The Tank: Chapter Six, Part Two

Notes: A clue, a dash of gentleness, and the introduction of...not the tank of the title, but something just as cool!

Title: The Tank: Chapter Six, Part Two

***

Chapter Six, Part Two

This was the second time Anton had seen Camille march into a perilous situation and take it over completely, and to say the man had a knack for it would be ludicrously minimalist. He presented himself to Anton’s party—Dr. Grable, at least, had met him during the incident at the university and therefore didn’t put up the fuss he otherwise might have—and showed them all his credentials. “While my presence among you is purely coincidental, I was aware of your group’s presence on the train and have already taken the liberty of supplying a new mode of transportation that should be here within the hour,” he continued, looking at everyone but Anton. “I understand you’re headed for L’Institut D’Ingénierie Technologique.”

“How did you come to understand that, young man?” Cardinal Proulx asked, his voice somehow thunderous and mild at the same time.

“Your Eminence, I am a lumière working under the aegis of the emperor himself,” Camille replied dryly. “There is very little that goes on in this Empire that I do not understand.”

“This is a nightmare,” Monsieur Deschamps whimpered, one hand clutching the amulet around his neck as he stared at Camille. “It must be a nightmare. I’ve fallen into a dream I can’t wake up from.”

“You should consider yourself lucky to have convinced the late Lord Voclain that you were qualified for whatever if was he asked of you.” Anton had never heard that particular tone from Camille before, something so cold and contemptuous it made him want to shiver secondhand. “I suggest you take the time between now and our vessel’s arrival to quiet your nerves.

“Dr. Grable,” he continued, dismissing Monsieur Deschamps entirely, “the rest of this journey is going to be somewhat trying for a man with a broken leg. Would you prefer to be carried to the nearest village with the rest of the train’s passengers and continue after you’ve recovered a bit?”

“Whatever happens next can’t be more trying than an ambush by a lot of ruddy cowards in the middle of the mountains,” Dr. Grable replied with a grimace. “I’ll manage.”

“Very well. I suggest you have your assistant—” and even now he didn’t look at Anton, just spoke of him in the third person as though he were an abstract concept instead of a living being “—retrieve your belongings and place them to the side of that clearing over there. When our transport does arrive, speed will be of the essence.” Now he did glance over, but it was the same look he might have given any porter. “Perhaps you can do the same for the rest of your party as well, since you seem to be the only hale young man of the bunch.”

It felt like a dismissal—hell, it was a dismissal, but that didn’t mean that Camille wasn’t correct. Between Caroline and the now-deceased Voclain alone, there was probably half a ton of baggage. The Vicomte hadn’t believed in traveling light. “Of course,” Anton said, feeling quite subdued, and walked toward their overturned car in a bit of a daze.

It was getting colder by the minute. Thankfully, a relief crew had arrived a few minutes earlier, and the survivors were either walking toward the closest village or being carried there by hardy volunteers. The dead were left behind, held inside one of the overturned cars. It was cold enough that they would last the night, at least.

Anton was grateful to have something to do that kept his hands busy and his brain occupied, however briefly. It kept him from thinking too much about Camille. He had made a mistake, voicing his half-formed concerns the way he had, but was it really too much to ask for a hint of understanding? He’d just been thrown from a train car and nearly shot by a man in black—a bit of rattled thinking was a clear and unavoidable consequence of that. But now his lover was giving him the cold shoulder, it was more important than ever that Caroline keep her distance from him, and his mentor—and, indeed, his direct employer—Dr. Grable had a broken leg. What would that mean for their work in Paris? Would Anton be expected to step in and demonstrate combat spells in the doctor’s place? The only outcome of that would be utter disaster.

He lifted, stepped, and stacked, over and over again, ignoring the pain in his ribs and the occasional furtive glances from the rest of the company in his direction as he moved every case, trunk and carton to the clearing some yards apart from the wreck. By the time he was nearly done inside the train car, where there were fortunately no bodies to deal with thanks to the Cardinal’s efforts to get them blessed and removed, Anton felt nearly incapable of thought, much less speech. The whole of his world had narrowed down to basic movements, and it was only the silvery glint of the buttons on the leather strap of the tiny holster that led him to notice it at all. He crawled toward the gleam, reached around the seat that nearly obscured it, and pulled out the holster.

