by G. D. Penman
Hiding in her mother’s cottage was a temporary solution, but the old witch was adept at keeping all of Sully’s other problems at bay by being such an overwhelming nuisance that Sully couldn’t focus on anything else. She had been awake for about four hours before she managed to sit up, and it was another hour before she could shoo her mother away long enough to get some clothes on. Everything that she had been wearing in the battle had been consigned to the fire, so she was in another of her mother’s scratchy hand-me-downs until she could mooch a uniform or some real clothes from the American Expeditionary Force. The moment that she stepped outside, everyone was going to see her. The demons were insufferable gossips so there was no chance that the whole world didn’t already know what she had done the night before, but she didn’t know if her medical condition had been widely publicized.
After her naval service and her arrival in New Amsterdam, Sully had seen a lot of beggars missing pieces. Sometimes it was an arm or a leg. Sometimes it was something inside their head that they’d left behind on the battlefield. She would look at them with feigned empathy and drop spare change to them while thinking to herself that it could never have happened to her because she was stronger than they were. She would never let something like that happen, she had her magic, she had her wits, and she was made of sterner stuff than the pathetic beggars with medals pinned on their filthy overcoats. She stared intently at her stump once she was dressed. It was all wrapped up in bandages, not to help it heal, but to keep the concoction that her mother had slathered on her while she slept from escaping. That was the logical reason, but Sully felt just as certain that the cloth was there to keep her wound out of sight, like it was something distasteful. When she went outside, nobody was going to see her, just the stump.
Sully didn’t mind being hated. She’d come to expect it early in her life. Ever since the first nun had screamed the word dyke in her face. There was a kind of power in being hated—it was almost flattering to know that she was so important to someone that shouldn’t have given a damn about her that they devoted so much energy and thought to loathing her. So hate was fine, but she didn’t know what she was going to do with pity. It was worrying her. She liked to think that she knew herself pretty well by this point in her life, that she understood the intricacies of her own mind, but the first time she saw pity she didn’t know if she was going to break down and cry or burn the face off whoever had dared to look at her that way.
She could just stay in the hut forever. Blackwood was conscious now. Still manacled and terrified looking, but mostly back in his original shape. He would never look at her with pity, just the bittersweet combination of awe and dread that had been pinned to his bruised face since Gormlaith had told him what had happened to his prized bounty hunters. Gormlaith herself would never look on Sully with pity. She wasn’t even sure the old hag was capable of it. If she wanted to then, Sully could just hide in here until the British wished the whole war away. She would get her hand back if the world was reset, or she would be blinked out of existence. Either way, she wouldn’t have to deal with the discomfort of the next few minutes.
She plucked another cigar out of the box on the mantle and lit it with a practiced flick of the wrist. They still stank to high heaven, but she was starting to get accustomed to the spicy undertones of the tarry tobacco. Shrouded in a cloud of blue smoke, she walked past her mother’s back and stepped out into camp with a scowl already prepared.
She didn’t make it far before a sullen silence descended over the gathered soldiers. A solid half of them were Magi, easily recognizable by their outdated clothes and the aura of power that hung around them. The actual soldiers of the American army were as ragtag a bunch of strangers as Sully had ever laid eyes on. Native Americans sat side by side with European rebels, passing around rolled-up cigarettes. Red-tanned Republicans laughed at the jokes of Indian volunteers. Tents had been raised across every dry patch of land, and walkways and rafts had been conjured in between them. The swamp still clung to twilight, but it was full of living people now, and it would never be able to go back to being a place of dread.
Ogden burst out of one of the tents and made a beeline for Sully, face pale beneath his bandana. He wrapped her in a bear hug that set every one of her injuries screaming and it was only pure stubbornness that stopped her from biting off his ear. Eventually he seemed to realize that she had gone stiff and let her go. “Apologies Sullivan, but tales of your tribulations precede you.”
“Gossipy bitches.” Sully muttered.
