Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles Read online

  “That’s . . . that’s kind of sad,” Faye said.

  “Eh . . .” Jane shrugged. “You get used to it. This is all I’ve ever done, so I can’t complain. I’m a Mender after all, that’s my God-given gift, and I’ve got no shortage of injured people this way. My friends have left things behind to do this. I never had to, and even if I did, I’d still do it anyway. I’m just glad that I never had to make that choice.”

  Faye understood. ”I don’t really have anything either. I guess if my Grandpa was still alive, I’d still be there, with him, happy. Now? I think it’s awful nice of you folks to let me stay here for a spell.” Faye didn’t know what she was going to do next. She was still figuring out what had happened, as secret societies and Tesla superweapons were a bit over her head, but General Pershing had said that she was welcome to stay with them as long as she wanted.

  “Leaving things behind is tough.” Jane placed a bookmark to hold her page then finally set her book down. “You haven’t met my boyfriend yet. That’s how it was for him. He was a radio star. Had his own show on the American Broadcasting Network and everything, best voice in the world, people used to say. He read the news, he was half the voices on the detective shows. Everyone loved him, and then one day they didn’t anymore. They hated him.”

  “What happened?”

  “People found out he had Power, that he could influence people with his words, get inside their heads. They pretty much ran him out on a rail. It ruined his life.” Jane sniffed and reopened her book. “Poor Dan.”

  “Don’t be hasty. Young Mr. Garrett turned out to be one of our finest operatives,” Browning suggested as he rose. “He would never have met you either, my dear, if he’d continued in the radio business, and I don’t believe he would have it any other way.” Jane blushed. “Now, if you will excuse me, I do have some business to conduct.”

  ***

  His eyes fluttered, open enough so that he could see who was at his bedside. He made out the scarecrow form and shiny baldness, decided that it was John Moses Browning, and closed his eyes again because any light was particularly painful today.

  “Yes, John?” Pershing whispered. “Did Garrett recover the device?”

  “We’ve not heard anything yet,” Browning replied.

  “I see . . .” That meant that there was another reason for the visit, and Pershing already knew what it was. Browning was his second-in- command, one of his oldest surviving friends, a deeply honorable man, and keeping the truth from him was more painful than the cancers eating his bones.

  Browning sighed. “I’m concerned, Jack.”

  “The Chairman’s trying to reassemble a weapon that blew a thousand-mile hole in Siberia,” he laughed, but it came out as a painful wheezing noise. “I’m a touch concerned, myself.”

  “That Cog, Einstein, figured that it was such a release of Power that it would have been felt in other realities. Concern is an understatement, but we both already know that . . .” Browning paused. “That’s not why I’m here. I’m a little worried about your recent recruiting.”

  Pershing would have nodded if he could have. “Please, continue.”

  “In the past we have always thoroughly checked people out before we revealed ourselves to them. That’s always been the Grimnoir way. That’s the only reason we’ve stayed alive as long as we have. The Chairman’s spies are everywhere, and if we brought one of them into our ranks, it would destroy us.”

  Pershing knew that Browning was utterly correct. It was the single biggest reason he could no longer even trust his own government or even the Army that he’d helped build. The Imperium’s tendrils were deep into everything. “Our numbers are too few. We’ve lost so many good men. If we do not increase our numbers, we will fail.”

  “I agree, but first it was Delilah Jones. We barely knew anything about her, except that her father was a bitter, miserable crank of a man, who would surely have drunk himself to death if the Imperium hadn’t found him first . . . and she herself is of questionable character, a criminal even.”

  “We’ve recruited criminals before, John. They can go places that others can’t. You’re just offended because she was a New Orleans whore.”

  Browning sighed. “No need to be vulgar, but yes.”

  “She did what she had to do to survive. When she discovered her Power, she turned to more lucrative crime.”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing. And this Heavy you have running around with Garrett and Heinrich. He’s a murderer.”