What kind of gun goes into this? It was tiny—whatever weapon it held could not hold more than five shots, at best. The leather holster had delicate silver scrollwork on it, in addition to the brilliance of the buttons. Anton lifted it to his nose and sniffed—fresh oil, and a hint of gunpowder. This was no ornamental keepsake, then.

Could it be… Such a holster was dainty enough to hold a gun that would perfectly fit a lady’s hand. Had Caroline or her companion been the ones to carry it? If so, where was the gun? And could it possibly have been the gun that fired the fatal round into the vicomte’s chest?

Oh, God. More clues, more secrets, more things that Anton wanted nothing to do with and yet was dragged headlong into regardless. He stiffly placed the supple little thing inside his vest and sat there, his mind whirring even as his body broke out in shivers that Anton barely felt. What the hell was Caroline playing at? Or was this even hers? A gun this small could easily be stored inside a set of robes as ornate as the cardinal’s, for example.

Oh, don’t be an idiot. Why would a man of the church turn to murder? Then again, why did anyone turn to murder? Anton ought to give the holster directly to Camille, but… now it was even more imperative that he do his utmost to guard Caroline against additional scrutiny from the Lord Lumière. Camille was devilishly insightful, he didn’t need any more ammunition than he already had.

But then Anton was potentially obstructing an official, Imperial investigation. If he was found to be withholding evidence, if—

 “Anton.” A quiet voice in his ear pulled him out of his daze. He turned blearily to see Camille, down on his knees in the wreckage beside him. Anton was shaking so hard he could barely stay upright.

“God, look at you.” Camille pinched the bridge of his nose as he closed his eyes for a moment. “You’re but a minute away from shock. What did you injure in the crash?”

“Nothing,” Anton protested numbly. “Nothing serious.”

“Nothing serious, he says.” Camille shook his head. “You’re done in here,” he declared. “I’ll have Deschamps gather the rest, I need a respite from his bellyaching. Come outside and sit down. Our transport should nearly be here.”

“You must know him,” Anton said, turning awkwardly on his knees in preparation to crawl out of the car again. Oh, ouch—perhaps the tree he’d hit had done a little more damage than he’d thought.

“Know who?” Camille reached a hand out to steady him but didn’t quite make contact.

“Monsieur Deschamps. You’d never speak of him so—” contemptuously “—familiarly if you didn’t.”

“I have the dubious honor of a prior knowledge of the man, yes.”

“God, I hope he wasn’t a friend before you decided to hate him.” It fell out of Anton’s mouth before he could take it back. Camille looked at him sharply.

“He wasn’t,” he said, quiet but firm. “And nothing about Deschamps can compare in any way at all to our own situation. Now.” He finally extended his hand. “You need to get up and get ready. Our new transport has arrived.”

Anton took Camille’s hand and let him pull him up to his feet, then forced himself to let go as he looked around outside. “Where? I don’t see any horses, or…”

“Not on the ground,” Camille corrected. “Look up.”

Anton did so, and saw a silver speck growing larger and larger as it sailed through the sky at breakneck speed over the nearest mountain range. “What is that?” he asked, gaping.

Camille looked pleased. “Our ride.”

The Tank: Chapter Four, Part Two

Notes: I'm kind of impressed I managed to get this done, given all the stuff that's been happening lately. We're about to set off on our adventure--enjoy!

Title: The Tank: Chapter Four, Part Two

***

Chapter Four, Part Two

Dr. Benedict Grable, master of thaumaturgy and feared head of the thaumaturgical department of the university, whose reputation preceded him across three continents, was sitting in the tall-backed chair behind his massive desk when Anton was ushered into his office. With his hands clasped over the front of his black robes and his elbows propped low on the arm rests, he might have looked somewhat relaxed to a casual observer. To Anton, who had never known the man to approach a state of relaxation over his entire two years here, it merited a double-take.

Ah. This was not relaxation. This was a brood.

