by Paige Orwin
Peace.
The Susurration.
Mercedes jabbed an elbow into his hip. “Mr Templeton, are you looking to be re-elected?”
“No,” he said, glancing back at where Grace had gone. Istvan was rushing toward them, reaching, bony jaw wide open. “No, I’m not.”
He snapped his pocket watch as the observatory crumpled between iron teeth.
* * *
Istvan wasn’t fast enough.
Time for everyone but him. Not possible, granting it to the dead man. That would be resurrection. That was well beyond Edmund’s powers. No, instead he would give it to Grace – and the rest – and they would flash off, all at once, abandoning Istvan to the monster that burst from below.
He was what he was, after all.
It didn’t matter.
The catwalk ripped through him. More machinery followed, cold steel and colder glass, a vortex of rough and jagged and rattling, stone breaking, waterfalls crashing, the tumbling-down of bridges and towers, noise so loud it was solid and solidity that drowned.
He tore at it. Beat forward. Up or down, he didn’t know.
Dust. Part of the telescope whirled past him. Rubble sheeted through his wings, torn from the observatory and from the rock, a tornado screaming through a vast rotten ribcage. Glimpses of the mountains below and beyond spun through the gaps.
He dove. Out. Up. Cracked sheets of concrete and glassy scales sped past, elevator cables and guy wires dangling from exposed vertebrae. Telephone poles fringed a twisted maw of scythes and crushing mandibles. Emerald lightning boiled in a cavernous eye socket.
It ignored him. He doubted it noticed him.
The beast heaved itself halfway out of the mountain, rock running like water. It didn’t move any further. It crouched there, its storms scouring away the peak, and complained to itself, a moaning millstone squall that echoed cliff to cliff and brought down landslides. It looked as dead as he was. A skeleton. A relic, falling to pieces. Even its lightning flickered. A crest of broken towers lined its hunched back, trailing smoke from three immense wounds blown through them end-to-end.
Nothing like the monsters Istvan remembered from the Wizard War.
Nothing left of the observatory.
He banked lower, searching for the others. They had all gone. A baroque Triskelion tank slid down the mountainside, empty.
The rents in the great beast’s rusting sides blazed blue-white. It screamed.
* * *
“And you left me there!”
“You’re fine!”
“That is entirely beside the point and you know it!”
“What was I supposed to do, come back and try to punch it to death?”
“No!”
Edmund knocked his head back against a scraggly tree growing out of the mountainside, his irritation a thin layer of spice over a richer turmoil. “Then what would you have suggested?”
Istvan snarled to himself. How was he supposed to know? How was he supposed to know anything anymore?
He kicked at the trail. A pebble spun down into the new valley below. Heaped towers lay there, the serpentine curve of enormous ribs, the splayed claws of at least five stout limbs half-buried in landslides. Whatever force it was that animated the beast had sputtered out, leaving it silent, blackened, and still burning. He didn’t know how many of the Bernault devices had detonated inside it, but he didn’t want to delve through it again to check. Even Shokat Anoushak’s sorcery had limits.
The Susurration had sent it. The Susurration had tried to kill everyone at the conference and destroyed any chance of using the devices to buy time – all after Istvan had tried to defend it! After Istvan had fought to let it talk! After Istvan had... had hoped, that, somehow...
Oh, he didn’t know what he’d hoped. He didn’t want to know.
He picked up another pebble and threw it.
“There’s nothing we can do, anyway,” Edmund muttered.
“The Magister–”
“Istvan, it doesn’t matter. The ritual, Mercedes, the people out there, whatever the Susurration has planned – none of it matters. Diego still has that weapon and he’s going to use it. All we’ve done is move up the timetable. Two days, Istvan. That’s it. It doesn’t matter what we or Grace or anyone else says. The Bernault devices were the only thing we could offer. The only thing. It’s over. We’re done. We tried.”
He hitched his bad arm around so he could cross it with the other, leaning back against the tree and staring darkly at the next peak over. “You know that old saying about living long enough to become a villain.”
He was giving up. Overwhelmed. Paralyzed. Plunged into that deep, yawning pit of despair and grief, resigned to drowning. If anyone did something wrong, it would be his fault. If a decision couldn’t be reached, best not to make one at all. Grace was alive, and she had left him – him and the conference both – and she had taken all of his confidence with her. Oh, he was so foolish.
Istvan kicked at the dust. “We can’t sit here.”
“I know we can’t sit here.”
“Have you no ideas at all?”
“Istvan, no one wants to cooperate. Mercedes stonewalled me when I got her back and no one else will want to talk to us again. I don’t know what we can do if no one wants to cooperate.”
“That’s because they don’t understand! They don’t understand what they’re doing! Edmund, I’ve seen it. I am it! If we do nothing, and they do nothing, it’s precisely the same as agreeing with the present course of action. The talking stops and all the rest rushes into action with banners and parades and before you know it you’re invading Italy and it’s awful and no one has any idea how it happened or how to stop it or what the fighting is for, and it’s all inertia from there. Nothing is ever the same afterwards. And then no one learns and it happens again. Over and over.”
