The Interminables (3 page)

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.

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.

He hunted through the pin box and chose a red one.

She raised an eyebrow.

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.

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.

asked Miss Justice.

Istvan replied.

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. he said.

Miss Justice grimaced.

She set her cup down.

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.

he continued,

She nodded.

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.

said Miss Justice, leaning against a nearby bookshelf,

Istvan chuckled.

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.

Miss Justice frowned, but took it in stride. She'd seen it happen before.

Istvan nodded his thanks, retrieved his field cap, and bolted for the infirmary.

E
dmund's
front door was locked. It was always locked. His primary point of entry was inside and had been since he'd moved in fifty years ago. Aside from the sudden conversion from apartment block to free-standing structure, unreliable utilities, the usual difficulty in procuring anything not used or broken, and the occasional giant tentacle washed up on the beach, not much had changed since before the Wizard War.

The house still boasted only a single floor. It still had all of its original furniture. It was still comfortable for two people, yet more suited to one. Despite multiple recommendations over the years, he had never arranged to replace the wallpaper. Fading shafts of twilight slanted in through the blinds. He hung his hat and cape on their well-worn peg by the door, tossed his goggles on the table, and laid out new bowls of food and water for his cat. He put the map he'd drawn in a folder with others like it and put the folder away. Then he heated some of the water he'd drawn from the river that morning, lugged it to the backyard, dumped it in a strategically-placed plastic tank, and drew the curtains.

Shower. He desperately needed a shower.

Once he felt more like a human being again, he threw on a plain white bathrobe, poured himself a glass of gin he assured himself he deserved, and retrieved his ledger from the desk in his bedroom. The mercenaries had at least graciously given him what time he'd requested, and he noted it down in its proper column to form a running total.

Some Time. A Few Moments. Enough Time. Time to Spare. Time to Think About It. All the Time I Need.

Each phrase formed a distinct semantic unit, together with many other permutations less common and even more unforgivable. Each was worth a somewhat flexible but unmistakable span of moments, hoarded and spent like anyone else might spend coin.

The ledger held thousands of notations. Other ledgers, filled and emptied in turn, occupied the desk's upper shelf.

Years of time. None of it acquired honestly.

Oh, he asked for it, sure. And it had to be freely given. But no one who agreed to it knew what he was doing, or noticed that he was doing anything at all.

He was, for all intents and purposes, a conman who dealt in stolen moments. The hours that slipped away when no one was watching. Lives, plain and simple. He'd been thirty-five for seventy years, and he could say that only because none of the time he'd lived since 1954 was originally his.

As long as he had marks in that ledger, he could dodge bullets, survive drowning, appear just at the right moment, give others all the time they needed, live forever. If he ran out... well, that was time he wouldn't get back.

He didn't plan to run out.

He hadn't spent any that day beyond the usual. He marked it off.

The ledger went back into its drawer. The tome that bound together long-ago events, good intent, and terrible power requested foolishly was elsewhere, well-hidden among other books that seemed much more interesting.

He poured himself another glass of gin on the way out.

The hallway outside his room, like the rest of the house, was bare of photographs. The kitchen still looked like it had in the Seventies, dark and mood-lit, with spare wooden cabinets painted avocado green, flowered tile, and a chrome gas stove with a jury-rigged tank he kept carefully rationed. A small table took the place of a kitchen island, three chairs drawn up beneath it. The lone windowsill was empty: no herb garden, no flowers, no decorative bamboo. All suggestions at one time or another. The sill stayed empty.

No photographs in the den, either.

What he did have was books. Hundreds of them, written in or about almost fifty different languages, packed floor to ceiling. A filing cabinet full of copied Innumerable Citadel records sat in the corner. A half-dozen boxes of others sat nearby, yet awaiting translation. A few slim folders held collections of wards, magical inscriptions vetted by centuries of use that were mostly safe to copy.

Copying was always safer. Innovation in magic was best done in tiny increments, based on what was already well-established. The task of inventing wholly new rituals – wholly new ways of breaking reality – fell exclusively to people so driven and so desperate that they accidentally tapped into forces more than themselves, caught the attention of
something...
and survived long enough to pass down the experience.

