The Interminables (19 page)

He took a moment to yank out his pocket watch… to shout…

The elevator bent inwards and outwards at the same time and then he was where he shouldn't have been.

I
stvan winged northward over rubble
, finally free. All night. All morning. Well into the afternoon. After six earthquakes it had become clear that his particular skillset – tireless, immaterial, fast enough to cover enormous swathes of territory – was invaluable in the initial stages of disaster. He couldn't remember how much surveying he had done. No chance at all to check on Edmund. He had eventually pleaded mental rather than physical fatigue: he could manage thirty or forty hours at a stretch, and would later if he had to, but couldn't stand to worry any longer.Now the sun blazed to his right, clouds billowing across the sky like gunpowder given a match. The twisted spire of the Black Building loomed over former Manhattan, a solid sheet of dark steel that rushed towards and then past him, unscathed by the many lightning strikes it had suffered over the years and untouched by the earth's violence. It swayed during quakes, nothing more.

He banked over Edmund's neighborhood, the pagoda on the hill a little worse for wear. The man hadn't seemed to be at the Twelfth Hour, as expected. He'd probably woken early, dusted, read another book. He was probably perfectly fine. Moping a bit over Grace, perhaps, but...

Istvan alighted on the roof, skidded down the shingles, and swung through the living room wall.

No Edmund.

Istvan didn't panic, precisely. He did check every room in the house multiple times, terrify the cat, startle several neighbors, and finally find himself standing in the middle of the kitchen, wanting to tear off in search someplace else, and not moving because it felt like if he did he would fly apart in all directions. Edmund was probably off on some legitimate business. Edmund had managed just fine on his own for many years. Edmund didn't need help or protection, not like that and certainly not from the likes of Istvan. He was fine. He was fine. He had to be fine.

Istvan was debating his chances of taking on the full weight of the Susurration one-on-one by the time he noticed the note left on the refrigerator.

Gone out
, it said,
will be undercover at Barrio Libertad for Fourth of July festivities. Hoping to find some answers. Should be back late tonight or tomorrow. Please don't look for me.

Don't look for me.

Please don't–

Istvan hissed. He read it again. Then a third time. Edmund was supposed to be the rational one. The sensible one. The reasonable one, with the steadiest temperament and the greatest devotion to duty any man could have. He wasn't wild and violent, like Istvan. He was a wizard who had seen too much. A librarian who led armies. A man who knew better, who respected his own dignity, who'd kept to the same routine for seventy years. He knew his place. He followed orders.

Will be undercover? Not returning until tomorrow?

Istvan crumpled the note in a fist and threw it. Looking for answers, oh, no – looking for Grace Wu. She had been here. This was her fault. Edmund wasn't like this. He wasn't supposed to be like this. He was disobeying direct orders – direct orders! – and gallivanting off in pursuit of a woman who didn't even care for him anymore. Who maybe never had!

She had no right to do this to him!

He was Istvan's Man in Black, not hers!

Istvan snapped open his wings and shot through the wall. Wood. Electrical wiring. Insulation. Wood again. He skimmed the hedge, slashing a trench through the top. Out. Up. Focus on climbing. On wingbeats. On clouds above and then below, faster and faster, winds that screamed through him like solid barriers, air that turned to ice. The sky shaded to purple. Black. Focus on something else. Anything else. His chains burned, taut and choking, tugged in a dozen different directions by conflicting mandates of uncertain priority: watch Edmund, stay away from the fortress, don't tell him of this conversation, help with the earthquake, do whatever you think is prudent,
stay within bounds
…

The stars hardened into unblinking points, distant and unsympathetic.

Barrio Libertad was a rogue state. Magister Hahn had given Edmund the direct order to avoid dealings with it. Edmund had chosen to attend a Fourth of July celebration at Barrio Libertad. That was more than insubordination. That was consorting with the enemy. That was treason.

The Magister had to be told. That was what mattered. Nothing else.

All the world curved below, forbidden.

Istvan dove.

