She tied off the bandage with a wince. “An explanation, Mr Templeton? I thought you knew better than that.”
“Frankly, Mercedes, I don’t think the Twelfth Hour can afford to sit back on this one. If that weapon goes off, we’re losing a lot of innocent people, and right now that’s the best outcome on the table. If you know something – if you can refute any of what I heard – I’d be grateful to hear it.” He turned his hat in his hands, wishing Istvan weren’t off... wherever he was. Some backup would have been nice. “I’m looking for a solution, not a witch hunt.”
“Mm,” Mercedes replied. She waved at the lines, the candles, the sputters of sigils in the fire. “What do you think this is?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Mr Templeton, I can assure you that I’m aware of the delicacy of the situation. I don’t blacklist entire nation-states without reason. If I had authorized wizards to enter Providence, years ago, what do you think would have happened?”
He shook his head. “I can’t say what might have been. I can only say what might be.”
“What might be,” she repeated. She swung her legs around to face him, waves rolling behind her. It was night on the Atlantic, moon-lit, droplets of salt spray rolling from the window panes. A studying gaze – he knew the routine – and then she clasped her hands together, a maimed gesture, uneven. “What do you expect me to do, then?”
Providence. The last battle. A convergence of Shokat Anoushak’s forces from across the globe, all searching for something never found, all destroyed in that blast. He had always thought it was Mercedes’ work. She had taken advantage of the strange decision, was all. Shokat Anoushak was mad, pulling so much of her forces into one place, but... well, she was mad.
A lot of people had died at Providence. Too many.
He did his best to hold Mercedes’ eyes. “As I said, I’d like to know what’s going on.”
She shook her head. “Wouldn’t we all.”
“Mercedes…”
“Mr Templeton, has it occurred to you how the Susurration operates? You were already targeted once. Compromised once. Led your friend Doctor Czernin into a fight with it once. You’ve just returned from Barrio Libertad – an explicitly unauthorized visit, during which time you could easily have been intercepted – and, after all that, Mr Templeton, you expect me to trust you?”
“No,” he said. “But one can hope.”
“Don’t.”
Edmund tucked his hat under his arm, resigning himself to ignorance. That was that. The Magister had spoken; the Hour Thief obeyed. That was how it had always been. That was how it had to stay. The alternative was all too thinkable, and she had a name.
How much memory led to madness?
“One question before I go,” he said. “I’ve checked with the infirmary and no one seems to know where Istvan’s gone off to. I was wondering if you might know where he is, or when he’ll be back.”
“Doctor Czernin?” She frowned, glancing at her telephone. “You didn’t meet him at the fortress?”
Edmund bit back a curse. He’d left a note, hadn’t he? Don’t follow? Don’t look for me? He could take care of himself just fine, especially in something so personal. Istvan always worried too much. “I wasn’t expecting to, and I didn’t.”
Mercedes stood.
“Wait, are you saying he hasn’t come back?”
She stepped around her drawn lines, making for the door. “How much do you care for your friend, Mr Templeton – on a scale of one to ‘would kill him myself’?”
<I never wanted to end them,> said Pietro. Said the Susurration, pursuing him through the pews. <Shokat Anoushak, her creatures, those misguided souls who worshipped her – Pista, I wanted to save them. Save all of them. Redeem them! Give them what they sought, spare the world their misguided ravages, end it all with a whisper. Doesn’t everyone deserve another chance, Pista? Doesn’t everyone deserve happiness, no matter how monstrous?>
Istvan vaulted the last wooden back, sprinted for the doors –
– and found himself again on the other side of the church, scrambling over the altar, back where he’d began. Three times, he’d tried. Three times, failed. There was something biblical in that, something damning, like all the rest. He was tired. He was so tired.
He set his eyes on stained glass. Ran again. Leapt, wings churning... tripped, tangled in his own chains, for how many attempts he couldn’t remember. No escape. No end.
Pietro offered a hand to help him up, as he’d done a thousand times before. <I was bound, just as you are. I didn’t want to seek out such a terrible weapon but I did, and I didn’t want to bring poor Shokat Anoushak to it, but I did, because I had no choice. Even now, I have no choice. I would keep my people safe forever, if I could!>
Istvan ignored the hand. Struggled to his feet. Missed a stair. Stair?
Tumbled.
Landed with a thwack, skidding on his back through the dust, his glasses cracked, bullets pelting the hill beside him. Men shouted in a tongue he didn’t know, a twisted cousin to German warped by long exposure to the South African frontier. The Transvaal. One of his own farmer-militiamen lay before him, a Boer, blood bubbling over weather-beaten flesh torn by British artillery fire.
Istvan couldn’t stop the bleeding fast enough. He could barely see through the dust.
<How many soldiers did you save, Pista? How many of those men returned to war, fought again, suffered again, died where you couldn’t help them?>
A whistle. Close. Too close. He threw himself over the wounded man before it hit.
Fire.
<How many yet suffer?>
Faded lines of Arabic. Loops and dots. Words penned at the fall of the Sassanids, crumbling, a tale of ancient horrors wrought by the simple act of living too long for too high a price. The dust plugged his nose. He sneezed. The pages turned. A picture, flattened and stylized, painted by hands long gone, fell open before him: a man in a black cloak and top hat, a corpse in a bridal veil at his feet.
A smile, faint and pleasant. Eyes turning, remorseless–
Istvan yelled.
Pietro caught him. Leaned him against the park bench as he shook and shivered.
<I can help him,> he said. <I know what haunts him, Pista, and if you help me free myself from this miserable waste, I promise, I can help him.>
Istvan swallowed. Tasted dust. He couldn’t breathe, for the dust.
