Healing the sick, walking through walls? Sure, that’s neat an’ all, but I met this one brother who could play bagpipes you could swing to. Now that’s real magic.
—Duke Ellington,
Interview, 1927
Paris, France
Faye was waiting for Jacques Montand to arrive at the little café, rather patiently, she might add, when she realized that she was being watched. She had spotted the man on the sidewalk that morning. Then when she’d caught a glimpse of his reflection in a window a few blocks later, she’d gotten suspicious. Taking a seat in the front of the same café ten minutes after Faye had arrived had been the final straw.
He was a fairly average-looking fellow, tall, lean, older than her, but not by more than ten years at the most. His overcoat and fedora were dark, nothing that would stand out on the street, and he was pretty good at looking like he wasn’t watching her from behind the newspaper he was pretending to read.
A quick, focused check of her head map confirmed that the man had magic. He was an Active. She tried not to feel smug as she congratulated herself on picking out the tail. Lance had called that sort of thing field craft, which made sense, since, like hunting, it was all about paying attention. Faye’s initial reaction to suspicious men following her around was to greet them, preferably with sudden, overwhelming violence, but today she refrained. If he was Imperium, he’d show it soon enough.
But what if the stranger was using her to find Jacques? There were all sorts of nefarious groups that wanted to murder the leaders of the Grimnoir. Mr. Browning had tried to warn her about that many times. But everybody thought she was dead, so using her to find them didn’t make much sense either.
Well, if he was an Imperium spy sent to find the Grimnoir elders, it would serve Jacques right for not helping her find a place to stay where she wouldn’t have to worry about being spotted and followed. She’d been forced to get a hotel room. Which was annoying, both because she didn’t know her way around Paris at all and didn’t understand a word of the language, except that a lot of the words sounded like mumbly versions of Portuguese words, and also because hotel rooms in this part of town were expensive, and she had only borrowed one stack of money from Francis’ walk-in safe before she’d left America. To be fair, all of Francis’ money stacks tended to be really thick and made entirely out of large denominations, so she was in no danger of running out anytime soon, but it was more the principle of the matter.
Jacques arrived fifteen minutes late with a briefcase in hand. He smiled at the pretty young waitress, asked for something in French, and then took his time strolling across the room. She discreetly kept an eye on the stranger while Jacques took a seat across from her. The stranger’s eyes flicked over toward them briefly, and then back to the newspaper.
You’re pretty good, buddy, but I’m better. If he so much as twitched wrong, Faye would Travel him up to the top of that big funny-looking metal tower with the funny name and drop him off it.
“Good morning, my dear. You appear rather enthusiastic.”
She was always enthusiastic when she was thinking about how to take care of bad guys. Faye kept her voice a whisper. “The man by the window, he’s been watching me.”
Jacques didn’t even bother to look. “Well, you are a rather pretty young lady, Faye.”
Faye didn’t think of herself as pretty, but the compliment made her blush. “That’s not what I meant. He tailed me here.”
The senior Grimnoir nodded. “I see.” The waitress brought Jacques one of the fancy coffees and a plate of intricate little pastries. “Merci.”
“You ain’t worried?”
“Do you believe I should be?”
“What with all of the assassinating and whatnot, yeah, probably.”
Jacques’ eyes twinkled when he smiled. He cleared his throat loudly. The stranger looked up, Jacques looked over and nodded at him once. The stranger folded his newspaper, got up, tipped his hat at Faye, and walked out.
“He’s one of yours?”
“Of course,” Jacques said as he popped a pastry in his mouth.
“You were having me tailed?”
He finished chewing first. It would have been impolite to talk with his mouth full. “Only for your own safety. There are many international elements within this city that would be very interested in someone with your reputation.”
Faye snorted. “I don’t need protecting. I spotted him no problem.”
“Yes. You did. Did you spot the other three I sent, though?”
Faye looked around the room. None of these people seemed familiar in the slightest. “No . . .” He might have just been making it up to mess with her, but now she would be on the lookout just in case. “Way to go, Jacques. You know I was pretending to be dead.”