“The Hydra that you defeated is being harvested for resources as we speak, but I have heard tell that there were other fearsome foes?”
“Three of them. Bounty hunters for the British. They’re all dealt with. You just can’t find good help these days.”
His eyes flickered down to where Sully had her arm cradled against her chest. “Would you like me to take a look at that? Or one of the other Magi?”
Sully sighed. There wasn’t much pity there, not really. Underneath the bandana Ogden had some nasty scars of his own; maybe he understood how pity stung. “No, thank you. I had to cauterize it before I bled out and . . . I’m told there’s nothing to be done.”
He nodded gravely. “The finest magical healers in the world are at your disposal should you change your mind.”
“Get me up to speed. What happened while I was fighting monsters and getting kidnapped?”
Ogden glanced around at the nearest soldiers, then led her back toward the oversized tent he had first popped out of. Maps drifted all around the enclosed space, putting Sully’s little display with the globe earlier in the week to shame. Troop movements and supply lines were traced in bright colors over the topography, but the one that really caught Sully’s attention was the map of Ireland hanging over a fold-out table. She stared at it while Ogden spoke, memorizing garrisons and redcoat emplacements. “The Fae incursion is continuing at the rate we previously discussed, and we are becoming more adept at discovering the wooden decoys that they have left behind. In areas with high concentrations of loyalists to the Empire, the hunt has been seriously impeded by the lack of trust but it has been decided that the magnitude of the situation would be likely to overwhelm the public were it made known.”
“It has been decided. By Pratt.” Sully grumbled.
“Yes, but I am forced to agree with his assessment. When my people faced this foe, we didn’t even know their name. We shared every whisper and rumor, and the result was pure panic. I would rather not live to see the ensuing chaos on a larger scale.”
“If we spend all our time lying, how are we any better than the British?”
Ogden’s smirk made it to his eyes, crinkling their corners. “Because we are not trying to rewrite all of existence to obliterate people—who happened to have some very valid objections to our system of government—from existence in a mad power grab to conquer the world by allying ourselves with eldritch nightmare creatures from the furthest planes of existence?”
“Okay, they might have lost the moral high ground, but I still don’t like it. What’s next? Casting taboos on subjects we don’t like?” Sully flicked a finger over the map, expanding some parts and fading others into the background.
“Perhaps we can worry about saving ourselves from imminent annihilation, and we’ll concern ourselves with transparency after the fighting is done?”
“Yeah, you’re right. Soldiers don’t deserve to know what they’re dying for.”
“Sullivan, is there a reason that you are being even more argumentative than usual?”
Sully took a deep breath. “I saw the way that they were looking at me out there. I was worried that they were going to be . . . you know, with my hand . . . but what I saw out there is worse. They’re expecting me to save them, Ogden. They’re looking at me like I’m going to cast a spell and make it all go away.”
“Heavy is the head that bears the crown.” Ogden chuckle
d. “To be fair to them, there is precedent. Every insurmountable crisis that you have faced seems to have—”
“They’re going to die, Ogden. Not all of them. Not many of them, if I have my way. But I’m going to have to give the orders and send them off to die. That’s how wars work.”
Ogden was too polite to look contemptuous, so he merely looked pained. “Not to be too harsh with your delicate sensibilities, but isn’t that part of your job description?”
“I didn’t want this job. Pratt blackmailed me into it. You should know, you were in the room where it happened.”
“I do seem to recall some tension. And some head-butting.”
The fond memory of Pratt bleeding brought a little smile to Sully’s face. “I’ve been in an army before. I’m not officer material. I can’t make the choices you need to make, not for other people. I’ve tried but . . .”
“Sullivan, I rather suspect that your fear of harming your soldiers is why the Prime Minister entrusted this task to you. And why your men follow you so willingly. They know that you will not spend their lives without necessity. That you would put yourself between them and the enemy muskets if given the chance.”
