Warbound (The Grimnoir Chronicles Book 3)

If I only had to fight one enemy, this war would already be won. Instead I have the Kaiser’s zombies and wizards on one front and your wife and her blasted devil monk on the other. I do not care how strong his magic or how true his prophecies. He is a malignant growth on the Motherland and if you do not remove him then I will find someone who will. You are aware of what the men with the black rings would do if they learned of his abominable experiments.

—General Aleksei Rybakov,

Personal correspondence to Tsar Nicholas II. 1916

Somewhere in Eastern Europe

Zachary had not written the man’s name under his picture. He’d only given him a title. The Black Monk.

Faye knew nothing about the Black Monk, nothing at all.

Except that she was supposed to kill him.

He hadn’t been hard to find. She didn’t really know her way around, she didn’t even speak the language, but luckily for her, one of the many pictures of this event had showed a road sign with the names of two towns and the distance between them. It had taken a lot of Traveling in constant short hops, and then sleeping overnight like a hobo on a train that was heading east, and then a lot more Traveling the next day too to get there. She hadn’t asked Jacques for directions, because frankly, she didn’t really want him involved. Did Jacques or the Grimnoir even know who the Black Monk was? Did it matter?

Her magic was burning bright. Her head map was showing her a larger area. She’d been in the building when Zachary had climbed into the furnace, so she suspected that she’d stolen his connection to the Power too. Magically, she was fine, but physically and emotionally, she was a mess. She was tired, hungry, and still smelled like Dead City. Faye knew she probably looked a little crazy, with crazy-person hair that had bits of plants and burlap stuck in it, but that’s what she got for sleeping on a train like a hobo.

She was all by herself. And knowing what she knew now, that was probably for the best. Jacques had said the Spellbound couldn’t have friends, but even he didn’t realize just how dangerous she could become to everyone. There was a job that only she could do, and anyone around her might get consumed in the process.

Faye had spent so much of her life surrounded by people, with a huge family crammed into one tiny shack, but she’d spent most of those years living another life inside her own head. She hadn’t minded the idea of being lonely back then so much. Heck, she might have welcomed the idea. It wasn’t until finding Grandpa and the years in California, and then the Grimnoir knights after, that Faye had found she didn’t like being by herself. She liked people. She liked them a lot. But she didn’t want to destroy them even more.

Alone. It was for the best, Faye told herself, even though the idea of maybe never seeing Francis again made her heart ache.

The road sign looked exactly like the one in Zachary’s picture. She’d found the name of a town on a map at the train station and had been heading in that direction ever since. She didn’t know how much ground she’d covered over several hundred Travels. She wasn’t even sure what country she was in. There was a valley past that sign, and there was a village in that valley. She could see the white church steeple from here. The bell was ringing . . . It simply wouldn’t do to kill the Black Monk in front of his congregation, so Faye sat down by the road sign and waited.

It could all have been an elaborate plot. Trick the poor naïve Okie girl, make her think all sorts of craziness was afoot, and then give her a picture of a man you wanted murdered and let her do it for you . . . Except Faye knew that wasn’t it at all. There were plenty of easier ways to kill a man than to bring a Traveler across the whole world and trick them with zombies to do it for you. That was just stupid.

Plus, Faye could feel it. The Enemy was there, just outside of the world, and she could feel it pushing to get in. She’d felt it before, but hardly anybody had believed her. The Enemy was closer now. That was undeniable. And on the other side of it was her Power, that seemingly endless river of magic, but beyond that was the Spellbound curse, and the curse wanted to be used. The Power wanted her to do the job that Sivaram had been too weak to do. Somehow the Black Monk was part of that.

Faye got tired of waiting and got tired of smelling like Dead City and tired of knowing she looked like a crazy person, so she found an isolated stream to bathe in. The water was freezing cold, but it was worth it to scrub the dust of Dead City off of her skin. Bathing gave her a chance to shiver, but more importantly, a chance to slow down and think.

She was flying fast and blind, getting into things over her head. She didn’t know why the Power wanted her to kill this man, but it did. What about all her promises to remain good? Was she about to prove Jacques right? The Power wanted this to happen. Every one of the Zachary’s pictures of the event turned out the same, with her killing the Black Monk.