“No need to fear. These knights are as loyal to me as your friends are to John Browning or General Pershing before him. They will not say a word to anyone, especially the other elders, because I have asked them not to. I merely wanted to keep an eye on you. I’m curious to see if you will be able to spot the others now. They are compatriots of Whisper’s, and if I may be so bold as to say so, extremely talented individuals. That should prove to be an amusing challenge for you, no? So, are you ready to continue your lessons?” He did not wait for his response, but rather opened his briefcase and began shuffling through papers. “We will start with a small test.”
“What? Why?”
“Something you said before intrigued me.” Jacques placed a piece of paper and a pencil before her. A complicated maze filled the page. “Solve this.”
“What?”
“You have never solved a maze before? It is a children’s game.”
The whole thing seemed stupid to Faye. “No. Why would I have?”
“I forget myself, your upbringing was rather harsh on the frontier. I would imagine that any papers you had were saved for the outhouse.”
Faye’s eyes narrowed dangerously as she picked up the pencil. She contemplated stabbing Jacques with it.
“I joke. Please forgive my impertinence . . . It is simple. There is an entrance and there is an exit. Draw a line from one to the other. I wish to see how long it takes you.”
“This is dumb.” Faye folded the paper in half so that the two ends were touching, and then jabbed the pencil through. Problem solved. “There.”
“Heh . . . Just like a Traveler.” Jacques shook his head. “No. Not like that. Through the maze. Those are walls. You must not cross any of the existing lines.”
“Why?”
He thought about it for a moment, and then laughed. “The rest of us have to put up with walls. Please, just humor an old man and do it again.”
Faye studied the map. It was too easy. She put the lead down. “Why are you wasting my time on this stuff?” Back and forth, up and down, twenty-seven separate turns, and done. She passed it back. Jacques’ mouth was agape. “You’ve got that surprised look again, Jacques.”
“Fascinating . . . Here, do another.”
This one had twice as many lines inked on it. Faye sighed as she took it in. It took longer to actually draw her way through it than it did to analyze it. Sixty-eight changes of direction, and she was done.
“You did not backtrack once, not a single mistake.”
“Why would I? Jeez, is this what normal folks do for fun?”
Jacques’ eyes were opened a bit too wide. He was flabbergasted but trying not to show it. He skipped several other papers and went to the bottom part of his stack. “Try this one.”
This page was absolutely full of twists and turns, not just square edges. Faye simply put the pencil down and drew the path through it, seventy-four turns and eighteen points where she had to choose from divergent paths, but she could instantly see which ones were dead ends, so she just skipped those. Dead ends were for suckers. “Really, Jacques. When do we get to the part where I master magic?” And by the time she said that, she was done.
He took it from her and traced his finger over the pencil line. “Unbelievable.”
“You French folks must be entertained super easy. In America we’ve got this thing called radio . . .”
“One more.” Jacques handed her the very bottom sheet from his stack. She’d thought the last one had been as full as possible, but this one was absolutely filled with tiny corridors. It must have taken hours to draw. The paper was actually heavy with ink.
Her eyes flicked over it once. “I can’t. Not your boring, normal walk-around-stuff way, at least. It’s all blocked.”
Jacques took the paper back slowly and sat it on the table in front of him. He stared at it for a long time.
“You trying to figure it out, because trust me, I already—”
“No. I know it is, but you figured that out in a second . . . There are hundreds of possible paths there.”
“Yeah, but when you know what you are looking for, some stuff fits, and some stuff don’t. It’s not hard to figure out.”
He was still looking at the maze with a funny look on his face. “How does the world appear through your strange grey eyes?”
Faye didn’t know how to answer that, other than seeing a little bit better in the dark than most folks she knew, Faye didn’t think her eyes were any big deal. They made it so she had to wear dark-lensed sunglasses out in public to keep people from recognizing her as a Traveler, but other than that, no big deal. “I just see stuff normal, same as anybody. I just think about how it all goes together better, I guess. I’ve got this map in my head—”
“Yes. You’ve mentioned that, but in other Travelers, it is more of an instinct. For you, it is something more.” Jacques seemed distant, distracted. “Very few Travelers live long enough to get very good at their peculiar form of magic. This thing in your mind, it is really like a map?”