He blinked at his hands. His dead, bloodied hands. “All these years, Edmund, and I’ve never done anything to... Not once have I... We can’t let that happen here, Edmund, we can’t. It isn’t right. It isn’t right at all. I might be this… this horrible thing, but... but I – Edmund, I can’t…” He ripped off his glasses with a curse, turning away to wipe viciously at his eyes. Soft, he was, after two bloody days with the Susurration, overwrought and womanish and weak. “Oh, I hate this.”
“You’ve seen me worse.”
“Yes, but you’re…”
Shellshocked? A proper man at heart? Irresistible when in pain; handsome, tragic, and brave?
Istvan hooked his glasses on his bandolier and rubbed at his face. Flickering again. Not right, indeed. “I’m sorry.”
Edmund shook his head. “Don’t apologize.”
“I... I simply want to find some other way, Edmund. For once. Something that isn’t a massacre.” He leaned back against the mountainside, suddenly wrung-out, weary as the wizard beside him. He turned his ring around his finger, thinking of the tiger locked in its cage.
Edmund was silent.
Another landslide gave way, crashing and bonging down the fallen rocks. Metal glinted within it. Part of the observatory, Istvan thought. Would it still report its view of the heavens, even now?
“Maybe we should talk to Mercedes,” Edmund said.
“You said she didn’t want to explain herself.”
“At this point it seems there’s not a whole lot of room for want, Istvan. If the Susurration was telling the truth – and there’s no reason to believe that it wasn’t, given what I’ve seen – she might be our best bet.”
Istvan blinked at him. “You don’t mean to...”
Edmund stood, turmoil yet churning but crushed beneath purpose. A blur: hat on, jacket straightened, cape cleared of bark and dust, snapping in the breeze. The Hour Thief. The impossible soldier. The Man in Black. He was bigger than he was, and Istvan still couldn’t understand how he did it.
The man who had been Magister swung his pocket watch around his hand, caught it, and
sighed. “Like I said. Not a whole lot of room for want.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The ritual circle lay drawn where Edmund last remembered it, still intact. The offering remained in their bowls, old blood congealing beneath Chinese lanterns. Only Mercedes’ phone was missing... and Mercedes herself.
“You can teleport into the Magister’s office?” demanded Istvan.
Edmund picked his way across the chalk, making sure not to scuff any of it. The window was open, for the first time since he recalled, and he had a sinking feeling he knew where Mercedes had gone. There had always been something odd about that window. “Unfortunately.”
“But–”
“I took the wards down for convenience’s sake and never got around to putting them back up. I’ll talk to Mercedes about it first thing after this is over, I swear.” He reached the seat below, set a knee on the cushions, and leaned forward to push the window open. It swung away on hinges, twin panels of glass reinforced by weathered wood and strips of iron. The waves roared. Salt spray stung his lips. Open ocean, as far as he could see.
Istvan skimmed over the ritual circle, alighting beside him. “You don’t really think she went out there, do you?”
Edmund tugged at the curtain rod. Solid. He held tight to it with his good arm and swung through the window like it was a shipboard hatch.
His feet struck wood. He staggered. The drop had been much shorter than he’d anticipated, and the position of the window seemed to have reversed itself: the waves were, once more, outside, though the inside he now occupied was vastly different. Before him stretched a carved wooden railing, curving back around to both left and right before leading down a spiral stairway. Above him, slats radiated outward from a conical roof. A tremendous heat burned at his back: heat, and a brilliance that nearly blinded him when he turned to look.
A lighthouse.
The window sat incongruously between two panes of glass, looking out over the same ocean as all the rest. He peered over the railing. Whitecaps broke on barnacle-razored rocks below.
Istvan burst backwards from the window, pinwheeling, like he’d tried to dive through and it had hurled him in reverse into elsewhere. His spine struck the lighthouse lamp; he staggered away from it with a curse. “Edmund, what is this?”
The stairs creaked.
“Do tell,” said Mercedes.
Edmund whirled around, automatically pulling off his hat. Istvan snapped to attention. Mercedes stood at the top of the stairs, holding a chipped mug and clad in a blue fluffy bathrobe. Her hair was wet, down, and lacking its customary pens. Her pockmarked face – and her eyes – were sharp as ever.
Whatever Edmund had been planning to say flew out of his head. Did she live here? She’d gone home, after that conference, and taken a bath?
Could he blame her?
I’m sorry, we’ll come back at a better time. We didn’t mean to bother you. I’ll get right to fixing those wards – we shouldn’t be in here at all, I know. Sorry. Forget we were ever here. You’re the Magister, not me.
“I imagine you’re here about the Susurration,” she said.
Edmund took a deep breath. “That’s right.”
“I didn’t know you could teleport into my office, Mr Templeton.”
“It’s a loophole from my tenure. I’ll show you how to put the wards back after this is over, I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” She started back down the stairs. “Come on, then.”
Edmund realized that Istvan had remained ramrod-rigid throughout the exchange, staring straight ahead with his field cap clasped in one hand and the other clutching his own wrist. All normal but for that last detail. He frowned. “Mercedes?”
