by Sara Hanover
We arrived at the same time as a gaggle of guys just out of high school for the day. They looked fine if terribly young, but my mind’s eye seemed full of Carter Phillips, so I barely noticed the three as they came in just after us and lounged about at the counter and drink machine. One of them puffed like a steam engine, great wet clouds billowing up. He didn’t smell like fruit, but something a little different that I didn’t like any better. Butterscotch and vanilla, I think. I prefer to eat my candy, not smoke it. They made a little noise and jostled among themselves, trying to get my attention, but I ignored them as Steptoe and Morty inquired about cigar box storage and other business. He had a tiny corner of boxes, but nothing as elaborate as the first shop we’d found. I don’t think he cared that much, but he stopped talking to us twice to yell at the boys before finishing with, “Get out of here, already, if you’re not going to buy something!”
“We already bought something!” A freckled lad with tattoo sleeves on both arms sneered at him, and the other two laughed at him and passed the vape holder around. An incredibly overscented and nauseating mist filled the shop. They howled at their wit and wrote words that were most definitely not PG rated in big looping letters with the vape mist.
The shop keep muttered to himself, and I wondered how much longer we should stall when the doors flew open in sound and fury, as the saying goes, and the harpies swooped in. The three bystanders let out yelps and fled as quickly as their feet could carry them. I mentioned sound and fury, but there would be no way I could forget their smell either. Wet chicken and dog, maybe? They stalled in midair, surprised as they saw us. I grabbed Morty by the arm. “Quick, before they get it!”
Thick as his body was, Morty’s mind wasn’t, and he nodded, powering himself toward the back of the shop, as determined as if the famed Holy Grail stood in the corner storage. The shop proprietor hit the floor behind his counter and rolled as far under it as he could get. Steptoe put his back to the front corner wall after pulling me into position with him, saying quietly, “Their wingspan keeps them from getting too close unless they land.” Then, with a quirk of a smile, he added, “And you’ve a pocketful of help when they do put boots on the ground, as it were.”
I’d forgotten about my flash-bangs and swore at my stupid self, although they wouldn’t have helped when they picked up Brian, as the attackers had stayed mainly in the air for that one. I might have helped in the muddle when one or two touched ground, but they’d already been pulled out of the fray by then—and I saw no need to be hurting anyone more than I had to, especially if they might be related to Morty’s wife. I hadn’t met her either, but making enemies for the sake of it seemed like overkill. I still held no clear idea who was on whose side, and until the dust cleared, it seemed wise to not do any permanent damage. Neither Morty nor Steptoe seemed to hold the same compunction, but maybe they had a better idea of how things stood in their world of weirdness.
Morty found his corner and swung around to bat at two of the winged warriors diving down at him, his shovellike hands at the end of his thick arms coming within a feather of doing serious hurt. “Break your bargain with me, will you!” he crowed at them.
Their screeches seemed to be a main part of their weaponry, as the sound brought blood dribbling out of my ears again while my eyes felt as if they were playing ping-pong in my forehead. I dropped to one knee, sick with it, while Morty roared his defiance at his attackers. Steptoe put himself over me in protection while he grabbed, of all things, a humongous backscratcher from a sales dump display at the counter, the thing half as long as I stood, carved with an apt and fanged cobra head. He wielded it like a cricket bat, teeing off on anyone wheeling close to us, his teeth bared in a fearsome grin.
“’Ere’s another stroke for you, love,” he cried and swung up, underhand, sending his target flying backward out of the shop’s still-open doors.
All the battle came to a halt when two harpies walked in, dragging Brian between them. “Desist!” called a third, tall one who followed at their heels, her stern face topped with steely gray hair, black and white magpie wings, and a ton of attitude. She folded her wings at her back as she came in, and I noted that if she’d flown in, they alone would have taken up half the store. Accordingly, they crowned the back of her head and the tips trailed behind her like a royal robe. I wondered if Morty’s Goldie were half as impressive as this lady. I checked out Brian, who looked limp and barely aware, his cane stuck haphazardly through his belt and the gazing stone dimmed like obsidian rather than its crystal-clear silvery self. Not good.