Regardless of fortune tellers or the wishes of big magical space jellyfish, Faye wasn’t a slave to magic and she wasn’t a slave to some zombie’s pictures. She’d make up her own mind . . .

And as soon as she thought about that, she knew it was a lie. If she really wanted to make a stand, why even come here to begin with? Why confront the Black Monk at all? Why not just keep on Travelling down the road? Shanghai was where she was really needed.

Except deep down inside she knew she wasn’t ready to face the Enemy yet.

She dried off in the sun, put on clean clothes, and checked the .45 Mr. Browning had given her and the big knife Lance had made for her, before popping into the village, being extra careful to appear in a place where nobody would see her. It was easy enough to do, since her head map told her almost everybody was inside the church. She picked a house where no one was home, popped inside, and ate some of their thick-crusted bread and strong-flavored cheese. Really, it was more of a hut than a house. Having grown up dirt poor and hungry, she knew how important that bread and cheese might be for humble folks like this. She felt bad for eating their food, but she made sure to leave a bunch of extra money in the pantry she’d taken the food from. It wasn’t Russian money, but she figured it might still do them some good.

Faye ate and thought. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t particularly want to kill anybody, unless they were bad, of course, but she had to see this through.

The church was clearing out. The people were going home. Now was her chance.

She found the Black Monk inside the chapel. He was putting out candles under a big statue of Jesus. Forgive me for this, and I’d do it someplace else if I had the time. Sorry, Lord.

Zachary had probably given him the title because of his robes. They were big, billowy, dark things. The top of his head was bald, but he had wild, long black hair on the back and sides, and a huge, unkempt, bushy beard. He was very tall, very thin, but with wide shoulders and arms that seemed too long, and hands that seemed too big. He heard her footsteps on the stone, and said a greeting in a language she didn’t understand. When she didn’t answer, he turned to see who his visitor was. His skin was pale, like he didn’t see the sun too much, and when he turned to look at her, his eyes were as black as his robes.

As she looked at his black eyes, he studied her grey ones.

He did not smile. His face showed no emotion at all. Not even a hint of surprise. He spoke again, and this time it was a challenge.

“I’m Sally Faye Vierra.”

He looked at her hands and saw her ring. “Grimnoir?”

“Yes.”

“English?” His accent was harsh, like gravel.

“American.”

The Black Monk nodded. It took him a moment to switch languages in his head. “So, the Grimnoir know I still live?”

“I don’t think so. Just me.”

“They thought they killed me before, but I am too strong. My countrymen poison me. Stab me. Shoot me. Drown me in river. Bury me, and burn me. But I not die so easy. The Pathfinder showed how to grow new body, copied from others. I have hid, very long time. Hid in this tiny place.” He gestured around the church dismissively. Faye didn’t think it was so bad. The stained-glass windows were very old-fashioned and pretty. “I hide from Grimnoir like all the other magical factions. I hide from Stalin. I hide from the Cult, I hide from Machine God and the Shaper and the Order, and most of all, I hide from the Chairman. I hide from any who would take mine things, and I wait . . . And I study, and I prepare, but for long time, I wait.”

Faye had no idea who some of those folks even were. “Who are you?”

He cocked his head to the side, seemingly curious. He was certainly no simple village priest, that was for sure, especially if the Grimnoir knights had gone through all that effort trying to kill him. “You do not know who I am?”

“You’re the Black Monk.”

“That is one name I called. Man with so many enemies must change bodies every generation. Today I am a simple priest. I took this new body so I could hide. Before that I used another name to rise to greatness, that name Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin . . .” He waited for a reaction.

Faye shrugged. It wasn’t ringing any bells.

“Really? Huh.” the Black Monk scowled, now seeming a little less sure what Faye was doing there. “Before I take this body, I was one of very first wizards in world.”

She didn’t know what he meant by taking bodies, but Faye knew he was telling the truth. She could practically feel the magic boiling under this man’s skin. He was powerful, more powerful maybe than anyone she’d met since the Chairman. And she wanted nothing more than to take that Power away. Faye shook her head and cleared her thoughts.

The Black Monk continued, “I was not the first. That is Okubo Tokugawa.”

“Him, I’ve met.”

