the knife away. “Don’t touch me.”

  Real anger. Tart, full-bodied. Seasoned with denial and self-loathing; oh, it was so much better than that horror at the fortress. All the horrors of the day. Cold fury. It was best cold.