Spellbooks – real, original spellbooks – weren't books so much as collections of notes and mad ramblings, the rituals they detailed encoded in esoteric ciphers and lost within tracts of poetry, political commentary, and other nonsense, doodles adorning the margins. Even the Twelfth Hour had a limited number of those. Those were dangerous. Those stayed in the vault. Edmund knew; he had cataloged them.

Stolen one, once.

He retrieved a Sherlock Holmes novel, put a jazz record on (his old upright radio could only catch one station at nine in the morning), put his glass on the coffee table, and collapsed on the couch. An enormous black cat jumped up beside him.

He scrubbed a hand across his face. “Evening, Beldam. I hope your day went better than mine.”

She wrinkled her nose at him.

He sighed. He could still taste the bitterness of tear gas in the back of his throat, he swore, even after two drinks. Three drinks?

He ran over the last few minutes in his mind: two drinks.

“Sorry about the smell,” he muttered.

Beldam headbutted his side. He scratched her ears.

She lived here, and Istvan was the only one who visited. As far as anyone else knew, Edmund Templeton was the reclusive bachelor at the end of the block who kept strange hours, suffered strange fits, and never entertained. He would help with harvest and he wouldn't shirk latrine duties, and he'd offered an opinion when they tilled the green, but not much else. He never took any shares from the commons. Cordial, but distant. His house was haunted.

If the residents of New Haven suspected any connection to Magister Templeton, they kept quiet. Istvan's erratic presence had proven a remarkably effective deterrent.

Edmund was left alone with his cat and his thoughts.

He should have known the day wouldn't work out. Should have expected it. Just like the mercenaries seemed to have expected him.

Today hadn't been Istvan's fault. It was Edmund's, for not being able to handle it. For doing nothing. For panicking. For running. For giving in to something his own mind manufactured, something that wasn't even real.

Edmund reached for his glass and finished it off.

Istvan had gotten carried away, sure. Istvan could have tried harder, sure.

But it had been Edmund's job to get to the Bernault devices. Edmund's job to find and secure them. Edmund's job to make sure they were hitting the right place at the right time. Edmund's job to not panic when things went wrong.

He had planned that operation, not Istvan.

He considered a third drink, and then reminded himself that Istvan would be arriving that night for chess.

Let it go.

Water under the bridge, the whole smoking wreckage of it. What was done was done. It was all something to deal with later.

Tomorrow. After the memorial visit.

Seventh anniversary of the end of the Wizard War. All those people, watching the Hour Thief – watching him – make that trek up the stairway, probably in the rain, carrying that lily to...

Edmund reconsidered that third drink.

Grace wouldn't have liked it. She had been an engineer, a pragmatist, a firm believer in “real problem-solving”, and the very notion that every problem could actually be solved. She hadn't believed in magic until magic happened, and when it did, she immediately decided it was some unknown branch of science.

There was no forbidden knowledge. There was no question that shouldn't be asked. There was no damnation.

In Grace's eyes, everyone could be saved.

Don't you dare give up, Eddie.

Punch it in the eye.

But Grace wasn't here. Explosions of that size didn't leave much to bury.

No. No, if he had another one, he'd have more than just another one, and Istvan would never let him hear the end of it. Istvan was coming for chess after midnight. New rule for the knights, he'd said.

Beldam headbutted him again.

“Sorry,” said Edmund.

He put his glass down, opened his book, and scratched her ears.

I
stvan hurtled through the wall
, chains burning.

Double doors slammed shut, the converted meeting hall that served as the Twelfth Hour's infirmary echoing with a yelp, a crash, and hastily receding footsteps. A number of lingering earthquake patients sat up, startled. The ordinary staff took no notice.

A nearby nurse sighed, kneeling down to pick up an overturned gurney. “Was that really necessary, Doctor?” he asked.

Istvan folded wings that dissipated into wisps of gas and wire, the memory of artillery dulled back to silence. The pain at his wrists and neck faded: he was present, now, and on duty. “I was in a hurry.”

“You could have used the door in a hurry.”