He tilted his scraggly head the other way. “Yes. I can see it on your soul. Knowing Tokugawa changes you. I fought for his cause once. I was member of the Dark Ocean.”

“You were there when they killed the last Pathfinder?”

“Yes. But it not really killed. Body killed, but it never left. It has been here, hiding, whispering, ever since. Tokugawa did not realize this. During the battle, it hurt me. It crawled inside my mind, made a nest, and hid. It did that to a few of us. Those harmed by it . . . It remains in your head, always a little piece. Always . . . chewing. I think am not alone in this. That is why you come? The Pathfinder?”

“Yeah. I’m off to fight the new one now.”

“Ah, yes.” He stroked his unkempt beard. “I knew this day would come. I knew it well for so very long. I have spoken to it in my dreams. It talked to me for years after the battle. For a time, I believed it. I listened to the words in my head and did as it asked. It wished me to help build an empire for it to use. It had plans. For a time, I did as it asked. I helped it. It gave me magic to heal the hemophilia of our heir. It helped give my words magic to make influence. Some I swayed, others I seduced. It put me in place to fulfill its wishes. I followed its counsel, and gave that counsel to the rulers and nobles who would heed me. I became great and important.”

“You listened to the Pathfinder?” Faye was shocked. “Why would you ever do that? It wants to kill us all!”

“Not all. It will change things. Kill many, yes. Not kill all the things. It whispered secrets. Offered me much. You try to resist. You know it speaks in lies, but the lies become comfort. Soon, you bend, then you break, and you do as it says. I see now that it used me, but back then, I could not.”

“What did it want you to do?”

“Counsel the Tsar to bring all the wizards together. Make them live in one place . . . Make them easy for harvest.”

This was horrible, and then she thought of Zachary’s pictures showing the skinless men carrying people away. “So when it finally attacks it can scoop up all of the magic it needs all at one time and nobody will be able to stop it in time!”

“Yes. Before it came boldly, but Okubo won. Now it creeps, ever so slowly.” He made a little chittering noise through his teeth. “Battles everywhere . . . The Power must win every fight. The Pathfinder only must win but one.”

“Is it still talking to you now?”

“No longer.” He touched his thumb to the center of his forehead. “When Grimnoir murder me, the ghost in my mind, gone forever . . . It knew I could no longer serve. My chance at empire, ruined, so it go elsewhere . . . Whisper to others, corrupts them, gives them same counsel . . . I not know who. Does it matter? Look around, child. Every land does this thing now. I was murdered. My empire died, yet the empire which replaced it has gone on to realize the same goals, only bigger . . . Stalin has done more than I ever could have. This time, the harvest, very swift. I knew it would come back.”

Now Faye understood. She understood the picture of the old samurai with the shadow in his head. She understood the picture of the skinless man, wearing a suit made out of a person, telling lies in Washington, and she realized that they were all in even greater danger than they’d expected.

She knew how all the pictures ended with the Black Monk, but she refused to believe it had to end that way. He had helped her, given her new information, regardless of what he’d done in the past or how much incredible Power he had for the taking, Faye did not want to kill him. “The time’s come to fight the Pathfinder again. You were Dark Ocean before. Will you help us?”

“Help, child? You do not know its promises. You did not hear the whispers.” The Black Monk chuckled. “Now you tell me Pathfinder has returned, I will go to it and offer my services. For this, I thank you.” He extended one long arm, spread his fingers wide, and the incredible wave of force that issued forth shattered every stained glass window in the church.

Faye saw it coming and had even run all the calculations in her head as the benches were lifted from the floor and the tiles were peeled off the walls and the statues were blown to bits. She stepped through space, just ahead of the wave, and appeared behind the Black Monk. Lance’s knife came out of the sheath and she put it square between his shoulder blades.

He turned, snarling, more magical energy building. Faye tore the knife out in a spray of red, and Traveled just as the altar was smashed into splinters. She’d never seen the like of this kind of magic. It simply seemed to make things come apart. She appeared on his other side and slashed the knife down one arm. He responded with more crackling energies, but Faye was already on the other side running the razor edge across his wrist.