  Pershing couldn’t deny that. “And a war hero.” He knew that if Browning found out the other reason he’d recruited Sullivan, he’d surely think that the Pale Horse’s curse had finally driven him mad. “It balances.”

  “Well, we should just take a trip up to Rockville and clean the place out then . . . Either one of them could have been co-opted by the Imperium. We’ve not investigated either as we normally would.”

  “We can’t spare the manpower to investigate anyone.” The American Grimnoir had borne the brunt of the secret war against the Imperium. The international leadership had their own fights, as the Imperium was active in virtually ever corner of the globe, but it seemed to him that all the tough jobs had been assigned to his people, and the Americans had paid for it in blood. As usual.

  “And now you’re letting this young lady, Ms. Sally Faye Vierra, stay here. Do you plan on giving her the oath as well?”

  “Oh, please don’t tell me you think that little thing is an Imperium spy?”

  He snorted. “Unless the Imperium has found a magic kanji for channeling the Power of irresistible cuteness, no, of course not. She’s a wonderful child, but she’s only a child. Consorting with us has put her in danger.”

  “I’ve led men into battle that were younger,” Pershing responded.

  “Those were men.” Most of the knights of the Grimnoir were male, most of their female members served in a support or intelligence fashion. Brutes, like Delilah, were historically an exception for reasons so obvious that even the harshest misogynist had to agree. “You want to start sending women into this meat grinder? Are we that desperate?”

  “Look around. We’ve taken seventy percent casualties over the last decade. We can’t protect the honor of the fairer sex if our entire nation is in slavery under the Chairman’s heel.”

  “It’s not right.”

  Pershing gave a noncommittal grunt. “She’s a girl, but she’s also a Traveler. We both know how rare those are. Think of the possibilities. Look what the Imperium has accomplished with their Travelers.”

  Pershing couldn’t see, but he knew Browning well enough to know that he would be shaking his head sadly. “You would turn that little girl into our own personal Shadow Guard?”

  The Imperium had a few pure-Active units that they knew of, the warrior Iron Guard, the experimental Unit 731, and the Shadow Guard assassins. They were often referred to by their common name, ninja, and the Grimnoir had lost many to their poisoned blades over the years. “We’re better than them, but we’ll do whatever must be done to win. Our way of life, our freedom, depends on it.”

  “That’s the same thing you said to Traveling Joe twenty years ago, if you recall. And he walked away and never looked back. He’d rather be a farmer than another murderer in the night. At least there’s honor in milking cows.” There was a rustle of cloth as Browning got up from the chair.

  Pershing had caused quite the stir when he’d been the first Grimnoir leader to invite coloreds into the Society. He doubted anyone would be surprised should he start drafting children. “Fine. We’ll give the young lady a home and a proper education, Lord knows she needs one, and I won’t ask her to do anything, but mark my words, her nature is such that she’ll want to give some payback to those Imperial bastards.”

  “And to think that I’d come up here worried that you were losing your judgment. Rather, it turns out you’re as ruthless a man as ever.”

  “I have a history of winning wars, John. That’s why I was
given this job.”

  The door closed and he was alone in the dark. Browning was right to question his wisdom. It did seem foolhardy on its face, but he had his own reasons for bringing in these new people. It was time for some fresh blood.

  He no longer knew whom he could trust.

  In 1908 he’d led a small team on a suicide mission. The Tunguska Event had been a mere test-firing of Tesla’s Geo-Tel. If the Peace Ray was a scalpel, the Geo-Tel was a battle-ax. Only by the grace of God had they succeeded just as the blue pillar was starting to form over the East Coast and the Power itself was rising from the bowels of the Earth. The knights of New York had succeeded only by the narrowest of margins.

  He’d been so enraged that if they’d had the ability, Pershing would have turned it around and fired it at Tokyo. With that being an impossibility, he’d wanted the thing destroyed, but the international Grimnoir leadership had vetoed that, in the hope that someday they might be able to utilize it themselves. He’d broken up the device and given it to the surviving members of his team to keep safe. Only the inner circle of the Society knew who had the pieces.