“
H
e's not going
to contaminate the place, I promise. I'll make sure he keeps his ducks to himself.”

A panel hissed upwards before him. Red lights. The tang of salt and ozone. His mouth was dry and he still heard ringing. Crashing. The rush of water, maybe, somewhere far off. He was on his back. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes.

Grace leaned over him. No cowl, no goggles. Just Grace. The light was above her and it made interesting highlights in her hair. “Eddie,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

He tested his tongue. “Came to see you.”

She sighed. “That's what Diego said.”

“What?”

“Come on,” she said, “let him up.”

The panel below him tilted upwards, becoming a chair and then a wall that retreated and vanished. More panels drew away to either side, angular petals rimmed in sawtoothed latches, hooking over and around each other to form a small room out of... well, out of the presumably larger room that had been there before. A sphere of orange rust. Somehow, no seams. Edmund kicked cautiously at the floor. It seemed solid.

“Grace…” he began, and then he realized she wasn't alone.

A man clad in a red T-shirt glowered beside her. He was shorter than her, stocky but bony, almost painfully thin. The flesh at his neck was dark brown and deeply scarred, interrupted by a haphazard array of metal support bracings and other things: a ribbed tube plunging through his esophagus, bolts driven into his collarbone, a grille embedded where his voicebox should have been. Above that...

...Above that sat a crude, roughly skull-sized device more akin to a camera, or perhaps a tabletop radio, than a human face. No ears. No nose. No mouth. Cooling fans in tubular mountings hummed at each side. Five lenses spun, focused, and re-focused, irised “eyes” of sky blue, all different sizes and arranged with no sense of symmetry. All staring at Edmund. Machinery whirred with each tiny motion, balancing a weight never intended for the human spinal column.

“Cameraman,” Edmund croaked.

“I can't believe you tried to just walk through the front door,” Grace was saying. “I thought we had a reputation, Eddie. Or did you forget the whole rogue, incommunicado, magic-hating city-state thing?” She pointed at at his lapel. “And if you say that's thyme instead of lavender, I might have to punch you.”

Edmund made sure he still had his pocket watch. He did. “Grace? Who is this?”

“Hm?”

“Your... friend.”

She glanced at her companion. “Oh, right. Sorry. I thought you knew.” She gestured from one to the other and back again. “Diego, Eddie. Eddie, Diego Escarra Espinoza. You've actually met already, just not in person.”

Edmund froze. The architect? This was the architect she'd kept going on about?

He took a moment to straighten his jacket. Always better to be composed in a situation like this.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said.

“They devour the numbers,” replied Diego. He crossed brown arms covered in faded tattoos of flowers and hummingbirds, a motion rough and sharp and teetering just on the edge of coordination, like a vengeful marionette. Mismatched lenses clicked and swiveled disdainfully in their mountings. “The pattern collapse to the accommodation of possibility is n- not sufficient.”

Grace flashed Edmund an ear-to-ear grin, the kind she usually reserved for showing off her powers or her genius. “Isn't he weird?”

“Yes,” Edmund said. “Yes, he is.” He waited for a response and received none: Diego simply glared at him. “What... is he?”

“A computer. Well, a cyborg. Or an android, really – there's no fleshy bits left above the neck – but he calls himself a computer.”

“A computer,” Edmund repeated flatly.

“Fastest in the world.”

“What was that about ducks?”

“Mathematical substitution. A way to bypass anything that doesn't make sense. He's figured out magic, Eddie, and that's how.”

“Why ducks?”

“Why not ducks? Eddie, all you need to understand is that Diego here is so far beyond genius that we don't have a word for it. He built this entire fortress out of dust over a period of about two months. Those cameras of his can see anything, and I mean anything: past, present, future, subatomic, around corners.” She dropped an arm around Diego's bony shoulders. The android didn't flinch or, despite his emaciated frame, buckle like Edmund half-expected. “This, Eddie, is a guy who runs simulations of worldwide weather patterns out to centuries and down to single snowflakes, and does it in massive parallel between every word we say because he's bored.”