Dr. Grable, for all his contemporary honors and achievements in thaumaturgical theory and teaching, was most well known for his rare abilities as a practical thaumaturge—not just practical, but battle-tested. He fought for the Empire in the last major conflict, the terrible mess with Russia—fought so hard and so well that after five years of fighting, he achieved the rank of colonel and could have gone higher if he hadn’t declined for a teaching position. His transition had been seen, Anton understood, as a demotion by many of his peers, but Anton thought he knew it for what it really was—an escape.

Dr. Grable had gone on to live as normal a life as a man who had killed hundreds, if not thousands of people with his spellwork could. He married, raised three children, and worked his way up the ladder at the university, which now had a reputation as one of the finest thaumaturgical institutes on the continent. It had been a safe place, a place of pure learning and research…until Gerald Montgomery’s possession of two of his fellow students, at least. What Gerald did to them was arguable worse than what he’d done to Anton. Anton might have died, but at least he hadn’t been forced to murder other people first.

 And it had all gone on under Dr. Grable’s nose.

Montgomery’s actions weren’t Dr. Grable’s fault, any more than they were Anton’s for having the palimpsest Montgomery wanted with him in the first place. It was something of a cold comfort, though. Anton stopped in front of his teacher’s desk and inclined his head.

“Sit.” Dr. Grable pointed at the chair next to Anton, who pulled it out and sat down. The cushion was still warm from its previous occupant.

“Good.” The doctor pulled a bottle of what looked like a thick, syrupy port out of his desk, along with two small blue cups. He poured them each a dram, then pushed Anton’s across the desk. “Now drink.” He grimaced. “Trust me, you’ll need it.”

Anton took a ginger sip, then relaxed a bit as the sweet fire of it hit his tongue. It was a port, but spicier than what he was used to, with a hint of a cinnamon aftertaste. It was exquisite, and probably very expensive.

“My wife died two years ago,” Dr. Grable said out of nowhere. He wasn’t looking at Anton now; he stared sideways out the tall, stained-glass window instead. “A few months before you arrived here. It was a sudden thing, a case of cerebral apoplexy. She died very fast, and the physician told me it was probably relatively painless. It was the way many people would choose to go. Hell, I would choose to go that way. But Leona?” He shook his head. “I have no doubt she blistered Saint Peter with the sharp side of her tongue when she got to the pearly gates, because he had denied her one last chance to fight. If it meant getting to say goodbye to me, to the boys, to our grandchildren…she would have withstood any pain, to get that opportunity. That would be a fight worth having, to her.”

He gestured toward the door. “Those men the emperor sent here? They don’t think like my Leona.” His sneer rearranged the craggy lines of his face, drawing his lips back from his long white teeth. “They want any fight that will let them test their might. Or, in this case, our might.”

“Our might?” Anton asked, somewhat redundantly but surely he could be excused, having learned more personal information from his mentor in the last few seconds than he had over the entire course of their previous relationship.

“Thaumaturgical might, that is. The power of magic.” He waved a hand through the air like he was waving a wand. “The last great war was a proving ground for thaumaturgy, a chance to show that it could be an effective weapon in combat. I regret being a part of that,” he said, surprising Anton, “but it’s done, and would have been done with or without my participation. Nowadays, the question isn’t if, so much as how. How much and how many and how often, it all goes on and on. They have plans, those gentlemen. And they want to drag me into them, damn their hides.”

“Well,” Anton offered after a tense moment of silence, “it makes sense for them to want you involved. You said it yourself, sir. You were an integral, and successful, part of the last conflict.”

Dr. Grable shook his head. “They don’t want me to spell their rifle barrels or cannons, Seiber. They want me for my other talent.”

“Your…” It took a moment for Anton to remember it. Dr. Grable was famed not only for his spell construction, but also for his ability to— “They want you to look at the spells that are already being used?” That didn’t make any sense.

“To, as they put it, ‘detect and interpret the thaumaturgical signatures under development and certify that they do as their caster intends.’” Dr. Grable took another drink. “They don’t trust the mages under their command. They want to make sure someone is holding their feet to the fire, which likely means that at least one practitioner’s tried a double-cross already. They mean for me to be their judge and jury. At least they won’t need me for the role of executioner,” he added dryly. “I’ve no doubt there are plenty of competent neck-cutters where we’re going.”