“I don’t like the idea of taking chances with the ones who will be telling stories about me after I’m gone. Besides,” she called as she vanished from sight, “I took a shower. I always think better after a shower.”
Edmund looked to Istvan.
“So long as I’m not ordered about again,” the specter muttered.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
They followed her down the staircase, a tunnel of brick and iron that spiraled around and around at dizzyingly steep angles, creaking. Edmund watched his step. Istvan followed closely behind.
Mercedes strode ahead, cup in one hand and the other on the rail. Her feet were bare. “I didn’t create the Susurration,” she said. “It was already there, waiting to be given form and purpose, and a way into the world. I gave it that. I brought it here, and I tasked it to kill Shokat Anoushak and her armies. Bring peace. End suffering. Save us all. You can see the problem already, I’m sure.”
Edmund thought of perfect clouds. How wonderful had Lucy been, while it lasted? Before he realized what she was doing, what she was? No more fears, no more abyss lurking behind every too-close wall, every person who grew too familiar, every drop of water in the dark. He could talk to her about anything. Laugh. Feel normal again.
Wasn’t that almost worth living in a realm of birds and sunlight and boys on bicycles while his body toiled itself to rags?
“It wants to finish what you brought it here to do,” he said, more to himself than anyone.
Peace, over the whole world, a final end to suffering. An indescribable toll lurking just beyond the illusion. But if no one knew, what would it matter?
Jailer, betrayer, and beloved…
“Bingo,” she said.
“Mercedes, it’s Conceptual. It’s like Istvan. You gave it a goal like that and then let it loose, and hoped it would stop at Shokat Anoushak?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
He ran a hand across his eyes. “It always does.”
She chuckled darkly. “They say you’re not a real wizard until you regret it.”
“It didn’t want to kill her,” murmured Istvan.
She glanced back at him. “I know.”
Edmund watched his feet. How many circles had they descended now? Two? Three? At this point he wouldn’t be surprised if there were seven… or nine.
“Mercedes,” he began, “you didn’t seem surprised by anything I said about Barrio Libertad. I can see now why you took credit for the blast, but as far as I can tell you’ve left everything else up to the fortress since it appeared and, conveniently, you’ve never been mentioned by anyone there – even though the Susurration has to know who summoned it.”
A blue-robed shrug. “Your point, Mr Templeton?”
“Diego.”
“What of him?”
“He must have come from somewhere.”
“I’m sure he must have.”
He spent a moment to step in front of her. “Mercedes, I’ve been in this business for a hell of a long time and I’d really like to know if we’re being somehow double- or triple-crossed here. How long have you known about Diego?”
She looked down at her cup, which was mostly empty. She sighed. “After my election, Mr Templeton, I received a single text message from Barrio Libertad, with an aerial photo of the Providence crater attached. It said – and I quote – ‘Keep Out.’”
“That’s all?”
“This was before we restored power,” she said. “Before I had a working phone. It turned on, flashed the message, and then went dead again. I figured we had an agreement and blacklisted the fortress the next morning.”
“What about the smilers?”
She waved a hand. “What would I have done about the smilers? Made an announcement? Started a witch-hunt? Caused a panic?”
He exchanged glances with Istvan. “So you let people disappear.”
“Smilers don’t become tyrants,” she said. “Whatever danger it poses unchecked, the Susurration is still a creature of peace and order, Mr Templeton. Don’t forget that.”
She stepped past him and started back down the stairs. “I almost worry about what might happen to Big East without it.”
Edmund rubbed at his forehead. Grace had said something about that. That things
were too stable. That people were adapting too easily. That it shouldn’t be like that after something like the Wizard War, and that he should have noticed that something was wrong.
He’d hoped things were just getting better.
“I didn’t recognize that ritual circle in your office,” he said.
Mercedes kept descending, step by step. “Two powers can’t occupy the same metaphysical space,” she replied. “When I realized that Doctor Czernin can fight it – deal with it on its own level, resist its temptations by the simple virtue of being something it is not – I thought I might replicate the effect. Send others into the Conceptual realm to engage with it and then, once it was weakened, re-bind it properly.” She finished off the last of her drink. “You’ve done that yourself, as I recall. I was hoping to do the same on a larger scale.”
Edmund almost fell down the stairs. It had taken a lot of archival searching to come up with the means to do that. He was no binder or summoner or portal-walker. It was a wonder it had worked at all, and even then he hadn’t done it alone. Most people back then had liked the idea of getting Istvan out of the besieged Twelfth Hour – and into battles, to turn the tide where living defenders could barely hold their own – and the ritual itself had required five wizards to complete. Five, to send one.
Mercedes, alone, had tried to do the same? Bigger?
He shook his head, steadying himself. “You know, you could have asked for help.”
She held up her bandaged hand with its missing ring finger. “I did.”
Edmund realized Istvan was no longer behind him. The specter had paused where he was, one hand clenched tightly on the rail, not looking at either of them. Edmund started back up towards him. “Istvan?”
Istvan shook his head, blinking. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”