Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles (45 page)

“I do not understand.”

“Magic is all the same. They all talk about geometry and stuff, but magic is all the same at first, until it gets folded! Then it makes a new thing!” Faye’s mind was blown. Her magic kept track of the lines as the bird unraveled. She envisioned the flat sheet in her head map, and then viewed it in three dimensions and decided to make something new. She quickly thought through all the necessary connections, and began
smooshing
things back together.

Lady Origami was perplexed, but she didn’t say anything as Faye kept folding and twisting things. It took her a whole lot longer to do it with her clumsy hands than with her fast brain. Faye proudly held up the rough thing that had once been a swan.

“I am not sure what—”

“It’s a Holstein!” Faye exclaimed.

Lady Origami took it back, obviously confused. Now that she was looking at it in cold reality and not as the majestic animal she conceived in her head map, it was ugly as sin, but at least it was shaped right and had enough legs. “Ah yes. Of course.”

“A cow!”

“Oh.” She nodded appreciatively. “I can see that . . . That is one of the spotted ones? We crashed the
Bulldog Marauder
on some. Very nice,” she lied, trying not to hurt Faye’s feelings. “I did not know anyone from the West knew this art.”

“Art? No. This is what I do when I Travel. I make connections. I can’t believe I never saw this before. Don’t you see?” Faye jabbered excitedly. “This is exactly how magic works! The whole world, the universe, that’s the sheet. Actives normally get to fold just one part to change the world! Maybe they can grow that bit, make some changes, but they don’t ever really unfold the whole sheet and make something new, but it’s the folds that decide what each part does! That’s how the Chairman could change between different kinds of magic. He unfolded his connection and made new ones.”

Faye could tell that she’d completely lost her audience. Lady Origami just had a look on her face that said Faye had gone crazy. That was okay, Faye was used to that, but this was a
big
deal.

“Do you got any more paper?”

Lady Origami had a lot of pockets.

Magic, a sharp knife, some demon ink, whiskey to dull the pain, and a steady hand . . . That’s all it took to turn a man into a weapon.

Who was he kidding? Jake Sullivan had always been a weapon. It was just time to quit pretending he could ever be anything else.

Killing.
That’s all he’d ever been good for. Even when he’d tried to help, tried to be on the side of the angels, all he’d done was kill.

As a boy, his head had been filled with big ideals about courage and sacrifice and defending the innocent. He’d lied about his age and joined General Roosevelt’s First Volunteer Active Brigade. He’d even talked his brothers into it. Think of the adventure . . .
What horseshit.
The Sullivan brothers’ grand adventure had turned into years of endless trench warfare, killing with bullets, gravity, and bare hands. He’d survived the biggest battle in history with his body relatively intact, while one brother had lost his life and the other had lost his mind.

He’d come home to a country that didn’t understand them. All they’d known was that the First Volunteer had nearly ripped the world apart killing magical Germans at the Second Somme. Some called them heroes, but he could see the fear in their eyes.

Still, he’d tried to help, tried to make a difference. He was stubborn like that. Sullivan had liked puzzles, and what better way to solve puzzles than being a detective? Fixing people’s problems, and occasionally using his Power to right wrongs and take care of the dangerous types, and he’d been damn good at it. He’d fallen in love with a girl who had her own kinds of nightmares, and for just a little while, he’d thought he’d build a life for himself.

That had ended in five minutes of blood, because an innocent person had been threatened, and he was just too damned obstinate to let that slide. He’d killed a crooked bastard, but it had been a crooked bastard of an elected lawman, and that life he’d thought he might build with Delilah had all came crashing down.

Rockville
. Six years of monotonous rock-breaking hell, and even in chains he couldn’t stop killing. The hardest of the hard had tried to prove themselves against his reputation, and he’d broken every single one. He never started anything, but he finished everything. His magic had always been strong, hard as his will, as forceful as gravity, but Rockville had given him time to think, and it turned out that was the most dangerous thing of all.

He’d been freed early to be J. Edgar Hoover’s attack dog, and even when he was trying not to kill anybody, they’d left him no choice. Delilah had come back into his life, briefly, until he’d gotten her killed too.