The Black Monk took a few halting steps away from her. Calm, Faye lifted the dripping knife and followed him. The church was crumbling, hammered to its foundations over the course of a few seconds. She had just given him a couple lethal wounds, but the Black Monk wasn’t showing it. Whatever his Power was, he was tough.

He ran for it. Faye Traveled after him, but he’d been ready that time. Her head map screamed in warning as a circle of magical energy exploded outward from his body. Her feet hadn’t even hit the stone before she Traveled straight up, launching herself at the roof beams. She caught hold, then had to step through space immediately as he blew a ten-foot hole through the ceiling.

The dust blinded her for a moment, but her head map warned her that he was trying to get away. He reached a small door at the back of the church, fumbled with some keys, got it unlocked, and yanked it open.

And Faye was there waiting for him.

She ran the knife across his throat, real quick, and it opened up like a bright new red smile. He stumbled back, surprised, nearly tripping in his clumsy robes. In Faye’s other hand was the .45. It came up spitting fire as fast as she could pull the trigger. Bullets him in the stomach, chest, chest, shoulder, then she missed, and again, and then in the teeth, and the last one hit him square in the right eye.

The Black Monk landed flat on his back.

The church groaned. The big brick stacks that held up the center were all broken now. His magic was odd, and she couldn’t tell by looking at it with your eyes, but her head map told her it was like the little tiny invisible bits that made up everything—Heinrich called them molecules when he Faded between them—were sloughing apart. The statue of Jesus was on the floor, and that offended Faye, because here was a man pretending to be a man of God, but he secretly wanted to help the Pathfinder that wanted to gobble up all of God’s green earth, and then she was glad she’d cut his throat and filled him full of holes.

Faye quickly looked around the little room that had been locked. It was some sort of study or laboratory. There were lots of vials and jars and beakers and things cooking over candles. There were magic spells drawn on all the walls and there were human body parts hanging from chains or placed on tables, mostly hands and feet, but there were a few heads and a big box of torsos. There were bits and pieces of guts and internal organs that she could identify from butchering pigs on the farm, because people parts really didn’t look that much different on the inside, and all of them were neatly stacked in pails or stretched out on workbenches where he could draw spells on them with needles. The spells written on the walls were keeping everything inside from rotting and stinking. The Black Monk had been experimenting, drawing new kinds of magic on the parts, and from the big, meaty lump of different folks stitched together lying on the table, he had been trying to stick them back together to make new sorts of living things.

It was sick, and gross, and it filled her with rage. These parts were fresh. They weren’t dug up from old graves. She wondered just how many poor innocent folks had disappeared from these quiet mountain valleys so the Black Monk could continue his experiments. In one way, though, it did make her really glad. She only liked to kill bad people, and this was one heck of a confirmation that he’d been bad.

And then the Black Monk got up off the floor.

“Killing you is hard,” Faye complained. It must have been something to do with being from the first ones magic had bonded with, because the Chairman had been the same way. Her head map could see what was going on, though. His magic didn’t just take the little bits apart, he could also put things back together, and that included flesh.

He couldn’t talk. He tried to, but only blood came through the hole in his teeth, and a bunch of air whistled through the gaping hole in his neck. He lifted one hand, gathering up a terrible burst of his dissolving magic, aimed it at her, and let it fly.

Faye knew what to do.

She Travelled around the magic, laid hands on the Black Monk’s robes, and then dragged them both back through space, reappearing right in the path of his magical attack. Faye let go and leapt aside at the last possible second.

The dissolving magic washed over the Black Monk.

His black eyes turned on Faye. Wide. Surprised. A little confused . . .

And then he simply came apart.

She could hear the cries of terror coming from the village and she could see them running around on her head map. They didn’t know what was happening. One minute it had been a quiet Sunday afternoon, and a minute later their church was falling down. The bell broke free of the tower, crashed through the beams, and landed on the stone floor with a terrible racket.

Walking over, Faye kicked at the pile of black robes and slowly melting pink sludge that had been a real live person only a few seconds before. He was melting like the candles that had been sitting on the altar. One eyeball turned liquid and ran down his cheek. The last of his air was coming out of his chest as white foam. Even his bones were melting. She’d have to tell Mr. Sullivan about this type of magic, because she didn’t think he had anything about it in his notes.