  But now those men were dying one by one, which meant that someone had betrayed them. He alone knew where the final piece was, but did not dare tell any of his people. He needed outsiders.

  The bedroom door flew open with a bang. “It’s Garrett!” Lance shouted. There was a bustle of movement and the nervous voices of at least three people as the focal circle was activated. Of course, Pershing hadn’t felt the contact. His fingers had become so arthritic that his Grimnoir ring couldn’t be worn anymore.

  The flash of white light could be seen through his eyelids, but he didn’t complain. He was as anxious for the news as everyone else.

  Garrett’s voice came through a moment later.

  “Christiansen is dead. The device is gone.”

  Chapter 10

  It was nearly eleven o’clock at night—an immensely late hour for those latitudes—but the whole town was still gathered in the Gatlinburg courthouse yard, listening to the disputes of theologians. The Scopes trial had brought them in from all directions. There was a friar wearing a sandwich sign announcing that he was the Bible champion of the world. There was a Seventh-Day Adventist arguing that Clarence Darrow was the beast with seven heads and ten horns described in Revelation XIII, and that the end of the world was at hand. A charlatan magician was escorted from the premises for pulling a rabbit from a hat, while nearby a fundamentalist of the Merlin-Baptists pontificated on the epistles of St. Paul while shooting lightning from his eyes and none dared interrupt that sermon. There was the eloquent Dr. T.T. Martin, of Blue Mountain, Mississippi, who had come to town with a truckload of torches (the wooden, not the human kind) and hymn books to put Darwin in his place. There was a singing brother bellowing apocalyptic hymns. There was William Jennings Bryan, followed everywhere by a gaping crowd. It was better than the circus.

  —H.L. Mencken,

  Editorial in the Baltimore Mercurium

  about the Tennessee Magic-Monkey Trial, 1926

  New York City, New York

  Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant was enjoying the view from the top of the Empire State Building’s super-dirigible dock. A mighty six-hundred-foot hybrid lifter was in the final moments of docking. Cables were coming out of the sky in great unfurling masses and his UBF employees were scurrying about securing the great beast. Two smaller dirigibles had been serviced in the last hour, and each one had been moved along with shocking efficiency.

  The wind over the city was potent today, but with two full-time Weathermen dedicated to calming the skies, dirigibles would be able to dock safely on even the gustiest of days. There were two more Cracklers on staff to deal with the static electricity and lightning issues, and even a single underpaid Torch just in case there was a fire. This might not have been the largest United Blimp & Freight station, but it was certainly the crown jewel of innovation.

  One of his retainers arrived, moving familiarly past his security man, and passed over the latest daily business summaries. There were two new orders from the British for small patrol craft and two complete air trains for Belgium, and they’d received the third installment payment for the Imperium’s diplomatic flagship vessel. Construction was complete and it was being taken for its test runs at the Michigan facility. If everything shook out to spec it could be shipped to Japan in a matter of days. He looked forward to the last payment, since the Japs always paid in gold bars, and he couldn’t care less if some of it had surely been melted down from Chinamen’s teeth.

  A further note indicated that one of the admirals he was paying under the table at the Navy Department had confirmed that the general staff were very frightened of the new Japanese Kaga-class super-dirigibles, and would be ordering their own fleet upgrades in the next fiscal year. Perfect. “It’s a good day to be me,” he said aloud, then chuckled. Every day was a good day when you were the richest man in the world.

  “Yes, Mr. Stuyvesant,” his bodyguard agreed. Cornelius couldn’t remember this one’s name, but he was a big Brute, and had come highly recommended.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, idiot,” Cornelius snapped. The Brute nodded politely. It was best to keep such men in their proper place. Fighting dogs should always be kept on a leash. He made a few notes on the file and passed it back to his retainer, who then retreated from the balcony with ratlike swiftness.

  Cornelius leaned on the balcony and savored his cigar. The dirigible was almost locked down. Who said that it was an economic depression? He was doing just fine.

