“You lost them.”
Edmund turned his hat in his hands, aviator goggles dangling from his elbow. The Magister’s office was a foreboding den of dark wood and stained glass, heaped all about with collections of dusty brass instruments, Chinese lanterns, and severed bird’s wings, its single window looking out over choppy waves. “That doesn’t mean we can’t find them again,” he said.
“They were ready for us,” Istvan added, standing beside him at rigid military attention, “They were expecting us.”
A pen tapped on coffee-stained oak, an ancient desk scarred by generations of smoldering cigarette butts and more lethal things. The woman behind it was small, brown-skinned, clad in a grey business suit two sizes too big for her gaunt frame. More pens strained to keep her hair wound in a tight bun. Pockmarks across her cheeks spoke of a past battle with illness, while a missing ring finger spoke of battle of a different sort. She was in her mid-thirties, as far as anyone knew, but had the sort of face that time dared not touch for fear of laceration.
Magister Mercedes Hahn. Self-appointed overseer of everything magical and strange in Big East. Edmund’s successor, and a far better Magister than he had ever been.
The woman who had killed Shokat Anoushak.
She had just showed up one day, announced that the Wizard War would be over within the week, and it was. One stroke. Providence leveled in a titanic blast. No one knew how. Anyone who might have asked was no longer on roster.
Her election to office had been immediate and unanimous.
“Mr Templeton,” she said, “I permitted your friend to accompany you on this assignment in hopes that you had recovered both your health and your senses. Is this not the case?”
Edmund reached for his pocket watch, clasping it in a gloved hand. “I’m fine.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t restrict Doctor Czernin back to infirmary duty alone and insist, for the last time, that you take a position in administration.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“You’ve done it before.”
The skull of Magister Jackson stared at him from one of the bookshelves. He tried not to look at it. “Mercedes, with all due respect, a year in your chair was enough.”
Her lips thinned. “Not every year is 2012, Mr Templeton.”
“Magister,” said Istvan, “we will find the Bernault devices, I promise you. I’ll talk to Miss Justice to see if her satellites have found anything else, and I can fly a search pattern besides. Once Edmund recovers, we–”
Edmund tightened his grip on the watch. “Istvan, I’m fine.”
“No, you aren’t.” The ghost stared straight ahead. “After an attack like that, you need to rest, and we both know you won’t be able to focus on anything tomorrow.”
Mercedes twirled the pen through her remaining three fingers. “Doctor Czernin, none of that would be necessary if you hadn’t decided to give in to your baser impulses rather than use your considerable medical talent to incapacitate a captive for questioning.”
Istvan wilted. He rubbed at his wrists. “Magister, I–”
“Quiet.”
He cut off with a pained wheeze.
Edmund winced, though this wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. Istvan had been chained now for almost thirty years; twenty of those spent locked away in the Demon’s Chamber, the Twelfth Hour’s most secure prison. Edmund had gone to visit him, sometimes. Edmund had helped put him there.
He hadn’t expected to feel bad about it, but that was a hard feeling to avoid when a man seemed earnestly happy to see you again, invited to you to coffee, and then was marched away to be magically shackled, hand and foot, bound so tightly that he could barely move before he was abandoned, alone.
The Twelfth Hour had only agreed to release him so he could help with the overflow of wounded during the Wizard War. Later, so he could fight.
Edmund was responsible for that, too.
He’d held those chains, once. Only the Magister could give Istvan orders.
“Mercedes,” Edmund began in the new silence, “Those men were Triskelion mercenaries. Those don’t come cheap, and they were hired by someone with enough resources to provide a working method of teleportation, magical or otherwise. That might even have been their payment. Bernault devices or not, our ‘Cameraman’ just got a lot more dangerous.”
She gazed at him a moment. The pen tapped on the desk.
“I’m going to need Istvan’s help,” Edmund said.
The ghost cast him a grateful look.
“Remember, Mr Templeton,” Mercedes replied, “without you our field of operations has been limited. The number of people trying to use what they don’t understand has grown, along with the notion that we shouldn’t be ‘hoarding’ the dangers that we do. Even now there are forces who would seek to have us removed altogether. Regardless of whether you intended it or not, the Hour Thief has become representative of all wizards and I expect you to comport yourself as such.”