“Move away, Mortimer Broadstone, or you will rue this day for more than one reason.”
His lip curled. “Oathbreaker.”
She shrugged. “Deals are not always possible to be carried out. Other personages hold an interest in your wife.”
“Then you should have known better than to try to parley with her life!”
The woman stopped only a pace or two in front of him, and he half-lowered his head, brow furrowing, a bull readying to charge. “While I could not stop her from being appropriated,” she said to him, “I did not approve, and I am approachable to working with you to free her from this new imprisonment. She is, after all, my sister as well as your wife.”
“You lie. There are few who would dare to steal a prize from a harpy once taken.”
“True. And equally true the one you might suspect who has done so.”
“No.” Morty’s voice broke on a keening note.
“As I said, I would be amenable to assisting in a rescue from that one. If you could bring yourself to trust me again.”
Steptoe shouted, “Quit fillin’ his ears with poison! Do what you’ve come to do, take your bounty, drop Brian in our laps, and leave!”
Steel-hair looked over her shoulder at us, her expression marked with contempt. “Not so easily done as that. The boy stays with us. He has more secrets to spill.”
Brian’s head hung, with his chin touching his chest, but he managed to take a hoarse breath and look up. “Not meant for you, never, not my wizardry!”
She laughed at his thready protest. “Or you either, it seems, boy.”
He slouched in their hold on either side of him, his slack weight keeping them on the floor with him. Steptoe moved away from me quickly, both distracting his captors and freeing my field. He brandished his cobra-headed scratching stick like a mighty baton.
I filled my hand with flash-bangs and tossed them, one at a time, strategically as I could place them at all the harpies. They exploded with sparks and smoke and an unholy loud noise, scattering everyone. Both Steptoe and Morty charged for Brian. Steptoe wrestled him free and Morty tackled them as they tried to snatch him back. With a shake of his mighty shoulders, he took down two of the women with one swipe and swung about, looking for his main adversary. Feathers flew as did banshee-shrill curses. I swear he gave a coughing growl, like some immense Bengal tiger, and set himself for another charge. He never saw the steel-haired woman pull her sword and plunge it into his back. It laid him low.
Steptoe and I had Brian bundled behind us when it happened. Morty let out a cry and rolled about, his hands digging at the blade buried between his shoulder blades as he did even as she swooped down on him. He pulled it out and stood up with a forward lunge before she even knew he moved on her, burying the sword into her stomach, just below her leather corset, a bared and vulnerable flank before her leather chaps began. They both went to their knees in a bellow of pain, and her hands went to his throat, determined to take him with her to death.
“Come on, come on!” Steptoe urged. “Before they trumpet for reinforcements, like.” He hauled Brian’s limp body across my feet and out the door. I turned, and my eyes caught Morty’s for a flash of a moment as the two of them thrashed in mortal combat.
I’m not sure—I’ll never be sure—if he saw the tears that spilled from my own eyes and down my face, as I left him behi
nd.
Maybe he thought he deserved that. Maybe he intended for us to go on without him, redeeming himself for his betrayal. Or maybe that was just the way it happened.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I STOPPED AGAIN on the sidewalk. I couldn’t leave Morty behind, not if there was a single chance he could still be alive. The harpies burst out of the tobacco shop with squawks and curses of fury, four of them hauling the queenly one between them, and crimson rained down from her body as they took to the air with a struggle, bedraggled sisters following after. Steptoe jumped and shook his fist at them, mostly in bluff I think, just in case one or two decided to hang back for bit of revenge. They dipped and flew in ragged formation, barely clearing the streetlights. None turned back and he danced a jig step in victory. I dodged the crimson drops after hearing the sidewalk sizzle as blood hit it.