The Black Monk gurgled, spat out some pink fluid, and within a few seconds, melted flat out into a puddle on the floor. This time she was sure he was dead. There weren’t no coming back from turning into a blood puddle. And then Faye got her confirmation when she felt the Spellbound curse steal his ancient mighty,connection to the Power. She’d not really felt the individual deaths before, but she certainly felt this one. It was a weird sensation, like she was now somehow more.

Nervous, she checked her Power. The river had grown deep and fast. Faye closed her eyes and found that her head map stretched for miles. It was almost too much information to process, and she began to swoon. Faye didn’t have time for that sort of nonsense, as she wasn’t the “fainting lady” type, so she wiped her knife on the curtains, put it away, reloaded her .45, picked out the spot where she’d hidden her clothing and Zachary’s art two and a half miles away, and Travelled there in a single hop.

Now she was ready to fight the Enemy.

UBF Traveler

The communication spell was severed. The ring of fused salt fell and shattered on the table. Sullivan stared at the fragments, trying to reason his way through the implications of the news. The ready room was totally silent as the last bits of magical energy bound to the mineral slowly dissipated into the air.

He raised his head and looked at the others. The feelings were easy to recognize on their faces; disbelief, anger, sadness, even resignation. They’d been worried that the Imperium might somehow detect the spell, so Heinrich’s report had been kept very brief. It hadn’t taken him much time to tell them that they’d been sucker-punched. Three of their four hideouts had been hit simultaneously. The only known survivors had been the four knights pulled out by the stolen patrol boat.

The Grimnoir had been gutted.

Sullivan couldn’t let his doubts show. They needed him to be the rock. He’d thought he’d left his soldiering days behind, but this was much the same. When you were in charge, you couldn’t ever let your doubt show.

Pang must not have known about the small place where Heinrich and a few others were staying. Most of the Traveler’s knights were unaccounted for and assumed dead or captured. The local Grimnoir were functionally gone, the entirety of their membership consisting now of Zhao, the badly injured man Yip, and a woman who had been serving as a guide for the knights stationed with Heinrich.

It sounded like the Shadow Guard had been effective in quickly removing resistance in two of the three attacks. Ian Wright had been in charge of the last group. Somehow they’d managed to break through the Imperium perimeter. Knowing Ian, he’d probably had a spirit out and about, which had given them some warning. Those knights had made it out into the streets, and that raid had turned into a long, running gun battle down the Nanking Road. There had been no word from any of those knights, but there was still a possibility that some of them had been able to escape. Since they hadn’t called in, Sullivan figured that was mighty unlikely, but at times like this, it was best for the troops to cling to whatever hope they had left.

He kept his expression flat. Inside, Sullivan knew this was his fault and he accepted full responsibility. He’d made the call. Dr. Wells’ idea had seemed like their best option, so Sullivan had run with it. If he hadn’t stuck Toru out there as a personal insult to the whole Imperium, would they have gotten this level of response? Sure, they’d been betrayed by one of their own, but it had been Sullivan’s call which had put them all in danger. The Imperium had killed those knights, but they’d only been able to do so because Sullivan had put them there.

It wouldn’t do to let the others know his dark thoughts. They might not realize it yet, but the mission still had to go on.

Bob Southunder stepped back from the table and ran one hand across his bald cranium. Even the experienced pirate captain didn’t know what to say. Lady Origami and Barns were there, both of them looking pale and scared. Buckminster Fuller and Chris Schirmer had come into the ready room near the end of Heinrich’s report. They’d surely heard enough to know how bad things were. The Cog and the Fixer were both stained with grease and stunk of chemicals from their project, which had taken over the cargo hold.

“Is your device ready?” Sullivan asked by way of greeting.

“It is based upon my previous nullification technology, only multireinforced and omnireconfigured to repel a portion of the recently discovered Enemy geometries instead. Despite the scavenged materials being insufficient to complement the tensegrity of the spherical—”

“Yeah, I got it rigged so it’ll function,” Schirmer said, quickly demonstrating the difference between scientists and engineers by getting right down to how things actually work. “The hard part is going to be where we’ll have to have to put this dirigible in order to make it effective.”

“Where exactly do we need to place my ship?” Pirate Bob asked suspiciously.