Edmund flashed a tired smile. “I do my best.” She set the pen down. “That said, I want those twenty devices found. I want whoever is behind this caught, and I want it made very clear to any other potential buyers that we do not take artifact smuggling lightly. I don’t care what you have to do, but do it soon.”
Edmund glanced at the room’s picture window. Outside rolled the waves of the Atlantic, though the office was underground. They seemed choppier than usual. “I understand.”
Istvan nodded, still unable to speak.
“Good.” She leaned back in a puff of ancient incense. “Mr Templeton, go home. Doctor Czernin, you may speak. You have ten minutes and then I expect you back on duty until midnight.”
“Yes, Magister,” said Istvan. His voice was raw.
“You are both dismissed.” She reached in a pocket for her phone, tapping a quick tattoo on the screen. “See to it that this incident is added to the wall.”
Istvan started out before Edmund did, turning stiffly on his heel like the military man he had become. Edmund scrubbed at his aching eyes and followed, instinctively avoiding ghostly barbed wire. It really could have gone better. He’d taken some time to get over the worst of it but he could still taste a heavy bitterness in the back of his throat. Being gassed was like drowning. He’d drowned once.
The door shut and latched behind him with seven ratcheting clicks. Mercedes’ office – and the office of all eight of her predecessors – sat at the end of a long hall, leading back towards the library and opposite the vaults, lit by wrought-iron lanterns. Photographs of Twelfth Hour Magisters and membership hung in alcoves spaced every few feet or so, one for every five years of the cabal’s existence.
The first held seven pictures and was dated 1895.
“I’m sorry for leaving you to choke,” said Istvan as they strolled past the nook for 1925, which held thirty pictures. His accent, a soft, cadenced Hungarian he normally quashed as best he could, had thickened into full Dracula-esque force, a sure sign he wasn’t paying attention. “I oughtn’t discount the effects tear gas can have on a man, I really oughtn’t. I know how painful it can be.”
Edmund swallowed. It didn’t seem to help much. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I simply haven’t... You know I fought duels once, and...” The ghost scraped a hand across the scarred half of his face, tracing a pair of raised ridges across cheek and jaw. “If I had been in my right bloody mind at all, Edmund, I would have kept at least one from getting away.”
“Can you do anything about it now?”
“No, but–”
“Then don’t worry about it.” He pulled his gloves off. They passed 1940 and a framed black-and-white picture of him at twenty-one, sporting a wispy beard and a fedora. There had been about fifty members that year.
He was hatless in 1945, and haunted.
“And if someplace is blown to bits because I didn’t act?” demanded Istvan.
Edmund jammed his gloves in a pocket. “I don’t know.”
“All twenty in one place would be bad enough, but what if they were to be split up? Twenty explosions like that, all over the city...” He snarled to himself. “Oh, I should have paralyzed the bastard, not tried to fence with him.”
In 1950, Edmund wore a top hat and opera cape. In 1955, he wore the same thing but in color. In 1960, he wore the same thing again and still in color. And again in 1965. 1970 was the Year of the Ill-Advised Mustache, but he was back to normal by 1975, and after that there was no change at all save for the ever-increasing weariness of his expression – the smile more fixed, the eyes more ancient – and the ever-growing sea of new faces surrounding him. By 2010, the Twelfth Hour was nearly two hundred strong.
Only sixty survived to 2015.
Edmund glanced over the candles arranged in the alcove, to make sure they were all still burning. They were.
Much of the Twelfth Hour’s present wizarding membership came from the wreckage of other cabals. The teaching of magic, dangerous at the best of times, had all but halted. The majority of those on roster now weren’t wizards at all.
Istvan paused beside him. “I always hated that picture.”
“Your cheekbones are fine.”
“No, they’re hideously Mongolian, but that isn’t the worst.” He sighed a long sigh. “You’re all in color and I’m still in black-and-white.”
Edmund shrugged. “I’m still in just black.”
“That’s by choice. That’s different.” He plucked at the decorative piping on his sleeve. “You’ve no idea how splendid all this looked in the old days, Edmund. How it shone. How terribly attractive it was to fair maidens and snipers.”
Edmund rolled his eyes as bullet holes flickered across the specter’s chest. “I think I’ve done well enough the way I am.”
Istvan chuckled. “I never said you haven’t.”
Edmund reached for his pocket watch again. Go home. Rest up. Take care of yourself, or you won’t be able to help anyone else. We both know that you won’t be able to focus tomorrow. He wished that none of that was right. “Istvan?”