Sully flicked the map with her finger and it zoomed back out to show the whole world, flattened out and crisscrossed with lines of longitude and latitude. London sat at the center of the map, the whole world revolving around it.
“We need to take the Archive. It all hinges on that. But without our demons I can’t see us getting past the city’s magical defenses. We are too vulnerable to artillery spells in the air, and street-to-street fighting in unfamiliar territory is like signing your own death warrant.”
Ogden cleared his throat. “On that subject . . .”
Sully glanced at him. Ogden spent every moment floating along on a cloud of his own self-importance, so to see him looking awkward was surprising, to say the least. After everything that had happened, Sully had almost forgotten. “Oh, Pratt finally asked you to kill me? Not surprising, really. You saw the soldiers out there, desperate for a hero. Pratt can’t have any heroes, especially ones that hate him. Not if he wants to hang onto control of the Americas. Besides, we’re about to head out onto the battlefield, easy for accidents to happen there. Have you decided what you want to do?”
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat and looked around the tent to avoid her eye. “When I first arrived back in this world I was a little lost, and more than willing to align myself with this man and all the friends around the world that he brought with him, but having spent some time in his company and seen the underhanded way that he conducts himself, I must admit that the prospect no longer seems quite so appealing. I know that you have no political aspirations, but I wonder if it might not help my own campaign to have the hero of the War of Independence’s endorsement. After the fighting is over, of course.”
“So what, if I endorse you, you won’t try to kill me?”
He flushed. “That wasn’t my—I mean—I have some honor—I—I have no intention of doing you any harm, I was merely—” He finally noticed Sully grinning. “Ah, you are making fun. I see.”
She held out her hand to him. “Nobody would be happier to see Pratt out on his ass.”
He shook it and Sully felt the magic coursing through him, just under his skin. So close that she could just reach out and take it. She pulled her hand away abruptly, then turned back to the map. “We need to secure our position and our supply line before we do anything else. That should give us some time to think on our two pressing problems.”
“The wish holding back our demonic allies and . . .”
“The Fae abducting all of our bloody civilians.”
“Ah, yes.”
After a couple of hours, Gormlaith came in with a pot of tea and a pair of clay cups. Sully and Ogden took them, mumbled thanks and then went back to poring over their plans. When she left the tent, she was grinning so broadly that it gave the poor soldier on guard the fright of his life.
When she returned later with bowls of stew, Ogden had collapsed onto a folding chair and maps blown up to show the terrain of each great city in Ireland were orbiting Sully. She was barking out instructions and Ogden was taking notes. Through a shimmering image of Limerick College, Sully caught a glimpse of her mother and stopped speaking so abruptly that Ogden startled to his feet. “Ah, thank you, kind woman. And my thanks once again for allowing us to make camp here on your property. It is most appreciated.”
Gormlaith rolled her eyes and handed Sully a stack of papers along with the bowl. “Just doing my part, Magus.”
After Sully was certain that the old woman was gone, she handed her bowl of stew off to Ogden and started rifling through the painstaking handwritten notes that she had just inherited. Resistance cells. Weapons caches. Embedded agents. Troop movements. Secret passages. Smugglers dens. She read through the names and the numbers with the strangest sense of déjà vu. This was the army that Gormlaith had always meant for her to lead. These were the people who had spent decades positioning themselves to drive the British out, without ever hearing the call to arms. Sully flicked an ember from her finger and incinerated the plans that she and Ogden had spent the afternoon preparing, then started barking out a new plan so rapidly that he dropped their dinner.
By evening Sully was hoarse and exhausted, but she still stopped by the quartermaster before turning in. She politely declined the offer of a hook for her left arm, but she let him take a quick measurement and then add a stitch to that sleeve to fold over the cuff and keep the damage hidden.