I heard no cries of surprise or fear; although New Yorkers have seen a lot, I felt they must have surely not seen what just flew over them and off into the sky. Brian groaned and shuddered in my hold, the cane slithering out of his belt and clattering to the ground. I darted after it, but it seemed in one piece, even the dark crystal, as I gathered it up. He couldn’t hold it, so I wrapped my hand more firmly in his shirt sleeve to keep a grip on him, curled my fingers tightly about the cane—gone light and nearly insubstantial again, unfortunately—and turned to say a final good-bye to Morty. Afraid to, but having to, I peered through the grimy window of the shop. The place looked as if tossed, but only mildly considering it had hosted a battle to the death. I searched without seeing him and then my gaze dropped to where Morty fell.
No body rested there. Instead, a massive heap of glittering stone, dust and ashes, gems and metal flakes. My jaw dropped. Steptoe saw where I looked and said, “Sorry, ducks, that’s what happens sometimes,” and he kicked the shop door open. Why, I could not understand.
A wind arose. Sharp and cold. Out of the nearly cloudless and bright warm sky, a stiff breeze swirled up and into the shop, spiraling round and round about the remains of the Iron Dwarf that bore no resemblance to the man I called friend. It filled, this metal and gem cyclone, it filled and swelled with all of his being. I’d had no chance to find out what he knew of my father, if anything. Nor would I see him grin when we brought his wife back to him. And I wouldn’t have him about to tell me about the nature of the stone, brick and mortar, rebar and steel of the buildings that surrounded us. Gone, all gone. It left a very big hole.
The dervish or miniature tornado or whatever you might call it paused as it poured through the doorway. I looked into it, its beauty and its harshness and, for the briefest of moments, I could see a transparent Morty looking back at me. He waited until I realized it, and then inclined his head in a nod.
“All is forgiven,” I whispered. “Every bit of it. You tried your best.”
Like a mirror of a rainbow, the substance gained color and reflected beauty back at me. And then, unexpectedly, three things dropped from the cloud. A black credit card, a driver’s license, and a brass token. I swept them up in my free hand and looked at Morty’s ghost in confusion. “I’m to use these?”
Another nod.
“Thank you. And . . . and go in peace.”
Morty smiled sadly before thinning away to nothingness as the winds began to churn again and then burst through the doorway, whirling away down the sidewalk heedless of pedestrians—I’d say it was heedless of all New York City—as it bore the atoms of his remains away.
The whirlwind gained air as it rose higher and higher, an indescribable cloud, glinting in the sun as it turned away from the city. I watched it disappear from view.
“Did you know that would happen?”
He nodded.
“Where—where is it going?”
“Home. Or, at least, where his family calls ‘home.’ Home to the mines and quarries thereabouts, and earth, and loved ones.”
“He had them, didn’t he? Loved ones.”
“Of course, ’e did! The Broadstones are a family o’ fame, and even without his Goldie, there is plenty of love waiting for ’im there.” He let the door swing closed slowly. “We’d best be off.”
“But—”
He waited.
“I don’t know where to go.”
“We did rescue the lad, after all. We still have a phoenix to deal with. And we need t’ get inside that study of his. See what’s left.” Something glinted deep inside Steptoe’s eyes. I didn’t want to think it was greed but it might well be.
I put the credit card and license in my front pocket but fingered the token. This hadn’t been Morty’s. I turned it about and about, thinking that it looked like a lucky piece my dad used to carry about all the time. He used to tell me, when I was little and we still talked and I adored him, that he had been about to board the bus for work when my mom came running for him and pulled him off the bus to tell him that they were expecting a baby. Unused, the token went back in his pocket and he kept it for a remembrance of a joyful time. I tapped it with my fingernail before putting it away, and the cane I still held took the rest of my attention. It felt as light as a kitten’s whisker, rattling with a familiar sound whenever I moved it, and it came to me slowly what it sounded like.