“Hm?”
“I’m going to head home. I don’t want to inflict this smell on anyone else.”
He flipped the watch open.
Istvan touched his sleeve. “Ah… before you go, I was wondering if you might be open to chess later. With all that’s happened, and the visit to the memorial tomorrow, well...” He glanced at the candles. “I thought you might like some company.”
Edmund took a breath. Right. That. There was that, wasn’t there. He’d been trying not to remember that. “I’m open to chess.”
“Oh, good. I’ve been meaning to test that new rule for the knights, you know.”
“That’s cheating, you know.”
Istvan cast him a lopsided grin. “You cheat, you know.”
“I do.” Edmund tipped his hat. “Just not at chess. Evening, Istvan.”
He snapped the watch shut.
The wizard vanished in a golden haze.
Istvan fiddled with his wedding ring, twisting it around and around his finger. There had been something more in Edmund’s movement, the coiled reluctance of it, the tightly-wound grief and dread and anger: a raw and oaken sweetness edged with citrine spice, hazing about him like the lingering smell of tear gas.
He hid it well, but Istvan always knew.
Tomorrow was the seventh anniversary of the end of the Wizard War. Edmund had seen it through – as Magister Templeton, elected unwillingly after the disappearance of Magister Geronimo – but it had taken its toll on him.
He’d been the only one to know anything about Shokat Anoushak. He’d obsessed over her, before the war. She was only example of a truly long-lived immortal anywhere on record, and during the years he came to visit Istvan in the Demon’s Chamber he would almost always bring sheaves of dusty documents with him, translating old stories from faded Arabic and trying to make a map of historical sightings.
Of course the wizards had chosen him as Magister when she came back.
And then there was the matter of Grace...
Oh, Edmund had been dreading the memorial visit all week. Best to provide something other than gin to keep him occupied the night before.
Ten minutes before a return to duty.
Istvan started for the wall.
The headquarters of the Twelfth Hour glittered. From scarlet carpet to stacked wall sconces to sunburst railings, it was a study in the worst excesses of Art Deco, an aggressively sterile structure of gold, chrome, marble, and mahogany paneling that seemed to have obliterated all of its curves in favor of yet more triangles. Blocky columns bore repeating images of stylized books and staves. Interlocking patterns spread across the ceiling, almost Moorish, lit by sunken yellow glass panels instead of proper chandeliers. The central library was three stories high, all of them dreadful.
It had once been a gentleman’s club of sorts, named for its hours of operation and its dedication to combating magical disaster. What arrives at the end of the eleventh hour? None other than the Twelfth.
As for the additions that had appeared with the Wizard War, well... Hindu temple architecture was sturdy, at least.
Istvan strode past scattered tables and took the stairs rather than make a scene, enduring questioning glances from surviving wizards, allied citizenry of New Haven, and stranger things: an animated floor lamp, a giant lizard in a purple parka that stumped along on a cane, a posse of armored policemen from a possible future. A flock of ravens hopped from shelf to shelf after him, cackling to each other.
They had all known that the Hour Thief was finally returning to real field duty after fourteen months missing and then years of sticking to nothing more than librarian work and his usual mysterious excursions by night. He was former Magister, after all. The Twelfth Hour’s calling card. The “wizard-general,” dashing and unkillable.
It was nice that he kept the library so neat and clear of casualties, but that wasn’t why he was famous.
Where was he now? Had something happened?
Istvan found himself grateful that he had his own brand of fame, and no one present dared approach to ask.
He climbed to the highest story, closest to the above-ground entrance, and found the map wall where the shelves ended. The map itself was fabric stretched over a frame, studded with colored pins that marked recent mission sites, artifact sightings, and known movements by enclaves the Twelfth Hour had an interest in watching. A table before it held the pin box, a notebook, a tray of pens, hot water, and what passed for tea.
A tall, heavyset black woman stood before it, filling a chipped coffee mug. Greying hair spilled down her back, braided into dozens of strands.
“Miss Justice,” called Istvan.
She glanced up. She spotted him, and raised the mug to him. She wore a glittering green shirt and glittering green earrings and didn’t look at all like she had lived through the ruin of civilization. She also wore pants, but women did that now.
Janet Justice. The Twelfth Hour’s primary information and surveillance specialist. She wasn’t a wizard, but what she did was as close to magic as modern civilization had ever produced.