The uniform was unisex, which was to say, it was stiff men’s clothing that she was much happier to wear than her mother’s old dresses. The details of it screamed of Pratt’s personal involvement in the design. That man loved his tailor more than he loved hot meals and it reeked of his sense of drama. Sully probably would have preferred something more camouflaged than the rich navy blue with gold trim, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
She carried it with her to one of the Manhattanite healers, who dealt with the worst of the burns, bruises, contusions and cuts from the day before, leaving fresh scars all over her. There weren’t many people in the world who could boast gryphon and Fury claw marks, so she was vaguely proud of her new additions. The healer had undone the bandages around her wrist and confirmed Gormlaith’s assessment that regrowth would have been possible if she hadn’t sealed the wound. A freezing touch of healing magic finished the process of scarring, chased away the last of the pain, and left Sully with a nice smooth nub at the end of her arm where she used to have a hand. She tried very hard not to think about it and thanked the healer for a job well done.
There wasn’t much clean water in the middle of a swamp, but the rain barrel around the back of Gormlaith’s house was still half full so she used that to scrub herself as clean as possible. It had been easy when she was a child and even easier as a teenager when she was tall enough to reach inside without the assistance of the peat stack, but now the experience was slow and clumsy. The cold water numbed her fingers and made everything feel distant. The new scars didn’t feel real as she scrubbed the mud away. Sully had spent the first decade of adulthood in unisex barracks and the cramped confines of crew quarters on British dreadnoughts. Usually it didn’t bother her when men strolled past while she was getting dressed. Something about her reputation and the mess of scars tended to keep them from ogling, and it wasn’t like any of them were a threat to her. Yet this time she felt exposed as she fumbled with the stiff new buttons and buckles of her uniform. It was only once the new jacket slipped over her stump that she realized why. She saved her hair for last so that it would stay slicked back for longer before curling.
The overall look seemed to have the desired impact when she walked in on Blackwood, perched on a stool by the hearth. He didn’t see his hostage or a silly little girl with a head full of romantic notions. He was face to face
with the highest-ranking military officer in the American Alliance. He drew himself up to his full height and nodded gravely. Sully held his stare as she crossed the room and she was ever so slightly gratified to watch him flinch when she got within punching distance. With a jerk of her hand and a twist of low magic, Sully spun a second stool across the floor to stop in front of him and sat down with a grunt. “I want you to tell me how you are summoning the Fae into the Americas.”
“No.”
Sully blinked. “I’m sorry, did you misunderstand me? Did you think I was asking if you wanted a nice cup of tea?”
“I will not be intimidated by any thug in a uniform. I am a Lord of His Majesty’s privy council and I will not tolerate this treatment.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, are you feeling threatened?” Sully smirked.
“You beat me within an inch of my life—as you are well aware—and while I imagine that only one side of my face would be struck this time around, I must warn you that the ratification of Irish independence came with several conditions. The first and foremost of which was my fair treatment and safety. You cannot torture the information out of me because it would be a breach of the contract that your mother and I agreed on, forcing your infernal allies back out of this horrible backwater faster than you could blink. So when you ask me a question, I have as much right to decline to answer as any other man. And so I decline. No. I shall not help you to interfere with my life’s work any more than you already have. My arrangement with the Fair Folk stands. My wishes shall be fulfilled and the world shall take shape as it is meant to. No amount of foot stomping and petulance on your part will change that. All of this is just a temporary delay before an eternity of victory. You shall not take that from me.”
Sully’s smile hadn’t faded, but it had taken on a very brittle appearance. “You aren’t going to win. I can promise you that much. I’m going to leave in the morning, I’m going to go wage a little war across this beautiful island and then hop over to jolly old England next. And you are going to be stuck here with my mother. Now she might not look like much anymore, but old Gormlaith O’Sullivan has a mean streak in her about a mile wide. If it looks like I’m going to lose, she isn’t going to care about treaties or safe passage. She isn’t going to care about honor and gentlemen’s arrangements. She is just going to flay the flesh from your bones with hellfire and then go have herself another cup of tea. Either I win this war, and you get to go home to a broken empire, or I lose this war, and you lose everything.”