“Was that another applicant?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Istvan ran a hand across the reformed flesh of his face. “Well. If he truly thinks he's up to the task, Roberts, he'll be back. Now,” he continued, sifting through the infirmary's usual dulled yet pleasant ambiance of misery and pain, “are you certain this was all the patients we had? No one at all nearly died today?”

Roberts patted the gurney, retrieved his clipboard, and looked it over. Istvan wasn't a small man, but Roberts was a head taller and broader twice over, young and round and descended from the native inhabitants of some tropical island or other. More importantly he had a good head on his shoulders and a remarkably steady disposition, which was why he'd made the cut several years ago. “Not that I can see. It's been a good day so far.”

“Rather bland, yes.”

Istvan looked over the rows of pallets. The infirmary was a makeshift one; dividers built of cloth, machinery cluttering every alcove that would fit it, a hum of activity bustling below more grand pillars, sweeping arches, and gilded paneling than the Vienna Court Opera. The wizards had discussed grand plans here, once; now the order of the day was making sure those remaining lived to see any plan to fruition. Much cleaner than the muddy field hospitals to which he had grown accustomed, it was an altogether agreeable facility that would have been ideal had it only been just that tiny bit more disagreeable.

Every so often he found himself missing the trenches, the tunnels, the splintered timber, the occasional excursions to enemy lines that he could never remember as anything more than a euphoric blur of brilliant sensation; massacres permissible and even laudable because that was how war worked.

Istvan rubbed at his wrists, where the chains weren't visible. He'd hoped for more cases, more suffering. Something to take the edge off what had happened with the mercenaries and Edmund. “When do you suppose we'll have another shock?”

Roberts flipped some of the pages on his clipboard over. “Dunno. They're wondering now if some of the city-monsters aren't quite dead, or if the earthquakes might be some kind of gradual settling.”

“Oh, it's always a gradual thing,” Istvan sighed. “It starts small and then you find yourself invading Italy.”

“Yes, Doctor. Did you sign off on Martha back there?”

Istvan glanced at the clipboard. “She should have full control of all six limbs in another few weeks. I told her to be patient.”

“Right.”

“I'm not a wizard, you know – eight years isn't enough time to become an expert on the fallout. Not for me, not for anyone. I did the very best I could and she's lucky to be alive at all.”

Roberts held up his hands. “I wasn't saying anything.”

Istvan crossed his arms across his bandolier, gazing over his spectacles at the far corner. They kept all the worst cases there, people with afflictions he'd never seen before the Wizard War, never known were possible. They likely hadn't been before Shokat Anoushak appeared with her beasts and her spellscars and her ancient brand of madness, ripping apart the possible and rampaging across the results of her handiwork until that last terrible convergence at Providence.

“I suppose I ought to have another look,” Istvan admitted. Was it petty of him, to wish that a hundred and forty years of medical experience counted for more? “Perhaps I…”

He paused. Over the background pain and worry of the infirmary, and the minor annoyances typical of any human gathering, something else was approaching. An ache, dulled and clouded. Fear, sharp and urgent, but not overpowering; a complex medley of motivation and restraint. There was a smoothness to it, a confidence he recognized.

“Roberts…” he began.

The nurse set his clipboard aside. “On it.”

Istvan was already at the doors when the team rushed through. The man on the gurney was young, clad in jeans and a thin jacket. Pale, brown-haired, clean-shaven. Barely breathing. The front of his jacket was torn into bloody ribbons. His skin was blistered with frostbite.

It was June, and the man had frostbite.

Istvan cursed. That was the one mundane thing he couldn't treat in confidence.”Severe hypothermia and frostbite, wounds to his chest, very weak vitals,” rattled off one of the medics as Istvan confirmed those details for himself. “Recommend–”

The man's heart stopped. Istvan forcibly restarted it, reaching through bone and muscle to the organ itself. “Go on, then,” he snarled. “I can keep him bloody stabilized but I'm not helping the cold!”

All present scattered before he finished the sentence. Roberts and three others were already setting up the nearest machine in a flurry. Istvan could keep nearly anyone alive through nearly anything that didn't kill a man instantly, but cold... oh, his own presence only worsened it, chilling flesh and spirit alike until it wore down to attrition. The human body could only be revived so many times.