“We, sir?” It wasn’t wholly unexpected, but Anton had also been hoping that Dr. Grable would broach the subject a little differently. Perhaps by starting with a “Congratulations on graduating, you’re going to do great things, and if you like, you can start with this.”

In retrospect, it seemed like a foolish hope given what Anton knew of the man.

“Oh, yes. One man might keep a secret but two never can—the emperor’s people are hedging their bets in case I turn out to be a backstabber or am otherwise disappointing.” Dr. Grable’s expression softened minutely. “It helps that your skillset is perfectly suited to the task. You can make the dead walk again, Seiber, after a fashion. You find truths that other people like to keep hidden, and you’re a survivor. Damn good at that last part,” he added. “And I’m going to need an assistant who can watch both of our backs where we’re going.

“You’ll be paid,” he went on, straightening up a bit. “Double your current teaching stipend, plus expenses for travel and meals and the like. You’ll get a hell of a recommendation out of it at the end, if all goes well. Not the type of thing that will make you friends in Oxford, perhaps, but why would you return to that stuffy, theory-drunk puddle anyhow? I told the representative committee that continuing my work here was nonnegotiable, and so it would only be a three-month term including travel, but a lot can happen in that amount of time.

“What do you say, Seiber?” Dr. Grable arched one thick gray brow. “Care to run off to Paris with me?”

Lord, when he put it that way… Anton down the rest of his port in one long, intoxicating draught. He set the glass down, gasping only a little, and said, “Ready when you are, sir.”

The Tank: Chapter Four, Part One

Notes: Anton's world is slowly coalescing, like a black hole, only he doesn't realize it yet. More plots, more schemes, and a few innocent little tidbits that turn out not to be so innocent in the long run!

Title: The Tank: Chapter Four, Part One

***

Chapter Four, Part One

For the first time in months, the campus was quiet. The university had officially let out for the year, and while there would always be some people about—the staff that maintained the facilities, certain teachers and students who had experiments that couldn’t be put on hold for holiday, and the occasional tourist—the bustling crowds of dark-robed students were by-in-large gone now.

Anton, by all rights, should have been one of them, new graduate that he was. At the very least, he should have been in the process of packing his laboratory, settling his paperwork, and moving on to a new and exciting position back out in the world. The last, of course, hadn’t happened, and because it hadn’t happened none of the rest of it was until he absolutely couldn’t put it off any longer.

He wouldn’t have squatted on campus, of course. Anton had his pride, after all—he would never have pushed his welcome so far that he was forced out. But if he’d had to be reminded more than once, well, he was absent-minded at times, wasn’t he? It was a caveat of the trade—thaumaturges tended to focus so deeply on their work that much of the rest of life passed them by, often including the need to sleep and eat. It was a bit of a miracle that Anton’s parents had ever found each other, given how many thaumaturgical miracles his father had wrought and how much bloody time they’d all taken.

Besides, Anton now had an actual, official reason to stay here—at least until he was called in to meet with Dr. Grable. He’d received a message from the man’s secretary not an hour ago, requesting his presence at four. That was right after Grable was scheduled to meet with the emperor’s delegation, according to a passing comment by Camille that morning.

That morning…mmm, that had been nice. Camille had gone out early, and returned not long after with hot chocolate, ham and gruyere croissants, and just in case Anton couldn’t cope without it, a little cup of espresso as well.

“You are a god among men,” Anton had slurred from where he still lay in bed, his arms wrapped around Camille’s pillow.

“I hope not,” Camille had said, gently setting the tray of food down before joining Anton on the bed again. He didn’t lay down, just sat across from Anton’s head and smoothed a hand across his shoulder and upper back. “There’s too much expected of gods, and I have more than enough people to worry about as it is.”

Anton craned his head around until he could kiss Camille’s palm. “I wish you didn’t worry about me.” He knew better than to suggest that Camille didn’t ever need to worry about him—last night had made the opposite abundantly clear.

“You wouldn’t be yourself if you didn’t occasionally become involved in things that normal men shy away from.”

“I am normal,” Anton had protested sleepily.

“No,” Camille had replied with a faint smile. “You’re really not.”