At least Fuller was excited that he had a new gizmo to play with. “The magically charged particles’ range is functionally unlimited, but they must travel in a straight plane. The further out from the curvature of spaceship Earth, the greater the area of the nullification zone!”

“Real high altitude. Higher we can get this thing, the better.” Schirmer explained. “It’ll take a minute to move the array back and forth. Think of it like a cone. But the higher we get, the more ground we can sweep.”

“Real high altitude, like where the entire Imperium can see us in broad daylight and shoot their line-of-sight Peace Rays at us? That’s a hell of a good plan,” Barns said sarcastically. “I’m a good pilot, but I’m not dodging-Peace-Rays good.”

“Nearest land-based Peace Ray is in Japan. Given the altitude the Traveler is theoretically capable of, we would be over the horizon . . . They could be radioed our coordinates and start flinging death rays, but their odds of hitting us are slim to none,” Captain Southunder muttered. “The real concern is, how close is that Kaga class we saw on the way in? We’ve been parked for days and there’s been no sign of that monster on the teleradar device.” Pirate Bob wasn’t coming out and saying it; there were supposedly only a few of them built so far, and one had gotten splashed along with the Tokugawa, but they all knew that if the Chairman was in Shanghai, then that meant that one of the Imperium’s super battleships would be close. “That beast and its ray beams are the only thing I’m scared of. Anything else in this sky we can outrange, ou run, or outclimb. Good thing I can control the weather. I can provide us some cover at least.”

“That will not work!” Buckminster Fuller exclaimed. “The refraction of atmospheric moisture will cause a dissolution of the concentrated magical energies—”

“It won’t shoot as far in the rain or fog,” Schirmer explained. “That’ll defeat the purpose. We’ll only get maximum power in a clear sky.”

“I’m just going to keep you around as Mr. Fuller’s translator from now on,” Pirate Bob said. “Thank you, Mr. Schirmer.”

“You still wish to go through with this?” Lady Origami asked Sullivan quietly.

Sullivan nodded. “Got no choice. This is our only shot. He’ll come to Shanghai for sure now that he thinks he’s got us on the run.”

“He does have us on the run,” Barns pointed out.

“Yeah. So he won’t expect us. Toru’s probably gone, but I’m sticking with Wells’ theory of the man. He’d come to the party now just to gloat.”

“Is Dr. Wells among the dead?” Buckminster Fuller asked.

“He was with Ian’s bunch. They made a run for it.” Sullivan shrugged. “So maybe . . .” Probably.

“Too bad. He was an intellectual peer, a charming conversationalist, and I much enjoyed his attempts at describing my childhood based entirely upon my current speech patterns, an absolutely fascinating endeavor indeed.” Fuller Said. “I would say that the untimely loss of such a great mind will be a terrible thing for humanity, except for that part where he was absolutely terrifying and completely amoral.”

“Yep . . .” He’d gotten the alienist sprung from jail just to get him killed too. One more failure to throw on the pile. Sullivan turned to Southunder. “I know it’s dangerous, Captain, but I’m still asking you to do this.”

Southunder mulled it over. He turned and walked to the map on the wall, running one bony finger from their current position up the coast to Shanghai. “Even if we don’t attract that Kaga, half the Imperium navy will come after us.” The captain scowled at the map, as if that would give him any better answers. “I would ask only one thing. Before we depart this village, we explain to the crew exactly what we face, take volunteers, and then we ask every single person without an absolutely vital responsibility to get off. I know some of the local captains. I could call in a favor and arrange their passage home. We will make this attempt, but only with a skeleton crew.”

The captain didn’t want any extra blood on his hands. Sullivan understood the sentiment, especially today. “Agreed.”

“What about the rest of Wells’ plan?” Schirmer asked. “We need boots on the ground, but we’re down almost everyone. Heinrich’s got five men on the other side of the town, and the Shanghai Grimnoir are all dead.”

“Not all of us.” Zhao had entered the room silently. Sullivan didn’t even know how long the kid had been there. Zhao hadn’t talked much on the ride back or during the walk through the woods after they’d ditched the patrol boat. Getting betrayed by somebody you believed was a friend, and then executing your parents’ killer, was a lot to absorb. The burdens of leadership were tough, even tougher when everyone you were in charge of was gone and somehow you weren’t. “I will return to Shanghai and meet with Heinrich. We will still attack when Du’s gangsters begin their riot.”