Not too many years ago, rain sticks had been a cute novelty item, hollow gourd tubes with seeds that showered back and forth inside from end to end, sounding like rain when moved or shaken. I wondered how long the cane could last if it had been hollowed like that, and what made the noise inside of it, shifting back and forth. I truly doubted it could ever shoot perdition lightning forth again, but I didn’t want to throw it away nor did I think Brian could. The bright crystal looked smoky and bleak. I shoved the cane partway into my backpack and leaned down to get my arm wrapped about Brian’s waist. Steptoe did the same and we both looked up as a car slid to a halt in the street, thinking it to be Sam.
Wrong. The police had caught up to us again.
Carter swung his long legs out of the car and leaned back in the window to say, “I’ve got this. I’ll be along later” before joining us.
I let out a long sigh of relief but Steptoe muttered, “He’ll haul our arses to the Society, see if ’e doesn’t.”
Brian gave a movement and a faint moan as if trying to straighten up. I squeezed him a little. “I won’t let him.”
Carter swept his cool gaze over us and into the store, where the proprietor had begun to crawl out on hands and knees from behind the counter. “Trouble?”
“Was. Isn’t now, and we’ve got Brian back.”
“But now you’re missing the big guy.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t help it, my breath caught in my throat at that one, and I turned away so he couldn’t see the tears brim in my eyes.
“Let me take care of this, whatever this is.” Carter stepped into the shop and flashed his badge at the man who didn’t want to get to his feet even when Carter put a hand down to him. He got up, finally, and they talked for a few moments and then Carter—I swear—did a Jedi wave of his hand and the proprietor stood stock still for a long moment. He didn’t move until Carter rejoined us. Carter squeezed me briefly. “I’m sorry about Mortimer.”
Feelings welled up that I tried to shove down. Even the one which gave me the sense that there was no one else in the world on this sidewalk but the two of us. I swallowed tightly.
“Did you know him? At all, I mean?”
“We’d met once or twice, though I doubt he remembered me.”
“If he met you, he remembered you. He had a very sharp mind but kept his thoughts to himself.”
“As a judge does. The Broadstone family is lessened by the loss. All of the Folks, really. I’m sorry this happened around you, too.” He squinted out at the traffic as a horn or two sounded. “There’s your driver. Get in before I have to ticket him for double-parking.”
“Seriously? This is the cit
y.”
“And that is an open car door.” He helped steer Brian into it, got into the front seat himself and left the crowded rear seat to the three of us.
Steptoe glared at the back of his neck for five blocks while Carter gave directions and then had Sam pull into a wide alley. Then, with the motor turned off, we all looked at each other.
“I’m supposed to take you in.”
“Under what jurisdiction?”
Carter shrugged at Steptoe. “Pick one, although I’d say the Society is by far the most interested party, and more likely to believe anything that you say.”
I folded my arms. “I ain’t talking.”
“Didn’t think you would, which is why we’re here.” Carter’s sharp gaze came to rest on Brian. “He’s the phoenix wizard once known as Dr. Brandard. He’s a renegade. Some have even gone far enough to say he’s been outlawed, which means he should be banned from all his powers, but that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem right now.”
“Outlawed?”
“Pshaw,” returned Steptoe. “By those standards, I shoulda been put in limbo long ago.”
“There’s still a chance of that.”
Steptoe drew back in his seat indignantly. “As if I’d ever stand in judgment in front of you lot.”
“Better us than the other side.”
The two traded a very long and hard look before Steptoe pursed his lips and waved a hand. “There’s them that would differ.”
“Just so you’re aware. I don’t like the way you’re leading my girl around.”
My ears burned. His girl! I didn’t know whether to be insulted or pleased. On the other hand, he seemed worried about me. Maybe even a bit protective. Score!
“Me leading? Me? I’ve been on her heels the whole way about. She’s the one ’eaded down the garden path!”