She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live without a head map, or even worse, how terribly limiting it would be, not having the freedom to Travel. “Well, that’s the best way to explain it I guess.”
Jacques was quiet for a really long time. She thought about asking him another question, but he seemed to be thinking really hard about something. Whatever it was, something must have clicked, because he started talking, all while still staring at that maze.
“Whisper confirmed for me that you were not born with grey eyes. All Travelers are born with grey eyes, but you were born with blue eyes. Your eyes turned grey on September 18th, 1918, the day we killed the last Spellbound.”
“I don’t remember . . .” As far as Faye knew, she’d always been a Traveler.
“Yes, you were far too little. He was named Anand Sivaram. What do you know of him, Faye?”
“Just what Whisper told me. He was a real bad man. He was a Traveler, but real smart.”
“Smart is an understatement. He was an astonishingly brilliant man, perhaps one of the greatest minds of our time.”
“It sounds like you respected him.”
Jacques chuckled. “How could you not? One must give respect to those who deserve it because of what they are capable of, even as you despise them for how they use their capabilities. Sivaram was born in one of the poorest slums in a very poor nation, with a rare form of magic that everyone around him saw as a malicious curse.”
“I know the feeling.”
“The parallel had not escaped me. Sivaram mastered teleportation, Traveling, as you are fond of calling it. As you are well aware, most Travelers do not live to adulthood. It is a form of Power most unforgiving of mistakes. Perhaps it was the complicated and dangerous nature of his Power that honed his curiosity so, but Sivaram embarked on a lifelong quest to understand magic. He was one of the first to discover that you could fashion spells and bind bits of the Power to them in order to create various effects. He went on to invent many of the spells we take for granted today, such as using the Power as a method of long-distance communication. He fashioned many others, great and marvelous spells that have since been lost to us. It was his greatest spell that pushed him over the edge into madness and murder. His notes have since been scattered around the world, but I sought out every last piece I could in order to better understand him.”
“So you could kill him better?”
“Of course. I may not look it now, Faye, but I was once quite the dashing leader of Grimnoir. The task of stopping his reign of terror fell to me. As you know, a Traveler can be a wily foe. Now imagine, if you will, a Traveler who came to hunger for death, and did everything within his considerable ability to cause death on a massive scale.”
The thought made Faye uncomfortable, mostly because she knew she’d be super good at it. She tried to hide her discomfort by nonchalantly eating one of the pastries. It was delicious.
“Sivaram’s earlier works were rational, coherent. He was a compulsive letter writer, and there was so much correspondence to choose from. I read so many of his words that I began to feel like we were old companions. I truly believe he started out as a kind, generous, gentle man, but the more he delved into the mysteries of the Power’s true nature, the more it changed him. By the time he’d fashioned the spell that you would come to inherit, his character had fundamentally changed. He believed the Power was talking to him, actually communicating its will and wishes. He became delusional, erratic, and eventually driven mad with homicidal urges.”
“That ain’t a real long drive for some folks.” Faye could immediately tell that her attempt at humor had failed.
“This spell’s burden was more than any one man could bear.”
“I intend to prove you wrong.”
Jacques paused. “My apologies. I did not mean it that way.”
“It’s okay. He went crazy and started killing good folks. I wouldn’t be here talking to you now if I was planning on doing the same thing, now would I? I’ve got to know, though, what did he think the Power was asking him to do?”
“By that point, Sivaram’s writings had become far too difficult to understand. They were simply the babblings of a madman.”
“But . . .”
“If I were to guess, he thought that the Power had chosen him to be its protector.”
Considering what Faye now knew to be out there, that was a sobering thought. The Chairman had thought the same thing about himself, and look how that had turned out.
Jacques took one last look at the complicated, unsolvable maze. “We must go on a journey, Faye. There is someone I would like for you to meet.”
UBF Traveler
“What the hell is this thing?” Lance asked as he stared at the body. “Some type of demon?”
“It isn’t a Summoned . . .” Ian Wright was standing a few feet away, keeping one hand over his mouth. “Summoned have a feeling of . . . How can I explain this? Connection. This thing isn’t linked to any Summoner. Plus it would’ve dissipated back into smoke and ink when it was killed. The insides of a Summoned are basically smoke and goo, all kept in a shell based on the imagination of somebody like me. This thing has guts.”