He’d been at war ever since.

The brain of a scholar in the body of a thug with a history so hard it would make an Iron Guard flinch. In another time or other circumstances, he might have accomplished great things with his mind or built great things with his hands. Instead, all he’d done was tear down the world, chipping away, piece by piece, like methodically breaking rocks in a quarry. He could try to hide it in fancy talk, about how he was protecting the innocent from the evil, but those were just words to confuse the issue. Jake Sullivan was good at one thing, and that one thing was killing. Sure, it was always for a good reason, but that didn’t change the fact that he was born to fight.

The Grimnoir oath he’d taken was serious business to a man who always kept his word. There were still folks in need of defending, now more than ever before, so he intended to go and do what God had put him on this Earth to do, and that was to kill a whole mess of people.

Jake Sullivan may have been on the side of the angels, but they were some damned bloody angels.

He woke up lying on his stomach. At first he wasn’t sure where he was. There was a strange noise vibrating through the floor, and then he remembered that was the sound of turbojet engines, and then he remembered that he was on the
Traveler
, and then he remembered that it was mostly empty since most of its passengers had been murdered in Shanghai. It wasn’t until he tried to move that he felt the pain and recalled why he was lying on his stomach. His back had been the only spot big enough to carve the new spell.

The Healing spells he’d carved on his chest were burning hot, repairing the damage to his tissues. Already the cuts and burns that had been infflicted on him had knotted over into rough scar tissue. He’d thought the others had hurt, but they’d been nothing compared to this. It was fading now, but he didn’t think he’d ever forget that magical fire.

Madi had held the record. He’d taken thirteen Imperium kanji and lived, and as a result he’d been damned near unkillable. Sullivan now had five, though this new one from Sivaram had to be equivalent to several Imperium kanji designs. Sullivan felt for the Power built up in his chest, but then immediately recoiled. It was
different
than before.

What would happen when he actually used it? Zangara had gone from making firecrackers to artillery shells. Crow had gone from Summoning demons to wearing them like a suit. What would that do to a man who was already a master of gravity? Even as curious as Sullivan was, frankly, he was afraid to experiment with such forces, especially while on board a fragile airship.

He took stock. He was barefoot, wearing pants but no shirt, and he still didn’t know where he was. Last he remembered he’d been in sick bay. He lifted his head from the pillow. There was a small mattress on the steel floor. He pretty much covered the whole thing and then some. He’d never been in this room before, and he’d been nearly everywhere he could fit aboard the
Traveler
. She simply wasn’t that big of a dirigible.

He realized it wasn’t actually a room at all, more of a space between rooms. The ceiling
moved
. And then he realized there was no roof at all. It was rust-colored fabric. It was the bottom of one of the hull cells holding thousands of cubic feet of hydrogen. Light was trickling through the gas bag, and it gave the room a sort of pink tint. Always analytical, Sullivan sat up, wondering how he’d gotten to this forgotten corner of the ship and how long he’d been out.

Other than the mattress, there wasn’t much here. A short table had been welded to the floor next to the hatch. There were cushions around it, since it was too small to use a chair. There was a vase bolted to the table, and the vase was filled with flowers. His neck popped as he turned his head. There were lots of little paintings and pictures on the wall, not hung, but screwed, because they would simply fall off the first time the ship banked hard. Then he tensed as he realized there were actually
lit
candles in the room.

He got yelled at for smoking, but somebody had put
candles
directly under one of the hydrogen bags? Sullivan crawled toward the candles to put them out, but then stopped when he realized it was a shrine of some kind. There were two photographs placed between fresh flowers, and several intricately folded paper animals, and then Sullivan knew exactly where he was.

The first picture was of a young Japanese man, stocky, muscular, with a big square face and a wide grin. He was wearing a Western suit and proudly holding some sort of academic award or diploma in his big hands. Sullivan would’ve bet money that he, too, was a Gravity Spiker. He just had that solid look about him.

The next picture was of a little baby.