The words emerged on their own. “I didn't know you had a thing for chrome, Grace.”

She started laughing. “What?”

“I don't know. You tell me.”

“No,” she choked, still laughing, “No, Eddie, that would be the worst – I love science, Eddie, but not like that.”

“He has no sense,” said Diego. “There is no purpose to r- remain.”

“Besides,” Grace continued, “he's not interested.” She pulled her arm away but didn't relinquish her touch, hand remaining on Diego's shoulder. Easily. Casually. Like she didn't even notice she was doing it. “Look, uh, would you excuse us for a second?”

Edmund stood there as she tugged the other man through the room's circular door. “Sure, Grace.”

A machine. Diego was a machine. Grace's architect friend, if not lover, was an artificial brain stapled onto a flesh-and-blood body that didn't even act like it was human.

And she complained about Istvan?

I
stvan winged
to a running landing over the cracked remnants of a sidewalk. The stoplight leaning over the equally root-shattered street was shedding leaves unseasonably early, thin round things that blinked red and green. Axe marks marred its trunk, to no avail.

The mountainous curves of the edifice itself towered before him, its broad steps lettered with old poems, its Grecian columns festooned with imaginative sculpture that, thus far, remained uncensored. Chips of fallen stone lay scattered across its lower levels. Some of its windows were cracked. According to Edmund, the upper library had once been a small three-story affair converted from an old church, a wholly ordinary structure with a weather vane in the shape of a crescent moon. No longer.

Istvan took the steps three or four at a time. The door was glass and steel, modern shelves lined with modern books visible beyond. A labeled handle invited entry: PULL.

He hammered at it with the hilt of his knife. “Doctor Czernin. I've vital information regarding the Hour Thief. Do you mind?”

The label changed to PUSH.

He did, not paying attention to his own lack of mass and barely remembering to mutter thanks. The shelving beyond the glass didn't change, but the shelving revealed through the doorway was wood instead of metal, stained dark, inlaid with glass and chrome. Another library, basement-built with no basement access. Until now.

The place was crowded as always. More earthquake victims and their tenders, New Haven farmers carting in boxes of tomatoes, Twelfth Hour wizards and watchmen reporting back from spellscar patrol, visitors from the Magnolia Group inspecting tangles of electrical wire. A family of ravens browsed the shelves. The giant lizard was back, stumping along on a stout cane. All sorts of people. His only concession to common courtesy was to fly over rather than through the majority of them.

“Magister Hahn,” he called. He banged on the heavy door at the end of the hall. “Magister Hahn, this is Doctor Czernin. It's about Edmund, he's gone and... Magister Hahn, are you there?”

The wood sank into grooves before his eyes.
Busy
, it said.

Istvan cursed. He hammered at it a second time. “Magister Hahn!”

Do Not Disturb
, the door informed him.

Istvan sheathed his knife and tried to charge through it, only to strike it as though he were solid – and not with enough force to break it down, either. He cursed again. Faint murmurings drifted from behind the door, but it always did that and he couldn't make out any words. She had read Edmund's report. She knew what was going on with Barrio Libertad and the surrounding horrors. The Susurration. Edmund. Grace bloody Wu. All of it. Of all the days to be absent!

He turned, took a breath, took a step... and then whirled about and assaulted the door again, a surprise attack that only resulted in a prim
In Urgent Conference
. No use. No bloody use at all. What on Earth was she doing?

Were there smilers in the Twelfth Hour? Had it all been compromised? What manner of coincidence was this?

The sensation of a heart hammering where he had none, he sprinted back down the hall. Telephone. She had a telephone, and though Edmund's hadn't been left in his house, someone else would have one.

As it turned out, the Magister gave very few people her personal number. It made sense, he supposed, but it wasn't a sense he wanted to hear at the moment.

Istvan made a beeline for the Department of Modern Technology and Such.