“Guten Tag, Herr Chirurg Czernin,” she said in schooled German.
Istvan took his hat off, folded it, and tucked it beneath his bandolier. “Grüß Gott, Fräulein Justice,” he responded in the same tongue. <I was planning to speak with you tomorrow.>
She stirred her tea. She was one of the few non-medical people on task often enough late at night to encounter Istvan regularly, and over the years had proven both fearless enough and good-natured enough to humor a ghost asking about computers in return for an opportunity to practice her second language. <I’m here now. How did Operation Hour Thief go?>
<That was what I wanted to talk about.> He hunted through the pin box and chose a red one. <Ah... does tear gas corrode electronics?>
She raised an eyebrow. <Tear gas?>
<Edmund was carrying his telephone. Will it be damaged?>
<If he brings it in, I’ll have a look at it.>
Istvan nodded, regarding the map. It covered a rough approximation of the northeastern United States, divided into fracture zones, spellscars, and what remained of the nation before. <Thank you.>
Big East followed the new coastline, a half-flooded urban wasteland home to, among other things, the Black Building, the Magnolia Group’s crashed spaceship, the Wizard War memorial, and dozens of tiny survivors’ enclaves, scavenger camps, and odder things that came and went. The Twelfth Hour claimed former Yale University, much of New Haven, and the nearby Generator District as its own, though its ambitious patrol territory covered most of Big East. The crater that marked Providence loomed in the north, forbidden ground dominated by the fortress-state of Barrio Libertad.
Beyond Big East stretched the spellscars, a vast band of twisted wilderness and deadly magics, and past that lay what passed for “normal” regions, administrated by government remnants and flooded with refugees.
The pattern was the same for the Greater Great Lakes fracture, Chicago through Toronto: impossible cityscape ringed with impassable horror, its original population fled, transformed, trapped, or dead.
It was the same the planet over, as far as anyone knew.
<Is he OK?> asked Miss Justice.
<He will be,> Istvan replied. <He only needs to rest.>
He pushed the pin into an area thirty miles outside former New York City, where he and Edmund had lost the mercenaries. Triskelion itself lay in the spellscarred Appalachian mountains of former Pennsylvania, further west, sandwiched between Big East and the Greater Great Lakes.
What were they after? One warlord or another had been trading Bernault devices from both fracture regions for years, as far as anyone knew, but not once had a Bernault-powered weapon been deployed against anyone. It was as though whoever was behind it collected the devices merely for the sake of collecting them. Or stockpiling them.
For what? Against what? How many did the Cameraman have now?
Was he planning to sink all of Big East into the sea?
Istvan shook his head. <The mercenaries knew we were coming,> he said. <The convoy was a decoy. They’ve learned to teleport somehow, and I’ve no idea where they went.>
Miss Justice grimaced. <I’m sorry it didn’t work out.>
<If I could ask a favor?>
She set her cup down. <Sure.>
<Keep monitoring the area around New York. Look for anything moving, any potential signs of camouflage.> He didn’t know how, exactly, she stayed in contact with the satellites or how they stayed in orbit, but they were so high up that the Wizard War hadn’t touched them and they had proven, overall, surprisingly useful.
<The mercenaries left their tanks,> he continued, <Why would they leave their tanks, if they could take them along, and why bother with a decoy at all if they could teleport the devices? I think the real convoy is still on its way.>
She nodded. <I’ll keep an eye out.>
<Thank you.>
Istvan scribbled the date and a note on the day’s events in the notebook. June 28, 2020: Failed interception of Triskelion mercenary Bernault convoy, x20; Mr Templeton, Dr Czernin. Decoy. Red NYC, 30 m.
<You know,> said Miss Justice, leaning against a nearby bookshelf, <Mr Templeton just asked a favor recently, too. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was popular with the older set.>
Istvan chuckled. <Don’t let him hear you say–>
He winced. He rubbed at wrists that burned in their shackles, the chains he couldn’t see enforcing orders he couldn’t break.
Ten minutes, and then I expect you back on duty until midnight.
He put the notebook back with a grimace. <I’m afraid I’m needed. Now.>
Miss Justice frowned, but took it in stride. She’d seen it happen before. <OK, then. You’re still welcome to drop by whenever you’re free.>
Istvan nodded his thanks, retrieved his field cap, and bolted for the infirmary.