Sullivan pulled away from the candles. He realized that though they were emitting heat, they weren’t moving at all. It was like the flames had simply frozen in place. Even the light coming off them wasn’t flickering. The wicks weren’t being consumed and the wax wasn’t even soft. Of course, Lady Origami was a Torch, so fire would do whatever she told it to do, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to endanger her memorial or her ship.

The hatch opened. Sullivan lurched to his feet on wobbly legs as Lady Origami entered her quarters. She was carrying a pitcher in one hand and a steaming bowl in the other.

“Hey,” Sullivan said awkwardly.

She placed the food down on the table, then closed the hatch behind her. “I am surprised you are awake. Do you feel all right? It looked painful.”

“I’m okay. Why am I here?”

“Sick bay is very full, with the four knights pulled from river. This is a private place, so I offered. It took three big men to carry you here. Your words were upsetting the others.”

“Words?”

“All about killing. Over and over.”

Sullivan looked down at his hands. “Uh, yeah . . .”

“You scared them.” She came over, touched him on the chin and lifted his head. He was surprised by the physical contact. Her fingers were callused and surprisingly strong. Her eyes were piercing, and he could see the fire inside. “You scared me.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

“Oh, Sullivan . . .” She smiled and shook her head. She stepped away lightly, untying the dark red silk that decorated her coveralls. She placed it on the pillows. “Do not apologize. You are what you are supposed to be. You are strong, and proud, and smart, and very sad inside. You say very few words, but the words you say are always true. Men such as you are rare in the world.”

The jet engines gained in intensity. They were lifting off. “I should be going.”

She stepped in front of the hatch, blocking it. “Do not go.”

It had been a long time, but he recognized the look. He knew what she wanted, though he could not understand why she would possibly want him. “Lady Origami, I can’t—”

“Lady Origami is my marauder name. What they called me when I did not wish to speak after they rescued me from the prison ship. My real name is Akane Yoshizawa.”

“Akane.” It was a pretty name for a pretty girl. “I—”

“You must think terrible things of me because of the first time we met. You must have thought I was a pirate whore.”

“No!” Sullivan shook his head vigorously in the negative. “Never. You just surprised me is all.”

“I surprised myself that night too. That was not like me. Many of the marauders have wished to, but they have respect for me when I tell them to go away, and I did not have to burn any of them.”

“Hard to get fresh with a Torch.”

“True.” She smiled. “You were the first man I’d tried to be with since . . . It was just . . . When you told the Marauders your story, you reminded me of someone. A man I once knew.” Her eyes flicked unconsciously toward the shrine, and then back to him. “You still do. You are complete, but empty. Never afraid, never false. I can see this in you and I have only ever seen it once before.”

He turned away. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“We all lose, Sullivan. We lose our homes, we lose our love, our families, and sometimes we lose ourselves because losing is all we know how to do.” She came over slowly, put one hand on his scarred back. It lingered there, her fingers tracing the complex lines of Power, then she gently steered him around to face her. “I see your sadness when others do not, because I share it. You don’t want to lose any more. You don’t think you have any more to give.”

“If you’re tired of losing, then you sure as hell don’t want to end up with the likes of me.”

She ran one hand down the muscles of his chest. This time he didn’t try to pull away.

“Then we will not think about it until tomorrow, Heavy Jake Sullivan. Today, we will just be alive.” She reached up to her neck and unzipped her coveralls clear to her navel, and she wasn’t wearing a damned thing beneath.

“Well . . .” Sullivan took a deep breath.
Akane
. It really was a beautiful name for a beautiful woman. “All right, then.”

Chapter 19

I have long felt However, I did not expect them to be literally invisible.

—Buckminster Fuller,

personal correspondence,
1933

Drew Town, New Jersey

The call had been urgent.
The elders were contacting every single Grimnoir knight in the world. It didn’t matter where they were, who they were, if they were old or feeble, on their own or in a group, it was all hands on deck. Not all knights were fighters, but for those that weren’t, they needed to go and make sure the local authorities were alert and ready, and they were to do so by any means necessary. If that meant throwing rocks at the Kremlin, do it. Wake up the milita. Load your guns. If you didn’t have guns, it was time for torches and pitchforks.