“I realize that. I know demons pretty well.” Lance absently tapped his permanently damaged leg. He had been mauled by a Summoned when he was younger. “But you got another explanation for this critter?”
There were half a dozen of men assembled in the sick bay. The corpse had been dragged in and dropped on a tarp. Sullivan hadn’t said a single word while they’d examined the thing that had attacked them at the Imperium monitoring station. He’d only leaned in a corner, smoking and thinking over the implications of their discovery, angry at knowing that he’d been used.
It was hard to look at. Sullivan had skinned plenty of game in his youth, so he was no stranger to the sight of bare red muscle, but you shouldn’t be missing your skin and still be running around. And this thing had been fast, fast enough to take apart three wounded Grimnoir and their only Healer. It looked like a man, but its limbs were too long, its chest too big and its spine was all curved and bowed. The toes looked more like fingers, and its teeth . . . The bodies of his dead men showed what those teeth could do.
Dr. Wells knelt next to the corpse, poking at it maliciously with a length of pipe. None of them actually wanted to touch it with their bare hands. “It isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen in my travels. However . . .” He squished the pipe into the hole in the ribs and rolled the purple and red bits around. “I’m fairly certain this was once a human being.”
Lance snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I can assure you. I’ve seen many, many human organs in my day, and these, no matter how deformed some of them have become, are clearly human organs.”
Lance wasn’t convinced. “I know you’ve probably read a lot of anatomy textbooks, Doc—”
Wells pried some of the ribs a bit further apart. “Textbooks? Hmm . . . Yes,” he replied absently. “Yes, of course that is what I meant . . . In textbooks.”
“But that ain’t no man. Look at those teeth! Damn thing’s got jaws like a hyena. And those claws . . . I’ve hunted damn near every corner of the world, and the closest thing I’ve seen to those were on an anteater.”
Heinrich had been nearly as quiet as Sullivan for most of their rushed autopsy. “We know the Imperium has performed terrible experiments. We’ve seen with our own eyes how badly Unit 731’s failures can be. Perhaps this is the next step in their eugenic madness?”
“It’s not one of theirs,” Ian stated with grim finality. “I’ve seen their work. They twist people, but not anything like this. I’ve been to one of the schools. My . . . Somebody I knew was lost in one of them. This isn’t how 731 works. There’s no brands on this body, no spells at all. Those Jap Cog bastards can’t twist flesh without magic.”
“Wright and Wells are both right,” Sullivan finally spoke. Toru had warned them about what had happened the last time around. He just hadn’t expected to see it again this soon. “This was a man, and it wasn’t Imperium magic that did this to him. This was something worse. You agree, Fuller?”
The Cog had been completely silent so far, standing in the corner, as far from the skinless man as possible. At first he’d seemed disgusted by the broken carcass, but then he had focused in on trying to understand the creature’s magical nature, and had been off in his own world ever since. He had a small notebook in one hand and a pencil in the other, and he was either writing quickly or sketching, or maybe a little of both. “Fuller!” Sullivan snapped his fingers.
Fuller’s head popped up, for a split second seemingly bewildered by the distraction. He looked back down at his notes, and then back up at Sullivan. It seemed to take a moment for his brain to shift back to reality and away from esoteric formula and odd geometries enough for him to form actual human language. “You promised that this expedition would witness magic like mankind has never before seen. You were true to your word. This . . .” and for once the man who had extra words for everything seemed stymied. “This thing is bonded to magical elements the likes of which I have never even dreamed of.”
Dr. Wells had given up on his autopsy and let the bloody pipe fall on the floor with a clatter. “What does that mean?”
“It has magic, but the power geometries are multistacked across planar elements!”
The rest of them exchanged confused glances. Wells ran one hand through his thinning hair. “You say so.”
“No, no. What you think of as magic is cords of omnidirectional energy capable of distorting physical law and probability. These cords have been tied into a knot. My Power can see the connection, but my mind is unable to untangle the knots. How? Why? I do not know.” Fuller looked back at his notes. “I need time to think.”
