Page 98 of Middlegame

“Clay, native amphibians, and . . . ?”

“Railway iron, ma’am. Stolen from the tracks. I had to trade any chance of speech for the additional resilience, but you could hit him with a bus and he wouldn’t notice.”

“Hmmm,” says Leigh speculatively. The massive construct gets into the front passenger seat, not bothering with his own seatbelt; it wouldn’t stretch across the barreled expanse of his chest. “We’ll have to see about that.”

The alchemist behind the wheel goes as silent as his construct. No one who works with or for James Reed doesn’t know about Leigh Barrow: where he found her, what she is. For a manikin to outlive their creator . . . it requires an immense amount of power.

“Have you found them?” The question is asked lightly, almost sweetly. In that moment, Leigh could have been anyone, harmless and looking for her friends.

“No, ma’am,” he says.

“Why not?” The moment has passed. Her voice is a promise of pain unavoidable, and his hands clench on the wheel.

He knew when Reed called that he probably wouldn’t survive the night. He had no way to refuse. Until this moment, he was still holding on to hope. Hope is gone now; hope has fled.

“They left their car. I can take you there.”

“Do that,” she says, leaning back in the seat. “And drive quickly. I’m not feeling patient tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am. Clyde?”

The construct opens the glove compartment and withdraws a Hand of Glory. This one is very small. The owner, when living, couldn’t have been more than six years old. Leigh doesn’t comment. The refusal of some people to use Hands of Glory made from children has never made sense to her; a murdered child will not magically be un-murdered if you refuse to exploit the resources they’ve left behind. Meat is meat. Meat exists to be used, and anyone who thinks differently is deluding themselves about their place in the world.

The construct lights the Hand. The car fills with the sweet smell of wax and burning flesh. Leigh breathes deeply, and the nameless alchemist hits the gas, accelerating beyond the speed limit, hidden from the watchful eyes of the police, as he drives toward the illusion of salvation.

It takes less than thirty minutes to travel between the private airfield and the lot where Erin’s car is hidden. Leigh steps onto the sidewalk and looks dismissively around. This is a small town aspiring to become a city, still connected to the people who forged it; they no doubt remember the names of their founders, celebrating them every year, as if creating a settlement were something special and unique, and not the human urge to propagate writ large. Better to celebrate the people who came after the sweet rush of newness, the ones who fought their way through floods and famine to build a functioning municipality, an infrastructure worth sustaining. Better to support the ones who fought and died in the name of something that would never be theirs, would always belong to some sainted, long-dead founder.

The Up-and-Under belongs to the Averys and Hepzibahs, but it’s the Queens of Wands who will be remembered. It’s not fair. That’s how it goes.

Leigh walks away without looking back; doesn’t see the still-nameless alchemist heave a sigh of relief. He’s a boy who imagines himself a man. He’ll be dead before morning. She knows herself and knows what this search will require in the way of alchemy, of science, of murder. His heart will fuel a tracking tincture, his hands form the cloaking devices to keep her from being seen. He is, at his core, expendable, and she doesn’t have the time or energy to spare in making him aware of that fact. Instead, she walks, steps quick and fleet as a hunting hound’s, nose turned to the wind, looking for traces of alchemy. Like speaks to like, and Leigh Barrow is a woman made of many women, bone and feather and soil. She can no more overlook the signs of a working than she can grow wings and fly, the crow beating in her breast notwithstanding. She weaves between the cars, and she never stops, and she never looks back.

The air cools as she approaches a green Honda. She steps closer, and the scent of wax caresses her nostrils, identifying her target. That doesn’t explain the coolness: the coolness is something she’s never felt before. It’s as if the behavior of the air has changed, the molecules slowing down, losing some of their excitement.

The doors are locked. That’s never been a problem for her. One quick application of her elbow later, the window is shattered and she’s letting herself into the car, where the air is even colder. A great working has happened here, a working she doesn’t know or recognize. The thought is chilling in a way the air is not. If they’re beginning to manifest, if that bitch Erin has found a way to coax them toward their destiny . . .

(Will they be tame creatures, under her control? Will Erin find a way to reduce phoenixes to firebirds, turning burning things into something manageable, something that wants to be commanded? Or will they blaze out of proportion to the fuel available, igniting and destroying the world? She won’t lie, not even to herself: the thought is beguiling, attractive in a way almost strong enough to overcome her lingering loyalty to the man who holds her reins.)

She shakes herself as brutally as a hound shakes a rat, chasing the too-tempting, too-terrible thought away, and bends to pluck the discarded Hand of Glory from the footwell. The wax is still soft and malleable; the fire can’t have burnt down more than a few hours ago. Reaching into her pocket, she produces a handful of coal dust streaked with glints of silver. The coal came from a mine where a disaster claimed the life of over a hundred men; the silver, melted down from the jewelry of a woman whose husband had choked the life from her body before bedding his mistress in her marital bed. It’s a subtle, complex thing, is alchemy. Reed isn’t half the alchemist Baker was, but he’s smart enough to know when he should give his employees their freedom. Leigh’s art was refined under the tutelage of the man who made her, a man who recognized that the aspects of alchemy belonging to the dead were best practiced by the dead themselves. It wasn’t until that man died (she will not even think his name) and her leash was pressed into Reed’s hand that she began to flourish. Where the dead are, so is she, and where she is, she can work miracles.

She spreads the dust thinly across her palm, purses her lips, and whistles five notes of a threnody written to honor the death of Abraham Lincoln. The coal dust moves; the silver does not. Leigh frowns. According to the candle, the car has been here less than an hour. According to the humors of the air around it, the car has been here all night and for the better part of a day, drinking in sunlight and moonlight alike, growing ripe with potential. The contradiction shouldn’t be possible.

But there is a chill in the air, and the Doctrine is half made of time. Leigh’s hand snaps shut, nails digging into her skin until it splits, allowing dark, sluggish blood to seep forth. The smell is sweet, like decaying meat.

They’re manifesting.

When she climbs out of the car some five minutes later, her face is smooth, her shoulders relaxed; her hands dangle by her sides, fingers pointed daintily downward, betraying none of her dismay. She walks back through the maze of cars to her ride. The construct stands outside his vehicle, keeping watch, guarding against the dangers of the night. She knows herself for the greatest of those dangers, and she smiles without pleasure at the thought.

The alchemist rolls down his window when she gestures for him to do so. “Ma’am?”

“They were here. Now they’re not. They have no car. What are their transit options at this hour of the night? Don’t gawp at me, we don’t have time. Where could they go?”

“The trains aren’t running. Not for another three hours. They’d have to either steal a car or find something that stays open all night.”

Leigh has monitored the missing cuckoos since the cradle. Dodger doesn’t drive: Roger does, but can hardly be considered mechanically inclined. Her smile is a terrible thing. “Good,” she says. “Then they’re stuck, and we can move them.”

The alchemist says nothing.

UP ALL NIGHT