  “Hello, Mr. Stuyvesant.”

  The voice had come from behind. Nobody was supposed to be out here except for him and his immediate entourage. Somebody was getting fired for this. He turned around, ready to bellow his fury, and stopped, surprised.

  “Harkeness . . .”

  The Pale Horse had returned. He was standing there, calm as death, in a pitch-black suit, a craggy shadow of a man. One bony hand was resting on his bodyguard’s shoulder, and the giant Brute collapsed to the deck, grey-faced and gasping for air. Harkeness removed his hand and stepped forward.

  “Good evening, sir. I have come for that favor.”

  Cornelius took an involuntary step back and crashed violently into the railing. “Don’t come any closer.”

  Harkeness smiled with his yellowed teeth. “I’m a businessman, Mr. Stuyvesant. Why would I hurt you now? I’m just here to collect on our deal . . . You weren’t thinking of backing out now, were you?” His accent seemed to accentuate every wrong word. “That’d be rather upsetting.”

  The bodyguard turned on his side and vomited blood in a great gushing mass. He convulsed violently, then was still. Cornelius screamed.

  “Oh, sorry about that. I get carried away sometimes. You’re going to want to have a Torch clean that up. Perhaps throw down some peroxide as well. Now as I was saying—”

  Cornelius thought fast. “He’s still alive! I don’t owe you anything until he’s dead. That was the deal.”

  “Come now. We both know General Pershing is as good as dead. I’ve given him three years of terrible suffering, and I stand in awe of the man’s will. Anyone else would have eaten a bullet by now. I know that you know I speak the truth.”

  “It hasn’t accomplished what I wanted,” Cornelius shouted. “I wanted results.”

  “No. You wanted to fill the hole your son’s death left in your soul. You wanted to fill it with revenge, and you wanted the once-favored heir that had forsaken you to come crawling back to your fold, his pride broken. That did not occur, but that’s not my concern. You came to me for one thing, and one thing only: Death. Painful, lingering death.” Harkeness stepped forward, crowding Cornelius, until he could smell the tobacco on his breath. “Black Jack Pershing will be dead soon, but I need my favor now.”

  Cornelius briefly contemplated throwing himself off the ledge, but he was too scared. His fear seemed to cause his own Power to flare, and he reached inside, gathered al
l his energy and threw it at Harkeness.

  The Pale Horse was hit by the telekinetic wave, and his polished dress shoes slid across the marble and into the puddle of blood. Harkeness looked up in disbelief. “That’s it? That’s all you have?”

  Cornelius tried again, but his Power was exhausted.

  Harkness stepped forward, glaring down at his shoes in disgust. When he looked up again, his face was flushed with anger. “You think that Power is something you can mistreat your whole life and never respect, and then when in your time of need it will somehow rise to the occasion?” He covered the distance the feeble push had moved him in two steps and grabbed Cornelius by the lapels. “You have to earn Power, fool!”

  Cornelius screamed when he saw the hands curled into claws next to his body. He could almost see the flesh crawling with disease. One narrow finger came up and stroked his lips with a yellow nail. His bladder let go. “Fine! Fine! Name it. Name your price, fiend! Please, just don’t hurt me. I beg you! I’ll give you anything.”

  “I do not want anything more than our agreed-upon price.” Harkeness released him. “You will make a change to one of your client’s specifications and you will not inform them.” He removed an envelope from his jacket and shoved it between the buttons of Cornelius’s shirt. “You will follow the instructions on these blueprints exactly, down to the most precise measurement. These changes will be made under your direct supervision. It will be done in utmost secrecy.”

  Cornelius slid down the balcony, curled his knees up to his chest, and whimpered in a puddle of his own urine.

  “You’ve been touched by the Pale Horse. You’ve heard what’s happened to Pershing despite the constant ministrations of Healers. Failure to follow these plans exactly will result in you sharing his fate. I will know if you try to betray me. I am inside your skin now, Mr. Stuyvesant. Goodbye.”