“Think quick.” Sullivan said. “I got a feeling we’ll be running into more.”
“You think this is the Pathfinder’s doing?” Lance asked.
“I know it.” Sullivan ground his cigarette out in a nearby ashtray, turned, and strode out of the room.
Sullivan’s words were left hanging in the air like the cloud of tobacco smoke.
“Hey!” Wells shouted after him. “What do you want us to do with this thing when we’re done?”
“Burn it.”
It was hard to keep his cool when he was that furious, but luckily nobody spoke to him as Sullivan made his way to the cargo hold. He found Toru in his quarters, standing in front of a mirror he’d hung from a wall pipe, pulling shards of broken glass out of his face with a pair of pliers.
The Iron Guard healing kanji had done its work, and Toru’s jagged lacerations were mostly closed, though Toru still seemed shaky from blood loss. “Sullivan.” He gave a curt nod into the mirror. “What do you—”
Sullivan grabbed Toru by the shoulders, spun him around, and slammed him back into the wall. The mirror shattered. Surprised, Toru didn’t even have time to use his magic before Sullivan’s elbow landed on his throat. “Talk, you bastard!”
Toru’s face turned red. “Unhand me.”
“What do you know?”
“I said unhand me,” Toru answered, his calm visibly slipping.
“That thing came for you. The Pathfinder’s already inside the Imperium. What do you know?”
Toru flared his Power. The impact of the hand against Sullivan’s chest hit like a sledgehammer in a Rockville quarry. Sullivan called on his own magic in time and absorbed the hit. Gravity twisted and Toru hit the wall hard enough to bend the metal.
“I lost four men back there!”
“Do you think that makes you special?” Toru shoved him again, driving his magic harder. The grating under Sullivan’s boots screeched in protest against the extra gravity. “You will lose more before this is over!”
“You Jap bastard—”
“Gentlemen.” Neither of them had seen Captain Southunder walk in. The old man seemed relatively calm, but his words were hard. “If you two are going to fight, you will take it off my airship. I will not tolerate a Heavy and a Brute carrying on and wrecking my fine new vessel. The rest of us do not particularly relish the thought of being stranded at the North Pole, nor do I wish to walk home. Either one of you two wants to start violating the laws of physics and common sense, you will take it outside, or my marauders will escort you outside. Is that understood, Mr. Sullivan?”
Sullivan stepped away from Toru. “All right.”
“I expect a more level head from you, Mr. Sullivan . . .”
Normally, that would be true. It took a lot to rile somebody who was as constant as gravity. “I can’t abide losing men.”
“A noble sentiment, but breaking my ship will not bring them back . . . Mr. Toru?”
Toru looked like he was ready to fight, but he paused, realizing that using his Power had caused the wound in his side to partially split open again. Blood was seeping out. “Look at what you have done.”
“Walk it off.”
“Mr. Toru?” Southunder asked again.
“Very well.” Toru glared at the old pirate. “Captain.”
“Splendid.” Southunder folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “That nonsense out of the way, I’d also like to hear an answer to Mr. Sullivan’s questions. It seems there have been some complications. So Fuller fixed the Chairman’s toy and it showed the Pathfinder is already inside the Imperium, I take it.”
“Something is eating magic all over the Imperium.” Sullivan gave Toru a suspicious look. “Camping on top of every single place that’s got itself an Imperium school. Then some sort of hyena-ape-man came through a mirror and attacked Toru here before it slaughtered a few of my men.”
Toru gave a small nod. “A passable summary.”
“You want to tell me how that is possible, Mr. Toru?”
“A sufficiently skilled spellbinder is capable of sending small amounts of physical matter through a communication spell. My mastery of the kanji is insufficient to perform such a feat. I was unaware of anyone who could send living matter through a mirror, thus I was caught by surprise. It will not happen again.”
In better circumstances, Sullivan would have been excited to learn about this new magic trick of the Imperium’s, but these were not better circumstances. “I know Faye did something like that once, Traveled right through a communication spell.” In fact, she’d even done it to try to kill Toru. “But why were you using one? Who were you talking to?”
“The imposter.”
Toru was lucky Sullivan needed his help, or he would have just eaten a .45 slug right there. “You better have a damn good reason.”