<Please,> pleaded Pietro, <All I need is enough time.>
Edmund dashed after Mercedes as she made a beeline straight for the vault. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d done this earlier?”
“Would you have approved?”
“Has my approval ever mattered?”
“It was a case of need to know, Mr Templeton,” she called over her shoulder. “Need to know!”
They slid to a halt in front of the enormous circular door. Startled faces stared from further down the hall, bleary-eyed latecomers who hadn’t yet made full use of the Twelfth Hour’s coveted caffeine reserve. No worries regarding interference: Magister Hahn was involved in whatever it was, and if she were involved, it was Serious Business that shouldn’t be interrupted.
She set her palm in the central depression and the door rolled back with a crash. “D Section,” she said. “Things We Really Oughtn’t. Look for a mahogany case with scorch marks on it, about this big.” She held up her hands to indicate something roughly the size and shape of a lunchbox.
Edmund hesitated. “You aren’t coming?”
“Mr Templeton, you can search far more quickly than I. Magister Jackson’s mysterious countermeasures remain in place in the event you take anything you shouldn’t, and I’m not accepting any of your ill-gotten time.” She jerked her chin at the blackness beyond. “Go. I’ll set up the rest and have the vault open again when you reach the exit.”
Well. He couldn’t argue with that. “Any labels?”
“‘Security Deposit.’”
“Right.”
He went.
The vault sections remained nearly constant, but individual locations could and did change with unnerving frequency: any attempt to re-locate an archived item was a monumental task in and of itself. Time, even considering Edmund’s powers, was of the essence.
For three stolen hours he walked alone through the bones of a dead beast dreaming.
When he finally found the box, it was labeled, just as Mercedes had said, and closed with a brass lock, for which he was grateful. Locks had a way of removing options.
Mercedes was right: he hadn’t needed to know.
He brushed the dust off the wood, picked it up – it was lighter than he’d expected – and tucked it under his good arm. A walk of any length with its contents wasn’t an appealing prospect, but the vault had a way of being smaller on the way out. He reached the massive stone door within ten minutes. The Demon’s Chamber was another five.
By the time he got there, Mercedes had drawn a familiar ashen summoning circle around the pillar in its center and activated the wards that circumscribed each wall. Salt, cedar, iron. The shackles that had once held Istvan fast gaped in their mountings, fangs etched with faint Greek inscriptions. They had been cast to control more traditional dangers, in the founding years of the Twelfth Hour, and looked it.
Edmund checked his watch. It had been about a half-hour, Mercedes’ time.
“Put the box in that empty space,” she ordered, producing a brass key to match the brass lock.
He did so. “Anything else?”
“No. I’ll get it open and we’ll go from there.”
She kneeled beside it. No muttered words, no ritual incantations: the key turned smoothly and the lid opened with nary a creak. Inside, resting upon a bed of cushioned red satin, was a blackened human jawbone. Part of one. Edmund was no dentist, but if he had to guess he would have said it was from nearer the ear than the chin, and it was missing about two molars. The blackening was clearly from fire. Scattered around it was a few ashes, or pieces that had come off.
Concrete details. He had to focus on the concrete details.
Mercedes sat back on her heels. “There we go.”
Edmund remained standing just outside the circle. He didn’t want to get any closer. Every moment spent staring at that sorry piece of bone was another moment reminding him that the man who was, at this point, his closest friend in all the world, was dead. That he had been dead for over a century. That he had died, in horrific galvanic agony, almost two decades before Edmund was ever born.
It was one thing to know that while trading jibes with Istvan’s spirit-shadow. It was quite another to look at what little was left of him.
He swallowed.
All of his friends were dead.
<No,> Istvan said. <No. I can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry.>
He pulled away.
Pietro caught his wrist. Memories long-faded flared like photographs given color.
Morning meetings at the coffee house, matches of chess that Istvan almost always lost. Pietro’s total ineptitude at Hungarian. That perfectly awful flat they’d shared. Arguments over this matter of nationalism, the ridiculousness of that Freud character, and whether or not heavier-than-air craft would ever be viable. Istvan’s struggle with Latin anatomy, assisted by relentless drills and bribery. Pietro watching, from the second row, Istvan’s long-awaited betrothal to Franceska; Istvan watching, in turn, Pietro’s wedding, and applauding as any good friend ought. That dreadful year of attempting to avoid one another, to do their respective duties, to forget and pretend and fail, and meet again as failures. They’d been failures for eight years already – why stop now?
Most of all, those precious, few, forbidden dances after public festivals, joking over who ought to take the woman’s part and whirling, hands clasped, in laughing circles about the empty tables...
Istvan hugged himself, elbows tight against his sides. Like his own knife had split him open. Like ravens had ripped out his intestines, leaving nothing but a gaping, wind-whistled ache. His eyes floated in their sockets. <Please, no.>
<If you loved me, help me.> Arms encircled him, drew him close, like he were solid, like he were living. A warmth that didn’t care he was disfigured, that he was awful. A warmth that didn’t flinch away. A voice he hadn’t heard in over a hundred and twenty years, that had told him his cheekbones were lovely. <Oh, my poor Pista,> whispered Peti, <Help me.>
He broke.
Mercedes raised her eyebrows. “Mr Templeton?”
Edmund ran a hand across his face. His own jawbone was there, the muscles surrounding it clenched beneath his skin. “OK,” he said. He was acutely aware of his tongue against his teeth, the vibration of vocal cords deepened by past decades of smoking within his throat, the exhalation of a deep breath from living lungs. “Show me what I have to do.”