B
arrio Libertad
, in two days, had transformed itself into a riot of red, white, and blue. Streamers fluttered from every surface. Rows of tiny flags strung up on lines zig-zagged above bridges and walkways. Larger flags flapped from windows. Most were the American standard, but others bore a simple diagram of the fortress in place of stars, and only two stripes. The streets were spilling over with people, and someone, somewhere, was cooking sausages. Stands, stalls, carts, and performance stages choked the central plaza below. Firecrackers burst on the sidewalks.

That Barrio Libertad was an independent city-state built by a Chilean didn't seem to factor into people's minds: it was the Fourth, and the Fourth was and always would be an excuse to gather, carouse, barbecue, and light off colorful explosives in mass quantities.

Edmund wondered where they had found all of the meat.

He followed Grace across one of the bridges, far enough away from the main mass of festivities that they could hear each other talk. The rails looked like steel but weren't – no more than the adobe was adobe, the canvas umbrellas were made of canvas, or the murals were painted in paint. Grace claimed that the entire fortress was built of materials he couldn't imagine and no one else could replicate, mutable and nigh-indestructible.

“It's thyme, isn't it,” she said.

He touched his lapel. “It is.”

“You're the worst.”

“It doesn't bother you?”

“I can handle puns, Eddie.”

“No. Not that.” He glanced uneasily up at a looming gantry, scaffolding laced between support columns for a spiraled stairway. High-tension wires trailed downward from the nearest wall. Strings of flags flapped from every corner. It didn't look like any of it would hold up to a stiff wind... but, high above, one of the enormous turrets turned with the ponderous grace of a whale.

After what she had told him, the buttresses along the walls put him vividly in mind of a tremendous steel rib cage.

“Grace,” he said, “how can you live here?”

She shrugged. “It's better than the alternative.”

He bit back a sharp retort. That's what he had said. That was his answer, for why he did what he did and how he lived with himself. She had to realize what she was doing. “Grace, you said Diego can monitor everything and everyone here, controls everything down to the color of the murals, and can reshape entire sections at a whim – that he
is
Barrio Libertad in every way that counts.”

“That's right.”

He caught her arm. “Does that mean that anger Istvan was talking about is him? Is it because I'm here?” She pulled away; he held tighter. “Not all wizards can be blamed for the Shift, Grace – if it was the war that caused it, it was Shokat Anoushak, not the rest of us. We aren't all like her, Grace. Please, believe me. We aren't all like her.”

Not me. Not yet. Not ever.

Grace looked at him, and he couldn't tell what she was thinking, and he didn't want to speculate.

“It's motivational anger with a side of grim determination,” she said. She pried his fingers off with almost contemptuous ease. “And Diego's always like that. He chooses it. Says it's his most productive setting. Magic has nothing to do with it.”

“So what–”

“He can see it, Eddie.”

Edmund stared at her. Seeing the effects of magic, fine. Seeing magic itself... oh, boy.

Oh, boy.

“Grace, are you crazy?”

She walked away.

He chased after her, fingers closing around his pocket watch. All of Providence was under total magical interdiction. He'd never learned how. “Grace, do you know what you're saying? Nothing human can see magic. Nothing even close to human, not without becoming something else, something like a… a god, Grace, the kind that exists outside the world, the kind that you don't
want
to give a damn about you or your life or anything you care about, ever!”

He took a moment to skid to a stop in front of her. “Grace, please, trust me. There are some things you shouldn't tempt.”

“You're one to talk,” she muttered.

“I am! I know what I'm talking about!”

She brushed past him, leaving the bridge and making for a spiked gate. The wrought-iron archway overhead resembled curling leaves, and she made as though to push the gate open... before halting, one hand still resting on the bars. The other combed through her hair. Straightened her T-shirt. It looked good on her. Everything looked good on her.

A garden lay beyond: roofed, meticulously geometric, lit bright as daylight. Green and white. Everything not leafy or fruiting was tile, pale and glowing. It smelled like the forest behind the old farm house, after rain. It was her sort of garden.