“As a result of leaving my order, I have been cut off, unable to send word to my former brothers. This base had a mirror prepared to directly reach the high command. The Iron Guard are far more suited to deal with this threat than this puny expedition. Of course I used it. I challenged him to do his duty to the Imperium to stop the Pathfinder, and I offered my suicide in exchange. Apparently the imposter disagreed.”
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Toru frowned. “Would you not have done the same thing?”
Probably. But he wouldn’t give the smug Jap bastard the satisfaction. “You shouldn’t have been alone.”
“Yes . . . Because the Grimnoir are so trusting of me that they would have no problem with me manipulating powerful Imperium kanji under their noses inside a secret base.”
The anger, though still there, had lost some of its direction, and now Sullivan just felt tired and frustrated. He took a seat on a nearby crate. “So what’s going on at the schools?”
“School, my eye,” Southunder said. “Torture chambers is more like it.”
Toru looked like he wanted to argue, but was wise enough to let it pass. “I do not know. Whatever is happening, it began after my father’s death. The imposter revealed himself to me. He is a senior Iron Guard named Dosan Saito, one of my sensei.”
“Sensei?”
“Teacher. Saito was one of Okubo Tokugawa’s closest advisors and a highly respected member of the cabinet. The betrayal of a man so honored is unexpected.”
“You assholes and your honor. He’s got your whole empire snowed, and good.” Sullivan took out his pack of cigarettes and lit up. They were in one of the areas of the dirigible where smoking was frowned on, but Southunder let it go. Which was good. Sullivan was willing not to fight Toru for the safety of the ship, but the smoking was nonnegotiable. “So is this Saito a Ringer or something?”
“No. Like me, he is a Brute, a relatively common type of magic. I do not know how he is capable of such a compelling disguise. He has deceived men who have known Okubo Tokugawa for decades.”
“Well, I hope he enjoys himself,” Southunder said. “I frankly do not give a damn which tyrant is in charge of your gang of tyrants, as long as he does his part to destroy this space monster before it is too late.”
Toru took a deep breath, as if composing himself before saying something difficult.
Sullivan’s cigarette dangled from his lip. “Oh, what now?”
“I believe Saito is in league with the Pathfinder.”
The three men were quiet for a very long time. Things had just gotten a whole lot worse, and sometimes that took a moment to really sink in. That explained the sabotage of the detector, and also their surprise guest. Sullivan closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the engines. They were lifting off, leaving Axel Heiberg. In a few minutes Barns would be calling, asking for their new heading, and frankly, Sullivan didn’t have a clue what to tell him.
Toru broke the silence. “Each Pathfinder has been different than the one before. The last creature worked quickly, gathering an army as it went, consuming Power as rapidly as it could until it was strong enough to send its message. It was direct, simple. This one is different. It seems to be working through subterfuge, building its forces gradually in the dark.”
“Your point, Mr. Toru?”
“All is not lost until it is strong enough to send for its master. The last creature was based upon strength and was defeated through strength. This one works through cunning, and therefore must be defeated with cunning. There seem to be plans afoot that we are only now discerning. The key to our victory is through disrupting those plans.”
Captain Southunder shook his head. “And how do you intend to accomplish that?”
The threat was inside the Imperium, but the Imperium was also the one force best prepared to stop the threat. “We give them a wake-up call. We expose the Chairman as a fake,” Sullivan answered.
“It is the only way. The Pathfinder’s forces are spread across the Imperium schools. Alone we could never cleanse them all. When the Iron Guard understand that they have been deceived and that the Pathfinder is among them, they will strike back, and they will win. We have a hundred men. They have a hundred thousand.”
“Like the Iron Guard will believe the likes of us.” Southunder was incredulous. “The Grimnoir are a thorn in their side, I’ve been raiding their shipping for decades, and Toru’s a turncoat. You couldn’t even convince your own government, Sullivan. How are we supposed to convince them?
“They think the Chairman’s immortal.” Sullivan looked to Toru. The Brute nodded. They were on the same page. “So we kill him again.”
Toru had the smile of a shark. “In public.”
Art to come
Skinless man