Anton stopped and stood in front of his laboratory’s window. It was late May, the height of spring now arcing toward summer, and the temperature outside was as lovely as Zürich could possibly be. There was no logical reason for him to keep the window closed. None of his experiments were so sensitive that they would be disrupted by a bit of breeze or a few raindrops, and that was all the weather had offered up lately beyond pure sunshine.

In truth, the laboratory could have used some airing out, after the last round of experiments involving powdered sulfur. That was what a normal man in this situation would do, and Anton was still of the opinion, despite Camille’s easy teasing, that he was quite normal.

None of this logic had much of an impact on Anton’s peace of mind, though.

He touched the stone sill beneath the window, cool and dark, shaped long ago by a stonemason’s chisel and worn a bit more by the hands of dozens, scores of students that had done their work here. It had a bit of a shine to it, this stone. Humanity had literally pressed its grease into the cutter’s marks until the surface was nearly smooth. Once, Anton wouldn’t have hesitated to lean his weight there, to throw open the window and stare down at the square far below with nothing more than a bit of bemusement. Now the thought of it made him shudder.

Oh, get a hold of yourself, he thought irritably. You’re not a child. There’s no need to let the past rule you like this. He was lucky he hadn’t had a nightmare last night—he would have hated to wake Camille up with his shouting.

Sometimes—rarely—hardly more than once a week—Anton relived the sensation of being pushed from this window. In those dreams, unlike in real life, he didn’t catch himself on a bit of gothic ornamentation as he fell, and Camille didn’t haul him back into his laboratory at the last second. In the dreams he fell straight to the cobblestones and dashed his brains out, yet somehow lived to see his own disfigured corpse despite that. Or Camille found him, but their hands slipped apart. The worse ones were the ones where Camille saw him, but never bothered to reach for him at all, and Anton had to see his lover’s indifferent face as he fell to his non-death and wonder what he had done wrong.

They were wrenching, but they were just dreams. “Just dreams,” he told himself. “Now get a move on.”

It made sense to at least start packing now, especially if Camille was right and Dr. Grable was going to offer Anton a place as his assistant for the summer. In Paris, nonetheless. Paris! Anton had always wanted to go to Paris. Some of the greatest technological innovations of the nineteenth century had been made there, courtesy of L’Institut D’Ingénierie Technologique. The Institute was to the development of machinery what Oxford was to British thaumaturgy—simply the best of the best. Anton was greatly looking forward to visiting it, if he got the chance.

Which he certainly wouldn’t get if he couldn’t even pack up his bloody laboratory. Anton began with his notebooks, organizing and triaging the most important ones versus those that could be left in his—safe and securely spelled—trunk for the time being. He needed to keep his greatest works at hand, of course, just in case. Just in case you’re offered a job down there, perhaps, and Caroline sees it and goes into conniptions and tattles on you to the Council and your citizenship is revoked and you never see your mother again.

No. Caroline wouldn’t do that to him. She would hurt him, verbally and emotionally, deliberately and not, but she would never do something to put him in physical danger and she would certainly never cause any harm to his mother. Caroline was like a daughter to her.

Get on with it.

Anton packed up his most specific and irreplaceable spell components next, things that he needed for his masterpieces or that were less essential, but that he doubted he’d be able to afford if he had to repurchase them. Next came the spell housings—little balls like the one he’d deployed yesterday, carved from resinous pine and balsam, light and easily lit. Lastly he added in a few basic alembics and firestarters, in case he had to make things on the go.

“That’s all the important stuff,” he murmured. Except…it really wasn’t. There was still the palimpsest.

It was a copy of the palimpsest, actually, one Anton had made before the original was stolen. He’d very nearly decoded it and he wanted to finish the job, even though it seemed like a waste of time now that the spell was out there in the world. Wasn’t it? Even if it was, there was no excuse for leaving something like that where any old thaumaturge could discover it.

Anton reached beneath his long wooden desk, brushing a few spiders out of the way as he felt around for—ah. The false panel he’d wedged in place fell out, and the copy of the palimpsest dropped into his hand. There. He pulled it out, brushed it off, and tucked it into his holdall. Now he was ready.

The bell tower chimed quarter to four. Anton put on his jacket and hat, straightened his tie, and headed for the stairs.