“Assuming that big-eared bastard keeps his word,” Barns said.

“I will make sure he does.” There was ice in the young man’s words. “If he does not, he will regret it, and then I will find a way to distract the military myself. This is my fault. Pang was one of my men, and I trusted him, like a fool.”

“Naw.” Sullivan shook his head. That sort of crushing weight didn’t belong on a teenager. It was Sullivan’s to bear. If there was anything he was good at, it was not being crushed under a lot of weight, and he’d gathered a lot over the years. Zhao was new at this. Sullivan had lots of practice. “You were lied to by a snake. Happens to the best of us. I brought us here. This was my plan. My responsibility. Got it?”

Zhao didn’t respond. It would have to do.

Schirmer returned to his point. Apparently Fixers were compelled to tackle all problems, not just the mechanical ones. “Every last knight you pulled out of the river is injured and in no shape to fight, and our Healer’s dead. Even if the new Chairman’s one-tenth what the old Chairman was, you’ll need more men to confront him. I can go with you.”

“I need you here to make sure Fuller’s device runs right. Exposing the Pathfinder is first. Killing its stooge is second. We have to wake the Iron Guard up. That’s all that matters.”

“All right.” Schirmer was a brave knight, but he knew Sullivan was right. Some problems just couldn’t be fixed. “I’ll shine the light so everybody can watch the roaches scatter.”

“I can go, burn many Imperium,” Lady Origami offered.

“You’re going to keep this ship in the air when it starts getting shot at. I got this myself.”

“You hide it, but I see your sadness. You think this is your fault. Being killed will not bring them back! It was too much danger when there were many of you!” Ori was getting upset. “Alone, you’ll die!”

“Maybe . . .” There was one other, drastic, final option. He hadn’t wanted to use it, because frankly, it scared him. He’d already figured it would come to this, even before they’d heard from Heinrich, so he’d retrieved the sheet he’d hidden in a compartment beneath his bunk. Sullivan reached into his coat and pulled out the folded sheet of paper that he had meticulously copied from the personal spell book of Anand Sivaram, when he had taken it from Bradford Carr. Sullivan carefully unfolded it and placed the paper on the table amidst the fused chunks of salt. “Maybe not.”

It would just look like complicated scribbles and lots of weird geometric designs to most folks. Sullivan had succeeded in binding several spells to his body over the last year, but those had all been child’s play compared to this thing. He’d thought of those as an intellectual, magical, and physical challenge, an opportunity to even the odds against Iron Guard. And even then each of those had been incredibly risky, with each one taking him right up to death’s door before he’d forced himself to come back. This thing was a monster in comparison. It was doomsday. Buckminster Fuller scanned over it and then let out an audible gasp.

“I know of only two men this spell’s been carved on. Giuseppe Zangara and the OCI man Crow. Zangara was a no-account weakling, and this turned him into the scariest Boomer anybody’s ever seen. And you all know what Crow the Summoner unleashed on D.C.”

Fuller swallowed hard. “It drastically magnifies the user’s Power, that much is clear, but there is so much there . . . I would think that there could be terrible side effects.”

“Don’t matter . . .” Of course there would be side effects. You didn’t screw around with this level of magic without dire consequences. Bradford Carr had been a fool. Zangara had already been crazy, but this thing had gradually pushed Crow right over the edge. Sullivan had studied Sivaram’s book, and though the actual Spellbound curse the Grimnoir elders were so scared of hadn’t been in there, this thing had been. He figured it was a sort of early prototype of the Spellbound curse. The elders would surely come apart if they learned what he was about to do, not that it mattered, since this was more than likely a one-way trip. “All I need to know is, can you carve this spell on me?”

Fuller was shaking. The others didn’t get it, but Fuller did. The Cog could read magic, simple as most folks could read letters. One slip and Sullivan was dead. He understood exactly what Sullivan was asking, and God bless him for it, he manned up. “Yes. Yes, I believe I can do that.”

As Toru had said back when they’d first embarked on this quest: they’d defeat the Pathfinder, or they’d die trying.

Art to come

Rasputin